Colvin swept past the dining tables and went directly to the kitchen. He tested the heat of the air above the stove before placing his palm flat on the iron plate. His apprehension deepened as he looked across the room to Josiah. “It’s cold.”
Josiah wheeled to Keenan. “Check the doghouse.”
The Irishman left at once.
Colvin turned to Abigail. “Bart Dalrumple is the cook up here. He’d never let his stove go cold. The boys would mutiny if they didn’t get their breakfast this morning, but by the feel of it, I’d say this stove hasn’t been used in days.”
“You believe the men have abandoned the camp?”
Colvin pursed his lips and kept his thoughts to himself.
A silhouette filled the door as Keenan returned. “It’s locked.”
“I beg your pardon?” Colvin arched a dark eyebrow.
“The doghouse is locked. I couldn’t get in.”
Colvin exchanged another uneasy glance with Josiah.
“What’s wrong?” asked Abigail.
“There are no locks up here,” Colvin replied. Brushing past Abigail, he marched across the creaking floor and left the mess hall.
Timber loped at Colvin’s side, his tail swaying as they went, and the others fell in behind them as they crossed the distance to the lumberjacks’ bunkhouse. The doghouse, as it was known, was a squat structure about fifty feet long and twenty feet wide.
Colvin lifted the latch and pushed on the door. It didn’t move. He tried again, putting his weight into his shoulder. The door trembled, but still wouldn’t budge. Colvin stepped back. “Something’s blocking it from the inside.” He paused a moment longer, eyeing the door before turning to Keenan. “Give me your axe.”
Keenan unslung the axe from his pack and handed it over. Colvin hefted it with both hands and brought it smashing into the door. It shuddered on its hinges and sent splintered chips flying. Again and again, Colvin brought the sharp blade crashing into the wooden planks.
An uneasy feeling took root in Abigail’s gut as she watched him hack at the door. Something awful awaited them on the other side... and they were about to let it out. Her pulse quickened and she had a sudden impulse to stop Colvin before he broke through the door.
It was already too late.
Colvin’s blows came to an abrupt stop. He covered his nose with his forearm and gagged as he fell back. His face had gone a sickly shade of green.
A terrible reek came pouring from the ragged gap in the door. The cloying stink filled the air like a noxious cloud. Abigail recognized it at once. She hoped against hope that she was wrong, but there was a part of her that knew with dreadful certainty that she wasn’t.
Colvin held his breath and gave the door one final blow. The top half fell from its hinges and collapsed inward like a broken Dutch door. The rancid stench was suffocating in its intensity as Colvin peered into the ragged opening.
Beyond the slant of cold daylight streaming through the gap, the bunkhouse was drowning in darkness. Curiously, a waist-high load of firewood was piled against the inner side of the door.
“Why would they barricade it?” Keenan wondered aloud. A hint of nervousness had crept into the young man’s Irish accent. “What were they afraid of?”
Colvin said nothing. His face was dark and brooding as he unfastened his lantern from his pack, lit the wick, and adjusted the flame. Raising the light high over his head, he pulled his neckerchief up around his nose as he climbed through the hole in the door and negotiated his way over the pile of firewood on the other side. Josiah went next, followed by Abigail. Keenan came last, leaving Timber outside as a light rain began to fall.
The gloom inside the bunkhouse was smothering. Somewhere in the darkness, Abigail could hear the frenzied scurrying of vermin fleeing Colvin’s light. The patter of the rain on the tin roof resounded off the walls. A quiet wind breathed through invisible gaps in the timber as if the shelter itself was moaning.
Colvin moved forward, playing the lantern around him as he went. Clouds of dust rose and drifted through its dim glow. Abigail could make out rows of wooden bunks lining the room to either side. Most were heaped with piles of straw and woolen blankets. Here and there, Abigail saw some of the lumberjacks’ scant possessions: a tin of tobacco; an extra pair of socks; a handful of candy.
The space had the empty feel of desertion.
Except Abigail knew they weren’t alone. Something was in there with them. She could sense it lurking in the darkest reaches of the cavernous room. Her hand went to the iron talisman slung around her neck and held it tight.
Just then, another sound rose above that of the rain. Outside, beyond the smashed door, Timber was growling a loud, gravelly threat that rumbled from deep in his chest.
Abigail caught a glimpse of Keenan to her right and saw his eyes were wide with fear. His bottom lip nearly quivered and a large vein in his throat throbbed furiously in time with his heartbeat. The Irishman sensed it too: something terrible was about to happen. He was frightened and Abigail knew he shouldn’t be there with them. She had an impulse to send him back but they were almost to the rear now.
Timber’s growls turned to barking.
Loud. Scared.
Just a few more feet remained...
Abigail readied herself.
Colvin suddenly stopped short.
A dead man hung by his neck from a rafter.
The lantern light found the corpse. It was mottled with decay; eyes a bluish white and turned back in the head. The gray gob of the dead man’s tongue protruded from his slack mouth. A rat dangled from his lifeless hand, glutting itself on the rotting flesh of his forearm.
More bodies came into view—over a dozen—all strung by their necks from the rafters like forgotten carcasses in a butcher’s shop.
“Oh dear God!” Keenan screamed and staggered back. “Oh God! All of them! Oh God no! Dear God...” His hysterical cries climbed to a shrill pitch as the rat dropped from the dead man’s hand to the floor. It glared at Keenan with eyes like ruby shards before scuttling away into the shadows.
“Get him out of here!” Abigail shouted.
Keenan kept screaming even as Josiah grabbed him and hustled him forcibly back toward the door.
Colvin stood gazing at the gruesome tableau illuminated by the garish glow of his lantern. Dumbstruck with horror, words seemed to desert him. The gentle rhythm of the rain filled the silence. From somewhere outside, Keenan’s panic-stricken moans could be heard as if from a great distance. Without taking his eyes from the bodies, Colvin finally mustered his voice. “What on earth could have driven these men to do this to themselves?”
Abigail waited a moment before laying a hand on his shoulder. She had seen all she needed. “Come,” she said quietly. “Bring me to Jed Hawes’ grave. Tonight, we will have our answers.”
Chapter 25
Abigail sat on a boulder in the woods not far from North Camp. Her cloaked back was to the wind and she had a small pumpkin wedged between her thighs. It was dusk and the landscape was a murky monochrome of bluish green. A veil of fog drifted like phantoms wandering among the trees.
A blond strand of hair escaped Abigail’s hood and twirled in the breeze as she carved the pumpkin. Her breath bloomed white in the evening cold. The lambent light of a lantern at her feet glowed like a lonesome orange sphere adrift on a shadowy sea. She could feel the wet tingle of the air landing on her hands as she held her creation up and gazed at the jack-o’-lantern grinning back at her. She had stashed the pumpkin carefully in her canvas pack before leaving Tahawus and was glad to discover it had survived the arduous trek up the mountainside. Very soon, it might mean the difference between life and death.
From deeper in the forest, Abigail could hear the hushed sounds of the men as they prepared the site for the conjuring ritual. Rising from the rock, she tucked the jack-o’-lantern safely in her arm and went to join them.
Colvin was digging the ground at the center of a small hollow. A knee-high mou
nd of soil and rock stood next to the shallow pit that was Jed Hawes’ grave. Keenan had nearly finished hacking away the shrubbery in a wide circle around the open ditch. The Irishman’s vacant expression didn’t change at Abigail’s approach, but he stirred enough to straighten his spine. Abigail suspected his thoughts were somewhere else, a dark and reeking place where dead men hung by their necks and stared at him with empty eyes. Regardless of his mental turmoil, he had done a good job of following her instructions. The space he had cleared was nearly twenty feet in diameter and the ground was almost entirely bare with the earth plainly visible.
Timber scouted the perimeter of the clearing, nosing the underbrush and stopping occasionally to paw at the ground. Nearby, Josiah was crouched before a smoky fire of wet wood. His face was as impassive as ever as he smoked his tobacco pipe and attended to the sickly flames.
Colvin stood up and stretched his aching back as Abigail approached. “Is that good enough for you?”
Sprawled in the muddy pit at his feet lay the exposed corpse of Jed Hawes. Despite having been interred for over a month, the primitive grave had managed to slow the process of decomposition. Still, the sour odor of putrefaction made Colvin grimace and lean away.
“Quite well done,” Abigail replied, unperturbed. Crouching, she placed her jack-o’-lantern at the head of the grave before producing her knife from the pocket of her cloak.
“What do you think you’re doing?” Colvin demanded.
“The conjuring ritual requires both the blood of the conjuror and the remains of the ghost.”
Colvin’s face filled with revulsion. “No. I’ll not let you defile this poor man’s body.”
“’Tis an abhorrent thought, to be sure,” Abigail conceded. “But if I am going to end this haunting, I’m afraid it cannot be helped.”
Swallowing his disgust, Colvin stood by while Abigail cut through the filthy wool of Hawes’ shirt and waistband. She then went to work at the mottled flesh, slicing strips from the dead man’s gut and depositing what was necessary into a small tin pot. Once the grisly chore was done, Abigail brought the pot to Josiah’s fire and nestled it among the coals. A sickening smell of rancid meat soon drifted from within as she went about rendering the fat from Hawes’ flesh. Next, she retrieved a scorched stick from Josiah’s fire and used the blackened end to draw a ring in the dirt around the perimeter of the clearing. She did this three times, murmuring an incantation to herself as she went, circling from east to west in the trajectory of the sun moving from day to night. Next, she drew a large pentacle within the ring. Hawes’ grave lay at its center. Arcane sigils were then added to the empty triangles of the pentacle’s five points, each representing one of the elements. At the tip of the first point—that of the earth—Abigail laid a handful of dirt she took from Hawes’ grave. She moved clockwise, lighting a small brass censer at the tip of the element of air. The heartening scent of wormwood incense coiled up to meet her. A red candle was placed at the third point for the element of fire, followed by a vial of water Abigail had taken from the stream.
Only the fifth and final element remained—that of the spirit. It was located at the western point of the pentacle, in the direction of darkness and night.
Abigail moved to Keenan’s pack and unstrapped his timber axe.
The young lumberjack eyed her uneasily. “What is that for?” he asked. It was the first words he had spoken since Abigail had set him to his task.
Abigail didn’t reply. Instead, she positioned herself over Hawes’ grave and raised the heavy axe high over her head. Before anyone could protest, she brought the blade swinging down and severed the dead man’s head from his corpse in one swift strike.
Keenan couldn’t stifle his exclamation as Abigail brought the decapitated head to the remaining point of the pentacle. Returning to her own pack, she produced a small handsaw and proceeded to saw through the dead man’s cranium above the empty eye sockets, separating the rounded top of the skull from the rest of the head. She then flipped the domed piece of bone over and returned it upside-down so that it lay like a bowl cradled in the open hole of the skull.
The men watched in horrified wonder as Abigail sliced through the flesh of her left wrist with the same knife she had used to carve the jack-o’-lantern. The instant flash of pain was both stinging and exhilarating at once. Blood poured from the wound and she let it drip freely into the waiting skull-bowl, filling it with crimson. Twilight was failing faster now and the darkness was growing impatient. Very soon it would paint the world in black. Abigail savored the thrill of anticipation. She had been ready for this moment ever since they had discovered the dead men hanging in the bunkhouse. Very soon, she would put an end to this haunting.
Heedless of her bleeding wrist, Abigail retrieved the tin pot from Josiah and carefully poured the dead man’s fat across a flat piece of slate. She then let her wound bleed into the congealing mixture of fat and gave it a couple of minutes to cool before shaping the waxy substance into something vaguely resembling a candle.
“It is time,” she said at last. “Join me in the circle.”
As if waiting to see what Abigail would do with the silence it left behind, the wind seemed to settle as they came together at the center of the pentacle.
Abigail placed the tallow candle in the hollow jack-o’-lantern, sparked a flame, and imbued the grinning pumpkin with life. “In ancient times, jack-o’-lanterns were lit to illuminate the path for the dead to return to their graves,” she explained. Her voice sounded strong and out of place in the lifeless silence of the hollow. “Jedediah Hawes’ ghost will feel drawn to this place, but he will not come willingly. I must invoke the aid of familiars from beyond the Veil—powerful spirits bound to my service—who will drag Hawes before us.” She paused. “But first, there is one thing more that must be done.”
She withdrew the iron talisman from around her neck and stooped to dangle the charm through the open hole at the top of the jack-o’-lantern. The candle’s flame licked at the iron rune.
“As with many who dwell beyond the Veil, the familiars I am about to summon harbor an intense desire to live again. They will seek out any weakness you may unwittingly reveal.”
“What kind of weaknesses?” Colvin asked.
“Fear; despair; mourning.” Abigail gave Keenan a meaningful look. “If my familiars find you sheltering such sentiments, they may very well use them to possess your body as their own.”
Colvin’s face grew grim. “How can we protect ourselves?”
“With this.” Abigail held up the talisman. The iron now glowed a dull orange from the heat of the candle’s flame. “It is a charmed ward against evil and instills courage in the face of death.”
Colvin eyed the charm suspiciously. “How is it supposed to help all of us?”
The heated charm dangled from Abigail’s hand as her eyes met his. “Open your shirt.”
Chapter 26
The smell of sizzling skin and burning hair filled Colvin’s nostrils until the blistering pain came to an abrupt end. When he opened his eyes and looked down, he saw the rune branded on his flesh above his left nipple. It was perhaps the length of his little finger and shaped like the letter “Y”, except for a third line extending straight up between the two upraised arms.
Colvin waited, the fresh brand on his chest still throbbing as Abigail moved on to Keenan. Colvin half expected the young man to refuse but the Irishman bared his chest and withstood the pain without question. When it was Josiah’s turn, the Native pulled his red coat open and stood firm as the heated rune seared his bare skin.
Once it was done, Abigail let the talisman cool before returning it around her neck. “Join hands.”
They did as she instructed, joining hands around the open grave at the center of the protective circle. Abigail positioned herself on the eastern side of the pentacle, directly above the glowing jack-o’-lantern and opposite the decapitated head of Jed Hawes. Keenan stood to her right while Josiah took the place across from he
r. Colvin completed the circle to Abigail’s left and took her palm into his right hand. Her fingers were sticky with her own blood but she didn’t seem to care. There was something different about her now, an excited flush to her face and an intense brilliance in her blue eyes that was almost fearsome to witness. A strange current passed through Colvin at her touch, as if she were radiating some strange power.
“Hawes’ head will serve as a scrying mirror, a window to the realm beyond the Veil. It is the portal through which my familiars must travel to bring Hawes’ ghost before us.” Abigail glanced around at the circle of men. “You may find the experience... unsettling. The charm I have given you will protect you from spirit possession but we must not let go of each other no matter what may happen or what you may witness here. Above all else, you must always remember that we are safe from harm only so long as our circle of the living remains unbroken.”
Abigail paused a moment to make sure they understood. Only when she was satisfied did she close her eyes, drew a deep breath, and began to chant. Her voice rang out from the center of the pentacle, invoking the names of her familiars and commanding them to her service. The glow of the jack-o’-lantern caught her from below and cast her face in an eerie orange light. Over and over she recited the incantation, gaining volume with each repetition. Her voice seemed too loud in the breathless silence and made Colvin feel like a trespasser begging to be caught.
And then, something seemed to change.
There was a stirring in the air, as if some unseen power was awakening.
A shiver ran across Colvin’s skin.
Something was coming.
A cold breeze brushed against Colvin’s face, fluttering his hair and beard. He looked across the open grave and found Keenan staring at him, eyes wide and fearful. He became aware of Timber shivering and whimpering pitifully against his leg. At the same time, Josiah’s hand clenched involuntarily around his own. His old friend sensed it too. They all did.
The Suicide Lake (Book of Shadows 2) Page 14