Mentally, I ran
through my options. I didn’t want to hurt this young woman, even though she was
pointing a loaded Ruger at my chest. I was 99-percent sure that she wouldn’t
pull the trigger no matter what she said, but then again there was that uncertain
one percent.
On the other side of
this cruel coin, I knew that I wasn’t going anywhere. I was there for a reason
and had no intention of leaving before daylight on All Saints’ Day. She would
have to shoot me if she really meant business.
“Are you deaf, Mister?”
she shouted. “Get out of here.” She raised the gun to my face and took a
threatening step forward, closing the gap between us. This was exactly what I
wanted.
I saw my opportunity
and took it. I shot forward and grabbed the short barrel of the gun with both
hands, shoving it upwards. At the same time, I dipped my head and out of the deadly
line of fire. The gun roared as her finger flinched on the trigger, the .22-caliber
round traveling high over my head and into the purple sky. She squawked as I wrenched
the gun to the side and out of her hands.
I stepped back and
left her gasping and unarmed. “Lady, I don’t want to hurt either one of you,
but I’m spending the night on this hill no matter what. Now, if we can all
behave, I’ll give you your gun back.”
I thumbed the safety
on and handed the pistol back to her, grip-first, barrel-down. I knew there was
a chance that she’d need it later, even though her gun was likely filled with
standard .22 rimfire ammo. If things got serious, she’d need silver bullets
like those that I brought for my Berretta.
“What are you two doing here?” I asked, genuinely curious.
“We have permission from the landowner,” Corwin said defensively. “Do you?”
I didn’t, and I ignored the question. “Are you legend-trippers? Ghost hunters? What’s the deal?” I asked.
“Not exactly,” Armitage spoke up. Elfin in appearance, she was the more attractive of the two young women, neither of which looked old enough to buy beer. She wore thin-rimmed reading glasses that seemed out of place atop this haunted hill. Her eyewear was much better suited for a day behind a library desk or pharmacy counter.
“We’re folklore students at Claiborne State, researching Kill Devil Hill,” she said. “We figured an overnight field trip to the actual site would help us with the paper we’re writing.”
I was more than a little familiar with the university’s Department of Folk Studies and the department’s chairman, Professor Bryce Broom. In addition to being a preeminent scholar, Broom was also a prominent Freemason. Knowing Broom, he would frown on the idea that two of his female students had decided to spend the night atop Kill Devil Hill.
“What about the hill are you studying?” I asked. “What’s your interest?”
“I’m interested in the stories about soldiers and Kill Devil Hill,” Armitage said. “The first recorded military reference to this site goes back to Colonel James Caller prior to the Creek Indian Wars. Military references to the site continue through the end of the Civil War but peter out after that.”
“What about you?” I asked Corwin.
She squared her shoulders and puffed at the direct question. “My research is narrower,” she said. “My portion of the paper is about references to the site in slave narratives as well as slave disappearances near the hill in antebellum times.”
“Is there much information on that?” I asked.
“You’d be surprised.” For the first time, I sensed a crack in her stony façade.
I began to scout around the craggy top of the Cyclopean hill for firewood. There was a surprising amount of dry pine straw for kindling and small sticks for fuel. I needed to gather enough wood to keep a decent fire going all night.
“What are you doing?” Armitage asked.
“Gathering firewood,” I said. “You want to pitch in? It’ll be dark soon. It’s going to get cool when the sun goes down.”
“You’re spending the night?” Corwin asked.
I dumped an armload of thin, dry sticks into a pile. “Yes, ma’am. That would be correct.”
“Why?” Corwin demanded.
“It’s Halloween,” I said. “I want to see what happens up here on the spookiest night of the year.”
“You need to leave,” Corwin said. She pulled out a yellow piece of paper. “We’ve got permission to be here. Do you?”
I took the note from the woman. It was a permission slip signed by some functionary employed by a large timber company headquartered in the Pacific Northwest, thousands of miles from Claiborne. I tore the note in half and tossed it atop my pile of straw and sticks.
“I’m not leaving,” I said. “And if you’re serious about spending the night here, you really don’t want me to leave. That small caliber handgun you have will be as ineffective as that permission slip when things go sideways out here.”
Corwin pulled out her cellphone. “I’m calling the Sheriff’s Department.”
“Good luck,” I said. There was no cell service this deep in the woods.
Exasperated, Corwin turned to Armitage. “You got service?”
Armitage, her arm and phone extended high out in front of her, shook her head. “Nope.”
Remnants of old campfires were scattered here and there atop the hill. I began to gather stones for a fire ring.
“How do we know he’s not some nut?” Corwin asked Armitage, as if I wasn’t standing a few feet away.
“He doesn’t look like the Claiborne Ripper,” Armitage said.
“I was arrested once on suspicion,” I said, deadpan. The two girls exchanged a confused glance. Far off in the darkening distance, a pack of coyotes howled eerily.
I produced my trusty Zippo and struck a flame to the straw piled in my small ring of stones. I blew gently on the flames and added a few twigs. White smoke drifted up and into the twilight sky.
I looked up at the two girls. Oblivious to each other, they were standing side by side, watching me, their hands clasped in anxious worry to their chests.
“Listen, I’ll make you a deal,” I said. “You cool it about me spending the night, and I’ll write a story on the two of you for the newspaper. You’ll be the two most famous folklore students in all of Claiborne when the paper hits the streets.”
Armitage pulled Corwin by the shirtsleeve, and they walked to the edge of the hilltop. There, they held a quiet conference with their backs turned. In animated, but hushed tones, the two hashed out the pros and cons of my offer.
A few moments later, they ended their aside and returned to the campfire. “We decided you can stay,” Armitage said. “And you have permission to do a story on us under one condition.”
“What’s that?” I asked, knowing that I didn’t need their permission to stay or to write the story.
“We want to read it before publication,” Corwin said.
“Suits me,” I said. My knees popped as I stood up. “Now let’s set up camp before it gets dark.”
We each had a tent and in the waning light, we erected them upwind from the campfire. While putting up the tents, we discussed the arborglyphs that I saw on my hike to the hill. They hadn’t seen any, so I showed them the pictures I had on my phone. The phone’s battery was almost dead.
Dark was setting in, and Armitage pulled a headlamp out of her back pack. She clicked it on, and its LED beam shined down onto the rocky surface of the flat hilltop. “That’s weird,” she said.
I looked in her direction. “What’s weird?” Corwin asked.
“The dead snake is gone,” she said. “It was there just a few minutes ago. I remember because I intentionally set up my tent as far away from it as possible.”
She was right. The dead copperhead had disappeared. In the beam of her light, I couldn’t even see any blood where I’d blown it nearly in two.
“That is weird,” Corwin said.
I produced my own light and searched the area closely. I knelt and examined the spot where the snake had been. I could see where the handgun round had struck the ground, but all trace of the snake was gone. With all the noise that we’d been making, plus our campfire, I knew it was unlikely that some scavenger had slipped up and made off with the cold-blooded carcass.
“What do you think?” Corwin asked.
I stood, my knees crackling in their joints. “Welcome to Kill Devil Hill is what I think.”
Their eyes followed me as I flipped open my green backpack and pulled out a 25-pound bag of salt. I reached into my right pants pocket and produced my scuffed Swiss Army knife. I punched a blade into the top of the bag and fingered open a hole.
“There’s more salt in my pack,” I said. “Grab one quick and help me pour a ring around our camp. There’s no time to waste.”
No comments:
Post a Comment