by Nico Augusto
Ani looked around the cave, trying to formulate a plan. Next to him on the ground he saw Yann’s backpack. He took a hold of it between his teeth and dragged it over nearer to the wall. He approached the creature slowly, not wanting to wake it. Its numerous long, stringy tentacles lay strewn about and Ani snuck between them until finally he saw Yann. The boy was unconscious and after a few licks from Ani, he woke up. They carried on a telepathic conversation to maintain the silence in the cave.
“Are you all right?” Yann asked Ani. “Thank you for coming to rescue me, I thought it was over. It’s weird, but in a strange way at the same time I was terrified, I had a feeling this thing doesn’t really want to hurt me. It’s almost like it has a split personality.” He pulled himself up slowly and cautiously so as not to wake it and then went on to tell Ani, “Look what I found, the creature dropped it when we came in here.”
Yann was now in possession of two irradiated stones. The two companions had made big progress in their quest. They moved slowly away from the creature. Yann took his backpack and slipped the second stone inside. They knew what they had to do now - activate the two towers.
They again found their way to the exit and climbed out from the cave. As the boys escaped they weren’t aware that the monster was watching. He had one eye open…his plan had worked.
Once outside, they hurried to the first tower situated in the north. The sun was slowly descending. The hills were like a patchwork of green and brown whose hues would change with the shadows of the passing clouds. Yann and Ani skipped and ran through the deep carpets of grass that had embedded themselves into the rocky slopes. The entire time they climbed, getting closer to the top of the summit and seemingly the clouds, they could see the tip of the tower they were chasing and hear the crash and roll of a waterfall nearby. Once they reached the top they could see the valley below them. There was another rocky slope they would have to descend between them and valley below. The valley was thick with trees except for one spot in the center that looked like a huge meadow with nothing but rolling green waves of grass. It looked like a giant green carpet had just been rolled out in the middle of it all. Big white birds soared across the skies with their vast, beautiful wings spread open. They stood prominently out against the bright blue of the sky with only small pockets of white clouds to occasionally camouflage them.
To their left, was a reflective white strip and upon further inspection they could see that it was water, tumbling down the hillside in a series of mini-waterfalls and roaring into the pools below. It was a magnificent sight to behold when all taken in together, possibly the most magnificent that either of them had ever seen. They stood there for a while, watching in reverence as the scene played itself out below them before Yann looked up towards the tall tower that loomed on the other side and knew they needed to start moving again. The climb down was less difficult and quicker than ascending the other side had been. But, once they reached the valley they had to pass through the trees and across the vast meadow before they could climb up the other side and reach the base of the tower.
In the midst of the trees it was dark in places with only shards of sunlight being able to penetrate through the thick canopies of branches and leaves. They spied another family of deer grazing lazily and the rabbits and squirrels played hide and seek in the trees and bushes as they passed. When they reached the thick meadow the two boys ran and sometimes tumbled through it. The grass was plush and would tamp down underneath them, only to pop back up in place as soon as they’d passed. Leaving the meadow at last, they passed through another dense forest of trees before reaching the rocky slope on the other side.
Using teamwork, as they had been all along, the travelers climbed the rocks up towards the tower. Sometimes it was a struggle for Yann’s small arms to reach something to hold onto above him, but Ani was always there to lend a boost. In some places, Yann would have to lift Ani and set him up on the next rocky projection. In this manner, they finally reached the top and the base of the tower. Once they were standing next to it, a strange feeling came over them both. It was as if the tower was steel and they were magnets. They couldn’t take their eyes from the majestic sight of it standing there on the hill. Although tired from the long trip they’d already made, neither of them could wait to get started climbing the perilous looking tower. It wasn’t an easy climb, and it was very dangerous. A slip and fall could have been fatal. They attached themselves to each other for protection and then using only instinct they began to shimmy up the wall. They both kept their bodies and faces as close to it as they could while they moved upwards, that seemed to keep their center of balance better and kept them from falling off backwards.
It was a long, excruciating climb, but instead of exhausted, they both felt elated with a sense of accomplishment and the view from the top was sensational. They could see the waterfall from here from a different angle as it thundered down the mountain looking like a flash of lightning against the rocks. Shadows danced amongst the trees as the setting sun sent an army of red and orange light down on top of them. Yann could see a carpet of flowers that had sprouted up at the base of the waterfalls in an array of colors that dazzled his senses. The peaks of the summit on the other side now seemed to reach up towards the emerging moon and stars and the white birds stood out now even more spectacularly against the twilight of the sky. The stars looked huge and close enough to reach out and touch from where they stood. Yann and Ani put the stone in a bowl shaped apparatus that was situated on top of the tower. It fit the stone like a glove and as soon as it was in, the stone began to emit energy. The whole thing was like a giant magnet and Yann couldn’t help but wonder what was going to happen. He didn’t have to wait long to find out. Suddenly, the stone and the tower began to shake and vibrate and the building started to sink into the ground. As it sank, it turned itself into a position like a key.
Fearful of being sucked into the ground with it, Yann and Ani ran down the tower. As they ran, they had to jump and duck and dodge to avoid being smashed by the falling rocks.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
“GHOSTS”
Funeral of Tim and Elise Northman
Eddie sat at the bleak cemetery and looked around him at all the sad faces. Everyone was there, the police, Yann and Ani and Shirley. Some faces had tears streaming down them and others were simply immobilized by their pain.
Eddie tried to shake the surrealism of it all off. Tim and Elise were dead; their car plunged down over fifty feet off the bridge and into the lake. According to the experts that surveyed the scene, Tim died instantly upon impact. Elise was said to have survived the crash, but drowned in the lake. Her lungs were filled with water and Eddie couldn’t shake the image of her fighting for her life.
He knew that the only way he could pay tribute to his friend and partner now was by solving the case they’d been working on…the one that was so important to Tim….
Eddie spent three days in Tim and Elise’s home after the funerals, looking for some clue…a hint to help him clarify all that happened. He went to the French restaurant, the last place the couple had been seen alive and talked to the staff. They tell him what they remember, but no one remembered anything unusual and Eddie was thinking it might be a dead end…until he spoke with the security manager. The security manager told him there was a security camera installed on the opposite side of the street. It was set to film the jeweler’s shop and the main entrance to the restaurant was also visible. Eddie was livid. Why hadn’t anyone checked these before? The police who investigated the scene were obviously just writing Tim and Elise’s death off as an accident. They’d looked at the scene, but not what led up to it. Eddie seemed to be the only one to think that something here was just not right. It seemed so obviously not right to him that he was furious at his colleagues for not taking the investigation more seriously. He took the tapes and went back to Tim’s house with them.
He sat watching the tapes with bleary eyes and a body running only on caffeine and determi
nation. After about five hours of recordings, at ten twenty-three p.m. Eddie saw a man wearing a hood. Something about the way he was just standing there, looking at the restaurant struck Eddie as wrong somehow. The quality of the tape was not great so he couldn’t make out his face, but he still got a strange feeling about him…he seemed familiar…maybe the guy Eddie had watched vanish from the laundry room the day Tim was attacked in the warehouse?
Eddie gave up the recordings for the time being and decided to drive out to the scene where the accident took place. The investigation had concluded only that the car had swerved and passed through the guardrail…plunging off the bridge and into the lake. There was nothing in the report, or the witness accounts to say what it was that caused Tim to swerve in the first place.
Eddie didn’t know why, but his gut was telling him this was no accident. He feared that it might be a murder disguised as an accident…someone wanted to get rid of Tim.
Eddie came to the place where the bridge was still cordoned off and found a spot to park his car; He walked over to the area where there were still dark skid marks and the portion of the bridge guardrail that was torn loose by the impact.
He was looking for some kind of clue…a hint that there was a link between the case that he and Tim were working on and the “accident.” All the road was telling him was that Tim had swerved and braked before going through the guardrail. He walked over to where the bridge was broken, shaking the wet orange leaves from his boots. The air was frigid cold and Eddie could see his breath as it came out of his mouth.
He looked at where the guardrail was smashed and then he found a spot where he could walk down to the water, where the car had ended up. He took photos of everything on his way down, and again when he got near the water. He noticed tire tracks and cigarette butts…and a small piece of white paper with something stamped on it that was hardly legible any longer due to being out in the weather. He picked it up and looked at it more closely. Suddenly it dawned on him what he was looking at…
“Holy shit … That’s a parking ticket. He was there.” Eddie didn’t care that it would be dark soon. He went back to his car and took out the large car phone the department had just recently issued them. He called the station. He wanted the scene investigated again, right now.
By the time the crime scene techs arrived, it was almost full dark. The area was once again marked with caution tape and police emergency car lights.
Once again, they were examining everything. The tire tracks, the skid marks, the path the car took over the side…and he even had the pick up the cigarette butts in hopes of finding DNA on them. He was doing a good job…the best he could, but to him it didn’t feel good enough. Tim was dead…and so was Elise. Yann was left as an orphan and that just didn’t sit right with him. He wanted them to go faster. He wanted it solved yesterday. Zen wasn’t working for him on this one.
During the second investigation a highway security camera was identified and on that tape a white Ford pickup was seen leaving the highway seven minutes after the accident. Eddie needed to find that guy and talk to him. If he hadn’t been the cause of the accident, he had to have seen something.
Because of the fact he and Tim had discovered the serial killer they were looking for had been active both in Idaho and New York, the state of New York started collaboration with the FBI. Eddie was worried that if he didn’t find something soon, the Feds would take it over completely and it would be out of his hands.
Eddie ran the DMV for New York and New Jersey and it came back with thousands of white Ford Pick-up’s registered in each city. Then, acting on a hunch based solely on the fact that the photograph of the killer had dropped the night they chased him was taken in Little Rock, he ran the plates there. He got seven possible leads. He went home and packed a bag and headed for Little Rock.
**********************
It was dinner time by the time he got to Little Rock. Eddie thought it might be a good idea to eat at the local diner and get a feel for the community before he started knocking on doors. He went into what seemed to be the only diner on the small street called Main in the little town. It was an old wooden building. Eddie put it at probably over a hundred years old. From the places where the paint had flaked and peeled, Eddie could tell that it had been repainted more than once. Currently it was a dark peach color. The name on the sign out front simply said, “Diner.”
He parked his car and walked along the cobblestone sidewalk to the front of the building. All of the buildings in the town looked to be older, but they also seemed neat and well-maintained. It looked like a place out of a Hallmark movie where the neighbors got together and had pot luck dinners and church was an important part of everyone’s week.
The bells on the door jangled as he opened it and walked in. The place was about half full and judging from the hearty conversations that seemed to be taking place, Eddie would guess the customers were mostly locals. He took a seat at the counter and turned over the coffee cup. Within seconds it was being filled by a waitress in a peach colored uniform. She was probably in her thirties with long red hair worn in a braid on the side of her head and dark jade green eyes.
“Hi there,” she said as she was filling his cup and laying a menu down next to him. “How are you today?”
“I’m good, what about you?” Eddie asked her. She smiled and looked around,
“Another day,” she said. “Let me know when you’re ready.”
Eddie thanked her and looked at the menu. He called her back a few minutes later and gave her his order. While she was there he said,
“Have you lived here in Little Rock long?”
“All my life,” she said.
“Then you were around when the disappearances were happening…the thing with the kids?”
She gave him a suspicious look and then she said, “Yeah, I was here. That was a terrible time for this town.” She put a hand on her hip and said, “Why are you asking about that?”
Eddie showed her his credentials and said, “I’m here on something entirely unrelated to that,” he wasn’t sure that was the truth, but no one needed to know that but him. “I’d just heard about it of course and was curious.”
“So who you here looking for?” she asked.
“I’m here to talk to several people,” he told her. “Maybe you could help me out with the streets so I can find these addresses more easily?”
“What streets you looking for?” she said.
Eddie pulled out his list. Folding it so that only the street addresses showed and not the names, he laid it on the counter. The waitress looked and said, “Well, Little Rock ain’t that big. You’ll find most of these streets over in the section of track houses by the school. It’s just up the street here a ways. That last one is over on the far side of town. It’s not the best part of town either…”
“Great, I appreciate your help,” he said. “I’ve got one more question. Is there a motel around here?” The waitress told him there was only one in town just off the freeway. Eddie had passed it on his way in. He finished his dinner and headed over there. He’d try and get some rest tonight and set out in the morning on his quest.
He slept fitfully, dreaming about Tim and Elise and the look on little Yann’s face at the funeral also haunted him every time he closed his eyes. He had to find this guy, if for no other reason than to get some kind of justice for that little boy. After having breakfast at the same diner he set out on foot to track down the addresses of the people with white Ford’s.
He walked up the street like the waitress told him to and turned left next to the little school. There was a series of track houses there and after getting turned around on a couple of “cul de sacs”; he found the first street he was looking for.
He was surprised at how nice the homes were here. It was such a small community that he wouldn’t have thought the economy would be that great. The likelihood was that the residents commuted to the city for work. He made his way up a paved driveway that curved up to
a quaint looking Tudor-style wooden house with leaded glass front windows. It had a steep wooden shake roof and a prominent stone chimney. His list listed a Gregory Miller as being the owner of a white Ford pick-up and living at this address. He rang the bell and within seconds an elderly woman opened the door.
“Can I help you?” she asked.
“Yes, I was looking for Gregory Miller.” The smile on the woman’s face melted and she said,
“Gregory was my son. He passed away last month.”
“I’m so sorry for your loss,” Eddie said, “Can I ask how he died?”
“Who are you?”
“I’m sorry,” Eddie took out his credentials and told her, “I’m investigating an accident that happened in New Jersey a few weeks ago. I think someone may have witnessed it and that someone was in a pick-up like the one registered to your son.”
“Oh, well it wasn’t Gregory. He died five weeks ago. His pick-up is in my garage. It hasn’t been driven for almost a year. He had cancer and he was in and out of the hospital the last year.”
Eddie was sure this wasn’t the truck he was looking for. He thanked the woman and went on his way.
The next house was three blocks away and as Eddie approached the front door he could hear the television on inside. A middle-aged woman answered the door and told him that the man he was asking about was her husband, George.
“He’s at work now though. He works in the city, he’s an investment banker.” That explained the nice house and the expensive clothing the woman was wearing, Eddie thought. He told her who he was and why he wanted to talk to her husband.
“He doesn’t ever drive the pick-up into the city,” she said, “It’s expensive on gas. We mostly have it to pull our fifth wheel when we go on vacations. It’s in the garage if you’d like to take a look at it.”