“What happened to her?” Annika asked.
Evan looked over at her.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I really don’t. They took her and pulled her into the forest. It was so dark, I couldn’t see what they did.”
“But you know something happened?” Soren asked, remembering his guilty look earlier.
“No,” Evan said, “not for sure. But . . .” He paused and licked his lips. “I’ve seen her,” he said.
Soren looked at Evan carefully and waited, knowing sometimes the best choice is to stay silent.
“In my dreams,” Evan continued. He looked up at Soren with a desperate look in his eyes. “She never talks, but I can see it in her eyes. She’s waiting for me to come back to her.”
Soren felt goose bumps on his arms when Evan said those words.
“In the dream, is Alice okay?” Soren asked.
Evan looked down and started crying. Soren glanced at Annika.
“I think we can take that as a no,” he told her.
“Evan, we appreciate you telling us all this,” Annika said, her voice calm again. “We just need to know a few more things. Can you describe the guy who spoke to you?”
Evan put his palm to his face, wiping away tears from his bloodshot eyes.
“Big,” he said. “He had white hair and a long beard. His eyes . . . they were intense. They seemed to look right through me. When he stared at me, it was like he could see every bad thing I’d ever done.”
Soren thought of the charcoal sketch he’d found among Annika’s papers. The man Evan was describing fit perfectly with the image in the drawing. If so, Evan had been looking at Jeremiah Coakley, the preacher who founded Bethlehem.
“And the way he kept talking about sin—he knew what Alice and me were doing in the forest, that we were cheating,” Evan continued.
“Anything else you can tell us about him?” Soren asked.
“It was like I said: he was both there and not there,” Evan said. “One minute I could see him clearly, just like you two. The next I could see through him. When I started to run, a couple of his guys tried to grab me, but their hands went right through me. I know that’s impossible, but . . .”
He stopped talking, obviously exhausted. There was a knock at the door and a police officer stuck his head in.
“Ms. Taylor, I’ve been told your time is nearly up,” the officer said.
Annika nodded and the cop disappeared, shutting the door.
“I’m sorry, Evan, we have to go,” she said. “But we believe you. It’s good that you confided in us. We can help you.”
“No, you can’t,” Evan said, looking up. His eyes were bloodshot and puffy.
“I have one last question,” Soren said. “You said when you started researching the story about the missing gems you had an anonymous source who sent you a tip. Do you know who they were?”
“Would they be anonymous if I did?” Evan asked.
“But did they give you a hint?” Soren said. “How did they find you?”
“I don’t know,” Evan said. “I found Mitchell’s journal in the archives, but the only person I told about that was Gavin. No one else knew. I put in a request for any books about Bethlehem, but that was it. A little later I got a note in my box asking me to set up that separate e-mail address, the one she found.”
“And that’s how they contacted you?” Soren asked.
“Yes,” Evan said. “But all they did was point me in a couple places, help narrow my search.”
“Who told you exactly where to go?” Soren asked.
“The source,” Evan said. “They sent me the map with the red circle on it. It was attached to an e-mail that said ‘You will find what you’re looking for here.’ That was it.”
Annika gestured at Soren, and he got up to leave.
“We’ll be in touch,” Soren said. “With any luck we’ll find enough to get you out of here.”
But Evan smiled wearily as Soren looked back at him.
“I see him, too, you know,” Evan said as they opened the door. “In my dreams.”
Soren didn’t have to ask who he was talking about, picturing the bearded man in white.
“He tells me I’m not finished yet,” he said. “He says I have to come back to atone for my sins. When I try to sleep, he talks to me. At night I can hear him calling my name.”
Chapter Eight
Soren was so lost in thought that it took him several moments to realize they weren’t headed back to the highway. When he looked up, they were on a two-lane road going east.
“Where are we going?” he asked.
Annika turned and smiled at him.
“Finally noticed, huh? I tried to get your attention five minutes ago to explain but you were zoned out,” she said.
Soren shrugged, and Annika reached her hand out to turn down the radio.
“I was mulling things over, and sometimes I forget the niceties of social interaction. Where are we going?”
“Well, we came all this way . . .”
“Holy shit,” Soren said. “We’re headed to Reapoke Forest.”
“Might as well,” she replied. “It’s just forty-five minutes away from Richmond.”
“Fantastic,” he said. “Gotta say that I’m really looking forward to the part where we get kidnapped and hung from trees.”
“Come on, you aren’t scared, are you?” she said, and turned toward him again. She cocked an eyebrow at him. “Surely you can handle a mob of religiously inspired ghosts.”
“Is that our theory?” he asked. “Father Coakley and crew returned from the grave and murdered three kids?”
“You have a better idea?”
Soren leaned back in the seat and was surprised how pastoral the scenery had become. Richmond was only a few miles behind them, but they were already whizzing by thick knots of woods on either side. They passed the occasional gas station or home, but there was surprisingly little out this way. He turned back to Annika.
“A good investigation has to start with the premise that this may not be supernatural,” he said. “If that’s the case, two possibilities spring to mind. The first is the easiest: Evan is either lying or mentally unstable. Either way, he killed his friends. The fact that the place where it happened has a dark past is immaterial.
“The second potential explanation is that Evan really did find people out in those woods, but they weren’t ghosts. Coakley is long dead, but it’s possible that someone could have taken up his mantle, or pretended to.”
“Why?” Annika asked.
“Who knows? The world is filled with crazy people.”
“Yeah, but . . .”
She trailed off and Soren frowned.
“I admit it’s a lame theory,” he said. “But I don’t like Evan’s anonymous source.”
“It might have nothing to do with what happened in the forest,” she replied.
“Or it might have everything to do with it,” Soren said. “Let’s say there really are ghosts out there, and further that it was the ex–Father Coakley and his congregation. That explains what happened to Evan and his friends, but it doesn’t deal with how he ended up there. Unless we’re going to posit that Father Coakley has an e-mail account.”
“[email protected]. Very popular URL.”
“Exactly,” Soren said. “Speaking of e-mails, you didn’t find any among Evan’s separate account from a mysterious anonymous source?”
Annika shook her head.
“No,” she said. “Found a bunch between him and Gavin, but nothing from anyone else. I thought they just set it up to communicate with each other privately.”
“So either Evan’s lying or someone hacked the account and covered their tracks,” Soren said.
“What about the treasure? Isn’t it possible the source was just using Evan and Gavin to get to it?”
“The treasure’s probably a red herring,” Soren said. “Think about it: Where did it come from? Do we think Coakley had a secret stas
h of jewels? Evan made it sound like it was something a wealthy Southerner buried out there. Okay, but who? There are several plantations in that area, but why would they travel outside of them to essentially dig a hole? It doesn’t hang together. I doubt it really exists.”
“So someone lied to Evan? Why?”
“That’s what bothers me,” Soren said. “Again, we’ve got two alternatives, both of them fairly evil. In one, somebody wanted Evan and his friends to head to the forest so he or she could take them out, blaming ghosts in the process.”
“Or?”
“Or someone knew damn well there were actual ghosts in the forest and purposely sent Evan to them,” Soren said.
“Why on earth would someone do that?” she asked.
“That is a very good question.”
“We’re almost there,” Annika said.
Soren perked up and looked out the window. He wasn’t sure what he expected—certainly not a bright neon sign that said “Haunted Forest Next Right”—but he saw very little at all. On the right side was just a long line of trees with no distinguishing marks. On the left was a shop whose name was as nondescript as its outside. A faded yellow sign out front said “Sandwiches.” Past the deli was an unmarked road.
“When I was younger, my best friend would love to walk into these kind of stores and ask for whatever they were least likely to sell,” he said. “So if he saw this sandwich shop, he’d go into it and demand anything but a sandwich. Like maybe lobster or filet mignon.”
Annika didn’t laugh or even crack a smile.
“Guess you had to be there,” he said.
Annika turned the car onto the unmarked road. She seemed anxious.
“Why are you so nervous?” Soren asked.
“Oh, I don’t know,” she said. “I’m sure it has nothing to do with the fact that a lot of people who visit this place either disappear or die in a terrifically unpleasant way.”
“Twenty minutes ago you seemed positively cheery about coming out here,” he replied.
“That was before I saw it,” she said. “When I turned in—”
“You got the heebie-jeebies?”
“Is that a technical term?”
“Hey, I paid a lot of money to go to professional supernatural investigator school to use big words like that,” Soren said.
“Don’t you sense anything?” she asked.
He did—more than he cared to admit. The road had an abandoned feel. They passed a rusted sign for the wildlife reserve that hung cockeyed. The forest loomed in on both sides. The sun was still shining, but the road felt darker.
Soren often wondered why his experiences hadn’t left him more immune to that dread that started in the pit of his stomach and then worked its way slowly into his bones. He felt like he should be hardier. He tried not to show it, but he worried that each case made him more terrified, not less. There was the unnerving sense that with every encounter he was using up some finite amount of luck. It was only a matter of time before it ran out entirely. When it did, Soren had the feeling the result would be painful.
Still, for some reason he didn’t feel like being entirely honest.
“Nope,” he said.
Her brief look over at him was filled with skepticism.
“This road goes into the reserve?” he asked.
“Yes, but that’s not where we’re going,” she replied.
She slowed the car to twenty-five miles per hour and appeared to be looking for something on the left side of the road. Soren spotted it after a moment—a small gravel driveway that was barely visible and grown over with weeds. He pointed it out to her and she nodded.
“I’m amazed you see so well with those sunglasses on,” Annika said. “I would have driven right past it.”
She turned onto the road. The trees were so thick overhead they practically blotted out the sun. Soren felt like the temperature had dropped by at least ten degrees.
“Don’t tell me you aren’t feeling this,” Annika said.
Soren just nodded, not bothering to lie this time. He was hardly superstitious, but he had the uncomfortable feeling that they were being watched. He shivered. The radio suddenly became much louder and began blurting static. Soren heard several signals at once, as if the radio were changing stations, though the digital dial remained fixed to the same frequency. Finally, one signal seemed to come through loud and clear. It was the sound of a choir singing. Soren didn’t recognize the hymn, but he caught the chorus—“Grace, grace, God’s grace, grace that is greater than all our sin.”
Annika reached over quickly and shut off the stereo. Her hand was shaking.
“Still want to stick to the nonsupernatural theory?” she asked.
“I’m certainly willing to reconsider it,” Soren said.
With the radio off, the only sounds were the rattle and shake of the car. It hit a large rock, and Soren had to grab on to the handle overhead to steady himself.
“Next time, can we bring my car?” he asked. “This one feels like it’s going to come apart. And I don’t fancy being stuck out here overnight.”
“Next time you can come on your own,” she said.
Soren estimated they had traveled a little over a mile before they came to a gate. It looked old and was bent in several places, but it was still enough of a barrier that there was no way they were going to drive past it. Going around it wasn’t a possibility either. There was too much underbrush on either side.
“End of the line,” Annika said.
She shoved the car into park and turned it off. They sat there in silence for a minute before Annika turned to him, looking worried.
“I just remembered something,” she said. “I read a lot of stories about this place. There was one where a couple came back this way to have sex. They were getting pretty hot and heavy when they thought they heard people outside. When the guy tried to restart the car, he couldn’t get it to work. The battery was completely drained. They had to walk a couple miles back to the road before they could get assistance. The girl later said she saw people following them—a Native American hunting party.”
Soren gave her a stunned look.
“Thank you so much for telling me that story right now,” he said. “Instead of mildly terrified, I’m going to upgrade my Facebook status to severely petrified.”
“No, you won’t,” Annika said quietly. “For one thing, you don’t have a Facebook page. For another, your cell phone won’t work out here. It’s a dead zone.”
“What a fantastic choice of words,” he replied.
They sat in the car, neither of them moving. Soren looked out the window beyond the forest and the gate, but he saw nothing stir.
“We could just go back,” Annika said after several minutes.
The remark galvanized Soren into action. He opened the car door and stepped into Reapoke Forest.
Chapter Nine
Soren stepped gently out of the car and waited for something to happen.
He wasn’t sure what it would be—he imagined maybe a bolt of lightning or a sudden noose appearing in midair—and despite his fear he was mildly disappointed when nothing unusual occurred.
Standing there beside the car and looking around, Soren thought Reapoke Forest seemed like any other woods he’d been in. There were trees as far as the eye could see, thick groves of them that partially obscured the sun and sky above. Damp leaves and scattered twigs covered the ground. He heard a breeze blow through the branches above, sounding eerily like a group of people whispering.
And then he noticed what he didn’t hear. Soren had been camping many times in his life, and though he had never consciously taken note of the many noises that birds and other wildlife made, he felt their absence now. He waited for several minutes, thinking that perhaps the car had startled any forest residents. But he heard nothing, not a single bird singing in the forest expanse or even the sound of a squirrel scampering nearby. The only thing he heard was the wind through the trees.
“You
okay?” said a voice behind him. Soren whirled around, ready to attack.
Annika stood there with an alarmed look on her face.
“Whoa there, cowboy,” she said, raising her arms in the gesture of surrender. “I wasn’t trying to spook you.”
“Sorry,” Soren said, letting his hands fall to his sides. “I guess I’m a little jumpy.”
“Thought you would hear me coming around the car,” she said. “It’s so damn quiet here.”
“I know,” he replied. “I was just thinking the same thing.”
He looked back into the forest and noticed the way sunlight filtered through in patches. There was enough that he felt like it should be brighter than it was. It was as if the sun was being dampened somehow.
The trees stretched up high into the sky, with thick trunks that showed their age. Some were so massive that they looked like several trees twisted together at the base, sprouting off at odd angles.
“What’s the plan?” he asked Annika.
She looked at him in confusion.
“You’re the one who went to supernatural investigator school,” she replied. “You tell me. I just wanted to see the place.”
Soren had no idea what to do next. A part of him—the sane part, he supposed—just wanted to get back in the car and drive away. There was no ostensible reason he should feel that way. The forest was spooky, sure, but no more so than other woods he’d seen. There was always something foreboding about large forests. They were environments in which he keenly felt like an intruder. The trees didn’t need people here. Or, more importantly, they didn’t want them here.
This forest only amplified that impression. Part of it was that he knew people had tried to live here for hundreds of years, yet somehow the woods always drove them away. But it was also the wind. It was mostly silent, until a blast of air would ripple through the branches above. To Soren, it almost sounded like the wind was saying words. He could only catch a couple of them. One seemed to be “falk.” The other was more familiar and intimate. It was as if the wind was calling his name.
“Are we just going to stand here?” Annika asked.
The Forest of Forever (The Soren Chase Series, Book One) Page 9