by Lukens, Mark
Travis bent down and laid the gun down at his feet.
“There’s a boy named David,” his dead father said. “He’s with a man and a woman named Cole and Stella. They have traveled south to a town called Cody’s Pass. I think you have seen their snowmobile tracks in the snow.”
Travis nodded slightly.
“Kill the boy and I will not harm your mother or sister any further. But you must do it quickly. For every hour that you do not kill the boy, I will take a piece of them. A finger. A toe. An eyeball. A tongue.”
“Kill a kid?” Travis asked, his voice squeaking with panic. “I can’t just … just kill some kid I don’t even know.”
Travis looked at his sister, then at his mother.
Nora shook her head no. “Don’t do it, Travis,” she whispered. “Please …”
Travis’s dead father took a step over to the table next to the couch. He picked up the bloodstained kitchen knife. “Have you ever seen someone skinned alive?” he asked as he walked over to Nora. He raised the blade up to her face and pressed the point of the knife gently into her fleshy cheek. “I could take her face off in one whole piece and put it on your sister like a Halloween mask.”
“I’ll kill you first!” Travis roared as helpless tears streamed out of his eyes. “Whatever the hell you are!”
“You want to see what I am?” Travis’s dead father asked. He dropped the knife to the carpet. His body began to bulge suddenly in some places, the fabric of his dirty clothing pushing out. His suitcoat and shirt tore open; a long, segmented leg pushed out through his rotted flesh. Grayish goo was stuck to the thing’s giant insect-like leg. But then it wasn’t an insect leg anymore, it morphed into a rubbery tentacle, like a snake.
Travis’s mother screamed and nearly fell out of her chair, trying to lean as far away from the monstrosity next to her as possible. She still held her bloody hand cradled in the stained rag.
“I’m ancient …” Travis’s dead father said. “I’ve been here a long, long time. I am much more than you could ever understand. I am more powerful than you could ever imagine. If you will not kill the boy, I will have some fun with all three of you, and then I will find the next family to kill the boy. And then the next one. I won’t stop. If you want to save your mother and your sister, all you have to do is kill the boy.”
“Okay!” Travis screamed. His eyesight was blurry with tears now. This was all going too fast. He just wanted everything to slow down so he could think for a minute. But the thing that had somehow gotten inside of his dead father’s body wasn’t going to give him a chance.
“Kill the boy,” his dead father said again as the segmented and rubbery thing retracted back inside his father’s body. “It’s that simple. Use your gun and put a bullet in the boy’s brain. He won’t feel a thing. Do it, and then all of this will be over. If not, I can promise you that you cannot imagine the things I can do to them.”
“I’ll do it,” Travis said as tears spilled out of his eyes. “Just please … please don’t hurt them anymore.”
CHAPTER 24
Cody’s Pass, Colorado
After they rode the snowmobile down the hill and towards the edge of town, Cole stashed it in the brush and covered it with some broken branches. There was nothing they could do about the tracks leading up to the brush … eventually the snowmobile would be found.
They walked the next mile to the nearest buildings at the edge of Cody’s Pass. As they walked down the sidewalks and the plowed streets of the town, they tried to act normally, and with David’s long black hair hidden underneath the hood of his coat, they just looked like a family walking down the road.
There weren’t a lot of people out walking around, even though the storm had passed by hours ago. The sky was blue and cloudless. A lot of the businesses were still closed up, but there were a few people driving around, some driving large pickups, many with plows attached to the front of the trucks.
Stella heard a snowmobile in the distance and turned around to look. It was a teenager racing across a field of snow in the distance behind some houses. All of this snow must be a dream for him, she thought, but a nightmare for others.
After a few more miles were behind them, they spotted a convenience store that was open for business. They walked down to the side of the building and huddled together in the cold.
“Can you go in there and get us some food and drinks?” Cole asked Stella. “I don’t think it’s a good idea for me to go anywhere where there are cameras right now.”
“Yeah. What do you want?”
“I don’t care. I’m so hungry right now I’d eat anything.” He smiled at her.
She couldn’t trust that smile, she told herself.
“Maybe you should go alone,” Cole offered. “I could keep David with me.”
“No,” Stella answered a little too sharply. “David stays with me.”
“Of course. I understand.”
Cole dug a pack of cash out from the waistband of his pants and peeled off some twenty dollar bills. He handed them to her. “Money might be traceable, but it will take some time. We really don’t have any other options right now.”
Stella nodded.
Cole stared at her for a moment. “You could go in there and tell them about me. You could tell them that you’re with one of the guys that robbed the bank.”
Stella didn’t answer, she just held Cole’s gaze.
“I wouldn’t blame you if you did,” Cole said and she thought he almost looked relieved at the idea of it. He would be taken away from this nightmare and placed into police custody, locked away in a cell and protected from this ancient thing that roamed out here. He would be away from her and David, no longer a threat to the thing. She even wondered if the thought hadn’t crossed his mind already, if he might not be weighing his options and waiting for the perfect time to ditch them. He might just be using them for cover right now.
But Stella knew that if she turned Cole in to the police, they would have a lot of questions for her—questions she would have a difficult time answering. And they would take David away. He would be vulnerable to the Ancient Enemy without her. Before long, the Ancient Enemy would find others and force them into action with unspeakable horrors. It could find others who weren’t as strong as she was, others who weren’t willing to sacrifice themselves to save this boy, others who would kill David in a heartbeat to save themselves.
And of course Cole had already thought all of this through. He had run the different scenarios through his mind as he’d driven the snowmobile and on their walk through town.
He knew she wasn’t going to turn him in—she had too much to lose. David had too much to lose.
“I’ll go with you,” Cole said. For a moment she thought he was talking about the supermarket. “I’ll go with you all the way down there to find this shaman. I want to help stop this thing before it kills others like … like it killed my brother.”
Stella nodded. It felt like they had both come to the realization that their futures were bleak at best, like two gunfighters on the run and being chased by the law. It could only end badly. Even if by some miracle they survived all of this and there was a shaman who could help David, what then? Cole could always stay on the run, but eventually Stella would have to go back to her own life. She would have to face the authorities eventually, face their questions. She would either be charged with crimes like aiding and abetting a criminal or be thrown into the nuthouse. Her career was definitely over now and her life would be over after this.
But why dwell on that? The chances that they would live through all of this were pretty slim anyway.
She took David’s hand and he gave her hand a squeeze. He looked up at her and smiled. She couldn’t let anything happen to him.
“You ready to go to the store?” she asked him.
He nodded and they went.
*
Stella entered the convenience store with David, and they headed right for the restrooms to wash up. A sense of d
éjà vu blanketed her, and her mind swam back to that night at the dig site when they had escaped the Ancient Enemy. They had driven the rest of the night up into Colorado and stopped here in this town, parked in the motel parking lot for a few hours of rest. And then they had gone to a gas station to clean up in the bathroom and stock up on some food and drinks.
And here they were again, on the run and going into a restroom to clean up. Only they weren’t in a gas station this time, they were in a small supermarket.
Stella took David with her into the women’s restroom. He went to the bathroom in one of the stalls while she cleaned the dirt and grime from her face and hands at one of the sinks. Thankfully the restroom was empty. She stared at herself in the mirror for a moment and her thoughts drifted back to a few mornings ago when she had stood in front of a mirror at that gas station. She remembered being surprised at how gaunt and haunted her reflection had looked. Now, a few days later, she still had that same gaunt and haunted look. It wasn’t quite the shock to her now as it had been then.
After they cleaned up, Stella told David to keep the hood of his coat up over his hair while they were inside the store. Nobody might remember a mother and her son shopping, but they might remember a blond woman with a Native American child.
David was fine with the hood being over his head—he didn’t fight her about it. He was such a good kid. And she believed that he knew that her only mission in life right now was to protect him and keep him safe.
He smiled at her and took her hand. He still wasn’t talking much, but with the horrors he had experienced, she couldn’t really blame him. If they survived all of this somehow, who knew how long it would take for him to recover? If ever.
“We’re going to shop for a few things,” she told him.
He nodded at her.
“I want you to pick out anything you want to eat. Okay?”
Again, he nodded.
“Just a few things. Just what we can carry in a few bags.”
He seemed to understand. He was ready to start shopping.
But Stella hesitated before leaving the restroom. “Listen, David. I want you to be careful around Cole. Okay? I know he seems nice, and he seems like he wants to help us and protect us, but we can’t trust him. Okay?”
“Okay,” David whispered.
“I don’t want you going anywhere with him without me. Do you understand?”
He nodded.
“I mean it, David.”
“I know,” he whispered.
After they were out of the bathroom, Stella grabbed a shopping cart and they went down each aisle, trying not to hurry. She kept her selection small and light, foods in boxes or cans that could be eaten cold: packages of crackers, cans of tuna, a few pre-packaged meals that could go in the microwave, a box of Pop-Tarts, a package of energy bars, packs of nuts, a small bag of sugar, and Kool-Aid packets. She only bought one cold drink for each of them, figuring there would be vending machines at the motel. The motel would also have soap, shampoo, and other bathroom needs. She bought three toothbrushes and a travel-size tube of toothpaste, a can of spray deodorant, and a big bottle of aspirin.
They checked out at the cash register and the weight of her pistol inside her coat pocket felt so heavy; she felt like it was obvious to the young cashier that she was packing a weapon. She thought the cashier might have been taking a little too long studying her grocery choices, and then scrutinizing the twenty dollar bills that she’d given her. But maybe it was her imagination. The cashier gave Stella the change and bagged the groceries into plastic bags.
Stella asked David to carry one of the bags, and she carried the other three. They walked out through the automatic doors, and a moment later they were back out in the freezing cold air again.
Cole met up with them about a block down the street as they had agreed earlier. The walk to the motel was a long one, at least another forty-five minutes. They didn’t talk much as they walked, and they tried not to glance around too much at anyone out on the street.
*
When they got to the Mountainside Inn, Cole waited around the side with the bags of groceries while Stella and David went to check in at the front desk. She wasn’t going to let David out of her sight, and Cole couldn’t blame her for that.
He found a little alcove near the dumpster at the side of the building to hide in. There were no cameras on this side of the building (he hadn’t spotted any security cameras at all so far) and virtually no traffic in the parking lot—foot or vehicle. The motel seemed mostly empty right now, but there were a few cars and trucks scattered around, pulled up tight to the two-story building. Maybe some of these patrons were skiers, Cole thought; or maybe a salesman or family members who had gotten caught in the snowstorm while on their way to sales meetings or family visits.
Cole leaned against the wood-sided wall inside the little alcove, protected from view and the wind. He finally had a chance to breathe easily for a few minutes. He’d been so preoccupied with the police that he hadn’t even thought much about the Ancient Enemy (as Stella called it) until now that he was alone on this deserted side of the motel. The tree line was only a hundred yards away across a field of snow that was probably an area of tall grasses in the summertime.
He could imagine another dead person stumbling out of those woods, another hollowed-out puppet controlled by that thing. He could see that person in his mind stumbling forward through the snow, an unstoppable zombie on a persistent mission, a puppet with that strange and crooked smile hung on its face and that glazed look of the dead in its eyes.
But no one came.
Cole had begun to wonder about this Ancient Enemy. A theory had popped into his mind, a theory he had expressed last night when they’d been hunkered down in the cabin, waiting for the dead to come back.
What if David was doing this? Even if he wasn’t aware of it, what if he was somehow causing this to happen?
Of course Stella discounted his theory immediately. And maybe she was right, but maybe she wasn’t. Cole had to look at all possibilities through a detached filter, and as improbable as everything had been so far, the idea of David somehow manifesting all of this, even if it was subconsciously, couldn’t be discarded so quickly. He’d heard of children being born with strong telepathic and telekinetic abilities that faded away as they got older. He wasn’t sure where he’d read or seen this—possibly some horror movies—but he couldn’t rule it out right now. He couldn’t afford to rule anything out.
If David was doing this, even if he was unaware of it, then he was very dangerous. And Cole needed to be ready for that.
CHAPTER 25
The Mountainside Inn
Stella and David entered the lobby of the Mountainside Inn through the double doors set in a wall of glass panels. A chandelier hung in the middle of the lobby ceiling two stories above them. Two sets of wide, carpeted stairs led up to the hallways and to more motel rooms. Massive potted plants decorated the corners and stood next to sofas and smaller couches arranged in the middle of the vast room with tables nearby, spreads of magazines fanned out on the table tops. Stella had expected more of a lodgy feel to the motel, something targeted more towards skiers, but this seemed like a much fancier motel for such a small town.
She guided David across the empty lobby towards the long wood counter to their left where a clerk stood behind the counter, dressed in a burgundy vest over a crisp white long-sleeved shirt. He was a little overweight and his dark hair was slicked down and parted severely on one side. He had a neat and trim mustache and wire rim glasses. He smiled at them as they approached.
“Welcome to the Mountainside Inn,” the clerk said.
“Thanks,” Stella answered and smiled at the man. “We’d like to get a room for the night.”
“I think we can arrange that,” the clerk said, typing away at the computer hidden underneath the high counter.
Stella glanced beyond the clerk at the neat counters behind him. There was a chair in the corner even though t
he clerk chose to stand. A TV was on the counter, but the sound was turned all the way down. It looked like some kind of basketball game was on the screen. There were displays on the countertop advertising ski lodges, mountain tours, horseback riding, restaurants, a spa, and an Old West museum.
“Name?” the clerk asked.
“Molly Reed,” Stella said without hesitating. She had already come up with the fake name on the way there, the name of one of her professors when she was a student at Arizona State.
“Just the two of you?”
“Yes.”
“I can put you upstairs in Room 237. It has a balcony view.”
Yeah, I really want to hang out on the balcony in sub-zero temperatures, Stella thought. “That would be great,” she said and smiled at him.
He placed a piece of paper on the counter for her and a pen. “Just fill out your vehicle information.”
As Stella filled out a fake address and vehicle information, the clerk worked on getting the key cards ready, running them through a small machine. He placed them in a small paper sleeve with the motel’s logo on them and handed them to her with a smile.
“Do you have vending machines here?” Stella asked.
“Of course. You go up that set of stairs over there, take a right, and to the left you will see a small lobby area with vending machines, an ice machine, and even a few video games.” He gave David a wink. “There’s also a change machine there if you need it.”
“That sounds great, thanks.”
“Checkout is at eleven thirty, and we have a small continental breakfast from seven to ten o’clock. Just some coffee and juice, sweet rolls, fruit, cold cereal, toast, stuff like that.”
Stella’s stomach rumbled with hunger just from the clerk’s description of the food and she was afraid he might have heard it. She smiled at him again. “We might take you up on that.” She put her arm around David, pulling him close to her. “Right?” she asked David. He looked up at her and smiled and then nodded.
