The skittering gave way to the pounding of bare feet. As Abraham crashed through the trees, cursing as branches slapped at his face and cut his shirt, he caught sight of long, auburn hair and bare legs. The girl turned once, glared at him with feral, haunted eyes. Then she grinned widely, revealing several gaps in her teeth, and fled into the woods. Panting from the exertion and coated in sweat, Abraham slowed and finally stopped. He leaned heavily on a tree and stared after her.
Whoever she was, she was long gone. Abraham looked down at her footprints. For an instant the thought of running barefoot through those woods, with their brambles and branches, loose rocks and snakes, wrinkled his nose. Then he laughed.
It hadn't been that many years since those barefoot prints might have been his. One thing was certain—it would be only a matter of hours before everyone on the mountain knew that someone was coming.
Abraham turned and headed back at an angle toward the trail. He planned to cut across it further along than the point he'd left it and make up the lost time. The wind had picked up, and clouds scudded across a darkening sky.
"Where did that come from?" he wondered aloud. The sun that had raised waves of heat to blur his vision an hour before was obscured, and suddenly the way back to the path seemed less certain. Long shadows wove around one another and danced in the wind. Leaves skipped along the ground and whipped into his legs.
Abraham broke into a jog, being more careful with the whipping branches and low bushes than he had in pursuing the girl. He knew these mountain squalls well, and he didn't want to be caught in the trees when this one hit. Besides falling branches and the cold, slashing rain, the danger of being caught in a lightning strike, or becoming disoriented and lost deep in the woods was very real.
As the sky darkened, the trees leaned closer. Their branches bowed toward the ground and their leaves swept in quick spirals across the path. Thunder rumbled in the distance, and the ground shook slightly.
There were other sounds as well.
At first Abraham told himself his mind was playing tricks. Too many years in the city had bred distrust of things he had once taken for granted.
Deeper parts of him knew better. He had heard those sounds before, furtive steps just beyond the reach of his senses. Voices tittering and whispering at the edges of his mind. A forest is a gathering of many things, trees, rocks, shrubs—even the trail that wound through its heart was a separate thing—but he knew this was wrong.
At moments like this, when nature screamed for blood and the light grew harsh; when the wind spoke with the voice of a thousand banshees and roared over the land and water dripped and splashed, whipping across the trail like the lash of a great whip, the forest was a single thing. It surrounded him, and vertigo hit hard with the realization that if that forest were a single entity, he lay in its center. He could be part of it, or he could be consumed.
Abraham came up hard against the trunk of a tree, barely catching it with a hand before his face collided with solid wood. The shock cleared his head, and he took advantage of the moment to dig in and crash ahead. He found the trail, and with wind and water howling at his back and the invisible weight of a thousand eyes that could not be there pressing him forward, he burst suddenly from the trees.
Abraham stopped despite the storm. He stood, soaked and dripping, and stared at the little cottage nestled up against the woods. No smoke poured from the single chimney. No lights glowed in the windows. He thought of the fairy tales of his childhood, witches gathered around cauldrons who shoved unwitting children into stoves. Then the images passed, and all he saw was the dark, desolate lines of his mother's cottage.
Memories threatened to overwhelm him, and he brushed them aside angrily. This was not the house he had grown up in; though it was the last place he'd laid his head on the mountain before his "escape." Now he stood, trembling, more willing to brave rain and storm than those clear old eyes. More willing to melt into the earth at his feet and become one with the mountain than to brush his fingers over that carved wooden door, or to hear his name pass her lips.
Once again he had the sensation that something was wrong. There was no sign of life in the home. No one stood on the hearth to greet him. Abraham started forward once more. He knocked on the door and waited. After a few moments he knocked again, but there was no answer.
Abraham hesitated, then reached out and turned the knob. The door was unlocked. He opened it and stepped inside.
TEN
Katrina knew that something wasn't right the second she climbed out of her car. The phone was ringing. This shouldn't have seemed odd. The sun was peeking over the horizon, and Abe should be down running on the beach. He ran every morning, and he was an early riser. She had wanted to get back before he woke, but the lines had been long, and a traffic snarl leaving the main road had held her up. She hurriedly gathered her bags and climbed the steps to the porch. Nothing looked out of place, but the house felt different. The insistent jangle of the phone grated on her nerves, and she frowned. Coming home was one of the small, hidden pleasures of her life. She had lived in a lot of places, but this was the first of them that she thought of as home, and the idea that someone waited inside, or down on the beach—someone who cared for her—made each homecoming special. She fumbled with the door. The phone stopped ringing, and the silence in the wake of it was deafening. The door was locked, and that was odd. If Abe had gone running, he wouldn't have locked up. He wouldn't have any place to carry his keys, and they were so isolated here that the danger of break-ins was slim. The door was almost never locked. Once inside, she went straight toward the table with the groceries. She saw the note, trapped under the saltshaker, when she was still several steps away. She nearly dropped the bag she was carrying, and cried out in shock. She stumbled forward and put the bag down, but before she could snatch up the note and read it, the phone rang again.
Katrina didn't think. She jumped, frightened by the sound, then dashed over and grabbed the receiver. She thought it had to be Abe, that something had happened, or he'd run too far and wanted her to pick him up—that he'd had a sudden urge for seafood and she should meet him at one of the restaurants up the road.
"Hello?" No one spoke. She listened for a moment, then tried again. "Hello? Abe, is that you?" No answer, but she heard a snapping sound, then a cough, and after that she was almost certain she heard someone breathing, harsh and heavy, and her hand shook.
"Hel…" She stopped halfway through her third attempt and slammed the phone back into its cradle. She stood and stared at it for a moment, then turned back to the note. When she did, the phone rang again. With a soft cry Katrina turned back, grabbed the phone and unsnapped the cord from its base. She heard the softer ring from the second phone in the bedroom, but she ignored it. She dropped the phone and went for the note.
She sat without looking up from the paper.
"Dear Kat,
"I couldn't leave without telling you where I've gone. If I had waited, and seen you, I couldn't have gone at all. I have to go to my mother, and I have to sort this out. There is darkness on that mountain, evil I didn't even begin to explain. I will, I promised you that I would, and I will, but I can't take you into this danger. I woke up this morning from another nightmare, and if you had been there, I believe I might have hurt you. I'm caught up in something I can't escape—the only way out is through, and that is where, and why, I've gone.
"By the time you read this I'll be well along the road to the mountain. Please don't follow. I'll call as soon as I can—there aren't many phones. If you need me, leave a message through Greene's General Store. The owner's name is Silas Greene. He's the closest thing the mountain has to a Post Office.
"Remember that I love you. Abraham."
For a long time after finishing the note, Katrina sat still, held the paper in her trembling hands, and stared off over it toward the windows that overlooked the beach. He was gone. She had felt that when she stepped out of the car. Now it wasn't a fear—it was real. She was
here, and Abe was not, and she didn't know where he'd gone—not really—or why. She only knew he was gone.
She rose and went mechanically through the motions of putting away the groceries. She made a pot of coffee. She didn't want any coffee, but she made it because in the morning she always made coffee. She made it fresh, the way Abe liked it, and when he came up from the beach, coated in a thin sheen of sweat and grinning like an overgrown boy they would share it, hers milk-toned and sweet and his as black as night.
She didn't make breakfast because she knew she couldn't eat, but she cleaned the kitchen. She saw that the small trashcan beside the stove needed to be emptied. She stopped, frowned, and reached for the bag. It was Abe's job to empty the trash, and normally she would leave it there until it annoyed him into action, but not today. Today the sight of it reminded her that he was gone, and she didn't need any further reminders. She knew he was gone because something inside her was broken. A frozen ball of barbed wire had coiled up like a snake in her stomach, and every time she moved it scraped away a little more of the comfort Abe had brought her.
She tried to watch television, but she hated to watch alone. Half the fun was the running commentary she and Abe provided behind the programming, and like the full garbage can, the droning voices only served to remind her of his absence.
Eventually she reconnected the phone line. She waited a long time, but it didn't ring. Then, when she turned away, she stopped and looked back. There was no ring. Whoever had been calling had found the correct number, or gotten the answer they sought.
The late afternoon sun dropped away over the waves, and she shivered. It wasn't cold, but shadows loomed on all sides. The small cottage where she and Abe bumped into one another so often they joked about living in a shoebox grew, moment by moment, into a huge, empty cage.
She'd found where he'd hit the bed. He'd hit it so hard that the springs were bent. Katrina stared at the mattress, then sat on the bed and ran her hand over the dent. It seemed impossible, but that's what it was. There was a dent in their mattress where Abe had smashed his fists into it, and that dent was right where her heart would have rested if she'd been home.
Was he right? Was he losing it? Was there some form of insanity in his family, or his past, that had finally caught up with him and was beginning to exact its price for all the sane, steady years of his life? Katrina had never even seen Abe get angry, but the violence of his nightmares was undeniable. Even if she didn't trust her memory, she had the evidence of the mattress.
When the shadows grew too long for her to dodge between as she slipped quietly and aimlessly from room to room, she curled up on Abraham's side of the bed. She pulled the sheets and blankets up around her neck and tucked her head up under his pillow. The sheets and pillowcase smelled like Abe. She curled into a tight ball and closed her eyes. She thought she would lay awake all night, but the tension that had wrapped her into knots since that morning released, and she drifted off into dark, dreamless sleep.
Tommy and Angel drove slowly past Silas Greene's General Store and turned off onto a rutted, overgrown trail that veered into the woods. They followed this even more slowly, the truck jolting through potholes and the tires cracking dry branches. This road curled around the side of the peak and approached the old church. No one had driven down it in over a decade.
Angel stared straight ahead. He had spoken very few words since they'd arrived at Greene's store the previous day. He had a lot to think about. He had made over thirty calls to the same phone number counting the two the previous night, and those he'd spent his time on that morning. Tommy was impatient and had threatened to take the truck and head back up the mountain, but Angel silenced his brother with a glance.
They both knew he'd do no such thing. Tommy had his visions, and his orders and Angel had some of his own. He hadn't been told to share them with Tommy, and so he didn't. Tommy had found the list of supplies they were to purchase in his pocket. In Angel's pocket a shorter note rested. It had a single name written across it, Abraham Carlson.
There were no instructions on the card. It didn't say to call anyone on the phone, or why he would want to do such a thing. Angel just knew. Since staggering out of the woods a few minutes ahead of his brother he'd known a lot of things he couldn't have explained, but it didn't trouble him.
After nearly thirty years of life, Angel Murphy knew what he was supposed to do with a certainty for the first time. He didn't hesitate, and he didn't spend time worrying over the consequences of his actions. He had a purpose, and he intended to fulfill that purpose. What happened beyond this was hazy, but again—it didn't matter. Angel lived in the moment.
He'd found the phone number easily enough. There was only one Abraham Carlson in the San Valencez directory. He'd been prepared to make the same call to fifty Abraham Carlsons, over and over, but fate was on his side.
He didn't speak to the man who answered the phone. He didn't speak the next morning when the woman answered, though he'd wanted to. She'd sounded scared, and that always turned Angel on. He knew she stood clutching the phone and waiting to hear his voice, and that was enough. If things worked out, maybe he'd be able to attach a face to her voice before too long.
Angel knew the name. The Carlsons had lived on the mountain for over two hundred years, and Angel had known Abe Carlson when they were boys. Angel would have picked on Abe given the chance, just because he was older and stronger, but it wasn't done. Abe's father was the pastor of the stone church, and you didn't cross him. Angel didn't care about much, and he was willing to take a lot of punishment if the offense proved interesting enough, but he'd never messed with Abe. Now, after so many passing years, he wondered if he was being granted a second chance.
Once the woman answered the phone, and he called a few more times for good measure, Angel signaled to Tommy that it was enough. They climbed into the truck, piled high with building materials, paints, tarps and equipment, and turned toward the mountain and home. Neither expected to see home any time in the near future, but the road was familiar and comfortable.
They bounced along the overgrown church road and energy crackled in the air. The isolation of the drive up the mountain faded, and they sensed others waiting. The road was lined on either side by tall trees, and Tommy thought that, once or twice, he spotted flashes of motion among them. He almost said something to Angel, and then thought better of it. If Tommy had seen them, and sensed them, he was sure his brother had as well.
They broke through the brush at the end of the old road and rumbled onto the churchyard without ceremony. Clouds of dust rose as Angel ground to a halt. Birds screeched and launched from the surrounding trees. The sounds faded, and the dust settled. Angel killed the engine and the two of them sat, staring at the front door of the church.
The door no longer dangled from its hinge. It was closed tightly, and the ground outside the door was cleared. There were rake tracks in the dirt, and piles of debris lined the old walk. After a moment the door opened, and Silas Greene came down the steps, smiling.
Angel was the first to get out, and without ceremony he handed over a slip of paper. Silas took it, glanced at what was written on it, smiled, and put it away in his pocket. Then he turned to the truck.
"You got everything?"
Tommy nodded. He thought about pulling out the list and handing that over as well, but he didn't. Silas knew what was on the list, and he had probably known what was in the truck, as well.
The door to the church still hung open, and from within Tommy heard the sound of voices. He glanced at Greene.
"The others are here," Silas said. "I'll send a couple of the men out to help you unload the truck. We have a lot of work to do."
Tommy nodded solemnly. He inspected the walls of the old church, the cracks in the foundation, the peeling paint, and the tattered shingles haphazardly covering the roof.
Angel had already walked around behind the truck, and a moment later the tailgate dropped with a loud clang. Silas stepped to the c
hurch door and beckoned to someone inside. A moment later Matt Albertson and Tim Miller stepped out into the yard and blinked as if the light hurt their eyes. They stared at Tommy and Angel for a moment, and then noticed the truck. "Pile it all around the side there," Silas told them. "We'll get to it as we need it."
The four men unloaded the truck silently. Silas watched for a moment, then pulled the paper back out of his pocket and read it again. All that was on the paper was a name and a phone number, but it was enough. He smiled, tucked the paper deep into his pocket, and turned away.
Inside the church the sound of nails being ripped from tired, rotten wood broke the silence. There was a loud snap, followed by the sound of more nails releasing their grip. The floor had rotted in places, and Silas knew they were removing the old boards and preparing for the new. Two men and a woman had gone for emergency generators and lights. At the rear of the church, scaffolding crawled up the side of the building like a bizarre metal exoskeleton. Now that the truck had arrived, they could start on the roof.
It would take time.
Silas turned to the trail he had followed those long ago years with his parents and strode purposefully out of the churchyard and into the trees. The ground was overgrown and rough, but he didn't mind. It was a good long walk to his store, and he didn't mind that, either. They could get on well enough without him at the church—for now. He had other things to take care of, and the night was young. The paper with Abraham's phone number on it crinkled in Silas' pocket as he disappeared into the woods like it was trying to escape.
ELEVEN
There was no one in the cottage. Abraham lit a fire and wandered about the small home aimlessly, looking for any sign of his mother—any indication of where she might have gone. He found nothing but the signs of everyday life. There was food. The pot she used to boil water stood on the stove, just as it always had, and there was water in it.
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