“What?”
“He blew the horn. Just one time, maybe for a couple of seconds.”
Jeff expelled a breath. “I imagine that was his warped way of letting me know that he had you. That seems to be the way his mind works.”
“I must’ve blacked out after that. The next thing I remember, I was lying in the dirt in that old barn and it was only then that I realized who he was.”
“You don’t have to tell me anymore,” Jeff said softly. “From that point on…I really don’t want to know. I’m having enough trouble with nightmares as it is now.” He remembered the way he had found the Mazda that night with the engine off. For some reason that had been bugging him. He opened his mouth to ask who had switched off the engine, but he changed his mind. It really wasn’t important anymore.
“Jeff…can you ever forgive me?”
Jeff didn’t answer the question. Instead, “We’ve got trees coming up,” he said, inclining his head toward the windshield. The trees had appeared from out of the rain and gloom like a wall of black.
“Okay, the road’s going to get narrow, so you need to slow down a little.”
Chapter Thirty
“You say this is part of the old Metcalf farm?” Jeff asked, easing back on the gas. Even though he had grown up only a few miles away from here on a straight line, he never knew where the exact boundaries of the property lay or that the woods were so dense and tangled. All he had ever known about it was that the farm was in the vicinity and that it covered a large area. Seeing it for the first time, he realized how intimidating, even threatening the woods seemed to be.
“From the trees on south. This is the northernmost corner of the property. No one except Damon ever seems to come out here. In all the time her spirit’s been trapped here, Marie claims she’s only seen five other people besides him and those he brought here, and all five missed seeing the old barn.”
In the headlights Jeff picked out an old and faded sign affixed to a tree near the edge of the road that read:
“POSTED–KEEP OUT!”
The question of who now owned the property crossed his mind, but he quickly shoved that aside. Instead, he shifted his thoughts to a more practical and urgent issue.
“Damon will probably see and hear us coming long before we get to the old barn.”
“I know. Not far from here you’re going to lose the road. A little ways beyond that, I’m going to have you stop. From there, I’ll lead you right to it on foot. How’s your arm?”
“Okay, for now.” His fingers had grown a little numb but the pain was still bearable and getting no worse. He figured his arm would be fine for the time being as long as he didn’t bang it against something like a tree.
They quickly reached the point where the road disappeared and there was only the woods. Jeff slowed his truck until it was barely moving at all as he steered around clumps of bushes and the dark and wet trunks of trees. There was an anxious, jacked-up feeling spreading through him, his heartrate rising and his breathing speeding up. His senses seemed more heightened than they had ever been.
Perhaps that was why he could feel it so strongly. It was coming from the woods and seemed to be all around him beyond the cab of the truck. Yet it was beginning to seep inside the truck; he could almost feel it touching him. Something ominous and unnatural. Jeff knew intuitively that it had nothing to do with what he now knew of the place and what had been going on here in these woods for years. A shiver ran through him.
“You feel it, too, don’t you?”
Jeff nodded slowly. “This was never a good place,” he said. “Even before Damon found it.”
“No, it never was. Marie’s husband was a vicious and selfish man. His cruelty and greed sucked the life out of everything and everyone he touched. Marie believes it was the pain and misery her husband left behind that first drew Damon to this place.”
“She may be right about it, too,” Jeff said. “When he left the house after getting into it with my Dad, he could’ve gone anywhere, but he showed up here, and the very night she hung herself. What are the odds? It’s creepy as hell when you think about it.”
“Okay, stop here.”
Jeff did as she said, quickly switching off the engine and headlights. He climbed out of the truck carefully, mindful of his arm, and moved silently to the front of it, where the image of Angela already waited for him. The adrenaline was really beginning to kick in. His right hand moved to the bulge of the pistol in his jacket pocket.
“What’s happening?” he whispered.
“He’s still in the car. Come on, it’s not far.”
It took but a second for the rain to leave Jeff drenched and shivering. Yet he was glad of the rain and the way it silenced the leaves on the ground; he moved without a sound. At first, he followed closely behind the image of his wife. Soon, however, she wasn’t there at all; he followed the trail made for him by sense. It was dark enough that he couldn’t see the ground, but his step never faltered and he never once stumbled over or bumped into anything. It was like he was following a fresh scent.
A sudden spark of awareness made him take the pistol out of his pocket and slow his silent steps to a creep. After a few moments he felt, more than he saw, that he had emerged into what had once been a clearing. It was even slower going now, as he had to step carefully around heavy brush and between younger trees and saplings. He moved without hesitation, the trail always clear in his mind. At the precise moment that he began to see a shape of some kind looming ahead of him, the voice of Angela spoke in his head.
“Stop here. Can you see the barn?”
Yeah, I can see something. Where’s the car?
“Right in front of the barn and in front of us. It’s lost in the shadows, but there.”
Where are the others?
“They’re in a half circle around the car. Step very slowly about ten or twelve feet to your left. That’ll put you on the driver’s side. When I tell you to, yell at Damon.”
Jeff edged to the left, counting each step, his pulse thumping in his ears. When he reached twelve, he stopped and set his feet, his automatic held in a nervous hand and pointed into the darkness in the direction he sensed the car to be.
“NOW!”
“Damon!” Jeff bellowed. “Get out of the car!”
For a moment there was only the sound of the rain.
“Do it again.”
“Damon! I’m not fucking around with you! You either get out of that car, or I’m going to start pulling this trigger and blow your ass straight to hell!”
After another long moment there was a sudden noise and a light blinked on from inside the car as the driver’s door opened. Jeff flinched in surprise, but he quickly controlled it. He stood perfectly broad-side to the car and was no more than nine or ten feet away feet away from it. He could see Damon behind the wheel. Damon looked like a dead man, his face sallow in the dim light, his eyes sunk in their sockets. Yet life still flared in those glaring and enraged eyes.
“How the fuck did you find me?” Damon growled.
“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” Jeff replied. “So what’s it going to be Damon? I shoot you where you sit, or are you going to get out of there?”
“You want me out, come and get me out. But we both know you’re not going to do that—not even a dumb fuck like you would be that stupid. There’s no way you’re going to pull that trigger again, either, so fuck off and get the hell away from me.”
“What makes you think I won’t shoot you again?”
“You’ll never find the bitch, that’s why. Well, guess what? You’re never going to find her anyway. So, like I said, fuck off and leave me alone. I’m giving you a break you don’t even deserve, so you better fucking take it.”
“Damon, I already know where Janice is.”
“The fuck you do. If you know that, then what the hell are you doing here?”
“I swear, Damon, you’re so pathetic. I think that’s what you really can’t stand and why yo
u turned out the way you did.”
“Fuck you,” Damon snarled. “You, the bitch you married, the other bitch whose ass you can kiss goodbye and, especially, the bitch that fucked up and brought you home instead of the afterbirth. All of you can kiss my ass and go to hell.”
It’s a goddamned disease with you. Jeff was about to pull the trigger when…
“No, Jeff, leave him to Marie and the others. You’ve done your part and he’s finally weak enough. You be ready to get to the trunk when I tell you to.”
Jeff lowered his gun and saw the smile that appeared on Damon’s face. The contemptuous and malevolent smile of a man who believed he had won. In a way, it was like the smile Damon flashed his stepfather so many years before at the Taylor supper table. Only now it was worse. It was more maniacal and, somehow, more pitiable than before.
Jeff was only beginning to shake off the memory of that night at the Taylor home when the smile on Damon’s face seemed to freeze, then vanish as if it had never been there at all.
“What the fuck is this?” Damon demanded hoarsely, his head snapping, first one way, then the other. “Get the fuck away from me! All of you, get the fuck away! Go back to hell where I sent your asses!”
Headlights suddenly blazed on; the front half of the car and that side of the old barn and the immediate area around were all bathed in glaring white. Only then could Jeff see his brother clearly, see the dark blood and how close Damon seemed to be on the verge of panic. Jeff couldn’t remember ever seeing his brother’s eyes so wide and filled with such incredulity and fear.
Yet Jeff was blind to what Damon was seeing. The only other figure he could see was that of Angela. The image of her had appeared to his right in the corner of his eye. He shifted his gaze a fraction that way. She was moving slowly toward the car’s trunk. It was the same image of her that he had seen in Janice’s backyard and in his truck.
Jeff looked away from her and back to Damon. He could only wonder what Marie Metcalf and all but one of his victims had chosen to show Damon. Judging by his frantic reaction, it had to be something insidious. Jeff was glad he couldn’t see it.
Damon had begun swiping at the air with one hand as if he was trying to swat away flies. A groan of fear and rising panic burst out of his mouth with his every rapid and short breath. He shrieked like a frightened child when one or possibly more of the avenging spirits seized his waving arm and began hauling him out of the car.
He hit the ground beside the car with a scream of pain and fear. He began trying to crawl toward the front of the car and the old barn, but he only managed a few inches before he suddenly flipped over on his back, his scream long and shrill. Then he began to twist and writhe as if being pummeled by kicking feet. As his shrieks rose to a crescendo his body seemed to leap into the air and hang there about five-feet off the ground.
Jeff, both mesmerized and horrified, watched as Damon thrashed above the ground like a puppet on strings, obviously trying to fight off those who had him. He was putting up a fearsome struggle, but Jeff could see that he was growing weaker by the second. His screams were losing their intensity, becoming moans and whimpers and sounds that seemed almost inhuman. Finally, as Jeff was beginning to wonder how much longer it would go on, Damon abruptly went limp. He hung there in the air like a man floating lazily on his back in a swimming pool. Jeff could hear his ragged breathing.
That was when Damon spoke, his voice low and labored and vicious.
“Fuck you all,” he breathed. “Don’t matter what you do… all of you will see me again. I swear it…none of you fuckers will ever be rid of me.”
He spoke with such certainty that it left Jeff feeling a chill that went beyond his wet clothes and the cold rain. He would hear those words in his head for a long time to come.
Damon, arms out from his body and the top of his bullet head pointing at an angle toward the ground, began floating toward the barn as if atop an unseen cloud.
The moment he was away from the car, Angela’s voice spoke up urgently.
“Now, Jeff. Hurry and get the keys and get this trunk open.”
Jeff stowed his pistol in his jacket pocket as he hurried to the opened driver’s door. He had just ducked inside the car, his hand reaching for the keys in the ignition, when he heard the creak of hinges and the groan of an old door opening.
As he backed out of the car he looked again and saw Damon’s still and limp form disappearing inside the old barn. Jeff didn’t know if his brother was still alive at that point or already dead, but what did it matter? Jeff hurried to the trunk, fumbled one-handed with the key for a second in the rain, and finally got it open.
A tiny light in the deck lid came on. In the small and cramped space was what looked like a bundle wrapped in an old quilt and secured with turn after turn of duct-tape. The bundle had a face and long blonde hair. The mussed and tangled hair hid a large part of the face, the hair caught under several turns of the gray tape that wrapped the head and mouth. One eye looked discolored and swollen shut. The other eye stared glazed and unseeing up at Jeff.
“Jesus Christ,” he breathed fearfully.
“Jeff, leave her to us. You get to your truck and get help out here, now.”
Jeff backed away from the trunk, his mouth suddenly dry with dread. “Is-Is she alive?” His voice was as creaky as the sound of the old barn door when it opened.
“Go, Jeff! Go now and, please, hurry!”
Jeff hesitated only a second. In that second he looked toward the old barn one last time. In the glare of headlights he could see Damon inside, lying in a heap on his side in the dirt as if the hands carrying him had dumped him there. Jeff had heard no last struggle or final scream of pain, yet he knew intuitively that his brother was dead. Damon seemed to be staring straight at him. As if, even in death, Damon was blaming him for some imagined wrong. It made Jeff shiver. He managed one last parting thought for his brother.
Tell it to the fucking devil how everyone dumped on you and did you wrong.
Then, after a glance at Angela, Jeff was hurrying through the rain and darkness, heading for his truck.
Chapter Thirty-One
Friday, second week of October
Early on a sunny and pleasantly warm afternoon, exactly a month to the day she died, Jeff buried Angela not far from the graves of his parents.
Most of those who had attended the simple graveside service had already shook his hand and whispered their sympathies and had departed as Jeff stood in the shade of the oaks at the back of the cemetery. He was close enough to touch the antique white and pale pink coffin, but he was staring at the black granite marker at the head of the open grave. His name was on one side of the marker, Angela’s on the other. It was her name and date of birth that he stared at, his face calm and thoughtful, his hair ruffling slightly in the warm breeze. He had been standing there for several minutes when two of the last three mourners still in attendance walked up to him.
He looked up just as Jasmine Evans, fresh tears glistening on her ebony cheeks, pulled him into a long hug. Then she kissed his cheek and dabbed at her own.
“Jeff, if there’s anything you need, you know who to call,” she told him.
“That I do, Jaz, and I thank you. You too, Daren. Thank you both for coming. Angie thought a lot of both of you.”
“So how you doing?” Daren asked in his baritone voice, his dark and handsome face lined with concern as he gripped Jeff’s right hand.
“I’ll be okay.” Jeff spoke in a firm and steady voice, but there was little conviction in his words.
“How’s the arm?” Jasmine asked.
Jeff grimaced. “Mostly it itches like crazy—and this is only the temporary cast. I dread the day they put the hard one on.” He opened his right hand and looked at what Daren had slipped to him when they shook hands. “Man, this is really too much. I hate to impose on you guys like this.”
“It’s not an imposition,” Daren declared, leaving no room for argument.
“None at a
ll,” his wife echoed. “We’re not using it, and you’re welcome to it. It’s yours as long as you need it.”
“Just don’t lose that, okay?” Daren was smiling.
Jeff looked again at what was in his hand. “So, can I take this as the all clear?”
Daren nodded, his smile now beaming. “You bet. The County Prosecutor made it official a few hours ago.” His face grew serious. “Jeff, I never said it to you out loud, but I was really worried it would go the other way. The use of a gun, failing to call 911 a couple of times when you had the chance–those are not the easiest things to justify. But there was no disputing what they found at Janice Mills’ home or what happened to her, or what they unearthed in that barn. Even that Mustang from Missouri was right where you said it would be. In the end, it was enough.”
Jeff nodded solemnly. The location of the Mustang was one of things that his dead wife had told him during the drive to the old Metcalf farm. He, of course, had told no one where he actually had gleaned the information. That and all the other facts and revelations he had laid at the feet of his brother. His sadistic and taunting words during their confrontation at Janice’s home. A mixture of the truth and little white lies here and there and some things left unsaid; it was Jeff’s story and he stuck to it throughout. As far as the possible consequences of his decisions and actions, he was quite prepared to take whatever any of the authorities involved decided to throw at him.
After the first few days neither the State Police nor the FBI seemed to have any interest at all in charging him with anything, content with all that he was handing them on a plate. So, in view of Daren’s news, all Jeff had to do now was live with it.
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