by Jen Blood
He parked behind the Chevy, blocking the way should Deng try to run before we had a chance to ask our questions.
“You have your gun?” he asked.
“Got it.” He’d given me a Glock that was now tucked in the back of my pants, though I was confident I’d be completely ineffectual with it when push came to shove.
I climbed out of the truck. No one came out of the cabin, though light still glowed faintly in the window. It’s not as though we were being stealthy—if someone was inside, they knew we were here. Either Deng wasn’t in there, or he wasn’t interested in visitors at the moment.
The property was neat to a fault. A meticulously kept garden with wire fencing had been planted to one side, a pen with a chicken coop beside it. A small porch fronted the cabin, with an unlit lantern hanging at the entrance. Wolf signaled for me to go ahead. I stepped up and approached the door.
“Hello,” I said, forcing some volume into the word. I knocked on the door. “Jacob Deng? It’s Daniel Diggins—the reporter who was on the pier with Charlene’s body.”
There was no answer. I didn’t hear any sound coming from inside the cabin.
“Try the door,” Wolf said behind me. He stood with his rifle up, aimed somewhere to my slight right. I tried the doorknob. It turned easily.
“Mr. Deng?” I said again, hovering at the doorway. Still no answer.
The cabin was small, with a woodstove at the center and a neatly made single bed in the corner. Books lined shelves built into one wall. The light I’d seen from outside came from a kerosene lantern that had burned down almost completely, set in the center of a scarred wooden table. A refrigerator and electric stove ran off a generator that stood just outside.
I closed the door behind me. There was no bathroom, so I assumed there must be an outhouse nearby. A photo, faded and creased, was stuck to the refrigerator—the only personal touch I saw. It showed a much-younger Charlene holding an infant. Jacob stood beside them, looking young and proud and terrified.
A classical guitar sat in a stand beside the bed, with several books of music placed neatly on the bedside table. If Lisette and Maisie had been staying here, they were the neatest houseguests I’d ever met.
“You see any sign of anyone?” I asked. Wolf was behind me doing his own search—gun still up, his eyes scanning every surface with cool efficiency.
He nodded to the rough-hewn table beside the refrigerator. “Someone was here.”
I followed his gaze. Two mismatched coffee mugs were on the table, half filled with coffee. I’d completely missed them.
Wolf put his hand on one of the mugs. “Cold. Whoever it was, they left long before we got here.”
“It doesn’t look like anyone was too stressed out about the visit, either.”
“No,” he agreed. “There’s no sign of a struggle. But this wasn’t Lizzie—she won’t drink coffee. And there’s nothing to suggest Maisie was here at all.”
Then where the hell were they? And where was Jacob and his mysterious houseguest now?
There was another door at the back of the cabin. I indicated it with a wave of my hand and Wolf nodded.
Outside, the air was warm and alive with mosquitoes and moths that buzzed around a motion-sensitive light above the back door. I shone my flashlight into the backyard, noting a lean-to of firewood covered by a plastic tarp and a small storage shed with the door slightly ajar.
I called for Deng again. When he didn’t answer, I shone my flashlight around the perimeter once more. A chicken clucked out front. Somewhere in the darkness, above the crickets and the frogs and the overlay of silence, an owl hooted softly. I clutched my gun in one hand and my light in the other and looked back toward Wolf.
He nodded toward the shed, rifle up, indicating that he was going around the other way.
I pushed the shed door open, my heartbeat thick and fast in my throat. It smelled sour inside, tangy and rotten. I heard the flies before I saw them, and my fear ran higher as I swept my flashlight through the small space. The floor was tacky beneath my feet. I stopped moving. Something dripped, heavy and moist beside my left ear. I whirled when something brushed against my left shoulder, and my gun came up almost against my will. I sprang backward.
When I shone the light back into the darkness, I was grateful Wolf had gone his own way—he wouldn’t have been impressed with me. A chicken hung in the doorway, just about eye level, its throat cut and its feathers plucked. The blood had drained onto the wooden floorboards.
“Holy shit,” I whispered under my breath.
I finished scanning the space and stepped back out, then went in the same direction Wolf had gone. I heard nothing—no voices, no movement—though I could see a pale yellow glow around the corner of the shed.
“Wolf?” I whispered.
I kept going, following that wash of light.
The first thing I saw when I turned the corner was Wolf, standing with the rifle down by his side, his face slack with shock. I followed his gaze, and saw a single candle. One candle still burning, among five that had been placed around Jacob Deng—who lay naked on the hard-packed earth of the forest floor.
His throat was slit, his arms and legs outstretched. His body cavity lay open, the smell of blood and excrement strong in the air. Unlike the spot where I’d found Charlene Dsengani, Jacob had died here, and he had died recently. Blood was thick on the forest floor beneath him. His eyes were gone. They weren’t the only thing—along with several internal organs, Deng’s penis had been severed. I saw no sign of it or anything else in the surrounding area.
“This is what happened to Charlene?” Wolf said.
“Yeah. This is what happened.”
He didn’t move. I trained my flashlight beam along the edge of Deng’s body until it caught on something on the ground beside him. I didn’t want to get any closer, but I forced myself to take another step. I knelt and picked up a beautifully crafted wooden statue similar to the one I’d found with Charlene’s body. This one was of a laughing boy.
The wind shifted, and my stomach lurched as the smell hit me again. I straightened, swallowing bile, and looked back toward Wolf. He wasn’t focused on the corpse anymore. Instead, his entire body was tensed as he gazed into the trees, away from Deng’s house.
“What is it?” I said.
“A path.”
I tried to see what he was seeing, but could make out nothing but trees. “Where?”
He crouched slightly, his gun up, and started for the forest.
“Wait—where are you going?”
“Keep quiet. Stay back. There’s something out there.”
He didn’t elaborate on what that something might be. I followed him anyway.
◊◊◊◊◊
The trees closed in on us both fast as Wolf followed what, to my untrained eye, appeared to be no path at all. We pushed through thick brush and cobwebs, mosquitoes and other flying things I could hear buzzing in my ears. Wolf seemed impervious to it all.
Fifteen minutes later, I gave up trying to keep my gun handy and tucked it into the back of my jeans. I slapped at a mosquito on the back of my neck and brushed at something crawling by my left ear, but I wasn’t afraid of bugs or beasts. The dead were my concern now. Even as I followed in Wolf’s wake, Doug Philbrick wove his way in and out of my periphery while my brother would simply appear from nowhere... And they’d been joined by others. My mother in the deep blue dress she’d been buried in; Charlene Dsengani, naked, a stitched line up the center of her body.
It was the exhaustion, I knew. Compound that with the power of suggestion inspired by the idiotic curse and my own guilt, and of course I was seeing dead people.
Ahead of me, Wolf stopped suddenly.
“What are you doing?” I whispered.
“Look.”
He trained his flashlight beam to our right. I saw nothing at first—a relief, given the visions I’d expected. It took a second before I realized what we were looking at.
A tent, strate
gically hidden with branches and brush.
He started to move forward.
“We should call the cops,” I said.
Wolf turned back toward me with a look somewhere between disbelief and disdain. “Go ahead,” he whispered back. “I’m not waiting.”
He pressed on until he reached the tent, set in an almost-indiscernible clearing among a thicket of birch and spruce. He crouched down and fiddled with the zipper, his gun by his side—as though he already knew what he would find there.
“Lizzie,” he said. “Lisette, it’s me.”
There was movement inside the tent. Hushed whispers. I didn’t take my gun out, too afraid that I would shoot someone live while I was dodging the dead. When I heard a child’s voice, I was grateful for my decision.
“Wolf?”
Someone unzipped the tent from the inside. A small, dark head peered out. I shone the flashlight toward her, and Maisie blinked in the glare.
“What are you doing?” she demanded, not unhappily. “Lizzie, it’s Wolf,” she said over her shoulder. “And...uh, the guy from the party.”
Lisette said something that I couldn’t make out, then unzipped the tent the rest of the way and stepped out. Maisie remained where she was, apparently under Lisette’s orders.
“What are you doing here?” Lisette asked Wolf. “How did you find us?”
“We’ve got to go,” Wolf said instead of answering. “I’ll take you somewhere safe—I promise. But we have to get out of here.”
She pulled her arm away when he attempted to take it, looking to me in confusion. “What happened? Why are you here?”
“When did you see Jacob last?” I asked.
Even in the darkness, I could see the way her face changed as realization dawned. “They found him.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “Did you hear anything coming from the cabin? See any light?”
“No. Maisie and I go to bed early here—we’re up with the sun.”
“Up with the chickens,” Maisie added. She climbed out of the tent in jeans and a sweatshirt, her hair a wild mass and her voice still tired. “To be honest, it kind of sucks. How did you guys find us?”
Wolf shook his head. “There’s no time to explain. Please, Lizzie—I’ll take you anywhere. But here’s not safe.”
As if to illustrate the point, a branch cracked somewhere in the distance. I started. When I looked toward the sound, I saw nothing but darkness.
We’d walked only a short distance before I heard a familiar voice call out.
“Wolf? Diggs? Come on out here, we should talk,” Elias said. His voice was coming from the direction of the cabin. The beam of a flashlight swept through the trees and came to rest a few feet from us.
“Who is that?” Maisie whispered. Wolf put his finger to his lips and shook his head. He pulled us off the path, treading carefully before he motioned everyone to stop.
We crouched in the brush. My breathing was ragged as we waited for Wolf to give the go-ahead. There was a rustling behind us. Wolf turned in that direction. It felt as though the air were suddenly charged, something lurking just beyond the curtain of darkness that surrounded us.
“Wolf?” Lisette whispered.
“We should move again,” he said. There was a tremor in his voice that shook me.
“I don’t like this,” Maisie said. “Something’s wrong.”
“Just keep moving,” Wolf said. “The truck isn’t far.”
“What if Elias has other people waiting for us?” I said.
“We’ll handle it when we get closer,” he answered. “Come on, damn it. I’m not arguing strategy out here.”
We set out again, but I could still feel that electricity in the air. To my right, I saw a flash of color; when I turned, there was nothing.
“Wolf!” Elias shouted again. It sounded like he was farther from us, maybe gone in the wrong direction completely. “Come on, buddy. Give them up and we can be done with this.”
None of us made a sound as Wolf guided Lisette and Maisie along the broken path, moving faster now. Something rustled above us in the trees. The wind came up. Beneath it, I thought I heard a woman’s voice—whispering, too low to make out the words.
“I’m giving you one last chance,” Elias shouted. “Then things are gonna get bloody. I’m done with this shit.”
The murmur rose, non-words in a tuneless lullaby that climbed through the air. Someone was behind us. I didn’t want to know who—or what. I could see very little, but every other sense was overwhelmed with stimuli: the brush of insects in the night air, the taste of blood and decay on my tongue, the incessant song that seemed locked somewhere inside my mind.
Suddenly, cutting through the sensory overload, Maisie screamed. Wolf stopped dead in front of me. I could see him reach for her, his body taut. Lisette stopped beside me.
“Sssh,” Wolf whispered frantically. “What’s wrong?”
“Maisie?” Lisette whispered.
There was no response. “Where is she?” she asked, more loudly now. Her panic was palpable. “Maisie—come back now. Talk to us. Maisie!”
Wolf clapped his hand over her mouth and she struggled against him, nearly hysterical.
“Quiet,” he whispered frantically. “We won’t do her any good if we’re caught too.”
Another flashlight beam swept through. Wolf pulled us into a thicket of trees and forced everyone to the ground.
“He’s getting closer,” I whispered.
“Ssh,” Wolf said. The darkness of the undergrowth was impenetrable. Seconds ticked by like hours, every one like the creep of spider legs across my skin. I could feel my heart and my breath, the press of Wolf’s side against mine.
Eventually, though, the flashlight beam got farther away.
I strained to hear any sign of Maisie out there, but the woods were silent and strangely deafening at the same time. If she was out there, I had no idea where.
“You think he’s gone?” I whispered.
“He’s not alone,” Wolf whispered back. “Whoever he’s got with him, they’ll be waiting for us. They won’t let us drive out of here.”
“It doesn’t matter, because I’m not going anywhere without Maisie,” Lisette said.
“So what are we supposed to do, lie here and wait for daylight?” I asked.
Wolf grunted, which could have meant anything. I heard the rustle of something to our left—low to the ground, suggesting an animal, but there was no way to know for sure in the darkness. I looked in the direction the sound had come from regardless. My breath hitched.
Doug Philbrick sat with his back against a tree trunk, some inner glow making him luminous in the night. He looked at me.
“They’re coming for you, asshole,” he said.
I looked away. Wolf touched my arm, and I jerked away from him.
“Hey—you with me?” he asked.
“Yeah,” I said. My gaze shifted back to the spot where Philbrick had been. He was gone.
“You’re going to lay low for a while,” Wolf said when he had my attention. “I want you two to stay here. I’m gonna go scout, see what I can find.”
“What do you mean?” I said. “I thought we were supposed to stick together.”
“If it’s only a couple of them, we can take them out,” he said. “And maybe get Maisie back before they take her out of here.”
“And if it’s more than a couple?” I asked.
“Just wait here.”
He crept away before we could protest any further. The horizon was starting to lighten. I guessed it had to be five a.m. by now, though I had no way to know for sure. I watched Wolf disappear into the woods and leaned in to Lisette.
“He’ll be all right,” I whispered.
She didn’t say anything.
Minutes passed. Lisette prayed quietly beside me, and I thought of the years in my father’s church. None of those prayers had meant anything to me then—my father’s hypocrisy when it came to them had effectively killed religion e
arly on for me. But Lisette’s soft voice reciting the forgotten words was a comfort, despite everything.
Far off, I heard a voice shouting. Elias again. There was no answering call. Based on the glow of his flashlight, he had to be fifty yards away by now—close to the cabin, I assumed. Everything went still once more. Then:
“Okay,” Wolf whispered behind me. My heart nearly jumped its cage. He continued without giving Lisette or me a chance to respond. “It’s just Elias back there—they must have already taken Maisie. That means we can take him out.”
“Are you sure?” I asked. “What if it’s a trap?”
“We can’t just stay out here,” he said. “This may be our only chance to get the son of a bitch and make him talk.”
I agreed, if only in theory. We moved out once more.
◊◊◊◊◊
Twenty yards from the cabin, I spotted Elias on his cell phone. I stopped Wolf with a hand on his arm. He nodded silently; he’d seen him too. Wolf signaled for me to take Lisette and go around the cabin and circle back to the truck. I took her arm. For a second, she resisted. Then, she turned back to Wolf, leaned in, and kissed him quickly, quietly, before we crept away.
The charged feel the air had had earlier was gone now. Something felt off, but I attributed that to my own fatigue and way too many close calls for a single night. We were nearing the spot where Jacob Deng’s body lay. I slipped my hand into Lisette’s; the contact felt oddly intimate. I pulled her to the right, toward the woodshed behind Deng’s cabin.
“Elias,” I heard Wolf say, low enough that the two men must be close. Lisette and I continued along the back of the cabin, skirting spider webs and dead insects that clung to the siding.
“I wondered when you’d have the balls to show your face,” Elias said. “Now... You bring me your girls and we can be done with this.”
Lisette and I reached the end of the cabin, still well concealed by brush. Now, though, in the dim light of early dawn I could see Wolf and Elias standing beside the truck. Elias’s silver Corvette was parked next to it. Wolf had a gun trained on Elias’s middle; Elias still held his cell phone.