by Lukens, Mark
“Okay,” the clerk said. “If there’s anything I can help you with, just call down here to the desk. The instructions are on the phone, but it’s pretty easy … just dial zero on the phone.”
“Got it.” Stella was ready to go.
“You guys just passing through?” the clerk asked.
This guy was either nosy or lonely. Either way, Stella didn’t want to get into a long conversation with the guy. “Yeah. On my way up to see my aunt.”
“There are some great things to do around here. And if you’re looking for some suggestions for dinner, there’s a great pizza place just down the road. They deliver, too.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” Stella said. “Look, I don’t mean to be rude, but my son needs to use the bathroom.”
“Oh,” the clerk said, his smile disappearing. “Of course. Sorry. I hope you enjoy your stay here.”
“I’m sure we will,” Stella said. She ushered David away quickly.
They walked up the set of wide steps that were carpeted in the same garish carpeting that covered part of the lobby. What was it with hotels and their ugly carpeting?
A moment later they found the vending machines exactly where the clerk said they would be. They had left the bags of food with Cole, but Stella decided to stock up on a few cans of soda and water before going to their room.
“Pick out what you want,” she told David.
He pointed at the Coke button.
Stella found two five-dollar bills in her purse, smoothed them out, and then fed them into the change machine. Quarters plunked down into the metal basket and she used them to get two cans of Coke, two cans of Sprite, and two bottles of water. Hot coffee sounded good, but she could come back for that later.
“Someone’s thirsty!” a man roared from behind them.
Stella whirled around, expecting the see the clerk for some reason, thinking he had followed them up here.
But it wasn’t the clerk who had bellowed at them. A tall, fat man stood there grinning at them. He was nearly bald and his face was red with a splash of broken capillary veins across his cheeks. His gut pushed out the white button-down dress shirt tucked into the waistband of his black pants. He wore a necktie that was only slightly less loud than the pattern and colors of the motel carpeting.
For a moment she thought the large man could be a puppet controlled by the Ancient Enemy, but she dismissed that thought in the next few seconds. It was something about the way he stood, the way he looked at them, but most of all it was the way his voice sounded—he didn’t have that monotone guttural growl.
Salesman, Stella thought. It was the way he was dressed, the wide smile plastered on his face, the exuberance in his voice; a vibe came from him that was probably so ingrained in his personality from decades of sales work that he couldn’t turn it off anymore.
“Uh …” Stella tried to think of a good reason for all the drinks.
“Great mixers,” the man said and gave Stella an exaggerated wink.
She forced a smile on her face. “Yeah,” she agreed.
“Name’s Bruce Goldman,” the man said. His voice was so loud, and he seemed to fill up the small vending-machine area with both his personality and sheer mass.
David was eyeing the video games, apparently already bored with Bruce’s conversation.
“Hi, Bruce,” Stella said. She didn’t offer their names, hoping the man would get the hint.
“Heck of a storm we had, huh?”
“Uh, yeah. We just got here.”
“Oh, you missed a doozy. I haven’t seen a snowstorm like that since I was a kid.”
“It was nice to meet you,” Stella said, practically pushing David out of the room towards the hallway.
Wow, people sure were friendly around here.
Stella and David walked down the hall and found Room 237. She saw that there was an exit to a set of outside stairs at the other end of the hall, a great place to sneak Cole up here. She was sure there were cameras around … she just had to hope that the clerk wasn’t studying them.
*
Cole still waited in the alcove. It had been at least twenty minutes now and he was beginning to get a little worried. He looked back at the trees covered with snow in the distance, and then he looked at the small drive leading out of the parking lot down to the road below, the road that led south.
The road that led away from here … away from this nightmare.
“Cole,” Stella hissed from around the corner.
Cole jumped. He’d drawn his gun without even realizing it. He shoved it back down into the waistband of his pants and pulled his coat back down over it before she and David came around the corner and saw him with his gun in his hand. He didn’t want them to see a wild-eyed man pointing a gun at them.
“Right here,” Cole said. He grabbed the plastic bags of groceries down by his feet and stepped out from the alcove. He trudged through the snow to her and David, who waited by the back of the building.
*
They climbed the set of concrete steps outside the building at the far end and entered through a metal-framed glass door. Even this area was fancy, with two chairs and a table positioned next to a picture window that looked out onto the mountains. A potted plant stood in the corner. The heat was blasting down from the air ducts, an immediate relief from the cold.
Stella and David led Cole down the hall, passing door after door as they walked along the garish carpeting made up of strange geometric designs in muted reds, oranges, and purples. Cole whispered to her that he didn’t really like being upstairs, but what could they do about it? It wasn’t like they could complain to the manager about it.
Stella stopped in front of Room 237 and slipped the card key into the slot above the metal doorhandle. The little light in the shiny metal plate turned green and she opened the door and hurried inside.
Cole was the last one to enter the room. He closed the door and then engaged the deadbolt lock with a flip of his thumb. The lock thunked into place and the door seemed sturdy.
For the first time Stella felt somewhat safe. For the first time she felt like she could exhale a full breath. She took off her coat and laid it over one of the chairs on the other side of the room, spreading it out so the snow would melt and the coat could dry. She helped Cole unpack the groceries from the bags and she put one of the prepared dinners into the small microwave that was on a counter in the area near the door and the bathroom.
She looked at Cole, who also seemed a little less tense now.
“We wait here for a few hours,” he told her as if she had asked a question. “We get cleaned up, eat, and then we can sleep for a few hours in shifts.”
CHAPTER 26
Route 217—Cody’s Pass, Colorado
Travis drove his snowmobile down the snow-covered road that wound down through the mountains, down into the valley where Cody’s Pass was nestled. He needed to get to the motel at the other end of town, the Mountainside Inn; it was the only motel he could think of. That’s where this kid David would be, that’s what the thing inside of his dead father had told him. Travis wasn’t sure how that thing knew exactly where this kid was, or why that thing just didn’t kill the kid itself, but he couldn’t think about things like that; he had to do what it wanted or it was going to tear his mother and sister apart. He had to do this, he didn’t have a choice. It was just a bullet in the kid’s head. Lights out. He wouldn’t feel any pain at all.
As he drove into town, trying to stick to the unplowed roads as much as possible, he saw more cop cars patrolling than he’d ever seen before. They must be looking for the escaped criminals. He hadn’t even thought about the bank robbers. Being at Tom Gordon’s burnt cabin this morning seemed like such a long time ago—a lifetime ago. Everything had changed since then.
He was tempted to stop one of the cops and plead for help. But what could he do, tell them that his dead father had dug himself out of his frozen grave and was now holding his sister and mother hostage, tearing pieces of their bodies off one
by one? They would lock him up and then there would be no chance of saving his family. The police couldn’t kill that thing … they couldn’t kill whatever the hell was inside of his dead father.
And Travis was sure that the thing inside his dead father—that spidery, slithering thing—would know somehow if he didn’t accomplish his mission. Maybe that thing and this boy it wanted killed had some kind of psychic connection and that thing would know immediately when that link was broken.
What was that thing? Was it an alien? A demon of some kind? Travis even tried to rationalize that he had imagined the whole thing … and the farther away he rode from the madness the more his mind tried to convince him of that possibility.
Except that his mother’s severed finger was tucked down inside his shirt pocket.
“Put it in your pocket,” the thing that used to be his father had growled at Travis as it stood right in front of him, its breath smelling like moist earth and rotting meat.
Travis had almost retched as that thing stood right in front of him, but he took the bloody finger from the dead man’s hand. His father’s flesh was cold, but his mother’s finger was still warm and moist with blood.
Being so close to his dead father, Travis saw the bullet hole he had created when he’d shot him in the forehead. He saw the wink of daylight through the bullet hole—straight through to the back of his head, which had exploded open from the gunshot wound, leaving behind shattered, jagged pieces of skull that stuck out of the edges of the gunshot wound like broken teeth. His salt and pepper hair was matted down with that grayish goo that had been inside of his embalmed body. The mortician’s stitches dangled from the inside of his father’s lips and eyelids, tiny black strings hanging down, torn from his eyelids and mouth after he had forced them open, after he had crawled out of his grave.
“For every hour you don’t come back, I take a piece of them,” his dead father had whispered.
Travis had nodded, afraid if he spoke that he might vomit. The room seemed like it was spinning around him in his peripheral vision.
“Go,” his dead father had whispered. And then he had smiled—it was like invisible strings had just yanked up the corners of his mouth violently, a forced smile underneath the dead, white-glazed eyes.
Travis had stumbled back away from his father and then raced outside. He had puked in the snow before even reaching his snowmobile, throwing up a yellowish streak across the pristine snow. His stomach was emptied, but he didn’t feel any better.
And now he pulled his snowmobile up to the edge of the motel parking lot. They were in there somewhere—the man, the woman, and the boy. He wasn’t sure if he could do this … but he had to. Had an hour passed by already? Was that thing twisting off another one of his mother’s fingers, or cutting a slice of flesh off with the kitchen knife? Travis felt his stomach lurch again; he felt like he was going to throw up again, but he didn’t have anything left to purge from his stomach.
He touched the bulge in his coat; his gun was stuffed inside a pocket. He sat on his snowmobile, staring at the motel in the distance.
Just do it, he told himself. Just get it over with.
CHAPTER 27
Cody’s Pass, Colorado
The commuter jet Special Agent Palmer flew in landed at a small airstrip right outside of Destin, Colorado. The snow on the airstrip looked like it had been plowed away recently, but it still looked dangerously slippery to land on. Palmer wasn’t usually afraid of flying, but looking out the small plane’s windshield at that runway made him nervous. The pilot assured him that they would be fine, but Palmer had gripped the armrests of his seat anyway, bracing for impact.
The landing went smoothly just like the pilot said it would. And a rental car was waiting for him just like Debbie had promised. The rental was another black sedan, similar to the one he’d driven in New Mexico. It was most likely a different make and model, but it still looked like a cookie-cutter car to Palmer.
He got in the car and turned his phone on. Debbie had sent him the address and he’d already programmed it into the GPS app on his phone while he was on the plane. She’d also told him that the road to the address, Route 217, had already been plowed a little earlier.
He was ready to go.
As Palmer drove up into the mountains, following the commands of the female and slightly robotic voice giving him turn-by-turn directions from his phone, he wondered how badly the crime scene had already been compromised.
Debbie had explained as much as she knew about the crime scene while Palmer was still in the air. She’d told him that a burning cabin had been discovered by the sheriff’s department with an SUV parked in back, part of the vehicle on fire. The vehicle belonged to a woman named Stella Weaver—and that’s when the FBI got involved. Debbie also told Palmer that there were five dead and burnt bodies inside the cabin—all male.
Stella wasn’t with them.
The drive seemed to take forever on the winding road that twisted its way through the mountains. Walls of snow-covered trees whipped by in a blur outside his car windows. He had his headlights on even though it was still the middle of the day, the beams of light shining onto the freshly-plowed road. Even though several feet of snow had been plowed to the side of the road, Palmer still drove carefully.
“Turn left at the next driveway,” the robot voice from his phone chimed out. “Your destination is just up ahead.”
“I don’t see a driveway,” Palmer grumbled, but he slowed the car down gently. He glanced down at the phone and saw the driveway on the screen splitting off from Route 217 and .1 miles at the top, counting down to his arrival. He looked back out the windshield and saw a lone mailbox at the left side of the road, practically buried in the hill of snow that had been plowed into it.
And there was the driveway.
Palmer drove down the twisty, narrow driveway, and after five minutes of driving, the driveway opened up to a massive field. In the middle of the field was the burnt cabin. All four log walls were still standing, but the roof was partially caved in. Part of the front porch had collapsed, but most of the debris had been removed and piled up near the front corner of the cabin. A large truck with a long bed and a crane on top was parked alongside the cabin, the crane removing the last bits of the roof from inside the cabin. A fire truck, an ambulance, the fire chief’s car and two sheriff cars were parked in a plowed area in front of the cabin. None of the lights were flashing—the vehicles had been here for a while now, the investigation going on for some time.
Palmer parked towards the back of the plowed parking area, right behind one of the sheriff’s cars. He turned his headlights off and then cut the engine. He grabbed his phone and got out. He shrugged into his coat, slipped his gloves on, and tucked his phone into his outside coat pocket.
The sheriff approached Palmer’s car. He was a tall man … a large man. He didn’t seem muscular, more like a man who’d always been big and was comfortable with it. He had a ruddy complexion and sharp little eyes set deep in his face. He walked with an air of confidence, a man who was on his home turf.
Palmer reached inside his suitcoat pocket and pulled out his FBI badge and ID. He snapped the wallet open with a flip of his wrist. “Special Agent Palmer.”
The sheriff nodded. He didn’t offer to shake hands.
“I was told there’s a vehicle here belonging to a woman named Stella Weaver.”
“Yeah,” the sheriff said. “Truck’s around back.”
Palmer followed the sheriff down a well-worn path through the snow to the back of the cabin where the charred remains of Stella’s vehicle remained.
“The fire was deliberate?” Palmer asked.
The sheriff nodded. “We found an empty gas can on the other side of the cabin.”
They didn’t try to hide the evidence, Palmer thought. Just like at the dig site.
“Our fire chief has looked through the damage already,” Sheriff Hadley told him.
“We’ve got forensics and fire specialists on th
e way,” Palmer responded and he could sense the sheriff tense up a little. It was like a slap in the face, like their hick specialists weren’t as good as government ones.
“I’m told there are five bodies inside the cabin,” Palmer said.
The sheriff gave a curt nod. “Yessir.”
“And the owner of this truck, Stella Weaver, she’s not one of the bodies?”
“Nosir,” the sheriff answered. It sounded like one word the way he said it. The constant use of “sir” reminded Palmer of someone who used to be in the military. “All five are male. Our medical examiner is here now and he’s already taken a look at them.”
Palmer stared hard at the sheriff.
“No tests have been done,” Hadley assured Palmer. “But the M.E. has found some strange things.”
Palmer braced himself, afraid of more strange news, but deep down he knew it was going to happen. “What kind of strange things?” he asked, trying to keep a poker face.
“The M.E., his name’s Carson. He’s right over there by the front of the cabin.”
Palmer walked with the sheriff around the ambulance and firetruck. He met Carson near the front porch as promised. The M.E. was a short man with a pot belly. His gray hair was wild and a little long. He had a pair of oversized glasses on his face that magnified his eyes. He was bundled up in a thick coat and he still had a pair of latex gloves on his hands. The gloves looked fresh. Palmer figured the gloves the M.E. had worn to do a cursory examination, the ones that would have had charred marks all over them from the burnt bodies, were discarded by now.
Carson offered a hand in greeting and Palmer shook it, a quick shake.
“The sheriff tells me that you’ve discovered some odd things,” Palmer said.
The M.E. nodded. “I’ve been doing this for twenty-six years. You think you’ve seen everything …”
As the M.E. let his words trail off, Palmer was reminded of talking to Susan Dorsett, the forensics specialist at John and Deena’s house in New Mexico only hours ago—she had begun with the same preamble. He glanced at the front porch beyond them. The roof of the cabin had collapsed from the fire, but much of the debris had been taken away and piled up in the snow near the house by the firefighters and the crane operator. The floor of the wide front porch was more solid near the front doorway, where the door looked like it had been smashed in.