by Anne Frasier
She let out a little sound of protest. “That doesn’t mean I like it or embrace it.”
“I never said that. And nobody likes it. This was something that had to be done.”
She’d always resented the way he’d come in and just taken over, and it had surprised her that he’d beaten out two locals for the position of mayor. It seemed people were ready for guidance and big ideas. She could understand that, since nothing up until this point had really worked for them. Tuonela had been in a state of decay and decline ever since she could remember.
Alastair Stroud appeared. “We’d like for you to autopsy a random sampling of animals.”
That veiled demand didn’t improve her mood. “Animal autopsies aren’t in my job description.”
“Come on, Rachel. Just do a cursory exam. Maybe check stomach contents. Look for signs of human remains.”
“If that’s what it will take to prove that this slaughter was completely uncalled-for and that these animals are innocent, I’ll do it. Pick out the three most likely suspects and bring them to the autopsy suite.” She turned and strode away, quickening her pace and making it inside the morgue just in time to throw up again.
Rachel followed standard autopsy procedure, beginning by dictating the basics into a small recorder. That led to the external exam of the first animal’s fur and paws. She pried open the mouth and brought the swing arm close, all the while aware of Alastair Stroud standing a few feet away.
“You could have stood up to the mayor.”
“I tried.”
“I can see that.” She picked up a pair of tweezers from the instrument tray.
“I can only do so much.”
“I’m beginning to think that’s a problem with everybody in this town, me included. An inability to take action.” With a gloved hand, she held the animal’s jaw open and extracted long pale threads from between the back teeth.
Jesus. Now, that was totally unexpected.
She held the strands under the light.
Alastair stepped forward. “Is that what I think it is?”
“Forget everything I just said,” she mumbled with distraction. “Hair. Human hair.”
Alastair let out a low whistle.
Rachel tucked the strands into an evidence bag and plopped down on a nearby stool, stunned. It could take a while to shift gears. “I’ll see if we can get the crime lab to put a rush on this.”
“Now we know the perpetrator.”
She looked up at him. “Do we?”
This was too easy. Too obvious, the hair strands appearing to have been freshly introduced rather than packed and matted with oral debris. She started to voice her suspicions, but caught herself at the last second.
Alastair was standing there looking like an anxious trick-or-treater. Rachel thought about how odd he’d been acting lately.
What the hell was he up to?
Chapter Thirty-seven
It didn’t seem like I slept at all, but I must have, because the creak of floorboards above my head jerked me awake. Weak light filtered through the small ground-level, block-glass window, indicating that morning had arrived.
Graham really should have warned me about the mice.
I’d heard them scratching, the sound coming from the vicinity of the freezer. Sometimes I swore it seemed like they were inside the freezer.
At one point I’d gotten up and opened the freezer lid, then quickly hid when I heard footsteps on the floor above my head.
I rubbed my face, braided my hair, and wished I had a drink of water. I looked up at the wooden rafters and wondered what I was doing. How did I constantly get myself into these situations? Why hadn’t I just gone back to Minneapolis with Ian and Stewart?
Was I fooling myself? Convincing myself I could make a documentary that would have some impact and meaning either socially or artistically? I mean, I’d worked with a lot of people who thought they had talent when they really didn’t. Was I just another one of those delusional fools? How did a person know? That was the problem with delusion.
I heard a door slam, then heavy footsteps. A minute later the basement door opened. I jumped to my feet and grabbed the sleeping bag.
“Just me,” Graham whispered. He jogged down the steps. “He’s gone. He left really early. I gotta get going. I have a big test today. It’s worth half my grade, and I’m already late.” He glanced at the freezer. “Hey, why’s this open?” He closed the lid.
“There were mice trapped inside.”
“Mice?”
“Yeah. Inside the freezer.”
“So you let them out?”
“Yeah.”
He laughed and we left.
I dropped Graham off at school. He got out of the car, pausing and leaning in the open door. “Pick me up right here at three thirty.”
I was fiddling with the radio. “Yep.”
I headed downtown to see if anything was going on. A press conference was in progress on the courthouse lawn. I dug out my camera and kept a low profile while inching my way through the crowd of bystanders, reporters, and newspeople.
Mayor McBride was going through his spiel, an obviously prepared speech, talking about how they’d get to the bottom of the deaths. He went off on a coyote tangent again. Apparently they’d had some huge coyote roundup that had ended in a massive kill.
Buncha lunatics.
I got it on tape. I might use it; might not.
I shut off the camera and looked up from the viewfinder. A guy in a dark suit was watching me. Crap. I got the feeling he was with the mayor. One of his thugs. Did people really have thugs, or was that just on TV?
I capped the camera lens.
The guy in the suit began wending his way toward me, cutting through the clumps of people. I jumped, turned, and began walking away quickly. I broke out of the crowd and chanced a look over my shoulder.
He was still coming, faster now.
I ran.
I didn’t really know why. I hadn’t done anything wrong, but something about a big guy in a suit just made me haul ass.
Graham’s car was nearby, but I didn’t want the guy to see me getting in it. I cut down an alley, through a yard, down another alley. Glanced over my shoulder. Not there. Circled back to the car, jumped inside, started the engine, pulled away.
Checked the rearview mirror.
There he was. Standing in the middle of the street.
I headed out of town, to the place I’d wanted to visit again since day one. The scene of the original crime. The place where the little girl had appeared, then disappeared.
A few heavy frosts and the trees had lost most of their leaves. Now, rather than a repeated pattern of yellow, the repeat was dark, symmetrical trunks under a gray sky.
I began filming as soon as I stepped from the car. Keeping the camera low, I walked slowly toward the grove of trees. The leaves were thick and buoyant under my feet. They absorbed sound and created heaviness around my ankles that weighed me down. My body seemed closer to the ground, and my legs weren’t as light as they’d been on the road.
I could see a few birds clinging to tree branches, but they were silent, watchful. The area felt lifeless and hollow.
Before entering the trees I paused and kept the camera focused on the spot where I thought the little girl had appeared. I panned to the right and left, bringing the camera back to the beginning.
Nothing unusual in the viewfinder.
But then, I hadn’t seen anything in the view-finder last time.
I glanced up and checked the path. The sky was a slate gray, distant and cold and talking of snow. My fingers were turning red, and I felt a chill wrap around my ankles and creep up my pant legs. Why hadn’t I worn socks? Why hadn’t I borrowed some heavier clothes from Graham?
Foolish and unprepared. Story of my life.
I moved forward and tried to ignore my physical discomfort.
Into the woods.
Even though most of the leaves had fallen, a few clung stubbornly t
o branches, twirling as if trying to break away and drop to the ground. It was even quieter here.
The trees had been planted by a human hand, unnaturally close together. The artist in me appreciated the way the trunks lined up from every angle, all paths leading into black infinity.
Should I have come here by myself?
I’d thought it would be okay, since it was daylight. Both of the murders had happened at night. But now, with the sky turning so dark, and with the woods so isolated . . .
It was like night.
I paused and looked behind me.
I’d come farther than I’d thought. I could see Graham’s car, but it was small and undefined. When I swung back around, the other side of the woods didn’t seem any nearer. The entire place created an optical illusion.
Should I stop? Go back?
I’d gotten footage. Maybe not everything I’d wanted, but probably enough. I always shot too much anyway.
But I wanted to get to the other side.
I walked faster; to hell with the jerkiness of the camera. It might add a little something.
Five more minutes and the view ahead hadn’t changed.
I paused to check behind me.
I couldn’t see the car anymore. I lifted the camera to shoulder level and did a slow 360-degree pan, the black trunks nearest me blurry while the distance was in sharp focus.
This was going to be some of the coolest stuff I’d ever shot.
For a moment I forgot about my plan to make a documentary on Tuonela. I was just excited about what I was capturing.
I heard a rustle. I lowered the camera and visually scanned my surroundings. Dark trees. Standing. Watching. A flutter of a leaf, then hollow air.
A movement. Something black. A shift of bark. Was that a head? Someone looking from around a tree? And another? Was that another someone?
Like a kaleidoscope, black objects seemed to ooze from the tree trunks, moving in unison. I gasped and took a step back.
The sky was darker now, and I blinked, trying to make out what I was seeing.
Shapes moved toward me.
I tried to scream, but the air swallowed the sound as soon as it left my mouth. I ran. The wrong way. Away from the car, but it was my only choice because it was also away from the dark shapes coming after me.
Chapter Thirty-eight
As soon as the bell rang, Graham was out of the school building, looking up and down the street. No sign of Kristin or his dad’s black car. Great. Where was she?
He waited while the buses pulled away. Pretty soon everybody was gone, and still no sign of his ride.
He walked home.
It wasn’t far.
Was he the worst judge of character in the world? Kristin was a flake, but had he misread her? He’d known she was using him, but he’d felt that at her core she was all right. He certainly didn’t think she’d do something like steal his dad’s car. Was that possible? No, she wouldn’t do that.
Would she?
She wasn’t at his grandfather’s house. He’d half thought maybe she’d be there. Nobody was home. After an hour he called Alastair and told him at least part of the story.
Never tell them the whole story.
“Kristin Blackmoore was supposed to leave town yesterday,” Alastair said. “What was she doing with your car? Your dad’s car?”
“I let her borrow it. She wanted to get some video before she left. It didn’t seem like a big deal.”
“I’ll see what I can find out.” Alastair disconnected.
An hour later he called back and Graham answered the phone before the second ring.
“We found the car,” Alastair said. “At Aspen Grove.”
Graham swallowed. “Kristin?”
“Her belongings were inside, but no sign of her. I have some officers searching the area right now.”
“She’s there. Somewhere. She has to be somewhere. Or maybe Ian and Stewart came back and she left with them.” But would she have abandoned the car? With her stuff in it?
“That went through my mind,” Alastair said. “But we found something that led us to believe otherwise. Something that led us to believe she might be in trouble.”
Surely Alastair wasn’t talking about skin. Graham hoped to God he wasn’t talking about skin.
“We found her camera and bag in the middle of Aspen Grove.”
Kristin might leave a lot of things behind, but she would never leave her camera. “What about videotape? Maybe that will tell you something.”
“We’re looking into that right now.”
Chapter Thirty-nine
The metal shovel hit stone; sparks flew, and Evan flinched in the darkness. In the glow of the lantern, he leaned close and dragged the shovel across the rounded rock of the foundation.
The foundation of the Manchester house, where the voices had told him to dig.
He could feel himself fading again. As his body weakened, so did his resolve. Richard Manchester was taking over.
His thoughts were jumbled and confused. Was this new Tuonela? Or old? Old, right? Or was it Tuonela before it became Old Tuonela?
If he walked upstairs, would he find a magnificent house that hadn’t been a victim of time and neglect?
I’m losing my mind.
No, you’re coming home.
Sometimes, when he finally fell into an exhausted slumber, a hushed roar of a hundred distant voices whispered to him. And he would find himself reaching for the oil lamp near his bed where no oil lamp existed. He would look at the floor and instead of seeing black stains left from a leaking roof, he would see a thick Oriental carpet in hues of rich burgundy and blue.
The walls were painted in beautiful shades of green, the woodwork brought over from England by ship, then train, then wagon. Stained glass imported from the finest Boston glassmakers.
I could have been so happy here.
I should have been so happy here.
If only he could go back. Do it all over again.
He’d been brought down by love. Weakened and tricked by love.
Oh, the shame.
He repositioned his grip on the shovel. His palms were raw, the blisters peeled and bleeding. But it wasn’t his body. This body was expendable.
Evan paused and frowned and listened.
Had someone said something?
Were they whispering again?
You had to listen hard. You had to tune yourself in to them, open up to them; otherwise you would mistake the voices for the wind.
Where does the wind begin?
In Old Tuonela.
He’d brought support beams from the condemned area of the mansion to use as braces. But one man could do only so much, and if the earth decided to shift and breathe the braces wouldn’t hold.
They’d filled it in when they’d left. His followers.
His mutinous followers. If he’d lived, it wouldn’t have happened.
People were so fickle.
Love of his life.
Hate of his life.
Bitch. He’d been brought down by a woman.
The shovel hit something new, making a hollow sound, sending a shuddering impact up his arm.
A door.
He dug faster, but soon came to realize that the entrance had sunk and shifted too much ever to open.
Holding the shovel above his shoulder like a javelin, he beat at the rotten wood. Little by little it gave way until he was able to put the shovel aside and rip a section free with his hands.
He grabbed the lantern, ducked, and squeezed his body through the narrow opening.
Once inside the inner chamber, he lifted the muted light.
Another section of cellar with a foundation made of stones collected from the nearby hills, valleys, and riverbeds.
This part of the cellar was unchanged and untouched. As if she’d wanted it that way. As if she’d somehow been able to keep the tons of dirt from breaking down the door and swallowing her.
Victoria.
Th
ere she was. Where he’d left her over a hundred years ago, never to be found by anyone, not even Florence.
That knowledge gave him a small flicker of sinister comfort. To know that when he and Florence had been upstairs fucking, Victoria had been down here, chained to the wall.
He laughed, and the sound echoed in the small chamber.
He would make sure she knew this time.
He frowned. She? But she was dead.
Florence was dead? Wasn’t she?
No, he’d seen her. Seen her sleeping, her belly swollen with pregnancy.
Bring her here. Show her Victoria; then kill her and cut the baby from her womb.
He stared at the skeleton shackled to the wall. At the strands of hair and clothes and mummified skin. Next to it was a smaller corpse, Victoria’s child.
A girl?
He couldn’t remember.
He lifted the lantern higher and stepped closer.
Cobwebs and a layer of dust covered both mummies. The child wore a dress. A cotton sleeping gown with embroidery and lace trim. He closed his eyes; he could see her. A blush to her cheeks, dimpled fingers, long blond hair, and blue eyes.
Sweet, sweet girl.
Smelling of life.
Now a shriveled corpse.
Leaning against the wall was the sword he’d eventually planned to use to end their lives. He’d meant for them to die; but this hadn’t been his plan. Not this abandonment. But they’d gotten what they deserved. He’d been jealous of Victoria and the bond she and Florence had shared. His plan had been to remove her from the equation. Get her out of the way; then Florence would turn to him for comfort.
The alarm was raised. Victoria and the child went missing. After two weeks they were presumed dead. But they’d been here. In the catacombs beneath the mansion. Richard had been able to smell them even when he was in the solarium.
Especially at night. Always at night, the humid air a carrier of sound and scent.
Babies always smelled so sweet.
And yes, he took a perverse pleasure in setting the trap for Florence, knowing all the while that the two she longed for were such a short distance away.