JК
Bag of Bones :: Кинг Стивен
Страница: 422 из 425Jo traced some of them to North Carolina, where manyof the descendants still live. And during the fires of 1933, the ones young Max Devore set, the cabins burned flat”
“I don’t understand why the bodies of Sara and her son weren’t found,” Frank said. “I understand that what you smelled—the putres-cence-wasn’t there in any physical sense. But surely at the time… if this path you call The Street was so popular…”
“Devore and the others didn’t bury them where I found them, not to begin with. They would have started by dragging the bodies deeper into the woods—maybe up to where the north wing of Sara Laughs stands now. They covered them with brush and came back that night. Must have been that night; to leave them any longer would have drawn every carnivore in the woods. They took them someplace else and buried them in that roll of canvas. Jo didn’t know where, but my guess is Bowie Ridge, where they’d spent most of the summer cutting.
Hell, Bowie Ridge is still pretty isolated. They put the bodies somewhere; we might as well say there.”
“Then how… why…”
“Draper Finney wasn’t the only one haunted by what they did, Frank-they all were. Literally haunted. With the possible exception of Jared Devore, I suppose. He lived another ten years and apparently never missed a meal.
But the boys had bad dreams, they drank too much, they fought too much, they argued… bristled if anyone so much as mentioned the Red-Tops…”
“Might as well have gone around wearing signs reading: ICK US, WE’re GUILTY,” Frank commented. “Yes. It probably didn’t help that most of the TR was giving them the silent treatment. Then Finney died in the quarry-committed suicide in the quarry, I think—and Jared’s logger-boys got an idea. Came down with it like a cold. Only it was more like a compulsion. Their idea was that if they dug up the bodies and reburied them where it happened, things’d go back to normal for them.”
“Did Jared go along with the idea?”
“According to Jo’s notes, by then they never went near him. They reburied the bag of bones—without Jared Devore’s help—where I eventually dug it up. In the late fall or early winter of 1902, I think.”
“She wanted to be back, didn’t she? Sara. Back where she could really work on them.”
“And on the whole township. Yes. Jo thought so, too. Enough so she didn’t want to go back to Sara Laughs once she found some of this stuff out. Especially when she guessed she was pregnant.
“I don’t understand why the bodies of Sara and her son weren’t found,” Frank said. “I understand that what you smelled—the putres-cence-wasn’t there in any physical sense. But surely at the time… if this path you call The Street was so popular…”
“Devore and the others didn’t bury them where I found them, not to begin with. They would have started by dragging the bodies deeper into the woods—maybe up to where the north wing of Sara Laughs stands now. They covered them with brush and came back that night. Must have been that night; to leave them any longer would have drawn every carnivore in the woods. They took them someplace else and buried them in that roll of canvas. Jo didn’t know where, but my guess is Bowie Ridge, where they’d spent most of the summer cutting.
Hell, Bowie Ridge is still pretty isolated. They put the bodies somewhere; we might as well say there.”
“Then how… why…”
“Draper Finney wasn’t the only one haunted by what they did, Frank-they all were. Literally haunted. With the possible exception of Jared Devore, I suppose. He lived another ten years and apparently never missed a meal.
But the boys had bad dreams, they drank too much, they fought too much, they argued… bristled if anyone so much as mentioned the Red-Tops…”
“Might as well have gone around wearing signs reading: ICK US, WE’re GUILTY,” Frank commented. “Yes. It probably didn’t help that most of the TR was giving them the silent treatment. Then Finney died in the quarry-committed suicide in the quarry, I think—and Jared’s logger-boys got an idea. Came down with it like a cold. Only it was more like a compulsion. Their idea was that if they dug up the bodies and reburied them where it happened, things’d go back to normal for them.”
“Did Jared go along with the idea?”
“According to Jo’s notes, by then they never went near him. They reburied the bag of bones—without Jared Devore’s help—where I eventually dug it up. In the late fall or early winter of 1902, I think.”
“She wanted to be back, didn’t she? Sara. Back where she could really work on them.”
“And on the whole township. Yes. Jo thought so, too. Enough so she didn’t want to go back to Sara Laughs once she found some of this stuff out. Especially when she guessed she was pregnant.