Stone Groove

by Erik Carter

“Oh, really? I haven’t told you my plans for the money. Those people at the Marshall Village aren’t just any ol’ sycophants. They are the descendants of Virginia Dare.”

  “Um … come again?” Dale had heard some whacky things in his time at the BEI, but every now and then he still heard something that took him by surprise.

  “Haven’t I given you enough clues?” He huffed and put his hands on his hips. “Each one of the Marshallites is a direct descendant of the first English-born person in the New World. As am I.”

  “Virginia Dare died as a child.”

  Spencer waved his finger. “That’s what they want you to believe. That was the myth started in the sixteenth century and perpetuated with the first Dare Stone in 1937.”

  Dale stood up. His legs wobbled beneath him. “So what? If she did live and have descendants, so what?”

  This angered Spencer. He got in Dale’s face. “‘So what?’ Don’t you see? It’s the government. Your government, Agent ‘Conley.’ The Freemasons. They planted the first Dare Stone. For centuries they’ve been suppressing the natural descendants of Roanoke, fighting against Walter Raleigh and any other non-Mason of power. The colony didn’t disappear. It was wiped out. But Virginia Dare survived. And so have her descendants.” He whipped his back to Dale and paced a few feet away.

  Dale hated Glenn Downey even more now. Glenn hadn’t just wrecked Spencer’s body; he completely destroyed his mind. And then Spencer had gone back to work at the Worldwide Weekly Report, marinating his brain in wild conspiracy tales. It was the worst possible place for a mind like that to go.

  Even after seeing all that scar tissue, Dale felt worse now. A bright and talented young mind had been completely annihilated. And without a mind, there wasn’t a soul.

  He’d been such a good kid.

  “I’m sorry, Spence,” Dale said. “So sorry.” The words got stuck in his throat and escaped tiny and hoarse. Spencer didn’t hear them.

  Spencer turned back to him. “The Dare descendants will not be restrained forever.”

  “What about the people who died? You think you’re protecting these people? You’ve killed three of them.”

  “Noble sacrifices. Every cause worth fighting for is one worth dying for.”

  “Let me help them, Spencer. Please.” It was a pointless thing to say. His BEI experiences had taught him that trying to reason with a crazy person was like arguing with a traffic light.

  Dale thought again about leaving Spencer at the camp and felt a pang of guilt. But then he remembered the two dead people atop Old Rag Mountain and the man who blew his brains out outside the Sheriff’s Office. He remembered the terrified look on Caitlin’s face as she bawled, duct-taped to a bed.

  And the pity dissipated.

  “Spoken like a true sheep,” Spencer said. “But I need you nonetheless. Your shepherd government will provide me with two million dollars. Then I’ll liberate these people by taking them to South America. We’ll start a new community, free of the torment we’ve endured for the last four hundred years.”

  Spencer motioned toward the two men. One of them grabbed Dale from behind. The other began to tie Dale’s hands behind his back.

  “Be happy I need you,” Spencer said. “Otherwise I would have left you alone to die. Like you did to me. By the way, how’s that mother of yours? How’s Audrey?”

  White-hot rage coursed through Dale at the sound of his mother’s name coming from Spencer’s lips. “What did you just say?”

  “It’s always important to check in on one’s mother, Brad. Even when one has a secret identity. You really should check in on her more often up there in Front Royal.”

  “What have you done, Spencer?”

  Dale, his hands now tied behind his back, lunged toward Spencer, but the large men grabbed him from behind. He thrashed and kicked, trying to get free. Spencer laughed casually.

  One of the men pulled out some duct tape and slapped a strip over Dale’s eyes. They dragged him backwards. A hand with a cloth clasped over Dale’s mouth, and a pungent, cool smell filled his nostrils.

  “I’ll give you another call at the Sheriff’s Office and tell you where to meet me,” Spencer said just before Dale passed out. “Get me my money, Brad, or I promise you’ll wish you had.”

  Chapter 49

  Dale woke up on a metal floor. He felt movement. Though he couldn’t see, by the ribbed steel beneath him and the road noise all around, he knew he was in the back of a van. The vehicle slowed, stopped, and after a moment sped off again, sending Dale sliding to the back. He slammed into the rear doors.

  His wrists and ankles were tied. He managed to get himself to his knees and rubbed the duct tape covering his eyes against the side of the van. He worked it up and down but did little more than tear out his eyebrow hairs.

  For maybe twenty minutes, the van was on a highway. Smooth, fast, uninterrupted travel. When this ended, Dale felt short stop-and-go motions of city driving and heard the occasional sound of the turn signal. This continued for several more minutes until the van took a left turn and came to a stop. He heard the doors of the cab open, followed by the crunching of footsteps on either side of the van. A moment later, the rear doors opened.

  Four strong hands lifted him out of the back of the van. They dropped him, and he fell a good two feet to the ground, landing heavily against gravel and sending a dull pain throughout his battered body.

  The van doors shut, and the tires squealed. It took off with a roar. Dale was alone.

  But not completely alone. He could hear the sound of traffic in the distance, and the gravel he’d landed on indicated that he was in some sort of parking lot or driveway. His analytical mind often left him labeled as cold-hearted, but in situations like this it easily countered what would have been a panic-inducing situation for most folks. Dale knew that they’d dropped him off somewhere where he’d be found. Spencer wanted his two million dollars. He wouldn’t ditch Dale in the middle of the woods to die. More than likely, he’d dropped him off at the Ashbury Motel.

  And with that, Dale’s prophecy was proven true. Wilson’s voice came from the distance. “Conley!” Dale heard footsteps approach at a run, stopping right beside him . “Hold still for just a second, bud.”

  “I’m not going anywhere,” Dale said.

  Wilson had called him “bud.” Stressful situations truly do bring out some strange reactions. Wilson worked his fingers under the duct tape on the side of Dale’s head. “This is going to hurt.” His mater-of-fact-ness in action again.

  Wilson yanked the tape from Dale’s face with one swift motion. Dale’s eyelids stretched off his eyes and slapped back down, eyelashes pulling out.

  “What happened, Conley?”

  Dale scrunched his eyes together, working some life back into the lids. “Untie me. We have to get to Front Royal.”

  Chapter 50

  Arancia screeched to a halt outside Dale’s mother’s home some time after eleven o’clock that night. The house’s front door was ajar, and a sliver of light fell onto the front porch. The drapes in the front window were disheveled. Dale’s heart dropped.

  He killed the engine, and he and Wilson ran up to the house. Dale threw the front door open. A sickening feeling of unfamiliarity hit him as he looked in upon his childhood home.

  A credenza that stood in the family room near the front door now lay facedown on the ground. The chairs and couch were out of position. One of them was overturned. Mom’s knickknacks had been stripped from their shelves. They lay on the floor in a pile of painted sand dollars and shattered porcelain dog legs.

  “Mom! Mom!”

  There was no response, just the ticking of the grandfather clock, whose glass door was now shattered. Dale pushed through the chaos to the back of the house, dodging overturned furniture as he went.

  “Mom!!”

  He could hear water running. It was coming from the kitchen. He rounded the corner.

  Every cabinet and drawer in the kitchen was open. Shattere
d dishes and silverware were scattered all over the counter and floor. The table, though, was unmolested. It was perfectly clear, save for a vase with a single black rose and, propped neatly against this vase, an envelope with a single word written on the front:

  He ran over to the letter, broken plates crunching beneath his boots. He picked it up and paused for just a moment. His hands shook. He tore the envelope. Inside was a folded piece of paper.

  Chapter 51

  Dale was drinking coffee. His third cup. He hadn’t slept. Wilson had stayed up through the night with him at the Sheriff’s Office waiting for the call.

  The phone was sitting on the table in front of him. He’d been staring at its silent form. All night.

  It was 6 a.m now. Wilson stood beside Dale. The two of them, Taft, and the sheriff were circled around the table. Surrounding the phone were all the clues Spencer had left—the four stones and all the notes. There was also a regional map with all the key locations circled—Staunton, Norfolk, Old Rag, and Manteo.

  “Please tell me,” Brown said, “you ain’t planning on giving this loon two million dollars.”

  “Sheriff, with all due respect, there’s nothing else we can do,” Wilson said.

  “Don’t worry, Brown,” Taft said. “We have a contingency plan at the BEI for situations like this.”

  The phone rang. Dale lunged at it. He pushed a button and put the call on speaker. “Conley.”

  It was Spencer. “Croatoan Island. Old paper factory.” The line went dead.

  Dale looked at Taft and put a finger on the map in the area of the North Carolina coast. “He has them at Hatteras Island. North Carolina. The Outer Banks.”

  Wilson raised a finger. “But he said Croatoan Island.”

  Dale nodded. “Last night when I was in the warehouse he said something. Almost in passing. He said the Marshallites left just like the colonists did. Many people think that when the Roanoke colonists left behind the word Croatoan they were referring to Croatoan Island, meaning that the colonists left to go to the island south of Roanoke. The island isn’t called Croatoan anymore. It’s Hatteras.”

  “Okay. Wilson, call Quantico and get SWAT out there,” Taft said.

  “Yes, sir.” Wilson grabbed the phone’s receiver.

  Taft looked at Dale. “We’ll get you the usual briefcase. And a vest. You keep the lunatic talking. SWAT will grab the Marshall folks and the two women. The snipers will take him out if needs be.”

  Dale nodded.

  “Conley,” Taft said. “There’s no guarantee that we can come out of this with Susan Anderson alive. Or your mother.”

  “I know, sir,” Dale said quietly. “The thought had crossed my mind.”

  Chapter 52

  Spencer looked at the dozens of people in the warehouse before him. He’d assembled them because he knew they’d soon have visitors. By now Brad Walker would have put all the pieces together and would be arriving with his federal goons.

  The warehouse was the largest building in the factory, so it made sense to keep them there. But it was far from a perfect environment. It was cold, the cement floor was dirty, and the big fluorescent bulbs hanging from the ceiling put out harsh light that gave him a sad, sickly feeling. Still, these people would follow him into a sewer if he commanded.

  They sat in rows of metal folding chairs, staring at him, not saying a word. Just exactly as he’d instructed them. Spencer had once marveled at Father’s ability to brainwash people, but adding hypnosis had taken it to a new level. They would sit there as long as he wanted. They’d sit without food. Hell, they’d even shit themselves. Until he told them to move, they weren’t going to budge.

  When he sent Camden Marshall away to make his confession, Spencer told the Marshallites that their Father had died. There was great sorrow that day in the Marshall Village. But, of course, their beloved Man in Black assumed the mantle of Father. Spencer wished he would have had more time as Father, but in that short amount of time he’d achieved an exhilarating level of control. And it was all thanks to the little spark of brilliance he’d implemented years earlier.

  He’d been fascinated by hypnotism since a visit to the county fair as a child. There, a hypnotist asked his audience to interlace their fingers. When he told them that their hands were now glued together, about half of the people could not pull their fingers apart. Those people were, according to the hypnotist, the ones who were capable of being hypnotized. He took volunteers from this group and had them do the most phenomenal things on the stage. He convinced one man that he was a country music star. This man proceeded to sing his off-key heart out despite the roaring laughter of the crowd. The hypnotist convinced a woman that her body was freezing. She shook violently.

  What an awesome power to have! One important lesson Spencer learned from that hypnotist at the fair, though, was that as great as the power of hypnotism might be, it couldn’t be used on just anyone. It wasn’t until after his time at the CAE that he realized how he could utilize this power with an entire group of people.

  He looked out on the faces of the former followers of Camden Marshall. When he first infiltrated Marshall’s hippie village and put his plan into motion, he almost felt guilty. Marshall’s followers thought of him not as a new messiah—as the people in the CAE had with Father—but as a symbol of hope, a beacon in a lightless world. And yet they were now about to serve their purpose not for Camden Marshall but for him, Spencer Goad.

  Soon Brad Walker would arrive to personally witness what Spencer had planned for these people.

  Chapter 53

  It was dark and quiet but for the sound of the surf to the east. Hatteras Island was a slender strip of land, fifty miles long but with a varying width of only around 1,000 feet or less. It sat off North Carolina’s main coast with the Pamlico Sound on one side and the endless Atlantic Ocean on the other. The abandoned factory sat isolated north of the town of Rodanthe. Back in the 1930s, it had produced paper goods. An eight-foot brick perimeter wall surrounded it.

  Dale, Taft, and thirty SWAT members walked along the crumbling wall. Dale wore a bulletproof vest under his jacket. In his right hand was the metal briefcase, and he had a tape recorder strapped to his back. It was large and cumbersome, but he knew he might need it tonight. The ground was moist from rainfall earlier in the day, and the men’s boots crunched on the cement. They approached the front gate—an iron monstrosity with the words Bellevue Paper forged in the center—and looked through the gates into the factory beyond.

  There were a half-dozen buildings visible but no people. Weeds grew from cracks in the ground, and everywhere were piles of broken, empty crates. None of the lights throughout the factory were on—total darkness except for a thin line of light creeping out from the edges of a warehouse door in the back. Dale looked at Taft and pointed at this building. Taft grunted.

  Wilson stepped up to Dale. He nodded at the briefcase. “You’re really going to pay him?”

  Dale opened it. Inside were neatly lined stacks of hundred-dollar bills. “A BEI mainstay. Forged bills. With serial numbers we can track. I get a lot of crazies wanting money.”

  Wilson rapped Dale on the vest. “If he starts shooting, have him aim for your chest.”

  “Thanks, Wilson.”

  Taft put his hands on Dale’s shoulders. “Okay, Conley. Listen up. Go in swiftly—”

  “But cautiously,” Dale said. “Observing my surroundings for any contingencies. Keep my poker face on and my head up. Got it.” It was the same speech Taft gave him every time he threw him into a life-threatening situation.

  Dale took a deep breath and approached the gate. The other men slipped into the darkness behind the perimeter wall.

  He tugged on the gate. It held firm in place. He pulled harder, and there was a whining, metallic noise from the corner. Just as he was about to give it another tug, there was a slicing sound and a loud thwack.

  A bullet struck the ground inches from his foot.

  Dale dove back toward the wall
, falling on the ground and scraping his knee.

  Loud cracks of rifle fire burst through the quiet nighttime air. Taft yelled something, his eyes bulging. Men covered their heads as they ran toward the wall.

  The other men crowded in beside Dale, knocking into him, everyone trying to find where the shots were coming from. The bullets hit the ground relentlessly, like workers hammering shingles into a roof. One of the bullets struck about six inches from Dale’s hand, spraying small rocks that peppered his jeans and burned like bee stings. He took out his .38.

  “Over there!” one of the SWAT members yelled. He pointed toward the corner of the factory grounds.

  There was a sniper standing atop the perimeter wall. He had a scoped rifle and was wearing Marshallite clothing. Dale turned to the opposite corner. Another sniper. They had Dale’s team in a crossfire.

  The SWAT members returned fire. This slowed down the onslaught, but the snipers were able to easily draw cover behind the wall.

  Dale aimed his Model 36 but hesitated before pulling the trigger. He remembered what Spencer told him back in the woods. The Marshallites had not only been brainwashed, but they’d also been hypnotized. He lowered his gun and turned to Taft. “We can’t fire on those men, sir. They may be hypnotized.”

  Taft’s eyebrows formed a jagged V across his forehead, and for a moment he resembled the Looney Tunes version of the Devil. He ran his hand over his face and looked back into the factory. He hesitated. “Goddamn you, Conley.” A bullet struck the wall next to them, and debris fell on his hair. “You’d better be right about this.”

  Taft smacked one of the SWAT members on the arm. “No rounds! Use the gas.”

  The SWAT member whipped around. “Huh?”

  “Just do it!”

  “Put your guns away,” the man yelled to the rest of the SWAT team. “We’re using the CS.”