by Craig Thomas
Brian favored him with a scalding look. “Well, I’m damn sure we’re not searching for your missing butt, Deputy.”
That didn’t sit well with Allan. Nonetheless, he shrugged and went on with his business.
Brian said, “Clues, Allan. Anything at all—that’s what we’re searching for. Anything that can lead us to the ...” He paused, watching Allan, who had already dropped down on all fours, poking his head underneath the bed frame, his butt jutting out behind him. He was probing the space down there, doing a darn good cop’s job. “ ... anything that can lead us to it,” Brian finished.
Allan’s butt reversed, dragging the rest of him out from beneath the bed. He rose. With his back still turned to Brian, he dusted the object he’d ferreted out. Flipping it over and over, he said, “Check this out, Sheriff. I just found something, which is worth anything.”
“What?” Brian inched closer.
Allan turned around. There was a mischievous grin spread all over his face.
“A diary?”
Allan nodded. “Says ‘The daily reports from Robert’s funny dreams.’”
They flipped through the pages and were profoundly amazed at what they read from the boy’s secret writing.
In it, Robert Smallwood talked about a recurrent creature in his dreams called The Outkast. He further commented on how the creature scared him, even though when he woke up many times, he hardly remembered every part of his dreams. His writing was a mishmash of fearful emotions of nightmare and exhilarating feelings of pure adventures of journeys made into the Unusual.
“That’s some wealth of imagination going on for a twelve-year-old, huh?” Allan cocked his head to one side, anticipating a comment from Brian. He got one.
“I don’t think this is just a work of imagination, Allan?”
“Really? You don’t think so?”
“No, I don’t. I have a hunch there’s something concrete buried in there, something real and revealing. Something alive and breathing. The boy reads a lot of crooked books—and he’s a twisted kid, no doubt. But my gut feeling keeps nagging at me to see the wood for the trees.”
“What’d you suggest, then?”
“That we keep reading.”
“All right.”
So, they continued, Brian doing so with keen interest, hoping to fish out some clues.
Brian cast a brief glance at Allan. The look on the deputy’s face divulged the fact that he practically had no interest to tarry here this long, but Brian didn’t act like he noticed a thing.
The Outkast, Robert wrote on, hated everyone so much that he believed they deserved to die. He had been alienated from the community, and he lived alone, away in the --------------------------------------------------
There was a blank space in the rest of the sentence, the last line on that page.
They skipped to the next.
The creature in the boy’s dreams believed Robert and him were the same, that they were of the same true blood and essence of life.
“Could he be making reference to their DNA, Sheriff?” Allan asked with a curl of his lip.
“Yeah, yeah. It’s a possibility,” Brian said. “I won’t be surprised at all if it turns out to be the case.” He ran the tip of his finger along the lines of Robert’s writing, as if the pages were specially made Braille that gave understanding not to the sightless but the curious at heart.
From the hallway, Holly’s wail filled the night.
Even though Robert was still young and not fully made yet, The Outkast would whip him into shape. He would instill the insensate spirit in him, adequate to carry on the work of casting the impure blood into the pit of hell, when he, The First True Blood, would be gone to the place of glory. The boy would learn all of this at the feet of The Outkast, watching as blood flowed from their enemies.
Brian frowned. “You see that?” he said, glancing briefly at Allan.
“Yeah, I do. The kid’s story’s getting better.”
Brian shook his head slowly, but didn’t say a word.
The next part of the piece spurred them to set off.
Robert described the domicile of the creature, based on his experience from the dreams, as a place full of blood, death, and wonders.
The Outkast lived on the outskirts of town. Repelled by the hypocrisy of human, he had chosen to live among the trees, in the deep bowels of Cave Kushi. It was located twenty miles northeast of River Sebastian, close to a trail accessible through a dirt route at the end of Sebastian Road.
Chapter 14
“Where the hell’s Cave Kushi?” Allan grunted when they got outside.
“Twenty miles northeast of River Sebastian.” Brian’s curtness rang clear. To Deputies Craig Nelson and Dwayne Haughton, he said, “I’ll ride ahead with Allan while you follow us.”
“Where’re we going?” Dwayne asked.
“Down the River.” Brian dashed to Allan’s patrol car, searching for a map.
“Oh,” Craig observed. “We’re heading back to the crime scene?”
Allan moved closer to Craig, and placed one hand over his comrade’s shoulder. “No, buddy. We’re actually heading to Cave Kushi.”
Craig frowned.
Allan said, “You know where that is?”
Craig shook his head.
Allan looked in Dwayne’s direction. “Do you?”
“Never even heard of it,” Dwayne said.
Brian returned with a big map. “We gotta be on the move presently.” He gave them a quick run-down of the situation and why they were heading that way.
“A fantastic way, in my book,” Allan commented.
“Get in and let’s hit the road, boys” Brian said, walking to the driver’s side of the cruiser.
“Hey, Sheriff,” Allan called after him. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”
“No time to think. Get your butt right in the car. Now!”
Brian pulled out and drove off.
Allan was his right-hand man, in a manner of speaking. He could be a very dependable lieutenant when he chose to be such. But he could equally be an outright jackass whenever he so desired. Brian had learned enough about Allan to take him in hand without getting himself excessively ruffled in the process.
******
With the map laid out on Allan’s lap in response to Brian’s instruction to check it intermittently as their journey progressed, he said, “This still looks like some fantasy tale to me, Sheriff. We don’t even know where we’re going.”
“How many times have you said that, and how many times have I given you an answer as to where we’re going?”
“I mean, we know it’s some kind of cave, but we don’t know our way there.”
“We’ve got the map.”
“Damn right. I have it all spread over my lap. Point is, what if this map doesn’t lead us anywhere? What if it’s not up to snuff to do the job—provided there’s any job to do in the first place?”
Swerving from side to side to avert potholes, Brian said, “It’s done the job so far, hasn’t it?”
“It’s done the job so far ’cause we’re still in a familiar territory. Over there, I can see Cynthia Drake’s house. On the left-hand side, a little ahead of us, is Ted Folsom’s place. We just drove past Michelle Charles’s cottage.”
“Brilliant. You’re paying attention to your surroundings.”
Allan pressed on. “So, we’re still in the real world, where this map can count for something, not yet in Robert Smallwood’s mysterious universe.”
“Well, when we get to that other world, we’ll utilize the Greater Map. The one on your lap is only supposed to be a back-up, after all.”
Unmasked puzzlement: “What’d you mean?”
“Rob’s diary.”
“Greater Map?” Allan laughed. “A mindless note from a troubled twelve-year-old boy—and you call that a Greater Map, Sheriff?”
Brian turned right at the beginning of the grove, driving towards Sebastian River. The other cruisers ro
de closely behind them. “Are you getting laid tonight, Allan?”
Shocked: “What?”
“Wondering if you have a piece you wanna taste tonight, ’cause it looks to me your mind is pretty far from here.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Oh, just a hunch. You know, the same feeling that made me think the troubled boy’s little writing might be a valuable map that would point us in the right direction. And I might be wrong, in which case we’ll turn back and go home. But if I happened to be right about my second feeling—”
“There’s no piece of ass, Sheriff. I only thought we could have waited till the day breaks, designed a better plan, and maybe even requested help from outside—anywhere we could get one. But you’re the boss. Besides, I’m all for this search,” Allan remarked, looking out his window into the moonlight-soaked trees.
“Ah, beautiful. Glad you’re in.” Brian patted his deputy’s shoulder quickly.
Chapter 15
Something was wrong. Very wrong.
The Outcast couldn’t put his finger on it, but the curdling foreboding that kept swelling within his bowels warned him something just wasn’t right, and he’d better act fast before a chain reaction of catastrophes began.
But what? What? What was wrong and what should he do to right it?
For the first time in a long while, he became deeply discombobulated.
After he had snatched the boy from his bedroom and placed him in the backseat of his SUV, all doors locked, he had intended to return to the woman’s house, where the two deputies were. Had intended to return so as to kill them both. Returned he had, but killing both sheriff’s officers he hadn’t. He had fatally wounded one and then run off without even making an attempt to do the second officer in.
He had never left a job unfinished. Never. Until tonight.
What had come upon him? Why did he become so restless at that instant—at the very instant when he could have cut down two more enemies? And why had that antsy feeling haunted him till this very moment?
Sitting in the gloom of his room, he felt distraught.
Now, he was shaking. Shaking with rage and frustration. Rage because he had just failed himself for the first time since the start of this purging mission; frustration because he just couldn’t figure out why everything had started sliding south.
He rose from his recliner, dashed across the blackness of his den, blood pulsing through the veins on his temples. The thin-layered darkness in the lightless room blended into the thick one building up inside him.
What should he do?
First, he would need to find a way to decipher the problem. Then, he would have to understand the best action to take to quench the fire so as to prevent himself from being ravaged.
He walked out of his den, going toward the pantry now, going to fall off the wagon and relapse into his past life. For almost two years, he had been a teetotaler, an exercise engineered as part of the rituals he had to fulfill in order to accomplish his mission. However, two weeks ago, he had stowed away two bottles of his two favorite wines (in his past life). He had done so with the hope that soon, he would have a one-shot celebration, drinking with his True Blood as they both toasted the absolute fall of their enemies, but he hadn’t gotten the wines for the purpose of permanently falling off the wagon.
Steering clear of the deception and clutches of the bottle had enabled him to think and act with precision. But tonight, he might just as well fall into the hole of the bottle once more, because the power of reasoning had been stolen away from him. He just couldn’t think.
Tonight, his composure was falling apart.
He opened the cabinet, brought out one of the bottles, but quickly replaced it in its niche. He closed the cabinet door and ran out of the pantry.
He dashed across to his recliner and fell upon it. With his face buried in his hands, he let out a deep growl of frustration.
From a room, Robert Smallwood was shouting something in an urgent and sonorous voice.
Chapter 16
When they drove to the very end of Sebastian Road, Brian poked his head out the window, checking to see if the map had started to fail them, searching for the landmark—a dirt road.
There was none.
Brian heaved a deep sigh.
In his writing, Robert had described the dirt road as a wide boulevard lined with apple trees on both sides and running for more than a million miles. Such a description possessed a sharp contrast to the typical feature of a dirt road. And it was this sort of disjointed piece of information that had detracted from the value of the direction they had had at their disposal when they had set out—at least, in Allan’s view.
But Brian knew enough to separate the wheat from the chaff, to disregard the discrepancies, and just use the rational parts of the boy’s message—or try to demystify the undertone of whatever message Robert was trying to deliver, rather than taking things at face value.
He got out from behind the wheel. Without casting caution to the winds, he pulled his gun out and scanned the whole area as quickly and effectively as he could.
Craig and Dwayne joined him, their weapons drawn as well.
Allan brought up the rear, playing the perfect grumpy old cop.
Brian thought they had reached the end of their quest, until he took a closer look and saw tire threads in a number of places.
At first, they all missed it. But for some reason, Brian paced back the same way they had come, and it caught his attention—an overgrown footpath. Not an obvious landmark by any standards. The path was hardly visible even when they moved closer. They also noticed huge footprints in places.
Ahead of the weed-grown trail was a cluster of trees blocking the view that lay beyond, which they later discovered to be a long stretch of dirt road.
“Is that the road the kid wrote about?” Allan’s voice carried loud over the calm layers of air.
“I suppose,” Brian said, walking back through the trail towards their cruisers.
“Thought the dirt road comes before the trail, and not the other way around,” Allan said as they all followed Brian.
“Yeah, that’s the way it should be.” Brian walked swiftly past the cruisers. He was in search of another hint. “But I’m more concerned about something else.”
“The access route to the dirt road?” Craig observed.
“That’s right.”
There was no path in sight at all for a vehicle to go through in order to connect to the dirt road on the other side. Of course, along the trail, in the light of the moon, they had noticed very huge footmarks, which, in all likelihood, belonged to a proportionately huge individual crossing from the end of Sebastian Road to the dirt road. But there was no means of driving a vehicle across without being impeded by the multitude of trees hugging one another.
Cognizant of the amount of time that had elapsed, Brian began to grow a bit agitated. “There has to be a way to drive our goddam cars across to the other side.”
“This ain’t looking good,” Craig said, his pop-eyes darting in every direction. “God, we’re kinda trapped here. And the temp’s dropping, too.”
“Reminds me of the Israelites getting stuck at the Red Sea,” Dwayne said.
“Yeah,” Allan agreed. “Except water was their own curse, trees are ours. Perhaps we should pray the gods of the woods to grant us an access road.”
“Goodness, we’re trapped,” Craig repeated. “I hope nothing’s happened to the boy yet.”
“We’re not,” Brian said. “Knock that silly thought out of your head before it poisons you. If we can’t forge ahead, then we’ll turn back, and make a fresh plan. So, what’s the whole fuss about?” Brian turned around. “But I see no reason why we would be unable to create a passage to the other side.”
“So, what’s the plan, Sheriff?” asked Dwayne.
“We’re not giving up, that’s what it is,” Allan said.
“That’s right. We’ll get back in the car now and drive the length
of this road. There’s gotta be a way around this somehow. So, move it.”
They all started towards their cars.
“Hey,” Craig said all of a sudden. “You see that?”
“What?”
“Over there.” He pointed in the same direction they had been advancing before Brian suggested they get back into their cars. “Looks like an opening.”
Chapter 17
His single-handed uproar through the house must have awakened the boy. Robert had been in a comatose kind of sleep when The Outcast had brought him into his haven. That was the way it had always been between them. Whenever he was in the presence of The Outcast, he vacillated from a state of profound hypnotism, in which he was almost unconscious, to a state in which he could only put up a mild remonstration like he had done when Donnie had got killed.
But now, he was screaming as loud as he had never done while in the vicinity of The Outcast.
Suddenly, in the middle of the boy’s unprecedented din, the revelation flashed across The Outcast’s mind like a bolt of lightning.
The problem was his True Blood. At last, he had found the answer.
But he should have known all along that his enemies had intended to get to him through the weakling. They knew the boy wasn’t fully formed yet, which was tantamount to The Outcast’s Achilles heel, the very weakness they would be working very hard to attack, because trying to save his True Blood from their scourge would be multiple times harder than trying to save himself alone. But he had to fight for both of them at the same time. It was his divine responsibility.
He bolted towards the boy’s room, wondering what he could do to expedite the growth process.
The answer lay on the lap of the final ritual, which entailed Robert’s full participation. In fact, it was all about Robert’s involvement. When properly executed, it would be the watershed that would catapult the boy into the fullness of maturity. But that wasn’t possible yet. There was still a handful of killings the boy had been predestined to witness.