by David Wood
“You have got to be kidding me.”
Blue lights flashed in his rear-view mirror and with them came the icy feeling in the pit of his stomach that always accompanied a traffic ticket. “Haven't seen a damn soul for miles and the first person I meet is a cop.” Could this day get any worse? He hadn't been speeding but, with all the attention he'd been paying to his phone and GPS, he had doubtless had trouble staying on his side of the center line on the winding mountain road.
He scanned the roadside for a place to pull over but there was precious little space. The mountain rose up to his right at a steep incline and to his left fell away into a dark valley. The cop was riding his ass now, and cold sweat trickled down the back of Grant's neck as he wondered if the guy was getting impatient with him for not pulling over right away. What was he supposed to do? Stop in the middle of the road?
He was about do to that very thing when he spied a turn-off to his right. He winced as the encroaching shrubs scraped the paint job on his '68 Camaro. Finally far enough off the road to feel safe, he killed the engine and, careful not to make any sudden moves, took his wallet from his back pocket.
He turned to roll down the window and gasped, jerking involuntarily and dropping his wallet. A dark shaped loomed in the window, gleaming teeth bared. Heart pounding, he blinked and the image came into focus. A man in a beige uniform, mirrored shades, and a wide-brimmed hat. How had the cop gotten to Grant's car so fast?
Still grinning, the cop tapped the window with a yellow fingernail.
“Sorry,” Grant called, cranking the handle for all he was worth, wishing for an automatic window. “I'm a little lost and I was trying to look at my...”
“Just get your license and hand it to me, son.” The cop had a nasal voice with a touch of mountain twang, but his big hands and authoritative manner chased away any feelings Grant might have had of city superiority. His name tag read “J. Barton.”
He handed over his license, proud that his hands weren’t trembling. Biting his lip, he waited for a chance to explain himself and possibly ask for directions, but was hesitant to be the first to break the silence.
Barton held the license up. “Grant Shipman,” he read aloud. He pursed his lips and tapped his chin. “You Andrew's boy?”
Grant's heart sank. “Yes, officer.” His mouth was dry and his voice scratchy.
“Sheriff.”
“Sorry, Sheriff. Yes, Andrew was my dad.” He paused, searching Sheriff Barton's face to see if the admission had any obvious impact, but could see none. “I'm headed to the memorial service, but the road to Wallen's Gap isn't showing up on my GPS. I was trying to look at it and check my directions. I know I shouldn't do that when I'm driving.”
“Damn shame about your daddy.” Barton handed back Grant's license. “Damn shame. He was a good man.”
“Thank you.” There wasn't much else Grant could say. He and his father had never been close, and the elder Shipman had moved to Wallen's Gap a long time ago.
“You going to see to his affairs? His house and the like?”
“I suppose so. But not until after the funeral, of course.” Grant grimaced. He didn't relish the thought of sorting through a dead man's possessions, especially a man whom he felt he should have known better, should have cared for more deeply.
“It's just a dirt road into town from this side of the mountains. You'd best follow me.” Barton turned and strode back to his patrol car.
Grant sagged against the headrest, took a deep breath, and exhaled slowly. He had avoided a ticket and found himself a guide to town. Perhaps this day was about to get better.
Cassie took a deep breath and stepped into the community center beside the tiny Wallen's Gap supermarket. Her heart hammered and her nerves made her angry. She needed help and wouldn’t let pride get in the way.
“Hello, Cassie.” The gray-haired woman at the desk greeted her with a smile that was more genuine than her too-white dentures.
Cassie ground her teeth. Everyone knew everyone in this tiny craphole of a town. “Hello, Mrs. Golding.”
A moment's uncomfortable silence hung in the air.
“You'd like to see the counselor?” Golding eventually asked, her voice gentle.
Cassie nodded, not quite able to meet the woman's eye.
Golding stood, favored Cassie with a kind smile, and stepped away down a corridor. Moments later she returned. “She's free. Second door on your left.”
Cassie tried not to roll her eyes. The only counselor in a small town where half the people thought psychology to be just one of the many tools of the devil wasn’t likely to have people beating down her door for appointments.
The woman in the office had a familiar face, but Cassie couldn't place her. “Cassie Brunswick, is it? I'm Doctor Houghton. Please come in and sit down.”
Cassie took the offered seat. Houghton. She'd gone to school with a Clare Houghton, but they had never been close. This must be Clare’s mother. She took in her surroundings in a quick glance: a sofa and chair, a tiny bookshelf stuffed with self-help books, and a spartan, metal desk, neatly organized, above which hung a framed diploma from Stuart College. Two whole hours away! By Wallen's Gap standards, this woman was a world traveler. Cassie supposed she should get on with it before she changed her mind. “Everything we talk about is confidential, right?” she asked.
Houghton took a pad and pencil from her desk and sat in a chair opposite. “Yes, absolutely. You can be open and honest and nothing needs to ever leave this room. Unless I think you're about to commit a crime or harm yourself. That's not the case, I presume. Is it?”
Cassie shook her head and stared at her hands in her lap. She'd bitten her nails down to the quick. Her grandmother would have had a fit. The room seemed to press in on her as she searched for words. She had no idea where to start.
“It's all right,” Houghton said softly. “Tell me what's on your mind.”
“I've been seeing this boy, Carl.” She stopped, unsure again.
“How old are you, Cassie?” There was no trace of judgment in the woman's tone.
“Just turned eighteen.”
“Carl is twenty, isn’t he?”
“Twenty going on twelve.” How had she not seen what an immature jerk he was? She'd known from the start he was broken, but didn't count on just how badly.
Houghton nodded, and scribbled on her pad. “Take all the time you need.”
“Well, it's just everything really.” Inside, a floodgate opened. “He scares me and he's always getting wasted, he smokes so much weed, and has all these stupid ideas about stuff. I want to break up with him, but he says he couldn't live without me. And he says I need him too.” She stopped, dragged a breath in, determined not to cry.
Houghton laid the pad on her knees. “Let me get this straight. You'd like to end things with Carl, but he makes you think you can't leave him?”
Cassie nodded.
“You can, you know. You can do anything you want.”
Cassie made a derisive noise that was half-cough, half-snort. “Oh sure. Anything I want. Like what? I can't go anywhere. I can't get out of this stupid town. Besides, nobody would like it if I left him.”
“What do you mean?” The counselor frowned.
“Never mind.” Cassie gazed at the floor.
“Has he hurt you, Cassie?”
“No.” Heat prickled the back of her neck and she felt the same old urge to defend the loser. Her loser.
“Have you two had sex?”
The boldness of the question shocked Cassie briefly, but she bit it down. “No. Well, not actual sex, no. I never have.”
Houghton jotted something down. Cassie imagined the woman writing EIGHTEEN YEAR-OLD VIRGIN in big block letters and almost managed a smile.
“Has he pressured you about that?”
“Not exactly. It's kind of weird. He likes to, you know, fool around.” Her cheeks burned at the admission. “But he doesn't push me to go farther. I don't want to anyway, but every guy, yo
u know, wants to. It doesn't make sense. He acts like he doesn't want to go all the way with me, but he wants to own me or something. He always wants me to get him off. But never all the way. I don't really want to be with him, but when I start talking about us maybe taking a break, he gets so mad. I'm scared most of the time.” The last bit came out in little more than a whisper and Cassie dropped her gaze to her clasped hands.
Houghton nodded, scribbled again on her pad. “You know, you don't have to be scared of him. You can...”
“I'm not just scared of him,” Cassie interrupted.
“What else?”
Cassie paused, breathing deeply again. It was harder than she thought it would be to talk about the real problem. The real fear. “He says I sleepwalk.” The word seemed so inadequate.
“Do you?”
“Maybe. He says I sleepwalk and he has to try to get me back into bed without freaking me out or anything. That's another thing that's been holding me back. Carl says if I leave him, who's going to look out for me at night then?”
“So you sleep together? Share a bed, I mean?”
Cassie nodded. She was still looking at her hands and couldn’t see the woman's face, but she thought she registered a note of mild disapproval. Typical for this town. Just about every girl got initiated in the back seat of somebody's car during her freshman year, but as soon as they became parents themselves, you'd think they'd worn a chastity belt until they were thirty.
“I do sometimes. I usually stay at home, but I don't want to be there when Daddy gets really drunk, so I crash at Carl's.”
“Do you sleepwalk at other times, when you're not at Carl's house?”
Cassie couldn't say anything, a lump of nerves sitting heavy in her throat like a cold rock.
“Cassie?” Houghton's attention was fully upon her now. The note pad lay forgotten on her lap.
“Sometimes I wake up and my feet are muddy. Once my nightshirt was all torn and there was blood on it.”
Houghton shifted forward, elbows on her knees. “Blood?”
“I couldn't find any cuts or anything.” Cassie bit her lip, not sure if she should say the rest. Then again, what was the point of seeing a counselor if she didn't spill her guts? She blurted the words out before she could change her mind. “I don't think it was my blood.”
“Whose was it then?” Houghton articulated each word in careful, measured tones. The woman was trying too hard not to sound judgmental.
The tears started despite Cassie’s best efforts. “I don't know.”
Chapter 2
“Another book about the Templars. Big surprise.” Grant tossed the volume into a box that already contained the works of Dan Brown plus a variety of fiction and non-fiction titles along the same theme. He'd sorted through roughly half of his dad's library. At first, he inspected each book carefully, even flipping through the pages in search of hidden cash or important documents, but an hour's futile efforts convinced him to give it up as a bad job.
The next book was a thick, heavy tome, cracked with age and the stamped gold letters on the spine faded. He held it up to the light and read the words aloud. “Demonology and The Bible.”
Frowning, he flipped through the pages, trying to get a feel for the content. The title made it sound like a Christian book of some sort, but the contents put him to mind of a horror novel. He stopped at a black and white print showing a demon hunched over the supine body of a naked young woman who lay bound to an altar. He didn't know what unsettled him more: its rapacious expression or hers of terror. A shiver ran up his spine and he had the sudden urge to toss the book into the fireplace and burn it. The momentary irrationality passed and he put it in the box with the other religious books.
He'd hoped that, in the process of settling his father's affairs, he'd learn a little something about the man who had been an enigma to him for so long. So far, all he'd determined was his father loved his home in the mountains, his conspiracy thrillers, and apparently liked to read about religions, no matter how obscure. Or how sinister.
Grant stared into space as his thoughts drifted back to Suzanne. His stomach iced slightly at the thought of her packing up all her stuff and leaving. They had been together a long time. It was hard to imagine that she had just up and left like that. Then again, they’d been high school kids when they first started dating, and they’d had problems from the start. Everything he did stressed her out: his decision to drop out of college, his string of part-time jobs, his musical pursuits, his band practices, his seedy gigs. Meanwhile, she pursued corporate greatness, going to school year-round, earning her business degree after only three years, and recently accepting a boring, entry-level job at some faceless corporation in an equally faceless glass building. Come to think of it, he didn’t know where she worked or what she did, aside from the fact that it involved a lot of bitching at the dinner table. He hadn’t thought they were as doomed as she had suggested. Clearly he had been quite naïve there. Now he was all alone. You never finish anything! Her words haunted him.
Two razor sharp knocks on the door jolted him out of his emo moment and he grimaced as he stumbled to answer, awkwardly navigating the clutter he'd created in the spacious living area. Who could it be? He didn't know anyone and who, aside from the cop who'd stopped him, even knew he was here? He reached for the knob and hesitated, visions of Deliverance-style hillbilly perverts flashing through his mind. He dismissed them with a rueful laugh and opened the door.
No one was there.
He cocked his head to the side like a confused dog and stepped out into the cool mountain air. There was no car in the driveway, save his own. He strode out onto the front porch and peered out into the woods. Nothing.
“Hello?” His voice sounded weak and tentative, so he summoned his inner thug and tried again. “Somebody fucking around out here?” That was better, though not by much. It suddenly occurred to him that anyone who was messing with him wouldn’t answer back. In fact, whoever had knocked might be sneaking around back at this very instant. He stepped back inside, shut the door harder than necessary, locked it, and looked around for a weapon. His dad's Civil War era musket, complete with bayonet, hung above the fireplace. Nice. Now all he needed were cartridges, lead balls, and an inkling of how to load and fire the thing. He hurried into the kitchen area and, in a drawer full of tarnished silverware, found a carving knife with a long, triangular blade. It would have to do.
He moved to the back door and peered out the dirty window. If trees were out to get him, he was screwed, because that was all he saw in any direction. Clutching the knife, he opened the back door and moved out beneath the canopy of the forest that grew right up to the back edge of the house. He strained his eyes and ears, but neither saw nor heard anything. He was alone. It must have been a tree limb knocking against the side of the cabin. That or his imagination running wild.
There it was again. This time there was no question about the knock. He heard it clear as day. In a flash he was off, sprinting around the corner of the cabin. In the time it took to think, At least I'm not running with scissors, he was there.
And he was alone.
“No freaking way.” He kicked at a loose rock and sent it bounding across the clearing in front of the cabin. The forest floor was carpeted in a thick layer of dry leaves. There was no way anyone could have run away that fast without him at least hearing them. He made a circuit of the cabin, looking for footprints but found exactly what he had expected--nothing. More unnerved than he cared to admit, he returned to the cabin and began gathering his things. He'd head to town, grab a cup of coffee and a bite to eat and clear his head. At the last second he grabbed the old demonology book that had caught his attention earlier. He didn't know why, but he suddenly wanted it out of the house, or maybe it wanted out, or something equally irrational. In any case, he shoved the book into his backpack.
He kept the knife too.
The interior of Cup-of-Joe was as grimy as its plate glass front window where chipped paint adve
rtised the “Best Cup of Coffee in Town!” Faces turned toward Grant as he entered and all stared with mingled curiosity and disdain as he ordered and took a seat. Their conversations slowly started up again when he refused to meet any of those inquisitive eyes. Fucking hick town, he thought to himself. If they were dogs, they'd all be sniffing my ass right now. He'd be glad when the funeral was over and he could clear up and get out. Maybe he should just pile everything up in the woods and set it on fire, leave the cabin an empty shell, and get a real estate agent to sell it.
The thought had occurred to him that having a cabin in the country might be nice. He wasn't really the rural type, but he appreciated peace and quiet, nature, clear skies and fresh air. But this certainly didn't seem like the place for it. Maybe he'd sell out, take the proceeds and buy a little place somewhere else. Somewhere less... inbred.
The waitress put his coffee and eggs on the table and gave him a friendly, if distant, smile. “Anything else?”
He returned the smile, shook his head. “No, thanks.” A thought occurred to him. “Say, did you know Andrew Shipman?”
The waitress's friendly face turned sad. “Sort of. Not really. My daddy knew him, from when they were in the lodge together. Terrible that he died. So young for a heart attack.”
Grant nodded, now wondering why he'd asked. “Was he a... I dunno, was he a nice guy?”
“I guess so.” She pursed her lips and cocked her head. It was a cute look for her. “Like I said, I didn't really know him, but he was always friendly, always had a grin on his face when he stopped in.”
A part of Grant wished he knew his father better, but only a small part. The bastard walked out on Grant and his mother years ago and all the memories from before that were bad. Perhaps it was easy to feel guilty now the man was dead. Perhaps he needed some kind of closure, though he doubted he'd find it out here among the mountains and trees. He tried to imagine the old man as a regular member of the community. “You said he and your dad were in the lodge together? What lodge?”