“It’s probably a neurological poison,” Jeremiah barked and she repeated it into the phone.
That was what would explain just how fast it had started to react. All he could hope to do was cut off the flow of blood up Mark’s arm, even reverse it as best he could. By applying the pressure of the battery where he did and holding it in place with the belt it not only acted like a tourniquet but it also put pressure on the nerve cluster which would slow down the transmission of the poison through his nervous system.
“What can I do?” Trina asked once she was off the phone.
“Pray, and see what you can figure out about the poison without getting it in your own system. Does it have a color, odor? Gather all the information you can quickly for the EMTs.”
She clicked on the flashlight app on her phone and headed to the table where Mark had cut himself. Jeremiah continued to keep the pressure up, doing everything he could, and praying frantically. He had not gained a brother just to lose him.
A minute later Trina was back at his side, kneeling next to him and Mark. Her hand hovered over Mark’s forehead. “I don’t know how to help, what to do,” she said, her voice agitated.
“Go upstairs and get the EMTs down here safely as soon as they arrive. Tell them everything you can so they’re prepared when they get down here,” he said.
She hesitated, still hovering.
“Go!” he thundered.
She scrambled to her feet and raced up the stairs, taking the light from her phone with her and plunging Mark and him into complete darkness. As her footsteps retreated they were left in utter blackness, cold and silent as a tomb. Jeremiah knew from experience that such complete sensory deprivation could lead to a number of problems ranging from anxiety to inability to properly judge the passage of time. Those could be a problem in any ordinary place, but they were deeply compounded when the darkness and silence was in a place already disturbing and filled with traumatic memories.
Even though he knew that they were alone in the basement, it didn’t feel that way. It was as though a strange and terrible presence was there with them, pressing in around them with malevolent intent. The place was haunted, that was what his uncle would say. Sometimes the history and the memories inspired by a place could be as present as any phantom.
He did know that the darkness here was oppressive. Terrible things had happened here, and while it was not something he often gave great thought to he suspected that something demonic might be at play. Letting his thoughts linger on such things, though, would help neither of them.
“Mark, it’s going to be okay. We’re going to get through this,” he said out loud, chasing the silence away. “You claimed me as family and if you think you’re getting out of that so easy, you’ve got another thing coming.”
On the one hand it was good that Mark was unconscious because otherwise the pain he would be experiencing would be unbearable and Jeremiah would likely have had to struggle with him to keep the battery and the belt in place. On the other hand it worried him because it would make it easier for Mark to slip away from him. If the other man was screaming at least he would know he was alive and fighting.
“You sure picked a heck of a time to investigate a crime scene without wearing some kind of protective gloves,” Jeremiah said. Truth be told whatever had cut him probably would have sliced through the thin disposable gloves he knew Mark carried with him for when he had to handle evidence.
Something moved in the dark to his left and Jeremiah swung his head that direction. He couldn’t see anything in the absolute blackness, but he had heard something. His heart began to beat faster as he considered the options. It was possible there was another way into this room from somewhere else in the house or even a tunnel to the outside. If that was the case the killer might be there with them. Whatever it was it had been too large to be a rat or a mouse.
He held his breath, straining to listen. After a moment there was movement again, a faint scratching sound accompanied by a dragging noise.
If the killer of that first girl had really been in this room while the police had investigated the house had he or she stayed until the police left hours later. Or was there really another way out?
Jeremiah shifted slightly, moving as silently as he could but positioning himself so he was facing the direction from which the sound was coming. It was one of the corners of the secret room. He tensed his muscles, preparing to defend himself and Mark and hoping that his adversary would be as blind as he was.
More scratching and dragging. Whatever it was it was getting closer. He had his phone in his pocket and he could reach for it and shine his light into the darkness. That would leave him vulnerable, though, even if just for a couple of seconds. It was no good calling Trina for help either since he didn’t know her number.
He raised himself silently into a crouching position, preparing to lunge in any direction he needed to. He thought he heard for a moment the distant wail of a siren. Perhaps Trina and the EMTs would be down shortly. He had a feeling, though, it wouldn’t be before whatever was creeping toward him in the darkness attacked. He waited, tense, ready, wishing he knew what kind of weapons the creature in the darkness had.
Or if what is over there is even human.
He tried to shake the thought from his mind. It was just this place making him panic, imagine things. Whatever was creeping toward him was alive and corporeal, not some ghost or demon.
Suddenly he heard a new sound. It was coming from upstairs. Trina must be on her way. Which meant that now was the time it should attack him if it was going to. He stayed still, waiting, refusing to leave Mark’s side. He would let his enemy come to him.
Then he heard voices and a moment later footsteps on the stairs. Any moment now and light would fill the room and he’d see just what he was up against. If whatever was there was going to attack, it was now or never.
“We’re coming!” he heard Trina call, voice frantic.
A sudden stab of light shot through the dark, and he winced against the brightness after so long in the darkness. He threw a hand into the air to shield his eyes from the light.
And he felt a needle jab him in the thigh.
Before he could react light suddenly flooded the room. Squinting he looked down and realized it wasn’t a needle that had stabbed him, but a claw. A black cat had his paw on his leg and was shaking. The poor animal looked like it had been mangled, but it was still alive. He realized that’s what he’d heard, the animal dragging its body across the floor to him from whatever hiding place it had been in.
“Can you move out of the way, sir,” one of the EMTs said tersely.
Jeremiah carefully picked the cat up and it pressed itself close against his chest as he stood up. He moved over to Trina and she glanced at the cat. “Where did he come from?”
“Somewhere in this room. That corner over there, I think,” he said, pointing.
“But we searched this place.”
“Apparently he found a hiding place we didn’t. It’s probably what saved his life.”
Her eyes drifted over to where the EMTs were working on Mark. “He looks in rough shape.”
“They both are,” he said, not sure if she was referring to Mark or the cat.
A short while later Jeremiah was happy to be standing outside in the sun, away from the house, as Mark was being loaded into the back of the ambulance on a stretcher. The men seemed to have gotten him stabilized and Jeremiah was starting to believe everything might be okay. He started to get in the back of the ambulance, but Trina stopped him with a hand on his arm.
“I still need help searching the rest of this house,” she said.
He took a deep breath, barely holding back a harsh retort. She was right. There was nothing more he could do for Mark, but he could keep on the search for Lizzie and the killer.
“I know a good vet, I’ll drop him off on the way to the hospital,” the driver said, indicating the cat that Jeremiah was still holding.
“Let h
im know the cat is a potential witness to a homicide and any forensic evidence he can collect off him should be reported to the police,” Trina said.
The man nodded and Jeremiah reluctantly surrendered the cat. The poor thing had probably been trapped in the house since before the murder and was likely in as desperate need of water as he was medical attention.
As the ambulance drove off he quickly called both Liam and Traci to let them know that Mark had been poisoned and was on his way to the hospital. He was about to call Cindy as well, but decided to wait until he had left the crime scene. She wouldn’t take kindly to him continuing to look around the place where Mark had been poisoned. Better to tell her everything afterward.
A couple hours later Jeremiah and Trina staggered outside the house, sweaty and disheveled. Upstairs they had found one bedroom that was clearly being occupied and Jeremiah had no idea how Mark’s people had missed that. They’d found another hidden room upstairs that was reached through a linen closet. There hadn’t been much of interest inside it, though. They’d also found a tiny hole in the wall in the hidden room downstairs that the cat had likely secreted himself in, hiding from his attacker. It had been hard to see with the way it was blocked from view by the trunk that occupied the one wall.
He checked his phone and found that he had a missed call from Cindy, wanting to check in with him, and another from Traci letting him know that the doctor had said that Mark was going to be okay, thanks to his efforts.
He relayed the information to Trina who looked relieved. “I’ll follow up on the cat, see what more we can find from him,” she said.
Jeremiah wanted nothing more than to go home, take a hot shower, and go to bed. He glanced at his phone, though, and saw that he only had a few minutes before he was supposed to be teaching the scare class at the church. He’d been a fool to agree to do it, especially with everything that was going on. He should call and cancel, but Wildman would just try and get him to come out on Sunday. After all, what was happening with the murder investigation didn’t involve Wildman or the kids or their haunted house.
Jeremiah made it back to the church with five minutes to spare. He took a moment to himself in the car to mentally prepare. Dealing with kids was always unpredictable and you had to be ready to roll with the punches. Sometimes literally. Wildman hadn’t said how many kids he was expecting to show up to the workshop. Given that it was a weeknight, he figured the number would be fairly small.
Having taken a few quick cleansing breaths he got out of his car and walked to the gym. His jaw dropped when he got inside. There were at least thirty kids from high school and college sitting on the bleachers. When he walked toward the front where a microphone had been set up and Wildman was standing they all began to cheer.
One of the first things he noticed was that the entire front row was made up of familiar faces. Jeremiah’s Rangers were all grinning at him, looking proud as could be. They were the kids who had followed him through the wilderness when they were attacked at Green Pastures camp.
Brenda and Sarah were sitting front and center, holding hands, mutually supporting each other. Both of them had clearly been crying for a very long time given the puffiness and redness around their eyes. They both managed to give him smiles, though. Flanking them on either side were the boys. Noah, Zac, Bobby, Stuart, Tray and Tim were all there along with the rest.
Half the kids in that room went to the synagogue, not the church. He’d no idea they’d signed up to help out the church with its haunted house. He felt a swell of pride. It had been a year-and-a-half since Green Pastures but he could see that they remembered. He could also see that all the other kids there who hadn’t lived through what they had were looking at the kids in the front row with the same amount of awe and respect with which they were looking at him.
“I don’t know what to say,” Jeremiah said when he stepped up to the microphone.
“That’s okay, Rabbi, we do,” Zac shouted.
“Rangers! Rangers!” his kids started the chant and the rest picked it up. He turned to look at the pastor who was smiling at him.
“These kids love you, and they’ll never forget what you did for them,” Dave said. “You know that even though the ones you led through the wilderness came from different backgrounds, different religions, and were different ages each one of them has stayed fast friends with the others?”
“I had no idea,” he admitted.
“You didn’t just save them. You changed them. In some cases you even changed their families. Zac was on the verge of running away from home because he couldn’t stand the screaming in his house while his parents were getting a divorce. You helped him go live with his grandparents and because of that and the changes they saw in him when he came back from Green Pastures it made them re-evaluate their own lives. They got marital counseling and reconciled. He moved back in with them just in time to spend his senior year at home.”
Through Jeremiah’s mind what Mark had told him in the pub came back. There were people here in Pine Springs who loved him and standing in front of those kids he had never felt so humbled in his entire life.
He cleared his throat and then took the microphone in his hand. “I just have one question. Who’s ready to learn how to scare the pants off people?”
There was a thunderous chorus of “me” and all the kids jumped to their feet screaming.
“Okay,” he said when they quieted down slightly. “Then let’s get started.”
Cindy had just finished eating dinner when she glanced at the clock on the microwave. It was six-thirty. Jeremiah should be teaching kids how to scare people. In a few minutes prayer chain members would arrive at the hospital to pray over Samuel. She hoped for his sake that it worked. She rinsed off her plate and put it in the dishwasher.
As she dried her hands she glanced at the clock again. She had enough time to get there if she wanted to go, too. The thought hadn’t occurred to her until just then. She wasn’t actually a member of the prayer chain, just the liaison between it and the church.
Suddenly, though, she felt an overwhelming urge to actually go and be a part of what they were doing tonight. She made a snap decision and five minutes later she was in the car on her way.
Once she got there she was relieved to see that there were indeed fifteen church members there. A woman in a dark suit who Cindy guessed to be the F.B.I. agent Mark had told them about nodded at her as she came into the room.
“Thank you so much for coming,” the woman said, addressing the group. “My name is Trina, I work for the F.B.I. and I’m here investigating some serious crimes. This man could hold a key piece of information. His name is Samuel and he’s been in a coma for nearly two years. I’ve called you together so that we might pray over him for his full and complete recovery.”
Heads bobbed up and down around the room as people signaled their understanding. Trina moved over next to the hospital bed and placed her right hand on Samuel’s forehead. She reached out with her left hand and the woman standing closest to her moved to take it. One by one they all linked up so they were standing in a circle around the bed. The man on the far end put his hand on Samuel’s shoulder and everyone bowed their heads.
The little old lady who was holding Cindy’s right hand began the prayer out loud. “Father, we bring before you this boy Samuel. He is ill, Lord, and only Your tender mercies can heal him. We, Your servants, come before You in prayer and supplication. We lift him up to You and we ask, heal him of whatever is wrong so that he might wake from this sleep that has stolen years of his young life.”
She finished and someone on the other side of the circle began to pray. Cindy felt a tingling in her spine and a warmth flooding through her hands. Peace washed over her as she listened to the prayers around her and added her own silent pleas for healing and restoration. She was amazed at the power of the prayers and regretted that she had never joined with this amazing group before in lifting someone up in prayer.
When a moment of silence came s
he finally had the courage to speak up herself. “God, please heal Samuel now, tonight.”
That was all she had to say. It wasn’t long or eloquent like many of the others, but it was from her heart. Around the circle others kept on praying. The longer they prayed the more warmth seemed to infuse her until she felt drowsy. Her legs were beginning to feel rubbery, like the energy was leaving them. Finally the last person prayed and ended it with a strong ‘Amen’ which they all chorused.
They all looked up, still in a circle, still holding hands. They stared at Samuel, who was so still in his hospital bed. His cheeks were flushed and she didn’t remember them being that way earlier.
Then, suddenly, Samuel’s eyes flew open.
15
Cindy gasped along with everyone else.
From his hospital bed Samuel looked up at all of them, eyes wide and uncomprehending. Trina smiled and patted him on the shoulder. “Welcome back to the land of the living,” she said.
He struggled to move his mouth like he wanted to say something.
“Take it easy,” she warned. “You’ve been through a lot.”
Seconds later doctors and nurses were pouring into the room, looks of shock on all their faces.
Cindy stepped back and marveled at what had just happened. She was beyond exhausted and she was sure that once she went to bed she’d sleep for a week, but she felt a glow, an excitement. It had worked! They had managed to bring this guy out of his coma. She was so grateful that she had made the last minute decision to come and be a part of it all. It would have been so hard to believe if she hadn’t seen it with her own eyes.
She felt tears welling in her eyes and she marveled at the miracle before her.
“Everyone, can we clear this room for just a few minutes?” one of the doctors was saying.
Cindy shuffled out into the hallway with the others. There several people leaned against walls or sat down on the floor. They all looked like she felt - elated but drained.
I Will Fear No Evil Page 13