Free Drummer Boy: A Supernatural Thriller by Scott Nicholson

whisper, and the wind played its own voice through the trees. Hardy wondered how much of his anger was due to his inability to stop the spinning hands of time.
    Change is fine with me, as long as it’s not change for the worse. But some things are better left alone. Like whatever’s sleeping in the Hole.
    Hardy followed the developer, wondering how many times the man had poked his head in the Hole. Maybe Budget Bill Willard didn’t have enough imagination to get into trouble with it. Then again, Bill hadn’t lost kin to it like Hardy had. Hardy feared the Hole for good reason: it had stolen his son from him.
    They were within twenty feet of the Hole, near where the two boys were standing when Hardy had first arrived, when Sheriff Littlefield stepped out of the woods.
    “Howdy, Bill,” the sheriff said, nodding at Hardy and narrowing his eyes and giving a small shake of his head.
Nothing
, the look said.
    “Big day for trespassers,” Bill said.
    “I checked out the property. We didn’t find a trace.”
    “I heard one of your boys got a little loose with his pistol. Maybe he was shooting at one of Hardy’s spooks?”
    Littlefield stepped between the two men and the Jangling Hole, overtly avoiding glancing into the chilly depths. His hand rested on the butt of his sidearm as if he were guarding gold bullion. “A lot of funny stuff goes on in this place,” Littlefield said.
    “Yeah, like what happened in the red church in Whispering Pines? People are still snickering about that one.”
    “Nobody who lived through it is doing much laughing.”
    Bill looked at the sheriff, then at Hardy, and he gave his thigh an animated slap. “You fellows are serious about all this, aren’t you? I can understand it from Hardy here, being a seventh-generation, pig-porking hillbilly. But you’ve got education, Sheriff. You know there’s no such thing as boogeymen.”
    “I know what I see and I know what I know,” the sheriff said, before pursing his lips into a stubborn line.
    “Your chief deputy died in a car crash,” Bill said. “Those other deaths were just what the coroner said: animal attacks. And, anyway, just because you’ve gone goosey in the head doesn’t mean I have to change my plans any. I’ve got approval from the planning board and I’ve followed every line in the building code and subdivision ordinance. Hell, I practically know them by heart, since I helped draft them.”
    “Maybe there’s a higher law,” Hardy said.
    “Don’t thump the Bible on my head, Hardy. You haven’t been to church much since the day your boy went squirrel-shit nutty.”
    The blood rage filled the backs of his eyelids. Hardy, who was two decades older, launched himself at Bill and wrestled him to the ground. The farmer’s limbs were tough and leathery, like strips of beef jerky, but they bulged with muscle around the bone. He climbed on top of Bill, who squealed in surprise and tried to roll away. Hardy’s arthritic knees sent blue lightning to his skull but he rode the developer as if the man were a wayward bronco in need of busting.
    Hardy’s hands were tightening around the man’s throat when Littlefield reached down and yanked him away by his long john collar. The fabric stretched and the elastic snapped as Hardy clawed his way back toward Bill’s face, but Littlefield got one of his arms in a wrestling lock and tried to restrain him. Hardy pulled free of the sheriff and was about to ram his knotty fist into Bill’s fig of a nose when the voice wended low from the cave.
    “
Earley.”
    The two combatants froze, and the sheriff stepped back from the fray. Bill rolled away and scampered to his feet.
    “He . . . I’m filing on this one, Sheriff,” Bill said between slobbering gulps of air. “You witnessed it. Assault.”
    “Didn’t you hear it?” Littlefield said.
    “All I heard was the wind.”
    “Something in there
talked
.”
    “Arrest him, Sheriff.”
    Hardy eased away from the Hole, wondering if his son