“They’ve been very busy,” Tom said, shaking his head.
“Look what they’ve done,” Katie muttered. “The whole town...”
“We’ll have to spread the word then,” Tom said. “Red thread, rowan and horseshoe nails must be put everywhere.”
“These people are not going to believe us,” she said, aiming the truck towards the alley entrance that would take her to the parking area behind the library.
“Believe us or not, the town must be protected,” he said. “It’s not even midsummer’s eve yet. That’s when it will be the worse.”
Worse? she lamented inwardly. What could be worse than what she was seeing right now? She pulled the truck into a space, noticing that toilet paper had been used to decorate some of the gargoyles. Tom was first out of the truck. He glanced back at Katie.
“I know a back way into the cellar,” he said. “I’ll meet you there.”
Katie nodded. They had already discussed the fact that Durgan would have fits if he saw Tom entering the front door and heading for staff sanctioned areas.
“You want to take the gun?” she said, angling her head towards the shotgun behind the seat.
Tom shook his head. “I’m a man who abhors violence. I don’t trust guns.”
“Okay. I’ll see if I can slip it in later.”
She locked his door behind him, then snatched up her purse and hauled herself out of the driver’s seat. Durgan was not going to like seeing her in jeans, but under the circumstances, she felt that a skirt would hamper her. She paced herself towards the front, noting how quickly Tom disappeared.
The library had suffered inside as well. The faery must have found maintenance’s stash of toilet paper, for everything had been carefully decorated with garlands of tissue. She spied Henry up on a ladder removing wads from the ceiling light fixtures. He cast a sour glance in Katie’s direction as she made her way towards the hall that would lead to the cellar entrance. She was also quick to note that Charlotte was on the main desk instead of Lonnie...
“Miss MacLeod!”
Katie froze to hear Durgan’s angry bark. He was just coming out of the Reference section, holding a handful of toilet paper.
“Mr. Durgan?” she said. “I know I’m not dressed right, but this is my day off, and I planned to go rummaging in the...”
He waved a hand to cut her off. “That is not what interests me just now, Miss MacLeod. I tried to call you this morning, but no one answered.”
“I was at the hospital checking in on Sally,” she said, not willing to reveal just yet that she had seen the MacGreeley sisters as well.
“Indeed, then do you happen to know the whereabouts of your cousin, Miss Yellowcreek?” he said.
Katie shook her head. “No. You mean, she didn’t come to work?”
“No, she has not reported in, and when I have called her home, her line is always busy,” he said. “Considering County policy concerning absenteeism, I was hoping you could shed light on the matter.”
Again, Katie shook her head. Lonnie was never absent without good cause, and she was so rarely ill, it was hard to imagine that she had simply decided to take a day off without calling someone.
“Well, if you should see her, please let her know that I am not pleased with this behavior on her part, and I will not be forgiving! Bad enough, all this mess without staff deserting their duties!” He stalked away, sputtering his tirade more to himself than for Katie’s benefit. Like a man about to have a nervous breakdown.
Quickly, she hurried for the cellar. It looked like they would have to delay the excursion to see if they could pass the barriers.
Tom was not where to be found when she first entered the cellar. “Tom?” she called.
“Over here,” he said quietly, slipping out of the shadows that darkened the space under the stairs.
“Lonnie didn’t show up,” Katie said. “I’ve got to go over to her place and see what’s wrong.”
“But we’ve only two more days...”
“I know, but Lonnie is my cousin, and she’s never absent without telling someone, and after the Erl-King’s threat to me last night...”
Tom nodded. “Very well.”
She started back for the stairs.
“No, this way,” he said, going under the stairs again, and to Katie’s surprise, he pushed in a brick. She heard the chunk of a latch. He pulled open a section of what she had always assumed was just brick wall, revealing a long, narrow tunnel.
“This place is a labyrinth!” she said, following as he stepped into the tunnel.
“Nearly,” he said, moving effortlessly through the dark.
Katie shook her head, clutching the hem of his sweater and wondering just how he could see when she couldn’t. Tom suddenly stopped and heaved his weight against something solid in the shadows. Katie blinked when a sudden flash of light filled her eyes.
A door that opened out in a retaining wall just short of the graveyard behind the neighboring house to the library. From outside, it looked like nothing more than a stone wall, and she knew that up above was the parking lot. She quickly climbed worn stone stairs, realizing how Tom had disappeared from sight so quickly. They were close to the space holding her truck.
She drove as quick as she dared. Lonnie lived off the main road that led from the highway to Mercyville. Hers was the last house on a winding lane that ended at a patch of woods. Katie had hardly killed the engine before she seized the shotgun and was out of the truck, hurrying towards the door of the old log cabin Lonnie called home.
Katie was just about up to the porch when a movement attracted her attention towards the woods. Something slipped into the trees. The only reason she even noticed it was because of a bright flash of red that was quickly swallowed by the thickets. She stopped, staring at the trees.
“What?” Tom asked as he caught up with her.
“I saw something red, like a hat.” she said.
Tom frowned. “Red Cap,” he muttered. “Now that’s a vicious Unseelie.”
“But I thought they only hung around old ruins waiting for victims.” she insisted.
“Aye, well the rules are a little different here,” Tom said. “No ruins. Let’s hope he’s not been at your cousin’s house. I don’t like to think what would happen if it had.”
Katie made a face. From what she remembered, Red Caps lived in the Highlands, waiting for travelers to stop in their ruins. They were named for the caps they wore which were dyed red with the blood of their victims... That thought was more than enough to spur Katie to bolt for the porch.
The cabin was locked. Katie pounded on the wood, calling, “Lonnie!” at the top of her lungs. Silence answered her, the eerie quiet that said something was deathly wrong. She thumped the door again. “LONNIE!”
“Maybe she’s asleep,” Tom said, casting a glance around.
“She has a dog,” Katie said. “Mazie’s not too bright, but she should be barking her head off now.”
Tom made a face. Katie moved off the porch, going around to the side of the cabin and trying to peer through windows in vain. Lonnie’s drapes of woven cloth were obscuring the view.
Around back, she found the rear door hanging off one hinge. Katie stopped, staring at the damage. Her knuckles were white as she clutched the shotgun before her. “Lonnie?” she called.
Still no answer. Katie forced herself to move, stepping through the gap into a kitchen that had been turned into shambles. The air had a funny, coppery smell, and tufts of animal hair were scattered about the kitchen floor as though a struggle of some sort had ensued.
Tom moved back to the threshold, kneeling and passing his hand over the wood. “There’s no metal in this house.” he said. “How peculiar.”
“It’s supposed to be one of those natural cabins,” Katie said, wondering how he could tell. “Right down to the pegs holding it together.”
“Useless against the faery,” Tom muttered. He rose and touched Katie’s arm. “Perhaps we should summon the
constables.”
She shook off the hand and moved through the door into the living room. Here, things were the same. God’s eyes and dream catchers had been scattered across the braided circle rug. Furniture lay overturned or broken. More hair as well. Looked like the color Katie saw normally attached to and being shed by Mazie, but this was no molt. There looked to be hanks of hair with blood on it as well.
Tom picked up some broken items, small clay pots, and settled them on the mantle over the fireplace. “We really should call the police,” he said.
“I gotta find her first,” Katie said. “I gotta know...”
“...no one close to you shall live to rue the day...” Wasn’t that what the Erl-King said last night. Damn him, had he kept his promise? Katie took a step and kicked something with her toe. She glanced down, startled, just in time to see a packet of horseshoe nails wrapped in red thread skittering off into a corner.
The bedroom door sat ajar. A faint sound, like a high-pitched squeal, caught her attention. Katie made her way towards it, her hands trembling. She readjusted her grip on the gun, using her shoulder to push the door wider and swinging the barrel of the shotgun ahead of her.
The bedroom had suffered like the rest of the house. Even the bed had been turned over, and the clothes scattered. Here, clots of blood spattered the walls near a corner where the faint keen was emitted. Katie raised the shotgun, aiming at the corner and crossing over that way. The bed table had been overturned, and a pillow trembled just slightly. Katie took a deep breath.
She kicked the pillow aside and heard a painful yelp. At first, she did not recognize that the bloody thing in the corner was a dog, a large golden lab whose tail weakly thumped the floor in greeting.
“Mazie,” Katie said, raising the barrel and kneeling in the corner.
“I thought we were looking for a Lonnie,” Tom said.
Katie ignored him, running her left hand over the pitiful creature’s head. The dog had literally been gnawed and torn alive. Her hair was almost all gone, and her skin showed teeth and claw marks. Mazie whimpered.
“Oh, poor Mazie,” Katie said. “God, what did they do to you?”
Tom had crouched beside her. He looked at the dog, clucking his tongue in dismay. “Poor lass, you must have fought them bravely,” he said. He pointed to some dark, greasy patches around the dog. “A few of them lost their lives doing this to her. Sunlight would have done the rest.”
“But what did they do to Lonnie?” Katie insisted, glancing around. So far, she had found no sign of her cousin. Seeing what had happened to Mazie only increased Katie’s fear that her cousin might have suffered as terrible a fate.
“They might have taken her hostage,” Tom suggested, though his face burned to the contrary. “They do that sometimes, you know.”
His attention was drawn elsewhere. He rose, lifting a book from the bedstand. “Cherokee folklore,” he said.
Katie only gave the book a cursory glance. She was tempted to use the shotgun to put an end to poor Mazie’s misery, but the police would have a better caliber for that. The shotgun would just make a bigger mess of the dog than she already was.
Tom flipped back the pages and frowned. “What’s a Yunwi... ?”
“Yunwi Tsunsdi,” Katie said. “Literally means little people. I mentioned them as one of the examples of parallels between Celtic and Cherokee folklore in a paper I wrote back in college. The Yunwi Tsunsdi dwell in mounds or just underground. By all accounts, their behavior is like that of faeries. They help some folk and curse others and... why do you ask?”
“She’s got a page marked here, and she’s underlined the word,” Tom said.
Katie took the book from him, glancing at the pages. Indeed, Lonnie had taken a red pen and underlined several words. Yunwi Tsunsdi. She had obviously been studying the old lore. “Damn,” Katie muttered. “They must have been here last night. Lonnie, where are you?”
“I think we should call the constable now,” Tom suggested.
Katie nodded. She looked for the telephone Lonnie kept in the bedroom. It lay on the floor, receiver separated from the main body. Katie picked it up, hearing silence on the line, but when she toggled the button, she got a dial tone. She stuck her finger on the first button of the emergency line...
... and paused as her gaze shifted towards the bathroom door. It too sat ajar, and from the looks of it, something had forced it open.
“Oh, god,” Katie muttered, dropping the phone and starting towards the door.
“Katie, wait,” Tom said, reaching out to restrain her. “Let the police...”
She evaded him, putting a hand to the gouged wood and letting it swing wide.
Blood was everywhere, and the coppery scent was mixed with excrement and a sweet, meaty odor. Katie felt her gorge rise, sitting bitter in her throat.
“Lonnie,” she muttered.
Lonnie lay in the tub, clutching the torn shower curtain in one hand. Her head was thrown off at an angle, and by all accounts, she could have slipped in the tub and broken her neck. But there was the blood, and the bite marks that laced her ankles and arms. Long fingernails had left gouges across her cheeks and throat. The startled widening of her dark eyes said she could not believe the fate that befell her right up to the end.
THIRTEEN
Katie sat in the cab of the pickup, arms wrapped around her knees. She rested her chin there, staring at the mesmerizing flash of lights atop the sheriff’s cruiser and the ambulance. Why an ambulance, she thought wearily. She’s already dead. Tom had made the call. Katie had dashed outside to relinquish the contents of her stomach, then sat on the back steps sobbing until everyone arrived. Tom encouraged her to go into the kitchen and wash her face at that point, and Dan had insisted she go out and wait in the truck until the Sheriff was ready to talk to her.
They were being far too routine about the whole affair. She wondered what they were speculating? A group of lab boys arrived from the main headquarters in Newport. They were inside a long time before the crack of a pistol sent whips across her nerves. She closed her eyes, biting back more tears. Poor Mazie.
After a time, Dan and Tom came sauntering around the cabin side by side, like old chums. Tom had his hands in his pockets and was talking while Dan grinned just slightly. So what were they up to? Katie uncoiled from her knot and opened the truck door. Dan moved ahead to block the way.
“Katie, I’m sorry,” he said, and without hesitation, he drew arms around her shoulders. She leaned into him, relishing the contact for the strength and comfort that filled it. “I don’t know what else to say,” he added. “Uncle will be out to question you in a minute. He just wants to make sure you corroborate what Tom tells us, like how you came to be here and finding the body.”
Katie nodded, drawing back and seating herself on the step of the truck. “ Thanks for taking care of Mazie?” she said.
Dan nodded. “Actually, Uncle put her out of her misery so you can thank him. I don't have the stomach for that sort of stuff.”
Wiping her nose, Katie sighed. Dan squatted so he was able to look up at her. He smiled, taking her hand.
“It’s gonna be okay,” he said. “We’ll find out who did this, Katie, I promise.”
“I already know who did this,” she said, fixing him with dark eyes that still burned from shedding tears. “The Erl-King said that no one close to me would live to see me rue the day I crossed him.”
She saw Dan draw a long breath and let it out slow before his gaze dropped.
“Katie, we think it was the drifters who were driven out of Townsend over in Sevier County,” Dan said. “We got more reports on them from the Sheriff’s department over that way, and they tell us these drifters are into some kind of occult stuff. That in Townsend, they were having orgies in the woods, and painting themselves all sorts of colors and dancing naked under the moon. They actually sacrificed a goat they stole too. Even some of Lonnie’s neighbors called the station and reported seeing a bunch of folks acting like wi
ld men down in the hollow just last night...”
“No, Dan,” Katie said. “It was the Erl-King. You saw the bite marks... what they did to Mazie. No human being would...”
“These are some sick people, Katie,” Dan insisted. “They smoke pot and shoot PCP, and under those conditions, there’s no telling what they’d do. We’re going to coordinate an aerial search for them with the help of the National Guard as soon as they get clearance to use their copters.”
She looked at Tom, but he was managing his usual casual indifference, staring off at the woods. Fat lot of help I’m getting from you, she fumed.
“Now it’s not that I don’t believe some really strange things have been happening here in Mercyville, and it’s not that I want to doubt you, Katie,” Dan went on. “I’d give anything to be able to believe you, but I told you once before, I’ve got to deal in facts first. Lonnie’s dead, and someone killed her, and that’s all we have to consider right now. Erl-Kings and goblins as the cause of death on an autopsy report would just lose me and Uncle our jobs.”
She sighed and hid her face in her hands, refusing to look at anything as she rubbed her forehead. All of this was starting to give her a tremendous headache. It made all too much sense. No matter what she knew, how could she expect anyone else to believe?
She was kept from voicing that opinion, however, when Sheriff Cannon came over. She heard the thump of his boots crossing the sod and the jingle of his equipment. The bite of his musky cologne could burn her nose from a mile away.
“Miss MacLeod,” he said. “I need to ask you a few questions, if you think you’re up to it.”
“Go ahead,” Katie said, raising her face to study the tall, thick-set figure standing a few yards from her. He wore a grim expression.
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