The Purchase

by Amy Cross

  Copyright 2019 Amy Cross

  All Rights Reserved

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, events, entities and places are either products of the author's imagination or are used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual people, businesses, entities or events is entirely coincidental.

  Kindle edition

  First published: March 2019

  Two very different men meet in a remote cabin. One is looking for gold. The other is transporting a very special purchase back to his home. As a snowstorm rages all around them, these two men are about to come face to face with an evil they can't possibly comprehend.

  Richard Garrett is a man on a mission. A former soldier, he's now dedicated to a strange and unnatural ritual that sees him travel far and wide. The purchase on the back of his cart has to be protected. Stuart Munver, meanwhile, is a man whose greed knows no end, who has been searching endlessly for gold, without any success. Desperate to prove himself, Munver will stop at nothing in his quest for glory.

  What strange purchase does Garrett have on the back of his cart? Why are two mysterious gold coins marked in an unknown language? And – in the present day – can two archaeologists uncover the truth before the evil strikes again? The Purchase is a horror story about greed, faith, and the true price of returning from the dead.

  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Epilogue

  The Purchase

  Prologue

  “Okay. Let's see what we've got here.”

  Climbing out of the car, wincing a little at the pain in his back, Doctor Jack Levant looked toward the cabin and immediately noticed a few key details. Thirty years in the field had taught him to work fast.

  From the cabin's design and layout, he could immediately identify its construction as early-to-mid nineteenth century, which meant that it was most likely home to one of the prospectors who'd flooded this part of the country. The fact that the cabin was nestled in a valley, so far from the usual trade routes, made it a working station rather than a trading point. The construction looked ramshackle, as if it had been hurriedly put together by, perhaps, a small team. Possibly just one man. And the lack of any other buildings in the area – for miles around, in fact – made him think that this had been home to someone desperate, someone who was willing to go to a place that everybody else had written off.

  All of this, he'd worked out in less time for him to straighten his posture and swing the car door shut.

  “Doctor Levant,” a breathless female voice said, as footsteps hurried closer. “I'm so grateful to you for coming all this way. I know your time's very valuable, but I promise I wouldn't have called if I didn't have something to show you.”

  “It's not every day that one's student discovers a perfectly preserved Rattier cabin in Marsh territory,” he said with a faint smile, before turning to Catherine Chandler. “I looked at the photos you sent. Allow me to be the first to offer my congratulations.”

  “It was mostly luck, really,” she said, reaching out to shake his hand.

  “Of course, but luck can make or break careers.” He shook her hand briefly, before stepping past her and starting to make his way across the muddy open space. “Without luck, you'll never get anywhere. You've got a good two or three years' worth of work out here. Research papers. Conferences. If you don't make a PHD out of this place, I'll be sorely disappointed.”

  “It's amazing that the site has never been touched before,” she said, hurrying alongside him. “One in a million. It's also amazing that the bodies have barely been disturbed.”

  “Bodies?”

  “Four of them. We're still in the early stages of our examinations, but I think it's three male and one female. And they're -”

  “Prospectors, of course,” he said, interrupting her. He could see Chandler's fellow students working at various locations around the cabin's perimeter. “Possibly a family, although that's rather surprising given how small this place looks. I'd have thought it might have been home to a loner, striking out in the hope of getting some gold. Not that there was ever much gold in this region, so I'm thinking it was a chancer. Or a madman.”

  “The bodies are in quite unusual positions,” Chandler continued as they stopped in front of the cabin. Turning, she pointed toward the front of the building. “There's one male inside, and then a male and a female outside together, and then a third male a little further away.”

  She pointed toward the northern side of the site.

  Levant looked, but at first he saw nothing of note.

  “In the tree, Sir,” Chandler added.

  He looked up, and finally he saw a human figure hanging from one of the branches. Some form of noose appeared to be tied around his neck.

  “How is he still up there after all this time?” he asked, genuinely puzzled.

  “A combination of unlikely factors,” she explained. “The rope isn't actually a rope at all, it's some kind of chain. Environmental conditions have drastically reduced the damage to the body. And there doesn't seem to be much in the way of wildlife around here.”

  “So you're telling me that the poor bastard's been hanging there for a century and a half?”

  “It would seem that way.”

  For a moment, Levant could only stare at the body. In all his years of field work, he'd never seen anything quite so bizarre. He was almost jealous of Chandler's luck, and he was starting to think that perhaps this site was too valuable to be entrusted to a mere student. He didn't want to seem arrogant, of course, but he was coming rapidly to the conclusion that he and he alone would be properly suited to the task. Even if it meant Chandler had to wait a little longer for her PHD.

  “Fascinating,” he murmured. “Evidently you've stumbled upon quite a tableau. One can't help but wonder who these four poor wretches were, and how they ended up meeting their end out here in the wilderness.”

  “This part of Marsh territory was struck by a particularly cold winter back in the late nineteenth century,” she pointed out. “No-one knows how many prospectors and settlers died, but the estimates range from a few hundred to as many as one and a half thousand. There was a three-month period that's still referred to by the locals as the Ice Winter. It's quite possible that these people died during that winter. It's said that in some areas there was up to five feet of snow. Roads were impassable. Whole towns got cut off for months.”

  “Interesting,” he said, before making his way over to the cabin. Reaching the window, he peered inside and saw two students examining a dead body that was sitting upright in a chair.

  “Male,” Chandler said, stopping next to him and observing the scene. “Mature. No younger than twenty, I estimate, and probably at least a couple of decades older. There's a whiskey bottle next to him, and look, part of his skull has been destroyed. There are shards over in the corner. There's also a knife in the back of the chair.”

  “So there is,” Levant replied, looking
down and seeing the handle of a knife poking out.

  “There's that broken window pane, too,” Chandler pointed out. “I can't help wondering when that happened.”

  “This man wasn't a prospector,” Levant said. “You can tell by his clothes. They're too fine.”

  “That's what I thought.”

  “So he was just visiting.”

  “There's a cart,” she explained. “It's right over here.”

  For a moment, Levant could only stare at the skull of the body on the chair. A few scraps of skin still clung to the bone, and a surprising amount of hair remained on the scalp. The skull's remaining jawbone section was hanging low, although Levant knew it was impossible to determine if it had been in that position when the man had died. Perhaps it had slipped due to the processes of decomposition. Overall, around two thirds to three quarters of the skull remained intact.

  “You mentioned a cart?” he said finally.

  “That's where the other two bodies were.”

  He turned to her.

  “This way,” she said, and she led him around to the side of the cabin, where another student was taking samples from the front of a medium-sized wooden cart.

  “Well, look at this,” Levant muttered as soon as he spotted the two withered corpses on the back of the cart. “Your mystery site just became a little more mysterious, Ms. Chandler.”

  “One male, one female,” she explained as they stopped in front of the cart and looked at the bodies. “They appear to have been... I don't know, entwined somehow when they died. Embracing, perhaps. There's no sign of any clothing. I'm leaning toward the idea that they were perhaps placed on the cart after they died.”

  “Why would that be?”

  “I don't know at this stage.”

  “You need to figure that out.”

  “I know. There's quite a lot of discoloration, especially around the necks. I'm not sure yet whether or not that's relevant.”

  “Star-crossed lovers, perhaps?” He raised a skeptical eyebrow, before turning and looking toward the body that still hung – after so many years – from a distant tree. “This cabin was the scene of a robbery,” he declared suddenly. “It's obvious.”

  “A robbery?”

  “One that went tragically wrong. The clues are all there, if you know how to put them together.” He turned back to look at the bodies on the cart. “These two, together with the man in the tree, were obviously thieves. They most likely came to steal from the occupier of the cabin. The man inside disturbed them. He killed two of them and then he punished the third by hanging him. Then, doubtless injured after the tussle, he sat down inside and died due to a self-administered shot to the head.”

  “There's a rifle,” she told him, “but it's propped against a wall.”

  “Perhaps it flew from his grip.”

  “And propped itself neatly?”

  “Stranger things have happened. It had to land somewhere.”

  Chandler thought about this for a moment, and finally she furrowed her brow.

  “Do you really think the whole thing could be so simple?” she asked.

  “I wouldn't have said it,” he replied archly, “if I didn't believe it.”

  “There are other possibilities,” she suggested. “I think it would be rather rash to leap to a conclusion so quickly.”

  “You're absolutely correct,” Doctor Levant said, “but I've seen countless sites of this nature and almost all of them turned out to have been sites where robberies had taken place. This was a wild and lawless part of the country back in the old days, Ms. Chandler. You mustn't let your modern sensibilities cloud your judgment. Although this site was occupied just a century and a half ago, it's like a whole different world. A barbaric world.”

  “Of course,” she replied, a little timidly. “I know you're probably right.”

  “I'll bet you, a dollar to a penny, that this the site of a robbery that went horribly wrong.” He stepped toward the cabin and stared at it for a moment, and then he turned back to her. “I mean, think about it. What else could possibly have happened here?”

  One

  149 years ago

  “No! Damn it!”

  The left-rear wheel bucked and then slipped on a patch of stone, almost tilting the entire cart over.

  Straining with every last ounce of strength, Garrett held onto the chain and pulled. Snow was falling all around and he was already knee-deep, and he knew that – if the cart tilted much further – it would be lost forever, along with its cargo. His whole journey would be ruined, he'd be broke, and there'd be nothing left to do except sit down and die. He adjusted his grip on the chain as he felt the weight shift, and he knew it was only the snow that was keeping him from sliding onto his face. His shoulders were burning with pain, his arms felt as if they were almost coming out of their sockets, but he clung to the chains for dear life because he knew that the cart was all he had left.

  “I will not fail now!” he snarled through gritted teeth. “I still have work to do!”

  Finally he cried out.

  He had nothing left to give. The cart was tilting more and more, and any second now either the weight would turn or the chain would break or his arms would be ripped away from his shoulders. Still he refused to give in, and he pulled and pulled as the cart leaned further to its side and threatened to tumble down into the ditch. Letting out several impromptu grunts, Garrett began to feel the chain slipping a little more in his great gloved hands. He was clenching his teeth so hard now, he thought they might shatter, but he thought of Mary and of everyone back home, and he knew he had to give his all. For them. For her. For the chance of making this journey, and of fixing everything. Most importantly, for the importance of his work.

  A knife slipped from his belt buckle and fell into the snow. Garrett didn't even notice as the knife – its blade smeared in fresh blood – slipped beneath the surface and disappeared from sight.

  “They need me!” he hissed. “They can't do without me!”

  Suddenly the cart shuddered, as the wheels shifted under the great weight. Garrett clung to the chain harder than ever. He waited to see the cart fall down into the ditch, but instead he saw the top section tilt the other way, and then there was a loud thud as the wheels settled and the chain fell slack.

  Garrett waited, not daring to let go, but he didn't understand what had just happened. The cart had been doomed, tipping further and further, yet suddenly it seemed to have righted itself. Finally he set the chain down and stepped closer, and to his surprise he saw that the wheels had somehow slipped a little further and had settled on a miraculously flat and bare patch of stone. Exactly how that had happened, he could not begin to judge, but he felt a rush of relief as he realized that disaster had been averted.

  Sighing with relief, he closed his eyes and made the mark of the cross against his chest, and then he turned to go and fetch the chain again. At the last moment, however, he spotted a section of wood poking out behind one of the wheels at an unusual angle, and he stepped closer and crouched down to take a closer look.

  As soon as he saw the splintered end that jutted out from near the side of the cart's under-section, he knew that he had a new problem. The support for the entire frame was damaged, and there was no way that the cart would survive the sixty miles that lay ahead. He could fix it up with the right tools, of course, but at present he had no such tools. The cart had been saved from toppling into the ditch, but in so doing it had suffered damage that might yet cripple the journey. Garrett knew that the cart wouldn't last much longer.

  Getting to his feet, he took a step back and tried to figure out a solution. Could he somehow strengthen the damaged section? Could he find some other way of transporting his cargo? He looked for a moment at the great section of cloth that covered the items in the rear of the cart. At the edges, where the sheet wasn't quite tied down, the fabric flapped in the wind, while pockets of snow had gathered in the various creases and folds. He thought for a moment of what was under t
he sheet, but he immediately understood that simply carrying the cargo on his back was no good. Maybe he could have done that back when he was a young, strong man, but now he was nearing fifty and his body was too far gone.

  He needed to fix the cart somehow.

  Sighing, he turned and looked around. Night was settling in, and he was hopelessly behind schedule. He'd tried to save time by taking a different route home, by going off the map's trails and going direct through the valley. It had seemed a good idea at the time, but now he was miles from anywhere and he was starting to wonder whether he'd made a fatal mistake. He didn't know the land out here in this part of the region, and he couldn't exactly turn around and head back to the other trail. As he stood with snow falling all around, he found himself remembering some words of wisdom imparted many years ago by his father.

  “Out there in the wilds,” the old man had said, “one mistake can kill a man. It doesn't even have to be a big mistake. One little error of judgment, and that can be the end of you.”

  Had the moment finally arrived? By taking this unknown trail, had he made the one error that was going to cost him his life? He thought for a moment of Mary waiting back home, and of how she'd start to worry once he'd been gone a few more days. He thought of her begging men to journey out and search, and he thought of her holding out hope for his return. How long would she wait? A month? A year? He knew that his body would likely never be found in such a barren, remote place, not unless wolves came past. For a few seconds, the prospect of his imminent death stretched out before him and he realized that his father had been right. One mistake, that's all it had taken.

  Dropping to his knees, finally exhausted by his years of labor, he suddenly felt all the fight drain from his body. The years piled onto his shoulders and in an instant he began to realize that he was an old man now. He'd been getting on with his work for so long now, always struggling along alone, and perhaps he'd given too little thought to the fact that he was getting weaker. But who would do this work once he was gone? He'd trained no-one, warned no-one, told no-one the importance of his task. He'd taken the burden entirely without help, barely even explaining much to Mary. Now, as he signed and allowed his tired shoulders to arch slightly, he began to feel as if he could no longer go on. Somehow, someone else would have to pick up where he was leaving off. Someone else would have to perform the good work.