by Rusty Ellis
“Thank you, sister.”
Megan offered her arm and Anna grabbed her with both hands. Anna rested her head on Megan’s shoulder and the two walked in silence to the cabin.
Megan finished tucking Anna into her bunk and stepped back outside. She glanced around to see if anyone was watching, the side-effect of being nervous and knowing what she was about to do. The other members of the Community were scattered with most of them involved in some chore or assignment related to Community improvement. She nodded at the few individuals walking by the cabin, but was careful to avoid encouraging more than a nod, not wanting to end up in a conversation that would delay her.
The trail back to the Enlightenment Circle was empty. Without Adam’s presence, there was no need to visit the site. He was the focal point of the circle. Without him, it was a circle of trimmed logs arranged in a round pattern. Adam was the spark, the draw, he electrified the clearing for his believers. Megan looked at the circle. Empty. No believers. No Adam. If they could hear her true view of the Enlightenment Circle, she would surely get thrown out of the Community.
Have they ever thrown anyone out?
If it weren’t for Haley, she would test out her theory and see if they’d actually throw her out. She laughed and shook her head. If it weren’t for Haley, she’d be back home and at work today. Megan wasn’t sure if either were still there—work and home.
Oh, Haley, what have you done?
She glanced once again at the center of the Enlightenment Circle. In her mind, it was a shoddy stage. It provided no inspiration and was a central spot for Community entertainment. Its only value to her was its starting point leading to Adam’s cabin—and Haley, she hoped.
Megan instinctively looked toward the spot where she had seen the man in the uniform earlier. She leaned forward and peered into the trees, making sure he wasn’t still there. Seeing nothing but trees and bushes, she looked one last time around the circle to make sure no one was there. She turned back and locked onto the path leading into the woods. She took a deep breath and marched toward the spot where the path met the woods and hopefully ended at the cabin and Haley.
15
The pancakes were as good as Frank had bragged. Chase had added the runny-yolk egg on top of the stack on Frank’s recommendation, and partly in honor of Alice. With a full tank of gas and a full stomach, Chase was ready to do a little recon around the edges of the compound.
He’d learned from Millie—by way or her customers and their over-willingness to create some small-town news—that there was a large cabin on the northeast corner of the HLC property.
The number of prefab logs being trucked up to the property had amazed the locals. A local hunter had seen the cabin and made the mistake of getting too close. His version of the story ended in a Rambo-like standoff; though Millie told Chase it was more than likely, the man ran like a jackrabbit at the sign of the ‘polo guys’—a loving title the locals gave to the HLC security staff.
Chase decided the cabin was a good place to start for answers. He figured the guy in the backseat of the SUV requiring a bottle of water would likely call the large structure home. And if not, he would find out what the cabin was being used for anyway.
His last stop was at the local real estate agent’s office, if you could call the location an office. He was the only game in town and didn’t worry about the outward appearance of his office—again, according to Millie. Chase acted interested in moving to Crouch and was immediately presented with a fistful of property flyers.
“I’m a little worried about resale value of the property, you know, with that one group living up here.”
The man acted as if he didn’t know what Chase was talking about. Chase assumed it was his attempt at preserving the property values of his clients, and more importantly, his future commissions.
“You know, the HLC, I think that’s what you folks call it,” Chase grinned as the man looked caught.
“No, no, that doesn’t affect the market values of properties around here. It’s a great time to buy. The interest rates are still pretty low, but they’re climbing fast.”
“Did you sell that property?”
The man’s look of guilt turned to nausea.
“Listen, I’m not here to bust your chops about it. It’s strictly numbers and business. Can you print me off an old listing for the property so I can see the sell price and the exact location of the property?”
The man slipped behind his computer and tapped on the keyboard. His inkjet printer went to work humming and spitting out pages. After the last page printed, the man grabbed the stack and handed them to Chase.
“Thank you. I’ll be in touch,” Chase said.
The man quickly stuck out his hand. Chase thought it was for a handshake but noticed a business card in the man’s hand. Chase took the card and tapped it to the bill of his camouflage ball cap, an unceremonious salute.
Chase left the realty office and walked back to his truck. He climbed in and dropped the stack of papers and business card on the seat next to him. He picked up the top five sheets of paper and looked at the HLC property. The original list price on the property was $470,650. A pretty penny for a church group needing a hideaway. He switched pages and looked at the outline of the property drawn over a satellite picture. Definitely a sizable chunk of land.
He picked up his phone and looked at a map to see how far of a hike he was looking at to make it to the cabin in the property's corner. Looking back and forth from his phone to the paper he figured it was just under a mile hike from the nearest road. He could avoid the front gate to the HLC by staying on the Crouch side of the Middle Fork Payette until cutting across even with the northern boundary of the HLC property.
Chase zoomed in on the map on his phone and tapped the satellite view. He could see a small patch of cleared land, a rocks-throw west of the northeast corner of the HLC. Zooming closer he could see what looked like a small cabin or house on the clearing. The home wouldn’t be hard to skirt. The last thing he wanted to do was trespass and shake up any locals. Especially along the HLC perimeter.
16
The path through the woods was clearly worn. The trees and bushes butted up to the edge of the dirt path, and in some parts made Megan duck or walk on one side of the path or the other. The path was barely enough for one person, but not wide enough for two people to walk shoulder-to-shoulder.
Megan pictured Adam walking ahead of his latest choice from the Enlightenment Circle and guiding her by the hand. His promise of guiding her to the Holy Garden stuck in Megan’s head. Adam made good on his promise of guiding the young girl. The only question was to what end.
Megan’s attention went back and forth from the woods ahead to the path below her feet. The way the path twisted in some areas made it difficult to follow without keeping your eyes on the tamped dirt below. The path bent back and forth in a natural way, as if it were carved around the existing woods and not cut through the woods. Her first thought was that this could be Adam’s connection and respect for nature. Her second thought made more sense. The curves in the path kept a person on the path from having a direct view to the ‘fabled cabin’ up ahead. You had to commit to the whole journey to catch a glimpse.
All in or no payoff.
A chirping echoed to Megan’s left, birds being disturbed or surprised by something, or someone. She paused and listened. Growing up with a father and brother who were hunters taught her birds called out to voice a warning of concern or change to their environment. Birds didn’t just start chattering without reason, let alone fly away. Something spooked them.
She looked toward the chirping and wings flapping. She heard them continue to complain about being uprooted from wherever they had roosted. The sound petered out as they must have given up and took to flight. Megan continued to listen for the cause of their retreat. Nothing, silence.
Quit being so jumpy! she told herself.
Turning her attention back to the path, Megan plodded forward, turning
sideways in certain areas where the forest attempted to retake the path. Partly to avoid scrapes, more so to avoid announcing her travel.
The path in front of her brightened through the trees. She was getting closer. A tingle ran up her spine, sprinting from her waist up the right side of her neck. She drew up her shoulders to ebb its chilling effect. Megan felt her body tense and noticed her fists were clinched. Her steady gait now turned to evenly paced steps as the light in the trees ahead of her continued to brighten.
She made one last turn on the trail and stopped. The trees cleared to expose the fabled cabin standing ominous in the center of a small clearing. It looked out of place, more suited for a resort town, not a religious leader’s humble retreat.
As Megan soaked in the grounds surrounding the cabin, she noticed a blur of motion on the porch. The front door opened and a burly man in a black polo stepped out. Megan recognized him immediately—the man staring at her at the Enlightenment Circle!
She watched as the man shut the door behind him and strode along the porch to her left. He reached up to the mic on his chest and squeezed the small black box while speaking down into it. She couldn’t hear what he was saying, but he was taking turns speaking and listening to the person on the other end.
An enormous picture window spanned the distance from the front door to where the man now stood. The early afternoon sun bounced its rays off the glass, leaving a glare at an angle from where Megan was standing. She could see movement beyond the glass but couldn’t make out anything other than that. She leaned to her left, then her right—the view inside the window seemed to clear up a tad to her left. She needed to get closer.
On her tippy-toes, she skirted the brush and low-hanging branches on the trees. Every two to three feet she would stop and look at the porch to see if the man was still there.
She worked her way about 12-feet into the brush from the path and stopped again. She looked again at the porch and could see the man standing in the same spot, still conversing into his mic. She stepped closer to the edge of the tree line separating the forest and the clearing. The glare on the window had cleared enough for her to make out the shapes in the room.
There were several girls walking back and forth in the room. Megan could make out a few faces, none of them familiar. She lowered her stance and crept a foot closer to the edge of her wooded concealment. She squinted intently at the faces and could make out the girl’s features and faces a tinge clearer. None of them appeared to be older than 21.
Girls, not women.
Two girls were standing close to the window engaged in an animated conversation. The back of one girl was square to the window’s surface. Her dishwater blonde hair glistened in the sun. Megan watched as the girl hugged the girl in front of her and stepped toward a different girl. Her movement left the other girl standing in front of the window, staring out at the wooded area surrounding Megan.
“Haley?” Megan whispered.
The girl took a step closer to the window and rested the palms of her hands on the glass and leaned forward, staring into the wooded area.
Haley! Megan screamed inside.
A jolt of instinct and energy seized Megan’s body, and she fought to hold her ground. Every inch of her begged to run to the cabin and her daughter. Megan reached out and grabbed two fistfuls of branches and pine needles, a vain attempt to find something to keep her from sprinting forward.
She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. Then another. She shook the haphazard thought of sprinting to Haley—acting on instinct—and instead scrambled to come up with some sort of plan. Her instinct would ultimately fail her and end in her being stopped and possibly even injured. The latter was not a guarantee, but it was closer to keeping sane and figuring out how to get to Haley.
Megan glanced back at the picture window as Haley stepped away from the glass and disappeared out of view. Megan needed a way to get to Haley. To get a message to her. To get her daughter to snap out of the twisted trance Adam had somehow planted in her.
Closing her eyes, Megan tried to envision her next move. Common sense told her to back away for now. She had verified Haley was at the cabin. Now she needed a plan.
Megan opened her eyes and stared hoping to get one last glance at Haley through the window. As she watched in anticipation, her thought drifted to the man on the porch, only he was gone. She scanned both ends of the porch, then to the door. The man was standing at the bottom of the steps, level to her on the ground. He was scanning the woods in front of him, in Megan's direction.
Megan’s heart raced. She kept still and quiet, moving only her eyes to follow the man as he started toward the path leading to the Enlightenment Circle. Her heart began pounding in her ears, a stereo of kettle drums drowning out all sounds around her. She watched as he hesitated at the edge where the path met the woods. He spoke once again into the mic on his chest.
He stood there, squared up to the woods, his eyes slowly taking in the woods as they scanned left to right, then back again. Megan waited, feeling like a covey of quail hiding from a hunter. A cracking of brush sounded over the pounding in her ears, a distinct crack of branches on the ground behind her. She stayed crouched, praying she was far enough into the brush and still enough to go unnoticed.
The sun dimmed around her as a shadow cast across her hiding spot. She pivoted her head and looked up to see a dark outline standing over her.
17
Chase parked his truck just off the edge of the closest dirt road to the corner of the compound and downloaded the satellite map of the area to his phone. He rolled up the truck windows to keep the dust and dirt from settling inside. Grabbing the water bottle and binoculars, he began his trek toward the northwest corner of the HLC property. The hike through the trees and brush was an easy enough chore. Chase’s main concern was to keep a safe buffer between him and the HLC property line.
He reached the clearing he’d located on the satellite map, about two-thirds the distance down the HLC property. A stick-built home was sitting in the middle of the empty patch. The outside and shape was strikingly similar to his parent’s home in Glasgow. A basic layout, probably built by the owner, probably consisting of two-bedrooms and one-bath.
Chase paused long enough to see if there was any movement in or around the property. An old pickup truck with faded blue paint was parked at an angle across the yard near the porch. There was a two-lane dirt carved road leading away from the clearing, and more than likely all the way back to meet up with the road where Chase had parked his truck. Calling it a road might be a white lie of sorts. The two tracks wide enough for two rows of tires to pass. Between the tracks, the brush was knocked down but reached up just high enough to tickle the truck’s undercarriage.
Not seeing any movement, Chase decided to skirt the property on the northern side. Something about squeezing between this property and the HLC property felt a little claustrophobic.
He made his way around the property and kept to the shallow edge of the woods to mask his presence. Chase walked another quarter mile east. He stopped and looked through his binoculars. To his right, just south of the HLC border, he could see the top of a green-shingled roof. A traditional coloring for modern cabin roofs.
Chase pulled his phone from his pocket and looked at the bars on the upper right of the screen. One bar. How in the world the service was so spotty back at his own home, yet available up here in the sticks, was a wonder.
He pulled up the map again and tapped on the edge of the property to find the coordinates. He waited for the slow connection to download the information and then copied it into a GPS application he had on his phone. He wanted to get closer to the cabin while still staying on this side of the property line.
Holding his phone up in front of him, he walked toward the green-shingled cabin and the coordinates he had set as his final surveillance spot.
The cabin grew larger as he approached the northeast corner. He reached the coordinates and put his phone back in his pocket. Pacing
back and forth, he looked through his binoculars to find the most unobstructed view. He located a small space through the trees pointing indirectly at the front of the cabin. Overall, the view was decent enough to make out the front of the two-storied structure. Sometimes it was better to be lucky than good, this was one of those occasions.
Chase used his forefinger to rotate the focus on the binoculars and crisp up his view to the cabin. To the left of the picture window he could make out the silhouette of someone standing on the porch. He pointed the binoculars directly at the person and focused them again. He could make out a fairly broad man standing there, wearing a black polo shirt—a ‘polo guy’.
Chase sat on the ground and propped up his elbows on his knees. He pressed the binoculars to his face and continued to watch the polo guy. He could see the man raise his left arm to his chest momentarily.
Probably a walkie-talkie, he assumed from the location and movement.
Chase scanned the front of the cabin and didn’t see any other movement. He returned to watching the man and noticed him take two steps to his left. It looked as if something had caught the man’s attention. The man nodded as he kept his hand on his chest and started walking across the porch across the front of the picture window.
The wind was blowing lightly and caused the tree branches and bushes to rustle around him. Chase lowered the binoculars and looked across the trees to the hills surrounding him. The land looked untouched, although he had no doubt the property was privately owned.
Chase began raising his binoculars for another look when a voice shouted from somewhere behind him, “Don’t move!”
18
“What are you doing here?” a man’s voice ordered. “You shouldn’t be here.”
Megan’s arms shot out to her side, a jolt of fight or flight surged through her body.