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Deadlock Trilogy

Page 28

by P. T. Hylton

Falling into the mirror had been a violent experience, like being pulled into a pool of cold water, but falling out of it was gentle. One moment, there was the strange coldness and the sensation of being suspended in liquid, his lungs burning and desperate for air, and the next, Frank was on a dirt path, dry and standing upright.

  He stood in a forest of towering, twisted trees. It was eerily quiet; Frank felt the absence of all the expected forest sounds—no birds singing or insects buzzing. Even the wind was silent.

  He leaned his head back and gazed up at the trees, trying to make out the tops of them, and a wave of dizziness washed over him. This place—wherever it was—it wasn’t right. The silence felt like a sickness.

  It had been almost three months since he’d left prison—three months since he promised the Rook Mountain city manager he would find his brother Jake. Or had it? Time was tricky, especially for Frank. It had been three months of Rook Mountain time, but that didn’t count the time—probably years—he’d spent in the Away, fighting for his life against the Ones Who Sing.

  However you figured it, it felt like he’d been searching for his brother for a long time. All of it had brought him here.

  It had been seven years since Jake came through the mirror. Frank wondered how far his brother had wandered in that time. If Frank knew Jake, the man was doing everything he could to get back to his family, even if that meant walking halfway around the world.

  Frank took in his surroundings. Ferns, bushes, and rhododendrons grew thick on the ground around him. He stood on a thin dirt trail on the side of a hill. Seemed odd, such behemoths of trees growing on such a steep slope.

  As his ears began to adjust to the quiet of the woods, he heard something through the silence, and he licked his lips at the thought of it. A stream. He’d only been here a minute, but already he felt a powerful thirst. Something about the air here made him want to rinse out his mouth. He headed toward the sound, cutting his own path through the dense foliage. It wasn’t long before he came upon a stream.

  Growing up in the Appalachian Mountains, he had more than a passing familiarity with mountain streams. He’d drunk from them, fished them, and swam in them plenty of times. This one was a shallow little number, freckled with rocks.

  He squatted at the bank and reached a cupped hand toward the water. A dark shape hovered near the bed of the stream. For a moment, he thought it was his own shadow. It was a black round thing no bigger than a basketball, and it seemed unmoved by the force of the water around it.

  He craned his neck and looked up to see if something above him was casting this odd shadow. He saw nothing but trees. He passed his hand over the shape and didn’t see the shadow on the back of his hand. That thing was under the water.

  He held his breath, the pace of his heart suddenly quickening. He’d seen more than enough of shadow creatures in his time Away. But he didn’t hear any singing now.

  He cursed himself for coming here so unprepared. Why hadn’t he brought a gun or a knife or, hell, a canteen?

  Then he heard it. Not the buzzing, collective, mind-numbing song of the Ones Who Sing. This was something else. Something softer. It was like a light humming he could feel at the base of his skull. It was a disquieting but almost sweet sound.

  He leaned back, away from the water. He’d have to move upstream and find somewhere else to drink. He started to rise, then felt a callused hand on his shoulder and heard a gruff voice say, “Don’t move. It might look small, but that damn thing’ll cut through you like a buzz saw.”

  Frank froze. He didn’t dare turn around.

  “Talking’s alright though,” the man continued. “They can’t hear us, near as I’ve ever been able to tell. Or, if they can, they don’t seem to care.”

  The man hunkered down on the river bank, and Frank got a good look at him. The guy had to be in his sixties. His skin was a leathery color that spoke of long hours outdoors. His jeans were baggy and tattered. He wore a faded blue Carolina Panthers baseball cap and a plain red tee shirt, and he held a long pointed stick that had a knife lashed to the end of it.

  “Okay, so what do we do?” Frank asked. “Wait for it to go away?”

  The man’s eyes were on the creature in the water. “Nah, I may not have that much time left to me. This thing has been sitting at the bottom of this stream for years, never hurting no one ‘til you came by and caught its attention. You see the way it’s quivering? It wants you dead like it’s never wanted anything. You put all three of us in a bad situation.”

  Frank did see it quivering now. It seemed to have risen up off the bottom of the stream, though it was hard to tell for sure.

  “Only thing to do now is to kill it.” He grinned at Frank, revealing a smile speckled with holes where teeth had once been. “Might want to say a quick prayer. I miss and we’re both dead.”

  Quicker than Frank could respond, the man pulled back the stick and stabbed it toward the shadow creature. He yelped and hopped to his feet, pulling the stick out of the water, and holding up the creature impaled on the knife. The thing looked like a huge black cotton ball. Thick strands of fur hung limply from its round body.

  “You see that? Teach you to quiver at a man trying to enjoy a cool drink of water!” He held the spear high, and as Frank watched, the shadow creature melted, dissolving into a sludgy mess of ink-like ooze.

  A thick glob fell onto the man’s shoe, but he didn’t seem bothered. He scraped it off with the heel of his other foot.

  Frank put his hands on his knees and started to stand.

  “Wait!” the man shouted. “You know how many of those things are in the water?”

  Frank froze mid-crouch. His eyes darted back and forth along the stream.

  The man bellowed out a laugh. “I’m just messing with you, man. Stand up.”

  Frank did so and looked the older man in the eye, not sure whether to punch him or hug him. He pointed at the sludge dripping from the spear. “Thanks. What the hell’s that thing?”

  The man shrugged. “I call them Larvae. Mostly I try to leave them alone. They don’t bother me much, unless I invade their space. They usually stick to quiet places like the bottom of that stream or up in the trees. It was different when I was young. Back then they were hungry. Now they keep quiet. Until someone or something like you comes along and gets them riled.” He held out his hand. “I’m Mason.”

  Frank shook it. The hand was hard and rough with calluses. “Frank.”

  Mason leaned the spear over his shoulder, oblivious to the sludge running down onto his neck and shirt.

  “Frank.” He said the name like he was skeptical of its authenticity. “I gotta ask you, what the hell are you doing here?”

  Frank brushed his hands off on his pants and looked around. “I don’t even know where here is.”

  Mason’s smile suddenly looked a bit more artificial. “Oh, don’t kid a kidder. No one gets here by accident. It’s been a long, long time since anyone’s gotten here at all. Who sent you?”

  “No one sent me. I sent myself.”

  Mason squinted at him. “I’ve got bad news for you. Whatever your purpose, you’ve made a seriously bad decision. I need to know why you’re here. If you don’t come clean with me right now, I’m gonna let my spear here ask the next question.”

  Frank nodded. Makeshift spear or not, he was confident he could take down this weather-beaten man if it came to that. Still, the guy moved pretty fast. “Look, I’m not trying to be secretive. I’m happy to explain everything. I’m looking for a man. I’m not sure he’s still in the area, but he definitely passed through here a while back. About seven years ago.”

  Mason shook his head. “Ain’t no such thing as passing through here. No one came here seven years ago, I can promise you that.”

  Frank’s heart sank. “You sure?”

  Mason spat on the ground by way of an answer. “This man you’re asking after. Tell me about him.”

  Frank ran a hand through his hair. This was getting him nowhere. “H
e’s a little shorter than me. Blond hair. Wears it a bit shaggy, at least he did last time I saw him. Suffers from a distinct lack of a sense of humor.”

  The old man rubbed his chin and squinted at Frank. “Why, if I didn’t know better, I’d say you were talking about Jake Hinkle.”

  Frank’s pulse quickened. “Yes!”

  Mason squinted at him. “You came here looking for Jake Hinkle?”

  “Yes!”

  “And what exactly do you want with him?”

  Frank wondered if the man was messing with him. “I’m here to help him, if I can. He’s my brother.”

  Mason grimaced. “That’s what I figured, but I needed to hear you say it.” He cleared his throat. “I’m sorry, but I’ve got some hard news. Jake Hinkle has been dead more than fifty years.”

  The air went out of Frank’s lungs. No. It wasn’t possible.

  “Uncle Frank.” Mason put a hand on his shoulder. “My dad never gave up on you. He told me you’d be coming.”

  CHAPTER ONE: THE CURBSIDE KILLER

  1.

  The man who killed Sophie’s sister ran free for five years before they caught him. His victims were young and old, black and white, beautiful and ugly. He was an equal opportunity killer. His only criterion was convenience. He attacked pedestrians, a quick baseball bat to the head and he went on his way, leaving them lying in the gutter.

  Still, even knowing that, Sophie Porter spent her high school years living in fear of him. Fear he’d come after her some day. Even though she never walked anywhere—her parents didn’t let her and she wouldn’t have wanted to anyway—it was always in her mind that he’d make an exception from his established pattern for her. Sophie never believed her sister’s death had been random. She believed there was something special about Heather that had drawn him, and she believed maybe the same special quality was inside her, too.

  The police caught Charles Dylan Taylor—the man the media had dubbed ‘The Curbside Killer’—just outside Chattanooga in 2004. They pulled him over for an illegal U-turn, saw the bloody baseball bat, and took him into custody. His multi-state, half-decade-long voyage of terror was over. No more names would be added to his already double-digit list of victims.

  Sophie was nineteen years old when they caught him. She dropped out of Vanderbilt a month after the arrest. The combination of relief at the man’s capture and dread over his upcoming trial left little room in her mind for coursework. She got a job at a jazz bar and stayed in Nashville rather than returning to her parents' home in Knoxville. She needed to be around people who were at least pretending to be happy.

  Charles Dylan Taylor was sentenced to death by lethal injection four years later. Twenty-three-year-old Sophie Porter sat in the courtroom during the sentencing, promising herself this was the end of the story for her and Charles Taylor. He’d likely wait for years on Death Row, but she wouldn’t let her mind and heart be held captive with him. She’d move on with her life. The Curbside Killer would wait for his final appointment with the needle at Northern Tennessee Correctional Complex in Rook Mountain.

  On September 30, 2014, Taylor disappeared from his locked cell. The report showed he was in his bunk for the ten-thirty bed check. When Officer Rodgers came around for the eleven fifteen bed check, he was gone.

  The story made national headlines—‘Death Row Inmate Escapes’—but most of the reports focused on how the disappearance had taken place in the weirdness capital of the nation. The other things that had happened there made a simple prison break, albeit a perplexing one, seem mundane by comparison. Most people chalked it up as another Rook Mountain mystery. Add it to the list, they said.

  The families of the victims banded together and raised money to help bring attention to the manhunt. Sophie’s parents reacted as they always did in a crisis: her mother leaping into action, organizing campaigns and committees, and her father withdrawing further into his own thoughts and distancing himself from the world.

  Sophie had seen this all before. The victims’ groups. The fundraising. The desperate pleas for a few moments of attention from the right media outlets. But Sophie wasn’t a little girl this time, and she was no longer content to watch her parents try their broken-hearted best to cope with another chapter in an endless saga of tragedy. It all seemed so familiar and sad. That same old picture of Heather was being shown again and again.

  Sophie knew their way didn’t have to be her way. She needed to find her own method of survival.

  On October 15, 2014, Sophie Porter drove to Rook Mountain.

  2.

  Sophie stomped on the clutch and downshifted into first, slowing to a roll as she approached the prison. The place was less menacing than she’d expected. Tall fences topped with coils of razor wire surrounded the complex, but what she could see inside the fence looked like the institutional version of quaint. The buildings were long and squat, gray and drab. They looked clean and freshly painted, not the grimy oppressiveness Sophie had seen in so many prison movies and television shows. It didn’t look like the kind of place she’d want to spend the rest of her life, but the sight of it didn’t cause her legs to go watery either.

  There were seventy-six prisoners on death row at NTCC. Seventy-six people waiting around to die, some of them waiting decades. A few days before, there had been seventy-seven. Now Charles Dylan Taylor was walking free. Sophie didn’t know exactly what she expected to do about that, but she had to try something. Someone had to be held accountable.

  She’d never been to Rook Mountain before even though she had grown up two hours to the southwest in Knoxville. It hadn’t been a hot tourist destination. Not until seven months ago, anyway.

  It had been seven months since the weirdness. Seven months since everyone in this town had aged eight years in a single night. The residents of Rook Mountain had come back with wild and unbelievable stories, stories of giant birds and strange laws. They claimed they’d been led by a man named Zed. No last name. Zed had protected them, some claimed, from the things outside the town. Others claimed he’d been an oppressive dictator. Zed had apparently disappeared off the face of the earth around the time things went back to normal in Rook Mountain, and he hadn’t been seen since.

  Theories about what had really happened to Rook Mountain on the night of March 27 were as varied as you’d expect. Mass delusion with physical manifestation. Some sort of spiritual attack brought on to teach the town a lesson. And aliens. A lot of people theorized it was aliens.

  Sophie thought of all the government employees and scientists still hanging around town, and she grimaced. Finding a place to stay would be a nightmare.

  She took a deep breath and glanced at herself in the rearview mirror. Did she look professional? Like someone who might legitimately come calling on the warden? She thought so. She had done her best approximation of the pantsuit she imagined a government official might wear on a daily basis. And yet, she saw her own discomfort in the mirror. She wore the right clothes, but she didn’t wear them with the casual grace of someone who was accustomed to business attire.

  Nothing she could do about that now. She turned the wheel of her Civic and pulled up next to the guard station, stopping well behind the barrier arm blocking her path. She rolled down her window and waited for the guard to speak. He looked at her, his face blank.

  When it became clear the guard wasn’t going to initiate the conversation, she said, “I’m here to see Warden Cades.”

  For a moment, it seemed the guard still wasn’t going to speak. Then he said, “You have an appointment?”

  She waited a moment too long before answering. “Yes. He’s expecting me.”

  The guard grunted, his expression unreadable. “ID please.”

  Sophie fumbled with the clasp on her purse. This wasn’t going how she’d planned. She’d imagined she would be charming. That she’d win the guard over with her smile and friendly conversation. So naive. Charles Taylor could be anywhere by now, and here she was in the only place she knew he wasn’t.


  She handed the guard her driver’s license. It still had the picture from when she was twenty-one years old. At the time, she’d just bought a car and moved into a new apartment. It felt like a fresh start, a way to escape the past. No baseball bats would cave in the back of her head while she was driving her used Mitsubishi Expo, a vehicle that looked like a cross between Inspector Gadget’s ‘Gagetmobile’ and a minivan. She’d quickly learned no simple vehicle or state-issued plastic card would be the answer to her problems. Nor would the various other solutions she tried over the years. Older men. Younger men. The Goth scene. The rave scene. Even the country music scene. Of course, none of it had made her forget the Curbside Killer. She didn’t regret it, though. She had collected a wider array of memories than most people her age. Good as well as bad.

  The guard looked at the ID for a full thirty seconds, squinting like it was written in Mandarin, and then he glared up at her.

  “Hang on,” he said.

  He scooped up the phone and pressed a button, his eyes never leaving her. It was as if he was afraid she’d turn to smoke and disappear if he looked away. He muttered into the phone too quietly for Sophie to hear. Her stomach was doing flip-flops now. All the confidence she had felt minutes before had drifted away.

  He handed the ID back to her. “Listen,” he said. “I’m trying to get in touch with the warden. Visitor parking is over there. You can wait while I verify his schedule.”

  She hesitated, not sure where to take it from here, whether or not to push. She’d had a response ready for if he gave her a flat-out no, and she was ready to act unsurprised and confident if he lifted the one-armed barrier and waved her inside. She hadn’t been ready for a maybe.

  Sophie gave the guard a quick nod and shifted into reverse. She navigated the car backward fifty feet and then pulled into the visitor parking lot. She angled the car so she could see the guard’s little hut of a station through her windshield.

  She sat for five minutes, chewing her bottom lip and trying to make out the guard’s movements through the tinted glass. She was staring so hard and gripping her steering wheel so tightly the vibration of her cell phone made her jump.

 

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