by Jason Winn
***
“Where the fuck is this thing?” Madison said through gasps for breath, frustrated at the black compass. But she wouldn’t be deterred. This was the trip that would end with her standing in the Shiloh Library. Too many people had died trying to find it.
She leaned against an oak tree, pulling off her floppy hat to remove a twig from her curly brown hair. The muscles in her long legs burned, and she wanted to fling the infernal compass off the nearest cliff. That would teach it to lead her on. The little needle pointed forward, or up, toward another incline, dotted with hardwood trees, pricker bushes, ankle-twisting ruts and tree roots; all nestled next to rocks big enough to crush a man.
She took out her binoculars and surveyed the woods. There was nothing man-made in any direction. Above, thunderheads were creeping in, over the Shenandoah Valley.
“Got to be kidding me. Come on, get moving.” The words didn’t carry the same motivation they did that morning.
Reese died for this. Dana almost died for this. You can be tired when you get home. You want to be the Rose Widow? Then go get her tools.
That was enough to get her moving again—the thought of her dead boyfriend, the man she almost married. A second wind numbed the ache in her legs. She grabbed saplings to pull herself further up the side of the steep slope, as thunder rumbled in the distance.
Every few hundred yards, she raised the compass to her lips and blew. It responded to her breath, just like the letter her grandmother, Nancy Mosby, penned revealing the compass’s existence. To Madison, the needle represented a middle finger from Nancy—a cruel joke from the void. She had been hiking for the better part of five hours. The Appalachian Trail had disappeared two hours ago as the traitorous needle took her off the path and up the side of a not-so-gentle slope.
The hike wouldn’t be so bad if there was some sort of indicator as to how much farther she needed to go. That was the big problem: the location could be anywhere, over the next ridge or ten more miles. The compass had switched directions several times, and for all Madison knew Nancy Mosby had flown in a Blue Petal company helicopter to get to the library’s hiding spot. But that probably wasn’t the case. Nancy had been an iron-willed woman, with a body made lean by years of adventures to remote parts of the world, living the life of Indiana Jones. She’d probably be yelling back down at Madison to “get her butt moving up that hill,” with not a bead of sweat on her brow.
I get it, Grandma, you’re stronger than me. I’m getting there. Okay?
The Shenandoah Valley fit Nancy Mosby’s adventurer attitude, close enough to her home outside of DC, but big enough to hide something precious. It didn’t hurt that it was also filled with wildlife, like snakes and bears. It was a vast tract of forest, nestled in the Blue Ridge Mountains, in western Virginia. Madison recalled stories of her grandmother and grandfather hiking and camping in the area.
A scouting mission with the black compass a few weeks back had led her to a remote parking lot, across the street from a park ranger station. Ten YouTube videos on hiking, and a thousand bucks online for gear, led her to where she was now.
The pack on her shoulders sapped her strength, and although it was the highest-rated hiking pack on Amazon and felt great when she first put it on, the straps were now digging into her shoulders and causing her lower back to ache.
Inside was everything the YouTube prepper had told her to bring on a two-day hike: spare clothes, bedroll, first-aid kit, water purification tube, dehydrated food, single-person tent and some rain gear. She didn’t trust her recollections of camping with her father and sisters to prepare for the trip. A pistol was strapped to her thigh, because she wasn’t going to die for this place. Not without a fight, at least.
Despite all that, she kept putting one foot in front of the other. Today was the day she’d find the Shiloh Library. Too many people had died, and even more had tried to kill her over this collection of magical artifacts. She wasn’t going to wait any longer. It had been six months since Langston gave her the black compass. She was done losing sleep over finding the library. In her mind, lingered the very real possibility that someone would discover it before her.
She stopped to check the compass again, only to find it still pointing up the hill, which seemed to get steeper with every step. That’s when she heard the rustling in the scrub brush off to the left. Madison snapped her head in the general direction and reached for her pistol.
***
The rustling subsided. She convinced herself that it was a small animal of some sort. This was the forest after all, not the streets of Arlington, Virginia or the manicured grounds of her grandmother’s mansion, where Han, the groundskeeper, could shoo away deer or raccoons with the swing of a broom.
She pushed on for another hour, willing herself into an ever-thickening wilderness where the trees were now so tightly packed together, it felt as though she was moving through a bar on Saturday night. Spider webs clung to her one after another, until finally she stopped trying to peel them from her face and hair.
A moment later, the ground leveled out and the trees thinned to reveal a small cabin with clapboard siding. Red paint was flaking away from the exterior. Thorny vines enveloped the thing. It looked to be about the size of a one-car garage, with a set of antlers hung over the door. A cobblestone chimney rose from one side. Black windows stared back at her, wide as if they were scared to see her. Grime ringing the glass gave them an almost sickly appearance.
Curiosity pulled Madison toward the cabin. She felt the same as she did when she saw the metal spider-looking storm brewer for the first time. She reached out to touch the side, brushing her fingers along it, and paint flaked away in chips. The vines scratched at her fingers and that’s when she noticed the small blue roses.
Well, well.
“Hello Grandma,” whispered Madison. Her heart was racing. Questions flooded her head. Was this it? Was this some secret place Grandma and Granddad came to get away? Madison thought for a moment, trying to recall any time when her grandmother may have mentioned a cabin, up in the mountains. She couldn’t. Her father might have said something at one point, after half a case of beer, but he could be hard to understand when he drank.
Madison pulled out her phone and snapped a few pictures. She wanted to send them to Sarah as a “hey, check this out,” but her phone was on its last ten percent of battery life and there was no signal. She turned it off to conserve the battery before returning it to her pocket.
These were the same roses that ringed the greenhouse at the mansion. The same blue roses, Grandma’s Winter Roses that the Preens tried to use to kill Madison when she broke into their flower shop to steal the totems. And the ones she used to turn their bodies into ash.
If this wasn’t the Shiloh Library, she had to be close. She wanted to open the door and step in, but decided to make a quick circle of the place first. That’s when the rustling started again. It came from all directions this time. The birds in the trees above flew off in a torrent of flapping wings. Branches quivered.
Madison’s heart jumped into her throat when she heard the commotion followed by a deep roar. She yanked her pistol free of the holster and thought about running away from the roar, but which way? It was coming from everywhere.
Another roar, this one was louder. Madison felt the ground tremble.
A huge set of teeth and fur burst from the thick woods—a massive black bear. Then another and another. Madison saw four of them before she had the presence of mind to pull the trigger.
Bears hate guns, right?
The shot did nothing but put a loud ringing in her ears. The bears crashed towards her. Madison darted for the front door and tried the handle. It came off in her hands. She whirled around and aimed for the closest bear. She fired, and the shot kicked up a bit of dirt in front of the beast.
“All right!” a man shouted.
The bears all stopped and glared at Madison.
Chapter 3
This was her chance. Madison c
onsidered taking aim at one and putting it down, but the bears’ expressions had changed, to that almost of happy dogs.
Were they smiling? Bears don’t fucking smile. But she had to admit, these vicious animals, the ones that were about to tear her arms and legs off, had suddenly become no more threatening than a group of Labrador retrievers.
“What the fuck?” Madison wondered aloud.
“I’d of let them kill you if you hadn’t touched that vine,” the man said.
Madison turned toward the voice and saw what could only be described as a mountain man. He was tall, fat and sported a beard that fell down his wide chest. He carried a shotgun. She lowered her pistol.
He walked over to one of the black bears and scratched it behind the ear. The bear responded by licking the side of the man’s face.
“Oh, go on now, stop,” he said, pushing the bear’s massive head away from his.
“You a Mosby?” he asked.
Stunned, Madison fell back against the cabin door. She’d forgotten what it felt like to think you were about to die and then not.
“Lammy, come on over here,” the man shouted over his shoulder. “Girly, you all right?”
“Yeah,” said Madison. She most certainly was not “all right.” Her legs melted away, as she slid down the door to the ground. All she could think of was that up until two minutes ago her biggest hassle today had been worrying about spraining an ankle on some tree root.
Madison heard another rustle of footsteps, but she just sat trying to catch her breath, content to stare at the ground.
“Oh, that’s a Mosby,” said a different man.
She finally looked up and saw a duplicate of the first man, right down to the green suspenders and plaid shirt. She threw up her hands and tried to say something.
“Looks a bit like Nancy,” one of them said. Madison couldn’t tell which was the one who scratched the bear’s ear.
She tried to push herself up. The two men came over, grabbed her by the hands and hoisted her to her feet. Her eyes darted from one identical face to the other, trying to find something to distinguish one from the other, a birthmark, a freckle, or wrinkle.
“Yeah, we get that sometimes,” one of them said. “You think you’re seeing double.”
“I guess so,” replied Madison.
“I’m Lammy,” one said. “This here is Buddy.”
They slung their shotguns over their shoulders, in unison.
“Any way of telling you apart?” Madison asked. She could see no difference whatsoever, as if there was a mirror in the forest.
“He’s the ugly one,” said Lammy.
Madison wanted to say they were both ugly, but this was probably not the time for jokes.
“Said the man missing three fingers,” replied Buddy.
Then Madison noticed it. Lammy was missing the middle, ring and pinky fingers on his right hand.
Thank god for missing fingers.
As intriguing as all this was, Madison had the sudden urge to take out the black compass and walk around. Was this cabin the Shiloh Library? While she was grateful that the bears hadn’t ripped her face off, she didn’t want to waste time talking to these two.
“So, are you a Mosby?” asked Buddy. “I reckon you are, seeing’s how you didn’t burn up, touching the Winter Roses there.”
She considered lying, but what good would that do? “Yeah. I’m Nancy’s granddaughter.”
The two men smiled, and Madison got the impression that these two were possibly more than just friends of Nancy’s.
“You’re probably up here looking for something?” Buddy asked.
She didn’t know how much they knew and how much she should tell them. However, given their command of the bears, they could probably get her to tell them everything if they wanted to, so Madison decided to spill it.
“The Shiloh Library.”
“Got the compass?” Lammy asked. His eyes twinkled.
Madison pulled it from her pocket and presented it. She blew on it and the needle pointed off to her left.
“Haven’t seen that in a while,” said Buddy.
“Can I assume you two know where it is?” asked Madison.
“We do,” said Lammy.
This was starting to feel like pulling teeth. “Well, can you take me to it?” She tried not to sound like a smart-ass, but she was exhausted, hungry and in need of a stiff drink.
“Tomorrow,” said Lammy. “Let’s go rest back at the camp for a spell, and then we can go to the library.”
Madison was too tired to put up a fight. The sun was going down behind the trees and even though it was the middle of summer, the Appalachian night was going to be cold. She buried any fear that these men were rapist cannibals and decided that maybe they were all right. And plus, they knew about her grandmother.
“Y’all okay?” asked another man.
Madison recognized a deep Southern accent, similar to Sarah’s. She looked around until she saw a new man emerge from behind a large oak tree. He was much younger than Lammy and Buddy. Maybe thirty? Madison couldn’t tell for sure. He wore mechanic’s coveralls and a trucker’s hat over shaggy brown hair.
“What stirred up the boys?” asked another voice from behind Madison.
She whirled around to see a clone of the younger man, same hat, same coveralls.
“Jesus Christ,” she blurted out. Madison turned to Lammy. “Okay, I’m too tired for this shit. Can we just go?”
Lammy and Buddy smiled and led her down a path, deeper into the forest.
***
The camp looked more like an old village. Several cabins ringed a common area, where a big fire was already burning. The smell of searing beef mixed with wood smoke. The scene reminded Madison of her childhood with her dad. The only thing missing was her sister older Shelby, complaining that she wanted to go home.
“Got anything to drink?” Madison asked. Her throat was bone dry. She’d wisely left her travel flask in the car, having the clarity to know that getting buzzed in the middle of nowhere would probably land her on the news as a missing person.
“Catch,” said one of the younger twins as a beer can flew at her head.
Madison caught it, opened it, and downed it without paying any attention to the label. Besides, it was beer. What difference did it make?
“Come on over by the fire.” Lammy pointed to a log stump next to the blaze.
Madison sat, which apparently was the signal to her legs and back to send a torrent of pain signals to her brain. Lammy and Buddy sat opposite her. The flames seemed to cast identical shadows across their mirror-image faces.
“Well go on, ask,” said Buddy. “You know you want to.”
“Yeah,” replied Madison. “What the hell is all this?”
“We’re sentries for the Shiloh Library, along with the boys you met down the trail. Nancy hired us back in eighty-eight to look after it, after the previous fellows up and died.”
“Are the other men your replacements?”
“No,” chuckled Buddy. “They’re Lammy’s boys. Mine are over there.” He pointed to another set of twins by the tree line, gathering wood for the fire.
Madison decided not to be further disturbed by this bunch. If one of them turned into an octopus and started tap dancing, she decided she would be okay with that.
“When was the last time you saw her?” asked Madison.
The two looked at each other and back at Madison. Lammy spoke up. “‘Bout five years ago, I’d say.”
What? “But she disappeared almost eight years ago,” said Madison.
This was incredible. An actual sighting of Nancy Mosby after she boarded that plane in Hong Kong, never to be seen or heard of again.
“Yeah, well she came around here on our birthday, needing to get into the library…”
“Wait, wait, wait,” Madison broke in. Her spine went straight and her heart began to race. “She was here five years ago. She went into the library and then what?”
“Sh
e said good-bye and left,” said Buddy.
“What did, what did she get from it?”
“Nothing, as far as we can tell,” said Buddy. He got up as his twin boys came over with armloads of wood. He took a few logs and threw them onto the fire. “Of course, she never let us down there when she was in it. And we got no cause to go in it anyway.”
“We’re not paid to go down there,” said Lammy.
“How much does she pay you?” asked Madison. “Is she still paying you? How does that work? Someone from Blue Petal?” It had to be some sort of automated thing from Blue Petal International, an account or something that automatically paid these men for their services. Although they didn’t exactly look like the types that trusted banks.
Madison hadn’t even started digging into her grandmother’s company. She knew she needed to—her father, now the majority shareholder, didn’t want anything to do with the decisions necessary to run the multinational corporation. Board meetings and presentations on international logistics weren’t something a man who spent all his time in a cabin in the woods wanted to deal with.
“Oh, she’s still paying us, every month,” said Lammy. “Go show her the jar, Buddy.”
“It’s got another week to go,” said Buddy. In truth he looked like he just didn’t want to get up again.
“It’ll be fine, just show it to her.”
“Fine,” said Buddy as he got up with a grunt and shuffled off toward the woods.
Is there a mailbox out there? Madison was now very interested in what Buddy was going off to fetch.
One of the younger twins appeared with a stack of metal camping bowls. He passed them around and placed one on Buddy’s empty seat. They smelled amazing. Madison looked down to see a steak, next to onions, peppers and potatoes. She didn’t wait to be offered a fork. While the beer had calmed her head, it jump-started her appetite. She grabbed a potato and popped it into her mouth. She tasted salt, pepper, and oregano. This twin knew how to cook.