LOT'S MOUNTAIN

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO: The Mourner

They're still talking. I don't know what they're saying, but I sure as hell know it isn't good.

They? I'm talking about Grim, South, and a bunch of other monsters meeting with the Old Bone Woman. It's hard to say how all this works. From what Grim said before he left, they'll go to some deeper part of the house, a place that no one really goes to. I'm guessing that now the house will let the Old Bone Woman out. It knows how serious things are.

I wasn't invited to that meeting. Hey, that's okay with me, but I think they'd be a little more thankful about me getting rid of a bunch of glass. But all this is bigger than some crazy woman showing up here on the shores of Belle Lake.

They know what's coming next. They've made their choice. They had a chance to join with the Glass Man and take out the Stone Men. Some of them were kinda wanting to do it, but none of them are gonna go against the Old Bone Woman. She knows what'll happen to them if they go the way of Glass.

But what are they supposed to do now? The Stone Hounds can come here and rip at them. And the Glass Man has made a point to let us know that he knows exactly where Belle Lake is as well.

So, for now, I'm hanging here at Belle Lake, waiting to hear from Grim. In the meantime, I'm helping this little monster. I don't know what the hell it is. It looks kinda like a fish head's been stuck on a thick, stumpy, human-like body. Its fingers are webbed, but its feet look like a human's. Its blood is thick like tar and sticks to my clothes.

Have you ever held a catfish? I'm not talking about the nice, neat ones you get from pet stores. I'm talking about the ugly, slimy sons of guns you pull out of murky ponds. Their whiskers are long and thin, tapering to a point. Their mouths are slashes, and they have gooey black slime all over them. It globs to you in black smears, and I swear to God, you can wash your hands about a million times but it's still there.

As I'm dabbing at the thing's wounds with some pieces of cloth, I hear music. It isn't Belle Lake's usual music, what I heard when Grim first brought me here. This is a darker sort of sound, one that's hard to explain. You ever hear the soft music from a horror movie, the kind that let's you know the killer's somewhere close?

That's when I see this guy where the shadows are real thick. He's perched on top of a big rock, with a fiddle across his lap.

"Come closer," he says to me as he plucks a string and holds his head real close, listening to the hum it makes.

The catfish-thing takes the rest of the rags from my hand and then waves me on. Well, I'm guessing I should be pretty safe here. The worst things have already been driven off, right?

I don't know what he is, but the fiddle guy's definitely not a person. Don't get me wrong, he looks kinda like one, like Preta did. This guy is tall, or at least I'm guessing he is. Him being all scrunched up on top of that rock makes it's hard to tell. He's wearing a gray hood and a long t-shirt that's gray, too.

At first I think he looks like some kid I went to school with back in elementary school. The longer I look, the more he looks like Roger Dodds, and then a little bit like Granddad Sam. I can't tell you exactly what makes me think he looks like them or why it's constantly changing. But the more I look at him, the less I see. I can see his eyes, but I can't tell you about them.

I can, though, tell you about his fiddle. It looks real old, but not run-down or anything. The wood is a pale brownish-red with black marks on it. There're gold plates along the bottom and the top. I don't know if they're real or anything, and they definitely aren't shiny.

"Wormy chestnut. It's a wood that ain't the best for fiddle-making, though it is for my purposes because of how it's grown. It's all in where the roots grow before the tree is cut," the guy says. He runs his finger along the pitted wood. "They gotta grow deep into a dead man's grave."