“That’s right,” Winn said. “St. Thomas showed up ten years ago when the waters receded. That’s when I first became interested in it. I explored it, in the River. There were no Callers there back then.”
“Alright,” Steven said. “Let’s get out of here.”
“Finally,” Winn said under his breath.
◊
They arrived at Pete’s just as it was opening. They took a table in the back. Their waitress poured coffee for everyone from a fresh pot. “I’ll come get your orders in a second,” she said, and left.
“I’m starving,” Jason said. “I feel like I haven’t eaten in days.”
“You haven’t!” Deem said.
“Jason,” Steven said, “the four of us are going to continue working on this. I’m not going to lie to you; we’re trying to destroy St. Thomas and the Callers. That includes Michael. I’m not hiding anything from you anymore. You’ve got to make a decision – if you’d rather not be part of this, I understand. I’ll drive you to Vegas right after breakfast and I’ll put you on a plane back to Seattle. We can start your training as soon as I get back. Or, you can stay and help us. If you stay, I’ve got to know you’re one hundred percent with us. It’s your decision.”
Jason looked at his coffee mug. “As I was covering Michael’s grave, I knew it was a mistake,” Jason said. “With each shovelful I felt his hold over me lessening. I was still angry at you. Angry for ignoring me, angry for chasing me down here, angry for not respecting my choices. And I was angry that you killed him. But I did see those bodies in the cave, and I knew. I knew it was wrong.”
He sighed. “That said, I don’t know if I’m a hundred percent. They made St. Thomas feel like a home to me. I worry that if I joined you right now, you might not be able to count on me. I don’t know what I’m doing with the gift. Maybe they could still control me somehow.
“I understand what you’re all trying to do. I think the best way I can support you is to go back to Seattle, so you don’t have to worry I might fuck it up.”
“You wouldn’t fuck it up,” Steven said.
“You don’t know that,” Jason said. “You said they were manipulative. I can tell you, sitting here at this table with you, that I’m on your side. But if we got back in there, I don’t know. Are they capable of turning me against you? Maybe. Probably. I don’t know. Why take the chance?”
“Putting you in that situation is risky for you and for us,” Roy said. “Take him to Vegas, Steven.”
“Agreed,” Steven said, “as long as it’s your decision, Jason?”
“Yes,” he said. “If there’s some reason you absolutely need me here, I’ll stay. Otherwise, it’s best I not be here.”
“We’ll leave after breakfast,” Steven said. “Vegas is what, an hour away? I’ll be back by noon.”
“We’ll miss you,” Deem said.
“Yeah,” Winn added. “We were just getting to like you.”
Jason smiled, and the conversation turned to the past, about college, growing up around Steven, and Steven growing up around Roy. Winn and Deem listened as Roy and Steven shared more with Jason about the gift and how Steven had turned from a rational skeptic into a believer.
“Aside from you taking a while to join us in St. Thomas,” Deem said to Steven, chewing on bacon, “I wouldn’t have known you’re new to this. You seem much more seasoned. Perhaps that’s Roy’s doing.”
“Probably,” Steven said. “He has a great deal of influence over me.”
“Too damn much,” Roy said. “It was my idea to hold off on Michael, when we should have finished him off. Steven wanted to, but I told him no.”
“Excuse me,” Jason said, rising from the table. “Gotta hit the john.”
After he’d left the table, Winn spoke to the others. “I think him going back to Seattle is a good thing. I don’t think he’s all with us just yet. Get him out of this area and he’ll come back to his senses. I saw the same thing with the other people we extracted. Even though they agreed to go, you could see it in their eyes, there was a part of them that regretted leaving. I heard that once they got away from here, they were better.”
“That’s a relief,” Steven said. “I’d hate to think he’d be haunted by this place.”
“Give him some time,” Deem said.
“But offer to train him the moment we’re back,” Roy said. “He’s expecting that.”
“I will,” Steven said. “I plan to. Let’s drop the talk of St. Thomas and Michael when he gets back. Let’s let him leave in peace. What will you do while I’m in Vegas with Jason?”
“I’m gonna contact my friend in Ely,” Winn said. “See if he can add anything to what we know about Callers.”
“Deem, would you be up for a short road trip?” Roy asked.
“Sure,” she said, still chewing on bacon. “Where we going?”
“We need to go to LaVerkin,” Roy said. “I don’t know where that is, but there’s a man there named Levi I want to talk to.”
“I know the place,” Deem asked. “What’s his last name?”
“Don’t know,” Roy said. “Do you think there’s more than one Levi in LaVerkin?”
“For sure,” Deem said. “You need a last name.”
“Steven?” Roy asked. “Can you use your doohickey and see if that guy up in Orderville will give us a last name for Levi?”
Steven removed his phone and composed an email to Bert. Jason returned from the bathroom, and everyone began finishing up their meals.
“Everyone about done?” Steven asked. “Time to hit the road. Deem, I’ll call you if I hear back…hold on.” Steven removed his phone. Bert had replied with Levi’s last name and even his address. Steven handed his phone to Deem.
“Oh, Gubler,” she said. “I should have guessed. The town is full of them. I know this address. We’re good, Roy.”
“Alright,” Steven said, taking the phone back and standing up. “Let’s head out. Deem, I’ll call you as soon as I’m back. If our electronics fail us, let’s say we’ll meet each other here, at this restaurant. I should be back by noon, 1 at the latest.”
They all rose and left the restaurant. Jason shook hands with Deem and Winn, and gave Roy a hug. Then he got in Steven’s car and they took off.
Roy, Deem, and Winn walked to Winn’s Jeep, and Winn drove them to the motel, where Deem’s truck was waiting. Roy and Deem said their goodbyes to Winn, and Deem pointed her truck toward the interstate. Just over an hour later they were pulling through the small town of Hurricane, on the way to the even smaller LaVerkin.
Roy noticed the signs for Zion National Park. “Don’t like Utah,” Roy said, “but I always wanted to see that place.”
“It’s a trip for gifteds,” Deem said. “Lots of ancient spooky shit in there, most of it Native American. The tourists have no clue. Why don’t you like Utah?”
“Too nice,” Roy said. “Everyone’s so goddamn friendly.”
“And that’s a bad thing?” Deem asked.
“You sound like Steven,” Roy said. “And what’s wrong with coffee?”
“Nothing,” Deem said.
“But you don’t drink it,” Roy said.
“No,” Deem said. “I think it smells great, but I’ve just not developed a taste for it.”
“Could be you haven’t had any decent coffee to try with,” Roy said. “Come up to Seattle and we’ll set you straight.”
The conversation paused for a while. Deem wondered if Roy was worried about Jason. “You know, Jason’s going to be alright,” Deem said.
“Oh, I’m not worried about him,” Roy said. “Steven is, but I’ve always had more confidence in the kid than he has.”
“I don’t know if I should tell you this,” Deem said, “but I guess I will. You’ll want to keep any eye on Jason once you get home.”
“He’s been through a lot,” Roy said, “but he’s tough, it’s nothing he can’t handle.”
“No, that’s not what I mean,” Deem said. “T
hey do things to them at St. Thomas. They use thoughts and certain phrases to control them, it’s part of the training. It’s embedded in their psyche, in their gifted side. I don’t know how far Jason had gone in his training, but he was there for at least three days, right?”
“Yes,” Roy said, “I’m not sure when the first day would have been exactly, but at least three.”
“That might have been long enough for some of the embedding to take,” Deem said.
“But he decided to leave them,” Roy said. “He’ll disconnect from them entirely.”
“These are embedded thoughts and phrases he’s not even aware of,” Deem said.
“Like a Manchurian Candidate?” Roy asked.
“A what?” Deem said.
“Never mind, you’re too young.”
“What’s a Manchurian Candidate? Tell me,” Deem said.
“It’s a movie about a guy who’s running for president,” Roy said. “He’s been hypnotized by some foreign agents before he ran. Certain words trigger him to do things. They essentially have control of the president, if he wins the election.”
“Not quite like that,” said Deem. “I doubt they embedded an agenda in Jason. Just thoughts that they could trigger that would make him compliant.”
“Handy,” Roy said. “I wish I could do that with a few people I know.”
“If you see Jason turn funny, one of those triggers might have been tripped. I don’t know what the thoughts or phrases are. Winn might.”
“Will it wear off?” Roy asked, “Or is Jason stuck with these for the rest of his life?”
“Don’t know that either,” Deem said, slowing her truck in front of a small house off the main road in LaVerkin. “Another question for Winn.”
Chapter Eleven
Steven was waiting at Pete’s, sipping on an iced tea. He’d dropped Jason off at the airport in Vegas without incident, promising he’d tutor him as soon as he returned. Jason wished him the best and they parted ways at the security checkpoint.
Deem sounded excited when they talked on the phone. He was anxious to find out what they uncovered in LaVerkin.
While he was relieved that Jason was free of St. Thomas and on his way back to Seattle, he was still concerned about Michael. He didn’t know how long before Michael would turn into a Caller, but Michael was still a ghost somewhere, with revenge upon his mind. Steven felt Michael would take that revenge out by targeting Jason, even if he was up in Seattle. He felt they needed to hurry, to figure out how to shut down the Callers and St. Thomas before Michael could become more powerful. Even as a mere ghost he’d be formidable.
Steven thought of Winn’s EM gun. I want to use it on Michael, Steven thought. Just to do it.
Deem and Roy walked into the restaurant, and Steven waved at them. Deem was grinning.
“How’d it go?” Steven asked.
“Great,” Deem said.
“We found the guy,” Roy said. “His stories weren’t as good as the guy in Orderville, but we struck the jackpot with his grandmother’s journal.”
“He wouldn’t let me take it,” Deem said, “but he did let me take pictures of it. I transferred them to my iPad so they were easier to see. Look!”
She handed the iPad to Steven, and he began to read. The handwriting was highly stylized and a little hard to make out. “This is slow going,” Steven said. “Do you already know what it says? If so, just tell me.”
“The Mormons didn’t leave St. Thomas in 1871 because of taxes,” Deem said.
“The guy in Orderville said they moved because Brigham Young told them to,” Steven said.
“And Young told them to move because the mayor of St. Thomas told him they needed to,” Roy said.
“Because of a man named Ira Bohnert,” Deem said.
“OK,” Steven said, confused. “Backtrack. A man named Ira Bohnert is the reason the town completely picked up and left? And the mayor sanctioned it?”
“Here’s the story,” Deem said, taking the iPad back. “It’s here in the journal. The town of St. Thomas formed in 1865, right? It was completely Mormon, for the most part. Occasionally people on their way to California would stop. One of them was Ira Bohnert.
“He got into some kind of trouble in town, and died. The Mormons might have killed him. They buried him quietly and everyone kept it hush-hush.
“Ira’s mother, Hannah, was a famous medium. She lived in St. Louis. When she got word that her son was missing, she traveled out west and tracked him down, right to St. Thomas. There were stories floating around that the Mormons had killed him and buried him secretly. She confronted the town elders, but they wouldn’t admit to anything. She cursed the place.”
“Now we’re getting somewhere,” Steven said, smiling and looking up at Roy. Roy was smiling back.
“Here’s what she said,” Deem said, looking down at her iPad and reading from it. “She cursed ‘the ground that surrounded his bones, that it would forever yield the opposite of its purpose’.”
“The Mormons never had an easy day after that,” Roy said. “When you bury someone, the purpose is to put them at rest. The curse forced anyone they buried to become ghosts immediately, without choice. The town slowly became more and more haunted. They gave up in 1871. It was easier to just move away.”
“Other people moved in behind them,” Deem said. “Had the same trouble. When the residents of the town learned that the entire area would be flooded because of Hoover Dam, they fled to other places.”
“They relocated the St. Thomas cemetery,” Roy said, “to Overton.”
“But they didn’t move Ira Bohnert,” Steven said, “because no one knew where he was buried.”
“Bingo!” Roy said.
“The Mormons wouldn’t have buried him in the town cemetery if they were trying to hide the death,” Deem said. “His bones are still there, in town, somewhere.”
“That curse is the reason the town still exists in the River,” Roy said. “The water destroyed the buildings, but the town and the ghosts were still there, submerged. It never went away. It just became visible again once the waters receded.”
“And it’s why there were so many ghosts there,” Deem said. “The curse keeps St. Thomas alive, and it keeps them walking in it. The Callers came upon the town after it dried out. They found a place they could use for their purposes, already stocked with ghosts they could manipulate.”
“Is the curse why they can transform?” Steven asked.
“No,” Deem said. “Most of the ghosts around here can do that. That’s from being downwind.”
“This is the solution to our problem,” Roy said. “We need to find those bones.”
“Do either of you know how to lift a curse?” Steven asked.
“I don’t think we can,” Deem said. “But I’m not sure we want to.”
“We lift the curse, the town goes away,” Steven asked. “Why wouldn’t we want to do that?”
“Because I know the perfect place to reinter Ira once we find him,” Deem said.
Steven thought, and then it clicked. He smiled and looked at Deem. “Devil’s Throat?”
“The curse said ‘the opposite’,” Deem replied. “St. Thomas would no longer be infected by the curse, because the bones wouldn’t be touching the ground there anymore. The town would go away. The infection would shift to Devil’s Throat.”
“And the curse,” Steven said, “would apply to the ground the bones were touching, out there. Would that reverse the power of the Callers?”
“It would be the opposite,” Deem said.
“And the bodies out there?” Steven asked. “What would it do to them?”
“Not sure,” Deem said. “They were killed there to feed the creature in the cave that gave the Callers the power they wanted. Burying Ira there might wipe out all that, too.”
“Or it might turn all of those victims into ghosts,” Roy said. “Maybe even animate them. That cave would become the scariest place for miles.”
“I
f we do this,” Steven said, “and bury Ira at Devil’s Throat, we have to remove that false rock wall that hides the cavern. And then we have to report what we found inside, so the families of those poor people can have some rest.”
“That’ll have to be an anonymous call,” Deem said. “I don’t want to get wrapped up with the cops.”
“Us either,” Roy said, remembering June’s house in Seattle.
“Alright,” Deem said. “I like this plan. I think it might work.”
“Next steps?” Steven asked.
“We get ahold of Winn,” Deem said, “and fill him in. We’re going to need a way to find a buried body. I hope he has some ideas.”
“Oh, I have the perfect person for that,” Steven said.
◊
The next morning, Winn, Deem, Steven, Roy and Eliza sat around a table at Pete’s, drinking coffee. Eliza had flown in on a redeye, and Steven picked her up in Vegas. They spent the night at Deem’s house in Mesquite.
“So you know Jenny, out of Kingman?” Deem asked Eliza.
“Yes, she’s the one who recommended you,” Eliza said. “Jenny and I go way back to high school. We were in a girls’ band together. It was called ‘Purple Haze’ because we were so in love with Prince at the time. One day someone asked us why we were named after a Jimi Hendrix song and we were like, ‘what?’ We had no clue!”
“I’ll have to remember that,” Deem said. “Jenny will regret hooking us up.”
“Steven told me everything that has happened,” Eliza said, “as we drove back from Vegas. So I think I’m up to speed.”
“You know how to detect bodies underground?” Winn asked, smiling at Eliza. Deem noticed that the edge of his lips curled up a little – a trick she’d seen him use on women. She rolled her eyes.
“Yes,” Eliza said, smiling back at Winn but quickly shifting her gaze back to the others. “It’s a specialty of mine. I’ve worked a lot with artifacts in the past. I can detect about ten feet down, a radius of maybe fifty feet.”
“Then it might take a little time,” Winn said. “We’ll have to move you around and have you keep checking until you find it. We’ll keep an eye out while you do it.”
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