by Mia Taylor
She climbed into the driver’s seat and turned the ignition. As Vaughan suspected, it took three tries before the gas finally began to cycle through the vehicle.
He moved toward the driver’s side door but before he could reach her, she slammed it and put the car in drive, leaving him in a spray of mud as she steered her way down the mountainside.
She hadn’t even bothered to say goodbye.
Chapter Nine
Focussing on What’s Important
“I’m not coming home yet, Mother,” Vivian intoned. “I’ve got a lead on a job over here and I’m not leaving.”
“You have a lot of nerve, Vivian,” Celia spat back over the phone. “You disappeared without so much as a phone call and now you’re telling me you’re not returning my car?”
“Mother, you have four other vehicles. Why is this one so important?”
“That’s not the point and you know it!” Celia growled. “The car isn’t yours. What is this job, Vivian?”
“It’s a story I’m following,” she replied truthfully. “Come on, Mom, cut me some slack here.”
“It seems to me that all I’ve ever done is cut you slack, Vivian. Now you’re off on some fanciful idea of following a story? When are you going to accept that you’re not going to cut it as a journalist and focus on a real career for once?”
Vivian bristled.
“Thanks for the vote of confidence,” she snapped. “I’m not coming home.”
She disconnected the call before the tears which were burning in her eyes could fall freely down her cheeks. Her mother was a sadist—she’d undoubtedly be able to hear if Vivian was crying and she didn’t want to give Celia the satisfaction of hearing her broken.
Even if I am.
She thought immediately about Vaughan and how she had left him. Vivian was sick to her stomach.
I acted like a dumb brat, she thought furiously. So what if he only saw it as a one-night stand? You had no right to react the way you did. He saved you, fed you, gave you shelter. You left him in a spray of mud on the side of the road after he gassed up your car. You are such a bitch!
It had been three days since she had left Vaughan and the reality of what she had done only made her feel worse with each passing moment.
Vivian knew she should go back up Mt. Rogers and apologize for the terrible way she had acted but the thought of seeing Vaughan again made her heart hurt.
What we shared meant nothing to him and everything to me. I can’t look him in the eye right now. But I will. I’ll go back before I leave.
She didn’t believe herself and that only made her feel worse.
But even if Vaughan didn’t care about her, if she had misread everything she thought she’d felt coming from him, he had given her a mantra to live by.
“You’ll get what you want out of life if you focus. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.”
And Vivian wanted her story.
Which is why she found herself in that seedy motel room at the base of Mt. Rogers three days later, encased in notes about the bear-man.
If only Mother would get off my case, I could focus better but I guess beggars can’t be choosers.
Vivian did not have time to nurse the heartache that threatened to consume her—she had a story to write and a career to build.
That day alone, she had four interviews set up with people who claimed to have witnessed the bear-creature over the years.
I hope they’re not a bunch of clueless yokels, Vivian thought, grabbing her notebook and purse. I’m going to need someone more verifiable than Jim-Bob if I want a reputable magazine to take me seriously.
But she had to start somewhere and given the topic, she couldn’t exactly be particular about it.
Her first interviewee lived just outside Blacksburg and it took Vivian a while to find the lonely trailer.
Surprisingly, the man who answered the door was nothing like she expected.
“Miss Bentley?” he asked, lowering his round spectacles to peer at her over the bridge of his nose.
“Mr. Jones, I presume.”
He chuckled, extending a weathered hand to allow her into the stationary trailer.
“Well there isn’t anyone else living here and I’m certain you didn’t chance upon this trailer by accident, so yes, I am Charlie Jones. Thank you for coming.”
Vivian stepped inside the immaculately kept trailer home and was instantly awed by the number of books lining the space. There were pages in every area of the place and when she saw the titles, her wonderment only increased.
This was no uneducated redneck. He was a worldly man although what he was doing living in a trailer in the middle of nowhere was anyone’s guess.
He seemed to read her expression and chuckled dryly, indicating for her to sit. She perched on the edge of the loveseat and studied his face curiously.
“You seem surprised,” he commented. “Tea?”
“Sure,” Vivian agreed, pulling her recorder from her purse and setting up her notebook. “And yes, I am surprised. I really didn’t know what to expect but between you and me, Mr. Jones, I am not sure what I’m walking into investigating this bear-man.”
Charlie grinned wryly.
“I can’t say I blame you. When I heard about this mythical creature, I thought, ‘uh oh, just when I thought I’d found paradise, it turns out I’m surrounded by lunatics.’ But here I am, being interviewed on my own experience.”
“What was your experience?” Vivian asked, taking the cue from him.
He busied himself in the small galley kitchen, setting up a teapot with wrinkled hands before turning back to her.
“Before I tell you about what I saw, I want to give you some background on who I am,” he told her.
“I am eager to hear it,” Vivian replied. “May I record our conversation?”
He nodded pleasantly.
“Of course.”
Vivian hit the record function and gestured for Charlie to continue.
“I worked in research and development for a company called Ambrosia Inc for many years,” he explained. “Have you heard of them?”
Vivian shook her head.
“No, I don’t believe I have.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Charlie explained. “I wouldn’t mention it if it didn’t affect what we’re talking about today.”
She waited expectantly.
“My work was boring, to put it mildly, but I worked under a man name Daniel Wexley who owned the company in part with his sister, Beatrice. They were an odd couple of characters.”
Charlie moved his attention back to the stove and Vivian was beginning to wonder if there was, in fact, a link or if she had been roped into a discussion with a lonely old man.
“Daniel was married once upon a time and his wife up and left one day, along with the couple’s four children. It was a strange situation, one with more questions than answers.”
“Mr. Jones—”
“Charlie.”
“Charlie,” Vivian tried again. “What do your former employers have to do with the bear-man?”
“Probably nothing,” Charlie sighed. “But when Fallon disappeared all those years ago, some very bizarre rumors about the children began to manifest. They were rumors and they were about a boss whom no one much cared for, but nonetheless, I had to wonder if there wasn’t some validity to the claims.”
“What claims?”
In the back of Vivian’s mind, she made a mental note to investigate Ambrosia Inc.
Maybe I’ll get two stories out of this. Wouldn’t that be something?
“Some believed that Daniel had done medical procedures on his own sons, trying to alter their DNA so that they would possess supernatural abilities.”
Vivian almost laughed aloud but there was no mirth or jesting in Charlie’s tone.
“He was playing mad scientist with his own children?”
“It was one theory and one which I can’t say would surprise me.”
“I’m
sorry, Charlie, but I don’t understand what this has to do with the bear-man. Are you saying that Daniel Wexley is the bear-man?”
Charlie snickered.
“Hardly. That bastard is still living large in Ashbridge, soaking up all of Trump’s tax breaks. No, I am not suggesting that the two stories are related at all but when I did see this beast that one time, two years ago, I couldn’t get the story about Fallon and her children out of my head for some reason, almost like my subconscious was trying to tell me there was a connection.”
“Why don’t you tell me what happened?”
“I had just found this place, right here where we’re standing, and I was sure I was in heaven. After I retired, I bought this trailer and decided to see the States once and for all. My whole life had been so consumed with work, I’d missed out on so much. No wife, no kids…”
The wistfulness in his voice was almost palpable.
“This was my dream—find the most beautiful places in the country, live on the land for a while and move on.”
“It’s a wonderful dream,” Vivian encouraged him. “And this is a beautiful spot.”
She was not lying—the view was majestic from every angle. Vivian could see why he loved it.
“I’d been here for maybe two weeks when I was woken from my sleep one night, a low growl scaring the bejeebus out of me. I knew it was some kind of creature but I couldn’t be sure what.”
The kettle began to whistle and Charlie quickly moved it before reaching for two mugs in one of the small cupboards.
“He was massive, the biggest bear I’d ever seen and that’s how I instantly knew it was no normal bear. He was the size of a polar bear if I had to guess, but black. It was no grizzly or black bear known to North America, I will tell you right now.”
“Could it just have been a freakishly large bear?”
“It was more than just his size, Miss Bentley. There was an intelligence about him. He stood on his hind paws, unprovoked, and just howled at the full moon over and over.”
Charlie poured the steaming water and visibly shuddered.
“Then, like he felt me watching him, he turned his giant head and looked right at me and…”
Charlie seemed to need a minute to clear his head or his throat.
“I was filled with the most painful sense of melancholy which pierced my soul. I thought he might have been physically hurt but the pain he was feeling was in his soul and so palpable, I felt it like a slap in my face.”
Vivian got goosebumps just hearing the story but she still wasn’t sure what to make of it.
“Then what happened?”
“We stared at each other for what felt like an hour, our gazes locked, but I wasn’t afraid he was going to come after me. He seemed to be calling out to me, begging me to help him but what could I do?”
The older man placed the hot drink in front of Vivian with a cup of sugar and a small pitcher of milk.
“Help yourself,” he told her. “Lemon?”
Vivian shook her head almost impatiently.
“No, thank you.”
“Ah, where was I… ah yes. Finally, I shrugged my shoulders, as if to tell him, ‘I don’t know how to help you, friend’ and that seemed to break the spell between us. He fell forward onto his paw and ambled away from me but even his swagger was… sad. It was the most gut-wrenching experience of my life, Miss Bentley, and even though it was two years ago, I still get shivers when I think about it. Not because I was scared, you understand, but because I was powerless to do anything to alleviate his suffering.”
What a weird story, Vivian thought.
“So…” she asked slowly, “what is your hypothesis? What do you believe it is?”
Charlie bit on his lower lip and shook his head.
“I have no idea. I thought that’s why you were here, to figure it out.”
“I am looking into it, Charlie, hopefully to write an exposé article on the matter but I’m not an investigator.”
“Oh.” His eyebrows knit together in confusion. “I thought you were here because of that FBI investigation.”
Chills slid through Vivian.
“What FBI investigation?”
Charlie shrugged his shoulders and took a sip of his scalding tea before cringing and responding.
“About a month back, two FBI agents came around asking vague questions. They didn’t say what it was regarding but they were asking about the area, about suspicious activity. They weren’t talking about people. They were obviously looking into our beloved bear-man.”
“Did you ask them?”
“No, ma’am. I don’t ask questions. If they wanted me to know what they were after, they would have offered their insight. Anyway, I have no interest getting tangled up in a government agency. I’m retired. I dealt with enough suits while I worked for Ambrosia.”
“Did you happen to get their cards?” Vivian asked excitedly and Charlie nodded.
“Of course,” he replied. “Let me find them.”
Vivian got the distinct impression that Charlie knew exactly where they were. She looked at him, willing him to move, but the old man continued to sip on his tea.
“After our tea, if you don’t mind,” he told her. “It’s not every day I get such a lovely visitor.”
Vivian stifled a groan and forced a smile.
“Of course. I’m in no rush,” she lied.
But she knew the minute she left the trailer, she was going to be on the phone with the agents and Googling Ambrosia Inc.
I wonder what I’ll find.
Chapter Ten
Secrets Exposed?
Vivian tapped her foot impatiently, glancing at the time on her cell phone for the eighth time in five minutes. Her appointment had been an hour ago but she was still sitting in the lobby, waiting to meet with Vernon Davies of Ambrosia Inc.
She’d been shocked to discover that Ambrosia had a small office in Roanoke, just outside Blacksburg, although why, she could not guess.
“Can you tell me how much longer Mr. Davies is going to be?” she asked the prissy receptionist. The woman did not bother to look up.
“As long as he takes. If you would tell me the nature of your visit, it might move things along.”
“I would rather speak to him about it,” she retorted for the third time and reclaimed her seat, snatching up a Forbes magazine from the table.
In the past day, she had met with four people from all walks of life who had made precisely the same claims as Charlie Jones had. The bear was too big to be a part of the Virginia landscape and seemed to be human, even though it did not speak.
“I swear, though,” one millennial announced, “I felt like he was talking to me through my thoughts. It was like he was asking for help somehow. I can’t explain it.”
“Are you sure it was a male?”
“There was nothing feminine about it,” a waitress at the local Denny’s replied. “That creature was pure male and pure sorrow.”
Still, Vivian reasoned. The local folks talk to one another. They could have compared notes.
But judging by the difference in their social statuses, Vivian had a hard time reconciling that the twenty-something hipster chick and retired Charlie Jones had much to discuss.
There was some truth to whatever the phenomenon was happening on Mt. Rogers and she was going to get to the bottom of it one way or another.
“Miss Bentley?”
Finally!
She lifted her eyes and glared at the uptight-looking man in the three-piece suit.
“I’ve been waiting an hour.”
He sneered at her.
“You should consider yourself fortunate that you were granted an appointment at all. I am not a fan of mysteries, Miss Bentley. Why don’t you tell me what you’re doing here?”
Now that is a great question, Vivian agreed silently. What the hell am I doing here?
She did not betray her lack of confidence on her face.
“Are we going to stand in the m
iddle of the lobby?” she demanded.
“Until I know what you want, yes.”
“I’m here to discuss Mr. Wexley’s lost children.”
Davies face contorted in shock and his mouth fell open.
“You—you know where the children are?”
“Well, they wouldn’t be children anymore, would they?” Vivian replied, stalling for time. It was such a long, stupid shot trusting that there was any connection between her story and the missing boys but what kind of journalist would she be if she didn’t follow up on everything?
Davies shot her a warning look and glanced over his shoulder at the receptionist who was pretending not to listen but clearly was.
“But since you want to talk in the open, let’s do that,” Vivian continued loudly. “What do you think happened to the boys? To Fallon?”
“Get in here!”
He whirled back toward the doors and gave the secretary another look.
“Hold all my calls and be ready to get Mr. Wexley on the line.”
Vivian was suddenly seized by a feeling that perhaps she was in over her head.
Out of nowhere, she wished she’d thought to call Vaughan to accompany her.
Idiot. Vaughan thinks you’re insane the way you left him. He isn’t about to drop everything and play bodyguard while you go on a wild goose chase.
Yet even as she thought it, she knew she was wrong. She had a feeling that Vaughan would very easily jump to her defence if she asked.
You can’t give him another chance to break your heart, she warned herself. You can go say goodbye to him when you head back to Richmond but that’s it.
Davies hurried into a vast back office and shut the door firmly behind him.
“What do you know about the boys?”
“Why don’t you tell me what you know about the bear-man,” Vivian said although where the words had come from, she couldn’t say. She almost felt like someone else had overtaken her mouth and asked the question.
Apparently, it was the right question to ask, for Davies’ complexion went opaque.
“Who the hell are you and how did you find out?”
“It doesn’t matter who I am nor how I know,” Vivian told him firmly although her head was swimming. She had no idea how to make sense of what was going on.