“The Apocryphal books. They’re the ones not included in the Protestant Bible.”
She nodded. “Yes, but I can’t remember what the books are offhand. I don’t know much about the Nephilim either, just rumors that they came back to the town and took the people.”
“But what would they want with Taylor Crossing?”
She shrugged again. “That’s why it doesn’t make any sense. Do you really think some ancient spirits mentioned in the Old Testament are still around?”
“It does sound pretty farfetched.” Then he said forcefully, “but I’ve got to find out what that thing was that spoke to me in New York. It was real, and it was sinister.”
“Do you believe in God?” she asked.
“No. Well, I did. But I haven’t done anything with that in years. Not since I was a kid.”
“So maybe it’s God giving you a wakeup call.” She took a sip of her water. “Maybe you did experience something that was real, but it’s strange to think about it in those terms.”
“I don’t know that the tunnel or whatever it was, was good. Besides, I don’t believe in that God stuff anymore.”
“Why not?” she asked quietly.
He stared into her perceptive eyes and he wanted to tell her, needed to tell her. And suddenly it was pouring from him. His religiously fanatical mother, how she prayed to a God that didn’t stop her husband from beating her, didn’t stop him from finally leaving her. How she got crazier with her religion after his father abandoned them, blaming her son for his father leaving, saying that he was a wicked boy, that the sins of the father had come home to roost with the son. How she kept him from seeing his grandmother, his dad’s mother, after that, and that he hated his mother for taking away the one good person in his childhood. And how he couldn’t believe a loving God would do that to a scared little boy.
He was staring at his hands when he finished. He looked up, expecting her to be looking at him like he was a fool. He wasn’t quite sure what her expression said. Sadness, mixed with something else. Anger, maybe.
“Not all Christians are like that,” she finally broke the silence.
“Uh huh.”
“Maybe you’re running from something you can’t escape.”
“What’s that supposed to mean? That God would let me get hit by a car to get my attention?”
She blanched. “No, uh, that’s not what I meant.”
“That’s not what happened,” he said.
“Then why is this making you angry?”
He sat up, fighting his emotions. “Because I can try to rationalize an explanation, say it was a near-death experience or something, but I don’t believe it. What happened to me doesn’t match up with what happens to most people who have had those kinds of experiences. And I’m supposed to be the guy who figures all this out. What about the things I can’t explain? And why did it feel so evil?”
“Maybe it was evil,” she said. “But did you ever consider that if it’s real, and if it’s evil, that maybe there’s a converse good side at work, supernatural forces, or dare I say it, God? And you just don’t want to see it.”
“Yeah, right.” He wiped his clammy hands on his pants. He was annoyed: at himself, for ever entering into this discussion, and at his fears about it. “Look, I appreciate your viewpoint, but you don’t understand.”
“I guess not,” she said sharply, her tone rising to meet his intensity.
“Anna, I didn’t mean to insult you. You can believe whatever you want. Just don’t ask me to.”
“No, that’s fine. I shouldn’t have brought this up.” She slid from the booth.
And the date ended. Just like that. He paid the bill and they left the restaurant, their conversation dribbled to nothing. They walked in awkward silence back to the Jeep.
CHAPTER 20
Mick stared out at the scene in front of him, sheer horror ripping through him. He wasn’t high anymore. The buzzing in his head had disappeared as he watched the scene in the clearing unfold. Crouched beside him, Nicholas had a hand clasped over his mouth, and he was edging away in a backwards crawl.
“Hey,” Mick hissed. He reached around and tried to grab Nicholas. “Stay here!”
Nicholas shook his head back and forth, terrified. But he kept moving backward into the shrubs.
“Damn!” Mick whispered. What he had just witnessed was indescribable. He saw the black whirlwind as it came out of the sky and assaulted Samuel. He saw it, yet he didn’t. “How do you see evil?” his mind frantically asked him. For that’s what it was. But he hadn’t seen it. He had sensed it, like it had spoken evil to him.
And now the old drunk fisherman was staring in their direction.
Mick locked eyes with Ed. And the boy felt his blood slow to a crawl. The hair on his arms rose straight up. He drew in a gasp of air. He was now stone cold sober. He backed up. “Let’s go,” he said in a low voice. “Now.”
But it was too late.
Ed crossed the clearing with an urgency born out of discovery. He came at them, the menace in his gaze paralyzing the boy. Mick tried to get his legs to move, but fear held them rooted to the ground. He had a fleeting thought that Nicholas had disappeared into the bushes, and he wished he were so lucky. But before he could think further, Ed’s right hand had him by the throat.
Ed cried out, a hideous, perverted sound, and dragged Mick back into the clearing. Mick struggled to breathe, trying to get away, his hands frantically tearing at Ed’s wrist. He didn’t think he could feel any more frightened.
He was wrong.
Ed stopped in the clearing and held the boy in front of him. Mick stared into Ed’s eyes, the white part bloody red, the pupils like a pinpoint that was endlessly hollow. They burned with pure evil. Mick’s terror reached a new level.
“Please,” he whispered. He thought of Harvard, his parents, and his sister Ellie. He wanted to do more, see more. His eyes watered and he felt a tear run down his cheek. “Please,” he repeated.
The cavernous eyes turned into slits. Mick felt his will capitulating under the evil stare.
“Are you him?” Ed asked.
“Who?” Mick asked, terrified.
“The one with fire?”
“Yes.” And with that, Mick wasn’t Mick anymore. As the words left his mouth, he fulfilled a role, his destiny set long ago. Ed put him down.
“Come,” Ed said. Mick followed, taking the spot that Samuel had occupied a few moments before. He knelt down unbidden.
Ed performed the ceremony just as he had with Samuel. The powerful forces of darkness descended on them, and a spirit entered Mick’s body. And just like Samuel, Mick screamed in agony, his young body jerked up and back by the force entering him. Then he stood, ready to do the bidding of his leader.
Ed stared at Samuel and the boy. The spirit within was satisfied at the turn of events. Now they had the one with water and the one with fire, two of the earth roles necessary for them to gain enlightenment. They needed the other earth elements and a few other necessary ones and they could begin the releasing ceremony. Ed contemplated the two before him as the last vestiges of sunlight filtered down on them. Samuel and Mick stared out at nothing, waiting. Inside them all, evil communicated with evil.
But the spirit in Ed knew the scent of Mick’s blood, and likened it to a smell from centuries gone past. It breathed in the metallic odor, fed on it as if it were fresh morning dew. The evil inside Ed festered powerfully.
And the spirits inside Samuel and Mick fed, too, for evil feeds evil.
The spirit in Ed knew that the one with water and the one with fire were becoming aware of their purpose. They could sense the evil. They were two vortexes that began to wrap themselves in their darkness, creating one powerful force with Ed’s spirit. And they would grow stronger still.
The sun sank further, leaving the forest in shadows. The Matchless Mine stood like a weathered ghost off in the distance.
Ed looked at the crescent of yellow on the edge of the horizon.
The spirit inside communicated. The time for action would have to wait until tomorrow. When the sun was high again, and the heat intensified, the spirits would be at their most powerful.
And they would call the others to join them.
CHAPTER 21
The dinner hour was busy at the Silver Dollar Café. Joan Friedman seated a family of five at the last available table in the café’s small front room. She kept glancing toward the kitchen, hoping to see Samuel.
“Looks like we lucked out,” the heavyset man, father of three little children, said to Joan as he took a menu from her. He spoke loudly over the sounds of his children’s excited giggling and horsing around with one another.
“It’s busy,” Joan agreed, hiding her irritation under wan politeness.
She handed a menu to the frazzled-looking mother before hurrying back into the kitchen to check on dinner preparations. Manuel, a young Mexican immigrant who lived in Nederland, was cooking the food and frantically slopping it on plates.
“Eet very busy,” he said, wiping his hands on a food-stained apron. Rock music blaring from the kitchen radio drowned out the buzz of conversation from the dining room. “Where eez Samuel?”
“That’s what I’d like to know,” Joan muttered, helping Manuel put the finishing touches on a hamburger plate. Manuel worked the dinner shift, and other times when the Friedmans occasionally needed an extra pair of hands. With Samuel around, it worked out fine. But with just two people, serving the dinner crowd was chaos.
She grabbed the hamburger plate and a salad bowl and rushed out into the dining room. She could feel a headache coming on, and it wasn’t from how busy she was. It was from Samuel.
Joan had been willing to dismiss Samuel’s afternoon fishing trip – she knew that’s where he’d gone because the tackle box and pole were missing – but for him not to return to help finish out the evening was more than she was willing to excuse.
“Ma’am? Some ketchup.” The diner, Travis Velario, pointed to his burger.
“Sure.” She grabbed a bottle from a sideboard and handed it to him, too distracted to notice how formally he’d addressed her.
“Where’s Samuel?” Travis asked.
“Out,” she said abruptly and walked off. She didn’t want to try and explain anything to Travis. She took care of a bill at the front counter and quickly cleared the vacated table in the corner before seating another couple there. Then it was back to the kitchen to help Manuel.
“He can’t go fishing, no?”
Joan stared at Manuel. “Sure, in the afternoon when things are slow. But he knows better than to leave us to serve dinner alone.”
Manuel nodded in sympathy as he threw baked potatoes onto plates.
“Thank goodness people understand this is a Mom and Pop kind of place,” she said, putting shredded carrots on salads.
“What?” He looked confused.
“We can be slow and people’ll understand,” Joan explained.
Manuel still had a blank expression, his pencil thin mustache twitching.
“We’re not McDonald’s,” Joan said, piling dishes onto a tray.
“Oh,” he nodded.
“But if I get my hands on Samuel…” she let the words trail off as she took the tray in front.
Behind her, she heard Manuel say, “He eez a dead man, no?”
You better believe it, Joan thought, her eyebrows furrowing together angrily.
CHAPTER 22
As Rory’s Jeep meandered its way up Boulder Canyon, Anna sat slumped in the passenger seat, her thoughts a jumbled mess. She hadn’t meant to insult Rory by saying he was running from God, or that God would resort to injuring him to get his attention. She’d been thinking about his childhood when she said that there were things he couldn’t escape from. Because they all had things from their past that they wished they could run from. Maybe that was why she’d gotten so upset, because she was running, too. She reflected on their dinner conversation.
Rory had been getting increasingly tense as he talked about whatever it was that he’d seen in New York, and that had been making her edgy. But that wasn’t all of it. She had been surprised when he said he didn’t believe in God. Since Rory delved into exposing paranormal hoaxes, she should’ve assumed that he would be skeptical of a higher power, only she hadn’t. In truth, she hadn’t thought that far ahead, but now she was forced to look at their differing beliefs.
Now neither one spoke, and the hum of the tires seeping through the floor was a monotonous signal of the tension inside the Jeep. After a few minutes of silence, Rory flipped the switch on the radio. It was playing an old seventies song, “Stuck In The Middle With You”, by Stealers Wheel. So true, she thought.
She stared out the windshield, but glanced sideways at Rory. One hand gripped the steering wheel, the other rested on his left leg. His face was impassive, but the muscles in his jaw periodically tensed. She flashed back to a time years ago. Funny, she and Paul had just had an argument, but she couldn’t remember what it was about. But she’d been terribly mad at him. He’d been frustrated with her, and his jaw worked in the same way Rory’s did now.
Anna sighed heavily. Paul. He was her soul mate. They had clicked instantly. She’d taken an English lit class, not really her subject, and was sitting at the back of the room, talking with her friends, when he walked in. Their eyes had met, and he strolled purposefully to an empty chair in front of her. A tingling shot through her body, her attraction to him immediate. By the end of class, she knew he was going to ask her out. By the second date, she knew she’d marry him. And almost a year later, they were husband and wife.
She loved him, his intense brown eyes, his smile that others might have found too wide and gaping, but she found adorable. They had so many of the same interests, and he was as passionate about his faith as she was in hers. Everything had been going fine, until that one day out on the lake. What was her dad doing out there? she thought for the second time that day.
Rory cleared his throat, bringing her reeling back to the present. She glanced over but he was looking off to his left. Then his focus riveted back on the road. She almost said something, but stopped herself. She was so confused, like the darkness in the canyon was sucking her down.
But as she sat next to Rory, she felt that same intense attraction to him as she’d felt for Paul. She remembered sitting next to him in the theater earlier, how jittery she felt with him right there. He made her feel alive, feminine, wanted. She got excited thinking about it. All that heat and fire. Then her rational self questioned whether she should pursue something with a man who didn’t believe the way she did. She’d always been told this was a dangerous path, and she could see that. She wanted to share her faith with those close to her, but what if she married someone who didn’t believe at all? What would that be like?
Anna snickered. Look at me, she thought, I’ve moved this into marriage and I haven’t even known the guy for more than a day. Rory eyed her but she didn’t say anything. In truth, she was scared of her own feelings.
They passed through Nederland. Barker Dam on the left was a murky mirror with the moon reflecting off its still surface like a white marble. He drove through the roundabout and they headed up the Peak-to-Peak Highway. The radio was now playing a Dwight Yoakam song, and she saw his fingers start tapping the steering wheel.
The lack of conversation was overpowering. She wanted to say something, anything, to make everything better. But she didn’t.
They drove on, and in the blackness he almost missed the turn-off.
“There’s the road,” she pointed it out to him. Her voice cut through the stillness between them.
He nodded at her, signaling his thanks. The Jeep bounced down the dirt road, the headlights cutting through the night, pebbles occasionally popping the metallic underside. The trees at the edge of the light flew by in a staccato beat. She was relieved that she would soon be home, where she could think through this whole thing.
“What the hell?” Rory
blurted out, jerking the wheel.
Anna turned her head and saw a flash of dark blue, a red plaid shirt, and a pale face with a huge mustache on their left. For a brief second, she locked eyes with the man outside the car. She felt like she was gazing into the face of a dead person. Then the Jeep flew on by. They had come within inches of hitting him.
“That fool!” Rory hit the brakes and they skidded to a stop.
“That was Samuel Friedman,” Anna said, twisting around and gazing out the rear window of the cab. But in the gloom, she couldn’t see anything.
“What’s he doing out here?” Rory asked. He opened his door and stepped out. “Samuel?” he called out. Darkness swallowed his voice. He called out again. “You’re sure that was him?” he said, poking his head inside.
“Uh huh.”
She heard the sound of Rory’s footsteps fade as he drew away from the Jeep. The beep of the car signaling an open door grated on her. She heard him call out a third time, his voice far off as she leaned over to close the door to keep the bugs from seeking out the dome light.
Rory was so much like Paul, she thought. Stop it! she scolded herself. It’s not fair to Paul, and it’s not fair to Rory. Get your head screwed on right before you take this thing any further. She continued to admonish herself.
She peered out the rear window, but couldn’t see anything. The radio droned on. She reached over and switched it off, sitting with the hum of the engine, waiting. Out in front of her, the headlights cut into the road, the beams dying a short distance ahead, leaving a stark black-and-white landscape.
“Rory, where are you?” she said to herself after a while. She craned her neck and looked out the driver’s side window. The trees at the edge of the road seemed to leer at her as they walled off the woods.
She turned and gazed out her window at the canopy of tiny white dots covering the sky. An edge of fear crept into her veins. Where had Rory gone? Something moved just outside the halo of light in front of the car. She swirled but whatever it was had gone. She put her face to the window and squinted through the glass. Then she jumped as the driver side door suddenly opened.
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