Tom threw away the last few bites of his burger, unable to stomach any more food after thinking about the missing children. “I’ve had enough. We need to talk to this bastard.”
Tyler set down his burger, wiped his mouth with a brown napkin, and clapped Tom on the shoulder. “Let’s get this guy. Rich, man the fort. You’re on phones. Anything pops up, let me know.”
A few minutes later, they were in a cramped makeshift interrogation room. File cabinets lined the wall behind the perp, and there was another one of those clocks with the wire cages, the second hand not ticking, but rotating around the dial in even movements.
Tom had another cup of coffee on the table, the old brew steaming. He caught Carl looking at the cup, and he took the opportunity. “Carl, you can tell us where they are, and I’ll bring you a fresh cup from Chuck’s. Everyone around here raves about it, right?”
“It is the best. Have you tried his burgers?” Carl asked, and Addy cleared her throat from the seat beside her client.
“My client claims he’s done nothing wrong. He found that hair elastic, and was working the night Brittany Tremblay went missing. He can have his employer send a timecard in,” Addy said.
Tom leaned back and crossed his arms. “You said you work security in Gilden, right? Where at?”
“The car dealership. You’d be amazed how many people try stealing cars right under the four-hundred-watt LED lamps they have set up in the parking lot,” Carl said.
It was the second time someone had mentioned the dealership since Tom had been in Red Creek. The girl, Abigail, said her parents owned the dealership. Was there a connection?
“I can imagine,” Tom said, taking the lead. Tyler sat there, an imposing rock of a man, staring hard toward Carl as if trying to get a read on him or intimidate him. It looked like it was working, because Carl was avoiding eye contact with the sheriff and giving his undivided attention to Tom, which was exactly what they wanted. “Do you work with anyone there?”
He shook his head. “Shift starts at nine. Ends at six in the morning when the cleaning crew shows up.”
“Good. Not bad hours for a loner, hey?” Tom asked, and before Carl could reply, he kept talking. “So you could have clocked in, left the site, and abducted Brittany. As long as you were back in time for the cleaning crew, right?”
Carl shifted in his seat. “I suppose so. But I didn’t do nothing to that girl, I swear.”
Ms. Sinclair spoke up. “You’re leading him into these answers. Enough, Detective. Carl, you don’t have to answer them.”
“It’s okay, Addy. I want to. I didn’t do nothing wrong,” the man said, his eyes weepy. Either he was a good actor or he was innocent. Tom was starting to question himself; then he thought of the evidence. “We found her hair scrunchie on your nightstand. We found Fredrik Karlsson’s pajama top in your storage unit!” Tom slammed a palm against the table, his coffee spilling over the edge as the cup bounced.
Carl started to openly cry now. “I don’t know what you’re talking about! I didn’t do anything! I haven’t been to my storage unit for over a month!”
“Then why is there fresh mud caked on the bike? Why was Fredrik’s top sitting there folded like something from a Gap store display window?” Tom asked.
“I don’t know! I was working, I swear!”
Tom watched the man and decided to go for it. He’d learn a lot from Carl after this. “Let me paint you a picture. The Prescotts own the dealership, correct?” he asked, and waited for Carl to nod before going on. “Good. They have a daughter, name’s Abigail. You know her?”
“Sure. She’s around every now and then. What about her?” Carl asked.
“She’s friends with Brittany. Or at least, she claimed to be. You and she set this up, didn’t you? She the unwitting participant, you the older man who threatened her to keep her silent. Or did the guilt of her part in it keep her from ratting you out?” Tom was standing now, his palms pressed against the table.
Carl was leaning away, eyes wide. “I don’t understand!” he shouted.
“You got her to lure Brittany into the forest that night, didn’t you? You went to work, clocked in, drove the twenty minutes to the orchard, where you ran through the rainy forest, finding Brittany all alone out there. You followed her, even after she lost her shoe. She went home, and you took her. Didn’t you? You watched her as she peeled her muddy clothing off, and you took her!”
“No. No. No. I didn’t do anything. I found the hair thing, picked it up for some reason. I forgot I even had it. It was in my pocket when I went to bed, and I threw it on the nightstand. I swear,” Carl said through sobs.
Tom didn’t stop. “Then you what? You’ve been walking by the Karlssons’ house, watching little Fredrik read his comic books? You already did it once, why not do it again? You’re in so deep, why not go a little deeper?”
“Oh God, no. I don’t know how that shirt got in my storage unit. It wasn’t me.”
Addy sat a protective hand on Carl’s shoulder. “That’s enough. My client has nothing else to say to you tonight.”
“Where are they?” Tom shouted. “What did you do to them?” His heart was pounding and he was feeling light-headed, the half-eaten burger threatening to come up all of a sudden.
Tyler grabbed his arm and pulled Tom from the room. He didn’t fight it, and when they were in the hall, the larger man shoved him against the wall. “You need to chill out, son,” the man said. He was only a few years Tom’s senior, and his use of the word slammed some reality into Tom’s mind. He’d been in berserker mode in there.
“I was so sure we had him,” Tom said, his shoulders slumping, and the vein on his forehead stopped pulsing.
“Me too. But what if it isn’t him? What if he’s telling the truth about the scrunchie?” Tyler asked.
“What about the shirt? The connection with the Gilden car dealership?” Tom asked as they moved farther down the hall, away from the interrogation room.
Tyler was shaking his head, clucking his tongue. “I don’t know.”
Then it hit Tom like a semi truck. “Son of a bitch!”
“What is it?” the sheriff asked.
“The shirt. Did you see Carl’s room? The clothing was all messy. He had week-old shirts lying on the floor in heaps. Not one thing in that suite was organized. I’ll bet my 401K that he doesn’t even know how to fold a shirt.” Tom was pacing now, running a hand over his tired face.
“What are you saying?” Tyler asked.
“I’m saying someone set him up. They wanted to divert attention to Carl to take the heat off themselves,” Tom said.
“Who?”
“Someone at the condo. It has to be,” Tom said, walking to the front and grabbing his keys.
“Wait. You can’t go back alone. Take Rich. Watch first. There are things in Red Creek you don’t understand,” Tyler said, and Tom recalled the call earlier, where Tyler said he wanted to talk to him about something face-to-face. They never did have that conversation.
“Gotcha. Stakeout first.” Tom was okay with that. He had a good feeling they’d find something tonight. “Come on, Rich. Bring the food.”
Sixteen
Emma Jeanne sat on her couch, head cradled in her hands. Agony twisted over her face as she struggled with the voice pounding in her mind. It needed more. She was sure two children back to back would have been enough to bring it out from its state of hibernation. All the bodies had done was make its voice more powerful; its pull over her already fragile will became stronger.
It wanted more, and it knew exactly which one. She’d felt the disturbance earlier in the day, around the time the police had arrived. It had taken all her strength not to buckle under the overwhelming pressure of the Anbieter. The Provider. That was the name her father Conway had used for the monster. She remembered seeing it around the orchard as a young girl. It would hover over in the night, stay back at least fifty feet, and watch her.
She’d stand there, stark blonde hair i
n ponytails, a plush toy under her arm, hypnotized. Dark mist dripped toward the sky from its crude shape. She never did tell anyone about it, because her father was mean. He’d beaten her bottom so hard the one time she questioned the monster, and that had taught her to keep her mouth shut.
Emma grabbed a photo from beside her: she and her husband on their wedding day. It had been so wonderful, so far away from Red Creek. As soon as she was old enough, she’d run away, never to return – or so she thought. Now, sitting in her suite as a seventy-year-old woman, she just wanted the pain and suffering to stop. She cursed her ancestors for bargaining with the creature. They should have cut their losses and left the logging town where they’d uncovered the dormant entity.
She still didn’t really know what it was. A demon, perhaps? The only one of its kind, maybe? Either way, she was compelled to help it now, as her family had been for generations. Maybe she could end it. Cut the source off. Maybe find explosives and destroy the entire nest once and for all. Would that even work? Burning the old nest hadn’t. She wasn’t even sure how much control she had over her own body any longer.
She often woke to find things moved around her apartment. There were sketches spread across her table, red eyes and black shapes that she had no recollection of drawing. She was cursed now, just as much as the people of Red Creek were, because of her family; more, even.
If only Paul Alenn had been sacrificed so long ago. The family had broken the pact, the bargain sealed in blood so many years earlier in northern Germany. Twice a century, they made a sacrifice. It was the deal. Timothy Caldwell had been one sacrifice, then Paul was next, only they’d let him get away. Someone stuck their nose into the business, and when the Alenn kid came back to town, he’d destroyed the Smiths. They were his family too, but they were Emma’s father and daughter. Emma would be lying if she said she hadn’t cried tears of joy upon hearing of her father’s death.
Katherine should never have come back here. She’d always been drawn to the prosperity part of the bargain. When Emma had first told her daughter about Red Creek and the orchard’s power, her daughter had only nodded along, curious how the creature provided wealth. Emma didn’t know, but that was how she knew the monster was otherworldly. It had powers beyond human understanding.
Fütter mich.
The words came to her head unbidden. It said, “Feed me,” and she knew what that meant. A child of their blood had entered the area that day, and it had sent the creature into a frenzy in his nest below. He was almost replenished, nearly strong enough to fend for himself, but not quite.
Emma closed her eyes, gripping the picture frame tightly. She saw the memory of dragging Brittany Tremblay through the mud, the power of the Anbieter coursing through her as she carried part of it with her. She’d felt it take over her body, and when the lightning had flashed that night, she’d seen its arm in place of hers, pulling the girl by the arm so hard, it had torn from the socket. She could still hear the screams.
Fütter mich. It said the words again in her mind. Always in German, but never more than a couple of words at a time. She opened her eyes and saw blood dripping from her nose onto the picture. It covered her husband’s image, and she cried for the loss of that good man. He’d always taken care of her, and when he passed in bed at their Florida home, the pull from Red Creek grew. It was stronger each and every day, until Emma knew she had to either end herself or made the trip back to her old hometown. Here she was, helping it kill now, just like her father, the man she’d always hated and resented. She was no better than Conway Smith.
Maybe she finally understood him. He didn’t have a choice in the matter. That had been decided long ago by their ancestors at the logging camp.
Emma got up, staring out the window. It was dark now, the sun setting fairly early in late March. She set the picture frame onto her coffee table and considered grabbing her jacket. She didn’t have a choice. She needed to bring it one more sacrifice, then she knew it would be strong enough on its own once more.
Emma wasn’t herself again, and she smiled now, widely and greedily. Yes. It would be happy again, and she could take her end of the bargain. She’d be blessed with riches, and she could finally leave this dump, and the monster would be sated for the time being. It wouldn’t need to hunt again for a few years, and she thought that might be a fair trade.
Part of her deep within fought the thoughts, banging against the barriers the creature had placed in her mind. But the inner cries went ignored.
Emma Smith washed the blood from her face and smiled.
_______________
Everything was spread out over the tabletop at Aunt Beth’s, and Taylor was standing, her can of diet soda precariously balanced on the edge of the journal, holding a page open.
Taylor’s uncle Darrel was there now, standing behind his wife protectively as they talked about what they’d found. Darrel had been there, and he knew exactly what they were dealing with. He’d even shot Jason in the arm at seeing the shadow man for the first time.
Her dad acted tired, the energy drained from him as she talked about the journal and what their family had done.
“You’re saying our family traded their son’s soul for a bargain with the creature? What did they get from it?” Paul asked.
Taylor wasn’t entirely sure. “Some sort of future protection. I don’t know. The pages are missing.”
Isabelle had her laptop open and had been frantically searching files, anything of public record in the immigration archives, and she let out a cheer. “I found it!”
Taylor leaned in, trying to see what exactly she’d located.
“It says here that the Smiths first arrived in eighteen ninety-two. We know they’d immigrated to England fifty years earlier, changing their name to Smith. We also know there are vague reports of a killer in the neighborhood outside London during that time,” Isabelle said, looking proud of herself.
Taylor’s mom spoke up first. “So let’s map this out. Northern Germany. The Schmidts dig up a forest and find a nest with this Schattenmann inside. They strike a bargain with it, one that suggests they sacrificed their son to save the rest of the village, for a time. Is that about right so far?”
Taylor’s dad nodded. “Then they left, apparently well off after selling the logging rights and the camp they’d spent a decade building up. The family headed to England, where they changed their name to Smith after a few years. If we didn’t know their last name now, they would have been hard to trace. They lived there outside London for five decades, running a successful inn.”
Taylor sipped her diet soda; the carbonated beverage was sticky against her tongue. She smacked her lips and continued. “Then they took a boat across the ocean, landing at Ellis Island in eighteen ninety-two, presumably with their friend aboard.”
“How do you travel with a shadow monster?” Darrel asked, cracking a grin, but no one laughed with him. He quickly lost his smugness.
“They moved upstate, and eventually bought the land here with the income from the sale of the logging camp and the inn they’d built from the ground up. It looks like Conway’s grandparents were the first settlers, and they came to Red Creek in the late eighteen hundreds, and that’s when the records of missing children start, going all the way until now. Why have they stayed in one place so long this time?” Paul’s eyes were intense as he ran his hands over the assortment of papers spread across the table.
Aunt Beth finally said something after staying quiet and sitting pale-faced at the edge of the table. “They grew complacent. But what I don’t understand is Uncle Timothy. Why kill one of their own? Why go after you, Paul?”
Taylor leaned toward the journal, pointing at it. “This is missing some pages, but it was right there at the start. It demanded a link to their blood. The child.”
Her dad glanced up at her, locking eyes. “It all makes sense.” He rubbed his forehead a few times, like he always did when he was stressed. “My mom told me all about it. They had ‘protection’ fo
r me.” He looked at Beth. “For you too, I guess. But Mom told me we didn’t have protection for Taylor. That’s why she was taken as soon as she stepped foot out in the open.”
Goosebumps rose on Taylor’s arms. “But it didn’t want me. It wanted you,” she told her dad.
“Maybe. But that was Conway. The shadow may have had other ideas,” her dad said softly.
She’d never considered that before. She suspected they’d all be dead if the creature had any say in the matter.
“Wait! I have it!” Isabelle barked. She was flipping through the journal, comparing it to the translated notes they’d printed out. “It needs the blood of our family to sustain itself, or else it kills with impunity.” She pointed to Timothy Caldwell’s name circled on an old obituary. “He was the last one. Your mother’s brother. His bloodline was strong, and then you were next, Uncle Paul. The family allowed it to take you, but your parents weren’t in on it. At least, I doubt they were.”
Paul listened without interrupting, until she paused. “Mom knew all about it, didn’t she?” he asked Beth, who could only nod as if the revelation made sense.
“They were different people,” he added. “Think of the money. Dad worked for the orchard when we were kids. They were poor, and the Smiths paid Mom and Dad off after Cliff found me. Instead of sustaining whatever the hell it is – the demon’s soul, let’s call it – it kept feeding. We lost a lot of kids because it wasn’t getting a family sacrifice.” Paul looked at Taylor, worry creasing his brow. “We have to get out of here.”
Taylor shook her head, even though every inch of her agreed with his sentiments. “We can’t. Besides, the police caught someone and have him locked up. We saw it. The deputy says they have evidence.”
“Do you believe it?” Uncle Darrel asked, his voice never more serious.
Taylor considered the facts but found she couldn’t believe it. “No. I think the Schattenmann is still out there.”
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