“Who are you?” he asked in his mind.
“You have already asked us that question.”
“You didn’t answer.”
“You have discovered many things that had remained hidden.”
“You’re behind all of that, aren’t you? You want to kill off our species.”
“Your species and ours come from a common root. We are extending the universal force that governs everything. We are nothing more than the organic support of that force, but it is not yet accessible to your reason. The time for the great harvest has come, Sentinel. Humanity will grow from this. Some will know omniscience.”
“And the others will know death?” Cooper asked.
“Evolution implies selection. The human elites will attain supreme wisdom,” the creature replied
“The elites? You already have your servants among men, of course. The great harvest is your work! You’re not the creators; you’ve come back to destroy life.”
“You are thinking without really knowing, Sentinel.”
“I don’t want to know anything about your so-called omniscience.”
“Your mind is like a drop of water drying on a rock, far from the ocean. You’re draining yourself into ignorance.”
“You won’t get anything from me. I’ll resist you until I die.”
“Open your eyes, Sentinel. You are already one of us.”
“You’re just a trick, an illusion.”
Suddenly, an unbearable pain shot through Eliott’s stomach, like the blade of a sword. He went down on one knee.
“You will carry out our work, whether you want to or not.”
He stood up and tried to form an ironic smile on his black face. “And if I refuse?”
“This is not within your capabilities.”
He felt another stab of pain, this time in his skull.
“We can make you an amorphous puppet, subject to our will. Is that what you want?”
This time, it was harder for him to get up. He legs were shaking. “What do you want from me?”
“You became what you are when Isolde, the Sentinel you killed, transferred the power of the Lineage to you. That night, she opened a crypt.”
“Yes, I remember. ‘Human blood spilled onto the black stone,’” he quoted. “She was actually performing an opening ritual.”
“The old paleographer taught you well,” the Elder said cruelly.
Cooper tried again to push back the force that surrounded him with darkness and was slowly closing in on his reason. But he soon realized that these creatures had so far let him do as he pleased. “Yes, the old man was right when he warned us of the danger you represent.”
“Stop resisting.”
“What the fuck do you want for me?”
“There is still one crypt to open: the last of them all. You will open it, and then you can take human form again if you wish—not before.”
32
Lauren left the police station and crossed the parking lot to get into an unmarked Ford Crown Vic the captain had provided. The old Grey Head Farm was eleven miles out on Bradford Road. A military car escorted her until she took a dirt road to the farm. The night was clear, and the moon soon brightened it even more. Lauren had the only clue Andrews had found: tire tracks in the mud on the dirt road leading to the farm. No one had taken impressions from the ground; there were only satellite photos. The photos dated from August 10 to 23. The dates corresponded with the fourth child abduction, that of little Christopher Elmer.
Lauren soon arrived in a vast, sparse expanse. Back in the day, these fields had been pasture for cattle. Nearly half a mile farther down were the remains of three large buildings and two sheds. She left the vehicle at a safe distance so no one would hear it, in case anyone was there. The tall grasses rustled and rippled in the moonlight like the waves of a silvery sea of plants. The scent of dried hay lingered despite years of neglect, and she could even hear cowbells still ringing as they hung in the stables. Gusts of wind rattled them while rushing through the dilapidated walls. Old weathered boards flapped and creaked. She stopped and checked her phone. There was still no message from Eliott—nothing for two days. She was starting to imagine the worst possible scenarios. Her heart tightened, and her hands went clammy at the thought of his possible capture. She pushed these painful visions from her mind and found the courage to keep walking toward the farm.
There was no sign of any presence around the ramshackle farm buildings. Old pickup truck bodies rusted away in a large shed with a sheet metal roof flapping noisily in the gusting winds. Piles of hay bales seemed to have been rotting there for the past fifty years.
The tire tracks Andrews had found led Lauren to a vehicle parked at the back of the shed, covered with a tarp. Lauren flipped on her flashlight and removed the tarp from the vehicle. It was an old Land Cruiser Wagon. The four-wheel drive contained nothing but a few tools. She swept the inside with the light beam; then she got in and thoroughly inspected the interior. Someone had driven the vehicle here at the time of the area kidnappings, carefully covering it with a tarp even though the shed had already been sheltering it. The driver hadn’t taken all these precautions just for maintenance purposes. Someone had tried to hide the vehicle—especially since this farm’s occupants had abandoned it more than fifty years ago. She got out of the car and looked for marks on the floor, but the boards covered with bits of hay didn’t tell her anything more. The farmhouse was practically leaning against the shed. She noted that someone had covered the doors and windows with boards, nailing them tightly in place. Nothing seemed to have moved since then. She forced open a door with a crowbar she found in the shed. The interior of the house was still in perfect condition. The beds in the rooms were made, and there were even logs in each of the fireplaces. Once she had methodically visited all the rooms, she had to face facts: the abducted children hadn’t stayed here. She inspected the stables and the other two buildings but found no evidence of any recent human presence. No one had used Grey Head Farm to hide the children.
Lauren was walking back to her vehicle when an image suddenly flashed in her mind: the toolbox in the back of the Land Cruiser. That box held all kinds of tools, intended for so many different uses, but the one that came back to her was a very specific tool. The helmet was similar to the ones construction workers wore, except it had a headlamp. This type of helmet had only one use: to work underground, probably in a mine. She remembered seeing it on top of the other tools in the box. That was why she noticed it right away. So the Land Cruiser’s driver had most certainly used it last. But there were no known mines on the site of the old Grey Head Farm. Lauren called up and carefully read the former owners’ access rights. She realized they had sold their land to CONSOL Energy for a substantial amount of money. The latter had also acquired a large seven-thousand-acre parcel of land adjacent to the Grey Head property. No coal mines appeared on Lauren’s map of operating sites in the area, and coal was the only fossil energy source CONSOL Energy was exploiting in Pennsylvania. But if the company hadn’t located a mine in the area, it also hadn’t acquired the parcels for no reason. Lauren figured that the prospectors had carried out extensive underground drilling and research and found coal deposits. They had then bought the land to mine it. So there must have been prospecting mines in the area, even if they didn’t appear anywhere on the official operating sites.
She went back down to the shed and took the helmet from the Land Cruiser. She then went out and searched for a path or trail in the vegetation that might lead her to the hypothetical prospecting mine site. Logically, if there was a mine, its entrance could only be downstream, in the valley. So she followed the only path that went down to the Kinzua River and walked along its banks, first toward the east, and then back in the direction she had come from. She was looking for the trace of a stream where drilling discharges from the mine site would have flowed into the river. She eventually found what she was looking for. Vegetation had partially covered it, but an old stream had flowed
into the river at this point. She made her way up the dry bed of yellow pebbles and tangled dead branches. About a mile upstream, she reached the spillway that came out of a concrete wall. She climbed up the slab and arrived at the base of the prospecting site. The entrance was overgrown with vegetation. She cleared a path to reach the main tunnel, which was sinking into the shadows. She put on the helmet and lit the lamp. On the left, she saw an out-of-order elevator shaft. So she took the stairs and cautiously began the descent, walking down the metal grid steps with her gun in her hand. On all sides, water trickled down the walls, which glistened in the glow of her lamp. The clues seemed to add up, she thought. This miner’s helmet was in the back of the truck. The satellite had observed the vehicle traveling between St. Marys and Grey Head Farm during a period that corresponded exactly to the last abduction. The tarp had covering the vehicle hidden in the shed . . . She was sure she was right.
When Lauren reached the mine’s bottom level, she followed the only gallery, which sloped gently downhill. Rooms dug on both sides of the corridor followed one another endlessly. Then, in the circle of light from her lamp, she saw a ball of colored cloth in a clump on the ground, partially covered with clay. As she got closer, she could see it was a child’s doll. She crouched down and picked it up. Moisture had worn and rotted the woolen toy. On the left was a room dug into the face of the rock. She stepped in, walking as quietly as possible, pointing her handgun in front of her. Absolute silence hung over the whole place. Lauren noticed another opening cut into a recess. She stepped forward and walked into a pestilential draft of air coming from the smaller cavern. The smell of death, as violent as a shock wave, struck her head-on. She entered the cranny and swept the inside with the lamp’s beam. Her hands were shaking. Wooden pallets lay scattered on the ground. Mattresses lay on rugs that in turn lay across the pallets. She crept closer. Under multicolored polar blankets, she could make out the elongated shapes of bodies. She lifted the blankets and found the children. Her heart constricted with the pain of her grief mixed with intense horror at the vision before her. The children looked like they were sleeping, huddled up against one another. Their faces were considerably thinner, almost skeletal. She leaned toward them despite the stench of putrefaction emanating from their immobile bodies. Then she heard breathing. It was noisy and irregular. Little lungs were still convulsively sucking in air. She panicked and felt around the shrunken bodies to remove the one she thought was still alive. She realized that two others were still breathing very faintly. They were near the end. She remembered each of their names.
“Ryan, Jaden, Iris, Timothy,” she called them like a mother.
Two of them stirred and began to whimper. Without her feeling them come, tears ran down Lauren’s cheeks.
Only little Iris remained motionless. Her eyes were frozen, and her doll-like face was white and cold. Timothy seemed to be the one who had retained the most life force. Lauren ran her hand through his curly hair.
The boy’s weak voice slowly rose from his half-open mouth. “Mom . . . my . . . is that you?”
“I’m Lauren, a friend of your mother’s. I’m here to take you home. You’ll see your mommy soon.”
He grabbed Lauren’s hand, which was warm and soft. He squeezed it as hard as he could. His own little hands were cold and damp.
“Thank you, Lauren,” he mumbled politely.
She took him in her arms and hugged him tightly against her.
“Here.” She held out an energy bar. “Eat this.”
He brought it to his mouth and managed to chew it the best he could. The other two little boys, Ryan and Jaden, opened their eyes in turn.
“Guys, I’m here to take you back home. Are you going to be able to walk?”
Timothy nodded, continuing to chew his protein bar. Lauren divided her remaining food between Jaden and Ryan and made them drink.
“Very good. We’re going to get going, guys.”
She gently wrapped Ryan and Jaden in the same blanket and tied it around her shoulders with a piece of rolled fabric. She got up and, keeping one hand free to hold her weapon, went up to the exit from the tunnels. Timothy followed her, holding on to her waist. When they were outside, Lauren decided to take the path that went directly up to the farm instead of going back along the stream. They reached the car in less than twenty minutes. She put the children in the back and took the road to St. Marys.
As she was driving, she was rethinking the investigation and trying to reconstruct the events. An image had an icy grip on her. Little Iris’s cold, white face, which she had just left at the bottom of the Grey Head mine, was etched in her mind.
Isolde Hohenwald had been a Sentinel.
The German civil registry office hadn’t made any mistakes. She really had been born on February 12, 1852. The power of these creatures had no doubt been the cause of such longevity. Before serving the Elders, Isolde had been a cruel, bloodthirsty witch, and perhaps that was why they had chosen her. She had then recruited the other two young women to satisfy her thirst for blood during the black masses she had continued to celebrate, in parallel with her Sentinel function. In her monstrous predatory form, Isolde alone had been able to remove the five children without leaving any evidence. Why choose such young people to sacrifice? Isolde’s unlimited cruelty might have been the only explanation.
That night, the ritual they had performed had also opened the crypt. But Isolde must have kept her secret to herself, and her two young recruits hadn’t known what she really was. There was no question that if Eliott hadn’t intervened, she would have devoured them without the slightest pity, just as he had.
As Lauren approached the city, many armored military vehicles were patrolling and performing civilian checks. The number of soldiers had almost doubled. As soon as she entered the satellite network reception area, she called the hospital to notify them of her arrival. She took the children to the emergency room, where a team of nurses took charge of their care. Captain Sherman had come over from the police station. He was waiting for her in the lobby.
“Excellent work, Agent Chambers. I’m going to contact your superiors tonight to tell them about your effectiveness in this matter. I’m sure they—”
“Do me just one favor, Captain Sherman,” she interrupted him.
“I’m listening.”
“What I’m going to say may seem crazy to you, but I’m going to ask you to believe me.”
“You know, Chambers, given what’s going on in the world right now, I’m willing to believe just about anything and everything.”
“Did you meet Agent Eliott Cooper when he arrived in St. Marys to begin his mission?”
The captain wondered for a moment what she was driving at.
“I did meet him, yes, during a brief conversation.”
“Do you think he was capable of committing the acts he is accused of?”
“No. I must admit that the accusations really surprised me. He impressed me as an honest and competent agent.”
“Captain, I need your trust and your help because what happened that night in the woods goes far beyond what you can imagine.”
“Very well. Let’s go to the station. We’ll be able to talk there.”
33
Eliott felt his predator’s instinct pushing him toward the city streets. He crossed a first avenue under the cover of darkness and then clung to the bricks of a facade and climbed to the top of the building. He straightened up and sniffed the icy air, searching for the scent of humans and the promise of flesh. He leaped from building to building, as agile as a cat, and came to the roof of a nightclub, probably a disco. He saw drunken soldiers come outside and get into their vehicle. Driven by an overwhelming need for nourishment, he clambered down to the ground and lurked in a recess that held dumpsters. From his hiding place, he could see the club’s parking lot. He didn’t have to wait long before he saw two young women leaving the establishment. They were staggering and shrieking with laughter, visibly drunk. Deep inside, he felt appreh
ensive about doing what he was about to do, but the force that compelled him surpassed what was left of his human will. The two young women were holding on to each other so they wouldn’t fall. He thought they wouldn’t feel anything he was about to do. They wouldn’t have time. Standing above them on a dumpster, he jumped without a sound and landed behind their car, swooping down on them like a shadow. He wrapped his powerful hands around their throats until he broke their necks. Then he dragged them behind the dumpsters to devour them on the spot. It took him no more than a minute. They were young and not very substantial. He regretted choosing them for his meal. He climbed back up to the rooftops and headed away from the city. The taste of their blood felt like a wound inside him. He couldn’t get used to it.
He returned to the cave where he had spent the previous night. His cell phone was no longer working, and he had no way to charge it.
“Lauren,” he whispered as he pictured her face in his mind.
But he knew he shouldn’t hope to see her again. His last metamorphosis was permanent. He would never return to his human appearance. His eyes grew misty, and thick, black tears trickled down and fell to the ground. His throat knotted, and he uttered uncontrolled growls. It was the suffering of a man tortured by grief expressed through the body of a monster. He crouched down in a corner and languished in misery.
“What do you miss in this pathetic world, Sentinel?” The evil voice of the Elder came back to inhabit him.
Eliott lifted his enormous head from his hands. “You don’t know anything about love!” he shouted in his mind.
“Love . . .” said the creature with a macabre laugh, “. . . is an illusion that has brought you to your ruin. Now human beings are asking for deliverance from their suffering. And if men suffer, it is because they do not know their inner nature.”
“What do you know about human nature?”
“We created you.”
“That explains the dark side of every man’s heart, the evil side that tends to dominate our actions. Now we have an explanation for the evil, and it’s you!”
The Essence of Darkness Page 26