Part 32 (2/2)

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 smas.h.i.+ng 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.

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