The house also prompted a thought. There were only two cemeteries in Manitou. A big Catholic one on the western edge of town. Mason Krim had attended Rev. Cannon’s Lutheran church at one time but left on bad terms. He didn’t strike me as the kind to convert to Catholicism or to insist in his will to be buried there. That left Pioneer’s Rest, the community cemetery on the north end of Manitou.
When I arrived at Pioneer’s Rest, it was almost closing time, so I quickly told the elderly caretaker in the little stone entrance building that I needed to see the grave of a neighbor of mine for just a minute. He slowly booted up a map of the grave plots on the screen of his computer, then asked for a name. I told him I was there to see the last resting place of Mason Krim. Then I added, “It may be a double plot. His wife died a number of years before Mr. Krim did.”
The caretaker took his eyes off the screen and looked at me. “Mrs. Krim, his wife, was buried outside of Manitou. I’ve been here for more than forty years, so I remember some burials more than others. Mr. Krim wanted her buried here, but her final wishes were to be buried somewhere else, according to the estate attorney. She and her daughter were finally buried together in Omaha, where she was born. A Lutheran cemetery, I think.”
“In any event, I’m just here to see Mason Krim’s grave.”
“Yes,” the caretaker said somberly. “I remember that one too.” Then he pulled out a printed map of the grave plots and circled one at the far end of the cemetery, almost to the fence line that separated it from a neighboring subdivision.
I drove along the curves and well-tended paths studded with trees and lined with gravestones and markers until I came to the place. Map in hand, I trotted up to the spot. There were no other grave markers close by. Mason Krim’s grave was marked with a tall, white marble obelisk, and at the top was a chiseled arm with a hand projecting upward from it, fingers outstretched as if trying desperately to grasp something.
I came closer and read the name of the departed and date of death, just to make sure. Yes, it was his.
Then I read the inscription on the face of the obelisk. A weird poem that seemed vaguely familiar.
To all who hunger for secrets to keep,
and yearn for a realm of shadows deep,
and scoff at the wound of a fallen king,
but bow to a prince, his power to bring.
Then I scanned down to read the source of the poem, which had been etched in the stone just below the last line. When I did, I experienced one of those almost-out-of-body sensations, where the clocks seem to stop. And the noises of the world grow strangely quiet.
The marble obelisk attributed the poem to a book. The title of the book was Piercing the Supernatural Veil.
I read the poem again. The “fallen king”—Christ, the crucified. And his chest wound, as depicted in the Édouard Manet painting in Krim’s house, a wound on the wrong side, which had caused a scandal in the 1800s when the painting was first shown publicly. There was the scoffing part.
The painting had the same kind of chest wound, and in the same location, as had been inflicted on Heather, the street waif in New York City, butchered by the possessed Dunning Kamera. The same with the victims of demon-occupied Sid Castor, not to mention my own wound inflicted in the New York museum by Hanz Delpha, the former academic who had been inhabited by that creature of darkness, and lastly Bobby Budleigh’s chest laceration too. All of them on the left side of the chest.
It was easy to figure out who the hellish prince was, who would bring power to the scoffers.
Rev. Cannon’s words were ringing in my head. A series of mutilation killings in New York, and now one in my hometown. It had all the earmarks of a perverse Satanic joke, perpetrated through a demonic lieutenant who had inhabited humans, one after another, to execute the plan. And I was in the center of it.
There was a noise at the entrance gate. The caretaker was calling out to me that it was closing time and that the cemetery was about to be locked. I waved back to let him know I was going.
But just then I was hit with a physical sensation, a shiver shooting over my body the instant that I fully considered the hideous power that I was challenging. I questioned, at that moment, whether I was up to the task.
56
After reserving my motel room, a sense of gloom fell over me. Too many hours thinking about ghouls that possess and then ravage human flesh, and how to track them and what to do if I found them, and meanwhile, through it all, how to survive.
I wanted to connect with the one person in Manitou I could trust, who also happened to be the one person I couldn’t get off my mind. So I called Ashley again. When she answered, she sounded unenthusiastic and distant.
I asked her if I could buy her an ice cream sundae with chocolate sauce and a cherry on top, said I knew this great ice cream parlor where we had first met, and did she want to meet me there? She agreed in a monotone and ended by saying she’d be there in ten minutes, then added, “And this isn’t a date. So I’m not showering or putting on makeup. And I’m not putting on some cute outfit. Right now I’m wearing an old sagging pair of sweatpants and a tank top. I’m not changing and really don’t care. Just so you know.”
All of that was fine with me and I said so. Darkness was falling as I drove straight to Otto’s Creamery, and the little ice cream stand had already turned on their crazy Christmas lights that outlined the frame of the hut. A few minutes after I arrived, Ashley was at the passenger-side door of my car knocking and looking perturbed, perhaps because I had left the car door locked, a habit I had acquired after a number of encounters with those who wished me ill. I unlocked the door, and she jumped into the passenger seat. She was holding a piece of notepaper.
I started off on a high note, trying not to stare at her baggy sweatpants and struck by the fact that she always looked good no matter what she was wearing. “It’s really good to see you. I’ve been thinking about you.”
Ashley didn’t respond to that. Skipping over the pleasantries, she jumped right into reading from her notes. “I spoke to my contact at the EPA. There was an investigation. At least an initial one. Had nothing to do with Pebble Creek or wetlands, though. The concern was that Jeffery Opperdill might have allowed toxins to be released directly into the Little Bear River after he took over the foundry when his father died. Opperdill did a lot of dodging and weaving. Also, he had a powerful front man who was messing with the EPA on his behalf.”
“A lawyer?”
“No, although he had plenty of those. Somebody else. Someone who had power of attorney to appear for him on the investigation, but not as an attorney. My contact told me the EPA was frustrated at every turn. The next thing they knew, the lead investigator drowned in a boating accident on Lake Michigan. Then, files, including digital ones, went missing. They couldn’t even resurrect information from the backup data on the hard drives of their computers. She said she had never seen anything like it. Practically ‘black magic.’ Her words, not mine. In the end, Jeffery Opperdill quietly shut down the foundry, and the whole investigation fizzled out.”
“So, who was this powerful agent for Jeffery Opperdill?”
“We don’t know. That’s part of the missing data.”
I took a hard look at Ashley. She looked like she was in the grip of something. The hand that was holding the note was shaking. Her face was drawn.
Treading out on thin ice, I asked, “Tell me what’s going on with you.”
She refused, calling it irrelevant, so I pushed a little more. Telling her that, to the contrary, I considered everything about her to be relevant. Then she unloaded. “How about this. How about, ye GAD, I’m having a bad day. Remember? I opened up to you, unfortunately, about my diagnosis. Now the whole department knows. Butch knows.”
“You don’t think I said anything . . .”
“No, I’m not saying that. I am just saying that I am having a lousy day. It happens. So, I take my medication. I struggle through.”
“I wish I knew what you
were going through . . .”
“Do you really want to know?”
“Of course I do.”
“It’s like swimming in a pool that you think is safe, and the next thing you know there are ropes all around and you get all tangled up in them and you can’t breathe and there’s the feeling of drowning.”
“That’s what it feels like?”
“No. Not all the time. That is just one of the wonderful sensations. There are plenty more.”
What happened next I never would have wished even on the nastiest legal opponent I have ever encountered in court, let alone see it happen to Ashley.
A brown unmarked sheriff’s vehicle glided into the parking lot at Otto’s Creamery and pulled up next to us. Sheriff Butch Jardinsky climbed out slowly. He had something in his hand and strolled over to Ashley’s window. Today he was in full dress uniform: white starched shirt with epaulets, tie, and gold star on his chest.
Butch handed the papers to Ashley. “You have been served. Notice of suspension from the sheriff’s department. The date and time of the hearing before the disciplinary committee is right there in the paperwork.” Then he ducked his head down to address me. “And you, Mr. Black. You have twenty-four hours to clear out of Manitou. Or I will sit down with the district attorney to figure out the charges we’ll be bringing against you.” Then he turned back to Ashley. “As soon as possible I need your service weapon and your badge. Please turn them in immediately.”
When Jardinsky had driven off, Ashley looked up at the sky and exclaimed in a burst of raging sarcasm, “This is so excellent. What a wonderful day.”
I was ready to jump in and try to fix it. I was ready to launch my plan to hire the best law enforcement attorney for her I could find and to fight the phony disciplinary charges.
But before I could, Ashley turned to me with a kind of resolve I had not seen in her eyes before. “Hear me very carefully, Trevor. I am going home to my apartment. I am turning off my cell phones. Both of them. I will not be answering them. I simply want to be left alone. Please don’t bother trying to find out where I live. Do not attempt to contact me.”
She jumped out of her brother’s car, which I had been driving, slammed the door, and headed over to her vehicle, her baggy sweatpants fluttering around her skinny legs.
In the old days, at a minimum I would have arrogantly confronted the sheriff for his ignorance and his malice. Verbally reducing him to an oil stain on the cement. But no more. My job at that point of my life was to lay all the muck and mire of things, the mess of life, before an inscrutable God. I was on a mission to do the right thing, not the natural thing. But that course of action was always the hardest thing, and I knew it.
Then my cell rang.
Augie Bedders was going ballistic on the phone. “Trevor, help. Please, you gotta help me!”
57
“Augie, calm down. Where are you?”
“I can’t say much over the phone. You never know who’s listening in. I’m in trouble, though, man. Please, you gotta meet me. Down by the river behind Exotica—you know, the shop I work at?”
“I’ll be there in ten minutes. Hang tight.”
When I arrived, Augie was there, waiting for me. But this time he was cleaned up. His shoulder-length hair was combed and washed, and he was wearing a starched dress shirt and a new pair of jeans. He looked good, and I told him that.
“Getting ready for a special thing, sort of a date . . .” He sounded calmer than he had been on the phone. Must have had a chance to think through whatever had spooked him.
“That’s good to hear, Augie. I figured that after what happened to Susan, you know, that you might eventually find somebody else and settle down.”
“Yeah, Susan,” he said in a quiet voice. “Right.” And then he just looked at me funny.
But I was suddenly distracted by the distinct odor of smoldering, decaying death drifting in from somewhere. I looked around frantically, expecting to see one of the horribles looming ever nearer.
Augie must have seen the disgust on my face. “Yeah, stinks, eh? They finally got the Manitou incinerator working again. The bad news is we’re downwind, and that smell floats all the way down the river.”
I exhaled my relief. No supernatural assassins, just the honest scent of physical death and flames. “So, you sounded upset on the phone.”
“I am upset. Because of what happened to me. I was freaking out.”
“Just tell me.”
“I was up on the roof today, of this building. We have a leak up there, and I was checking it out. Then, the next thing I know, suddenly this big dude is behind me on the roof. At least the size of me. Maybe bigger. And he grabs me from behind and jerks me over to the edge of the building and holds me out, dangling there, off the edge of the building, like he’s going to drop me. And I’m not a small guy, mind you.”
“Did you see his face?”
“No, I couldn’t. He got me from behind. And as he’s holding me off the edge of the roof like I was nothing, he says that if I don’t do what he tells me to, he’s going to throw me down to the sidewalk and crack my head like an egg.”
“What did he want you to do?”
“To give you a message.”
“Me? What message?”
“If you are not out of Manitou immediately, then someone you care for is going to die.”
“Did he say who?”
“No. But he said these exact words. He said, ‘She’s going to pay for his sins.’ That’s exactly what he said.”
“Anything else?”
“Yeah. He said that he would enjoy doing it.” Then Augie added, “Do you know what any of this means?”
“I think so. Listen, I need you to get in touch with Detective Jennings.”
“Yeah, absolutely,” Augie said. “I need protection.”
I gave Augie Detective Jennings’s card and told him to call him right away. I didn’t know what shift Jennings was working, but I said that he was a good man and would be very interested in what Augie had to say.
Before I left Augie, I decided to ask him something. He had been in and out of jail and rehab too. Maybe he had heard something. So I took a chance.
“Have you even heard of some secret group here in the area called the Club?”
Augie’s eyes widened. “It was like some weird ghost story or something, so I thought it was just bull. But then I heard it was real. With somebody powerful who’s in charge. Could make things happen. Like magic. Except worse.”
“Was that person called the Chief?”
Augie eyed me. “How do you know about that?”
“Never mind. If you have any idea how I can find out who that person is, would you let me know?”
Augie promised he would. I told him to be safe and to leave a message for Detective Jennings immediately.
I could tell that I had Augie thinking. He said one last thing. “I might know a guy who could tell you about this Chief person. If he is willing to talk with you, what should I do?”
“Call me. Night or day. The sooner the better.”
On the way to my motel I called Jennings. There was no one else in the sheriff’s department that I could trust at that point. I left a detailed message on his voice mail that I thought Ashley’s life had been threatened and that it was because of me. I also described Augie Bedders’s conversation with me, emphasizing that he should expect a call from Augie any minute.
Then I left the same voice mail message for Ashley, but in big capital letters saying loudly that she needed to connect with me right away because she was in extreme danger, that someone wanted to kill her, and I would leave my cell on all night long. But, of course, true to her word, both of her cell phones went right to voice mail. That was all I could do. I had no idea where she lived. I felt quicksand under my feet.
At the motel, I went up the stairwell and right into my room, but I knew I couldn’t sleep. I paced, watched a little TV, and paced some more. Finally I sat down in the fake-le
ather chair and pulled out Elijah’s Bible. Eventually I must have fallen asleep in the chair, because the next thing I remember my cell was ringing at 3:04 a.m. It was Augie.
I tried to clear the fog in my head. “Talk to me, Augie.”
“I’ve got the guy. The guy who knows about the Chief.”
“Have him call me.”
“No. He doesn’t want that. Wants to meet you in person and tell you what he knows. Wants to meet right now. But somewhere safe. Where there is no chance of police surveillance or being bugged or whatever.”
“Do you have any idea where I can meet him?”
“Yeah. I know exactly the place. He wants me there too because he trusts me. You remember the old Opperdill Foundry?”
“Really? That place? It’s three in the morning.”
Augie was sure about it. “I used to be a building caretaker. I’d patrol the grounds and the building after Opperdill closed it. I’ve still got a key.”
It was agreed. We would meet in thirty minutes at the side door of the foundry next to the old guard shack.
I had already decided, whoever this Chief was, that any promise of his that Ashley would be spared if I would just leave town stunk like the Manitou landfill. I had to get to him before he could get to Ashley. I had failed to protect other people in my life. But not this time.
I made one final, frantic attempt to reach Ashley on her cell, describing where I was going, and who I was planning on meeting, and warning her about threats against her. Again, it went right to voice mail.
58
My car lights hit the long drive leading down to the Opperdill Foundry. But the rusty gate with the No Trespassing sign had already been swung open, so I headed straight down to the foundry complex, my high beams lighting the prickly weeds two feet high, which had the look of thorn bushes sprouting up from the cracks in the pavement. I could hear them scraping the underside of the Fairlane as I passed over them.
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