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

by Rob Blackwell

  “Roanoke,” Soren said. “The Lost Colony of Roanoke.”

  “Correct,” Terry said. “More than a hundred souls unaccounted for. The scientists will tell you it was famine, and it’s possible they are right. But I uncovered a letter from John White, the governor of the colony. When he left for England in 1587, he told Sir Walter Raleigh he had left behind a ‘most powerful protection.’ It was a family heirloom. He described it as a jewel that could change colors. His daughter was quite taken with it. So he bequeathed it to Virginia Dare, his granddaughter and the first English person to be born in North America. He hoped it would keep her—and all of them—safe.”

  “Hell of a plan.”

  “Needless to say it failed,” Terry said. “White spent three years trying to get back, but war with the Spanish intervened. By the time he returned, they were all gone. The colony was erased completely.”

  “And you’re saying this gem caused whatever happened to those colonists?”

  “Where it goes, misfortune follows,” Terry answered. “But I had thought that was the end of it. I never heard any mention of its survival. I assumed it was lost, perhaps taken by the Croatan Indians. I don’t know how it moved to where you are now.”

  Soren remembered something from his research.

  “I’ve got a theory,” he said. “I never thought anything of it. I looked into Bennett’s history. He was one of the first colonists at Jamestown. When they arrived in 1607, they were ordered to investigate Roanoke. John Smith dispatched an expedition up the James River and down to the former colony. It’s possible Bennett was on that trip.”

  “So he found the gem,” Terry said. “And it continues to wreak havoc.”

  “It’s a possibility,” Soren said. “I just don’t get why . . .”

  He stopped for a minute, picturing James Bennett holding the gem while a party of Indians surrounded him.

  “I don’t get why so many people are fighting wars over it. It shows you your inner self. So what? Especially if it’s going to show you the shittiest version it can find. That doesn’t sound like something you’d kill over.”

  There was a significant pause on the other end of the phone.

  “I agree,” Terry said finally. “I don’t know why White called it a ‘protection,’ either. It was meant to grant immortality—Darisam is the Sumerian word for ‘forever’—but to the best of my knowledge, it didn’t do what it was intended to.”

  “As we speak, some very bad people want to get their hands on this thing,” Soren said. “But assuming it’s the right gem, I don’t get it. What does this do for them?”

  “There’s something we’re missing. That much is certain.”

  Soren looked up to see Annika wandering around the library, apparently searching for him. He waved to get her attention, and she began walking over.

  “You’ve been a great help, Terry,” Soren said.

  “I’m not so sure about that. There’s still a lot we don’t understand.”

  “Maybe, but at least I know what I have to do. Whatever happens, I have to find the gem first.”

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  The four guys in front of Soren and Annika did not look like they belonged to the twenty-first century.

  Each was dressed in deerskins, with dark paint that covered their facial features. They held wooden bows that had fierce faces carved into them, with quivers of arrows slung over their backs.

  Kael Jefferson was almost unrecognizable, though he did look similar to how he was dressed when Soren first met him. That had been only a few days ago, but it felt like forever. Soren whistled appreciatively when he saw them.

  “You certainly look the part,” Soren said.

  “It’s no part,” Kael said. “We’re doing this the old-fashioned way, according to our traditions.”

  In the war paint, he looked even grimmer than when Soren had last seen him. The others next to him showed no emotion whatsoever.

  Kael nodded to a tall man beside him. His face was painted a dark red, making him look a bit like a devil.

  “This is Mingan,” Kael said, “my brother.”

  “We’re very sorry for your loss,” Annika said.

  Mingan merely nodded in return. Kael gestured to the other two Indians behind him.

  “The one on the left is Danny; the other is Brian,” he said.

  Soren didn’t know whether it was because of the face paint or their similar determined expressions, but he couldn’t tell the difference between them.

  “Danny’s the funny one,” Kael said.

  Neither man smiled. Instead, they stared impassively back at Soren.

  “If you say so,” Soren replied.

  He looked back to Kael. Soren noted that although Kael was the younger brother, he appeared to be in charge. His whole bearing had changed from a few days ago in the forest. Then he’d come across like a kid. But the death of his mother had radically altered him. He seemed older and eager to get on with their assault. Soren shouldn’t have been surprised. After all, he knew firsthand how personal tragedy could transform a person.

  “You have a plan of attack?” Soren asked.

  Night had almost fallen. Soren didn’t relish returning to Reapoke Forest in the dark but didn’t see a choice. It was the best way to stay undetected.

  “We’ll go in a back way that I know,” Kael said. “We’ll launch a surprise attack at 9:30 p.m. exactly. While we take out any guards, you get into the office building Chastain had us in and get the book out.”

  It wasn’t a complicated plan, but then again, Soren supposed it probably shouldn’t be. Complex plans had a tendency to fall apart almost as soon as they were launched.

  Soren looked at their bows and arrows.

  “Shouldn’t we have something a little bit more modern?” he asked.

  It was Mingan who responded.

  “None of us are good with guns,” he said. “But we’ve been shooting arrows since we were three. We hunt deer with them still. You ever killed a deer with one shot through the eye?”

  Soren was forced to concede that he had not.

  “We have,” Mingan replied.

  It appeared the question of what weapons to bring was over. Soren had brought his revolver, but it only had six shots in it before he would need to reload. The men they were facing, however, had semiautomatic weapons. Soren did not see that as a good omen for their assault.

  “I want to make one thing clear,” Kael said. “The book belongs to us. You can have it for the night if it helps you, but not for longer. Somehow the Association stole it from the tribe; I don’t know when or how, but it doesn’t matter. It’s ours.”

  Soren nodded.

  “No argument from me,” he said. “I just want to read it and see if it has a clue to the gem’s whereabouts.”

  He waited for Kael to demand the jewel next, a price he could not agree to. But Kael surprised him.

  “The gem is your business,” he said. “It belonged to Bennett, not the tribe. We want nothing to do with it. It’s brought us too much pain already.”

  In that moment Kael didn’t just seem older but more mature.

  “I won’t get into the research, but that’s smart,” Soren said. “Everyone who ever looked at it has suffered great misfortune.”

  Annika cut in.

  “I have a different concern,” she said. “You realize that some of these guys guarding that place are just security guards, right? They don’t deserve to be killed just because of who they work for.”

  Mingan looked to Kael, who nodded as if giving permission to tell a secret.

  “We think most of the actual security guards are already dead,” Mingan said. “We’ve been watching the men who go in and out of there. They’ve made our chief nervous. About two days ago, they stopped leaving. Instead of people in the forest, we’ve spotted those . . . things who killed our mother.”

  Soren drew in a sharp breath. In the forest he had tested the guards’ reflexes because he wanted to
have a sense of their training—and he’d found it lacking. At the time he assumed it was a resource problem. The Association was spending money on guns and equipment, not people. But now a new theory presented itself. The Association hadn’t been hiring based on experience; they’d been finding men whose disappearance would go unnoticed. Soren now thought it likely they were ex-cons or others with a past. If Mingan was right, Chastain was butchering the men and turning them into gaunts. He swore under his breath.

  “This just keeps getting better,” Soren said.

  “One more thing,” Kael said. “We’ve never seen Chastain leave that place. We’ve watched the guards go in and out but never spotted him. If he’s inside that building when you break in . . .”

  Soren showed Kael his revolver.

  “I’ll shoot him,” he replied. “It might not do any good, though. I’ve been told he’s not human.”

  “Then just make sure to shoot him in the head,” Kael replied. “That works on every monster I’ve ever heard of.”

  Soren thought of the pretender he’d shot at the séance and how it had barely slowed the creature down. He decided not to mention it to Kael.

  “So what’s this back way you know about?” Soren asked.

  “How do you feel about an amphibious assault?” Kael replied. “I think they have all the roads covered, but the river is too long a stretch to guard every square inch. It’s our best bet.”

  “That’s the way Evan went in,” Annika said.

  “Who’s Evan?” Mingan asked.

  “The one who went camping there a couple months ago,” Annika replied. “He survived, but none of his friends did. We have reason to believe he’s back in the forest. He escaped from police custody.”

  “Does he work for the Association?” Kael asked.

  Soren knew what the question meant. The fact that the guards had been turned into monsters was convenient for Kael. But if they were still human, Soren doubted it would slow him down. He clearly blamed the Association for his mother’s death—and he was going to make it pay.

  “He’s more like a victim,” Soren said. “They lured him into the woods; we just don’t understand exactly why. The point is, if you see him, don’t shoot him on sight.”

  “That it?” Kael said. “We need to roll out.”

  Soren looked anxiously at Annika.

  “Can you give us a minute?” he asked.

  “Meet you by the truck,” Kael said, pointing to one idling in the parking lot.

  Soren watched as the four Indians walked, bows in hand, to the vehicle. It seemed an incongruous sight. When he turned to Annika, she looked angry.

  “No way,” she said.

  “You don’t even know what I was going to suggest,” Soren said.

  “Yes, I do,” she said. “You don’t want me to go. For my own protection.”

  She said the last words in a mocking tone.

  “Annika,” Soren said, “come on. This is going to be very dangerous. You could get hurt.”

  “So could you. So could they. I don’t need your paternalistic bullshit right now.”

  Soren sighed.

  “Fine,” he said. “You could get in the way.”

  “I saved your life once,” she said. “Besides, this is my case, not yours. And I’m not backing off from it.”

  Soren held her gaze in the fading twilight. He could see in her eyes that he wasn’t going to win. He thought of a hundred different arguments to make and then decided to drop them. He knew a losing fight when he saw one.

  “Okay,” he said.

  “Good,” she said. “Because I even bought a weapon just for this occasion. It’d be a shame to have to use it on you.”

  She smiled when she said it and pulled a silver snub-nosed pistol from her jacket.

  “I didn’t want to go in unarmed,” she said.

  “Just be careful,” Soren said.

  “You’ll know if I’m not. You’ll be right there beside me.”

  Soren nodded. She put the gun back in her pocket.

  “Come on,” she said. “We’ve got a boat to catch.”

  They launched from the same bridge Soren and Annika had crashed through a week earlier. Soren was uncomfortably reminded of the incident and could sense Annika growing nervous behind him.

  Just before they got to the bridge, they pulled into a parking lot near a local church. As soon as he got out, he could tell Kael and his friends had been busy. There were three canoes lying facedown with paddles nearby. They looked weathered and beaten, the green paint faded after too many days in the sun, but serviceable.

  “Canoes? Are we being a little too traditional here?” he asked.

  “Motorboats make noise, dude,” Kael replied, sounding ever so slightly like his former self. “They also cost money. So unless you want to steal one, this is what we’ve got.”

  Maybe it was fitting. He wondered what anyone living here would think if they spotted the Indians silently rowing down the river. They’d probably conclude they were seeing ghosts. The thought made him smile. It was about time they were the monsters for a change.

  “Okay,” Soren said.

  Soren helped Kael flip a canoe and lift it up, one of them holding it on each end. As they started moving, he watched Danny and Brian—he was still unsure which was which—take the other canoes by themselves, hefting them onto their shoulders. Annika grabbed several paddles, and the six of them walked a few hundred feet toward the bridge. Near the pedestrian path they took a small trail down to the water.

  When they reached the river, Soren and Kael put their canoe down and pushed its nose into the water. It scraped against several rocks, the sound echoing underneath the bridge.

  Kael’s friends followed suit, putting their canoes into the river. Mingan came with a gigantic pile of arrows, which he divided between two canoes. Soren watched as each Indian stuffed dozens of arrows into his quiver. There was still a substantial number left over, however, which were placed into blankets at the center of the boats.

  “Got enough?” Soren asked Mingan.

  The Chickahominy appeared to take the question seriously.

  “It was all we could find,” he said.

  “This way we can restock if we need to,” Kael said, gesturing toward the extra piles of arrows.

  Soren was impressed. He still wished they were bringing guns, but he had to admit the Indians seemed intimidating.

  “You and I will go together,” Kael said to Soren. “Annika can ride with Mingan. He’ll take good care of her.”

  “I could take her,” Soren said.

  “We know the river,” Kael said. “In the dark it’s easy to get separated and then lost. It’s tough to know where to land.”

  Soren nodded his head at the logic of the statement. He watched as Annika stepped into the front of one canoe and Mingan pushed it all the way into the water. The Indian stepped into the back of the boat quickly, and the two immediately paddled off.

  The other two Chickahominy pushed their boat into the water. Soren did the same, getting his feet wet as he launched the canoe. He climbed on board and into the front and felt Kael jump in a second later.

  Soren found the paddling much easier than he expected. He’d read that the Chickahominy River had a tide, and apparently the current was moving in the right direction to assist them. He hoped it wouldn’t be too difficult if they returned. When they returned, he corrected himself.

  Soren found it difficult to be optimistic. He’d had trouble fighting just one gaunt; he didn’t want to imagine what battling a dozen or more would be like.

  As they paddled, Soren could barely see the other canoes ahead of them in the darkness. A thin crescent moon hung in the sky, providing some light, but it kept vanishing behind a steady parade of clouds. At least they would be mostly undetectable if someone was watching from the river’s edge.

  Speaking of the woods, Soren had trouble keeping his eyes off the shore. He wasn’t sure what he was searching for—perhaps so
me ghostly figures in white—but the trees seemed ominous.

  There were no sounds emanating from the shore except the occasional rustle of wind through leaves. To Soren, the noise sounded too loud. He had visions of something large moving invisibly through the forest, keeping pace with them from the shore. Perhaps it was merely waiting for them to land before pouncing.

  He shook his head, trying to clear the vision from his mind. He didn’t need to create fake creatures; he would be facing real ones soon enough.

  “There’s one thing I wanted to mention,” Kael said in a whisper. “If we don’t make it and somehow you do, you need to talk to the head of our tribe, Chief Joseph Adler. Officially, he knows nothing about this. But unofficially—”

  “He approved.”

  “Of course he did,” Kael said. “We’re a proud people. The rest of the world may have forgotten us, but we remember who we are. We know our duty. We’ve lived side by side with this filth for far too long if you ask me. If we’d acted sooner . . .”

  He stopped talking, but there was no need for him to finish.

  “No sense going down that road, Kael. You can’t change the past.”

  Soren couldn’t tell for sure, but he thought he saw Kael nodding.

  “There’s one other thing I wanted to ask,” Kael said. “If we die . . . will we be trapped there? We saw the boy in that forest. Is that our fate, too?”

  Soren thought of Owen Leggett’s face and shuddered.

  “I don’t know. I don’t think everyone who dies here is trapped. It seems like it’s only a handful. People have seen Coakley and his crew, the Indians, and the Boy Scout we saw. But given all the people who have died or disappeared here, I’m almost surprised it’s not more.”

  “They’ve seen the Charred Man, too,” Kael said. “Don’t forget about him.”

  “I haven’t. I just don’t know where he fits into all of this. If it really is Bennett, what’s he after?”

  “The gem, the same as everyone else.”

  “I’m not sure what the dead want with a gemstone,” Soren said. “It’s not like ghosts to accessorize.”

  Kael gave a short laugh.

  “Remind me to buy you a beer if we live through this,” Kael said. “I thought you were creepy at first, but you’re okay once people get to know you.”