Read Online Name of the Devil by Andrew Mayne - Free Book Online

and tell them where to find my body.
    â€œBlack Nick?” Ailes’s voice cuts in and out.
    â€œThat’s what they call him,” I reply, surrounded by forest. The faint blue light of the sky is barely visible through the trees.
    The woods have a quietness about them, but I get the feeling I’m being watched by dozens of small eyes.
    â€œIsn’t ‘Old Nick’ a name for the devil?” he asks.
    The signal goes dead.
    I realize he’s right. I tell myself it’s just a coincidence.
    Â 

8
    T HE TRAIL TO Black Nick’s cabin is more of a dried-up gully than a path. Shards of white stone poke out of the earth like whale teeth, telling me I’m on the right track—at least, the one Kris told me to follow. Every few hundred feet there’s a fork in the trail, marked by rocks, intended to lead the bad spirits astray.
    My dad and I once took a trip to the Winchester House in Northern California, a sprawling mansion that had stairways leading to the ceiling and doorways opening to brick walls—all of it to confuse the spirits that the widow of the Winchester rifle magnate imagined were after her. This trail reminds me of that.
    The sun is setting and the frogs have started chirping from deep inside their soggy homes. On the fringes of the trail, creatures scurry in the bushes. Out of the corner of my eye I catch long shadows of twisted branches as I go farther up the hill. They reach out to me across the trail as the sun sets.
    Crows, an awful lot of crows, perch in the trees. Watching me with their beady black eyes, they turn their sharp beaks toward me as I pass.
    Kris had mentioned a rock shaped like a skull without a jaw. The setting sun makes its shadowy eye sockets and gaping nose stand out.
    I make my last right turn here and come to flat ground, where tall grass gives way to a ring of white stones. A shack standsat the end of the clearing. Covered in plastic bottles, aluminum cans and knots of foil, it looks like a house built by a giant magpie—the same creator who made the twisted twig-man on the Deputy’s porch.
    A blue rocking chair sits on the porch next to a wind chime made from spoons and forks. It sounds like the bells of a Lilliputian cathedral in the breeze.
    The only churchgoers are the silk black crows still watching me. What do they make of the sound? Is it meant to scare them or invite them closer?
    As arresting as the shack is, my eyes are drawn to the mound of bones as tall as the roof piled off to the side of it. I spot antlers, cow skulls and the femurs, ribs and spines of a hundred other stark white creatures. Nothing human that I can see.
    I hope.
    I can’t imagine generations of Hawkton children not having stories to tell about this place. Even without the threat of a cannibal sheriff looming somewhere out in the woods, it’s eerie. I resist the impulse to touch my gun under my jacket and take a deep breath.
    The shack’s one window, made from different-colored pieces of glass joined by thick solder, is blocked from the inside by what looks like a burlap sack. There’s no sign of life except for the smell of burning.
    There’s a small fire of charcoals in front of a tall oak tree that was old when this was still Indian country.
    White stones keep the smoldering briquettes from setting the dry weeds around them ablaze.
    There’s only the ringing sound of the spoons and forks in the wind and the occasional caw of a crow in the distance. Telling the others I’m all alone, I assume.
    â€œYou da witch?” a deep voice asks from behind.
    I suppress a gasp and spin around to find the source. In thefading sun and dim glow of the fire, I almost miss him. Tall, real tall. Thin like a scarecrow, Black Nick is dressed in stitched slacks, a sweater as random as his house, and a black blazer with patches on the sleeve. Well-worn, but not dirty, he reminds me of a survivor from a postapocalyptic movie. Old—hard to tell