So much for keeping it simple.
Jax’s smile seemed to falter for a second before returning to normal, like a light flickering. It was never fully gone, but it noticeably dimmed for the briefest of moments, making Celeste’s heart skip a beat. Had she just blown it?
“Well,” he said as he drew a smiley face on the receipt and reached out with it, looking her in the eye. She met his gaze and saw that his eyes were different. There was a coldness to them now that there hadn’t been when she first walked in. “Hopefully you’re feeling up to it by then.”
“You know what they say,” she replied, taking the receipt and holding eye contact as best she could. “The first day is always the worst. I bet I’ll be raring to go by tomorrow.”
“I’m sure you will be.”
Celeste left the pharmacy as quickly as possible and ran out to her car through the downpour. She was nearly drenched by the time she slammed her car door shut, her teeth chattering from the sudden cold of the autumn rain. After turning the car on and cranking the heat up, Celeste pulled out her phone and started looking through her pictures to find the best one.
It turned out that Celeste’s hands were shaking so badly from nerves that she ruined almost every single photo she took. Thankfully, the last one was clear enough that she could zoom in and make out the information on most of the missing person flyers. She took individual screenshots of each poster before setting about on the last leg of her mission.
Celeste’s heart began beating faster as she cross-checked the dates and locations on the flyers with the ones from the atlas. Starting from the oldest to the newest, every last piece of information she could see in the pictures was a one-to-one match with a page on the atlas. Twenty-nine locations and dates, twenty-nine missing women, and twenty-nine perfect matches. There was simply no denying it.
Corvus was responsible for every single disappearance.
Her stomach turned at the revelation.
Should she go to the police? Her mind turned to Andrew, alone at the farmhouse and awaiting her return. With the phone line disconnected, she had no way of updating him on the discovery, and going to the police could take hours. Plus, she didn’t have any of the evidence on her. Would they even listen?
Her racing thoughts were interrupted when a bolt of lightning cut across the sky, followed a half-second later by a massive thunderclap. Visibility was growing more limited by the minute. She needed to hurry if she wanted to make it back to Andrew before the storm got too bad.
Celeste decided on the spot–she would pick her husband up first, help him collect the evidence, and then the two of them would go to the police together. Throwing the car in drive, she pulled out of the parking lot and started the trek back to the house.
Unbeknownst to Celeste, Jackson Crawley stood in the front window of his pharmacy and watched as she sped off down the road.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Andrew hardly noticed the sheets of rain hammered down on him as he stalked purposefully down the driveway. He met gusts of wind head-on, grunting as he braced himself against them. Thunder boomed and lightning danced across the sky, but still, he marched onward.
The storm above couldn’t hold a candle to the maelstrom within him.
Everything he thought he knew about his grandfather was a lie.
How many times had he shouldered the weight of the town’s rumors about Eileen? How many times had he defended Corvus and ended up with his face in the dirt for it? How many quiet moments had he spent convincing himself that those rumors couldn’t possibly be true? That his grandfather couldn’t possibly be capable of something like that?
It was all for nothing, and now Andrew was the fool for sticking up for him.
His tumultuous thoughts turned to the countless hours he had spent alone with Corvus in the two years he had lived in Dry Creek. They ate dinner together five nights a week, worked on the farm together daily, and slept right next door to each other every single night. Well, every night that Corvus wasn’t out kidnapping and murdering young women.
Tears mixed with rain as Andrew thought about those girls. If Celeste was right, then Corvus had had at least thirty victims under his belt, including Eileen, and two of them had died while Andrew was just a short walk away. He had likely been in the barn at the same time as them and never even knew it. His stomach lurched inside him at that thought, threatening to empty its contents on the pavement as he reached the main road.
He quickly checked both ways for headlights, and, seeing none, he stomped across the road, setting his sights on the building in the center of the field.
The barn looked skeletal in the storm. Flashes of lightning revealed every missing board and loose shingle, and the entire structure swayed slightly in the strong wind. It looked like it was one missing nail away from collapse, and Andrew figured that, with his luck, tonight would be the night it finally did.
His feet sank deep into the mud with each step, the suction threatening to take his shoes if he wasn’t careful. The last dozen yards in front of the barn were the worst of it, where years of farm traffic had compacted the dirt and left it a veritable quagmire. It was there that the mud came up over his feet entirely, and Andrew had to stop completely to pull his right shoe out of the mud–a balancing act for the ages.
Andrew pulled the door open and stepped inside. Water fell from the ceiling in steady drips around the barn, their impacts blending with the steady rattling of the rain outside as they echoed through the cavernous space. Andrew flipped the switch on the wall next to the entrance and watched the overhead lights flicker to life. They cast a dim glow over the barn, washing out the room and throwing long shadows across the walls and floor.
Thunder crashed in the sky above as Andrew dropped to his hand and knees to search for the trapdoor. The whole endeavor was awkward with only one arm, and Andrew was fairly certain that he looked like a madman, but he managed to eventually sweep most of the hay to the sides of the room.
He didn’t find anything.
Pacing the length and width of the barn several times, Andrew scanned the floor as thoroughly as possible, growing more convinced with each pass that the journal was just an old man’s deranged ramblings. Maybe Corvus was only guilty of what happened to Eileen, or maybe he wasn’t even guilty of that. Grief could do strange things to a person. Maybe he made it all up as a way to mourn the disappearance of his wife?
Andrew gave up his search and slumped against the wall by the door to pout, flexing the fingers on his left hand, trying to get feeling back in them. He had gotten so worked up and marched out to the barn in the middle of a torrential downpour, and for what? To sweep the floor and feel foolish? He leaned his head back on the wall and let his eyes unfocus, sinking deeper into despair.
He was about to get up and leave when a brilliant flash of lightning illuminated the space, briefly filling in all of the shadows and even reflecting off the tractor in the middle of the room.
The tractor!
Andrew nearly jumped to his feet. The answer was right in front of him the whole time. How could he have been such an idiot?
He practically ran over to the side of the tractor and climbed up the side before opening up the door and sliding into the cabin. Scrambling to find the key, Andrew frantically checked all around the floor and dashboard.
They weren’t there.
He hopped down and checked each wheel well, starting with the front left tire. The key was tucked up on the ledge of the last wheel well he checked because of course, it was. He looped back around to the other side and climbed back into the cabin.
Awkwardly turning the key in the ignition with his left hand, Andrew felt the vehicle roared to life. The teenager in him roared with glee along with the engine, thrilled to finally be living the dream. The adult in Andrew, however, maintained a laser focus on the grim task at hand and shoved the teenager back into the depths of his mind. This was no place for an inner child.
Headlights filled the front half of t
he room, even spilling out through the open door, illuminating the deluge outside. The gears shifted cleanly, and Andrew backed the tractor up to the end of the barn, stopping just a few inches shy of the wall. Between the purr of the engine and the smooth handling, it was clear that Corvus never let the vehicle’s maintenance slip, even as the rest of his home and property decayed around him.
Having cleared a whole new section of the floor, Andrew parked the tractor and climbed down out of the cabin, leaving it running as he did. The extra light would make his search that much easier. He got down on his knees once more and swept away at the last patches of hay with renewed vigor. It didn’t take long for him to feeling something cold and metallic beneath the straw.
Grabbing hold of the metal handle and lifting, Andrew retched as a sickly sweet stench erupted from below in a blast of warmth. He dropped the trapdoor and vomited on the ground next to it, adding that to the ever-growing list of unpleasant experiences that day had brought him. Certain that there were at least two or three more unpleasantries awaiting him under the surface, Andrew took a deep breath and pulled the hatch open again.
The trapdoor flipped over and landed on the other side of the opening with a resounding thud, and Andrew peered into the darkness below. He fished his phone out of his back pocket and turned on the light, revealing a ten-foot drop, and a wooden ladder leaning against the earthen wall. Andrew put his phone between his lips and clamped down as he awkwardly maneuvered into position to climb down into the hole.
Out in the field, illuminated by the tractor’s headlights, a horned silhouette slowly approached the barn as Andrew’s head dipped beneath the surface of the earth.
It took far too long for Andrew to descend the ladder, having to carefully balance his body each time he moved his hand from one rung to another. He wasn’t sure how he’d get back out again, but that was the least of his concerns at that moment. After Andrew’s feet finally landed on the ground, he gratefully pulled the phone out of his mouth and massaged his lips with his tongue as he scanned the area.
He stood in a small three-foot by three-foot entryway that opened into a cramped tunnel. The ground sloped downward as it went, dotted every few yards by wooden posts and support beams. The hole looked like a miniature version of a mining tunnel, only without the stereotypical minecart tracks. Andrew also spotted a kerosene lamp and some matches on the ground near the mouth of the tunnel, and, after striking a match and lighting the lantern, the mine look was complete.
Andrew turned his flashlight off and put his phone away, plunging the tunnel into a much darker, warmer orange light. The sounds of the storm were much quieter now, and the underground itself was nearly silent, making Andrew feel like he had been transported to another world. He took a few hesitant steps forward, ducking beneath the low-hanging support beams. Oddly enough, even as Andrew crept through an underground tunnel toward what was presumably his late grandfather’s torture dungeon, he felt almost nothing at all.
He was drenched head-to-toe, his feet were covered in mud, and his whole right arm ached as he shivered from the cold, and yet Andrew felt like he was a passive observer to what was going on. Even the warmth of the lantern on his frozen fingertips seemed miles away. He absentmindedly made his way through the tunnel as it sloped downward, going about twenty yards before taking a sharp right turn into a small cavern.
The ceiling was a few feet higher in this new space, but that was the only thing it had going for it. Even from his detached vantage point, Andrew felt a jolt of disgust and terror pierce through the numbness. Lamplight spilled across the cave, revealing a scene out of nightmares.
The kill shed was ten feet long and ten feet wide. The back wall was made of stone, and affixed to the rock face was a pair of thick, iron shackles that laid open on the floor. Long, red claw marks marred the stone around the shackles, and thick gouges had been taken out of the earth in front of them, evidence of dozens of women trying desperately to escape their grim fates.
On the right side of the ‘room’ stood an old wooden operating table. Five sets of leather straps were attached to the sides of the table in the perfect positions to bind someone’s arms, legs, and head. Even in the dim glow of the lantern, crimson stains could be seen covering the wooden surface.
On the left side of the room sat a workbench, grotesquely mirroring the one in the barn above, piled high with bloody tools and several sets of the missing antlers. Lined across the back of the bench were several bottles of pills and various fluids. Andrew’s feet carried him over to the work area, where he found, among other things, a hand crank drill, a hammer and nails, and Corvus’s pair of bolt cutters. He set the lantern down in an empty spot on the bench as a small, dry laugh escaped Andrew’s mouth at the sight of the tool. Of course, they would be here.
He threw the bolt cutters at the rock face to his right, feeling the smallest bit of release that managed to reach him in his distant hiding place. Following the next impulse that came to him, Andrew picked up the hammer, whirled around, and lobbed it at the operating table behind him, where it embedded itself claw end first with a satisfying thud.
A shuddering sigh escaped Andrew’s lips as he stared at the hammer, which was now sticking straight up out of the table on the other side of the room. He turned slowly back around and grasped the first pill bottle with trembling fingers. Picking it up and reading the label, he could only make out the word ‘ketamine’ before he threw that as well. It shattered against the stone, sending pills and small shards of broken glass cascading to the ground below.
On Andrew went, just like that, down the entire back of the workbench. Picking up bottle after bottle, of sedatives and antibiotics alike, and breaking it against the cavern wall, trying desperately to feel something through the numbness. Pills, liquids, and shards of glass alike littered the ground around the shackles, with some of the sedatives draining into the ruts that desperate bloodied fingers had left in the dirt.
As Andrew picked up the last container and threw it, a small piece of paper fluttered off the workbench and fell to the floor below. The final crunching sound rang in his ears as he wiped the tears off of his face and caught his breath. He stared at the wall for a long time before he remembered the flash of white he had seen fall back behind the bench. His breathing steadied slightly as he stumbled over and picked up the small rectangle of thin paper.
All of Andrew’s lost emotions came rushing back to him at once when he realized with horror what he was looking at. He turned the paper over and saw an empty pharmacy script. The only writing on it came in the form of a small, familiar smiley face.
***
The rain beat thunderously on the windshield as Celeste tore down the dark road toward the farmhouse. She fishtailed somewhat on the gravel when she cut the wheel to the left, taking the turn onto the driveway far too quickly. The rain let up slightly as she sped by underneath the thick canopy of trees, but it returned in full force when Celeste roared into the clearing in front of the house.
She skidded to a stop in the middle of the lawn, kicking up mud and grass. Turning off the car and running through the rain, Celeste’s clothes were soaked by the time she had run the dozen or so yards up to the shelter of the porch. The door was unlocked when she got to it, which was her first sign that something wasn’t quite right.
As much as Andrew liked to put on a show about being the protector and fearless guardian in their little family, Celeste knew better than anyone that he was a scaredy-cat. His imagination often got the better of him, and Celeste was no stranger to coming home and finding every light in the house on while Andrew sat huddled under a blanket because he watched a scary movie while she was out with her friends. Everything she knew about her husband told her that the door should have been locked when she got back.
Pulling the door open, Celeste bolted into the living room to find it empty. Every light was indeed turned on, just like she predicted, but Andrew was nowhere to be seen. She called out his name as she ran up the stairs t
o look for him. Looking through both bedrooms and the attic, Celeste didn’t find a single dark room, but the house was very much empty. She turned the lights off as she left each room, plunging the house incrementally into darkness.
Even in an emergency, there was no need to waste so much energy.
The stairs let out their usual sequence of groans at an accelerated rate when Celeste ran down them to get back to the living room. She checked down in the basement and called his name a few more times, but it was becoming increasingly clear that Andrew wasn’t in the house anymore. Where could he have gone?
She paced back and forth across the living room in a tizzy, trying desperately to break through the noise in her brain and figure out why Andrew would have left the farmhouse in the middle of the storm. She was chewing on her thumbnail by the living room window when she noticed a line of white particles going across the sill. Frowning, she touched a finger to the line and found that it was salt.
That’s when the pieces clicked and Celeste realized what was different about the room. Outside of the strange salt line in the window, she saw that the atlas and folklore books had all been moved. They sat in loose stacks on the coffee table with multiple new folded page corners visible from her perspective. That was the work of Andrew.
Which explained the salt.
Celeste had always had a small fascination with myths and legends, and she had spent many nights as a child reading books about goblins and fairies and trolls. Those childhood memories had been what prompted her to keep Corvus’s stolen library books in the first place, and they were also the reason why she suddenly recalled a piece of information that confused her as a child. Faeries hate salt.
Andrew must have taken his side of the deal seriously, going so far as to pour lines of salt in front of every point of egress. Now that she was looking for it, she saw the line at the base of the front door, too. But nothing about that explained where he had gone. Perhaps Corvus’s journal, which had been tossed onto an empty part of the table, held the answer.
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