by Lee Thompson
I stuffed my hands in my pockets. “As well as I can be. Once you find Doug will you give me a call?”
He pulled a pen and pad from his breast pocket and took my cell number. He said, “Go home and stay put. We’ll need to talk to you again. Probably sooner than later.”
I nodded, wishing I’d be able to do that, but I had no intentions of sitting on my ass while the darkness carried a friend away. Nutley and Lucas and the others had come here for me, because they thought I was some kind of necromancer, someone who went beyond raising the dead and went straight to materializing demons and bringing gods into this realm. If I didn’t know what strange gift I had, I’d have thought them all lunatics. But they were only partially crazy.
I waved to McCoy and he kept his gaze locked on the Jeep as I turned around in the road. I drove back to Division as the first rays of dawn touched the sky.
* * *
Duncan woke with a start, surrounded by darkness. Strong wind rustled his clothing. He smelled blood and blinked before looking to his right where the shadowed forest flashed by as if he were on a dark and deadly train blazing through the countryside. Someone squeezed his left shoulder. He glanced in that direction and saw the boy with the machete kneeling in shadows. Beyond the boy, the preacher clenched the reins, and the reins led out into the deep night and snorting horses that possessed too many jagged lines as if hastily drawn from Hell. Hooves pounded. He wiped a hand across his cold face. The preacher reached across Lucas’s lap and tapped Duncan’s leg and smiled as he recoiled, smiled because there was nowhere to go. He couldn’t jump. They were going too fast. He couldn’t fight back. He had no strength and they would kill him and more than anything he just wanted to return home to his broken family and hold his wife, to let her know that she mattered, with or without their daughter.
The preacher said, “You were with them when they saw the face of God.”
Lucas leaned in and sniffed Duncan’s collar. He nodded to himself, or to the old man, and behind them a chorus laughed madly.
Duncan’s heart hammered. He thought, I have to get the hell out of here…
He didn’t know where he was, if it was even the earth he knew, the world he loved and hated, filled with people, filled with disease and miracles. The dark carriage pulsed with the tremor attacking his knees. It rode smoothly through the night, soundless but for the sound of the madmen and women behind them and the horses carved from nightmares in front. He reasoned with himself that he was dreaming, that he was either dead or unconscious, maybe still back in one of the hovels. But he knew from what he’d seen last year at Rusty Wallace’s house that nothing was impossible. Some things only remained hidden, some things were neither here nor there.
He coughed into the crook of his arm, said, “Who the hell are you?” Trying to look around the kid and meet Nutley’s gaze. The preacher cocked his head, whispered, “That’s a good question, but irrelevant. We are All and Nothing. Outcasts and Attended. Loved and Unloved.” He gripped the reins tighter.
“What do you want with me?”
The night stilled around them as they slowed to a stop, and shadows deepened within the planes of Nutley’s face and eyes. He said to Lucas, “Carry him in.”
Duncan thought there was no way this kid was going to carry him, but he said, “Carry me where?”
Nutley said, “Into the womb.”
The others appeared around them on the ground as if the carriage and the horses had never existed—men with grimy and pale glowing faces, women sliding hands over each other’s bodies as if his terror stoked the fires of passion. He imagined that once Nutley bled him the women would frenzy while the men stood around gaping with hollow faces, and he wanted to laugh but he couldn’t because the children surged forward with their arms outstretched like they thought he could rescue them and carry them away. He turned and hit Lucas in the side of the head and the kid sat there and blinked. The children grabbed Duncan’s ankles. His back hit the ground and air burst from his lungs, burning his throat. He looked at the sky, the beauty of it breaking his heart, the stars so perfect and distant and unknowable.
Lucas leaned over him. He lifted his leg and brought his foot down on Duncan’s face and the stars quivered and the children around him chanted unholy things and he heard the ebb of the women panting and the men whispering, Sonnelion Ieiunium…
SIX
Tuesday…
Mike Johnston has been my best friend since childhood. Even in our twenties, when we hadn’t seen each other for nearly a decade because he moved away to join the Army, and then to L.A. to act in melodramas on daytime television after a producer had spotted him in a restaurant and claimed Mike was the exact image of the main character, Asher, in a project he’d written.
I stayed behind, piddling along the way I had always done. Writing books that were nothing of value, scraping by, and really only enjoying myself when self-pity kicked in, before I’d known Catherine wasn’t Catherine at all, but a mirage.
He opened one of the large double doors and stepped onto the front porch as I threw the Jeep into park and got out. Mike frowned and said, “What happened?”
I glanced over my shoulder. “Let’s get inside.”
A polished grand piano sat by a huge window that gave a spectacular view of the long, sweeping lawn, All Saints, my place, and most of Division huddled in the valley. We moved to a blood-red sofa and sat. Mike poured us each a shot of brandy which made me wonder how the mayor’s daughter, Brandy Miller, was doing now. Mike handed me the tumbler, in that moment looking more like his father than I’d ever noticed before, but I didn’t mention it because it’d only cause him pain.
Mike sipped his drink and then said, “Is this something to do with Proserpine and demons?”
“There’s a group out in the woods, south of the Devil’s Garden,” I told him. “I’m not sure how long they’ve been living there, but they’re bad news.” I wanted to tell him about Duncan right away but the liquor tasted good and I didn’t want to rush into speculation. I placed the empty tumbler on the end table. Mike eyed me, knowing there was more. “They’re a cult, I think.”
“A blood cult?”
Images of Tripper propped against the wall filled my head. His face cracked and peeled until glimpses of Duncan’s terror-stricken face revealed itself beneath. I told Mike I’d started the new job with Child Protective Services that Duncan had lined up for me, told him about the trip into the woods and meeting Lucas and then Tripper; how Duncan had brought two other cops with him and how Lucas had stepped from the shadows behind them and cut them down like chaff.
When I finished, he stood. “So, how long have they had Duncan?”
“I don’t know. A couple hours, maybe. I know the chances of Duncan staying alive are slim, but I want to get back out there and help the state police search for them. Abraham Nutley. Ever hear that name before?”
“No.”
“There were women and kids, too. But the women were more aggressive. The men were like trained zombies, mindless and waiting.” I shivered as images of their bald heads shone, moving closer, as fire flickered and Nutley grinned, holding Duncan’s shotgun, calling me a Summoner. I shook my head. “They’re evil. But they’re the real deal, not some group looking for hope or somewhere to belong.”
Mike said, “There’s more, isn’t there?”
“Yeah.” I sighed, thinking of the dozens of ghost children tramping through the forest as I fled, of April, and the mystery of the three sisters and the cave behind the falls. I told him everything, grateful to have someone who believed me, who had seen things like this as well. “The ghosts, April, the sisters, they might have all been a hallucination.”
“Maybe.” He stared at the piano for a moment. “We’ll go looking for Doug.” He said it as if there were no other choice. But there was. We could stay out of it, let the cops do their job and not get in their way. McCoy had told me to go home and stay put. But Mike and I knew how important time was, how quickly deci
sions must be made and committed to.
He crossed the living room and opened an ornate cabinet and retrieved a Colt AR15 rifle and leaned it against the door. He grabbed a Remington 870 shotgun and several boxes of ammunition. He smiled a smile that most people would assume reckless, but those who knew him well knew it was a calculated and dangerous expression.
When we were in our early teens and there wasn’t much to do in Division because my parents were poor and his were rich but all of them were frugal, we used to climb to the tops of trees and let ourselves go, free-fall, trusting our reflexes to move our hands and grab a bottom branch before we hit the ground. One time Mike decided to up the ante by doing it with his eyes closed. We faced each other and I wanted to stop him, but before I could he laughed and let go. I watched him fall. He bounced off a few branches on the way down—grunting as one hit him in the ribs, and another caught his thigh and spun him around. Then he hit the ground, the grass like green tendrils wiggling around his body through my tears. He had a gash on his cheek, his pant leg was torn and he had blood on his lips. He coughed and moaned softly, trying to move. I couldn’t move either, hanging by fingertips from the top of the tree and suddenly afraid of everything.
The next month flew past and I stayed away from trees and for a while away from Mike because it’d been the first time he’d really frightened me. But when he was able to move around a bit I visited and he’d smile the way he did right before he let go, like he’d looked death in the face and it didn’t scare him a bit. He’d be reading a comic book, propped up in bed, wearing that smile, never seeing the stories other people had written, just writing his own in his head. Once he healed he went back to the tree. He asked me once to climb to the top with him, but I refused. Mike climbed like a monkey, as if he’d never fallen. He grinned down at me. I said, “Come on, don’t be stupid!” Then he let go again…
Mike touched my shoulder, there in his living room, grown men but still the boys we had been—me still frightened of going into anything with my eyes closed and Mike brave enough to know that the only thing in the dark to fear was our own inaction.
We loaded the weapons in the Jeep, Mike cradling the AR15 between his knees, his fingers sliding .223 rounds into the magazine with amazing speed and precision. He tapped the clip on the dash as we bounced over ruts in the road. We both remained quiet, preparing ourselves for war.
We drove southeast, traveling 154 to State Route 3009.
Mike said, “They keep heading south they’ll come out somewhere around Eaglesmere Park.”
Sunlight and shadows crowded the road and ditches. We talked of childhood and innocence for the forty minutes it took to arrive near an entrance to the Loyalsock State Forest. Police lights danced in the distance. I said, “Shit,” and Mike pulled off his jacket and draped it over the barrel of the rifle, placing the weapon between his right side and the passenger door. He said, “Be cool, man.”
Two state police cars stood on either shoulder, one trooper facing us, the other stopping traffic from the other direction, stooping over to question someone in a blue Malibu. I rolled the window down and eased the Jeep to a stop beside the officer. Mike moved his leg. Rain dotted the windshield. The cop hunched his shoulders, the bill of his cap tapping the top of the Jeep as he leaned in and said, “You two seen anything out of the ordinary along the road?”
Now there was a loaded question.
Without thinking, I said, “What happened?”
The cop glanced over his shoulder and squinted against the rain. He asked again if we’d seen anything and I told him no. He said, “If you do, call the Laporte State Police Post.” Me and Mike mumbled agreement, watching this man’s eyes swarm with the news of his fellow officers’ deaths. It had to be a kick in the nuts—knowing that you’re doing your job to keep the roads and towns safe, and out of left field sprints misery and sorrow.
“Will do,” Mike said.
I nodded, holding my breath, worried that any moment now he’d notice Mike was hiding something, or he’d see some terrible light in my eyes, some foreknowledge that not everything was right here, but the cop waved us through and I eased the Jeep past the other cruiser. A mile up the road we turned into a gravel lot and stared at the forest. Mike pulled the jacket from his rifle. “If we see any cops in the woods we’ll have to hide our weapons.”
We got out. I said, “They have dogs.”
“We’ll hear them before they ever hear us.”
“What about…”
“Just keep your eyes and ears open.”
But that was hard to do. Exhaustion saturated every muscle. I heaved forward, following Mike between two guard rails at the mouth of the forest as rain bore down on us and the wind rocked trees. Leaves dripped heavily and our shoulders quickly grew wet, the shotgun in my hands slippery. We tramped between trunks and the air grew still and cool, Mike moving soundlessly, like Lucas had, and if I hadn’t been so concerned about finding Duncan I’d have asked him to slow down. I don’t know if he was ever aware of his skill, or if his body moved effortlessly while his brain measured every stride before he took it, all of it taking place in nanoseconds.
A cloud of breath hung around my face. I passed through it and followed Mike further into the unknown, hoping that we’d find Duncan in one piece with no more than bruises, a bad scare, but life is cruel and I didn’t really expect anything of the sort.
I wondered how close Nutley and his crew were.
I wondered if they knelt motionless beneath dark branches, waiting for us to step across their path.
Mike stopped and raised a closed fist. I stopped beside him, part of me trying to escape by playing it in my head that we were Indiana Jones on a quest. But the games of children don’t work in the world of men. I scanned the trees, holding the shotgun tight across my chest, telling myself to ease up because I’d never be able to fight if I went rigid. Mike propped the stock of his AR15 against his shoulder.
Rain fell harder. It deadened sound.
I whispered, “What…”
Mike shook his head slowly without looking at me and slipped behind an oak. I followed him, thunder above, blood pounding in my ears. I checked our back trail but saw nothing but emptiness, thinking that the men with Nutley were like Lucas in a way, quiet, and all of them could be inching forward as we stood there in the thickening drizzle. It was only the women who were loud and chaotic. And their laughter echoed through the forest, bouncing tree to tree, a hurricane one moment and a soft patter of rain the next.
Gooseflesh dotted my arms.
The wind rattled branches around us.
I placed my back to Mike’s and shouldered the shotgun.
Mist rose from the ground as if exhaled from ancient roots. It expanded as it inched forward. I reached behind me and tapped Mike’s hip with my left hand, the shotgun in my right feeling inadequate against the coming ghost tide.
I thought, We’re dead. We should have brought Uncle Red too.
Lightning crackled and the sky fell. Women’s laughter filled the forest again. I turned and grabbed Mike’s shoulder, part of me terrified that the same unnatural fog approached from his direction. I glanced past him and my heart skipped, blood and bone singing to a strange new song.
Nutley sat on a rotten stump with his head bowed. Lucas stood to his right, fingers clutching the machete. Mike kept the AR15 trained on the old man so I backed away, circled the tree and trained the shotgun on the creepy fucking kid. Me and Lucas stared at each other while Nutley sighed as if he bore exhaustion stemming from the foundation of the world. I wanted to watch the fog behind us but couldn’t do that and keep an eye on the kid. I remembered how Lucas moved through the woods. I said to Mike, “There’s a mist sneaking up on us.”
Mike kept his eyes on Nutley as he answered. “It touches us and I’ll put half a magazine into his chest before he has time to piss his pants.”
I thought, What if it’s not from him? What if it’s from the three sisters in the cave?
They weren’t as boldly psychotic as Nutley’s mistresses, but they weren’t normal either.
They might have been a hallucination.
I shook my head, clenched my jaw tight until my teeth ached and black dots filled my vision. Lucas smiled at me. I relaxed but lifted the shotgun’s muzzle and locked onto his midsection. I said to Mike, “The kid is a mute. If you kill Nutley then the boy won’t be able to tell us shit.”
“He can still lead us back to Duncan after he buries the old man.”
I eyed the preacher, then Lucas. I swallowed a lump in my throat. “If we have to kill one of them kill the kid.”
Mike nodded. He said to Lucas, “Drop the machete and step back.”
Lucas’s face remained stoic, the machete deadly and still.
Nutley rose from the stump. I shouldered the shotgun, aimed at his stomach, and it brought back the horrible image of what Wylie had done to Pat Andrews in front of the old cop’s house. I did my best to shake it off, but rage and panic fought for dominion.
Mike moved the rifle slightly and squeezed the trigger. Me and Nutley both jumped as the shot rang out and the bullet pinged off the machete’s blade, tearing it from Lucas’s hand. It flew to his right about eight feet. The kid turned to fetch it. Mike told Nutley, “You tell him to stop or I’ll put a bullet in him.”
Nutley stuffed his hands in his pants pockets and shrugged like he didn’t give two shits, the kid nothing more than a tool. If it breaks you get another one. Or maybe he didn’t think Mike had the balls to kill someone. Maybe he was only testing him to see if he was a man of his word, because even that meant something to crazy fucks.
Lucas knelt over the weapon and smiled again as he looked over his shoulder at us, but a vein throbbed in his forehead and murder filled his eyes.