My Sister's Grave

by Robert Dugoni

  Calloway directed the beam of his flashlight over the snow, searching for footprints. He instead found sled marks, the kind made by a snowmobile. The tracks led away from a shed behind the house and carved a path up the mountain. He stepped inside the shed and swept the light over an ATV and rusted and dilapidated equipment, but did not see a second snowmobile. His breath marked the air. Calloway directed the beam along the wall, stopping when it illuminated a pair of antique snowshoes made of wood and woven rope, hanging on a hook.

  He pulled the shoes from the wall and removed his gloves to put them on. His fingers quickly became numb. The toeholds on the snowshoes weren’t quite big enough for his boots, but he forced them on and adjusted the straps as best he could to secure them. He slid his hands back inside his gloves and stepped outside. The wind gusted as if to greet him, or to warn him. He lowered his head into it and followed the sled marks up the hill. The first few steps in the snowshoes were awkward, the wooden frames kept digging into the snow. He kept his weight distributed more on the balls of his feet and soon got the hang of it.

  Within minutes, his thighs and calf muscles burned, and his lungs felt as though he had a weight compressing his chest and preventing him from getting enough oxygen to fill his lungs. He concentrated only on putting one foot in front of the next, using a mountain climber’s rest step to conserve energy and catch his breath. But he kept his body in motion, fearful that if he remained idle, his body would shut down. He took another step, straightened his leg, rested a beat, and continued, step after step, fighting off exhaustion and the unrelenting voice that he stop and turn back. He couldn’t turn back. He knew what this was about. House wanted his pound of flesh. He wasn’t hiding Tracy the way he’d hid Sarah, and he wouldn’t wait long for Calloway. He’d kill Tracy. The wind that battered him was also erasing the snowmobile tracks, making them more difficult to follow. Still he pressed on, up the mountain.

  This time he intended to finish it.

  He had no doubt that was also Edmund House’s intent.

  CHAPTER 67

  Dan collapsed against the Suburban’s snow-covered hood, panting and wheezing. He couldn’t catch his breath. His chest ached and his lungs felt like they were about to explode, like he was suffocating. His face, hands, and feet burned from the cold. He could not feel his fingers or his toes. His legs and arms were leaden.

  He had plowed back through the snow as fast as he could, using the trail he and Calloway had carved while getting to the property. He had not allowed himself to stop. He thought only of getting to the Suburban, radioing for help—if the radio even worked in the storm—and getting back to help find Tracy. A part of him still believed that Calloway had sent Dan away just to get rid of him, not wanting to put him even further in harm’s way.

  Stumbling along the side of the car, he nearly fell, but gripped a door handle to keep himself upright. When he tugged open the door, snow tumbled from the roof onto the floorboard and seat. He gripped the steering wheel and used it to pull himself up, laying his flashlight across the bench seat. Inside, he took only a moment to catch his breath, which marked the air inside the car with white bursts. Dan removed his gloves, blew into his fists, and tried to rub life back into his fingers, which felt swollen. He flipped the power switch on the radio. It lit up—the first good sign. He unclipped the microphone, took a deep breath, and spoke in gasps. “Hello? Hello, hello.”

  Static.

  “This is Dan O’Leary. Is anyone there? Finlay?” He paused to catch his breath. “We are in need of any available backup at the Parker House property. Bring chainsaws. Trees across the road.”

  He threw his head back against the seat, waiting, hearing only static. Swearing at the lack of response, he turned the dials as he’d watched Calloway do before, and tried again. “Repeat. In immediate need of any available backup. Send ambulance. Chainsaws. Parker House property. Finlay, are you there. Finlay? Dammit!”

  Again, the response was static. Dan repeated the message a third time, got no answer, and put the microphone back in place. He hoped someone had heard him, but he couldn’t wait any longer. He could feel his body already wanting to shut down, his limbs becoming heavier. His mind and his instinct for self-preservation were fighting against his need to go back into the freezing wind and blinding snow.

  He flexed his hands, blew on them a final time, and fit the gloves back on. Then he grabbed the flashlight from the seat and pushed open the door.

  The radio crackled. “Chief?”

  Tracy studied the white concrete dust and efflorescence leaching from the cracks. She brought her fingers to the tip of her tongue. The paste tasted bitter and acidic. She smelled it and detected the faint odor of sulfur.

  She sat back and looked up at the scarred dirt ceiling. Above it grew a forest of ferns, shrubs, and moss—an entire ecosystem that had bloomed and died with the four seasons for millions of years. The decaying plants and decomposing animals had trickled back into the soil, where the persistent rain and melting snow forced the chemicals they created to seep through the rock and earth. Concrete was not meant for such damp conditions. The sulfates caused chemical changes in the cement, weakening the cement binder.

  She got to her knees and picked at the concrete. It had become pitted and came away in small flakes. Tracy tugged on the chain and felt the plate attached to the wall give just a fraction. The bolts embedded in the concrete had likely rusted and expanded, causing the concrete behind the plate to crack further and allow for water intrusion. She pulled again. The plate pulled half an inch from the wall. Tracy felt behind it and her fingertips traced etchings where someone had chipped at it—Sarah. She’d been working the plate free of the wall, but twenty years ago, that would have been a more difficult task.

  “How? How did you do it?”

  Tracy stood and stepped as far away from the wall as the chain allowed, defining the area Sarah also could have reached. She walked in an arc. The light overhead continued to fade. Shadows crept down the concrete wall, shading Sarah’s message.

  I am not

  I am not afraid

  I am not afraid

  Tracy considered the square patches of carpet and dropped to her knees, lifting them, feeling for imperfections in the ground. She began digging with her hands.

  “Where is it? What did you use?”

  The filament inside the bulb grew weaker, now a faint orange. As the circumference of light shrunk, the shadows crept farther down the wall.

  I am not afraid

  Tracy dug faster. Her fingertips touched something solid. She increased her pace and uncovered a small, round rock. She swore and looked to the door in the wall. She had no idea when House would return, but she could never dig up the entire area she could reach. It was simply too big, and Tracy had a sense that House did not intend to stay in the cave long, as he had with Sarah. She sensed he was on some kind of mission, settling scores. She continued to feel, now almost in blind darkness, and had the strange sensation that someone took her hand and guided it to just a few inches from the hole where she’d uncovered the rock. Tracy felt an imperfection in the ground, a mound of dirt. She ran her hand over it and felt a slight depression beside it. She dug. Just an inch below the surface she hit something solid. Tracy worked her fingers along the object’s surface, scraping the soil away, no longer able to see. Whatever the object was, it was not round. It was straight, rectangular. She dug around the object, trying to find a defined edge. When she found it, she worked her fingers deeper and felt the bottom of it. Tracy secured a fingerhold and tugged at the end, feeling the earth reluctantly give it up. She worked another finger beneath it, then a third. She gripped it and, with a final effort, yanked it free.

  A metal spike.

  CHAPTER 68

  Roy Calloway pushed himself beyond what he thought his body still capable of doing. Mercifully, the snow had temporarily let up, though the wind continued to pummel his unprotected face as he climbed higher. The muscles in his legs had begun to c
ramp in knots. His lungs felt as though they would burst from his chest. He could not feel his hands or his feet. The urge to stop and catch his breath, to rest, grew stronger. After a few more steps, the trail flattened, triggering a recollection of his hike with Parker House twenty years ago when they’d come to a crest in the hill. If he remembered correctly, the entrance to the mine would be on his left. But could he find it?

  He recalled the entrance as having been rectangular, not much bigger than a single-wide garage door. The wood beams supporting it had already begun to list to the left as if about to collapse, and, as with the decades-old road, the mine entrance had also been partially obscured by foliage. It would likely now have been completely overgrown, but Calloway was counting on the fact that Edmund House would have needed to clear the entrance to take Tracy inside.

  Calloway swept the beam of his flashlight over the snow. He no longer saw the snowmobile tracks, nor did he see the machine. House must have hidden it and carried Tracy the final distance. He looked more closely and picked up a single set of boot prints.

  The mine could not be far.

  He used the beam of light to follow the footprints. They led to what he first thought to be a rock, but was, in actuality, a black hole in the side of the hill. The snow had been recently shoveled out to expand the opening.

  Calloway knelt and used the light to look about. He slid the shotgun from his shoulder and removed his gloves, flexing his fingers, trying to restore feeling. He unstrapped the snowshoes and staked them in the snow, listening, but hearing only the howling wind, his eyes scanning the darkness. He blew again into his fists, gripped the shotgun, picked up the flashlight, and got to his feet.

  He shone the light on the ground and took a step. His boot sunk knee deep. Calloway yanked his leg free of the snow, took a second step, and again plunged to his knees. He moved to his left where the trail of footprints had tamped down the snow, and made better progress up the hill, though he was still plodding. Closer to the hole, he stepped with his right leg into the next depression, but this time his boot did not sink. It struck something solid.

  The snow beneath his foot exploded like a geyser, spraying Calloway in the face. He heard a loud snap, a microsecond before metal teeth bit into the flesh of his leg, followed by a second, sickening snap.

  Calloway screamed in agony and toppled face-first into the snow.

  Something heavy landed hard on his back, driving the wind from his lungs, burying him further, suffocating him. He strained to lift his head, in search of air. Someone grabbed his arms, yanking them over his head. Cuffs pinched his wrists.

  He lifted his head, still partially blinded by the snow and pain. A hooded figure walked backward, dragging Calloway by his arms up the slope toward the black hole, like prey being dragged into an underground den.

  CHAPTER 69

  Horrific screams reverberated down the mine shaft. It sounded like the baying of a wounded animal, but Tracy knew it to be human. House had returned, and he was not alone.

  The filament in the bulb had nearly extinguished, and the room had returned to near darkness. Tracy hurried to make a final scratch in the wall, determined to finish what Sarah had started.

  I am not

  I am not afraid

  I am not afraid

  of the dark

  The cries grew louder, echoing wails of agony and pain. Then, just as suddenly and horrifically, they stopped.

  Tracy swept the remaining bits and pieces of concrete that she’d chipped from around the bolts holding the plate to the wall into the hole she’d created while unearthing Sarah’s metal spike. She covered them with dirt and patted it flat. A clattering and banging arose from the other side of the wall as she aligned the piece of carpet with the others.

  The door banged open.

  House entered with his back to her, grunting as he struggled to drag something heavy into the room. He dropped his kill near one of the vertical wood beams in the gray light from the doorway. The shadows prevented Tracy from making out the body’s face with any clarity. She assumed it to be Parker.

  Next, House threw a length of chain over the nearest horizontal beam, gripped it, and stepped back. He pulled on the links of chain hand over hand, as if he was raising a boat’s sail. The body rose, arms extended overhead. House continued to pull until it hung like a slab of meat in a butcher’s window. He gave a final grunt and slid a link of the chain onto a hook protruding from the vertical beam, holding the body up. Finished, he fell back against one of the other posts, hands on his knees, bent over and breathing heavily. After a minute to catch his breath, he jabbed at the air with a fist, staggered forward, and fell to his knees. Tracy could hear his labored breathing as he cranked the generator handle. The filament pulsed and glowed, the drone becoming louder. The circumference of light took back the shadows, slowly revealing the body.

  Roy Calloway hung by his wrists, slumped against the vertical beam, the horizontal beam not high enough for him to hang free. As the light fell across Calloway’s face, Tracy thought he was dead. Snow and ice clung to his face and clothing. The light filtered down his body, and over the .357 still in its holster on Calloway’s hip. Farther down, the light revealed his right leg sticking out at an odd and twisted angle just below the knee, where the metal teeth of the bear trap gripped his leg. His pants were torn and saturated in blood.

  Tracy got to her knees and moved toward Calloway, but there was not enough slack in the chain to reach him.

  House stopped cranking the handle of the generator and fell back against the table, chest still heaving. Sweat and melted snow matted his hair to his head and dripped down his face. He pulled off his gloves, unzipped his coat, and shook it free, throwing everything onto the bed. His long-sleeved shirt stuck to his chest. He stood staring at Roy Calloway as if to admire a prize elk. One he was about to gut.

  Calloway moaned.

  House reached out and grabbed his face. “That’s right. Don’t you dare die on me, you son of a bitch! That would be too good for you. Death is too good for any of you. You’re all going to suffer in a way that will make twenty years feel like they were nothing.” House turned Calloway’s head to face Tracy. “Take a look, Sheriff. All your efforts and lies and you still failed.”

  “You’re an idiot,” Tracy said.

  House released his grip. “What did you call me?”

  Tracy shook her head derisively. “I said, you’re an idiot.”

  He came toward her, though still out of her reach.

  She said, “Have you really thought this through?”

  Calloway shifted his legs, tried to stand, and screamed in pain, regaining House’s attention. House leaned an arm against the beam, his and Calloway’s noses nearly touching. “Do you know what solitary confinement is like, Roy? It’s like someone stuck you in a hole and deprived you of all your senses. It’s like you don’t exist, like the world doesn’t exist. That’s what I’m going to do to you. I’m going to keep you in this hole and make you feel like you don’t exist. I’m going to make you wish you were dead.”

  “You really are a first-class fuckup,” Tracy said.

  House pushed away from the beam. “You don’t know shit. If you did, you wouldn’t be here.”

  “I know you screwed up, twice. I know you got caught, twice. And I know you ended up in jail, twice. Did you ever stop to think maybe it’s because you aren’t as smart as you think you are?”

  “Shut the fuck up. You don’t know anything.”

  “A smart man learns from his mistakes,” she said, mocking him. “Isn’t that what you said? It doesn’t look like you’ve learned shit to me.”

  “I said shut up.”

  “You brought the Sheriff of Cedar Grove here. How fucking stupid can you be? Parker is still alive, Edmund. Do you think Calloway came alone? They know where you are. You’re going back to jail. Strike three. Three strikes and you’re out, Edmund.”

  “I’m not going anywhere until him and me are finished. After th
at, I’m going to take care of you.” House lifted the generator onto the table and turned it around. The back of the crate was open, revealing wires protruding from large battery cells just as Tracy had suspected.

  He loosened the wing nuts and fastened stripped-copper wires around the bolts projecting out of the top of the battery. When he turned to speak to Tracy, the ends of the wires inadvertently touched, causing a spark. House grimaced and flinched at the shock. “Goddamn it.”

  “Jesus, you’re stupid.”

  He took a step toward her, still holding the wires. “Do not call me stupid.”

  “How do you think he got here? Did you stop to think about that? They’re coming for you, Edmund. You’re going to lose again.”

  “Shut up.”

  “You haven’t learned anything. You were in the clear. They weren’t even going to retry you. You were going to walk away free, but you let your ego get in the way.”

  “I didn’t want to get away. I wanted my revenge. And I’m getting it. I’ve had twenty years to think through what I would do to them and to you.”

  “Which is why you’re a two-strike loser. Because you’re an idiot.”

  “Stop calling me an idiot!”

  “You had the chance every convict hopes for, dreams for, and you blew it because you’re too stupid.”

  “Stop calling me—”

  “You haven’t won anything. You’ve lost, again. You’re just too stupid to know it. You’re an idiot.”

  He dropped the wires and rushed her, eyes wide, enraged. Tracy waited, letting him come, her hand on the flat end of the spike in her boot. When House was nearly upon her she rose up, pushing off her back leg with all her strength, her arm swinging up from the ground. She drove the sharpened tip of the metal stake just beneath House’s rib cage, his momentum and all of her strength embedding it deep in his flesh.