Dae's Christmas Past (10 page)

My heart skipped a beat. How he could be there? The other men in the vision were from a far distant past that no one alive could remember today. And yet there he stood, glaring at me from the dark corner.

“Who are you?” I asked in a trembling voice. I cleared my throat and blinked a few times. “Why are you here?”

I’d spoken to assure myself that this wasn’t real. This man was still from my vision of the past. He wasn’t really standing here on the boardwalk with me. That wasn’t possible.

His words in reply were gibberish to me. It wasn’t any language that I’d ever heard. He pointed and waved the big bone he held. I still couldn’t understand him.

He lunged at me with the bone, and I took a step back. Far from proving that he wasn’t real, I’d proven that a nightmare could follow me back from the places that I went. The idea was terrifying.

“I can’t understand you. I’m sorry. I don’t know what you’re saying.” I held my hand cupped by my ear hoping he’d understand.”

His hand lifted to point at the parts of Duck that we could see through the open entrance to the boardwalk. His words were unintelligible, but his meaning seemed clear to me when he pounded the bone.

I shivered. “Something else bad is going to happen, isn’t it? Something worse than Tom’s death.”

His dark gaze roamed the sunny water on the other side of the boardwalk behind me. He searched for some way to communicate with me as he ran back and forth to the rail and pounded the bone on the wood.

“I don’t know what you mean.” I thought about the horses I’d heard but couldn’t see. “Are you talking about the demon horses?”

The door to town hall opened behind me. “There you are, Dae,” Chris Slayton said. “Thank goodness.”

I glanced back, and the other man was gone. I walked to the edge of the damp wood. The shadows were empty. “Did you see him?” I asked Chris.

“See who?” His head shifted back and forth outside the doorway. “Were you talking to someone? I’m sorry. I thought you were just pumping up before you came inside. I didn’t see anyone out here with you.”

“That’s okay.” I put my hand on the door as he started to shut it again. “Whoever he was, I guess he left.”

Chris stared at me for a long moment. “Are you okay, Dae?”

I couldn’t quite summon my bright mayor’s smile, but I did the best I could. “I’m okay. What’s going on?”

Dozens of Duck residents had come to town hall and were refusing to leave until someone explained to them why there were wild horses running up and down Duck Road in the middle of the night.

“I started having them come back here in the meeting room until Chris showed up,” Nancy whispered an explanation. “More came in with Chris. They wanted to talk to Chief Michaels, but the chief is out with the sheriff looking for Jake Burleson. I’m hoping maybe between you and Chris you can handle the situation before I have to shut down the office.”

Nancy was out of sorts, unusual for her. Usually she handled every crisis calmly. She was still wearing her pink bunny slippers that she always wore at work but her hair was frazzled and her mouth had become a thin line.

“We can handle it from here, Nancy,” Chris said. “The people like the mayor. They trust her more than anyone. I’m sure they’ll believe what she tells them.”

I stared at him. “And what’s that going to be? I can’t explain what happened last night. The horses ran right past me—maybe even through me—I’m not sure. They left hoof prints burned into the street. How do I explain that?”

Chris pushed me into the meeting room with a gentle but firm hand. “I don’t know. But I’ll be there with you. There are a lot of frightened people, Dae. They need someone to tell them it’s going to be all right, even if that someone isn’t really sure it will be.”

About fifty people, the maximum amount of chairs we normally have in the meeting room, were full of scared, questioning Duck citizens. They were noisy, shouting back and forth at each other, until they saw me and Chris. Then silence hit them, and they stared at us with watchful eyes.

I forced another smile and avoided the podium at the front of the room. We pushed our chairs together to form a semi-circle. Chris grabbed a chair and sat close by.

“Hello, everyone. I know you all want a chance to speak. Let’s take it one at a time, no shouting, and we’ll try to work through everyone’s problems.” I tried to appear confident and helpful even though I was as nervous and worried as they were.

One man stuck up his hand. I nodded and acknowledged Andy Martin from the Ice Cream and Slushy shop.

“Mayor, I don’t know what’s going on, but those horses crushed a bunch of my wife’s azaleas and broke some pots. Why are they coming up this far?”

Everyone around Andy nodded. They wanted to ask the same question.

“I can’t really explain why this happened, Andy. Sheriff Riley and Chief Michaels are looking into it.”

“Did the horses kill that man from Corolla I heard about?” Mark Sampson from the Rib Shack asked.

“I don’t think so. The last I heard, Chief Michaels thought Tom was a victim of hit and run.” It was close to the truth.

There was a great deal of whispering and shock that anyone in our small community could be responsible for something so terrible.

“But if it was horses,” Mark continued. “They’d need to be put down or something, right? They must be rabid if they’re going around attacking people.”

“Horses didn’t attack Mr. Watts,” Chris said. “He was killed, but not by horses.”

“That doesn’t answer the question of why those wild horses were up here in Duck,” Agnes Caudle charged. “They never come up this far. I guess there should’ve been a horse round-up this summer to get some of them off the island. They’re probably looking for food.”

“Looking for food is one thing,” Carter Hatley said. “Did you get see the streets and the ground around your houses? I understand that the ground is wet from the snow, but I have hoof prints burned into the concrete on my driveway. I saw some hoof prints burned into the streets on the way here this morning. What kind of horse is responsible for that?”

“It’s coming from Corolla,” Vergie Smith, our Duck postmistress, said. “We all know it’s from all that digging and those crazy statues down there. I heard the police say Jake Burleson killed Tom. I’m telling you, it’s all coming from that historic excavation on Jake’s property. Somebody needs to shut that thing down before we all go to hell in a hand-basket.”

I could see heads nodding and people agreeing that Vergie was right. Residents of the Outer Banks who’d grown up here tended to be a superstitious lot. They still believed that the ghost of Rafe Masterson came back once in a while to stir up trouble. He was a pirate that had pillaged and plundered along the coast of the Carolinas hundreds of years before.

“I don’t think the excavation is causing these problems.” Chris’ answer was rational.

“Something is going on that we don’t understand,” I told them. “But we’re going to figure it out. Now I want each of you to take a piece of paper from that table over there and write down what happened to you last night. I know some of you called the police, and that’s fine. But let’s see if we can discover some kind of pattern that could help explain this.”

People went to get pieces of paper or took them out of their pockets and bags. It was action toward solving their fears. In my experience, that was what everyone wanted, to feel that there was something they could
do
.

“How is this going to help?” Chris whispered.

“I don’t know yet. Let’s see.”

As the residents scribbled on their pieces of paper, the door to the meeting room burst open and Jake came into the room.

“I’m here to set the record straight,” he said. “Evil has come to our home. The end of the world is at hand.”

“There’s an evil coming out of the ground in Corolla at my rescue ranch. We have to stop it!”

Chris and I shared horrified glances at Jake’s words.

“I’m sure Jake doesn’t mean evil like we’re thinking about something from the movies,” Chris joked. “Right, Jake?”

Jake looked as wild as the horses he tended, maybe more so. His gait was unsteady, and his hands shook. There was a crazy, restless gleam in his eyes that I’d never seen before. He was like a man possessed or stone cold drunk.

“No, Chris. I’m talking about pure evil like we normally see in the movies or hear about in church. I can’t explain why those stone horses are evil, but I know they are. The excavation is driving our native horses crazy. They don’t want us digging around out there. I think what we’re seeing here in Duck is what we’ve been seeing in Corolla since the excavation began. The horses are running wild. They’re trying to tell us to stay away from that site. Tell them, Dae. You saw it.”

Jake’s words weren’t helping the situation. Everyone knew him and understood that he had knowledge about the horses that the rest of us didn’t. If he said the excavation was evil and causing the wild horses to attack Duck, everyone would believe him. We had to find some way to stem his rhetoric.

“Why don’t you come with me so we can record this?” Chris suggested in a friendly voice. “I’ve got the recording equipment in my office.”

“All right.” Jake pushed his lank hair back from his face. “If you think we should record this, I’m game.”

Chris nodded to me as he led Jake out of the meeting room. “Call the police,” he whispered.

Nancy was standing at the door. She heard him and nodded.

I was glad that she was willing to call Chief Michaels. I wasn’t sure if I could. Whatever he’d done, Jake was my friend. I wanted him to have a chance to explain himself.

“I’m sorry about that,” I said to my friends and neighbors. “Whatever is going on in Corolla is affecting Jake too. I hope he didn’t scare you.”

“You mean the horses aren’t evil?” Carter asked.

“Of course they’re not evil,” Vergie answered. “It’s something else.”

I was glad she spoke up and added, “I know all of us have been out with the horses on the beach and seen the colts after they’ve been born. How could those horses be evil? That doesn’t make any sense.”

“Not those horses, Dae,” Carter said. “It’s the horses they’re digging up that are evil. We have to stop that excavation. I’m going to the state capital in Raleigh with a petition to make them stop. Who’s with me?”

All of the shop managers and owners who’d signed up for the Christmas in OBX event backed away from that proposal. They were too busy to make the trip to Raleigh and talk with legislators. But a group of ten people, mostly retired folks, agreed to help get a petition together and go with Carter to Raleigh.

“Aren’t the legislators out for the holidays?” Anne Maxwell asked.

“Yes.” Carter rolled his eyes. “I guess we’ll have to get the petition together and take it up there after the holidays. We can probably get a larger group to go with us once the shops are closed for the winter too.”

Mark Sampson shook my hand. “Thanks, Dae. I’m glad you’re going to be mayor again.”

“Yeah, me too,” Vergie said. “I don’t like to think what’s gonna happen to this town once Dae is gone.”

“I’m not planning to go anywhere,” I told them. “And I’ll be glad to sign that petition when you’re ready. I don’t know if the excavation is evil or not, but it seems to be affecting people badly.”

“Never a good idea to dig up the past.” Andy shuddered. “Let that stuff stay buried.”

“I don’t agree with that,” Mark argued as they walked out the door together. He was a member of the museum board and obviously wouldn’t want history to be left buried in the sand—unless it was evil.

Within a few minutes, the meeting room was empty again. I sat in a chair with a sigh of relief. At least that problem was solved for the moment. If the horses continued to cause damage, people would be back again. Maybe it was cowardly, but I hoped Chief Michaels would be here next time.

I said goodbye to Nancy. She’d called the police to report that Jake had been there. “But Chris said he left before I called,” she said. “That poor man needs help, Dae.”

“I know.” I hurried back to Wild Stallions—after a last long look at the shadowed area where the man from my vision had accosted me. No one was there. I wasn’t sure if he was real or I’d imagined him. Maybe I was still affected by the vision. How could I be sure?

Mary Catherine and Kevin were on the boardwalk watching the antics of a gull as it spun and dived toward Mary Catherine. Several silver fish also jumped out of the water as I approached.

“Can you believe it?” Kevin laughed. “A crow started pecking on the window by our table in the restaurant. All she had to do was tell him to go away, and he disappeared.”

“Sometimes it’s okay to chat,” she said with a smile. “Sometimes they have to wait.”

As she spoke, a crow flew down from the roof of the Duck Shoppes and landed on the edge of her handbag. It squawked and cried until she paid attention to it.

“What is it saying?” I asked as the crow fluttered its wings.

“He’s complaining about the horses. He didn’t like the noise and he says it’s an omen.” She stared at me. “He tells me you had a visitor with an omen too, Dae.”