The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires - Grady Hendrix Page 0,102

babies with their fat little legs, he’s dug in like a tick, he’s dug in like a tick and he’s sucking everything out of you patricia, he’s come for my grandchild, wake up patricia, wake up, the nightwalking man is in your house, he’s on my grandchild, wake up patricia, patricia wake up, wake up, wake up…

Dead words, a lunatic river of syllables hissing from between cold lips.

“Miss Mary?” Patricia said, but her tongue felt thick and her words were barely a whisper.

he’s the devil’s son the nightwalking man and he’s taking my grandchild, wake up wake up wake up, go to ursula, she has my photograph, it’s in her house, go to ursula…

“I can’t,” Patricia said, and this time she had enough strength to make her voice echo off the den walls.

The whispers stopped. Patricia turned and the crack in the door stood empty. She jumped at the sound of fingernails tapping, but it was only Ragtag getting up and trotting out of the room.

Patricia didn’t believe in ghosts. She had always considered Miss Mary’s kitchen-table magic something that might be interesting to a sociologist from a local college. When women she knew said Grandmama appeared in their dreams and told them where to find a lost wedding ring or that Cousin Eddie had just died, she got irritated. It wasn’t real.

But this was real. More real than anything she’d experienced over the past three years. Miss Mary had been in this room, standing behind the dining room door and whispering a warning that James Harris wanted her children, that James Harris wanted Blue. Ghosts weren’t real. But this was real.

She worried for a moment that she was confused again. Her judgment was thin ice and she hesitated to trust it. But this had been real. It wouldn’t hurt to make sure. After all, she was only a housewife. What else did she have to do?

wake up, patricia

“How?”

wake up, patricia

“How?”

go to ursula

“Who?”

ursula greene

CHAPTER 27

Patricia didn’t know her palms could sweat so much, but they left wet marks all over her steering wheel as she drove up Rifle Range Road toward Six Mile. She had sent Mrs. Greene Christmas cards, and the phone worked both ways, and maybe Mrs. Greene hadn’t wanted to see her, and maybe she was just respecting her personal space. She hadn’t done anything wrong. Sometimes you just didn’t talk to someone for a while. She wiped her palms on her slacks, one at a time, trying to get them dry.

Mrs. Greene probably wasn’t even home because it was the middle of the afternoon. She was probably at work. If her car isn’t in the driveway, I’ll just turn around and go home, she told herself, and felt a huge wave of relief at the decision.

Rifle Range Road had changed. The trees along the side of the road had been cut back and the shoulders were bare. A shining new black asphalt turnoff led past a green-and-white plywood sign bearing a picture of a nouveau plantation house and Gracious Cay—coming 1999—Paley Realty. Beyond it, the raw, yellow skeletons of Gracious Cay rose up from behind the few remaining trees.

Patricia turned onto the state road and began winding her way back to Six Mile. Houses sat empty; a few were missing doors, and most had For Sale signs in the front yard. No children played outside.

She found Grill Flame Road and rolled down it slowly until she emerged into Six Mile. Not much of it survived. A chain-link fence hugged the back of Mt. Zion A.M.E., and beyond it lay a massive dirt plain full of bright yellow earthmoving equipment and construction debris. The basketball courts had been plowed up, the surrounding forest thinned to an occasional tree, and all the trailers over by where Wanda Taylor had lived were gone. Only seven houses remained on this side of the church.

Mrs. Greene’s Toyota was in the drive.

Patricia parked and opened her car door and immediately her ears were assaulted by the high-pitched scream of table saws from Gracious Cay, the rumbling of trucks, the earsplitting clatter of bricks and bulldozers. The