Ghostcountry's Wrath by Tom Deitz Page A

all his life, had trod every deer trail and logging road for five miles roundabout, and camped by every creek and river. But tonight it all seemed different. Perhaps it was the moon: impossibly heavy and yellow, and so bright he could read the Nike logo on his sneakers without bending over, and pick out Dexter Holland on his red Offspring T-shirt without squinting. Or possibly it was the breeze—steady in spite of the tangle of palmettos, deer berries, and thorny wait-a-minute vines that grew so close among the sprawling live oaks they came close to walling in the trail. Certainly that was part of it, because even the slightest stirring of the air made the tendrils of Spanish moss that festooned every limb and twig sway like the ghosts of the Yamasee Indians who’d lived here until they’d walked into the Okefenokee and disappeared, or the Spanish soldiers who’d died at Bloody Marsh a couple of counties over.
    Unfortunately, he very much feared that… difference was because it was close to the anniversary of that night, and perhaps because this night knew he was going to attempt some magic.
    But he wouldn’t think about that either—until he got to that place. If he thought about it—destination or intention, either—he might chicken out and have to spend another day getting re-psyched, never mind having to sneak out all over again.
    Sighing, Don gave his arms and neck a final quick swatting, added his bare legs for good measure, then resettled his backpack and started off once more. Fortunately, the trail was straight here, and wide enough for the moonlight to reach the ground, so he decided to jog. Maybe it’d help burn off his case of nerves; perhaps if he focused on his pulse, his breathing, and the pounding of his feet on the sandy soil, he could forget.
    And for five minutes actually managed to. Which, unhappily, only hastened his arrival—and then he had to recall.
    He paused to catch his breath and steel himself one last time. Iodine Creek lay ahead. He could already smell its brackish, tannin-dark waters, and now caught the faintest glimpse of its surface glittering among the cattails along the farther bank. Between him and the nearer shore was only a thin screen of palmettos and a pair of live oaks that framed the trail like a gateway. He hesitated there, feeling the soil soft as flour beneath his sneaks. Once again a lump rose in his throat, even as a chill danced across his body—for his subconscious had already reacted to what his eyes only then acknowledged.
    It was still there—sort of—between the right-hand oak and one of its water-bound kin: the lean-to he and his best friend, Michael Chadwick, had built two summers back so they could camp out all night and not be rained on.
    The one where they’d talked about school and parents and sex, where they’d wrestled and had tickle fights and compared hard-ons and drunk stolen beer on the sly, where they’d discussed forestry school and video games and CD’s and Dungeons and Dragons and which girls of their acquaintance were most likely to relieve them of their troublesome virginity.
    The lean-to where Michael had died.
    No! Don corrected. Where he’d watched Mike be murdered.
    Almost he bolted at that, for the memory pounced upon him with the stealth of one of the panthers that were supposed to be extinct in Georgia and were not. Shoot, if he squinted a little, he could still see it! That pile of palmetto bayonets could easily be old Mike in his sleeping bag. And that broken branch lodged beside the shelter could almost be her: that old witch his friend Calvin had called Spearfinger, who had lulled him into paralysis with that eerie song of hers, holding him thus immobile while she calmly stuck her preposterously long finger into Mike’s side and with casual deliberation slowly picked out his liver a tidbit at a time and ate it raw. Mike had never awakened from that. And though Calvin had killed Spearfinger a day later, Don had never truly