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I tracked him down a few blocks away in the Bluff View Art District, up a hill and around a corner from his usual spot. He was parked with Cowboy in a pretty flagstone courtyard with an artsy stone fountain. The pair of them were presiding over a game of chess taking place outside the auxiliary coffee shop.

He waved when he saw me, inviting me over to the table. The chess players and the dog ignored me, but Karl was as chipper as ever.

“How you doing there, girl?”

“Fat and happy, darling. Have you got a minute?”

“For you? I’ve got all day. Pull up a chair. ”

I did as instructed, and I wasted no time.

“Karl, this may sound like a weird question, but I thought you might know the answer. ”

“Ask away,” he invited, shifting his chair to make me a little more room.

“It’s about Moccasin Bend. I heard someplace that it used to be—” I hesitated, because I felt stupid saying it out loud where the whole world could hear me. “Did it really used to be an Indian burial ground?”

One of the chess players cocked an eyebrow and nodded. Karl did the same. “Back in the day, it was a sacred site for the Cherokee people. There was a lot of controversy over the government putting the hospital there. It’s protected ground, or so they say. Like a park, I think. But once upon a time, yes, it was holy territory. ”

“You’re joking. ”

“’Fraid not. ”

“So what you’re telling me is that the government built…a mental hospital…on top of a sacred Indian burial ground?”

“Yes ma’am. ”

I blinked slowly and shook my head. “Had these people never seen a horror movie? Never read any Stephen King?”

“Apparently not. Why’re you so interested in Moccasin Bend all of a sudden anyway, kid?”

I balked, unsure of how much to share. “I heard something strange was going on over there, that’s all. Someone I know who worked out there heard some stories. ” That was more true than not; Malachi had lived there for years, and I knew they’d put him to work in some menial capacity.

Both of the chess players laughed, even as one of them lost a bishop. The guy playing white looked up at me and said, “No one ever works out there long without gaining a story or two. It’s like working at the battlefield. ”

“Funny you should make that connection,” I mumbled, but Karl heard me.

“You picked up something about Old Green Eyes?” he asked, lowering his voice just enough to make everyone around our table lean back and strain to hear us.

“Oh, I wouldn’t say that. ”

“Then what would you say?”

“I’d say that the world’s a funny place, Karl. And for now, I’d leave it at that. ”

7

Rising Again

SAND MOUNTAIN, ALABAMA, SEVEN WEEKS EARLIER

Pete Buford was thirty-two years old when he was released from the Silverdale Correctional Facility. They turned him loose with a regular set of clothes, and his uncle Rudy picked him up to take him back up Sand Mountain to Henegar, Alabama, from whence he’d originally come.

Two women were conspicuously absent from his home-coming.

One of them, the girl he was once going to marry, had mailed him a Dear John letter two years previously; and the other had died of a heart attack a month after he’d gone in. Pete still thought the whole thing had been terrifically unfair. It should’ve gone the other way around, he thought. Allie should have been the one to bite it, and his mother should’ve been there to make him chicken dumplings to welcome him back to freedom.

As it was, no one was waiting at home and there would be no dumplings, though Rudy was kind enough to run by the KFC drive-through and pick up a bucket of the Colonel’s finest.