Going into the office, however, he was arrested by the sight of a scrawled note on his out of office notepad. He pulled the clipboard from its hook to look at the writing more clearly. He couldn’t be fully sure but he thought it said: Susan attacked. In Tavern. Hurt Badly. Joe tossed the board onto the desk and rushed out for the tavern at once.
When he entered he saw Sam Brainard and Jeff sitting up at the bar, and the first thing he noticed about them was that they were both drinking what looked like whiskey. It was still early in the morning for that and Joe felt a sick feeling come over him knowing that whatever had happened was bad. Sam turned to look at him as he came in and the young man’s face was white and sickly looking.
“She’s down the hall, there,” Jeff said standing up and pointing. Joe nodded and decided to go to Susan first before asking anyone questions.
When he got into the hall, he saw there was one door slightly ajar and assuming this is where she would be he tapped gently. Sally appeared almost at once and looked at him in surprise.
“Is Susan alright?” Joe asked.
“She’s not as bad as I thought when she first came in; she came to a few minutes ago, but she’s out cold again now.” As she spoke, Sally made way for him to come into the room and see Susan for himself. There were damp towels on the floor and he could see blood on some of them but not a whole amount.
“What happened?” he asked on seeing Susan looking much better than he had feared.
“We don’t know,” Sally said. “Jeff found her on the Emerson back road lying in the road unconscious and bleeding.”
“It looks like you did a great job on her,” he said looking approvingly at the dressing on Susan’s head and noting her tightly wrapped torso. “Looks like you might have had to sacrifice a sheet or two there.”
“They were the only things I had for the job; she’s got a couple of broken ribs, maybe even three.” Joe grimaced the pain this must have caused Susan.
“She didn’t say anything when she woke up?”
“No, she just looked around like she was very frightened for a moment and then seemed to calm as she saw she was indoors and I was here.” Joe nodded.
“I better go out and talk to Jeff and see what he can tell me. I think it best you give the medical centre in Emerson a call and get them to send an ambulance for Susan just in case.” Sally nodded at this.
Sam almost jumped on Joe as soon as he came back into the main room of the tavern.
“Is she any better?” he asked eagerly.
“She is doing better, Sam, now steady on. She woke up for a minute but she’s sleeping now. Sally is taking care of her for now and an ambulance will come and take her later on today.” Before Sam could say anything else, Joe walked over to Jeff. “What happened, Jeff?”
“I don’t know, sheriff,” Jeff said looking perplexed. “I came across her car in the road but she wasn’t in it and the door was wide open. I thought perhaps she was having engine trouble, so I got out to take a look and that’s when I saw the blood all over the ground.”
“Blood?” Joe prompted him to go on.
“Yes, there was so much of it that I was frightened right off.” This didn’t make sense to Joe having seen Susan, but he thought perhaps any amount of blood might seem like a lot to someone not used to it.
“So, where was Susan? On the road?”
“No, she was in the ditch, I only saw her when I was going back to my car for my gun.”
“Why did you need your gun?”
“Because of all the blood; I thought something terrible had happened to her.”
“Then you saw her and what happened?”
“I went over and saw that she was alive but in a bad way. It was then that I knew all the blood could not have been hers.” This alarmed Joe.
“Then whose blood was it?” he asked.
“I don’t know; there were markings all over the snow but I couldn't tell for sure what they were. Maybe Susan hit an animal, and it was bleeding but not dead, and when she went to look it could have kicked her and then run off into the woods. That’s the best sense I’ve been able to make of it in my head, anyway.”
“Where was this?” Joe asked; he was going to have to go out and have a look at the site himself.
“Not far, maybe three miles but I think less,” Jeff answered.
“Nothing else happened? You didn’t see anything else I might need to know?” Joe asked. Jeff thought for a moment and then shook his head assuredly.
“No, but wait, I’ll come out there with you. We still don’t know what did this to her for sure,” Jeff said. Joe’s immediate instinct was to say no, but he had the feeling that another pair of eyes mightn’t be so much of a bad thing out there on that lonely road.
“You better come in my jeep then, if you’ve been drinking,” Joe said looking at the drained glasses on the counter.
Sam had wandered over to where Joe and Jeff were talking and he looked stunned. The door to the hall opened again and Sam bounded back over to meet Sally as she came out.
“Anything new?” he said.
“No,” Sally said irritably. “The phone isn’t working back there; I’m just going to try the tavern one.”
The three watched as she went in behind the bar and lifted the handle from the cradle of the wall mounted telephone. She listened, and the pressed the button a few times and then spun the dial a couple of times for good measure.
“This one’s down too,” she said looking at Joe. He looked to Jeff.
“Come on over to your store,” he said. “I’ll make the call from there.” Jeff nodded and started for the door. “I’ll call back later,” Joe said to Sally who also nodded. Sam stood there and watched the two men leave but said nothing at all. Sally looked sadly at him and wondered when his love for Susan had begun.
It was bitterly cold as Joe and Jeff crossed over to the store, and a wind had whipped up making it feel even more frigid. Jeff opened the store and nodded.
“The phone’s over there,” he said. Joe went to it and picked up but he knew at once that this phone was not working either. He went through the motions all the same just to confirm it.
“Not working; you got another one?” he asked Jeff.
“No,” Jeff answered shaking his head, “I only ever needed the one in here.” Joe nodded thoughtfully and said,
“Come on over the road and we’ll see if I can get the message out from the station.”
The phone was dead in the station too. This had come as no surprise to Joe, however; he suspected a downed line somewhere on the mountainside. That was a problem for later. He went to the next room leaving Jeff waiting, to where the radio was located. This was an essential piece of machinery for such an isolated place as Mercy. The phone lines were bound to go down from time to time, and this was a sensible back up for just that occasion.
Joe sat down and set up the machine and was very surprised when nothing but whistling static came to his ears. It was not a particularly bad day for weather and he would have expected a very clear line to Emerson on the radio. He tested it every three days and had never had an issue with it before. It made him feel — as had been the case quite a lot in recent days — very uneasy. Something bigger than he could see was happening around Mercy; he could feel this but had no clear meaning of what that something might be.
‘Where the hell are you, Maul,’ he thought, ‘Is this your doing?’
“We better get out to where Susan was injured,” Joe said — purposefully not using the word ‘attacked’— coming back to the room where Jeff was waiting.
“No luck?” Jeff asked. Joe shook his head but said no more.
They drove to where Susan’s car was abandoned and Joe parked a hundred yards away so as not to disturb the ground in the area any more than it had already been. Jeff opened his door but Joe said,
“No, I’d like you to stay in the car please, Jeff. I want you to just keep an eye out while I’m out there.” He nodded to the road as
though it were a different planet he was talking about.
“Watch your back, got it,” Jeff said lifting his rifle from his lap to show Joe he could be depended on.
The wind wasn’t so bad out here on the Emerson back road and it didn’t feel so chilly as town did. Joe ambled towards Susan’s car scanning the ground and looking all around with each couple of steps. It wasn’t long before he was able to see the discoloured ground that Jeff has seen. Even from this distance, he could see it was a lot of blood.
It was whisper quiet as he stood over the bloody mushed snow and the markings on the ground made no sense at all; it was impossible to tell if anything was boot prints, or hoof—prints or anything else.
Looking down the embankment, Joe could see Susan’s progress up it to the roadside where Jeff had found her. He looked to the site of the blood in the middle of the road and then down the ditch and saw that it was a very long distance for her to have been thrown. No man could have done that to her; it had to have been some kind of animal. And yet, he thought a blow strong enough to send her so far should have by right killed her or broke her back at least on impact. More information that didn’t make sense.
Joe then walked over to Susan’s car and looked inside. It was pretty tidy, and he didn’t see anything out of the ordinary there. Then going back to the bloodstain he looked to the drag trail that led into the trees. There was no way of telling what animal had laid here, but it had certainly been big; which meant that whatever carried it off must have been big too. The only thing he could think of was a wolf, but it must have been a big one.
Looking back to make sure Jeff was still fine in the car and more importantly was still paying attention, Joe walked to the edge of the road and looked into the trees. Almost at once, a few feet away, he saw the same strange markings that had been at Mouse Allen’s place and then patches of white on the barks of some tree trunks caught his eye. It was happening here too; this far out from town. He stepped into the trees and looked for something, anything, that might make even the tiniest thing clearer but again he came up blank.
A stiff breeze rose up and the noise of the groaning creak of the trees startled him. A surge of panic ran though his entire body as this noise suddenly coupled with the feeling that he was being watched — and not by Jeff who wouldn't be able to see him any more since Joe left the roadside. Joe’s fright was multiplied when to his horror, he was sure he’d seen the white of the trees spread right before his very eyes, like it had jumped from one tree to another not fifty yards from him.
Pulling his gun, Joe started to back out of the trees the way he’d come in. He didn’t have any idea what he thought might be coming for him, but there was no denying the feeling that this is what he thought was happening. It was as if he was being surrounded and cut off and it was a feeling he’d never had before and one he disliked with intense hatred. He slipped a little on the bloodied sludge as he came back onto the road but once he righted himself he hurried back to his car and got in.
“I think we’ve seen all we’re going to see here,” he said trying to sound calm.
“You don’t look so good, sheriff,” Jeff said peering at him with curiosity. “Did you see something in the forest?”
“Nothing I haven’t seen before,” Joe said and with that he started the jeep, maneuvered it around and drove back to Mercy.
Chapter 17
Sam sat on a chair pulled over to Susan’s bedside and he held her hand. Sally had let him come back when his pacing looked like it was going to put a permanent track on her tavern floor. Susan’s hand was still as hot as when he had come in, and sweat beads rose continually on her forehead no matter how often he dabbed her with a cool damp cloth. She looked so ill and he was anxious about her. Sam had seen his own grandfather die after an accident when he fell into a fever for three days before finally passing. What he was seeing now was very reminiscent of that bad time. And yet, he knew his grandfather was going to die, everyone there did, but it didn’t feel that death was definitely the outcome in Susan’s case. Sally had assured him that she was going to be alright, and she had been a nurse. He supposed that qualified her to know more than he did.
Not long after he sat down with her, Susan’s breathing became more regular and this had a very calming effect on Sam too. He didn’t want to flatter himself that he could have had anything to do with this slight improvement but it made him feel a little better all the same. She seemed more at ease now and looked like she was sleeping comfortably. He looked at her face and thought how beautiful she was, even in this injured and sick state. A flush of embarrassment went through him now at how he had behaved in front of everyone. He’d acted like a teenage boy running around in panic. The shame grew even worse as he thought about the idea that when Susan woke up she would hear all about it too. Even if Sally and Joe didn’t rib him about it, Sam was sure that Jeff would tell Mouse and there was no way Mouse Allen was going to keep quiet about a thing like that.
Just then a car door slammed shut and then another and Sam wondered if this was the ambulance arrived. He stood up and kissed Susan’s hand before laying it softly back down on her chest.
“I’ll be back in a minute,” he whispered, “I’m just going to see who that is outside.”
On passing through the tavern he saw that Ava and Jarrod were there having something to eat. The smell of the cooking filled Sam’s nose, and he felt a pang of hunger in the base of his belly. He went to the door and looked outside and saw that it was not the ambulance but was the sheriff and Jeff getting out of the police car.
Sam walked towards them and noticed that the sheriff looked very pale.
“I thought you might be the ambulance,” Sam said when he reached the two men. They looked at one another and then Joe said,
“The phone lines must be down; we couldn't get through to call for the ambulance.” This wasn’t news Sam had expected; he’d thought the whole time since Joe and Jeff had left that he had been waiting for an ambulance that was on its way from Emerson.
“You tried everywhere?” he asked.
“The store and the station,” Joe nodded.
“Maybe my phone is working,” Sam said hopefully.
“You can go check if you want, but I don’t think it will be,” Joe said. “I imagine there’s a line down somewhere.”
“I’ll go check, anyway,” Sam said, and he rushed off to his house.
He wasn’t too surprised to find that his own phone was dead. It pained him deeply to think that Susan needed medical attention that now was not coming to her. He rushed down the street to Alan's house. He didn’t seem to be home, but like all good neighbours in Mercy, he didn’t lock his doors. Sam let himself in and looked for the phone. He wasn’t sure if there was one here, but he looked in all the places he thought one might be and came up empty.
When he stopped and stood still in the kitchen — the last place he’d looked— Sam suddenly felt very odd. He felt like he had the previous morning in the woods, like there were eyes on him. He tried putting it down to the fact that he was essentially sneaking around someone else’s house without permission, but that didn’t seem to take with him. He looked through the glass to the rear of the house and it was like he was looking back at something but a something his eyes couldn’t register.
Sam swallowed and mustered up the courage to walk to the window and look out more closely. If there was someone out there looking at him he wanted to look back at them and show them that he was not afraid. He knew in his heart that it made no sense that he should have had this feeling of being watched but it felt like such a physical thing he could neither deny nor ignore it.
Out of the corner of his eye, he thought he saw movement, but it was like something imperceptibly slow and he wondered if his eyes were playing tricks on him. It was like something white was spreading from one tree to another about fifty feet away. He looked to the sky to see if cloud formations were causing shadows but all that the sky showed him was one large bank of grey
like the entire world was covered by one single huge cloud.
Sam looked back to the trees and then something else caught his eye. The telephone pole closest to the house, and hence closest to the town, had what looked like a creeper of white going up from the ground. The wire was snapped at the top and a thin strand flapped in the wind. The rest must be lying along the ground out there buried in the snow.
This gave him some hope; now that they knew where the fault was it was possible someone in town might be able to fix it. He didn’t have those skills himself but Jeff was a mechanic so he might have some knowhow that could be applied.
Another idea came to him just as he was about to leave the house. If the wires were cut off only here at the town, Mouse Allen’s house a mile or so down the hill might have a working phone. With this in mind, he ran from the house pulling the door shut behind him. He was making for his own truck when he saw Jeff crossing the road from the tavern to his store. He was still carrying his rifle in one hand.
“Jeff!” Sam called and when Jeff looked up, he said. “The phone line is down out the back of Alan’s house!” and then Sam ran on not hearing if Jeff had answered him or not.
All Sam could think about was getting to a working phone and calling for the help Susan needed. He got into his truck, started it and reversed without checking for any hazards around him and then changed to a higher gear too soon to try to get moving faster onto the downhill slope.
In a few minutes he was at Mouse’s house and he saw the smashed fence and wondered for a moment what had happened to it. It didn’t stay in mind too long however as he rushed for the house shouting out Mouse’s name as he ran.
Mouse came out his front door and looked at the approaching Sam with mild curiosity. He waited
“Mouse!” Sam said breathlessly when he saw the big man come out.
“Where’s the fire?” Mouse said with a grin.
“Is your phone working?”
“My phone?”
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