Still, it was worth a shot. Perhaps he’d be able to bring the authorities something they couldn’t so easily refute.
From the window of the guest room, Denton located the Buick out on the street. It was a smooth dome. The ploughs had blocked it in with a two foot wall of compressed snow. At least, no one could read the license plate number and report it.
The light seemed too bright. The sky was a fierce blue and the sun reflected off the solid surface of white that was Bexhill. He turned back into the room and checked his watch. It was almost ten.
It had been remarkably easy getting into the house. The only problem had been slogging through the deep snow. Someone had left the garden gate open, so he didn’t have to shovel it out or climb over it. He was able to gain entrance by smashing a pane of glass next to the latch in the French doors. A cement garden ornament in the shape of a toad on one of the steps helped him with the window.
He wasn’t so lucky with his search. If Eddie had left anything, either the police had taken it, or he hid it too well. Two hours of ransacking every corner of the house produced nothing related to the case except a special edition of Philip J. Gasher’s collected works. The cover was all black except for a red fish eye that stared out at the viewer.
It was a newer publication than the one Danny had at the lodge, but it contained The Spreading Evil, just as he expected it would. At the end of Denton’s excruciating night, he had showered and then picked a room to bunk down in. He had read the story with drooping eyelids and wavering attention, before succumbing to his exhaustion.
The story was incredibly short and was written in a terribly pretentious style. The author seemed to be intentionally trying to make it seem archaic, even though the copyright was dated 1952. Denton had been surprised that anyone would have cared enough about it to even remember the tale, never mind being inspired by it to go on a murder spree.
The story followed the sheriff of a small town on the East Coast. In the beginning, he’s hiding in a room overlooking the town square afraid for his life. It then switches to a flashback where the sheriff and his deputy investigate a murder.
They actually don’t do any investigating. They just show up and find that this alcoholic has killed his wife. The guy’s covered in blood and screaming that the woman wasn’t really his wife; she was some sort of impostor.
In one of the most preposterous passages of the story, the narrator describes the murder’s assertions as a demon had taken possession of her form and wore her visage like a fine façade. What kind of sheriff spoke like that?
More strange things happen: other crimes, abnormal behavior, and a rumor of a meteor crashing in the woods. Very quickly things go all Invasion of the Body Snatchers and the sheriff is outnumbered by the aliens taking over the town.
It was aggravating how quickly the narrator deduced it was creatures from another world. Just because of a few chance things people say, suddenly the sheriff thinks, “Aha! It’s aliens!” How could some old man in a diner ordering meatloaf or a young boy wandering around the town in the middle of the night make anyone think they were being invaded by aliens? It was completely ridiculous.
It’s not long before everyone in town is a bunch of drones, except for the sheriff. And he’s holed up in the library. On the other side of the town square is the church. The aliens have replaced the crucifix with a giant red eye. Gasher springs that like it’s a huge shock, as though he thinks his readers are a bunch of monks from the Middle Ages who would tremble at the sacrilegious notion.
His big M. Night Shyamalan twist at the end is that he has been infected with the alien virus and it is only a matter of time before he turns into one of them. He has rigged the whole square with dynamite. He knows it won’t stop them because they’ve already spread all over the world, but he intends to kill himself and take out as many of them as he can in the process. And then, it abruptly ends.
“How stupid,” Denton had said, tossing the book onto the nightstand. It almost seemed that the inanity of the story was a bigger disappointment than not finding any of the Guerrilla’s notes. But before he could analyze his feelings, sleep had carried him away.
Downstairs, Denton checked to see if his pants were dry. After he’d searched the place, he had washed the vomit off his clothes in the kitchen sink. The cuff was still damp, but they were dry enough to put on. He had briefly considered checking if anything in Eddie’s dresser would fit him, but the thought of putting on someone else’s clothes disturbed him more than wearing his own dirty and soiled garments.
There wasn’t much in the way for breakfast. Most of the cupboards were empty. The fridge wasn’t much better. There was some spoiled milk and a bottle of flat soda, mustard, ketchup, and a jar of pickles—nothing Denton would consider edible, at least not for breakfast. Eddie must have lived off of take-out. In the end, he managed to scavenge a meager meal of instant coffee and Pop Tarts.
When he was ready to go, he checked to make sure he had his keys and his pills. The list wasn’t with his things. He had had left it in the living room Eddie used to surf the internet and practice killing zombies.
Carefully stepping over the books and CDs covering the floor, Denton made his way to the desk. He wondered if he should clean up the mess he had made in his effort to find some clues. Glancing at the junk and the empty shelves, it seemed too daunting a task. I’d be here until tomorrow morning.
The police had seized the computer, and all that was left on the desk was the monitor and a bundle of wires.
It had been about one in the morning when he had sat down there and studied the names. Without any hope of using the internet, Denton had relied on an old phone book he’d found in one of the drawers. Very carefully on the right-hand side of the sheet, he had added three addresses. He just hoped they were for the right people and still valid.
Denton folded the paper up and delicately placed it in his breast pocket. As he tucked it away, he noticed the half empty bottle of scotch at the back of the desk. The spike in his temple pressed in a little deeper, despite the best efforts of the pain killers. Perhaps it would be best to leave the liquor behind.
How much of last night’s confusion had come from that bottle?
He was going to need a clear head if had any hope of finding some proof of his suspicions. Maybe one of the people on the list would have something he could show the police. But first he wanted to check out Mt. Nazareth. It was a long shot, but as Denton dug out his car and the cool tranquil day revolved around him, it was as if that mountain and all its legends of devils were calling out to him.
Chapter 33
Mt. Nazareth
EVEN THOUGH THE SNOW had stopped hours ago, the roads were still a mess. Even where the ploughs had passed, the streets were treacherous and cars crawled along to avoid accidents. It only got worse up by the State Park. Denton steered with white knuckles, maneuvering around the bends. The tires drove on pillows of snow and never seemed to make contact with the asphalt. He was certain that if he hit the brakes, he would end up over the guardrail, tumbling down the embankment.
All that time in the car, with no better company than the incessant whine of homogenized Christmas Carols, Denton began to think about what he was going to find up there. Or rather, what he wouldn’t find.
From the moment the old man in the shelter had mentioned Mt. Nazareth, he had felt its pull. There was a resonating connection between the man known as Ray and the cow mutilator. Demons in the woods, devils in the trees. But now in the clear light of day, his certainty deserted him.
Whatever reason the drifter had to go there, it had nothing to do with that disturbed young man who built that shack. The kid had probably chosen to worship his bull demon because of the folk tales people told about the place. The stories had mixed in with his own delusions and formed an outlet for his psychosis.
Besides, the old man never said that Ray had mentioned devils t
here, only that he was going to live on the mountain. And he never even went there. He stayed behind and went mad instead. Then the Bexhill Guerrillas had dismembered and burnt him. If anything Nazareth would have been a refuge if he had gone. He would still be insane, but alive.
Denton thought about the timeline. Had the boys gone back for him that very night, after the trip to the hospital? Or had they plotted and planned, striking days or weeks later? At first in his confusion, Denton had wondered how it was possible that they were already on the lookout for the eights—or the star and the moon, as they called it—when Ray was the first one with the disease. But even though he was the first to be infected, Alfred Reynolds hadn’t been the first victim. Agatha Radcliff must have already been dead on that night, and Danny was already weaving Gasher’s tale in with reality to ease the guilt and spread the paranoia. Then along came that man running onto the road with blood pouring from his head, and a story about a devil attacking him and circles of hell drawn under the train bridge.
Denton got as far as the road would allow. The way forward was impassable by car. He got out and started making his way on foot through the snow. The only indication that there was a road at all was the uniform border of trees on either side of a strip of white.
What am I supposed to do now?
Even if by some miracle there was an answer, a clue, one iota of evidence, he couldn’t search the whole mountain. He wouldn’t have been able to do that even in the summer, when it wasn’t shrouded in fresh snow. It was too big, too impossible.
Perhaps if he just went to were the shack had been. If he could just appease his own superstitions and make sure there was nothing out of the ordinary there. Then he could call it a day and go back.
It all looked so different: the leafless trees, the blanket of white. Would he even be able to tell where the shack had been? How far down the road was it anyway? In the 4X4, the ride had been five, maybe ten minutes. The trooper couldn’t have been going more than thirty. So what was that? Five miles or so? He’d never make it five miles. Not through fourteen inches of snow. It was a fool’s errand. And just because he was the biggest fool of all, it didn’t mean he had to carry it out.
He turned around looking at the woods. They seemed far more beautiful than they did haunted—heavenly rather than hellish. A great sense of peace filled them. Tension drained from Denton’s shoulders as he relaxed and breathed in the cool, bright air.
All this was to avoid going to the hospital, he realized. Stopping at the shelter, searching the Radcliff house, coming up here, it was all just to delay what he knew would happen.
The police would completely dismiss what he had to say about the disease. No one would believe him that the infected were joining up and conspiring against the town. They would lock him up and study him like some curious specimen. His future would be filled with therapists, psychiatrists, group counseling, and anti-psychotics. They’d probably prescribe thioridazine first and then switch him to haloperidol when that didn’t work.
Perhaps that’s what scared him the most. He knew what they would do. He knew exactly what was to come. And as the virus ate away at his brain and eroded his personality, they would treat him like any other lunatic. They would humor him and ask him about his feelings and his parents. They would even give him crayons, so he could draw as many eights as he wanted.
All the while, the illness would be spreading—stealing the sanity of more and more of the town. It would be moving to other towns, other states, other countries. Until there was nowhere to be safe from it.
No place for Linda to be safe from it.
Up on the ridge there was movement. He wasn’t alone.
He shielded the sun from his eyes and tried to get a better view. At first, he couldn’t see anything, then the figure took two steps and came out from behind a tree. It had horns.
The head turned and came into profile. A fearsome snout exhaled steam into the air. The breath looked black against the brilliant azure sky. The figure took another slow, cautious step and stopped. Its legs were long and spindly. Then in a blink of an eye, it moved from stillness into action. As if it heard some silent warning, it sprang off over the rise.
Denton released the breath he was holding with a deep sigh. He almost laughed.
“Just a deer,” he said aloud, to reassure himself.
Back at Cornell, he had taken a course called Myth and Psychology. It was one of the standard components of fairy tales and old legends that a hero would encounter a stag in the forest and follow it. It would lead him to a clearing in the woods and then transform and reveal some mystery.
But this wasn’t a fairy tale and Denton wasn’t a hero. It was just a deer that ran off because it got spooked.
In spite of every sensible reason, Denton began climbing up the ridge. As he struggled up the incline, he rationalized his actions: I’ll just take a look from the top of the hill. One look, then I’ll head back to Bexhill.
He wouldn’t search the park or even attempt to find the spot the shack had been. He would just get a high vantage and see if anything strange caught his eye. It would be just as irrational not to go up because the deer had passed that way, he told himself.
The snow that covered the slope was bad, but what made the going really tough were the wet leaves under the surface. Like a layer of slime, they fought to trip him up every time one of his boots sank too deep and came into contact with them. He cursed as he pulled himself up the hill using the trunks of saplings for support.
At the top, the ground immediately dropped back down, leaving only a narrow ridge. Denton stood there and gaped at the vista before him. The stag had led him to a glade.
At the bottom of the hill was a clearing, roughly circular and surrounded by trees. Nothing broke the silent plane, except for a trail of hoof prints. The deer was already at the far side and making for the security of the forest. Unlike fairy tales, it wasn’t waiting around to talk.
Denton’s wonder was soon replaced with harsh self-awareness: he was chasing ghosts up here. What was he hoping to find: a demon dancing around in the woods? A smoking crater with a glowing meteorite embedded in it? A talking animal with the answers to the riddle of the virus?
It was only a State Forest. It was woodland, nothing more.
It was time to stop finding distractions and be a man. There was nothing left to do but go back and face the music.
Is that a cabin down there?
He peered down. Yes, there was a structure off to the right of the glade. Who would build something all the way out here?
There was an answer to that, which he didn’t want to think about. But that boy was locked up in a mental institution. It couldn’t be him.
Denton slowly picked his way down the slope, diverting away from the deer tracks to head toward the cabin. Going down was much easier than the trip up and he soon found himself on flat ground, walking level with the building. The gray wood blended in with the trees, making it difficult to make out the details.
The closer he got, the clearer it became that it was only a shed. It was small, only about eight feet wide and ten feet long. There was one door in the front and no windows. Stenciled on the door was the State’s seal and “MN0053.”
It must be used by park services and probably filled with tools.
A perverse idea entered his head that he should knock. What if someone was in there?
And in the moment as he examined it, he was certain there was someone inside, someone who wanted Denton to enter. It was like a voice whispering in his ear.
Denton rubbed his face with his hands. What was happening to him? He had to fight this thing inside of him trying to rob him of his sanity. It was a tool shed. There was no one there.
Next to it, he came upon a trail that proved to be a much easier route to the road and his car than a return trip over the hill would have been. He didn’t relish the tho
ught of heading back to civilization, but it was time.
On the drive home, the Christmas music finally got too much for him, and he began cycling through the stations, until he came upon one discussing the storm.
“…estimates that four hundred people are still without power. Northeast Electric says that it is hoping to have it restored to all the homes in town by this evening, but isn’t making any promises for those in the rural areas. In the meantime, stay warm and stay safe. And keep your dial tuned here to WBNZ, Bexhill’s all 90’s music station.”
There was a prolonged organ intro, then electric guitars kicked in. Denton’s finger sought the scan button, but he stopped himself and brought his quivering hand back to the steering wheel.
By all strange fates, he actually knew this song. It was the Afghan Whigs. Linda used to play the album in her small apartment in Brooklyn.
He was in town for a date. Linda was making dinner for him for the first time. Mussels steamed in white wine seemed so exotic at the time. The most adventurous seafood Denton had eaten before then was shrimp. She stood slightly hunched over the stove with both hands on the pan’s handle, shaking the pile of shells and sauce over the burner. She swayed her head gently back and forth to the music. Her short, light brown hair fluttered in the air and around her face. Denton leaned against the counter taking another sip of the Pinot Gris, as the stereo sang about saying goodbye and disappearing into the night.
The lyrics, with their hints of revenge, began to bleed in with his recollections of the Gasher story. That was what the sheriff was trying to do in the end: kill himself before he was gone and get revenge on those that had destroyed everything he loved.
He picked up speed on the highway. Pieces of a plan rapidly began to form in his head, like a puzzle he had just deciphered the key to.
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