Primal Fear

by Boucher, Brad

  “It begins with death.”

  Harry’s eyes widened. He felt himself swaying on his feet for a moment, like a man on the verge of collapse. His eyes locked on to John’s, read the determination in them.

  “Let him go, Ben,” Harry said. “Just . . . just let him go.”

  Ben hesitated for a moment but ultimately did as Harry had ordered, releasing John’s arm slowly, almost reluctantly. He stood in the middle of the hall as John smoothed the wrinkles out of his sleeve, watching Harry for some sign of how to proceed.

  “Take the other four-wheel drive,” Harry told him. “Find out from Dana who still needs to be picked up and see if you can round them up. I’ll head out there in my own truck.” His voice was subdued, his tone heavy with defeat, and he could only imagine what Ben must think of him at that moment.

  He would probably think Harry was losing it. And maybe he’d be right.

  Because the string of foreign words John had just uttered were the same ones that had spilled from the mouth of Marty Slater’s corpse, just before it had attacked him. Word for word, syllable for syllable; each phrase was identical.

  “You just bought yourself another ten minutes, Mr. Artaqua,” Harry told him. “But I’ve got an appointment to keep.”

  “I could go with you. We could talk along the way.”

  Harry thought about it for a few seconds and then nodded. That would certainly help to hurry things along, to make up some of the lost time. And, if nothing else, John Artaqua would be an extra pair of eyes at the search site.

  “I can’t guarantee what time we’ll be back. Might be a long day. If you’ve got somewhere you’ve got to be, you’d better think twice about this.”

  John shook his head. “My only appointment was with you.”

  “Okay, then. Let’s move out.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Ten minutes later, they were travelling along Westside Road, moving at a steady clip despite the sharp curves every fifty yards or so. Harry knew the back roads well, and was using a series of secondary streets to shave a bit of time off of their trip.

  Ben had gone on ahead of them in the station’s only other four wheel drive vehicle, an unmarked Chevy truck, and had agreed to pick up two more of Harry’s off-duty officers on his way to the quarry. Now, bumping across the small wooden bridge that spanned Tabor Creek, Harry had the perfect opportunity to question what the young Aleut had come to Glen Forest to tell him.

  John had said little so far, as if unwilling to reinforce Harry’s impression of him as some kind of fanatic. Instead, he touched upon his own background, explaining his role at the University of Montreal and the extent of his education.

  As he listened, Harry found himself resenting his earlier behavior. He’d been in a hurry, sure, but that had been a poor excuse to let his anger get the better of him. He knew he’d come off as narrow-minded, a man who would probably refuse to listen to anything that didn’t fall easily into the scope of his own beliefs or perceptions. Now, he tried his best to focus clearly on everything John had to say. It soon became clear that John was an intelligent young man, not at all the type of person to rave madly about something as unlikely as an Indian or Eskimo curse.

  In the course of their conversation, Harry surprised himself by sharing some of the information on the Slater investigation, but only when it seemed relevant. Of course, he held back most of the more disturbing details of the case, but he did outline the reasons behind their search of the quarry.

  “Then it’s already started,” John said, his gaze vacant as he watched the woods roll by on either side.

  “Something’s started. I can’t say what just yet, and I don’t know whether it has anything to do with your legends. Whatever it is, it’s not good. I do know that.”

  “Believe me, there’s nothing I would prefer more than to tell you the legend is untrue. As terrible as this sounds, it would be easier to say what you have here is just a simple act of murder.”

  “But?”

  “But I would be lying. I can feel it in my gut.”

  “Tell me, then. What is this legend you’re so worried about? What’s supposed to happen?”

  John sighed, shaking his head. “For the past ten minutes, I’ve been trying to think of a way to put it all into words. I want to find a way to explain it to you without sounding as crazy as I did in your office.”

  He took a deep breath and then began to unwind his tale like a man describing one of his most dreaded personal fears. “In my culture, among my people, it is believed that the village shaman—a bit like the Indian medicine man—possesses great power. To heal, to make predictions, to find food or shelter, even to commune with the dead on matters of importance to the village. And he does all of this, as the belief goes, by contacting a familiar within the spirit world. A spirit guide.”

  “Are you going to tell me you’re a shaman, John?”

  “No, I’m no shaman, I’m just a student. But I’ve been studying the beliefs of my people since childhood. As a boy, I grew up in an Eskimo village. The villagers held a belief in the shaman as fierce as it was a hundred years ago. They still do, even today. Modern technology and all the breakthroughs of science haven’t stolen that belief from them. In many ways, they’ve made it stronger. With all of the problems the world faces today, it’s often easier to place one’s faith in the old ways. The ways of our ancestors.”

  He fell silent for a moment, but Harry didn’t prod him, confident that the rest would come when John was ready.

  “Four days ago, I met a man in Montreal who is the direct descendant of one of the most powerful shaman that has ever lived. This man I met, he’s called Mahuk, and he’s dying. More than two hundred years ago, his ancestor, a shaman named Jha-Laman, began a series of events which now—today—is coming back into being.”

  “I don’t understand. The one who’s dying—”

  “Mahuk.”

  “Is he the cause of what’s supposed to happen?”

  “Not exactly, no. He’s involved, just as you and I are now involved, but not in the way you might think. He’s the catalyst through which the past is about to emerge. It’s been held back for generations, but now its time is about to pass.”

  Before Harry could comment, John continued, turning to peer at him with a self-conscious frown. “I know how I must sound, how ridiculous this must all seem to you. I must strike you as one of those religious nuts on TV, rambling on about the fury of God and the fires of hell. In truth, in all honesty, there’s nothing further from my mind. A week ago, if someone had told me exactly what I’m telling you, I probably would have laughed in their face. Now, after seeing what I’ve seen these past few days, I’ve been forced to accept that these legends are true.”

  Harry fought to suppress a shiver, John’s words coming back to him. The image of Slater’s animated corpse invaded his mind. That, more than anything else, was what was forcing him to keep an open mind.

  “Is anything wrong?”

  Harry snapped back to the present. He glanced at John, shook his head. “Just trying to take all of this in. It’s some pretty wild stuff.”

  John studied him for a moment. “You’ve seen something yourself, haven’t you? Something that, to your mind, is unacceptable. What was it?”

  Harry began to voice a denial, but John cut him off. “I can see fear on you like a shroud, sheriff. It’s even with you now, and I can tell it’s eating away at you.”

  “I thought you said you’re not a shaman.”

  “You don’t have to be a shaman to see something this obvious. What did you see?”

  Harry felt a sudden stab of impatience and struggled to bite back on it before it could blossom. “No,” he said, “this is supposed to be you talking and me listening. It’s been fascinating, but so far you haven’t given me anything to make me want to believe you. You’re going to have to do better than that.”

  “Okay. Would you like to know how I found you? How I knew to come to this place? Haven’
t you been wondering about that?”

  “Yeah, of course I have.”

  John paused and licked his lips, his eyes never leaving Harry. “Yesterday, when I was flying to the states from Montreal, I fell asleep at some point during the flight. Now, believe me when I say that I never sleep on a plane. It’s just something I seem incapable of doing.”

  “Afraid of flying?”

  “Not so much flying, not really. I just still feel kind of . . . I guess you could just say it bothers me more than I’d like. Anyway, like it or not, I fell asleep, and started to dream. In that dream, I saw a man, very alarmed at something I couldn’t make out or understand, but he seemed to be scared out of his wits. He was in a uniform, just like yours. The patch on his sleeve read, quite clearly, ‘Glen Forest Police Department’, the same town whose name is circled on Mahuk’s map. That’s how I knew to come here.”

  “You can’t possibly believe that—”

  “The man I saw in the dream was you, sheriff. The details were very clear. I’m positive I’m not mistaken. I’m convinced the dream was really a message, designed to get me to the right place, to find the right person. That person, apparently, is you. You’re as involved in all of this as I am, whether you want to believe it or not.”

  Harry held his tongue. He’d never believed in the power of premonition before, but John’s words had set loose a sudden feeling of fear inside of him, one that was strangely reminiscent of how he’d felt under Slater’s dead and sightless stare.

  “That Aleut saying you came out with at the station—‘It begins with death’. How did you know to say that to me?”

  “It’s what I was trying to tell you in my dream, but you couldn’t understand me.”

  “What was I doing in this dream?”

  “I don’t know. Nothing, really. Talking on the phone, I think, and then when you turned around—”

  “Where was I?”

  “Some sort of office. It wasn’t yours, not the one I was in today. A lot of books, a couple of filing cabinets, some pictures on the desk.” John sat up, his voice rising. “In fact, when you turned around, when I first saw your face, you knocked one of the frames off the desk. I don’t remember what was in the picture, but I can definitely remember you knocking it over.”

  Harry slowed the truck, down-shifting until they’d come to a complete stop. He sat there for a long moment, the truck idling in the middle of the road, his mouth hanging open. Half a mile up the road, he could see the turn-off to Buckner Drive, the access road that would take them straight to the gates of the Stratham Granite Works.

  When at last he broke the silence, his voice was low, his tone so soft that John had to lean across the front seat to hear him. “What time did all of this happen to you yesterday? The vision, I mean.”

  “Around three or four, maybe even a little later. The flight left at two-thirty, but I can’t be sure what time I fell asleep.”

  Harry nodded, his expression grave. “The office you saw in the dream belongs to a friend of mind. Delbert Hughes. He’s the county coroner. I was there at pretty much the same time you say you had the dream. First I used the phone.” He turned and looked at John. “And then I knocked one of the pictures off the corner of Del’s desk.”

  “There’s more, isn’t there? Something you’re not telling me.”

  “Yeah, there’s more. More than I want to get into right now. We’re almost there. But I’ll tell you something: once we get through this search, whether we find anything or not, you and I are going to sit down and have a long talk.”

  “And then you’ll tell me what really happened yesterday? It might be important.”

  “I’ll tell you everything, don’t worry. But you’d better be ready to return the favor. I want to hear about this legend of yours, from start to finish.”

  “It’s a deal,” John said.

  Harry put the truck back into gear and they moved on, silence falling between them once more as they approached the final turn to the Stratham.

  The search went on for more than four hours, breaking up just as the last flickers of daylight were fading in the western sky. The snow had started to fall shortly after two ‘o’ clock, barely half an hour after they’d begun spreading out among the woods surrounding the quarry. Little more than a light flurry at the outset, the storm had gained momentum as the day wore on. By the time Harry and Captain Brochu had decided to call it quits for the night, four inches of snow already covered the ground.

  Worse than the cold and the ground-cover, however, were the powerful gusts of wind that rose up repeatedly throughout the afternoon. Visibility was poor enough as it was; the high winds reduced the conditions to near white-out, buffeting the search party with swirling snow and wind chill temperatures well below zero.

  For this reason, the team was instructed to maintain a distance of thirty yards from the mouth of the quarry itself at all times. A single misguided step in zero visibility at the edge of the granite pit was all it would take to lose a good man forever.

  In all, they’d managed to round up thirty-two men, including John Artaqua, who seemed to take the poor conditions in stride. He’d offered his help immediately after they’d arrived at the quarry, a gesture Harry was grateful to accept.

  Now, in the dimness of the day’s last light, as Harry led his four man party back towards the rendezvous point, their efforts seemed futile to him, their hard work ending in failure as darkness overtook them. He trudged through the fresh snow, trying to choose his steps carefully on the uneven ground and doing his best to keep his discouragement at bay. He was certain each of his men felt the same way, but as their leader, he wanted to set a positive example by keeping everything in perspective.

  “We got a good start,” he called back over his shoulder, where Charlie, John and one of Brochu’s men, Keith Blackwell, followed him in a rough line. He raised his voice to fight the rising wind. “If this storm blows over, we’ll get an early start in the morning, take advantage of as much daylight as we can.”

  He saw Charlie nodding and Blackwell flashed him a quick thumbs-up. Only John didn’t seem to hear, his eyes cast downward, his pace slackening. Harry turned away from them, back to the bitter wind.

  In the next few minutes, as Harry checked John’s progress twice over his shoulder, he saw that the young man had fallen even further behind. He was bringing up the rear now, and the gap between him and the rest of the party was steadily widening.

  Harry wondered if the elements were finally getting to him. He’d seemed immune to them all day; while everyone else had griped about the cold and the wind throughout the afternoon, John had gone about his duties in complete silence.

  Harry came to a halt, waited a moment for Charlie and Blackwell to move up beside him. “You two go on ahead,” he told them. “Follow this path out to the next clearing and then bear right at the work shed. That’ll put you in line with the rendezvous point. I’ll be right behind you.”

  Charlie nodded and moved off, the beam of his flashlight casting an eerie light through the swiftly falling snow.

  This time, when Harry looked back, John had come to a complete stop just off the path they’d been following. His face was turned downward, towards the earth between his feet. He pulled off his gloves and began to dig something out of his pocket.

  Harry signaled with his flashlight, but got no response. “John,” he called out, “what the hell are you doing? Let’s go.”

  John didn’t even look up, his eyes remaining stubbornly fixed to the same spot on the ground, as if he’d become rooted there.

  When Harry approached him, he still didn’t move, his attention riveted now on something in his hands, something Harry couldn’t quite make out. He shined his flashlight on it, but John’s hands had encircled the object and its shape remained a mystery.

  “What are you doing?” Harry asked. “We have to head back.”

  John shook his head, not bothering to meet Harry’s gaze.

  Harry tried again. “
Put your gloves back on. You’re going to get frostbite. Jesus, what’s wrong with—”

  “Right here,” John said, his voice filled with sudden enthusiasm. “It’s right here. I can feel it.” He raised his head, facing Harry at last, and the look in his eyes was completely unsettling. He looked like a man who’d just glimpsed the impossible, his face flushed and his eyes shining.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “This is it. This is where they buried it.”

  Harry stepped in closer, dropping the beam of his flashlight to inspect the ground at their feet. There was a slight depression but nothing more, hardly an indication that something had been tucked away beneath the surface.

  “The ground’s frozen solid, John. Nobody buried anything here, at least not recently.”

  Again, John shook his head. “No, it’s here. I’m positive.”

  “One of the kids? Are you sure?”

  “Not one of the kids, no. But they’re connected to this spot somehow. I don’t know how, but they’re definitely—”

  He broke off, his head suddenly turning to the right, his eyes scanning the dense woods that surrounded them.

  It had finally occurred to Harry to ask John how he knew that someone—or something, as he’d said—had been buried there. But before he could pose the question John was moving again.

  “There’s another way in,” John said and headed off to the right, into the woods.

  Harry reached out to stop him, his gloved hand slipping off of John’s coat before he could get a firm grip. By the time he turned to try again, John was off and running, rushing blindly into the forest.

  It only took Harry a second to assess John’s direction.

  In just under half a mile, if John didn’t alter his course, he would run straight off the edge of the granite quarry and into the pit itself.

  Steeling his nerve, Harry went after him.

  Chapter Fourteen

  “He’s heading due west, straight toward the quarry,” Harry shouted, thumbing the walkie-talkie’s send button as he ran head-long through the woods.