The Frank Peretti Collection

by Frank E. Peretti

  A knock at the door made me jump. The door cracked open.

  “Hello?”

  “Yeah, Kyle, come on in. Michael, have you met Kyle?”

  Kyle strode directly to the kitchen table and gave Michael his best pastor’s handshake. “Praise God! It’s great to see you free of that mess up there!”

  Michael didn’t know how to reply to that, but I just indicated the map he was drawing. “He didn’t actually see them dig the spring, but he knows where it is.”

  “I’ve got two shovels in my car.”

  Grave robbers, I thought grimly. “Uh . . . okay. But what we really need is a backhoe. We aren’t going to have all night.”

  Another knock at the door. “Travis?”

  Jim Baylor! This was no casual visit. Jim was breathing hard, sweating, and agitated, and he was wearing a sidearm. I didn’t even have to guess the source of the trouble before he said it. “He’s got Dee.”

  He told us his story and we told him ours.

  “Hey, I’ve got a backhoe!” he said.

  “I know,” I replied, nodding a strong hint at him.

  By the look in his eye, you’d think I’d invited him to help us sneak under a farmer’s fence to steal some corn.

  Michael did not look so gleeful.

  “Let’s have a word of prayer here,” I suggested, “and then we’ll get started.”

  We gripped hands in a circle and yes, we all prayed.

  I GOT MY CELL PHONE and called Morgan. She was still at the engagement dinner, but would be heading home soon. “Be very careful,” she said. “I want to see you again.”

  “Talk to you soon.” I put the cell phone in my coat pocket.

  BY THE TIME KYLE AND I reached the north gate to the Macon ranch, there was barely enough light to see it. The sun had set, and only a thin band of pink remained on the horizon. Overhead, the sky was shifting from indigo to black and the stars were coming out. Jim Baylor got there five minutes after we did, chugging up the shallow rise in his big dump truck, headlights blazing, his backhoe on a trailer. Michael said he’d rather wait at my place, so it would be the three of us. He was right about the gate, though.

  All we had to do was swing it open. We moved quickly and got inside the fence before any other traffic came by.

  I felt like I was doing an Isuzu Trooper commercial, taking my trusty rig into the rugged outback over rough roads and uneven terrain and doing it in the dark, no less. Kyle kept studying Michael’s map with a penlight and peering out through the windshield, trying to find the landmarks Michael had noted. The dirt road, still rutted and soft in places, weaved and wound, rose and fell, went on and on. We often passed small, idle bunchings of the Macon herd, resting by the road, grazing in the fields, paying us little mind. Jim stayed right with us, his headlights bright in my mirrors. After five miles I could make out the soft, roundish lines of the hills that sheltered the willow draw.

  We came to the grade, climbed, bumped, and wound our way upward, then dropped into a valley on the other side.

  I saw a distant, vague form in my headlights. “I think I see the dead tree.”

  “Uh . . .” Kyle checked the map. “It should have a feeder on the south side.”

  I slowed and swerved the Trooper that direction. The headlights finally caught a white planked cattle feeder with a dozen head of cattle dozing or munching.

  “Okay,” said Kyle, “straight on for another mile, then left where you see the willow grove.”

  A mile later, we found the grove and turned left. There had been some work here. The road was wider. It had been scraped and spread with coarse gravel. We came to a wide, flat area.

  “Here’s the turnaround,” said Kyle.

  “And there’s the fence,” I said.

  Michael had come through.

  I drove into the turnaround and circled to where I’d be out of Jim’s way. He rolled in, found a good spot, and shut down his engine. When his headlights winked out, the darkness moved in like a presence on every side, heavy and close, almost a liquid we could feel between our fingers. Our flashlight beams seemed pitifully weak in opposing it, like three tiny fireflies in a vast cavern.

  While Jim set about unchaining his backhoe, Kyle and I went to scout out the gully on the other side of the fence.

  There wasn’t much to see. Apparently, this used to be a boggy area filled with weeds and willow saplings. Now it was cleaned and carved out, filled with washed rock, and dammed with pressure treated timbers. A pipe ran out under the dam, with a large gate valve to control flow. It was neat and simple.

  Clean too.

  “What are we looking for?” Kyle asked.

  “A car.”

  “Well, I mean . . . you know, how do we—”

  I was shaking my head. “I don’t know.”

  All we could see in our roving cones of light were the wide, graveled turnaround, the post and wire fence to keep cattle out of the gully, a little bit of bare, brown soil where the gully had been scraped out, and a thin, green mantel of grass just coming up wherever the original soil had been disturbed. One fresh, car-sized hole, recently dug and then covered over, would have been nice.

  Beyond our little circle of light, coyotes yowled and yapped somewhere in the same valley, and shadows, only shadows, provided cover and hiding for any kind of beast or spirit to come close. Was it just Michael’s paranoia creeping into me? No, I had some of my own. I’d dealt with Justin Cantwell myself. I knew what it was to be watched by eyes that were . . . somewhere . . . but not really there.

  CLANG! I jumped.

  It was Jim, dropping a come-along on the deck of his backhoe trailer. He was working efficiently, but for me it wasn’t fast enough.

  I kept my light moving, both to search and to cut through the shadows to make sure they were empty. I could hear Kyle muttering little Pentecostal prayers. It wasn’t paranoia. He was feeling it too.

  Jim started up the backhoe, and its headlights and floodlights chased the shadows from a sizable piece of ground, a precious piece of illumined real estate we could stand and defend. While the engine warmed up and the lights consoled us, he walked along the fence line, eyeing the ground, digging in his heel here and there.

  “What do you think, Jim?” The sound of my own voice startled me.

  He leaned over the fence at the lower end of the turnaround and pointed his floodlight into the gully. “This here’s fill dirt, fill gravel.” He came to where we stood and studied the dam and catch basin. “Eh, they didn’t work those banks much, just filled in between ’em with the rock. But lower down . . . they put some dirt in there.” He went to his truck and grabbed a shovel from the cab.

  “Somebody hold my light.”

  I held his flashlight while he went along the fence, stomping the shovel in and spooning up the soil every few feet. “Eh, yeah, you see that? This stuff here is new, it’s fill.” Kyle and I looked at him like two disciples of digging awaiting wisdom from the master.

  “This shoulder’s new. It’s all fill. Let’s give it a scratch.”

  He climbed into his backhoe and backed up to the lower corner of the turnaround overlooking the gully, his floodlights illuminating the work area. He lowered the first outrigger, a big hydraulic foot to stabilize the machine for digging. The backhoe tilted as the outrigger contacted the ground. He lowered the opposite outrigger. It contacted the ground— And kept sinking, breaking through. We heard something crinkle.

  Jim cut the throttle on the backhoe and hopped out. We ran up, our lights searching the broken ground around the foot of the outrigger.

  There was broken glass down there, and beyond that, a dark cavity.

  Kyle had Jim’s shovel. He reached into the hole and scraped out some dirt and gravel. I recognized the chrome around the doorpost and the vinyl roof.

  “That’s it!” My voice squeaked a little, but I hardly noticed.

  Jim said nothing. He just climbed into the cab again, repositioned the machine, gunned the throttle, and s
tarted digging.

  Kyle and I stood as close as safety allowed, our lights and eyes following every scoop of dirt he took from atop and around that car. In no more than ten minutes he’d cleaned out a ditch along the car’s right side.

  Kyle and I jumped in with our shovels to do the delicate unearthing in the wash of his floodlights. Jim’s outrigger had shattered and broken a hole through the front passenger window. We cleared away the dirt and then broke out the rest of the window so we could search the car’s interior with our lights. We saw nothing but the rundown interior—the seats, steering wheel, dashboard, and ashtrays—still coated with brown slime and river mud. It still smelled like the river . . .

  And maybe something dead.

  We crawled out of the hole and I hollered up to Jim, “Let’s get into the trunk.”

  He jogged the backhoe a few feet sideways and started scooping again, lifting the dirt and gravel out of the hole like big scoops of flour.

  The car was sitting level and upright, the roof no more than a foot below the graveled surface of the turnaround. Jim moved his big bucket deftly over the rear end of the car, pulling loads of dirt from the trunk lid. The bucket’s teeth creased the metal a few times, but we didn’t care. We figured the trunk lid was going to receive far worse as soon as the dirt was gone. As soon as Jim took out his last scoop, Kyle and I hopped into the hole to finish the job, scraping and hurling the wet clay. We got the trunk clear, and just to take a crack at it, pried on the trunk lid with our shovel blades. It was jammed tight. I couldn’t see Jim behind those bright floodlights, but I knew he was watching. We got out of the hole so he could take his turn.

  He drove around to the side of the hole so he could get the bucket teeth up under the lid from behind. Kyle and I stood opposite, light beams fixed on that seam.

  Jim curled the bucket and the trunk popped open.

  There was something in there.

  Jim swung the boom aside and set the bucket on the ground.

  He reduced his throttle to idle and centered the floodlights. Kyle and I stepped into the hole again, the soft, wet clay sloughing and sliding under our feet, our flashlights aimed at the object in the trunk as if they were protective weapons.

  Now we didn’t just smell something. The stench, the thick, nauseating atmosphere came at us like a wave, worse than a dead rat in the attic, or a cat’s corpse under a back porch, or a run-over possum in the road ditch. I turned away for some fresh air. Kyle was ahead of me. We hadn’t even seen what it was.

  I breathed a moment, then tried again, my mouth and nose buried in the crook of my arm.

  “What is it?” Jim called.

  We had only told him about possibly finding a buried car. We hadn’t told him what might be inside.

  Every surface in the trunk was brown with river silt. I discerned the shape of a blanket, silty brown, with something underneath.

  With my free arm I extended my shovel, dipped the blade under the blanket, and lifted it aside.

  “Aaaaww!” I know Kyle didn’t mean to holler. It just happened.

  Jim found words, but I can’t repeat them.

  The remains of a face glistened wet and brown in the floodlights, the eyelids crinkled and sunken into the sockets, the decaying lips shrunk back from crooked teeth. Shoulder-length hair lay matted on the trunk floor, patches of black showing through the brown.

  Under the mud coating, we could recognize jeans, a denim jacket, and cowboy boots. The throat was sliced open.

  Kyle had already cleared the hole and was gasping for fresh air topside. I followed, coughing, clawing with my hands, acid rising in my throat. I slipped in the wet clay and fell against the side of the excavation.

  The cell phone in my coat pocket shrieked and stopped my heart. I rolled onto my back, the rotting corpse before my eyes.

  It bleeped again. Answer me! Answer me!

  I pulled it out, could barely get my shaking fingers around the antenna to extend it, and flipped it open. “Yeah,” I gasped, “Morgan?”

  “Surprise!”

  Terror knotted my stomach, and I fought for air. The eyes were here. By reflex I searched for them, trying to see into the darkness beyond that pit. Finding nothing, my gaze could only return to that rotting, muddy mask grinning in the floodlights.

  Cantwell spoke for the corpse, his voice low and taunting.

  “Looks like you founnnnd me.”

  I couldn’t speak. I could only stare.

  He became himself. “C’mon, Travis, say something. Tell me how it feels to know so much.”

  I tried to form a word. It wouldn’t come.

  “Maybe you should climb out of there and get some air—”

  The word came. “Better! It feels better!”

  He laughed at me.

  “I’m, I’m looking at your bottom line, Justin! I’m looking at what you produce! I’ve got my answer!”

  His voice went cold. “You’ve got nothing! I am he, and I hold the keys of life and of death—”

  “Oh no! You’re, you’re dreaming, Justin! But it’s over. This is the end of the dream, right here.”

  “We are not finished with our discussion, Travis!”

  “We’re not? What could you possibly have to say after this?”

  “You mean you STILL DON’T GET IT?” His voice was so loud it distorted in the phone. “What’s it going to take to get through to you? Life and death are in my hands now, and it’s my call! I’m not nailed to the fence anymore, Travis, or haven’t you noticed?”

  “Justin. It’s over.”

  “No. We’re not finished. Take a good look in front of you, Travis! I give life and I take it away. That means I can bargain with it. So it’s not over. I’m not alone up here, remember?”

  That twisted my stomach another turn. “Justin . . . don’t make things worse for yourself—”

  “That would be impossible!”

  “Don’t, don’t make it worse. Please. Those people trust you—”

  “I trusted God! Now give me another reason!”

  I struggled, stammered. “Justin, you don’t have any options. If you try to hold out you’ll only get yourself killed.”

  “I won’t be the first one to go. Make sure everyone knows that.

  And while you’re at it . . .” He trailed off. Silence.

  “What?”

  “Tell them I have Morgan.”

  Twenty-Nine

  I FOLDED THE CELL PHONE shut and fumbled to get it back in my pocket as I clambered, stumbling and slipping, out of the hole. Kyle and Jim grabbed my hands and yanked me to the top.

  “That was Cantwell,” I said. “He’s got Morgan!”

  “Oh Jesus,” Kyle prayed. “Oh Jesus, help us!”

  “He’s got Morgan?” said Jim. “What’s he doing, taking hostages?”

  “C’mon!” I urged them toward my Trooper. “There’s somebody watching us and I don’t know if it’s spirits or—”

  “We rebuke them in Jesus’ name!” said Kyle.

  Jim drew his gun. “What about Dee? He must have her too!”

  “He’ll have us if we don’t move.”

  “My machine . . .”

  “I don’t think they’ll shoot your backhoe. It’s us I’m worried about!”

  Jim scanned the darkness and saw my point. He ran with us.

  We jumped in my Trooper and I threw gravel getting out of there. The road dipped, jolted, shook us this way and that. I tried to steer around the bigger holes and ruts, but I didn’t take my time—I didn’t have any.

  I tossed my cell phone to Kyle. “Call 911. Tell them about Brandon Nichols in the trunk of that car, tell them about Morgan and Dee.”

  Kyle’s finger hesitated over the 9 button. “They’re going to give this to Brett Henchle.”

  “Tell them it’s a, a cult thing, it’s big. We need the county sheriff, the state police, lots of help. Cantwell’s at the ranch right now with hostages, and he’s a killer. We’ve all seen that!”

 
“Why’s he holed up at the ranch?” Jim wondered. “If I was him I’d run.”

  Kyle pressed in the number and put the phone to his ear. He pulled it away. I could hear the crackle and static from where I sat.

  “No reception here,” he said.

  I hit the gas.

  WELL, thought County Sheriff John Parker, I knew it would come to this sooner or later. We should have had a betting pool on when I’d get the call.

  He was no stranger to the religious movement in Antioch. He and his deputies drove through Antioch regularly. They’d seen the pilgrims, noise, and hubbub. They’d watched it building for months. They didn’t interfere. This was Brett Henchle’s jurisdiction, his turf, his problem.

  But now Parker was driving his own squad car behind Brett Henchle’s, rumbling slowly up the Macon driveway in the dark.

  Henchle said he needed at least two cars to show up at the ranch to make the arrest. He needed a strong presence, he said, so Brandon Nichols would know they meant business. No lights or sirens, just presence.

  Okay, Parker could do that. He’d already sent four deputies into Antioch to help the town’s one remaining cop restore order. If things got stickier, Parker was ready to bring in still more backup, even the state patrol, if he had to. This cult stuff could get complicated very quickly. Weird too. Henchle had said, “Don’t let him touch you, whatever you do.” It would be interesting to see how Henchle planned to arrest this guy without touching him.

  They came over a rise and Parker saw the ranch house. There were some exterior lights on in front and a few lamps in the windows, but other than that the place was dark. To the left of the house, dimly lit by some yard lights, were two huge circus tents joined together, and in front of them a small block building—it could have been rest rooms—under construction. To his left was a ramshackle community of recreational vehicles, campers, and tents, gas lanterns burning, some campfires flickering. By the looks of it, this messiah could be booked on health code violations if the other charges didn’t stick.

  Parker smiled sardonically. Yeah, getting the charges to stick, that was the rub. Domestic violence, assault and battery, inciting a riot, malicious mischief, holding a parade without a permit, and—this was the best part—littering. The other charges were more serious, but the littering charge had the better story behind it. Henchle said Nichols had tossed hundreds of loaves of wormy bread all over the street in Antioch and just left them there. And where did he get the loaves? Great story. Great story.