by Rex Burns
“Welcome to the Temple. Can I help you with something?”
“I called earlier. I’m here to see Sister Dori.”
“Oh.”
“I was told she’s in meditation. I have an emergency message from her father.”
The woman’s light brown eyes blinked. “I’ll have to talk to the Pastor.” She pushed herself up from the desk with both arms and walked heavily into the hallway. Her sandals slapped loudly on the polished wooden floor.
When she came back, she smiled apologetically. “I’m sorry. The Pastor isn’t in yet. And I’m not allowed to interrupt meditation. If you want to leave your telephone number, I’ll ask Sister Dori to call you after Morning Rites.”
“I need to see Sister Dori now. It’s very important. I’m not here to make trouble for her or for you, but I do need to talk to her.”
The woman smiled and shrugged. “But what can I do? Only the Pastor can interrupt Morning Meditation, and he’s not here.”
I stood. “She meditates upstairs?”
“Wait—you can’t—”
But I moved faster than she did. I passed the closed door to Pettes’s reception room and headed for the stairs. Before I reached them I heard the muffled jangle of an electric bell and the quick thump of bare heels above. I was a few steps up when two young men, robed and alarmed, appeared at the landing and glared down at me. A third man, a few years older, leaned over the railing. “You’re trespassing. Outsiders are forbidden in this area. Go back down.”
The two young men, ready to fight, came slowly toward me.
“I have to talk to Sister Dori. It’s vital.”
“Then you have to ask the Pastor when he gets here. He’ll give you permission to talk to anybody in the Temple. Now, I ask you to go in peace. We don’t want to violate the Temple with anger.”
The two came down another step, followed by the third man. I backed down to the first floor. Behind me, I heard Sister Rhona’s heavy breath.
“I tried to stop him. He wouldn’t—”
“That’s all right, Sister Rhona. He’s leaving now.”
At the bottom of the stairs, the two stepped away from each other, ready to close on me from both sides. The third man spoke gently. “We don’t like violence. But we’ve learned to defend ourselves.”
“Fine—I’ll take your word for it. But will you please tell Sister Dori she has a visitor?”
“I will if the Pastor tells me to.”
The two eased within kicking range, herding me toward the doorway. Sister Rhona stood rigid and frowning as I backed down the outside steps.
“Please don’t come back, Mr. Steele,” she said. “You’re not welcome anymore.”
“I hope I don’t have to come back with a warrant, Sister Rhona.”
“You don’t frighten us. We’ve had people harass us before. The Spirit protects us.”
“Be sure and tell Pastor Pettes and the Spirit that I’ll be back to see Dori.”
The screen door slammed. I searched the windows of the second floor for any faces, any movement of a curtain. But they remained blank and empty. Feeling Sister Rhona’s angry eyes on my back, I walked down the redstone walk to my car. A robed woman was busily raking the parking area and picking up trash in a black plastic bag. As I unlocked the door, I heard a voice whisper “Sir?”
“Yes?”
“Don’t look around—they’re watching.”
I opened the door and sat, not yet starting the car.
“Sister Dori’s not here.” The murmur barely carried over the scrape of the straw rake. “She’s at the Retreat. They took her up there two days ago.”
Unfolding a road map, I held it in front of my face. “Up in the mountains? Near Ward?”
The screen door slapped and one of the two young men came out on the back stairs.
“The mountains—yes!” The mutter hurried. “Help us. Help the children.” The woman picked up a final shred of paper and walked slowly back toward the building.
I closed the car door and backed into the alley. The youth on the porch watched me out of sight.
I left the car parked by one of the silent cabins near the gate to the lodge. Cutting through the fringe of brush beside the road, I found a relatively open avenue among tall pines and began to work my way toward the log-and-stone building. Staying in the shadows, I paused frequently to search ahead through the binoculars I’d bought in Denver. The light day-pack with its smell of new canvas began to heat my back, and I tied a bandanna around my forehead to keep the sweat from burning my eyes. The pack held what little I needed, and though the new canvas shoes wouldn’t do for an extended hike, they were light and quiet and gripped the tilted surface of boulders.
When I came within view of the ranch, I pulled farther back into the woods and studied the buildings. Half a dozen cars and vans were parked in the open area in front of the main lodge, but only a few people could be seen. A woman wearing a tube top and cutoff jeans sat near the slide leafing through a magazine. Beside her, three children—two boys and a girl somewhere between seven and nine years old—played desultorily in the sandbox. At least, two of them seemed to be playing. The third, the younger boy, just sat and gazed away from the house toward the woods.
Through the binoculars, the windows of the lodge trembled in magnified heat waves from the stone-and-log walls. A pale wisp of smoke rose from the main chimney, the only sign of life inside the lodge. Except for the woman and three children, no one moved. I walked a long, roundabout way to a ridge overlooking the lush green meadow and the buildings. A film of caked dust dried on my face and neck; occasional deer flies zoomed in to sample my flavor.
The binoculars picked up a stone-lined path that arced across the small creek behind the barn and disappeared into a thick stand of lodgepole pines. The parallel lines of evenly spaced and whitewashed stones gave the trail a formal look. I made my way through the trees to follow it. In a corral beyond the screen of brush, a horse snorted as it caught my scent on the light breeze. The trail wound through the thick woods to a circular clearing carved out of an aspen grove. A thick carpet of mown and trampled grass formed a level bed. Across the circle sat an ornate wooden chair. Made of the smooth trunks of aspen saplings, it had a high back and wide arm rests and sat on an elevated platform of split logs as if it had grown almost naturally from the earth. Smaller twigs made the design of an upside-down star on the seat back. Along its base a frieze of sticks spelled out runic letters that I could not read. Directly in front of the chair, a low stone served as a base for open fires, and a mound of ashes covered its face. Around the central fire and including the throne, a line of small quartz rocks made a circle. I paced off its diameter—three paces: the nine feet I expected. Another line of stones made a triangular shape beyond the circle, one of its points aimed at the throne. There the grass was longer and undisturbed. According to what I’d read, that was where the spirits that might be harmful would be summoned while the worshipers remained safe in the circle. Aleister Crowley’s design, which, true or false, he claimed to get from runic texts and which by now had the authority of unholy writ among those who wanted to believe in Satanism.
The circle was a primary symbol in a number of faiths, Christianity among them. Witches and Satanists used it to focus their psychic energy when practicing magic. If a coven grew too big for all members to fit in the nine-foot circle, a new group had to be formed with its own circle. Some of the texts I’d read said the range of effectiveness of the magic was three miles around, so new covens had to be far enough away not to overlap and confuse each other’s spells. That meant a six-mile diameter—not a bad impact zone for low-budget weaponry.
Looking, I found the five stakes that would hold string forming a pentagram when certain rites were performed. It wasn’t as ornate as some sites I’d read about, but the basics were here: magic nine-foot circle, signs and symbols, throne for priest or priestess or even Satan’s spirit in some ceremonies. The grass, carefully picked of rocks and thor
ns and brush, provided bedding for the sexual revelry that followed most rituals. And the miles of empty forest around gave the necessary isolation. I didn’t see an altar, though. Perhaps they elected one of the women to be a living altar, bracing her with a portable rest stored nearby. I could imagine a group of people, robed or nude—sky clad, as they called it—lit by the fire on the central stone and intoning whatever chant was called for. What I had trouble imagining was Dori—with her forswearing of Satanism—joining the circle willingly. Certainly the groping, half-terrified voice of last night’s telephone call wasn’t that of a willing participant. I touched the ash-covered stone sitting in front of the throne. It was still warm.
The smell of fresh ashes was heavy in the hot air. Smears of greasy candle fat glinted on the arms of the throne. In the highest rituals, the candles were supposed to be made of the fat of babies, and the odor from the smears did nothing to dispel that idea. More greasy wax formed melted lumps at the points of the pentagram. The only sound was an occasional insect and a distant squawk from a mountain jay somewhere up the steep ridge that began a hundred yards or so beyond the glade.
At the far side of the glade, an unmarked path of newly trampled grass led into a dark gap in the tree line. It twisted between the thick trunks of old and large ponderosa and across roots that lifted like wooden veins from the packed earth. Branches closed around heavily, and the shadows breathed a moist chill that the sun, reaching this far only as pale spots, could not dispel. A charred smell and shriveled pine needles told me that those who took this path in the dark used flaming torches to light their way. An occasional broken branch said that people stumbled and grabbed out for balance.
The trail twisted steeply uphill as the ridge began to close in on the sides. Then it snaked between two massive boulders that choked the narrow gulch. Beyond the boulders, a steep cliff formed a ragged wall.
This was the place of sacrifice. They had come and gone, leaving behind signs and stains and a tangle of odors that even the tingling smell of pine and dust hadn’t erased. A soot-stained cliff sheltered the small gully on three sides. Under the overhang of the back wall, which was mottled by patches of lichen and dark streaks of old water courses, a large boulder rested like an altar. Around it in a semicircle, smaller flat stones looked like the pedestals of missing columns or seats of honor for an inner circle. Farther back, toward the open end where I stood, the ground was scuffed by traces of feet, and the sparse grass was flattened and dying.
The odor of piss-wet charcoal came from the large pile of ashes and charred wood. It mingled with the unnatural sweetness of heavily perfumed candles. Under it was an almost sour smell that reminded me of a butcher shop after a busy day. That came from a soggy patch of ground at the foot of the altar rock. A reddish-brown stain had run from a now-dried pool in one of the rock’s hollows to the gritty and sticky earth below. Above the gentle sigh of pine needles, I heard an erratic, nervous whine, and an occasional glint of steely green leaped and swirled and settled again on the stains. But it wasn’t the odor or the feeding flies that made me feel sick. It was the knowledge that I was too late.
By the time I made my way back to the trees overlooking the lodge, the sun was almost straight overhead. Another car had joined the row of parked vehicles, and the woman and three children had disappeared to leave the grounds empty of life. I searched each window, but saw little. The large ground windows gave a shadowy view into the lodge’s main hall. It held a scattering of chairs and sofas, worn and sagging as befit a summer house. A towering mossrock chimney formed the wall at one end, and over the black fireplace was a gigantic ram’s head mounted like a hunting trophy. Through the binoculars I could see two pinball machines in an alcove, along with a pair of video games and a child’s plastic pony. A pair of open doors led to a dining room that held wooden trestle tables and benches. Unless you knew about the clearing in the woods, the lodge looked like any other dude ranch. An occasional figure strolled through the room, but none of them was Dori.
From this distance, I wasn’t going to find out if she was in there and alive. Slipping around through the trees, I put the barn between me and the house and worked closer.
The horses snorted and tossed their heads as I paused by a corner of weathered boards and scouted the outbuildings. Sliding between the rails, I crossed the powdered dust of the corral and entered the barn’s side door. The shade lifted the heat of sun and was filled with the quiet smell of hay. Listening for footsteps or a voice, I edged toward the large doors that opened to the parking area and lodge beyond. From a dark corner, I again searched the lodge’s windows with the binoculars. A rattle of crockery and a murmur of voices floated from the kitchen. But from this angle I couldn’t see into it. Then a screen door slapped. Dwayne Vengley and a young boy came out on the front porch.
The blond man said something to the boy, who stared down at his feet and swung a toe in short arcs against the porch boards. It was one of the children from the sandbox, the one who had simply sat in silence. Vengley patted him on a shoulder and guided him toward the barn.
I pulled back into a horse stall as they came up to the front of the barn and leaned on the rail to feed something to one of the horses.
“Don’t you like being up here, Brian? We sure like having you.” Vengley’s voice was a pleasant murmur. “The Pastor was telling me just yesterday that you’re one of the nicest boys we’ve ever had to visit the ranch.”
The boy said nothing. He held out a handful of oats and gingerly let the horse mouth them from his palm.
“Rusty and Sandy like you, too. Don’t you like them?”
“Yes. I guess so.”
“Well, why don’t you tell me what’s wrong, Brian? I can’t help if I don’t know what’s bothering you.”
The boy mumbled something to the horse.
“What?”
“I’m scared!”
“Well, there’s nothing to be scared of! Has anyone hurt you? Tell me, has anyone hurt you at all?”
“ … No.”
“Then what makes you frightened?”
“What they’ll do. What the Pastor said they’ll do.”
“Oh, that’s only if you tell somebody. You’re not going to tell anybody, are you?”
“No!”
“Then you don’t have anything to be afraid of, do you? Are Rusty and Sandy afraid?”
“I guess not.” He added, “But they’ve been here before, too.”
“And they wanted to come back, didn’t they?”
“I guess so.”
“Oh, you know they did. They invited you along, didn’t they? Do you think they would have done that if they were afraid?”
“I don’t know. I guess not.”
“Of course not.” Vengley patted the boy’s shoulder again.
“Look, I’ll tell you what—anytime you feel afraid, you come see me, okay? You’re a very special person to me, Brian. I’ll take care of anything that makes you afraid.”
“I won’t have to make any more movies?”
“Not if you really don’t want to.”
“Pastor won’t get mad if I don’t?”
“No. Not mad. He’ll be disappointed. You made a promise, remember? You promised to do what we told you and we promised to let you ride horses and camp out and go fishing, remember?”
“Yeah. But …”
“And Rusty and Sandy will be disappointed, too. They like having you make movies with them. And isn’t it really a little bit fun sometimes?”
“Sometimes, I guess.”
“Sure it is. And how many young men and women your age get to be in real movies? That’s something special. It’s not like there’s anything wrong with it, Brian. My goodness, do you think the Pastor or me or any of the family would want you to do something that was wrong?”
“I … I guess not.”
“But we have to keep some things secret from other people. That’s why Pastor said those things about what would happen if anybody told.”
“He scared me.”
Vengley stroked the back of the boy’s head and they started slowly back toward the lodge. “Well, you’re not going to tell, so there’s not a thing to be afraid of. Come on—I’ll bet the camera’s all set up now and I’ll bet Rusty and Sandy are wondering where you are.”
Understanding fully now, I rose from my hiding place to watch the two stroll across the sandy patch toward the lodge. Behind me I heard a hissing grunt and jerked around to see the twisted, bristly face of the caretaker just before the end of an axe handle smashed my vision into ringing black.
CHAPTER 29
IT MIGHT HAVE the thick and sour taste of dried blood in my mouth. Maybe it was the rip of pain across my forehead. Something stirred me into consciousness and then, when I turned my head, made me wish I hadn’t. The pain rolled into a throb of heavy aching pulse that I could almost bite with my jaw teeth. The sound of my own groaning voice came muffled to my ears, and as my eyes focused, I made out the glossy varnish of a peeled log wall shoved against the edge of a bare mattress.
I was tied. My wrists were lifted to the upper end of an iron bed frame. My ankles were hooked to the lower. My mouth had opened to let a dribble of blood and saliva dry down my chin and neck and on the striped ticking of the stained and lumpy mattress. I was in a small room and it was empty. A curtainless window showed a square of pale blue sky where a fly buzzed persistently against the screen. Carefully, I tilted my head up to squint through its ache. A closed door. Then I let my head sag gently back against the thin mattress and shut my eyes again.
The second time I woke it was to a patch of late-afternoon sun glinting on the varnished log wall. I felt an insistent shake of my leg and looked down. The frowning, whiskery face of the caretaker bent over the end of the bed and the man grunted when my eyes opened.