And he was sending Terry Cattrall up into that dark shadow all alone.
Oh, for fuck’s sake. It was just an abandoned property. Nothing up there would hurt the guy. Terry would do his job and come back down. End of story.
But who the hell could have made those offers? And why? GodsAcre had so many strikes against it. It was uniquely undesirable.
Yet for some reason, Otis had refused all of the offers.
He wished he could talk to Otis. Not even so much for solving the mystery. Just for the comfort of seeing the old man’s face. Hearing his gruff, no-nonsense voice.
He got into his Porsche, wishing he’d driven Otis’s four-by-four pickup into town, but he’d already loaded Otis’s old fiberglass fishing boat into the back of it, to haul to the last boat ramp on the shore of Shaw Lake.
Which was still very far from Spruce Tip, which was way the hell out there at the tip of the lake. In that crappy little boat with its ancient, bad-tempered two-stroke outboard, it could end up being a real adventure tonight, but fuck it. If worst came to worst, he could row. Or swim.
He could have rented something big and sleek and fast at the marina, but people would notice and start to speculate. He couldn’t risk that.
If Demi wanted him to be her dirty secret, a dirty secret he would be. Lady’s choice.
He spent the rest of the day tinkering with the ancient outboard. When he was marginally satisfied with how it functioned, he went on up to the bathroom to make himself presentable. Shower, shave, scent, fresh clothes.
He was heading out, Otis’s keys in hand, when the landline rang in the kitchen.
Everyone in town knew Otis was dead, so that call couldn’t be from anyone local who had known him. Anton and Mace texted him if they wanted to communicate. Terry and the estate lawyer had his cell. He had no reason to talk to anyone else around here other than Demi, and Demi had declared a no-phone zone.
Curiosity dragged him back to the kitchen, just as Otis’s deathless eighties relic of an answering machine picked up the call.
It clicked and whirred. A high, nervous female voice spoke. “Hello? Have I reached Eric Trask? I hope you’re there, Mr. Trask. It’s Deborah Cattrall? Terry’s wife?”
He hit the button that opened the speakerphone line. “Hi, Deborah. This is Eric. What can I do for you?”
“I’m so glad I reached you.” Deborah’s voice was tight and thin. “I would have called your cell, but only Terry had that number, so I looked up Otis in the phone book.”
“I’m glad you caught me,” Eric said. “How can I help you?”
“Well, um, I was just wondering if Terry had contacted you.” The words came out in an anxious rush. “When I called the office, they told me he’d gone up to GodsAcre to do an appraisal after he met with you. And he was supposed to be home by now. Over two hours ago. But he’s not back, and he’s not answering his cell, and that’s not like him.”
“Hold on.” Eric pulled out his smartphone and checked it. “I don’t have any calls or texts from him.”
“We had a date, for our anniversary dinner. It’s just so strange for him to not be home by now, and to not call me. We’re too late to make it to the restaurant now. It’s just so weird that he won’t answer, you know?” Deborah hesitated for a moment. “There’s a tracker on his phone,” she said miserably. “It’s up there. Near GodsAcre. It’s on the road. And it’s not moving.”
“How far away?” His creeping dread swelled into alarm.
“Um, I’m not sure. Below the Upper Falls. So, I’ll just, um, drive on up there, I guess. See if he maybe…had trouble with the car? And the phone?” She paused for a moment. “At the same time,” she finished, voice quavering.
“It’ll be dark soon, and the road is bad. I don’t think that’s a great idea. I’ll go up and have a look around myself,” Eric heard his own voice say it while the rest of him, the selfish, sex-crazed part that was wild to go to Spruce Island, howled silently in protest.
Deborah sounded scared. He couldn’t let her drive up that bad road in the dark, not with the sick cold knot forming inside him.
He’d be damned if he’d throw Deborah into that black hole, too.
“I’d appreciate it,” Deborah’s voice trembled. “I hate to bother you, but I just don’t know if my little car would be up to that road.”
“Don’t worry about it,” he said. “I’m familiar with it, and I have Otis’s four-by-four. Give me your cell number. I’ll go on up there and take a look around for you.”
Deborah did so. He finally managed to hang up over her thank-yous, and stared grimly out the kitchen window.
He’d fucked himself left right and sideways. Even if he didn’t have a smoking hot date for wild, mindless sex with the woman of his dreams on Spruce Tip Island, he would do any crazy, desperate thing to stay away from GodsAcre.
He hadn’t seen the place since the fire. It was haunted by the screams of the doomed. The thought of going up there made him physically sick.
But Terry did not seem like the type of guy who would blow off an anniversary dinner with his wife. His phone was motionless on Kettle Canyon Road. And Eric was the lazy, selfish dickhead who’d sent the poor guy up to that ill-omened place. Alone.
They had all thought it was hugely ironic that he, Anton and Mace, being the only survivors and bearing Jeremiah Paley’s name at the time of his death, had fallen heir to the GodsAcre property. Like it or not, that blackened ruin and the land it was built on actually belonged to them. God help them.
Luckily for them, Otis had managed the property. They all stayed well away from that hellhole.
Now he was about to see the GodsAcre ruins, lonesome and ghostly in the autumn twilight. He’d be lucky if he managed to keep down his fucking lunch.
Don’t flinch from pain. Hah. Old Jeremiah’s command rang in his head as he got into Otis’s four-by-four and headed down Vensel Road. Otis’s gas gauge showed a third of a tank. That should get him up there and back.
He hesitated for one final moment at the turn-off to Kettle Canyon Road. The last time he’d taken this road was when he’d taken Demi up to Lindsay Springs for their scorching tryst at the waterfall. More emotionally charged memories.
Gravel slewed under the tires as he turned onto the road and punched the gas.
Kettle Canyon Road was rougher than he remembered. His belly felt colder and heavier with every lurching mile. Otis’s boat slid around in the back of the pickup, thumping and rattling as he climbed.
Higher and higher. Endless, grinding switchbacks. The trees got shorter, the road narrower. Signs of coming winter were all around. During the winters of his childhood, they had sometimes been snowed in up there for months at a time. They often got eight to ten feet of snow at that elevation, and when they did, they lived like the end of the world had already happened. For all they knew, it had. The Prophet had stockpiled food, fuel, medicine, solar panels, machinery, medical equipment. After Kimball arrived, Jeremiah had invested in a fully equipped med lab in the caverns. Eric didn’t know where Jeremiah’s money had come from, but he must have had a lot of it to build and acquire all that stuff.
As he came closer to the level of the Upper Falls he slowed down. Something caught his eye as he rounded a hairpin turn and he ground to a halt in the thick mud.
A fringe of young pines separated the rough dirt road from the drop-off to the steep, rocky slope of the draw below. What he’d seen was a ragged gap in the fringe of trees, like a missing tooth. Three of the trees in the middle were broken in half.
He got out, trying to breathe down the sickening upwelling of ugly memories. That Humvee knocking Vaughan’s Porsche off the cliff with him inside it, seven years ago.
Crashing through the trees. Snagging on a few more halfway down the steep slope.
Those trees had just barely stopped the car’s fall. He’d hung by a thread.
He saw fresh tire marks in the mud. Deep, wet and obvious. They led up to the edge of the road right in front of the b
roken trees. The tracks did not display any attempt to brake or turn. Clean and straight. Right angles to the edge…and right off.
Pale splinters of fresh wood stuck up from the three broken trees. Eric could smell the tang of fresh pine-sap in the cold as he peered over the edge, his heart thudding.
He saw the glitter of broken glass on the steep, rocky slope, and far below, Terry’s blue jeep in the canyon below. On the edge of Kettle River. Upside down. Crumpled.
There had been no trees on this slope big enough to break Terry’s fall.
Eric pulled out his phone and called 911.
“What is the nature of your emergency?” the operator asked him.
“This is Eric Trask,” he said. “I’m up on Kettle Canyon Road, about two miles below Upper Kettle Falls. I’m looking down at the scene of a car accident. Someone went off the road here and fell pretty far. It looks bad.”
“Is anyone there in need of medical attention?”
“I’m hiking down now to see. If the driver is alive, he’s definitely going to need medical attention, so tell them to hurry. There’s a red Ford four-by-four parked on the road. That’s your landmark.”
“Please stay on the line, sir, so we can—”
“I can’t. I need both my hands to climb.” He cut off the call, looked at the glow of sunset and went back to the four-by-four to fish out the flashlight Otis kept in the glove box. He clambered over the edge, welcoming the mental concentration needed keep from falling as he half scrambled, half tumbled down the rocky mountainside.
The busier his mind, the better. He didn’t want to think about Terry and Deborah’s anniversary dinner, or the Humvee knocking the Porsche off the road. Green trees crunching, branches rushing past him, upside down. Or Otis, cold and stiff in a box in the Shaw’s Crossing Cemetery. Or the roar of flames licking the trees in the darkness.
And the screaming. It never really stopped. It was always there, waiting for him whenever his mind was idle. The Curse, following him like a faithful hound.
I’m so sorry, Deborah. I should never have sent him up to this godforsaken place.
“Terry!” he yelled “Terry? Can you hear me?”
No response, not that he could have heard one over the roar of the water rushing down the draw to join with Kettle River.
The closer he got to the Jeep, the less hope he had. Terry’s car had tumbled end over end multiple times. It was flattened and twisted, every window shattered.
Eric had to crawl over piles of logs, tangled branches and the enormous tumbled boulders of the river to get to the Jeep. He steeled himself as he crouched to peer inside.
Oh God. He turned away, and his ass landed heavily on a rock as the strength all rushed out of his legs.
Terry was definitely dead. He hung upside down in his seat belt, neck broken, head half crushed, his face streaked with blood. His eyes were wide and blank. Surprised.
There was no point, but still he reached inside, feeling at the base of Terry’s throat for his pulse. There was none. His blood felt tacky, almost dry. It was all over for him.
Then there was nothing left to do but sit with Terry’s body as the dusk deepened, the river rushing and roaring in his ears.
Another man dead. His young wife a widow. And Eric was the gutless asshole who’d sent the poor guy up here to die. The same, exact death that had almost claimed him seven years ago. He’d cheated the Curse of its prize. It had taken Terry in his place.
No. He had to stop thinking this way or he’d go nuts. Jeremiah-style nuts.
The roar of the stream couldn’t drown out the screaming, the crackle of flames in his mind. There was no fire anywhere near, but still he smelled smoke. He was choking on it. He wanted to bellow and roar, smash and break things, but there was no point.
Everything was already broken.
It was full dark before he saw the blue and red police flashers crawling slowly up the hill. He waited until the flashers stopped moving near where he had parked the truck, and turned on the flashlight, signaling the cops until they trained a powerful searchlight down the hill, pointing it at Terry’s crushed Jeep.
He waved to them, stepped out of their blinding pool of light and started to climb.
He didn’t remember the slog back up. It was like he watched from someplace very distant while some other guy made that effort, clawing his way back up that steep, muddy slope. Once he reached the top, he had a conversation with some cops, a man and a woman. He’d known their names in another life, but not tonight.
He didn’t know if he’d been coherent, or if he’d babbled nonsense. An ambulance followed. Too late for Terry. The ambulance attendants tried to make a fuss over Eric, but he waved them away. When everyone was looking elsewhere, he got into Otis’s pickup and took off. In the rearview, he saw someone running after him, shouting for him to stop.
He just kept on driving.
10
Benedict Vaughan stepped out in front of her from behind a van, blocking the gate to the marina. Demi was so startled, she almost dropped the shopping bags full of food trays that she carried. She stepped back awkwardly. “Dad! What are you doing here?”
Her father gestured toward her car, which she’d left parked across the street. “I came to your house, but you were driving off just as I pulled up. I wanted to talk to you.”
That made the alarm bells jangle. Coming to see her? Dad never came to see her.
He had that same sweaty, clammy look she’d noticed at the funeral yesterday, and his eyes were puffy and reddened. “Dad, are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” he said impatiently. “It’s you I’m worrying about.”
She raised her eyebrows. “Don’t worry. I’m fine.”
“Are you? I heard you were out drinking last night with that…that person.”
“That’s nobody’s business,” she said, with studied calm. “Don’t listen to gossip.”
“I heard he was in a bar-room brawl. That Boyd Nevins ended up in the Urgent Care because of him. This is the kind of person you want to party with?”
“Boyd had it coming,” she said. “I was there. Boyd was the instigator.”
“Of course you would come to his defense,” he snarled. “Of course.”
Demi took a deep breath, and let it out slowly, counting down. “Dad,” she said evenly. “Please. Let’s not do this.”
“Believe me, I would rather not. But you force my hand, Demetra. Every time.”
She shook her head. There was no point in starting an old argument, but there was a question burning in her mind that only Dad could answer, and it just came out of her.
“Speaking of Boyd,” she said. “There’s something I have to ask you. Eric told me he never took the keys to the Porsche. He said that Boyd was driving it that morning. That Boyd picked him up, took him to Peyton State Park, and drove off and left him there. He also says he was forced off the road by a Humvee while he was bringing the car back. Why did I never hear that side of the story?”
Her father’s eyes went wide with outrage. “Because it’s ridiculous!” he sputtered. “He’d say anything to gain your sympathies. That’s the most farfetched thing I ever heard. Boyd was somewhere else at that time, and fully accounted for. This man is supposed to be relatively bright, isn’t he? You’d think he’d come up with something a little more believable than that! I’m embarrassed that you’d even take it into consideration!”
“You never told me Eric claimed that Boyd was driving the Porsche.”
“Of course not. Why should I? It was a bullshit claim. Quickly shown to be completely false. It didn’t deserve to be repeated.”
Dad’s face was turning that eggplant color that indicated the danger zone. She edged away from him, gripping her bags. “Well, okay. I just had to ask. Oh, by the way. I’m taking the boat out to Spruce Tip tonight.”
“Tonight? By yourself? I don’t think that’s safe.”
“It’s been an intense couple of days, and the island relaxes me,”
she said. “It’s a beautiful sunset. Look at the colors on the water. I’ve done it many times. I’m an old pro.”
“In the middle of the summer, maybe!”
“It’s fine now,” she soothed. “The lake is very calm. There’s good cell reception out there these days. Absolutely nothing to worry about.”
Already she was kicking herself for telling him. He would never have known if she’d just taken the boat and gone. Now he might forbid her, which would be complicated and stupid.
“Okay, honey,” he said. “Of course. Go ahead to the island. Just be careful, all right?”
Demi stared at him, disoriented by his sudden change in tone.
“Uh…uh, great,” she faltered. “Thanks. Talk to you tomorrow, Dad.”
“’Night, honey.”
Honey? Since when had Dad called her ‘honey?’ Twice in the last minute.
She forced a smile and a nod, hoisted up her bags, and headed down the wooden walkway. When she got to the boat slip and turned around, he still hadn’t moved.
He had made a lot of huffy noises about Boyd, and the Porsche. But he’d never come out and said, in so many words, that what Eric said wasn’t true.
Just that it wasn’t probable.
He giving her that raw, hollow-eyed stare again. She’d noticed it periodically for the last few years. Even from here, it creeped her out. It was the look of a guy whose dire predictions had all come horribly true.
Despair, but no surprise.
* * *
Benedict watched until he lost sight of the boat. He got into his car and sat there, frozen, until he started feeling self-conscious. People were starting to notice him.
He put his phone to his ear. That looked better.
Demetra had just thrown him the life-saving rope he needed. But it came at a price.
He had tried once before to get out of this trap back when Elaine was alive. But Elaine couldn’t accept the danger they were in. He still remembered her eyes, full of shocked horror, after he confided his escape plan for the two of them.
It was extreme, yes. Risky. But Elaine wouldn’t even consider it. She’d wanted to run to the police, call the newspaper. Blow the whole thing wide open. She had no fucking idea what they were dealing with.
Headlong: The Hellbound Brotherhood Book Two Page 10