The Forest of Forever (The Soren Chase Series, Book One)

by Rob Blackwell

  Some time later I watched him leave. By then a shaft of moonlight drifted through the slats in the barn and I could see him rise and walk out. He did not turn in my direction, but I saw him pause by the door. He looked at the shelves beside it and seemed to make a decision. He lifted a large ax and held it up. Its sharp head seemed to gleam in the reflected light. I knew whom it was meant for.

  My father was leaving to kill me.

  He opened the barn door and disappeared. Though I felt frozen in place, I knew I could not tarry long. When my father went to my room, he would find me missing—and he would start looking for me. Even if I awoke others in the village, they would not help me. I was to be sacrificed, though for what sin I did not understand.

  I crept out the barn door and saw the village—my home—lying still in the darkness. I knew in that moment I was an exile.

  First, I would visit the grain shed. If my father had kept someone, it must be for a reason. And if there was another human soul trapped here, it was my duty to free it.

  After that I would find the only soul that could help me. I would seek out the Charred Man.

  —Edolphus Coakley

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Shortly before they reached the car, Soren realized Miles was dead.

  He should have thought of it immediately when the bodyguard never showed up inside the church after gunshots were fired, but he’d been so focused on the gaunt, it hadn’t occurred to him. He went to the car and checked the body, but it was pointless. There was blood splattered everywhere.

  Soren turned back toward Annika.

  “We’ll have to wait for the police now,” he said.

  She was staring at the body, and he gently turned her away from it.

  “I’ll stay,” she said. “I think the police will be a lot less willing to believe our story if they find we have an accused murderer nearby. We’ll talk to Kael and see if one of his friends can give you a ride.”

  “Where?”

  “The library at the College of William & Mary,” Annika said. “We need to do some research on that gem, and it’s the best library around here—at least, according to Wallace. I want to know what the hell we’re dealing with.”

  “We need to get ready for tonight,” Soren said.

  Annika looked emotionally and physically drained. He made a mental note to try and keep her from the raid tonight and hoped she would listen to him.

  “Yes, we do,” she said. “But we should have a powwow—excuse the expression—with Kael later once he knows how many people will join him. In the meantime . . .”

  Soren nodded. He needed to leave. He walked back inside the church with Annika and talked to Kael.

  A half hour later he found himself dropped off at Swem Library in Williamsburg.

  His first instinct was to wonder if he was in the wrong place. The brick and stone building was impressively large and appeared recently renovated, but it lacked the defining element of most libraries: books. He walked into a wide-open area populated with desks and computers but not a book in sight.

  He turned to the right to find another large space, this one crowded with students laughing with each other or staring at their phones. There were more people here than he expected, and few of them appeared to be studying.

  He grabbed a guy walking past with a backpack slung over one shoulder.

  “Are there any, you know, books here?” Soren asked.

  The student pointed to the ceiling, and Soren wandered around for a minute before he found the stairs to the second floor. That area, at least, was more what he expected, with large stacks of books.

  He knew what he had to do, but the task was daunting. He was looking for a cursed gem, but there were likely to be dozens or possibly even hundreds of them.

  He wondered if there were any stones he’d left unturned, and the image of a naked woman appeared to him. It took him a moment to figure out why—the nudist colony. Annika had told him about it at the beginning of the case, but since no one had died or disappeared from the colony, he hadn’t been very interested. Still, the nudists were the last ones to own Reapoke Forest before the Association showed up—it was possible they’d seen something useful.

  It wasn’t going to be possible to research the gem and the colony at the same time, and Annika was busy with the police.

  He pulled out his new cell phone from his jacket. He hadn’t had the time to go to the store and buy a replacement since he lost his last one in the car crash, but Annika had taken care of it for him. On their ride down to Richmond, she’d produced the latest in smartphone technology, a gift from the Wallace Institute. The only problem was he wasn’t sure how to use it. He’d never been much of a technology nut, and this one had an extralarge screen and a lot of icons that confused rather than excited him.

  Still, he managed to find the button that brought up the phone and dialed a phone number.

  Glen picked up on the first ring.

  “What the hell happened to you?” Glen asked. “You disappeared on me, and when I went to your apartment it had police tape around it.”

  Soren gave him the quick version of the story.

  “You have a knack for trouble, boss,” Glen said.

  “I need help.”

  “There’s a news flash,” Glen replied.

  “So it turns out there really is a gem somewhere in that forest,” Soren said. “Not a bag of them, just one. But we need to track it down.”

  “You want me to do more research?”

  “I need you to do something else,” Soren said. “In Annika’s file, you remember the mention of a nudist colony in the 1960s?”

  “Naked people? I’m so there.”

  “They’d be fifty years older now, Glen,” Soren said.

  “Good point. Hadn’t thought of that. And now I really wish I could get that image out of my head.”

  “I need you to see if any of them are still around. I remember the woman in charge went to an insane asylum, but maybe her husband is alive. I’m not looking for ghost stories. I want to know if they came across a gem.”

  “What’s it look like?”

  Soren thought of the brief description Tabitha had given them.

  “It’s about as big as a person’s hand, oval shaped, and apparently it can change colors. Oh, and it has some kind of symbol on it.”

  “What kind?”

  “No idea.”

  “That’s not very damn helpful.”

  “Just look into it, okay?”

  “Okay, boss,” Glen said. “Where can I reach you?”

  Soren pulled the phone away from his ear and stared at it. He realized he had no idea what his new number was. He heard Glen talking and put it to his ear again.

  “Never mind, I have caller ID,” Glen said. “I’ll just call this number, okay?”

  “Good enough,” Soren said.

  Soren wanted to tell him about the raid but decided talking on an open phone line to his office was a bad idea.

  “So are you and Annika staying the night together while you’re down there?” Glen asked.

  “Get your mind out of the gutter,” Soren replied.

  “That’s unlikely,” Glen said, and hung up.

  Soren took a seat in the library and wondered what to do next. How could he start looking for gems with supernatural powers? He looked at the vast shelves of books around him. The idea of poring through them made his head ache. But he soon realized he was making his task too difficult. Maybe there was a reason the library no longer kept books on the first floor. Books might be hard to search, but the Internet wasn’t.

  “God bless Google,” Soren said.

  He walked back down to the first floor and found one of the computers near the front. He began the search in the simplest way possible: “gems with supernatural powers.” Unfortunately for him, the results were almost totally irrelevant. He was awash in web pages dedicated to the various healing abilities of different jewels. Azurite would help the nervous system and
was good for hypnosis. Emeralds were useful for business success.

  He tried “cursed gems” and got nowhere either, instead pulling up a video game about lost treasure.

  “Cursed jewelry” fared better, but the articles he found were filled with half truths and outright lies. Under one about “real-life” jewelry that could kill people, he found the number-one object was the Hope Diamond. But Soren knew the stories told about the Hope Diamond were almost all untrue. Soren had been to see it in the Smithsonian in DC. It was a beautiful shade of blue, but it was neither mysterious nor cursed.

  The other stories were similar, fantastical tales about people who died soon after acquiring a particular necklace or ring. But none of it was of the order of what was happening in Reapoke. The deeper he dug, the clearer it became that he was looking for a needle in a haystack. If he kept plugging away like this, it would take days to find what he was after—and he didn’t have that kind of time.

  He thumped his head on the keyboard, earning him a strange glance from someone sitting at a computer nearby. Soren stood up to see if there was a librarian in the reference area on the far wall who might be able to help him, but she appeared to be assisting another patron. He was on his own. Not like that was something new, however.

  Soren sat up again and stared at the computer screen. Perhaps he was coming at this from the wrong direction. He was searching for some historical artifact when what he needed to be doing was looking for an item that was older and more powerful. He needed something mythical.

  He thought again of Tabitha’s description of the gem and used what she’d said in his search terms. After another half hour of fruitless searching, he tried looking for an ancient jewel that could apparently drive people crazy and whose history was steeped in blood. From Tabitha’s story it was clear the jewel was also hypnotizing in some way. Surely there couldn’t be too many gems like that.

  Finally, he found a promising lead. It was just a short item about an ancient Sumerian myth. In it, Nanna, the Mesopotamian god of the moon, fell in love with a beautiful mortal woman. He took human form, romanced her, and married her. On their wedding day he sought to create the perfect gift. He crafted a gem made of pure starlight.

  There was little description of the jewel other than that it was oval and cut so its beauty would be “overwhelming.” But the legend specifically mentioned the jewel could change colors and had a “strange symbol carved into it.”

  Whatever it looked like, the god’s present was too generous. It was so beautiful that when his wife looked upon it, she went mad and killed herself.

  “Bingo,” Soren said.

  He couldn’t be totally sure, of course. Maybe this was a different gem, but something about the story made it sound like this was what he was looking for.

  Unfortunately, there was precious little other information. Beyond the jewel’s name—the Gem of Darisam—the item made no mention of what happened to it afterward. He searched the Internet and found nothing.

  But that couldn’t be the end of the story. Frustrated and feeling time running out, Soren brought out his phone again. It was a thin chance, but he could think of only one person who might be able to help him.

  “This is Jacobsen,” the older man answered.

  Soren could practically picture him sitting with a cup of tea, still wearing his bow tie, as he answered the line.

  “I need another consultation,” Soren said.

  “I keep trying to tell you I’m retired, and yet you keep ignoring me,” Terry said, but he sounded resigned.

  “Have you ever heard of the Gem of Darisam?” Soren asked.

  Soren expected a quick no, followed by them hanging up. Terry knew a great deal, but he wasn’t a walking encyclopedia of supernatural information. There was only a slim chance he’d come across a mention of the jewel before. But there was silence on the other end of the line.

  “Terry?” Soren asked finally.

  “Why are you asking me this?” Terry asked.

  Soren could hear the change in his tone. He had gone from distant and uninterested to scared.

  “I told you about the case I’m working on,” Soren said. “You told me a place or an object could absorb human tragedy and eventually cause more to happen. I assumed it was the place itself, but I think I was wrong. I now believe there might be some kind of jewel involved—and it could be the Gem of Darisam.”

  Once again silence reigned on the other end of the line. Terry’s hesitancy was starting to freak Soren out.

  “Terry? What is it? What am I dealing with here?”

  “It’s been known by many names,” Terry said. “That is merely one of them. I should have thought of this earlier. But I just assumed—”

  “Terry, what’s going on?” Soren said.

  “I’ll come down there and explain everything.”

  “No,” Soren said. “We don’t have time. I need you to tell me what you know.”

  “What have you heard already?”

  “Not much. A Sumerian god forged the gem from starlight and gave it to his wife. It drove her nuts and she offed herself. It might not even necessarily be the same gem that’s here.”

  “It is,” Terry said.

  “You seem awfully sure for a guy who had no idea what was going on a few days ago.”

  “The gem never occurred to me.”

  “What am I facing?”

  “Something incredibly dangerous,” Terry responded. “It goes back to the story you know. The Sumerian god Nanna wanted something that would reflect his wife’s beauty. Not just her outward appearance but her inner self. The jewel is said to give anyone who looks upon it a view of their own soul.”

  “I guess Nanna’s wife didn’t like what she saw.”

  “There was an old show when I was younger called The Shadow,” Terry said. “Do you know it?”

  Soren shook his head and then realized he was talking on the phone.

  “No,” he said.

  “The tagline was this: ‘Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? The Shadow knows.’”

  “You’re suggesting the gem shows you the bad acts you committed,” Soren said.

  “Once upon a time it probably showed the viewer the good and the bad,” Terry replied. “My suspicion is that over time the jewel might have stopped reflecting the positive aspects. According to legend, some who looked into it went crazy. Others died outright. Only a few could look upon it and survive. Those with the purest of hearts, or those with the darkest.”

  “What an awesome wedding gift,” Soren said. “‘Here, honey, how about a jewel that will literally drive your friends crazy with jealousy?’ Anything else unique about the gem?”

  The person at the computer next to him loudly cleared his throat. Soren looked up to see him giving him a dirty look. He stood up and drifted over to the area near the front where other students were chatting.

  “Nanna loved his wife and sought to protect her,” Terry said. “He etched a symbol into the heart of the gem. We don’t know what the symbol looked like, only that it represented life and death. It was meant to grant her immortality.”

  “That plan failed.”

  “So it would seem,” Terry replied. “That kind of magic is notoriously hard to control. It may explain what’s happening in your forest. Instead of making someone immortal, the gem could be preventing them from leaving the mortal realm. Indeed, it might even trap the souls of those who died nearby.”

  Soren thought of Owen Leggett staring at him from the trees. It sounded like a horrible fate.

  “What happened to the gem? How could it end up here?”

  “After his wife’s death, the myth says that Nanna could not bring himself to destroy the jewel. So he buried it far from his homeland. But it was found again and again. Always death and destruction followed in its wake.”

  “Just how bad are we talking?” Soren asked.

  “Wars have been fought over this jewel,” Terry said. “There was always another osten
sible reason, always something else supposedly at stake. Take Helen of Troy, for example.”

  “You aren’t seriously telling me Troy was sacked because of this.”

  “I don’t know. But Helen was reputedly given a necklace made from a beautiful gem that changed color. A strange symbol was etched upon it. Stop me when it sounds familiar.”

  “It’s the gem that launched a thousand ships.”

  “Possibly,” Terry said. “Probably more if the legends are true. The dates and locations change, but not the result.”

  “So when you said an object could absorb the pain and suffering around it, you weren’t kidding around. And if that’s the case with this gem—”

  “It is a very powerful item.”

  “How do you know all this? I couldn’t find any details on this legend.”

  There was a long pause.

  “Several years ago I worked on a missing persons case,” Terry said. “It was something of a famous mystery, and although I was reluctant to participate, the pay was quite good.”

  “You’ll get no judgment from me,” Soren replied.

  “The case was an extremely cold one. It concerned around a hundred people who had gone missing: men, women, and children,” Terry said. “There were clues and theories as to what might have befallen them, but some suspected a more supernatural cause. I was quite skeptical, as I’m sure you would expect.”

  Soren was momentarily puzzled.

  “A hundred people went missing? Shouldn’t I know about this case?”

  “Everyone knows about it,” Terry said. “What they don’t know is what I found. I looked at all the available theories, including hostile outside forces, natural causes, you name it. But in the end I came back to reports of a powerful gem with a strange symbol. I followed the lead, just as you have done. It led me to the Gem of Darisam.”

  “What was the name of the case, Terry?”

  “I think you’ve already guessed.”

  Soren shut his eyes. He was almost hesitant to say it out loud because it sounded crazy.