Until... | Book 3 | Until The End

by Hamill, Ike

  Alan shot a look at Amber.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean any offense.”

  Jan took a moment before she seemed to accept the apology.

  # # #

  “You were saying? About the animals?” Alan asked.

  Jan jutted out her bottom jaw a bit and nodded.

  “Yes. A whole group of local people came to Samuel Prescott to demand compensation for their loss and order him to stop his horrible experiments. It’s said that he denied, denied, denied, until some of the men forced their way into his back garden. The place was like the Devil’s own graveyard. Ringed in fruit trees, there were bones hanging from branches. In the center, a fully articulated skeleton of a deer was posed over a plot of fresh dirt. A couple of the men dug down and stopped when their shovel hit the hide of a mule, dissected into two pieces with each end sewn up as if it could live by itself. The group rallied back to take custody of Samuel Prescott and make him pay for his crimes against nature.”

  Amber looked to Alan with wide eyes.

  “But they found that he had escaped through the side door of his laboratory while everyone was distracted. This is where the accounts differ. It was just after sunset and they were organizing their search to hunt down Samuel so they could bring him to justice. There was a big commotion from the orchard. The Dunn boys were setting fire to the trees and claiming that the mule had wormed its way out of the grave and tried to bite them. I wish they hadn’t burned down those trees. I only have one apple tree left and it’s said that Samuel kept rows of a dozen each. If I trucked all the way down to the Puddledock Road and got some trees, it would take me five years to get half a bushel of apples. Those heirloom varieties lived forever and produced…”

  Alan stopped her tangent by raising his hand, like he was asking permission to interrupt.

  Jan kept talking but got back on the subject.

  “They set fire to most of the orchard and more and more tales erupted of ferocious animals crawling out of their graves to come after people. When I saw that movie that came out in sixty-eight. What was the name of that? It was like I had seen that before. Those undead people crawled out of their graves and it was just like I had always imagined it from the stories. A group found Samuel and tried to bring him back. They said he went crazy and attacked. Several of the men were wounded trying to subdue him. Samuel died in the fight. That’s always the way that people put it when they told the story. Nobody ever said that Samuel was beaten to death, or Samuel was murdered, although both of those were certainly true. We all just say that Samuel died in the fight. That puts the blame squarely on nobody. It was just a thing that happened. Nobody was at fault.”

  “What about the men who were injured?” Amber asked.

  Jan’s eyes lit up at the question.

  “What an astute thing to ask, young lady.”

  Amber looked down at her feet.

  “They say that everyone who was injured that night suffered a horrible fate. Men who were hale and hearty, men who were young and vigorous, and men who had seen better days—none of them fared well if they were injured in the fight. One of my ancestors, Paulie, took ill and they say that he chased after his wife. Gert was a stout woman. Even when he climbed on top of her, she dragged herself out into the yard and brought him along for the ride. As soon as they were outside, Paulie let go and tried to hide under the porch. Gert wasn’t having any of it. She pulled him out by his ankles and the story goes widdershins after that. Cousin Hannie says that Paulie just boiled away and his smoke disappeared in the wind. Gert claims that he got under the porch, found his way through the basement and must have fled. Whatever happened to him, nobody ever saw him again.”

  “That happened to all the men?” Amber asked.

  Jan nodded.

  “Personally, I believe that the men who got away found a place to hide in the woods, and I wound’t be surprised if that included old Samuel.”

  “I thought you said he was… sorry, that he died in the fight,” Alan said.

  “Sometimes I think that. Other times I don’t. It’s one of those tales that doesn’t make sense regardless of what you think. People always want one answer. Sometimes there are a bunch. Those poor children—what happened to them wasn’t right. I like to think that we shouldn’t be judged based on the sins of our fathers. Those boys were judged and sentenced to the retribution that the people wanted to deliver to Samuel. What he had taken from them, they took from the boys.”

  “Animals?” Amber asked.

  Jan shook her head. “Maybe if they had still owned any, they would have. What they took from the boys was flesh. Once or twice a year, until the boys found a way to get far away from this place, they would be abducted. They say that the oldest boy had a limp because someone had taken half his toes. The youngest wasn’t able to eat an apple without cradling it with both hands. He didn’t have enough fingers left to grip it.”

  Alan turned away, thinking about his own son.

  “I know,” Jan said. “Horrible story all around. But that’s why you came, right? You wanted to hear a horrible story about a monster of a man.”

  Amber and Alan were both silent for a moment.

  “Well? If you didn’t come for that, then why did you come?”

  # # #

  Amber turned to stare at him—she put the burden of answering the question right on his shoulders.

  Alan said, “Honestly, we’re just trying to find out what happened. My family has also had a run-in with the Prescotts. I believe that when they left here, they came and settled down in the Kingston Lakes area. At least some of them did. Down there, some people have described them as sorcerers.”

  Jan nodded through his whole explanation.

  “I heard about that trouble. I also heard that it ended.”

  “Some things stop, but that doesn’t mean they’ve ended,” Alan said.

  “Astute,” Jan said.

  She stood up.

  “Come out back with me, would you?”

  Alan and Amber got up and watched Jan move towards the back door. For a moment, Alan knew that they were both thinking the same thing—maybe it wouldn’t be a bad idea to decline the invitation. He had the feeling that they might not like whatever Jan wanted to show them. Jan held open the door and Alan thought it would be rude to turn her down. He went first, zipping up his coat as he stepped outside. Jan paused to put her boots on and then she guided them down the steps towards the greenhouse.

  It was just as she described it—just a shelter for her lawnmower and some yard tools.

  He gestured towards the greenhouse door.

  “In here?”

  “No,” she said. “Around back.”

  Her yard was dry compared to the surrounding area. It looked like the sun had melted all the snow a while before and there was even some green grass boldly poking up along the glass wall of the greenhouse. Alan saw the twisted apple tree, growing at the edge of the back clearing. He wondered if it was one of the trees that SE Prescott had mentioned in his journal. If so, Scout would have been buried somewhere back there.

  “He used to have a barn, right?” Amber asked, looking around.

  “Yes, a small stable away from the house,” Jan said. “That’s been gone for decades. We’re headed back in that direction. Do you see the path?”

  Alan nodded and went first. Alarms were ringing in his head. There was definitely something back there, and he was certain that he didn’t want to know what it was. Momentum kept him moving forward—that and a fear of looking silly. If what was back there didn’t frighten an old lady, what right did he have to be afraid?

  He stopped at the edge of the hill where the path led down to a stream.

  “That’s far enough,” Jan said. “He doesn’t come closer than that.”

  “He?” Amber asked.

  Jan motioned for them to lean in closer to her.

  “There’s a beast back there. I was warned that it was a bear, but in the past few years I’ve dismisse
d that explanation. Every year, around this time, the beast comes out of hibernation. I don’t think it can cross the stream. Some animals are wary like that. The oldest, most superstitious people in my family used to say that running water was like a magnet that would pull on your soul. If your soul wasn’t tethered well to your flesh, then you couldn’t cross running water without the pull destroying you.”

  She took a small step towards the stream.

  “I don’t feel it, and my soul rattles around inside my flesh like a bird in a broken cage. Regardless, it keeps the beast at bay.”

  “What does the beast look like?” Amber asked.

  “If I had seen him, I wouldn’t be talking to you right now,” Jan said with a small laugh. “A beast like that will eat your eyes.”

  Amber stiffened and took a step back from Jan.

  “If you’re looking to find out what happened to Samuel and those other men, you’ll want to take that path. Whatever secrets they have left, they don’t belong to this property anymore. They’re back there, somewhere on the other side of that running water.”

  Alan looked to Amber and then up to the sky. It was almost noon.

  “Do you mind if we go have a look around back there?” Amber asked.

  “Amber,” Alan said. “Shouldn’t we wait for the others?”

  Jan turned from them and was already walking back towards her house.

  “Do what you will,” Jan said. “Just don’t pull too far down that road. It looks solid, but it will turn to mud in a heartbeat if you try to drive on it.”

  Alan followed the direction of her finger and saw that there was a dirt road just on the other side of a line of trees. He waited for Jan to move away from them before he went to Amber to discuss.

  “I’m not saying we do a full search or anything. I just want to get a sense of what’s back there and maybe we’ll be able to guess what she means by a beast being back there.”

  “We know what she means, Amber,” Alan said.

  “Okay, sure, but what’s the harm in exploring a little. This will literally be the safest thing you and I have done together since I got here.”

  Alan thought about that as he looked towards the creek and then over to the dirt road.

  “Standard procedure though. We go back for the lights, weapons, and we send a message. No shortcuts.”

  Twenty-One: Amber

  Maine was two distinct places, as far as Amber was concerned. When she had lived in her great uncle’s house the year before, the summer had been an endless string of baking heat. After that, fall had been delicious and crisp. She had left before winter smothered everything with white death.

  Walking up the path behind Jan’s house, Amber could almost imagine spring taking the land back from winter. The last of the snow wasn’t deep enough to warrant snowshoes. The ground was soggy, but they weren’t really sinking in.

  Their path led up to a line of stones that led in roughly a straight line.

  “Watch your ankles,” Alan said. “These stone walls have claimed more than a few.”

  “These rocks were put here on purpose?” Amber asked. She looked one direction and then the other. “I thought these were just, like, here.”

  “When they cleared the land for crops and pasture, they collected all the stones and then put them around the perimeter. They were good enough walls to keep the cows in, I guess.”

  “I always thought New England people were supposed to be industrious and tough. Looks like they’re just lazy.”

  Alan laughed. They picked their way between the trees on the far side of the wall. The path wasn’t much to speak of. Amber glanced back, wondering if it was really a path at all.

  “Well, remember this might have been made a couple hundred years ago. I’m sure it looked neater when they made it.”

  Alan swung to the left as the ground got pretty steep straight ahead. They climbed and Amber wondered if they were just wasting time. Tracing back to the origins of the journal was her idea, but she couldn’t stop thinking about the fact that there were other hiding places they should be investigating. At least when they were hunting down those, it felt like they were accomplishing something. Just walking around in the woods behind Jan’s house might not yield a thing.

  Alan stopped.

  Amber closed her eyes for a moment to see if she felt anything. She didn’t.

  When she looked to Alan for an explanation, he was holding a finger to his lips. With his other hand, he pointed. It took her a moment to see. The headstone blended in with the trunk of the tree behind it. After she saw the first one, she saw the other headstones that were hiding amongst the trees. Amber looked down, almost panicking for a moment when she thought that she might be standing on a grave. The image of a hand reaching up from the dirt raced through her head. From what she could tell, they were still outside the perimeter of the cemetery.

  Alan crept forward. Amber held her ground.

  He crouched in front of the largest stone, which wasn’t very big. The slab couldn’t have been more than a couple inches thick.

  “I can’t read it,” he whispered over his shoulder.

  “Why are you whispering?” Amber asked.

  He stood up.

  Amber moved forward carefully, trying to imagine where the bodies were buried and moving around those outlines. They crouched together and Amber brushed some lichen from the face of the rock. Once she saw the shape of the first letter, she was able to see the eroded details better.

  “Devoted Wife and Mother,” she read. “It says Prescott down here. Do you think this was SE Prescott’s wife?”

  “Then who do the small ones belong to?” Alan asked.

  Amber didn’t answer. She was looking at a dark place just beyond a big tree. There were still patches of snow. In one of the clear areas, the leaves and dirt looked black. She stood up and inched closer, leaning on a tree so she could get a better look. Alan came to her side.

  “Who does that grave belong to?” Alan whispered.

  It wasn’t really a grave, as far as she could tell. There was no stone, and it was nothing more than a patch of forest floor that looked like it had been disturbed. Once Alan asked the question, all she could imagine was a body down there in that loose dirt, and the answer to his question seemed rather obvious.

  She backed up and tugged at his jacket sleeve.

  “Let’s go,” she whispered.

  # # #

  Once they had crossed back over the stream, they were on the safe side according to Jan. Amber slowed and Alan walked alongside her.

  “Assuming he’s in a new form, you think that’s where SE Prescott hides?” he asked.

  “Don’t you?”

  “Something is under that dirt. I don’t know though.”

  “We get shovels and the brothers and we come back in the morning,” Amber said. “Ricky is finishing a double tonight, and I think he has tomorrow off. He’s just going to have to stay up and we’ll pull George out of class. We can leave at sunrise and we’ll have to bring stakes and seeds too, just in case.”

  “Amber, if that’s him then he has been at this a long, long time. I don’t know how smart these things are, but we have to assume that they’re cunning, at the very least. You don’t stick around that long without some really good survival instincts.”

  “As far as we know, nobody has ever really hunted them.”

  “You don’t think the townspeople back in the day tried to settle the score. Jan still sounds angry about what happened, and she is three generations removed, at least.”

  “So, what, we’re not even going to try?” Amber asked. She stopped and faced him.

  “That’s not what I’m saying. I just think that maybe we should do some more research first. We could put a camera on one of those trees. They make these cameras for hunters. You can set them to be motion activated or just take a photo every so many seconds. We could come back tomorrow with one of those and get a first-hand look at what comes out of the ground overnigh
t.”

  “You think that’s a better way to get a look than just digging?”

  “Not better. Maybe safer.”

  “What we should do is get some shovels right now. Who knows—he could come out after dark, smell the fact that we were there today, and move on. We’ll be lucky if we even find anything tomorrow. You want to delay that even more?”

  “We can talk about this in the car,” Alan said.

  “Fine.”

  Twenty-Two: Alan

  “Yeah,” Liz said. “That sounds reasonable.”

  Alan stood up and paced to the sink and then back to the island of light around the kitchen table. In the distance, he could hear Joe’s video games. Their son wasn’t even trying to hide it. Somewhere along the way, their rules had been rewritten by Joe and they hadn’t sufficiently set him straight. His grades were dropping and he wasn’t engaging with the work anymore. Alan felt like everything was a problem that needed his attention.

  “Can you just tell me what you really think?” Alan asked.

  “I just did.”

  “No, you gave me that passive aggressive nonsense where I’m supposed to come around to your way of thinking without you actually having to disagree aloud.”

  “Who are you trying to convince? Me? Or yourself?” she asked.

  “Okay,” he said, throwing up his hands. “Okay. Let me work this from a different angle. If you were in my position, dealing with Amber and Ricky who are gung ho to run off and take the most dangerous approach, how would you proceed?”

  Liz pushed away from the table a little and leaned back.

  “Well… Honestly? I guess I would consider pulling back. I wouldn’t ask them to, but I would allow them to do their high-risk approach without letting myself get dragged into it. You can’t always talk sense into everyone. Sometimes you have to let them succeed or fail on their own.”

  Alan sat down in his chair, absorbing the weight of what she was saying.

  “That feels so cold.”

  Liz nodded. “It is. I’m glad I’m not in that position because it’s a really tough road either way. You can beat yourself against the wall, trying to get them to change their minds, or walk away. Neither one is going to feel good.”