by Alexie Aaron
“What happened to set everything in motion?” Mia asked as she loaded her backpack with rock salt shells.
“It doesn’t say. The next mention of trouble is the Sentinel Settlement where Homer Van Kamp was the only survivor. This time men, women, and children lost their lives, including Homer’s father. Nothing much after that in the book I read,” Audrey clarified.
“I heard from a local man that they tried to build houses there in the sixties, but sinkholes opened up and swallowed most of them,” Mia told Audrey. “Was there any mention of sinkholes in the geographical survey of 1920?”
“No, the area was thought to be clay and stable, although, they did find limestone deposits in the area.”
“I don’t understand, what does limestone have to do with sinkholes?” Mia asked.
“If I may?” Ted asked permission.
“Please,” Mia replied.
“It’s rare and more common in the warmer climates,” he clarified. “Sometimes a cavity slowly forms in a layer in the bedrock limestone, deep in the earth. Over time water seeps in and weakens the limestone ceiling of the cavity. This causes an opening, a chasm. The layers of sand and clay over the area start to fall into it. When this happens, everything over the hole is swallowed up too. This can continue until the cavity is filled.”
“If that is true, then how can it swallow up houses four acres from where the cars were parked and then open up and swallow the cars too?” she argued.
“Either it is a giant chasm or perhaps more than one,” Ted answered.
“Is there anything else?” Audrey asked.
“No. I think this gives me plenty to work with,” Mia said.
“Are you sure you don’t want me to come out there and help with the search?”
“Sheriff Ryan wants to keep this from becoming a circus,” Mia told her.
“Then why did he request you clowns?” Audrey teased.
“The man will never learn. If you find anything else give a shout. Ted, Murphy and I are going to be in the woods, but Cid’s got the command center and we’re all wired for sound.”
“Good luck and stay safe,” Audrey said and hung up.
Mia looked up at where they had found the first boy hanging. “Would I be stretching your belief system if I speculate that the Summerfield boy was hung in the same tree as the insane trapper or the suicidal developer?”
“Yes,” Ted said.
“Then forget I said it,” Mia said patting the tree. “I could take off my glove and…”
“No!” Ted shouted.
Murphy moved between her and the bark of the tree. Unfortunately he didn’t stop her progress, forgetting to solidify in time.
“Geeze, I was just offering to cut some corners,” she complained, backing up, pulling her hand out of Murphy’s chest.
“Murph and I don’t want you to risk yourself.”
“Is that why you’ve forbidden me from practicing my telekinesis?”
“Forbidden is such a tricky word,” Ted said, loosening his jacket collar. “I merely suggested that until Dr. Walters is able to determine if your brain is healed from our trip to the museum, then you probably should refrain from any extra strain on it. Besides, you haven’t figured out why everything gets hot.”
“Not everything,” Mia defended.
Murphy scratched at the ground at the base of the tree. Mia and Ted watched as he moved aside enough earth to show that a stone had been set into the ground. Mia knelt down, and as she reached for the stone, she heard a crack overhead. Ted pulled her away hard. They tumbled backwards just as a tree limb came crashing down.
Mia was too startled to cuss. She just searched the tree, looking for whatever had twisted off the deadwood and tossed it down at her. This made her even more determined. She jumped up and dragged away the heavy limb.
Murphy hacked at the ground around the stone and soon had freed it.
Mia worked with her gloved hands to displace the rest of the clay. Ted handed her a bottle of water to wash away the remaining earth.
She looked down at the heavy tablet. “Efin hell, it’s in another language.”
Ted looked over her shoulder. “It’s French. It says, roughly, beware of falling branches.”
Mia turned around and whacked Ted on the arm before her funny bone set in, and she started laughing. “No really, what does it say?”
“En atomne, les chênes perdent leurs feuillies. It means…”
“In autumn the oak trees will shed,” John Ryan said from behind them. “The boy wasn’t teasing you, Mia; it basically warns of falling limbs.”
“It must have been quite a hazard for someone to go to the trouble to chisel it into stone,” Ted said.
Mia wrinkled her face, replacing the stone at the base of the tree. “How do I know you two aren’t in cahoots with each other?”
“I cahoot with no one,” John said, not being able to resist.
Ted bumped fists with the sheriff.
“I believe there is a grave you would like me to visit?” Mia said, trying not to let the irritation she was feeling seep into her voice.
“This way. Thank you for coming,” John said. “I can’t help but feel that no matter how fast we work, that the fate of these missing boys has already been sealed.”
“If there is a way to save them, Mia will find it,” Ted said.
Although Mia felt honored by his confidence in her, the situation they were in made her doubt the outcome, even with her participation. “Sheriff, from various accounts we’ve been able to find, there seems to be a theme of stay out of these woods or else. Also a thread of one lone survivor…”
“Mia thinks that we may be dealing with a revenge entity like…”’
“Pumpkinhead?” John filled in. “I’ve been tossing that around in my mind myself; I’m not ashamed to say.” He looked over at Ted and his expression. “Hear me out, son. When I was in Nam, we came upon a village. It was empty with the exception of one lone woman. She explained that she had just buried the last one to slander her name. We looked at the frail woman, and unless she had poisoned the villagers, she would not have been physically able to kill them. She opened her hand. I took it and saw a long healing gash in it. She snatched her hand away and said, ‘It only takes a drop of blood.’ At the time we thought she was messing with us. In later years, I’ve thought about her from time to time and wondered.”
They had reached the gravesite. John pointed to where they found Jason Jones and explained the condition he was in when they found him.
Mia lifted the remaining rocks tenderly and began to reassemble the grave marker. “There’s a piece missing. A rather large piece,” she said, getting up to look around.
“It’s in evidence. It was covered with the boy’s blood and paint. Before you ask, it was the same color we found in the boy’s pockets. And on his boots.”
“Boots, where?”
“I don’t understand,” John said.
“Was the paint all over the boots or just on the bottoms?”
John drew out his cell phone and flipped through a few pictures, arriving at the crime scene photos of Jason Jones. “Just on the bottoms. How did you know?”
“In our profession we’ve been in quite a few old cemeteries. Unfortunately, we’ve seen quite a few of these old graves that have been vandalized by the area’s juvenile delinquents, or their drunk adult counterparts.”
“Reaching…” Ted murmured.
Mia ignored him. “What those stones and this grave have in common is the way the earth is disturbed around the stone’s base. See, it looks like something powerful tried to push it over. Perhaps a kick from a well-aimed foot or two.” Mia picked up a large piece of stone. “Look, there are treads in the orange paint of this one. Either he danced upon the fragments of the stone or he was the one to break the stone with a kick.”
CRACK!
The three turned in the direction Murphy had signaled them from.
“I’ll never get used to that,�
�� John said, rubbing the back of his neck.
Mia walked over to where Murphy stood. She knelt down and examined the disturbed leaves. “Sheriff, I think that you may have a witness to what happened to Jason.”
John joined her and shook his head. “How did my officers miss this?”
“If I may?” Mia asked, pointing at the entrance into the hide.
“Careful, there are some wicked looking thorns in there,” Ted warned. “Ralph will kill you if you cut your face before the wedding.”
“Ralph will just… Nevermind,” Mia said as she crawled into the space and sat down. “I can see the grave from here. The grass is matted down, and there is an exit behind me leading away from the clearing.” She backed out and got up.
“You hurt yourself,” Ted said, dropping to his knees and pulling her cargo leg up, exposing Mia’s unmarred skin.
“No, I didn’t.”
“But that’s blood,” Ted insisted, pointing at the red stain across the pocket on the right leg of her cargo pants.
“May I?” Ryan asked as he took off his glove and touched the red stain on Mia’s pocket. He then took out a flashlight and directed the light into the thorny hide and whistled. “See here?” He pointed to a thorny vine. “Someone has tangled with this monster thorn and cut himself. Mia, you wouldn’t have seen it as you are more petite than the witness.”
“Blood sacrifice,” Mia said backing away. “He summoned the entity. The only question I have is, who was he?”
“I’m going to have to take your trousers into evidence,” John said.
Mia shook her head. “No, you’re not.” She emptied the pocket and ripped it off the leg of the cargos. “Here. I don’t have time to change.”
Ryan deposited the cloth into a plastic bag he pulled from his pocket. “You don’t have to be difficult.”
“I don’t have time to be courteous,” Mia said, crossing her arms. She looked up through the tree canopy. “Those are rain clouds. Forecast is for a soaking rain. A rain like that will make tracks impossible to follow, even with a super tracker like Murphy.”
“She’s got a point. We now have the trail of the witness. Let’s see how far it will take us,” Ted said.
Ryan nodded. “Go ahead, but be careful. There are things in these woods that are more dangerous than falling limbs. I’m going to get the lab boys to run this,” he said, holding up the evidence bag. “Mia, before you fire that thing, make damn sure it’s not aimed at one of the search party. Tom can attest to the fact that rock salt hurts like the devil,” he warned before he left.
Mia looked at Ted and narrowed her eyes.
“I didn’t tell him. Hell, even I can see that you are carrying more than a delicious bum in your cargos.”
Mia opened her mouth and shook her head, wordless.
CRACK!
“Murph has picked up the trail,” Mia said. “Let’s go.”
Chapter Twenty-eight
Smoke wafted over to where Rory was propped up. He opened his eyes and found that he was secured to an old fencepost by rusted strands of barbed wire. Each time he breathed, it felt like the barbs were cutting into him.
“Hardware Man, how nice of you to join us,” Blair Summerfield said.
Rory looked at him with disgust.
“Surprised to see me?”
“No,” he said, understanding the bad position he was in for the first time. Maybe he could bargain his way out of this trouble. “Okay, it has become painfully evident that you have me. Game’s over. Let me go. My mother must be frantic,” Rory pleaded.
“You hear that Ethan? Rory’s worried about his mommy. What about my mother, Rory? How do you think she’s going to react when Keith’s body is unwrapped from that hellish cocoon?”
“What?”
“Come on, you must know what you’ve caused,” Blair said, accepting a hit from the joint Vince offered him.
Rory looked at the four rich kids sitting on the rocks before him. Blair and Ethan were sporting some serious contusions, while the Smithe brothers were, as always, mellow. The only thing amiss was that each was sporting dried orange blobs of paint on their chests.
“I don’t understand. Where’s Keith? Where’s Jason?”
“Dead, I expect,” Blair said. “Casualties of our night of fun. My cowardly brother ran away instead of helping me out. Fortunately for me, Ethan has discovered your protector’s one weakness. He came in at the last minute and saved the day. You would have been so impressed.”
“I don’t understand what you’re talking about.”
Blair looked at the Smithes and back at Rory and said, “You know, I’m beginning to think he doesn’t have a clue what’s going on. Listen, Rory, don’t you have to have a brain upstairs to learn all those football plays, or are they written on your arm like the answers to the SATs?”
Ethan snickered. “Moron.”
“Football’s different; it makes sense,” Rory defended.
“Be that as it may,” Blair sighed. “I think it’s time to let you in on what’s really going on here.”
“You see, we’ve been trying to raise Pumpkinhead for months now. Pissing on Homer’s grave did nothing. Treading on his sacred ground, nada. We even cut down some of his beautiful trees. Still the monster refused to play with us. That was until you.”
Rory had seen the movie Pumpkinhead on cable, but what it had to do with him and this place confused him. He shook his head. “Let me go, I don’t understand,” he pleaded.
“Actually, it was my brother Keith who came up with the idea. He thought by killing you, your mother would raise Pumpkinhead. I had to eighty-six the idea, too many variables. Instead, I decided we would humiliate you until you wanted us dead. This, I thought would bring out the monster. A monster worthy of being hunted by us.”
“Are you a psychopath or something? If this thing is real, not only are you going to die, but your families too…”
“It’s real. I’ve seen it. And all that revenge stuff is movie fodder. Basically, we have an energy-driven monster, we can have some fun playing with.”
“I heard sirens. The police have to be here looking for me,” Rory said.
“Oh, they’re searching the woods. They got close to us a few times but managed, in their bumbling way, to head in the wrong direction, time and time again,” Blair said bored. “Soon darkness will fall, they will leave for the night, and we can have fun with your new bestie friend.”
“Is that why I’m tied up?”
“A glimmer of intelligence. Hold on to my hat, Ethan, the boy is thinking.”
Ethan walked up to Rory and prodded him with the business end of the gun and said, “You’re the bait.”
~
Mia did her best to keep up with Murphy. Ted took up the rear position, stopping periodically to check behind him. With his long legs, it didn’t take him long to be once again beside Mia.
“What’s up, Kemosabe?”
“I can’t shake the feeling that we are being followed,” Ted said.
“Oh, we have been for some time now, but I expect it’s Tom or one of the Monroe boys,” Mia said. “Besides, I don’t think we have riled the paranormal entities that exist in these woods.”
“Entities plural?” Ted asked.
“Maybe even several,” Mia said, watching the drifting spirits as they rose and fell like whack-a-moles. They have no energy; something else has taken it all away, sucked them dry.”
“Should we be worried about Murphy?” Ted asked, happy he remembered to bring along four energon cubes in his pack.
“Don’t know really. I’m not sure I understand what game is going on here.”
“Care to elaborate?”
“Nothing is going according to script.”
“Maybe if you let go of the idea of Pumpkinhead…”
“Pumpkin space head,” she corrected.
“For the sake of argument, let’s call him Jack,” Ted said.
“As in jack-o’-lantern, clever,” Mia
approved.
“Let’s say this isn’t Jack as we know him. Let’s say this is something new. How would you go about analyzing the situation from scratch?”
“Ah, you don’t want me to taint the waters with my preconceived nonsense.”
“Notions, preconceived notions,” he corrected.
Mia stopped and closed her eyes. “I feel an energy that seems to be, at the moment, rooted in the ground. It is primarily a nature entity. It wrapped the Summerfield teen up like a spider does but used old, dry wild rose vines instead of whatever spiders use. It also pulled Jason Jones half under the ground from… well… under the ground. They found no other earth disturbed. It was like someone placed the kid in the ground like you would a fence post.”
“What motivates it?”
“Seems like it was a bit upset when Jason dismantled Homer’s gravestone. That was a tad disrespectful. Don’t know what happened to the Summerfield kid. Why hang him from the hanging tree?”
“You’re doing it again,” Ted warned.
“I don’t see why I can’t use prior knowledge…” Mia opened her eyes wide and glared at him.
“It could be tainted. You know how Burt always tells us to not go into a haunt without an open mind. You need to open your mind here. Forget the fiction, and concentrate on the real evidence.”
Mia had to admit Ted was onto something. “Respect, it demands respect. It’s also female; it sees whoever is being tormented as its child. It’s protecting its child. Throughout history it has been protecting its child. Be it the French trapper, Homer, the builder, or the hunter. In each of those groups, there was a person that the assembly tormented. This humiliation and grief imprinted each of them as victims who needed saving. They didn’t summon the entity like the woman in Vietnam. They were chosen. It’s just a coincidence that blood was found each time.”
“Jackolina not Jack. How do we stop her?”