Four Summoners Tales Part 32

Savannah.

He had a dozen nicknames for her, but her name was beautiful. In his heart, that was who she'd always been.

"I will show you the notes to play, the notes they'll hear," Enoch said. "I'll play my own tool, and the notes will weave together and call to them, and they will rise."

Zeke closed his eyes, feeling the trickle of his own blood along his fingers. Hope and horror were at war within him and he could not allow either to triumph, because either would defeat him. He thought of Anarosa and how beautiful she'd looked the first time she'd held Savannah in her arms. Anarosa had left this world behind, but it might just have been that the daughter they had both cherished was not yet out of reach. Holding the pipe with two fingers so his blood would dry, Zeke listened to Enoch go on.

"It'll take 'em eight or nine days to heal . . . to come back to themselves," the hoodoo man said. "They won't know you at first, but in time they'll start to recognize their surroundings and your faces. Till then, they'll follow your commands completely, as long as you play that pipe."

The words chilled Zeke. The dead of October the twelfth would be like puppets until they began the final stage of transition from living to dead.

"What is it you're going to ask us to do, exactly?" Harry Boyd demanded. "How the h.e.l.l is my son supposed to help you get your revenge?"

Enoch shot him an angry glance. "Not only my revenge, but his own, Mr. Boyd.And I'll explain my price in due time. For the moment, just ask yourself this-is any price too dear?"

Boyd didn't look satisfied, and neither was Zeke, but they were in no position to argue-not if they wanted what Enoch had to offer.

"Now," Enoch said, "be careful not to smear the blood but put the pipes to your lips. Here are the notes you need to play."

The little man's fingers moved smoothly over the pipe, covering and uncovering holes.The tune was simple but it took Zeke more than ten minutes to master it, and others took even longer, muttering in frustration as they fumbled with the pipes.As Zeke played the tune over and over, perfecting it, Harry Boyd's question echoed inside his mind, followed by one of his own.

Enoch stood by Mrs. Hawkins, showing her the notes more slowly until she seemed to have the tune.

"It can't really be this simple, bringing them back," Mrs. Hawkins said.

"There is nothing simple about it," Enoch replied. "Now, all of you-play."

One by one, the pipers began. The music was strange and discordant and haunting, lifted up by the strangely chilly breeze and spread throughout the cemetery. The branches of the trees trembled, and when Zeke shifted his stance, the sc.r.a.pe of gravel underfoot was impossibly loud.

"What's to stop us from not keeping up our end of the deal?" he asked, raising his voice to be heard over the pipers.

Lester stood next to him, already playing, and he shot Zeke a glance that seemed to take him to task, not for the question but for its timing. Zeke knew he ought to have waited, that only an idiot would telegraph a double-cross before they had what they wanted. But he wasn't going to gamble with Savannah's second chance.

Enoch did not reply. Instead he produced another pipe, this one from inside his jacket and twice the length of the others and streaked with dried bloodstains; turned to look at Vickers and his dead wife; and played.

Half a dozen notes, and Martha Vickers dropped abruptly to the ground. Her hat fell off and tumbled off along the gravel path in the breeze.The pipers all halted their haunting music as her husband cried out in anguish and knelt beside her, her hat forgotten as he cradled her head in his lap and turned a ragefilled gaze upon not Enoch, but Zeke.

"Always the smart one, Prater. Always the one who can't just go along, you arrogant son of a b.i.t.c.h," he snarled. "This here . . . this is a miracle.You don't question it. And whatever we have to do in return, it's G.o.dd.a.m.ned worth it."

Vickers twisted around to glare at Enoch.

"Now give her back, you b.a.s.t.a.r.d. Give her back to me!"

Enoch turned a questioning gaze upon Zeke, as if to say, Is that enough for you? Zeke nodded his a.s.sent. He would ask no more questions. A fist of anguish clenched around his heart.They had come too far along this d.a.m.ning path to turn away now. Enoch had them at his mercy, for no one would refuse him now. Not when they had seen the consequences.Whatever darkness might be hiding inside it, he would accept the miracle . . . and whatever it cost him.

"Play," Enoch said, and the chorus of pipes began again.

This time, Zeke played with them, and so did Vickers.

Martha, who lay on the gravel path beside him, was the first to rise.

She staggered to her feet and studied her husband for a moment, and then dusted herself off as if vaguely embarra.s.sed . . . as if she had done nothing more than trip, rather than die again and be resurrected in front of them all in the s.p.a.ce of a minute.

Big Tim Hawkins was next. He'd been buried only a dozen feet from the path in a plot that the Hawkins family had been using for years. His father had been laid there a decade ago and there were spots for Tim's mother and siblings and their spouses. A family grave.

The hands that punched up through the soil were huge and fish-belly white, nails torn and one finger broken from smashing through the top of the coffin and digging his way up through the dirt. Zeke shuddered at the sight, and at the thought of the inhuman strength required for such a feat. Whatever power Enoch had called upon, it had instilled within October's dead more than just a renewed spark of life.

There were screams and Mrs. Hawkins nearly fainted, one hand on her pregnant belly as Aaron Monteforte caught her.

"Play, d.a.m.n you!" Enoch cried shrilly before going back to his own pipe, his notes different from the others, weaving in and out of the discord and creating an unnerving sort of order.

They played, and some of the dead rose. Some, but not all.

Five minutes pa.s.sed, no more. Zeke could not look at their faces but he knew them. Ben Trevino was there, standing near his mother like a sleepwalker as she wept and kept playing the same ugly, maddening notes. The funeral home had done an excellent job with the bullet hole in his neck.