Stitches (Insatiable Series Book 5)

by Patrick Logan

  Sheriff White paused for applause, but none came. Instead, the faces in the crowd were littered with confusion and murmurs rose up to him. Fearing that he was losing the crowd, he reached back and eased Father Carter Duke to beside him at the podium.

  “Many of you already know of Father Carter Duke and the message of the Lord—of kindness, of sacrifice—that he has been preaching for only a short while in Askergan. But his impact transcends words of inspiration. Father Carter Duke was instrumental in saving lives during the shootout in Pekinish, even risking his own life in the process. This, and many other reasons, are why I have chosen Father Carter Duke to serve as your fourteenth mayor!” Sheriff White stepped aside, a weak smile on his face, and waved Father Carter forward. “Father, the floor is yours.”

  Father Carter nodded and took to the stage. His right arm hung in a sling, and his hand was wrapped in bandages. There was also a large Band-aid on his forehead. Jared had been there when Sheriff White had told the priest that they could cover up these wounds with makeup, but the man had shaken his head.

  The only thing he had insisted on was getting the tooth that he had lost in the car accident replaced.

  And now, smiling as he was, big and broad, Jared realized why.

  “People of Askergan!” he proclaimed loudly. The crowd started to stir, their dopey expressions starting to liven somewhat. “I am honored to not only be your pathway to God, but also to represent you all as the Mayor of this wonderful County!”

  Jared heard a smattering of clapping, but he couldn’t pinpoint its source.

  “As our esteemed Sheriff mentioned, I have not been in Askergan for very long, but I know, the Lord knows, that this is a special place, one that I have quickly fallen in love with. This is a good place, one that can be great again. So I stand here today, as a servant of God, destined to facilitate this change, to bring the real Askergan County back!”

  This time someone cheered while another whistled, both of which encouraged the priest greatly. He gestured behind him, and when his eyes passed Jared’s, he could have sworn that the man had winked at him.

  Or maybe it was just the sun.

  “As you can clearly see, construction of a new church, a modern church, is already underway. Now some of you might have some reservations of the chosen location, which is likely why most of you decided to watch this in the comfort of your own home instead of making the trek out here, but I assure you, this selection was no accident.”

  Both of his hands went skyward.

  “This land, this place, is symbolic—we’ve all heard the rumors of what happened here—”

  Jared saw the Sheriff grimace and looked to move to stop the Priest, but the man simply turned his body to block his path.

  “—but none of that matters now. I—the Lord—stakes his claim on this land, and we have banished the evil that once existed here! We are here, and Askergan, we are going to thrive!”

  The crowd went from laconic to jubilant in the time it took Jared to take a piss. He squinted hard, looking at their faces, and then turned to Corina.

  She too was staring dubiously at the crowd.

  Father Carter Duke sure had a way with words.

  But he had also gotten Corina back, as he had promised Jared. And that meant that even though he was sporting an Askergan PD uniform, his allegiance lied with the church.

  The church…

  Two years ago, a thought like that would never have conceived itself inside Jared’s brain.

  But things had changed. Oh, how things had changed.

  The priest continued to smile for an awkwardly long time before the Sheriff gently put his hand on his shoulder and retook his spot on the podium.

  “Thank you Father—or shall I say Mayor Carter. One last thing before I go, I wanted to introduce to you Askergan’s two newest deputies: Jared and Corina Lawrence.”

  Jared was so taken aback by the introduction that Corina had to pull his arm to get him to react.

  Corina nodded, while Jared, for some reason, thought it appropriate to wave.

  They didn’t receive half the ovation that the priest had.

  As the Sheriff droned on for a few seconds more, closing with polite frivolities, Jared drowned him out and pulled Corina close. Then he kissed her gently on the forehead, forgetting for a moment that they were on camera.

  The Lawrence family might be destroyed, but like Askergan, they could rebuild some of what they had lost.

  Some, but not all.

  Some was gone forever.

  Chapter 54

  Paul waved his hand, indicating that he wasn’t going to answer any questions at this time, and then stepped off the makeshift podium that Father Carter had had his people built in record time.

  He shook several people’s hands, although he offered them only simple nods as means of communication.

  His mind was elsewhere.

  “Sheriff,” someone called after him and he turned to see the priest coming toward him, that damn smile still plastered on his face.

  There was more to this man than a habit, he knew. Nobody just goes out and strikes a deal with the Mexican cartel like he did without expecting something in return. The more Sheriff White learned about the priest, the more Coggins told him about what happened at Sabra’s, the less he liked Father Carter Duke.

  And he liked him little to begin with.

  “Yeah?”

  The priest gently laid his left hand on his shoulder, and Sheriff White looked at it intently.

  Carter pulled his hand back.

  “I just wanted to thank you for what you said up there,” for a second his smile faltered, but then it returned in full force. “I’m very much looking forward to working with a man such as yourself—a man of his word,” he finished, holding out his hand.

  Paul swallowed hard, but then grabbed the man’s hand—it was an awkward motion, given that it was the priest’s left hand and he used his right, but he pumped it anyway.

  He was indeed a man of his word.

  “Thank you,” Father Carter repeated. Paul released the handshake, and the priest turned.

  “Let’s get this church up!” he cried to the men standing around the piles of wood that littered what had once been Mrs. Wharfburn’s front lawn. “I’ve got sermons to give!”

  Paul shook his head as he watched the man go.

  With a deep breath, Sheriff White looked away, then continued toward his car.

  As he neared it, he was surprised to see that there was a shadow in the passenger seat. Paul picked up the pace, his hand moving toward the pistol on his hip. But when he got closer still, he started to relax.

  Paul opened the driver side door and collapsed onto the cracked vinyl seat. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath.

  “Is Johnny the Mechanic in lock-up?” Bradley Coggins asked.

  Sheriff White, eyes still closed, nodded.

  “Yes. Awaiting trial for obstruction. Seems like Shifty Leon tipped him off about what we were trying to do. We’re lucky that Johnny was too much of a coward to actually go and tell the Krushers directly what our plan was.”

  “And the estate?”

  Paul sighed again.

  “Pekinish PD burnt it to the ground—didn’t even go inside. It took some effort to convince them that a controlled burn was the only way to decontaminate the land, but they were just so fucking happy that we took out Sabra and the Skull Krushers that they conceded—after, of course, I searched it for any trace of Alice.”

  “She wasn’t there,” Coggins stated matter-of-factly.

  Sheriff White opened his eyes and looked at his friend for the first time. Like the rest of them, Brad looked tired, exhausted even, with circles around his eyes that matched the color of his beard.

  “I’m sorry, Brad. But she wasn’t there.”

  Coggins nodded, and Sheriff White could tell by the way he was looking off to one side that he was thinking of something.

  “No trace of Seth Grudin, either,” Paul
continued. “Corina said that he was there feeding Alice, that he seemed to have… have some sort of affinity toward her, that he was looking after her. She doesn’t know where they went.”

  Coggins continued to nod, giving the Sheriff the impression that he knew this already, that he had spoken to Corina directly.

  “And Williams? Reggie?”

  Sheriff White shook his head and then started to rub his temples.

  “I’ve got a crew in the sewers now, but they are—they’re having a hard time navigating. They say that there is no fork.”

  Coggins’s eyes snapped up. Clearly, this was new information. As to how reliable it was, Sheriff White couldn’t attest.

  “No fork?”

  “No fork. They say that the tunnel goes in a straight line all the way to Sabra’s, ends shortly after the ladder we used to climb into the house.”

  “How can that be?”

  Sheriff White shrugged. When he had first heard this news, he had become furious.

  What do you mean no fork? There was a fucking fork, I was there! Are you calling me a liar?

  But now, he wasn’t so sure. It might have been that it wasn’t a fork, that it only ended a feet after it appeared to split, as some sort of overflow reservoir.

  Or maybe it wasn’t there at all. Maybe he—they—had imagined it.

  Stranger things had happened in Askergan over the last twenty-four hours.

  “We’re going to keep looking, Brad. I promise you—I’m going to keep looking for Seth, for Andrew Williams, for Reggie, but most of all for Alice.”

  Coggins turned his gaze to the windshield and stared at the men bustling around where the new church was being built.

  “Well, if you find Deputy Williams, you should fire him.”

  “Yeah? Why’s that?”

  Coggins slumped back in his chair.

  “He fucking sucks at killing rats, that much is a fact.”

  Neither man laughed. Instead, an awkward silence fell over the car that seemed to extend for at least five minutes.

  Sheriff White had things to do, but there was no way he was going to rush his friend.

  But he also had his own questions that needed answering. When he could take it no longer, Paul finally spoke up.

  “Was it… I mean, was it—”

  “The same? Yeah, it was the same.”

  A shudder racked Coggins, drawing Paul’s gaze. The man’s face was covered in scratches and there was a heaviness to his features that hadn’t been there before. He looked rough, maybe not as rough when the Sheriff had found him in the biker bar, but rough none-the-less.

  “Is it over, Coggins?”

  Coggins shrugged.

  “You asked me that before, and I was proven wrong. I’m not going to answer that this time. All I know is that it isn’t over for me, not until I find Alice.”

  Paul placed his hand on his friend’s shoulder. He knew that Bradley would stop at nothing to find her.

  It was the only thing left tethering him to this world.

  “I won’t stop looking either, Brad.”

  Coggins didn’t reply, instead he went back to staring out the windshield again. Then, without warning, he grabbed the door handle and pulled it open. He stood, but before his body was completely out of the car, he said, “Take care, Paul. And never forget, you are one of the good guys.”

  And then he closed the door and started walking away from what had once been the Wharfburn Estate.

  Paul watched his old friend go, tears streaming down his cheeks.

  I’ll miss you Coggins. I’ll miss you the way I miss Nancy, Mrs. Drew, and Dana.

  He turned his teary eyes to the new church that was being built, his eyes falling on the back of Father Carter’s black robe.

  I’ll miss what Askergan County used to be.

  A house can be rebuilt, a forest replanted. Wounds heal. But what had happened in Askergan County would last forever.

  Epilogue

  The dirt that coated the blue walls of the sewer slowly became so thick that Deputy Andrew Williams was beginning to doubt that they were still buried underneath. Sweat soaked through his shirt, and the electrical buzzing that he and Reggie had first noticed near the fork had grown to mimic half a dozen bees mating inside his ear canal.

  It was causing his molars to rattle, and had he not been slick with sweat, he had no doubt that the hair on his arms would have been standing on end. It almost felt as if there was some sort of electrical forcefield pushing against him, wrapping around him, making it difficult for his lungs to fully inflate. And yet despite these obvious warning signs, Andrew was compelled to move forward. Several times he had turned back to look at Reggie, and wasn’t surprised that the man bore a matching grimace on his glistening face.

  His flashlight flickered and he tapped the head against his palm to get it to steady.

  Despite the sweat that seemed to soak every square inch of his body, his mouth was dry and there seemed nothing he could do to moisten it.

  Another few paces and something on the now sand or dirt covered bottom of the sewer pipe started to come into view roughly ten yards ahead of them. Curved shapes jutting from the otherwise smooth surface.

  “You see those?” he asked over his shoulder. His voice was hoarse and he wasn’t surprised when Reggie didn’t answer him. He doubted the man could hear him over the drone of whatever electrical power source they were heading towards.

  Some sort of power exchanger? Hydro dam?

  A manager for Pest Riddance prior to becoming a deputy, Andrew Williams had no clue as to why a power source would be buried underground, much less why it wouldn’t be on the blueprints that he had showed the Sheriff.

  Yeah, well, there wasn’t a fork on the map, either.

  Deputy Williams pressed onward, the beam of light from the flashlight bouncing off the strange shapes as they neared.

  He was thinking about when he had been commissioned to flush the rats out of the sewers, about how they hadn’t found the cadre that they had expected given the sheer number of complaints of people finding the rodents in their toilets, when he finally realized what those shapes were.

  “No,” he moaned. The flashlight nearly dropped from his fingers, but he somehow managed to grab it with his fingertips before it fell to the ground and smashed.

  And the last thing Deputy Williams wanted was to be alone in the dark with those things.

  Reggie jarred into him from behind, and Williams shrieked and stumbled forward.

  “What the fuck, Williams? What are—” but he stopped cold. When he spoke again, his voice was a mere whisper. “Jesus, are those what I think they are?”

  Williams swallowed hard, and slowly swung the beam across the shapes in a wide arc.

  “Yeah, but they look old… like real fucking old.”

  They were cracker eggs, of that Deputy Williams had no doubt. Even though he had never seen them himself, they were exactly as Sheriff White and Deputy Coggins had described, minus the bubbling pink fluid.

  He could even see what looked like the final vestiges of dessicated skins hanging haphazardly of the sides.

  Finally catching his breath, Williams mustered the courage to continue forward.

  He took a wide berth around the eggs where he could, and stepped between them when that wasn’t possible. In total, there were maybe a baker’s dozen of them, the tops of which were torn ragged, revealing white, crusty edges. While every muscle in his body was telling him to hurry, to get the fuck past these things as quickly as possible, he couldn’t help but peer into the last egg.

  There was a network of dark capillaries, long since dried but still visible on the pale gray egg, that ran from the bottom all the way to the jagged opening. Williams used the toe of his boot to touch the side of the egg and it crumbled, sending a puff of dust into the air.

  How long have these been here? Years? Decades? How is that possible? I thought—

  Reggie grabbed his arm and he jumped.

&
nbsp; “Reggie, seriously, stop—”

  The man’s eyes were wide. Terrified.

  “We should keep moving. And I mean, now.”

  Williams wasn’t sure what the big man had heard or seen, but the look on his face was all the motivation he needed. Besides, his curiosity had been satiated and he didn’t want to be here any more than Reggie.

  He took a large step over the last egg, shuddering at the sight of the skin hanging off the back like some sort of ancient scarf, and then moved deeper into the sewer.

  Could they still be alive? Could the crackers that hatched out of these eggs still be alive after all this time?

  Dozens of questions rattled around in his brain, but before he could nail any one of them down, something else came into view.

  Although not as frightening as the cracker eggs, it was equally as foreign.

  A door; a door hanging from a massive steel frame that seemed borne out of the earth itself hung slightly ajar not twenty feet from them.

  “What the fuck is this? This was definitely not on the map,” Deputy Williams muttered, more to himself than for Reggie’s benefit.

  As if not believing his eyes, he turned the flashlight so that the light reflected at an oblique angle.

  The door was still there, the twelve foot high, six foot wide metal surface gleaming in the otherwise dark tunnel.

  “What is this?” he repeated.

  The only reply was Reggie’s heavy breathing from his right.

  A door? What the fuck is a door doing here, in the middle of a sewer tunnel that doesn’t exist?

  Williams took a tentative step forward, aware that the electrical buzzing was getting stronger the closer he got to it. He wasn’t sure if it was his damn curiosity rearing its ugly, malformed Medusa of a head or if he was being drawn to it.

  He wasn’t sure if he could stop moving toward the door even if he wanted to.

  And the worst part was that it was open; it was open and beckoning for him to enter.