I stopped in the doorway to the suite, watching Kit and Mark set up their equipment but not crossing the threshold. A lump of fear had formed in my throat, and it took me awhile to swallow it down. I’d had time to process my conversation with Horace, but it still made little sense to me. How was he able to communicate with me so clearly? Why couldn’t I cut off our connection? What made him so powerful?
Kit, heedless of any hesitation on my part, focused on whipping everyone into a frenzy. “Come on, come on!” she barked, clipping a mic to my collar. “Let’s finish this and get on the road!”
Yuri and Mark seemed as eager as she was to reach the camp, and within ten minutes, I was mic’d, lit, and on camera. Yuri sat beside Mark, giving me someone to look at and talk to. From the audience’s perspective, I’d be looking just to their left instead of directly into the lens. I went through the events two nights before in more detail than I’d given either Kit or Gabrielle, trusting that Kit would cut out anything boring.
My team’s faces paled as I described the way Horace had filled the room with spiritual pressure, nearly suffocating me until I agreed to help him. Their reaction made me stutter, stop, and have to find my place in the tale again. Half my mind stayed focused on relating my story, but the other half reeled in terror. My assessment had been correct. There was something different about Horace.
We finished filming, and I bolted from the suite, choosing to wait on the stairs while Kit and Mark packed our gear. Happily, the pair of men who’d been eyeing me were nowhere in sight. No other guests ogled us as we left the inn, and we snuck out the back of the building and piled into Kit’s van to avoid any questions from the press.
“I don’t mean to second-guess you,” I told Yuri when we were finally on the road. “But couldn’t we have filmed that part afterward?”
“If we’d had no other choice, yes. But you’d already told your story to Kit. Each time we tell a story, certain details start to feel more important than others. I wanted to get your account on film before you’d had too much time to overthink things or begin downplaying anything in your mind.” He smiled. “And obviously, I prefer to hear the background before leaving on a journey like this.”
Journey. I remembered Stephen’s reading, which felt like ancient history considering what’d happened since. Cambion’s Camp was three hours away, on the other side of Moyard. It was the longest journey than I’d taken since moving to Donn’s Hill.
But you don’t have to be here, I reminded myself. Stephen had said the journey wouldn’t be one I chose. I’d decided to come here. I could have ignored Horace’s request and not bothered with any of this.
Deep in my heart, I knew that wasn’t strictly true. Nobody had a gun to my head, but there was no way I could pass up an opportunity to clear my name. And the thought of leaving a spirit like Horace in a place like the Oracle Inn… Well, what would my father have said to that?
As we passed Moyard, I searched for the hospital in the city’s skyline without finding it. Somewhere in that sprawl, Connor Miles lay in a hospital bed, still recovering from the injuries he’d received at Richard Franklin’s spectral hand. I wondered again how Horace might be connected to the cabin. It still nagged at me that Franklin hadn’t appeared when I’d tried to summon him—and that Horace had. Where had Franklin gone? Was that another riddle Horace could help me solve?
Moyard’s outskirts thinned into suburbs and eventually farmland. This was the farthest west I’d travelled since the bus ride I’d taken from Salt Lake City in the spring. Soon we turned off the four-lane highway onto a narrower country road that cut a straight path through massive fields and pastures. Soon we passed line of trees that marked the boundary between the farmland and the forest. A few miles after entering the woods, we slowed and turned down an unpaved lane. The van’s tires bounced on ruts and crunched over small branches. This wasn’t a road that saw much use.
“Have you ever been here?” I asked Yuri.
He shook his head. “Despite its infamy, I haven’t had the time.”
“What do you know about it?”
Yuri taught history at Donn’s Hill High School, which was a steadier income than conducting televised paranormal investigations. His two careers dovetailed nicely, though, as he handled the lion’s share of the historical research needed for the show.
“Hang on.” Mark unzipped his camera case. “Get your lavs on.”
Yuri and I obediently retrieved the sound equipment from a milk crate and pinned lavalier microphones to our shirts. Only when the audio levels looked good and the red light on Mark’s camera was glowing did Yuri continue.
“There’s not much documented history about the place. We know it was a small lumber camp, founded in 1857. But near the end of its first season, a lumberjack arrived in Moyard, claiming a foul illness had taken over the camp. He collapsed into a coma and later died, but his report prompted a Moyard physician named Caldwell Perkins to visit the camp. Upon arrival, he found the road empty and the animals silent.
“He eventually found a half-dozen lumberjacks huddled in the cookhouse with a supply of food and water. They warned him not to go into any of the other buildings. They said he would risk the ‘curse’ following him home. He ignored their warning.”
I realized I’d been so absorbed in his story I’d forgotten to breathe. “What did he find?”
“Bodies,” Kit chimed in from the driver’s seat. “Sooooooo many bodies.”
Yuri shot her a disapproving glance over the rim of his glasses. “Katarina, please. It’s true, he found the remains of the rest of the lumberjacks. The bunks were full of men who appeared to be sleeping, except their skin was dry and wrinkled and hard to the touch. Strangely, their eyes were missing.”
“Missing?” My skin crawled. They sounded like mummies I’d seen at an exhibit with my father. I’d known their organs had been removed, but at least you couldn’t see the evidence.
“He found the same thing in the foreman’s cabin,” Yuri continued. “The foreman and his family were dead in their beds. But most oddly, when he returned to the cookhouse, the remaining lumberjacks had vanished. Perkins rode back for Moyard at once, returning the next day with a dozen men to help him deal with the dead. They found only the smoking remains of the log buildings. The entire camp had burned to the ground during the night.”
Kit shivered with delight. “So freaky.”
“Of course, most of his story couldn’t be corroborated. The men who accompanied him on his return only saw the aftermath of a fire. Perkins could have made up the rest, written it down like a horror story, or he could have been suffering from delusions.”
“Has anything weird happened there since?” I asked.
“Nothing that’s been documented. Whether the physician’s account was real or imagined, it kindled a deep superstition about the area. There was no attempt to rebuild. The camp is today as it was over 150 years ago.”
I stared between Kit and Mark’s shoulders, watching the trees roll by at a leisurely pace. Kit carefully navigated the overgrown lane while Mark turned his camera to face the windshield. I recognized the collection of B-roll footage Kit could use as cutaways to make long stretches of Yuri’s storytelling more visually interesting.
Kit turned up the music and bounced up and down in the driver’s seat. Black Sabbath’s War Pigs pounded out of the speakers at a volume that made Yuri cringe, but Kit winked at me in the rearview mirror while she sang along. Her spirits were higher than I’d seen them in weeks.
“We’re close. We should be able to see the camp soon,” Yuri shouted above the song.
Despite the autumn sun shining high above us, the surrounding woods grew darker. Everyone except Ozzy Osbourne grew silent, and a feeling of unease wrapped around my chest.
The van lurched to the right. Kit swore.
“Easy,” Mark said.
“It wasn’t me. The wheel—”
The van lurched again with enough violence to slam Kit’s head into h
er window. I opened my mouth to ask if she was okay and the steering wheel spun beneath her hands, sending us careening off the road and into the trees. Time slowed as the van accelerated. An enormous oak tree loomed on the other side of the windshield.
Then: impact.
The van slammed into the tree with a massive BOOM! I flew forward an inch before the seatbelt stopped me, digging into my chest and belly. The back of the van bucked into the air, sending the crates and equipment cases flying, and all I saw was white.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Hissing filled my ears. Unsure if it was coming from my brain or the engine, I rushed to get out of the van.
Something pinned me to the seat—I’m stuck!—and I remembered I still wore my seatbelt. After fumbling with the buckle, I was free.
Yuri was already on his feet, standing in front of me to bend over Kit. Russian words poured out of his mouth as he inspected her, touching her forehead and holding her wrist between his fingers.
“Yav poryadke, yav poryadke,” she protested, un-clicking her own seatbelt and pushing against the inflated airbag to slide out the driver’s side door.
I followed suit, pulling open the sliding door and dropping to the uneven ground beneath us. The hissing sound was definitely coming from the engine; white steam wafted up into the cool air above the crumpled front of the van. The tree tilted backward but otherwise looked no worse for the wear. Meanwhile, cracks spider-webbed across the entire windshield, which had thankfully stayed in place. Kit’s window, on the other hand, had shattered completely.
Mark grabbed my elbow and led me away from the van, back toward the dirt road we’d been heading down. Yuri had an arm around his daughter, whose face was sprinkled with small gashes. Mark ignored a rivulet of blood running down his left temple, shouldering his camera and turning it on the wreckage.
“Is everyone okay?” Yuri asked.
Miraculously, we’d all escaped with minor injuries. Even the van didn’t look too damaged. I patted myself down, checking for tender spots, but found nothing apart from the stripe of pain across my chest. I gingerly poked at my sternum, vowing to never complain about any bruise the seatbelt left while saving my life.
Kit rubbed the back of her neck. “I’m so sorry, you guys. I don’t know what happened.”
“These are some deep ruts.” Mark kicked at a ridges of dried mud that ran the length of the road. “We must’ve hit one just right. Or wrong, I guess.”
I traced the tracks of mud with my eyes. Deep gouges marked the place where the van had careened off the road and into the trees. More tracks continued north, where the road turned sharply to the right and disappeared into the trees. Cambion’s Camp lay right around the corner; I could feel it, the same way I could feel someone’s eyes on the back of my head in a crowded restaurant. And if I closed my eyes and concentrated, I even thought I could feel tendrils of Horace’s energy somewhere nearby. The jewelry box was close, waiting for me to find it.
“Mac, where are you going?” Kit called from behind me.
I opened my eyes and turned toward her voice. She, Mark, and Yuri stood a hundred feet away from me. They were walking back to the highway—wait, no. They were still level with the van. I’d been the one who moved. My feet had carried me down the dirt road, toward the turn. I rubbed my temples to clear the fog from my brain and walked back to my team. I hadn’t hit my head in the crash, but my mind apparently thought otherwise.
As I returned to the group, Yuri slipped his cell phone back into his pocket.
“Penelope is on her way with the city tow truck,” he said. “They’ll be here in a few hours.”
My gaze returned to the bend in the road. “A few hours would be long enough for us to poke around the camp and come back, right?”
“Yes.” Kit’s answer was immediate and emphatic. “I didn’t come all this way and wreck our van just to stand in the dirt all day.”
But Yuri looked doubtful. “We rushed out here and look what happened. We shouldn’t rush into any other decisions.”
“We already made this decision,” his daughter argued. “We’re just finishing what we started.”
He stared at her. She met his gaze and stared back, unblinking. Unspoken words seemed to flow between them, and I wondered if Yuri lost arguments to Kit as often as I did.
Finally, he sighed. “Fine. But we tend to your wounds first.”
Once the steaming from the engine subsided, I ferried the gear we’d need from the van to the road while Yuri dabbed at Kit’s face with antiseptic from our medical kit. Mark managed to avoid carrying anything by keeping his hands busy with the camera.
“Tilt your head to the left,” he told Kit as Yuri placed small bandages over the cuts on her face. “You’ll catch the light better. There you go.”
Once Yuri was satisfied Kit’s injuries were only skin deep, we continued down the road on foot. Yuri took the lead, his shoulders high and tense. Mark filmed us from behind. I walked beside Kit, whose bright eyes were a strange contrast to her bandaged face.
We held our parade in silence. No sounds emanated from the dense forest; no birdsongs or animal cries filled the air. Only the soft clump of our feet on the hard-packed dirt broke the stillness in the air.
The adrenaline that’d filled my body in the crash wore off, leaving the sour feeling of disquiet I’d had earlier with nothing to hide behind. My apprehension grew as we approached the turn, and I imagined we’d turn the corner to see the camp exactly as it’d been in the 1800s. I followed Yuri around the bend, and the woods opened to a small clearing.
We paused at the edge of the space, but there wasn’t much to see. Over a hundred and fifty years had passed since Caldwell Perkins had visited this place, and whatever remained of the buildings after the fire had been reclaimed by encroaching trees and grasses. From where I stood, it was impossible to tell where the cookhouse or barn had been. It looked like a little meadow, a peaceful pocket of openness in the woods.
Kit deflated. “This is it?”
I contemplated the clearing with narrowed eyes. Ideal as it looked for a picnic, something in the air set off alarm bells in my gut. It felt like something or someone was watching us from the edge of the trees, and the unnatural quiet hung over us like a suffocating blanket.
Whatever I was feeling, the others seemed unaffected. Kit and Yuri walked the perimeter of the clearing, their eyes fixed on the ground. Reluctantly, I headed toward them, but as I crossed the midpoint of the open space, a wall of nausea brought me to a halt.
Kit hurried over. “What is it? Do you feel something?”
“Yeah.” I looked down at my feet, then called to Yuri, “What would’ve been here?”
“It’s hard to say.” He joined us, kneeling to brush his hand through the long grass. “I’m not sure where any of the buildings were. I suspect the forest has retaken them. But if we assume they lay outside the perimeter, this would have been a landing where they loaded the logs onto sleds for transport.”
“There’s something here. Buried, I think.” I spoke my thoughts aloud, a habit I’d developed after months of Kit barking at me that our viewers couldn’t read my mind. “Do we have a shovel?”
Kit and I returned to the van while Mark filmed Yuri explaining the buildings he thought would have been at the original camp and where they might have stood. The van’s roadside emergency kit didn’t include a shovel, but we found a short black pole with a jagged end under the driver’s seat.
“Aha!” Kit held it above her head in triumph. “I wondered where this thing went.”
“What is it?”
“Broken boom arm, for holding a microphone over people’s heads. It snapped a couple years ago—Dad was pissed, the mic hit him right in the face—and after that I used it to jab Mark when he was being annoying.”
I laughed. “I can’t picture Mark doing anything obnoxious. He hardly ever talks.”
“That’s what’s so annoying!”
Armed with our makeshift digg
ing stick, we hustled back to the clearing and got to work. The dry earth came away easily, especially once Kit straddled the hole and started yanking dirt toward her stomach with her hands. Her antics made me laugh and offset the nervous cloud hanging over my mind. I focused on the task at hand, pushing any other thoughts aside and jabbing at the more stubborn edges of the hole with my stick. Soon our pit was deep and wide enough for me to stand in up to my knees.
“How deep do you think we need to go?” Kit asked as I stood in our accomplishment with my hands on my hips.
“No clue. I feel like we’re getting closer, but…” I focused, trying to feel the energy beneath my feet. It was hazy. Nebulous.
Yuri sat on an upturned equipment crate a few feet away, his long legs stretching toward us. “If someone buried something here while the lumber camp was still in use, the woods have had over a century to cover the spot with dirt and overgrowth. Something that was two feet down back then could be twice that today, or more.”
Kit and I glanced at each other then continued digging in earnest. Something drove me to find whatever was tugging at me before Penelope and the tow truck arrived. I felt certain that if we didn’t find it in that three-hour window, we never would, though I couldn’t say why. With dirt packed into our fingernails, we scooped and stabbed at the ground. I glared at the equipment crates, wishing they were solid plastic. I was desperate for something more shovel-like than my own cupped hands.
After a while, Kit took a break, stretching out beside the hole on her back.
“You should rest, too,” Yuri told me. “Come out of there and have some water.”
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