“She is still alive! The girl is alive!”
The sirens came closer, and in her daze, she felt the men’s hands support her head while they called out to the officers that came running. Through her thin eyelids, she could perceive the flash of blue lights and she knew – now, she could let go.
11 Contrition and Pledge
“Mr. Purdue,” Lily called with a quiver of panic in her voice. She sounded ever so careful in calling for him through the house, because she knew that he did not like a racket. The day staff had left, including Jane, so it was up to Lily to find her employer. “Mr. Purdue?” she asked around the corner of his study, but found it vacant. The adorable, plump housekeeper jogged along the first floor hallway, but saw no sign of Purdue.
“What on earth are you doing, Lillian?” Charles asked form the bottom of the stairs. With his impeccable posture and stern tidiness, he looked at her inquisitively.
“Oh, Charles, have you seen the boss?” she whined, looking very worried. “There is an urgent phone call for him on the landline, and the woman refuses to let me take a message. She insists on speaking to Mr. Purdue about a book.”
The word punched Charles in the gut. “Book?” he asked.
“Yes, she says it is extremely urgent,” Lily panted, her hand on her stomach.
“Hold on, I think I know where he is,” Charles replied. “I will tell him.”
“Thank you, love,” she sighed in relief. With the matter in the butler’s hands, she could continue with the kitchen work.
Charles found Purdue in Storage 4, scrutinizing the letter Nina had translated.
“Sir?”
“Yes, old boy?” Purdue muttered without looking up.
“There is a lady on the landline for you, about…a book?” he told Purdue, who instantly raised his head in full attention.
“Did she say what about the book?” he asked quickly, hastily standing up to join the butler. They skipped up the stairs to the nearest telephone, fixed inside a small security vault built into the wall.
“No, sir, Lillian took the call, and the lady is holding to speak to you,” Charles informed him.
“Thanks,” Purdue replied and connected the call with the device mounted inside the wall. Opening the vault with a code, he activated the device with his voice to activate the isolated conversation. “Mrs. Williams?” he said quickly. On the other side of the phone call, he could hear her sniffing before she slowly started to speak.
“Mr. Purdue, I have no idea how to convey my utter fury at you and your bedeviled pursuits. I have no words to relay my feelings without shouting the foulest profanities at you right now,” her voice shivered. Her words came out calm, but her voice was fraught with seething rage.
“Mrs. Williams, please do tell me what is the matter,” he urged with gentle concern.
“My husband was killed for that bloody book, you know? Nobody will ever admit it, but I know it. With all my heart I believe that he was killed for it, for the contents of it,” she continued, trying to compose herself in between gasps of weeping. “But now you have brought this book into the light again, you and your incessant need to scratch at the dead wounds of old things that need to be left buried!”
A long pause ensued, but Purdue had no words to press her with. In fact, by the sound of her, by the annunciation of her sentences, he could tell that something terrible had happened. There was nothing he could think of to say in response, but felt inappropriately grateful when she added more details to her admonishment.
“Now, the book has caused my granddaughter to come to great harm, Mr. Purdue,” she rambled quickly, before her crying could interrupt her. He could hear the old woman crying, but she soon recovered and took a deep breath. “She agreed to run my errand, Mr. Purdue, to bring this accursed book to you on her own expense, only to be refused entry to your property. And now? Now she is lying in Western General’s ICU, fighting for her life!”
“Oh my God, Mrs. Williams,” Purdue finally replied. “Listen, I did not turn her away. I did not even know that she was here! How bad is her prognosis?”
“She spoke a few words when I came in to see her, but they had to sedate her before her head injuries would cause her to have brain damage. All she told me was that she could not deliver the book because they would not let her in,” Mrs. Williams half whispered. “Also, since the book had mysteriously disappeared from her car after her heinous attack, I assume that it was the motive behind the assault. Again, one of my dearest family members is paying for that godforsaken thing! I don’t want it back.”
“Mrs. Williams, I will investigate this immediately. I swear to you,” Purdue attempted to lighten the blow in vain. He knew such a terrible incident could not be excused or pampered away, but he was going to take action to correct what he could. “Now, listen, I will take responsibility for all medical costs incurred during your granddaughter’s treatment. I will have my people authorize a transfer to a private institution of your choice, and arrange specialists to treat her as a priority.”
“I don’t want your pity, Purdue,” she hissed.
“It is not pity, Mrs. Williams,” he replied sternly. “I am offering what I can to make some sort of amends for the error made by my security people, since I am not in a position to heal your poor granddaughter. Now, please, accept my help and my deepest apologies, and I will do as much as I can to help her regain her health.”
Mrs. Williams was silent, but Purdue felt so sick to his stomach about it all, that he would wait until Doomsday for her to reply. Finally, she cleared her throat and said, “I will accept your help. God knows my poor grandchild needs it. And as I said, if you find that damned book, I never want to see it again.”
Purdue sighed, relieved, but feeling the brunt of recent toils beginning to weigh in, but he made a promise to fix it with a simple word.
“Done.”
12 The Mountain that Eats Men
Cecil Harding held his breath.
That same sick churning in his gut emerged again. When he followed the sound of ornaments crashing and furniture being turned over, he came to a conclusion he had not thought of before. His father had previously tried to sell their old farm, because of some gambling debts and bad financial decisions. It was quite likely that the people in the house could be sharks, collectors, or maybe bookies coming to collect or get even.
If that were the case, he figured, he was in real danger here in plain sight. These men were not the types one could negotiate with, as his father often affirmed when he came home with black eyes or knife wounds. He called them ‘final warnings’. For a short while, it was dead quiet inside the house, so Cecil held his breath.
‘That is why Dad’s not here,’ he thought to himself. ‘He saw them coming, left the gate locked and pissed off. If he was hiding somewhere here, he would have signaled me when I called out.’ A shocking reminder came back to him. ‘Holy shit! They must have heard me shouting and screaming! They know I am here. Oh God, maybe it is me they are searching for in there! They don’t know that I came in from the gate. They must think I was here all along!’
It was time to act. Cecil realized that his father and brother were not his priority right now, but to survive was. He waited until the next din, so that his flight would go undetected. He endeavored to rush back to the Cockran farm to get help. They had a home phone from where he could alert the authorities.
When he heard the next commotion in the depths of the farmhouse, Cecil bolted into the thick brush that hugged the exterior walls of the house. His heart was jumping, but he could not falter now. If they came after him, he would have no chance. The chubby veterinarian sucked in ample air, waited, and then he went full force down the driveway that turned into the gravel road. Once he reached the long snaky road leading to the gate, he dove straight for the thick bush that lined the black gravel.
Once in the shelter of the trees, he was relieved to realize that the trip to the gate was downhill. He could move faster with less effort.
Cecil’s lungs wheezed as he crashed through the canopy of tree branches and thorny leaves, ignoring the bristles and barbs that licked painfully at his skin. Past the mysterious markers he charged, with little discretion or subtle movement. In record time, Cecil reached the menacing gates and scaled them remarkably well, considering how he first got over them. Clumsily he stumbled from the second last steel rod above the ground, and landed like a dead horse on the other side of the gate.
Only then did he dare to look back toward the house. Nobody was giving chase, but something alarming came to mind that only added to the odd goings on at Nekenhalle.
“Wait a minute,” he said to himself. Hardly able to breathe, he placed his hands in his sides to catch his breath. “If there are no cars parked anywhere and the gate is still locked, how the hell did they get here?”
So many confusing things came to mind that he thought it better not to think at all until he could relax and have a clear mind for the battle. Cecil paced in a tight circle in front of his car in the middle of nowhere, where only God could see him. Yet, it felt as if he was stalked by an unseen agent of something more sinister than a bookie or a loan shark. His question on how the house raiders came to travel here without evidence of any vehicle hounded him immensely. The notion of the alternative terrified him, but he was not ready to make assumptions yet, not until he was safe with people he trusted.
Cecil Harding took one last look at the deserted farm that his father inherited and jumped in his rental car to get the hell away from its insidious atmosphere and black sand. Indifferent to road safety, he raced down the road to the Cockran farm to make alarm. Time was against him. Without realizing it, he had been at his father’s house for over an hour after he started up the road from the gate. It left him with little time to get the police out to Nekenhalle before dark, but he had to try.
Finally he came to the Cockran farm entrance. His car kicked up a cloud of dust that drew his way up towards the house. Just outside the barn, he found Nigel Cockran, crouching over another dead thing.
“Oh God no,” Cecil moaned when he saw the old man’s Rottweiler lying bloodied at his feet. Nigel had his hat off in the burning sub, shaking his head helplessly. In fact, he was so distraught that he hardly acknowledged the veterinarian’s arrival. Cecil barely switched off the engine before leaping from the car to meet up with the old farmer.
“Nigel? How did this happen? Let me see. Let me see!” he said as he made haste to where the dog was lying…or what was left of it. “Gee-zus!” he exclaimed when he came closer. The dog had been dismembered and its neck snapped much in the same manner of the dead sheep.
Nigel was numb with sorrow. “If you can do something to save him, I’ll announce the Second Coming, son.” He looked at Cecil for a bit and said, “Excuse me for being a dick, but you look like shit, Cecil. What did your father say?”
The veterinarian felt utterly drained. Nigel could see the young man was in mild shock, his face flushing maroon and his breathing hard, but he kept to the duties of his vocation and gently examined the animal’s injuries.
“You see what I see?” Cecil asked him.
“Yup,” the old man replied. His voice cracked under the emotion of losing such a beloved pet. “And the other one is in the barn.”
“What?” Cecil gasped.
The old man nudged his sideways to gesture what he said. “In there, same.”
“The other dog was also killed?” Cecil asked. “Did you hear anything?”
“Did you?” the old man snapped. “Christ, Cecil, this happened last night while you were sleeping in my house! If you did not hear anything, how do you expect I did?”
“So they were already dead this morning,” Cecil concluded. “Of course. Otherwise they would have barked at me…or chased me, right?”
“Correct,” the old man concurred. “What did your father say that got you into such a mood?”
“What mood?” Cecil asked, wincing at the mangled body of the animal under his hand.
The old man chuckled coldly. “Well, you drive up here, kicking up the dust like a fucking maniac. If that kind of driving comes from a sober man, it can only be one of two moods – anger or fear. And you mentioned that you and your father did not see eye to eye on much, so I assumed it is anger that has you looking like a baboon’s asshole. No offence.”
Cecil got up from his haunches. “None taken. It was not anger that brought me here.”
The old man’s face sank into a more serious expression. “Fear? How so?”
“Nigel, I don’t know what kept you from going up there with me, but whatever you were hiding?” Cecil said with a dark tone. “There is a good reason for.”
“Why? What happened?” the old man pried with some interest.
“My father and brother are nowhere to be found. Gary’s car is in the garage and my dad’s truck stood where it always does, but they were…just gone,” he explained with a glint of horror in his eye. He leaned forward to keep his voice low, so that Sally would not overhear his suspicions. “But there was someone – something – inside the house. I could not go inside alone to look for Dad and Gary, Nigel. I was a fucking coward!”
“Hold on, hold on,” the old man whispered in the same tone to avoid his wife hearing. “You are not a coward for not wanting to go in there. Did you know who was inside or what they intended?” The vet shook his head, so the old man talked on. “Then you would have been bloody stupid to go in just like that, right? Right?”
“I suppose,” Cecil sighed. “I ran like a scared schoolgirl, Nigel, to your farm to call the police.”
“Listen, I did not even cross that goddamn gate. How do you think I should feel then? No, no, my boy. That is Nekenhalle. By local standards, what you did was a testament to very big balls, son. Trust me. Nobody would have walked up there alone like you did.”
“Why?” he asked the old man, pulling him aside into the privacy, and shade, of the barn. On the far end of the wall he noticed that Nigel had salvaged what was left of the two sheep he had lost. Their skinned and quartered carcasses were hanging from steel hooks to be brought into the house and cut up later. “Do you think something unspeakable happened to my dad and brother? Do you think,” his face darkened with distress, “they could be dead?”
The old man glanced at the back door of his house to make sure Sally was not within earshot. “I hate to be honest about this, son, but something unspeakable probably did happen to them, but I would not jump to the ‘dead card’ so quickly. Nobody knows exactly what it is about that place that keeps the natives and locals at bay, so we can never just assume that your family is dead.”
“Have you ever been up there?” Cecil asked.
“Long time ago, somewhere in 1970, I went up there with my father and a bunch of other farmers to look for some miners that went missing,” the old man recounted. “We did not see anything out of sorts. There were no invisible vandals, no beasts, no bad people or natural disasters, but I tell you, there was a darkness as black as the sand that took hold of our hearts.”
“Miners?” Cecil asked.
“You know that hill behind the house?” Nigel asked Cecil. “Did you see that hole?”
“I saw that, yes,” Cecil answered.
“That was a gold mine in the 1920’s. But it was a very dangerous mine, more dangerous than the others. Let’s just say that we did not need to have a cave-in to lose men to that goddamn hill. The natives said that the place was holy, it’s gold not to be trifled with, and that the mountain swallowed anyone who tried to take her gold.” He took a deep breath and looked up in reminiscence. “They even put up totems to mark the territory as ‘cursed’, but you know money. Money has the ability to make smart men stupid and they kept mining there. Oh, here and there, we would hear of another accident, but it was par for the course. That time in 1970, though, was the last time we bothered to look for missing miners. It had become common knowledge that most men who went into the mountain never returned.”
“I hope not, but I’d be lying if I told you they were not in trouble or dead,” Nigel admitted as mildly as he could.
13 The Clash at Nekenhalle
The police arrived at the Cockran farm an hour later. They apologized for the tardiness of their response.
“I’m sorry we only get here now, Mr. Hardi…Dr. Harding,” the sergeant said, meeting the veterinarian and the farmer in front of the Cockrans’ gate entrance. He looked at his notebook to make sure that he addressed the man correctly. “It was a bit of a struggle to find the farm. No GPS works here, really.”
“I know,” Cecil sighed in agreement. “I’m just glad you are here.”
The sergeant looked like a respectable fellow, a native descendant, while his sidekick was a reserved blond constable by the name of Const. Heather Ballin. “I’m Sgt. Anaru, this is Const. Ballin. Now, you reported two men missing here?”
Cockran shook his head, standing with his arms crossed over his chest in the late afternoon sun. For once, he kept quiet and allowed the veterinarian to state his case.
“Not here. Up at Nekenhalle Farm,” Cecil corrected him eagerly. He was in a hurry to get back to his father’s house before dark, but he knew cops were reluctant to move until their precious statements had been satisfactorily filled in. “My father and brother are missing and I believe there are burglars in the house. I heard them smashing up stuff and shifting furniture.”
The sergeant took down his statement as he spoke, and then he looked up at the complainant. “Did you confront the burglars, sir?”
“No,” Cecil frowned. “What if they shoot me? That is why I called you.”
The police officer shrugged a little restlessly at the discrepancy in the man’s claim. “Alright, sir, but if you did not confront them, how do you know that it was not your father and brother inside the house?”
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