What the Dead Men Say Read Online Free Page A

graduated from school this past spring, Mr. Carlyle. Her mother and I would have been so proud.”
        “We didn’t mean for it to happen, Mr. Ryan. Honest.”
        “You know what happened to her mother?”
        “No.”
        Ryan drew himself up and sighed. “Whooping cough.” Carlyle’s eyes dropped back to the Winchester.
        Ryan said, “You can always go to the sheriff here, Mr. Carlyle.”
        “Yessir.”
        “You can always tell him you were the men who robbed that bank and killed that little girl.”
        “Yessir.”
        “Because if you don’t-” Now it was Ryan who looked at the Winchester. “Because if you don’t, you’re going to have to worry about me.”
        “Yessir.”
        “And you know something?”
        “What, sir?”
        “I’d sure as hell rather have to worry about the law than worry about me. Because maybe in a court of law you’ll convince a jury that what you did was an accident-but you’ll never convince me. You understand that?”
        Carlyle didn’t even have time to respond before Ryan raised the Winchester and slammed the butt of it into Carlyle’s mouth.
        Carlyle moaned, putting his hands to his mouth. He sounded as if he didn’t know whether to puke or cry or what.
        Ryan said. “That’s just the start of things, Mr. Carlyle. Just the beginning.”
        But Carlyle wasn’t paying any attention. He was looking at the tiny white stubs of teeth he’d just spit out bloodily into the palm of his right hand. He looked shocked and confused and terrified.
        “Just the beginning,” Ryan said, and walked off down the street toward town again.
        

2
        
        James Hogan lay on his bed thinking of what he was going to say to his uncle Septemus as soon as he saw him. Septemus had no right to speak so slightingly of either James or his mother. She’d done a good job of raising all the kids and if she wasn’t quite as good a father as she’d been a mother, well, you still couldn’t blame her because she was a refined lady whose tastes just naturally gravitated to violin musicals in the parlor and the study of classical thinkers such as Plato and Socrates. Nothing wrong with that at all.
        But of course it was Septemus’s aspersions on James’s own character that really had the boy angry. Hinting that James was a panty-waist and a mother’s boy; hinting that at this rate he’d never grow up to be a man.
        He lay shirtless on his back, a black fly crawling around on his red freckled face. Maybe he should tell Septemus about the time he got drunk on beer that Fourth of July night when everybody thought he’d gone up to bed; or maybe he should tell him about how many times he’d loaded cornsilk into a pipe bowl and smoked till he’d turned green; or maybe he should tell him about the time, a spring moon making him slightly mad, he’d nearly kissed Marietta right on the lips. Boy, wouldn’t these things surprise Uncle Septemus? Wouldn’t he then look at James in a very different way?
        A pantywaist; a mama’s boy. Just wait till he saw Septemus.
        The knock startled him. He turned his head to face the door so quickly that a line of warm pain shot up the side of his neck.
        “That you, Uncle Septemus?” he called, uneasy about opening the door unless he knew who it was. His mother had given him explicit instructions about not putting himself in a position where he’d ever be alone with a stranger.
        And then he heard Septemus inside his head: see how she’s turning you into a sissy, son? Somebody knocks on your door and you won’t even go open it, Now is that how a real man would act, son? Is it?
        He fairly flung himself off the bed, making loose fists of his hands, striding to the door. To heck with what his mother said. He was sixteen; he was on his way to becoming a man. He would open the door