“No Casper,” Rory said, deadpan.
Anna shot him a mischievous smile and continued. “And not friendly either. No, they were,” she paused, trying to find the right word, “spirits, formless shapes that chased the man from Main Street straight up to his place in the woods. He stayed locked up in his cabin all night with a shotgun pointed at the door, but they didn’t bother him.”
“And when daylight came?” Rory asked.
“The spirits were gone. And so were all the other residents.”
“Gone where?”
Anna shrugged. “No one knows. Brewster says his grandfather searched cabins, went out on the lake, but everyone had just left, leaving all their personal belongings behind. No sign of any foul play. They just disappeared.”
“You sure Brewster’s grandfather wasn’t watching an episode of The Twilight Zone and some of the story plot got mixed into an alcohol haze,” Rory said.
“Maybe, except this was 1891.”
Rory leaned on the counter. “And no one could explain the missing people?”
Anna smiled. “It’s a ghost story, told by an old man who’s a six-pack short of a case. There’s no proof of anything like that happening.”
“You looked?”
“Well, no. Why bother? It’s one of those yarns that’s passed along from generation to generation.” She nodded out toward the door. “My father heard all that stuff when he was a kid, too.”
“Every old mountain town should have a story like that,” Rory said.
“The Crossing has its share of them.” The front door opened as a college-aged couple came in the store, decked out in hiking attire.
“Enough of Taylor Crossing’s myths,” Anna said.
“Talk to you soon,” Rory said as the couple came up to the counter with bottles of water.
“Watch out for Old Man Brewster,” she whispered to him, a playful grin on her face.
He shifted the bag of groceries to his other hand, and with a gracious nod of his head, he left the store. Jimmy rocked on the porch, oblivious to Rory’s passing, or to the cars beginning to gather along the street.
Rory strolled back to the dock, settled himself in his boat and rowed for the far shore. As he neared it, the dread he’d felt since arriving in town grew.
Once ashore, he put his groceries away, and started on his research again. Somewhere in the stacks of papers there had to be something more about the town rumors. Anna’s description of what the elder Brewster had seen in the town’s early days sounded eerily similar to what he’d seen in New York. He wondered if there was a connection, and even as he had the thought, his gut was telling him that there was.
CHAPTER 3
William Douglas, owner of the Colorado Mountain Art Gallery, sat at a small table in the rear of the store, eating a veggie sandwich. Amidst an array of paintings ranging from outdoor scenes, primarily of mountain views and Taylor Lake, Native American art, and Western sculpture, he contemplated a new watercolor by an up-and-coming artist who lived in Estes Park. The artist had perfectly captured the haunting presence of The Luckless Lady mine, one of many abandoned mines near the Crossing. The stark mine shack, with a treacherous rocky river flowing down underneath the weathered wood beams, rusted iron bolts holding the door ajar, an aspen tree growing up through the building, spoke volumes about the dashed fortunes of long lost prospectors. How long had they worked the claim before deserting the mine to seek their fortunes elsewhere?
“Let’s go, Douggie,” Pamela Henderson said from the small back room, where she was locking up the small safe.
Douggie, who always went by this variation of his last name, stood in the doorway and watched Pamela spin the black number dial on the safe twice, then replaced the picture that hung in front of it. Not at all creative, but it served the purpose.
“Selling that Billings takes care of us for the rest of the year,” Pamela said, referring to a popular local artist who specialized in Rocky Mountain paintings. Douggie noticed the gleam in Pamela’s eyes. Her generally hazel eyes took on a greenish glint when she got excited about money. How appropriate, he thought wryly.
“What’s that look?” Pamela asked sharply.
“Your greed knows no bounds,” Douggie answered her directly.
“It was a fair price.”
“For a signed original. Not a reproduction.”
“A sucker’s poor choice is our fortune.” Pamela stepped past Douggie, tugging at his scraggly beard as she went. “Would you rather go back to that office job?”
“No.” It had been years since Douggie had worked as a bookkeeper in Boulder, but that didn’t change the fact that he never wanted to go back to that kind of job. Being an art dealer, and dabbling in iron and clay sculpture, suited his bohemian attitude much better. And it didn’t bother him that Pamela was a tough businesswoman; her aggressive business practices were what allowed him to chase his artistic pursuits. “Did you check on that order for Travis?” Douggie asked her.
“Uh huh,” Pamela gestured at the antique desk in the corner of the store.
Douggie strode over to the desk to check the paperwork, donning a pair of wireless bifocals. Their business neighbor, Travis Velario, who owned Back In Time Antiques, often worked in trade with them. The desk was a perfect example. Pamela had traded a bronze sculpture for the desk, and unless Douggie had missed his guess, the desk was worth one hell of a lot more than the sculpture. That was Pamela.
“What’s the matter?” she asked. Douggie looked over at her. She was standing near the door, eating a banana. The khaki shorts and tight blouse she wore accentuated her figure. “I know that look,” she said.
Douggie shrugged his shoulders. She knew him well. They’d been together for over thirty years, never officially married but a couple since 1967 when they’d crossed paths in San Francisco. They were both college dropouts who converged with thousands of others on the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood, espousing free love while they dropped acid and chanted “Make love, not war”. Pamela looked almost the same now, tall and slender, her hair down almost to her rear end, the coffee color replaced by a silky gray. She still shunned makeup, never needed it to look beautiful, even though now her suntanned face showed more wrinkles with each passing year. And she could always tell when he was brooding. He’d never been able to master hiding his thoughts from her. “Just wondering about the future,” he answered her. “I don’t know how much longer this town will last.”
Pamela snickered. “The Crossing will be here long after we’re rotting in the ground, hon, so I wouldn’t worry.” She threw the banana peel into a trashcan by the door.
“Well, it’s my job to worry. This store has to provide for our retirement,” Douggie retorted. It was a running joke between them. When Pamela learned that the surname Douglas roughly translated to “from the dark water” she teased Douggie about how appropriate that was because his moods frequently ran a gloomy gamut.
“We’ll have plenty by that time,” Pamela said.
And Douggie didn’t doubt that. Pamela was the one with the business acumen, not him. How things had changed. At one time they couldn’t have cared less where their next meal would come from. Now they checked retirement accounts almost daily. Douggie set the paperwork down, closed the blinds on the windows and joined Pamela by the door.
“I love living up here,” Pamela said as she leaned against the doorjamb and looked out over Taylor Lake. “Check out that sunset.” The sun sat at the edge of the horizon, the tops of the trees like bleak silhouettes in its orange halo. The lake was midnight blue, the surface marble smooth in the evening calm, reflecting a sky that was a violet and crimson fire, wispy clouds fanning out in soft streaks, not a threat of moisture in them.
Douggie could never explain how Taylor Crossing was at once a place that beckoned him, and at the same time sent chills up his back. It was a vacation spot in the summers, accessible by turning off the highway and following the lone sign that directed you down a meandering, dirt
road for almost five miles. Right before you actually got to the town you crossed that decrepit bridge that threatened to collapse every time a car passed over it, especially at high speeds. And if you took the time to yawn during the drive, you might miss the Crossing completely. Except for a number of ruins, old brick and stone foundations, and their art gallery that derived its sustenance from the post-hippie culture that seemed to migrate out of Boulder and into the western mountains, there was the general store that sold just about everything at higher prices than the chain groceries in Boulder, Travis’s quaint antique store that got most of its business through word-of-mouth, a rustic bed and breakfast with a café that served a short list of excellent meals, and a small but serviceable post office that operated at very-reduced hours in the summer, and not at all during the winter. For that matter, the other four establishments weren’t open in the winter either. It was hard to operate a business when the weather was so treacherous that no customers came. Taylor Crossing didn’t even have a gas station. You had to get that miles down the road in Nederland, or hope you’d make it to Estes Park in the other direction before the gauge hit ‘E’.
But because of its idyllic location on the shores of Taylor Lake, with the Indian Peaks looming around it, Taylor Crossing and the surrounding land attracted a number of summer residents who came for weekends or the entire season to soak up some peace and quiet, and to enjoy the awesome views of the Rocky Mountains. The fact that temperatures at almost nine thousand feet above sea level were usually much cooler than in Boulder or Denver helped, too. Since most of the cabins were in outlying areas, you could avoid most of the day-to-day tourists who came to hike or fish on Taylor Lake because they stayed on the main road, and didn’t tend to venture off the beaten trails.
A few hardy, some said foolhardy, year-round residents like Douggie and Pamela braved the harsh Colorado winters, when the road up to Taylor Crossing was bound to be nearly impassable any number of times from October through April. But they managed by stocking up on food, keeping a healthy woodpile just outside the cabin door, and not minding the isolation that came with being snowed in. It was a lifestyle, to be sure, if you wanted it. If not, you left and came back with the warmth of the next summer.
“Let’s go.” Douggie nudged Pamela out the door, locked it, and took her hand. Outside, they ran into Travis, coming out of the antique store.
“Going for a bite to eat?” Pamela asked Travis.
“Yep,” he answered. Travis, a divorced father of two, lived alone in a cabin near theirs, and he rarely cooked at home.
“I’ve got your order ready,” Douggie told him coolly. Douggie wasn’t particularly fond of Travis, didn’t like the way he looked at Pamela. It didn’t seem to matter that she was taken, or that for years the local rumor was that Travis had hoped to sway Anna Holmes into bed. Douggie stepped around Pamela so Travis couldn’t eyeball her. He’d heard Anna complain often about Travis’s lecherous gaze and unwanted advances, and he could see why. There was something smarmy about the way he did it, way beyond casual flirting. He was certainly not the stereotypical genteel antique dealer. “You want to stop by tomorrow and check it?” Douggie asked him, still blocking Pamela.
“Sure,” Travis shrugged. He was heavy with a protruding gut and the beginnings of a double chin, and had dark features that made him seem sinister, a look accentuated in the dusk. Douggie watched as Travis tried to eye Pamela, then focused on the general store.
Poor Anna, Douggie grimaced, to have to deal with Travis’s advances every day.
“She’s already gone home with Jimmy,” Pamela said to Travis, moving Douggie along.
Travis smirked at her. “You sure?”
“Yeah,” Douggie said. “Give it a rest, huh?” Ugh, the man had no shame! Travis was always hanging around Anna like a leech, even before it happened… Douggie stopped himself from thinking about the terrible ‘it’.
“Whatever.” Travis waved them off as he turned up the walkway to the Silver Dollar Café. “Have a good one.”
“Ugh! What a jerk,” Douggie whispered at the retreating figure.
“You’re sweet when you’re jealous,” Pamela said, leaning into him.
Douggie smiled, suddenly aroused, and he held her hand tighter as they continued on down the road, then turned and followed a path up the hillside, through the pine and aspen trees. The suggestion of a breeze rustled leaves on the aspens, creating soft clicking sounds. A hundred yards through the woods they came to an ironwork gate, its latch long since broken. On an arch over the gate was a sign, fashioned over a hundred years ago: Cemetery.
They strolled through the overgrown brush around the entryway and into the cemetery. Most days they took this shortcut to the cabin they owned outside the Crossing. Marble and granite grave markers dotted a large clearing, some simple squares, some ornately designed with crosses. All were old. It had been at least a century since anyone had been buried in the Crossing, and many of the tombstones tilted as if they had tired of being sentries to some forgotten souls. Douggie sidestepped one, the name, birth and death dates worn off. He pulled Pamela over to him.
“Hey, be careful,” she admonished him. Douggie smiled back wickedly.
Shadows stretched out over the graves, elongated shapes reaching toward the east. Pamela stopped to watch the last sliver of sun disappear.
“Wait, do you hear something?” She stopped and cocked her head to the side.
He listened for a second. “Nope.” He wrapped his hands around her waist.
“It’s spookier than usual.”
“Yeah, the evil spirits are coming for you.”
She pushed at his hands. “I’m serious.”
“So am I,” Douggie murmured. He nuzzled his nose in her hair. He loved the way her hair smelled, like the mountain wildflowers.
“Stop it.” Pamela made a halfhearted attempt to push him away. He continued, his hands roaming up to her breasts, and she turned around. He kissed her hard. At first she resisted, but then her lips parted. Her fingers went to the back of his neck, playing with his braided ponytail. He lowered her to the ground, behind a tall marble headstone with a large cross. It was their chosen spot, hidden from the cemetery entrance. The tall straw grass formed a cushion beneath them, as he tugged at the drawstring on her shorts.
Above them, the last light slipped away, leaving the cemetery in dark shadows, tombstones standing sentry around them.
CHAPTER 4
Anna Holmes stood at the kitchen sink of the small A-frame cabin where she lived with her father, gazing absentmindedly out the window. She held a plate that she slowly wiped with a towel. The plate was more than dry, but her mind wasn’t on the dinner dishes. She was daydreaming about Rory Callahan. It had been a long while since a man had captivated her like this. Certainly not Travis Velario.
Ugh! she thought, hating the fact that while she thought Travis was about as appealing as a sunburn in July, he thought she was the best and only woman for him. She’d had to fight off his advances every summer season for as long as she could remember, even before her husband Paul died. And each year it frustrated her more and more. If only something would discourage him. Her mind flashed to an image of Rory. If Travis knew how attracted she was to Rory, maybe then he would back off. Yeah, right, she thought. The laugh track from her favorite sitcom floated in from the other room where her father was watching television, but she didn’t notice.
She worked the towel deliberately around the outside edge of the dish, while her eyes roved past her reflection in the window and into the dying daylight. She wondered what Rory was doing right now. Maybe he was writing an article about the town.
She hadn’t recognized him when he came into the store. It wasn’t like she hadn’t heard of Rory Callahan. She had seen his byline a number of times. She had even glanced at some of the articles, but it was the standard headline, “In The World, Not Of It”, that hooked you. The title was the same no matter where the articles appeared, whether it was the
New York Times or People, because the articles dealt with the same general theme, paranormal phenomena that seemingly couldn’t be explained. He recounted many strange occurrences throughout the country, and frequently dispelled myths about the paranormal, or ferreted out the charlatans and deceivers. He had an easy and entertaining writing style that she enjoyed.
He had gained more widespread recognition for his work as well. He had been on The Oprah Winfrey Show, winning her over with humor and a relaxed manner. Anna had watched the show, and she’d been won over as well, but mostly because Rory had shed new perspectives on so many seemingly bizarre things and his investigations had stopped several cheaters from profiting off their deceptive practices.
And then the man himself shows up in Taylor Crossing. Before Anna had seen him on Oprah, she’d pictured Rory Callahan, the journalist, with a stereotyped professorial, studious appearance. Turned out he didn’t look anything like she’d imagined. He didn’t look at all nerdy, she laughed to herself. In fact, he was the opposite. He had the build of an outdoorsman who’d had a rough time of things, as if pursuing life had left him drained. She figured he looked similar to some of the miners who had once lived in the town, their lives of chasing gold that frequently didn’t pan out wearing them haggard and beaten. He carried that look in a face deeply tanned by an unforgiving sun, his wavy dark hair just a bit tousled, thought lines around his eyes.
His eyes. Faded blue like well-worn jeans. They were what had pulled her in. When she gazed into those eyes she felt a sudden attraction to him, and she wondered what secrets he held close. In that brief conversation she had with him she felt like there was something there, haunting him.
Nephilim Genesis of Evil Page 3