yame Read online

  It took conscious force not to stare outright at her bosom, whose moistness had traceably darkened the fabric of her smock. The size of her papillae were surely the size of his pinkie-tips. "But it's one house in particular my editor wants me to write about—the problem is, there's virtually no records or documentation of its existence. It was some eccentric guy who owned it: no birth records, no tax records, no financial trail, no house title—it's all based on hearsay. Evidently this guy had some kind of holding fund that always paid the property tax, like he didn't want anyone to be able to find him. His name was Crafter—"

  Easter interrupted with a deliberate nod. "Aw, yeah. Ole Crafter, I 'member him-"

  Westmore gagged, lurching forward, and actually hacked out a mouthful of ice-coffee. He began to cough. Half-alarmed, half-amused, Easter leaned over. "Why, Westmore! What ever is wrong?"

  "Ice-coffee down the wrong pipe," he gagged, recovering. "You took me by surprise—"

  "Huh?"

  Dizzy in exuberance, Westmore re-harnessed his composure. He was shaking. Too good to be true, too good— "Easter. This means a great deal to me. I've been trying to trace Crafter for six months, and there's nothing on him. All I have are little bits of conjecture from antiquarian book collectors and antique dealers. But you're telling me that"—he gulped—"you know something about Crafter?"

  "Why, shore. Ain't no big deal." She rolled an ice cube around on her tongue. "He was a old coot'n weirdo, pretty much. Had a funny first name, some-thin' like...Eff-ree-ham..."

  Westmore trembled. "Ephriam, yes. When did he disappear?"

  Her head cocked. "He didn't disser-peer. He up'n die, that's all, guess 'bout fifteen years ago. Only place he disser-peer to is six feet under."

  "He died? How did he die? Mysteriously? Was it murder?"

  Now her bemusement was plain. "Naw. Nothin' but a blammed heart attack. Must'a been inta his seventies."

  Damn. Well, I can work with that. Westmore's blood raced. Without thinking he reached across the table and touched Easter's hand. "Easter. Please." He took a deep breath. "Do you know where Crafter's house is?"

  "Shore," she said in utter nonchalance. "It just off Governor Bridge Road. Even got the mailbox still standin' plain as day, but ya know? Crafter ain't never got mail delivered there. Got it someplace else. Since you so hot fer his house, it ain't no trouble fer me ta show it to ya if ya like. Ain't but five're six miles away from where we'se sittin'."

  Westmore could've hemorrhaged. In a matter of minutes, he'd hit pay-dirt, all because of meeting this unlikely backwoods woman at a Best Buy! "You may have just saved my career..."

  "Oh, I'm so glad I'se can be of help, 'specially since you've helped me so," she said and indicated the memo-corder.

  "Did you actually know Ephriam Crafter?"

  "Well, in a sense. We'd all see him around once in a while. What we heard was he mostly traveled, like, overseas. He were rich. I only knowed him enough ta say hello, but he hardly ever say hello back. Not a very nice man, and Lord knows what he were really up to in that house'a his. What'cha need ta understand is, Crafter... He were what they call...a nekker-manser." Her big eyes batted. "You know what that is, Westmore?"

  "Necromancy, sure. He was a sorcerer."

  "Right! But, if truth be tolt he was just more of a dabbler...I think the word is...novice."

  I don't care. I'm being paid to write a book about him, and you're giving me more information in five minutes than I've gotten in six months!

  A pause hung over the table, then Easter looked at his hand, which was still on hers, and smiled.

  Westmore had been oblivious. He pulled it away and removed his pen and notepad. "Let me write some of this down. Governor Bridge Road is where the house is? And what town?"

  "Luntville, sort of. Out off the back roads, things get kind'a mushed together."

  Westmore scribbled, frantic. "And you say he died of a heart attack roughly fifteen years ago... Can that be verified? His name never came up on the Social Security Death Index."

  She gave a casual laugh, still fanning herself. "Westmore? There ain't no Social Security nothin' 'round these parts. If'n someone die, they'se get buried. But I know the boy who buried him—Waldo Parkins— er, well, he ain't a boy no more, more likely closer ta my age now. See, he worked for Crafter, drove him 'round in his big fancy car, did the yard-work, run errands..."

  Pay dirt, pay dirt, pay dirt! Westmore kept scribbling.

  "And I'se good friends with Waldo's Aunt Ida-Waldo live with her near Crick City. Just you tell Waldo you'se a friend'a mine, they'd be happy to talk ta ya all about Crafter. It's Waldo who found Crafter dead'n buried him. Buried him right on his grounds, even made a little wood plaque fer a tombstone, he tolt me."

  Perfect! Perfect! Westmore couldn't write fast enough. He could take a picture of that plaque! "Now, now, uh," he stammered. "How do I reach this Waldo Parkins?"

  "Just call him up. I gots his aunt's phone number written down at the house."

  Westmore could've swooned. "Easter! You really are a Godsend! His phone number?"

  "Uh-huh. We ain't got a phone ourselfs but if'n we need ta make a call, we use the pay phone down at Hull's. But after I show ya where Crafter's house is? You'll'se need ta drive me back ta my shack 'cos that's where the phone list is. And you'll have ta find it yer-self off the list—it was Grandpop'n Noot who keep the list'a neighbor's numbers. See, I cain't read myself."

  "That's no problem, Easter, no problem at all," but then he realized, Shit, I'll have to meet her husband. Oh, well... "I look forward to meeting your husband."

  "Aw, well, that cain't happen 'cos my wonderful husband Noot—he died."

  Westmore froze up. "Easter, I'm very sorry to hear that—"

  She flipped her hand. "Don't be, Westmore. Like my Grandpop Orne used ta say, death ain't nothin' but the spirit movin' on ta someplace else."

  "Yes," he replied for lack of anything else. Then he thought of something, and took out his cellphone. "If the Parkins number is listed, I might be able to find it here..."

  Her eyes thinned in curiosity. "What's— Oh, that one of them cellphones I keep hearin' "bout."

  Westmore nodded. "And I can go onto the internet with it." He pulled up AOL white pages, then typed in the name Parkins. "And what town do Waldo and his aunt live in?"

  "Crick City."

  GREAT name for a town. In a few seconds he found it. "Parkins, Ida. That's got to be it."

  "Amazin', all this teck-noller-gee these days."

  "It's a great convenience and a great pain in the butt," he said but in the stasis, he realized that the sheer excitement of her revelations, along with his dense attraction to her, had left his penis painfully erect and leaking. I've got a loke for the house, a phone number, witnesses... It's the motherlode! Grinning, he set his pen down to take another sip of coffee, but—

  click

  —his pen rolled off the table.

  When he stooped over to retrieve it, Easter, in a motion almost mechanical, uncrossed her legs and parted her thighs.

  Westmore stared.

  A plenteous black nest of hair sprawled at her crotch. The parted thighs looked creamy-white. Westmore stalled on a breath in his chest; he could just make out the delectable twist of flesh hidden in the fur, and in a fantasy he saw himself crawling over there beneath the table and burying his face between her legs...

  Get up!

  He grabbed the pen and retook his seat. Had she done it on purpose? No, that was just more gutter-minded fantasy. Easter immediately kept talking as though completely unmindful...

  "And when yer talkin' ta Waldo? Be shore'n ask him 'bout Crafter's basement. All kinds'a nekker-manser stuff down there, he say. Get him after he have a couple'a nips and, believe you me—he'll tell ya some things."

  "I-I will," Westmore said. He felt half out-of-breath from the private glance. Were his hands still shaking? "Easter, I can't tell you how much
you've helped me—

  Another dismissive laugh. "I say, you act like I just tolt ya where the end'a the rainbow is. Crafter weren't nothin' but a nutty ole man—"

  "This info is better than the end of a rainbow. Look, let me pay you a consulting fee—"

  "Oh, you hush now, Westmore; I don't take money from friends," but just then her eyes drilled into his, and then she reached over and touched his hand. "Ya been so nice givin' me this here li'I machine but... could I ask ya to do me one more favor?"

  "Name it," he said.

  "See, like I just tolt ya, I cain't read, but I need someone ta read somethin' for me. I mean, I'se could get someone else ifn it's too much of a imper-zishun..."

  Westmore didn't quite get it but he said, "I'll read you anything you want, Easter."

  "It's, well, it's somethin' special, 'n'fact it's what I need this li'l recorder for in the first place. I got these words I need ya ta read, but I need ya ta read 'em out loud"—she touched the memo-coder again—"into this."

  Westmore shrugged. "I'd be happy to. But...what is it, exactly?"

  "Oh, I guess you could call it a prayer, like, a good-luck prayer."

  "Fine. I'll do it right now if you like."

  Her lips thinned. "I thank it'd be a sight better if ya do it someplace more private, like maybe in yer car..."

  ***

  From the old rucksack, Easter produced an equally old cloth-covered binder whose tarnished rings secured typical lined paper filled with scrawl. "This were Grandpop Orne's special book." she informed him from the passenger seat. Westmore's eyes flicked from the book to her bosom, the book to her thighs settled in the seat, the book to her radiant white legs. Even the barely perceptible veins in her thighs he found exotic and attractive. Fuck, came the abrupt thought. He could only hope she hadn't noticed the arousal in his pants. The woman seemed rapt on the book, bearing that constant gentle smile; Westmore thought of a mother flipping through a photo album of her babies.

  He'd turned the car on at once, to run the a/c, and when he did so, he took a stray glance at the dashboard and saw that the sizeable blue-bottle fly that had been buzzing around earlier now lay dead. No doubt, the heat had killed it. Good riddance...

  "Grandpop Orne were such a fine man. I just miss him so..."

  Westmore noticed some loose and oddly hued sheets beneath those bound. "What are," he began but then she pulled one out.

  "This is it here," she said. "Be careful now."

  Holy smokes, he thought, knowing immediately by its look and feel what it was. "Easter, this is parchment or maybe even vellum."

  "Huh?"

  "It's got to be very old. This is what they used for paper before paper was invented. It's actually animal skin shaved and cured a special way."

  "Oh, I know it's old. It come from way back my side'a the family. Them sheets come from Europe; my Grandpop's rellertives're actually part'a the first colony ta come here, someplace called...somethin' Choo-sit's bay." She winced. "Well, I cain't remember it all."

  But Westmore remained fixed on that first sheet of vellum. Nothing at all semblant of an alphabet could be found on the cramped lines of whatever ink its author had access to. The gradients in each stroke told him that a stylus rather than a primal pen had been used Just...a bunch of odd characters, like pictographs and logograms. Interspersed within were other, stranger characters—wedgelike but not cuneiformic— that seemed more like geometric diagrams. Each diagram had been inscribed with great precision, and each angle of each wedge was unequal in a manner he felt sure was deliberate. Anti-epicyclic, he thought. Angles in place of numerals? But then he winced at a passage that had clearly been highlighted in modern magic marker. Vandalism, he thought. A collector would howl...

  Nevertheless, he'd never seen anything like it. "Easter, I know a bit about ancient writing systems, but"—he shook his head. "I couldn't tell you in a million years what this is."

  "Oh, I know that. Grandpop said this writin' here, is writin' that existered, well, a long time before folks learnt ta write themselves."

  Westmore let the ballyhoo pass; of course, her grandfather would be given to tall tales. "What I mean is, I can't read this for you—"

  She laughed as if amused. "Oh, Westmore, no one could who don't know it! Only Grandpop could read it; but what he did, see, is he wrote down somethin' ta go along with that there page. A... tranzer-lay-shun."

  Westmore looked at her. "Really?"

  "And the way he write it is so—well there's a word fer it but I cain't remember. He write it down the way it sounds."

  "Phonetically."

  "Yeah! That's it." Now she ruffled through the bound sheets of normal paper. "He got scraps from a lotta old books'n such but that un there he always say's the most important." Her fingers isolated a sheet, but she paused and looked outward. "Manner-somethin'. Manner-skrit..."

  "Manuscript," Westmore corrected.

  "Uh-huh, and it was the-the..." She chewed her bottom lip. "Mot-ik, er, krotik, er, puh-not-ik." Her bare shoulders stumped. "Dang, I don't know the actual name he calt it."

  Westmore reached forward as if eager. "I'd like to see that phonetic translation, Easter."

  She unsnapped the metal rings and withdrew a single leaf.

  He couldn't imagine what this could be. And why would she be so intent on Westmore reading it? The tape recorder, he remembered. Something about a good-luck prayer... Only a few lines comprised the phonetic rendering. Simple. He picked up the memo-corder. "Okay, Easter. Here goes," and he pressed the record button, trained his eyes on the transcribed lines, and read aloud, "Guh'narl'ebb, druh'nug lee eye snub negg add'uk zynn...ee'uh, ee'uh, fuh'tay'gun, nem'blud duv...yog'saw'thoth..."

  He released the record button. "There ya go, Easter. Anytime you want to hear the good-luck prayer"—he pointed—"just press this bigger black button."

  Her eyes widened, fascinated, as he played the strange muttering back for her. A tear rolled down her cheek; the simple and rather absurd task left her choked up. "This means more ta me than ya can know, Westmore—" suddenly her hand was on his thigh, then she leaned over and kissed him on the cheek.

  Fuck, Westmore thought again. Just the feel of her hand so harmlessly on his thigh made his penis cringe. "No problem at all," he said, trying to act unaffected. After I take her home...I'm jerking off. Big time. He looked at the vellum once more before he returned it to her. "This is really very interesting, Easter. If you like, I can give you the name and number of an antique book dealer. He'd probably pay a lot of money for that sheet, as well as whatever else you've got in that book."

  She looked taken aback. "Oh, but—my! I could never sell it. It's what my Grandpop left me, been in the family fer hunnerts'a years, from even before they come here."

  Westmore smiled. "Easter, you and your world are so enviable. In my world, everything's about money. People do anything for it; money's their god. That's all they live there lives for. It's so refreshing to meet someone like you; you act like you don't even care about money."

  She replaced the sheets, then put the binder back into the rucksack. "Ain't never had much use fer money. Wouldn't never wanna have ta rely on it. The more folks get ta needin' money...the less real they is."

  "Well said."

  "Among hillfolk, if anything, money's like a disease, and it's the things folks want it fer that messes 'em all up or even destroys 'em." Did she gulp? "'S'what happen ta my fine husband, Noot." She was staring out as she spoke. "I got me a daughter— Linette's her name—and I'se afraid Linette's one'a them people who were just born bad..."

  Kind of an odd thing to say about your daughter, Westmore mused.

  "Noot were a wonderful man, and I'se loved him so much. Married over twennie years, we was. He was everything ta me... But then it was Linette who got herself all inta this stuff they call meth. Lotta folks gettin' inta that. Used ta be it were the moonshine that turn folks lives inside-out, but fer the younger ones? I
t's the meth."

  "It's stuff like that that's ruining the whole country, I'm afraid."

  She nodded blankly. "And it were Linette, mine'n Noot's flesh'n blood, who got Noot 'dicted to it too. Then, see, all of a sudden-like, they start ta needin' money to buy it. And the meth? It's that damn stuff made my own husband up'n fall in love with my daughter..."

  Holy SHIT! This is getting real heavy, real fast!

  "It's the way it make 'em feel Westmore, that make 'em turn bad. So, Noot, he start sellin' stuff 'round the house, solt a lot'a the gold things Grandpop left, and jewels been in my family fer ages, and Linette, it were far worse things she do fer the money. Thing's I'd be ashamed ta tell ya..."