by Mark Deloy
Lisa’s car was already parked in front of the sheriff’s station when I arrived. I went inside with Jim’s journal under my arm, and found Jensen and Lisa in Jensen’s office drinking coffee.
“Morning, Hick. Want a cup?” Jensen offered.
“I always heard cop coffee was the worst.”
“Not here. I drink too much of it not to splurge on the good stuff.”
After adding sugar and cream until it was the right color, I took a sip. It was, indeed, very good... strong, rich and creamy.
“Delicious,” I smacked my lips in pleasure.
“See?” he said. “So what’s the plan?”
“Well, first I need to show you both this,” I said, holding out the journal.
“What’s that?” Lisa asked, taking it from me.
“Jim’s journal. He knew about Mr. Shift. He helped my Papa build the house I saw in the woods. They built it for Mr. Shift so he could always find the doorway,” I said, giving them the Reader’s Digest condensed version.
“Jesus, Hick. This is all just too much to believe! Jim was in on all this? Did he take those kids?”
“No, but I think he manipulated me into letting him set up the revival on my land. He knew Mr. Shift was coming for children. According to his journal, Jim made a deal with him to only take three children instead of all of them in town.”
“The first kids—the boy scouts Talbot told us about—there were only three of them,” Lisa commented.
“Yes, maybe the nature guy, Hiram, made a deal with Mr. Shift, too—or maybe he was innocent, I guess it doesn’t matter. I think the reason Shift made the deal with my granddad and Jim was because he knew if he didn’t, he wasn’t going to get anything. My guess was he was bluffing about taking all the children in town. I don’t think he can travel far from the doorway, even with the house marking it, so he always needs someone to bring the kids in closer.”
“We need to find that house,” Jensen practically growled.
“I think we should talk to the two women at Willow Bend first,” Lisa interjected. “They might have some idea how we can find it.”
“Or, they might try to kill us,” I laughed nervously, realizing it was a very real possibility.
“The secure area at Willow Bend is locked down pretty good,” Jensen stated. “You’ll be talking to them through a slot in the wall. We won’t be in the same room.”
“How can they keep them there if they haven’t done anything wrong?” Lisa asked.
“Actually they did,” Jensen informed her. “Leslie and Beth both tried to kill their care takers on a few different occasions when they were in for initial observation. One time, Beth—the one that tried to shish-kabob her cat—jammed an ink pen in a doctor’s neck. Missed his jugular by centimeters. Leslie took apart her bed and sharpened one of the rails against the concrete floor then gave one of the nurses a nasty gash on her leg. It took a hundred stitches to close it. She nearly bled out while Leslie licked the blood off the floor.”
Lisa looked at me, her face was pale
“Glad I asked,” she said, making a face.
After we finished our coffee, we all piled into Jensen’s patrol car. I sat on the hard plastic seats in the back. Jensen told me they were easier to clean after the perps vomited, shit, or pissed on them.
“Thanks,” I said. “I could have gone without knowing that.”
“No problem. I’m here to serve, protect and sicken,” he chuckled. “Hold onto something, they’re slippery too.”
We arrived at Willow Bend and Jensen explained to the nurse on duty that the girls had information on a current investigation and could we please talk to them. The nurse obliged his request, blushing a little as she handed him the sign-in sheet.
“That was a lot easier than I thought,” I commented.
“That’s the old Pratt charm at work. The ladies can never resist,” Lisa chuckled.
“Uh huh,” I rolled my eyes.
The nurse took us into a small room with three chairs. There was a large window which looked into another completely barren room, and a small, vented slot next to the window.
Beth was led in first by an attendant. She was fifty-five, but looked seventy, at least, as she came shuffling into the room. She wore plain blue pajamas and had paper booties on her feet. Her hair was pure white, wild and unkempt, but looked clean. She seemed to be drugged, and as she approached the glass I could see her eyes were dilated to the point they looked completely black. She smiled when she reached the window and placed one hand on it, as if trying to touch us. Her teeth were mostly gone, and the few she had left were rotten around the gums.
“Hello, Beth,” Jensen began. “We’d like to ask you some questions.”
“You’re here about Shift,” she stated, surprising us. “He came to me in a dream last night and said you were coming.”
She turned away from the window and began twisting her hair around one finger. Then she pulled a clump of it out, looked at it, and threw it on the floor without even wincing.
“Yes, we are,” Jensen affirmed, not missing a beat. “We want to know where he took you.”
“To his place—to the other side. Leslie, Becky and me. He took us through, then ripped it out of all three of us. He ripped ME out of ME and then I was none! I am one of the none!”
“Her soul,” I whispered to Lisa.
“Yes,” Beth yelled. “I’m still over there. We all are. They said we came back, but we didn’t. We won’t ever. I’m a walking, talking bag of none.”
“What if you went back,” Lisa suggested. “What if you could go back and get what he took?”
“Jesus, Lisa, don’t promise—” Jensen began.
At this, Beth fell to her knees and folded her hands as if praying, then raised them to the window. Now tears were streaming down her wrinkled face.
“Please, please, please, please, please!” she implored.
She kept saying it over and over and she was getting louder. Her voice was becoming hoarse to the point that now it was little more than a squeak.
“I don’t think we’ll get anything else out of her,” Jensen finally said. He knocked on the door and told the orderly we were finished and could he please bring in Leslie. The orderly nodded, left, then opened the door to the other room. When Beth saw him, she ran into one corner and started screaming.
“No! No! They said they would take me to get the rest of me! No!” She clawed at the attendant. He was a big man, but was caught off guard. She scratched his neck and his arm before he was able to get her under control and drag her out of the room.
“I’m sorry,” Lisa apologized. “I didn’t realize she would do that.”
“Let me do the talking with Leslie, please,” Jensen told her.
She nodded.
Leslie was much calmer than Beth. She walked into the room and sat cross-legged on the floor. She wouldn’t even look at us as Jensen tried to get her to talk. She looked even older than Beth, and of course, actually was. Her hair was put up in a bun, probably by a nurse or an attendant. It was mostly gray, but had streaks of black still in it. Her face looked relaxed and her eyes kept drooping as if she was trying to stay awake.
“She’s drugged out of her mind,” I noted.
“Yeah, she is,” Jensen agreed and knocked on the door again.
When the attendant went in to get Leslie, she sprang up off the floor and ran at us, bouncing off the glass. We all jumped. She did it again, this time cracking the glass with her head, which was now bleeding. The attendant tried to grab her, but the blood pouring from her head wound had coated her arms, making them slippery. She slid out of his grasp and came at us again, this time bouncing off the glass and falling to the floor. She started screaming.
“The revival kids have to come with us. Go get the kids, Jacob, Anni, Mike! Go get them. Go get them so they don’t live like me!
She suddenly pointed at Lisa. “Your son saw him, too!” she shouted at Lisa. “Your son saw him!” she repe
ated, then chillingly added, “He is marked!”
The attendant finally got a hold of her and pulled Leslie out of the room. She was still screaming. She shook her head like a wet dog and blood splattered on the window, then dripped down in red rivulets.
“My God!” Lisa exclaimed. “Why would she say that about Connor? How could she know that?”
Neither of us had an answer.
33
“We need to go now and find that house and burn it down!” Jensen declared again. “If we can even find it and if it exists. Those are two very big ifs.”
We were back at the station in Jensen’s office, hashing everything out.
“I saw it,” I said. “It exists.”
“No offense, Hick, but this person, or whatever he is—this Mr. Shift—maybe he just plays with people’s minds. Maybe he drugged you, gave you some magic mushrooms or acid and you didn’t realize it. I’ve seen that shit make people see all kinds of things.”
“I guess it’s possible.” I allowed. “I have to admit the possibility, at least. Hell, I’ve thought of it myself. But why does everyone who comes back act psychotic?”
“Maybe he does some bad shit to them while he has them, to make them act that way. I don’t know. I just know that if it’s a real house and the bastard lives in it, we need to find it.”
Lisa, who had been quiet for most of our discussion, spoke up.
“How do you explain the journal, and the time span between disappearances? Shift would have to be in his nineties.”
“I don’t know,” Jensen said again. “A copycat maybe.”
“You’re grasping,” Lisa told him.
“I know I am, but this shit it too much to take in,” Jensen responded in exasperation. “How could Beth know why we were there? Even if she got a newspaper, why would she think we had any idea about Mr. Shift? None of that was in the papers. And, as for the house, when we searched for those kids, we scoured nearly every acre of that property, especially around the waterfall where you said you saw the house.”
I knew Jensen’s head was reeling, because mine was, too. He was trying to give an irrational situation a rational spin and knew it wasn’t working. I was reminded of an old Mr. Spock quote: “When you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.”
“Whatever we believe, or how we approach it, our next move is to find that house,” I determinedly declared.
“Do we try to take the kids?” Lisa asked.
“No way,” Jensen insisted. “Too dangerous.”
“How about Beth?” I proposed. “She seemed ready to go. If we find the house and take her inside and it fixes her, then we’ll know what we have to do with the rest of them.”
“I can’t believe I’m saying this,” Jensen responded, running his hands through his hair, “but we not only have to find the house and take her inside, we have to find the door—the whachamacallit—the vortex. I know I, for one, am not going in there. She’s on her own if she wants to go back in to wherever and go find her soul. We can get her there, but she has to do the rest. Sorry, but that’s how I feel. Protect and serve is one thing, but that doesn’t cover world- jumping. Not only that, what if this ‘Mr. Shift’ fellow decides to stop us. I love my Glock, but I doubt a .40 caliber is going to stop an eight-foot-tall being from another world.”
Lisa and I both nodded. I think we felt the same way.
“Where are the kids?” I asked. “I know Anni is probably in juvenile hall now under lockdown, but what about Jacob and Mike? If they’re at home, it’s still going to be near impossible for us to get them for a field trip. We’re going to have to see what happens with Beth and go from there.”
“Technically, the other two kids haven’t even done anything wrong yet,” Jensen said. “I was planning on taking them into some sort of custody after Jim’s death, but I know I’d have a legal fight on my hands. We’re just going to have to pray we figure out what to do before they go psycho and hurt anyone. It’s just more pressure, that’s all. You still in? Both of you?”
“Yes,” we both said in unison.
“Okay, good. So we need to go and get Beth, then we’ll head to the woods. Maybe she’ll be some kind of catalyst and the house will appear for her.”
“You’re starting to sound like Fox Mulder from the X-Files,” Lisa giggled.
“Hush. I’m not saying I believe in any of this shit,” Jensen protested. “I’m trying to think logically with the information we have, which isn’t much.”
34
Jensen was able to get Beth out of Willow Bend by talking to the attending physician and filling out a ton of paperwork. He told the doctor she was a material witness in an old investigation and we needed to take her to a crime scene. Lisa and I waited in the hallway for what seemed like four hours, but was really only a little over one. The whole time I was thinking about how we were burning daylight and I knew I didn’t want to get caught in those woods after dark.
When he finally came out, he apologized for taking so long and explained the doctor felt he had to warn Jensen several times about how dangerous she was. This was the same doctor Beth tried to kill with a pen and showed Jensen the scar to emphasize the danger, but finally relented and signed her day pass paperwork.
We walked down the hall and met the doctor again outside Beth’s room. He opened the door with a sigh, and stood behind us. He obviously didn’t like dealing with her at all. Beth was sitting on her bed cross-legged. She wouldn’t speak or even look our way.
“She gets like that at times,” the doctor murmured to no one in particular.
I was sure the doc felt better when Jensen pulled Beth’s hands behind her back and handcuffed her. She was wearing what looked like nurse’s scrubs. Her hair was as wild as before and her skin was scaly, like a lizard’s. The whole time, she just stared straight ahead. She’d spilled something on the front of her shirt.
Beth led the way as we walked out of the home with Jensen’s hand on her shoulder. Jensen put her in the back of the car, told her hang tight as he slammed the door shut, then turned back to us.
“When we’re out there, do not, under any circumstances, let her get behind you. It would only take a second for her to snap and do something we’d all regret. Stay sharp and stay alert,” He instructed them
“Okay, got it,” I confirmed.
Lisa said she understood as well.
“All right,” Jensen said. “We’ll meet you at your house, Hick. Do you have a weapon?”
“Yes, my Ruger.”
“Any semi-autos?”
“There’s an M&P in the safe.”
“Good, get it and give it to Lisa. She knows how to use a weapon. That okay with you, cuz?” he asked Lisa.
“Yes,” she said. I could tell she was scared. I grabbed her hand and squeezed it, she squeezed back and smiled.
“All right. Let’s go, we’re wasting daylight,” Jensen. He was obviously thinking the same thing I was. If the night came, and we were in those woods—his woods—then we’d all regret it. Some instinctual part of us knew the night was his time.
35
We got to my house around noon. Clouds were starting to roll in from the west and it looked like we were in for a bad storm. I hadn’t checked the weather that morning, but storms were so common during Tennessee summers, you almost didn’t have to see the news to know you’d get one. You could count on a pop- up storm a few times a week in the late afternoons.
“Has she said anything?” I asked, nodding to Beth in the back seat.
“Not a word,” Jensen said. “I thought she would start talking when she realized where we were going.”
“I’ll go up and get the other gun. Be right back.”
I went upstairs and opened the gun safe. I grabbed the Smith and Wesson nine millimeter for Lisa, as well as a spare loaded magazine. Then, I opened a box of .357 ammo and put several rounds in my pocket. The Ruger was single- action, so I’d have to load each round one at a
time. Hopefully, I wouldn’t have to reload.
It was raining lightly when I came back outside. I looked up at the turbulent skies and prayed for the rain to hold off for a while longer.
I handed Lisa the semi-auto and she checked the chamber, chambered a round and then flicked on the safety.
I raised my eyebrows.
“What? My cousin’s a cop,” she said, with a sexy little grin.
“You can protect me any day,” I declared, then continued, “We’ll be able to drive down to the edge of the woods. We’ll just ride with you, Jensen.”
We piled into the front seat of his car. He had to move his laptop so Lisa could sit in the middle. She held the M&P in her lap, pointed at the floor. Her hands were shaking slightly; I think mine were, too. I took a deep breath and looked at the forest in front of us.
We came to the edge of the woods a few minutes later, after bumping through the fields. It was raining steadily, now, and I thought it was a good thing the canopy overhead would be thick. In a couple of months the trees would begin to thin out considerably.
Jensen pulled his cruiser around so we were facing back towards the house. I didn’t have to ask why. We all got out and I let Beth out of the back, as Jensen went to his trunk, pulled out a small backpack and filled it with a few items.
We walked in through the thick brambles at the edge of the deep woods with Beth in the lead. She kept a steady pace, even with her hands cuffed in back of her. She actually looked like she knew where she was going and headed right toward the waterfall. She kept looking up at the rain and opening her mouth to catch it as we walked.
“I’m surprised she hasn’t run into a tree doing that,” Lisa remarked.
“Me, too.”
“Is she going in the right direction?” Jensen asked. “I can’t remember.”
“Yeah, she seems to be heading right to where the house has been, as far as I know.”
We used the dry stream beds to navigate. It was much easier with far less roots and bushes to block our path. Huge, black sheets of shale littered the dry bed, and a few broke with deep crunching sounds as we stepped on them.