Chapter Twenty – Faith

 

“This is it, I think,” I said, pointing up to the right, as we approached what I thought was the Shook ranch.

“You think?” Sam asked as he pulled over and began to slow down, taking the turn through the open gate. “Thought you’d been here before.”

“I never said that,” I replied as dirt and gravel began to loudly pepper the undercarriage of Sam’s Camaro. “I said I’d met Eb and his son. I just used Google to find this place.”

“Great,” he said. “Think they remember you?”

“Hope so.”

We took the long, dusty road back into the property, following its twists and turns through the leveled out grasslands of the pastures. The Shook ranch didn’t have as many trees as the farm I lived on, and we could see the ranch house out in the distance on a small hill.

“Think anyone’s home?” Sam asked as he peered out at the structure.

“I guess we’re going to find out,” I said, looking out the passenger side window at all the cattle and other livestock milling about in the pastures. It was in that sweet spot of the day, just between breakfast and lunch, which meant Eb was probably out in the field still.

A few minutes later, we were pulling up in front of the older, two story building with its screened-in wraparound porch and wind chimes dangling from every surface. Smaller buildings stretched out off to one side: a small barn, what looked to be a smokehouse, an open-air garage where the Shooks could work on farm equipment or vehicles, and a stretch of covered parking with a sheet metal roof.

“See anyone?” I asked as we sat there for a moment, the engine ticking to itself as it cooled down. I gazed up at the big structure, with the bizarre chimes hanging all around.

“Unfortunately,” Sam breathed.

“Who’s there?” boomed a man’s voice from behind the car. “What in the hell do you want?”

My eyes went wide as I frantically tried to look around in the car and get a better look at who was addressing us. No luck, though. Just a rear windshield, covered in road dust, with the sun shining through and lighting the whole thing up like the outside of a frosted light bulb.

Behind us, the man who’d just spoken racked his shotgun. “Don’t move! Stay inside the car!”

Sam ignored the man and started to roll down his window.

“What the heck are you doing?” I asked between frantic gasps for air. I’d never had a gun pulled on me before, let alone a shotgun. How was I supposed to react?

“Showing him my hands,” Sam said, his voice surprisingly calm for someone who had a shotgun trained on him from behind. On both of us, for that matter. “Relax.”

“Relax?” I nearly screamed. “Relax? How am I supposed to relax?”

“I said not to move!” the man yelled.

“Just showing you my hands,” Sam called out the now open driver’s side window, his voice loud, but even and controlled. “Here to speak to a Mr. Eb Shook, that’s all.”

“I said don’t move!”

“Just, would you come around to the front here?” Sam called back, sounding perfectly reasonable. “My hands are empty, and I’d prefer to look somebody in the face while they’re threatening to blow mine off.”

Boots scuffled on dirt as the man came around to Sam’s side of the Camaro. He scooted carefully into view as he gave us a wide berth, the shotgun raised to his shoulder, his cheek pressed down along the stock.

“You want to talk to my pa? What for?”

His pa? Right! Eb’s son had been there at the morgue, too. I’d completely forgotten because of the shock from the gun being drawn on us. What had his name been? Abe? Zeke? Jed? Something backwoods like that.

“Mind lowering the shotgun?” Sam asked. “There’s a lady present.”

“I’ll keep this gun right where it is till you tell me exactly who the hell you are.”

Ike! That’s right! His name was Ike.

“Ike!” I called from my side of the car as I leaned down, trying to see him better from behind Sam’s bulky form. “Ike, do you remember me?”

He gave me a strange look as I spoke, but I swore I saw recognition in his eyes.

“We met at the morgue a few days ago,” I continued, “when you and your father brought in the remains of that pig? Faith Riley? I was dressed differently, of course.”

“Yep,” Ike said after a moment, “I think I recall, Ms. Riley. You threw up in the sink, right?”

Sam looked back over his shoulder at me, eyebrow raised, a little smirk on his lips. “Didn’t mention that part.”

“Well, it wasn’t important,” I snapped, then shifted my gaze back to Ike. “Ike, this is Samuel Fitzgerald, a newspaper reporter out of Tyler. He heard about the pig y’all found and tried speaking to Dr. Lawrence, but he wasn’t very forthcoming. I mentioned to him that your father, Eb, might be willing to talk, that y’all had had this problem before. Any chance we could speak to him?”

Ike measured us both up carefully, but finally nodded as he lowered his shotgun to his side. “Apologies, Mr. Fitzgerald, we just can’t be too careful out here. Never know what kind of crazy person’s going to come driving up in the middle of the day, looking to run off with equipment, or might sneak in at night.”

“Completely understand,” Sam said, as he, with his hands still in plain view, reached down through the rolled-down window and opened the car door with the outside handle. “A man can never be too careful, especially when he’s this far out.”

I climbed out of my side of the car and came around to join them.

“What’s a paper reporter want with us, anyhow?” Ike asked as the two men shook hands.

“Well, like Faith said, I’m here to dig up some information on the pig you and your father found. The mutilated one?”

Ike turned his head to the side and, without his eyes ever leaving Sam’s face, spat on the ground. “Doc won’t help, though?”

“Says he doesn’t know what I’m talking about.”

Ike reached up, scratched the back of his head. “Well, that’s odd, don’t you think? Damn thing was plain as day when we dropped it in his office.”

“Yeah,” Sam said, laughing a little. “Not the oddest I’ve ever heard, but still pretty odd, that’s for sure.”

As the men spoke, I wandered up nearer to the house, began to look over the wind chimes I’d seen dangling earlier. I cocked my head to the side, giving them a closer look as a light breeze blew in out of the west and shook the chimes from side to side.

They weren’t wind chimes. At least, not like any I’d ever seen.

No, they were antlers, deer antlers to be exact, that had been sectioned off and strung together like triangular chandeliers. Burned into the skeletal structure of the antlers were what looked like weird reversed Nazi crosses. Swastikas. The symbols covered the antlers in twisting, strange script, like those bad tribal tattoos all those frat guys seemed to have around their upper arms.

The closer I looked at them, though, the more I began to realize that they weren’t exactly the same kind of symbol. Instead, they were reversed, and not at an angle.

“Well,” Ike said from behind me as I continued to peer up at the bizarre decorations, “if y’all don’t mind a hike, I’ll take you up to see Pa. He’s out moving the cattle around to one of their feeding pastures, might can catch him before he gets too far away.”

“Sounds good. Faith? You coming?”

“Hey, Ike,” I called, ignoring Sam as I pointed up to the antler chimes hanging all over the house. “Mind if I ask what those are?”

“Those?” he asked as he came up beside me. “Just a bunch of old hoodoo my babushka made when she and my papaw were alive, ma’am. She was from down south, east of San Antonio, and only spoke Polish and German. Well, some English, but only the words sailors would use. She’d make things like that, hang ’em up all over. Or potions and salves and the like for the neighboring families. Made us promise not to take ’em down as long as we lived in the house, said they’d keep away evil spirits or some such.”

“Really?” I asked. “Hoodoo? Don’t you mean voodoo?”

“No,” Sam said as he stepped up on the other side of me, “he means hoodoo. More European superstitions, less African and Caribbean, like with voodoo. Handed down from the old cunning folk, the wise women and men of the villages who healed the sick and kept them safe from disease. Voodoo’s a different kind of thing, has more to do with magic that affects others, and hoodoo is more about protection of the hearth and home.”

I turned to him, eyebrow raised, a little smile on my lips. “Aren’t we a fount of knowledge?”

He blushed a little, looked away. “I had a minor in history, okay?” He paused and licked his lips, a knowing glint in his eyes. “Hey, Ike, you ready?”

“Sure am.”

And, with that, the two men headed off back towards the pasture.

Still, though, I couldn’t help but stare up at those antlers, at the weird crosses burned into their surface, at the kind of braid they made as they intertwined all the way down to the points. Something about them should have been unsettling, should have set my teeth on edge and my hair on end.

But, the funny thing was, they didn’t do anything of the kind. If anything, they were a comfort. A strange form of comfort, no doubt. But still, a comfort nonetheless.

“Faith!” Sam called from the far gate that led into the nearest pasture. “You coming, or not? Ike says it’s close enough to walk, but we gotta hurry.”

“Yeah!” I shouted back before beginning a short jog over to them. Finally, I fell in line behind Sam, and the three of us were headed out into the pasture to find the elder Shook.

Hopefully, he’d be able to shed some more light on what we were dealing with.

Deep down, though, I had the sinking feeling that all he was going to do was provide us with more questions than answers.