by Robert Brown
“Why ‘of course the Thunderbird’?”
“The Native American mythos was a mix of animism and polytheism. They saw spirits in every living thing, overseen by a multitude of deities. The Thunderbird was literally the biggest, and in the lore of various tribes it is often called upon for aid by heroes and gods. The wolf was one of the most important totem animals, especially in this region. The moon, of course, was an integral part of rituals.”
“How so?”
“As you know from your research into more contemporary religions, the phases of the moon are tied to the sacred calendar. The full moon was seen as a time of high magic, both good and bad. The new moon, the darkest nights, marked the most dangerous time.”
Nick felt a prickle down his spine. The past few nights, the moon had been a waning crescent. The previous night, he had noticed it was barely a sliver.
That meant tonight would be the new moon.
“Have any of your students asked about all this?” Nick asked.
“Not really. Why?”
“I … as I said, I’m studying how ancient symbols are used in a modern context, so I’m interested in students who are using these symbols for their own purposes.”
Bennett shrugged. “A couple of the archaeology students have Native American symbols on t-shirts. One gal has a turtle tattoo, as in Turtle Island, the name for North America in some tribes.”
“Really? Anyone I know?”
“Kris. Works in the archaeology lab. Big girl.” Bennett said this in a dismissive voice. Apparently, the department’s porn addict didn’t have a fat fetish. None of the cultists appeared overweight, so Nick struck her off the list of suspects.
What list of suspects? Nick asked himself. I’m no closer to finding these nutcases than the first day I saw those stick figures.
Nick thanked him and left. As soon as he walked out the door, Bennett turned to his computer.
Stumped, Nick closed his office door even though it was his office hours. He searched through social media for something, anything that might give him a clue. He found a Students of Republic University group on Facebook. Nick signed on and was surprised to find that the group had only six hundred and eighty-three members. More than eighteen thousand students attended Republic University. Then Nick remembered Elaine saying that Facebook was for “old people.” He shrugged and searched the group anyway. He found a lot of complaints about the hicks in Republic, and a long thread about what had happened to Brett Dawson down by the river, as well as various racist insults about black kids.
He didn’t find much else, though. He shook his head in frustration. What did he expect, a post saying, “Join our cult and kill locals”? He supposed there would be more discussion on Snapchat and Instagram. Elaine had told him those were popular with her crowd. He’d never been on either of them.
Nick walked out of his office. Now he had to check the historical society. As he went down the hall, several professors filed past him, heading in the other direction. One of the other anthropologists, a doddering old guy whose career was even more over than Nick’s own, croaked at him, “Don’t forget the faculty meeting is in five minutes.”
Shit. He had forgotten all about that.
“I’ll be right back,” he said with a smile.
Yeah, right after I grill the woman at the historical society and plan battle strategy at a bar called the Drunken Indian while carrying an illegal firearm. You see, I have a feeling the main sacrifice is going to be tonight and that’s a bit more important than discussing changes to our paperwork.
Nick couldn’t help but smile as he left the department and strode across the quad. The meeting room overlooked the quad, and the assembled professors and department head would see him leave. Too bad. He had stopped caring.
He had finally found something worthwhile to do.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
The woman at the historical society was sitting at her desk, just like she’d been doing the last time Nick visited. Not reading, not working on anything, just sitting with pursed lips and a stern frown on her face. Like before, she was the only one there.
Nick put on his best smile. “Good afternoon. It’s nice to see you again.”
“Hello,” the librarian said. Even that seemed to take effort.
“I was wondering whether you had anything on the Native Americans in the region.”
Her sour look grew even more sour. “The university has an archaeological museum for that sort of thing. We focus on the area’s Christian people.”
“I see. Perhaps you have some more information about the abandoned towns I was asking about?”
The woman got up with a sigh and walked over to a file cabinet.
“These are our vertical files, cuttings from newspapers and magazines.”
She opened a drawer and flipped through the papers until she got to a thick folder marked “Towns—Ghost.” She handed it to him.
“Did my students come down here? I asked them to look up a few things.”
“We don’t get many students here.”
“Oh, it was last semester,” Nick guessed. “A group of guys and a girl? Perhaps you remember them. They were looking into old towns. I just wanted to check that they had done their research.”
The woman nodded. “Oh yes, now that you mention it, they did come down here. Made quite a racket, if I recall. Big city children aren’t raised with any manners these days. Made quite a mess of the vertical files, too. I had to sort everything.”
“I’m sorry they gave you trouble. They can be quite a handful,” Nick said, his heart beating faster. “Can you remember what they asked to see?”
Nick asked this while moving to a table and sitting down. He was trying to act casual, but the file folder shook in his hands.
The woman’s brow furrowed. “Don’t you remember the assignment you gave them?”
Thinking fast, Nick said, “Oh, it was an open-ended assignment about traces of the past in Jackson County. One paper mentioned the ghost towns, which sparked my interest, and I decided to follow it up. I was curious about whether they explored some avenues I haven’t yet.”
“They looked at the books and maps I showed you, and they looked at that vertical file. Oh, and they were interested in the rock art the savages put up. God knows why.”
“Do you have a vertical file on that?”
The librarian turned and opened the file cabinet again. She returned with a slim folder.
“Here you go.”
Nick felt tempted to point out that less than five minutes earlier, she had said the historical society didn’t have anything on Native Americans. He decided to let it slide.
“There are some articles on the Devil drawings the redskins put up around the area,” she told him. “Many have disappeared because of development.”
“I heard there was a big drawing of a Thunderbird down by the river.”
“Yes, I think that’s what they called it. There’s a newspaper article about it in that file.”
She went back to her desk. Nick searched the file.
“Excuse me, I can’t find that article on the Thunderbird.”
The librarian came over and flipped through the folder.
“Those kids,” she muttered. “Several articles are missing.”
“Which ones?”
“The one on the cave, another on a bunch of rocks with drawings here in Jackson county. One or two others, I’m not sure exactly.”
“They stole them?”
“Quicker than taking notes, I suppose. Those students cause a lot of trouble around here.”
Don’t I know it.
“Can you remember their names? I’ll look into it.”
The librarian thought for a moment, then shook her head.
“Not sure I ever asked. There were a few of them, all boys and a girl, like you say. Acting all high and mighty, like college students do. I remember one had several scars on his face. And the girl was quite the harlot.”
&nb
sp; “How so?”
“When they came in, she was hanging on one of the boys in an unseemly manner. After a while, she switched to hanging on another boy, and the first boy didn’t seem to care. When they left, she was hanging on a third boy. How these kids carry on! It’s a bad influence on the community.”
As she said this, she glared at Nick, as if the students’ behavior were his fault.
“Can you remember anything else?” Nick asked. “I’ll look into it and try to get the students punished.”
Will I ever, he added silently.
“No, it was quite some time ago. Let me think.”
She returned to her desk, leaving Nick to read through the files. He spent another hour there but learned little else. The newspaper and magazine articles were all popular-level accounts, vague and often contradictory. However, they did show that the local people took an interest in their past. Carl and Brandon weren’t the only history buffs in Jackson County.
It was time to meet the guys. And girl. Nick hoped Trisha would be there while simultaneously dreading that possibility.
To soothe his conscience about his desire for someone else’s girlfriend, he texted Cheryl to remind her where he was going and to tell her that he would be late coming back. He didn’t tell her that he was probably headed for a final showdown. She was worried enough as it was.
He handed the files back to the librarian.
“I remembered one more thing about your students,” she said. The final two words carried a tone of accusation.
“Yes?”
“They asked for a copy of the same map you did. Then they started drawing all over it. Seemed strange to me. When I tried to see what they were doing, they rolled up the map and started giving me sass.
So, they really are plotting out a pentagram around Republic, Nick thought. She’s lucky they didn’t kill her.
Nick thanked her and left.
He broke out of the windowless basement like he was leaving a jail. The cult had been there, actively researching the area. The librarian had confirmed that only one girl was in the group, and it looked like they had been sharing her even before the rituals began.
Even more significant was what the librarian hadn’t said. No black clothing or makeup on the guys. No strangely colored hair or piercings. She would have mentioned things like that. These students weren’t from the emo or goth crowds. These were regular-looking kids with twisted ideas. They could blend in.
In the parking lot, he scanned the people—all the locals he used to look down on. Some of them hid nasty secrets too—the racists and the wife beaters, the meth heads and the ones who beat up college kids for fun. But he couldn’t look down on the locals as a group any more, not after what he had learned. It wasn’t uneducated locals who were eviscerating animals and killing farmers, who were gangbanging a willing girl. Students were doing that. And it wasn’t just the students. Bennett was a perv through and through, and Nick bet he wasn’t the only one on the faculty who was.
Both sides had secrets. Both sides looked ugly under their masks. The reason Nick had judged the locals and not his own kind was that the locals’ masks were thinner and slipped more often.
He hopped into his car and headed over to the Drunken Indian.
Heaving with the after-work crowd, the bar was even louder and more crowded than it had been the last time he was there. Men from a road crew took up one table, and Nick had to shoulder his way through a loud circle of construction workers to get to the bar.
“A Bud, please,” he shouted to the bartender.
“Your friends are in the back corner,” the bartender said as he served him.
Nodding a thanks, Nick headed in the direction the guy had indicated. As he made his way through the throng, he saw everyone crowded around a small table. To his relief, Brandon was there too.
Nick was even more relieved when Carl and Tobiah made space between them and he didn’t have to sit next to Trisha.
“So, what happened last night?” Nick asked Brandon, shouting to be heard.
“A patrol car came from the scene of the fire and picked me up, then went right on back there. They needed everyone they could there. Man, you should have seen the place. Two fire trucks, half a dozen cop cars, police officers hunting through the fields. It took all I had not to tell them what I had seen in the farmhouse.”
“Did they get to see?” Nick asked.
Brandon shook his head. “Nope. The place was all on fire by the time they got to the scene. The firefighters were hosing it down, but I don’t think they’ll find much evidence. Probably take the coroner a while to figure out he was killed by a knife and not the fire. I’m sure the poor guy was burned to a crisp.”
Brandon shook his head sadly. Nick was surprised he would feel any sympathy for some racist hick who had treated him badly.
“The police did find a bunch of shell casings,” Brandon went on. Everyone at the table stiffened. A moment later, Nick realized why. You could match a shell casing to a gun like a fingerprint to a person. “The woman who called in the fire told them she’d heard gunfire too. They’re sweeping the whole area. If this gets back to us …”
The table fell silent. The jukebox thudded some cheap rock song and the rest of the bar was raucous and happy, but the silence around their table felt oppressive.
The sound of a ringing phone reached Nick’s battered ears. He had heard it before when he’d ordered his beer and when Brandon had been speaking. Now he realized it was his own phone.
He pulled it out. Cheryl.
“Hold on, honey, I can’t hear a thing in here,” he shouted into the phone.
He pushed his way through the crowd and made it outside. As soon as the metal door slammed behind him, it was like someone had turned off a stereo that had been set too loud. A faint thudding came through the door. Nick walked away from it, ending up close to Dreams Cum True. A young woman with frizzed-up hair and too much makeup, her open overcoat revealing a bikini, stood smoking by the door, eyeing him speculatively.
“What is it, honey?” Nick asked Cheryl.
His wife’s voice was weeping, incoherent. He caught something about Elaine and the school.
“What? You have to repeat that.”
“I tried calling you three times! I heard over the police scanner that there was an incident at the school. Someone broke in and kidnapped one of the girls. Elaine was there for rehearsal.”
Nick froze. For a moment, he couldn’t speak. Cheryl went on.
“I’m in the car now. Oh my God, the school is calling me. I’ll call you right back.”
She hung up.
Nick didn’t wait. He sprinted back into the bar, nearly knocking over a couple of guys to get back to his team.
“They’ve taken Elaine!” he shouted. “They’ve taken my daughter!”
They were on their feet in an instant. Just as he got back out the door, the others close behind, Cheryl called back.
“They’ve taken her!” she wailed. “A group of men shot the security guard, went into the school, and took her at gunpoint. Oh, Nick, what are they going to do to her?”
Nick knew. With horrible clarity, Nick knew.
The pile of condoms at the ritual sites. Each of the male members of the cult had taken turns with the one woman. Sex had been part of the ritual. They had even performed the act in front of the farmer who had been sacrificed and nailed to the wall.
And now it was the new moon. The day for the darkest ritual.
One that would require a different type of sacrifice.
A virgin sacrifice.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Nick drove as fast as his older model Ford could go, weaving in and out of highway traffic, hoping he’d get spotted by a cop who would chase him. He could see the rest of the team weaving through traffic with him—Carl’s pickup in front because he knew the way the best, Tobiah’s car with Brandon and Wayne in it, and Clayton and Trisha taking up the rear in their own pickup.
Nick knew he was taking an incredible gamble, not with his crazy driving but by having all his friends join him at one spot instead of going for two. He would need all the firepower he could get.
They headed for the river and the cave with the Thunderbird carving. For whatever sick reason, that was the cult’s main symbol. It was where they would make the final sacrifice.
He hoped.
If he was wrong, his daughter would endure a terrible ordeal before ending up like that poor farmer.
Nick gripped the steering wheel, wishing he could be there instantly. Cheryl’s first call had been fifteen minutes earlier. Assuming she had called right after hearing the report on the police scanner, the abduction had probably happened half an hour ago at most—more likely about twenty minutes. The Drunken Indian was closer to the river than Elaine’s school. The cultists would have had to negotiate some street traffic before making it onto the highway. Assuming they weren’t driving much faster than Nick and his friends were now, there was a chance they could cut them off.
A red glow on the highway up ahead caught his attention. The traffic began to slow.
Carl put on his brakes and drove beside Nick, rolling down his window.
“Can you see what’s going on?” Nick asked, a frantic shriek in his voice. Carl sat in the cab of his pickup and was higher than Nick was in his car.
“There’s a car flipped in the middle of the road, flares all around it. The traffic is all stopped.”
“We have to get through!”
“We will.”
Carl cut off the car to his left and got on the shoulder. Nick followed. Wayne came right behind him, followed by Clayton’s pickup.
They drove on the shoulder, their left tires trundling over grass. Nick gritted his teeth, hoping he wouldn’t run over anything and get a flat. Inches to his left, the grass fell off on a steep slope into a ditch that paralleled the road. Another car tried to do the same, but Carl and Nick leaned on their horns and cut him off. The guy shouted and gave them the finger. Nick barely noticed.
As they drew closer to the upturned vehicle, Nick saw several bullet holes in its side. A bloody woman lay moaning on the pavement, a weeping man kneeling next to her. Several other motorists stood by. One was making a call on her cell phone.