With his heart pumping double time again, Rob picked up the pace and thought about saying a prayer. That's what Juli would do. That's what Kelly would do too.
"Maybe we should pray about this, Rob ... I'll pray about
He felt a sudden sense of sadness come over him. Kelly would be so disappointed if she could see him now. Afraid, faithless, defeated.
He thought of Kelly then, of her bright smile and quick laugh, the way her lips felt against his and how comfortable she felt in his arms. He missed her so much; he hated being alone ... and the way she died, the way that... stop it. Anger and remorse took hold of him then, and for a moment, a very brief moment, he entertained the thought of surrendering to the darklings and their dogs. Juli had suggested his adventure this afternoon was suicide anyway; why not prove her right?
Because Jimmy needed him.
"Daddy, are you comin'?"
His wife might be gone, but his son was still alive, out here somewhere, and Rob wouldn't stop looking until he found him.
He heard another scream, louder. They'd found his trail and were closing the distance. Rob dug his heels into the soft, leaf-covered soil and shifted gears. He was half running now, not wanting to go too fast for fear that he'd miss the cabin altogether. Sweat soaked his hair and shirt and stung his eyes.
The screams, multiple now, grew closer yet. And now they were joined by barking. The dogs.
Panic sent tingles through Rob's hands, up his arms, and over his chest and head. He kicked the light on and watched as the beam bounced in front of him as he ran, faster now. The screams were still more than a hundred yards off, but he could feel them as if they were right on his heels. He wanted to scream himself, holler for help. He had to be close to the cabin. Maybe Asher and Juli would hear him and find him.
He was just about ready to let out a holler when he saw a light flash up ahead. It blinked three times. Asher?
Daylight in the woods was almost gone, and the other light blinked brightly three more times. Rob headed for it.
"Rob, over here." It was Asher. He recognized the old preacher's voice.
Rob reached Asher and almost fell into his arms.
"This way, follow me. It's not far." With both their lights on now, Rob followed Asher back to the cabin.
Juli was there, waiting for them with the door open. They entered, and Rob fell into a chair, breathing hard. Juli shut the door behind them, and Asher locked it. Outside, the screams continued to close in, and the barking grew louder. At last, after a few more moments, everything fell silent outside.
"They'll go now," Asher said. "They have little patience."
Minutes passed, and they heard nothing.
Juli placed a hand on Rob's arm. "I'm sorry about Jimmy. Tomorrow's another day."
Rob looked at her. Sweat still leaked into his eyes, and he had to wipe at it to see her. "Another day for what? It's too big out there. He could be anywhere." He pounded the table with his fist, which made Juli jump and remove her hand from his arm.
She sat back in the chair, a hurt look in her eyes. "I prayed for you while you were gone." She glanced at Asher, who was sitting on his cot now, then back at Rob. "We both did. You weren't ready."
"The crying led me to a warehouse," Rob said. "On the river's edge."
"I know of it," Asher said. "It was used to stock materials when the dam was built. At the time, the back roads couldn't handle the heavy equipment and materials. They'd use a barge to float the stuff down to the site."
Juli said, "Were there ... 11
"Darklings. Yeah."
Asher stood. "It was a trap."
"Are you OK?" Juli said, reaching for Rob's arm again.
"I'm here and in one piece."
"One piece is good. Let's keep it that way."
"And the crying?" Asher said.
"It wasn't Jimmy. Not at all."
Eleven
SHER MOVED ACROSS THE CABIN AND SAT AT THE table. He leveled his good eye on Rob. His other eye looked blankly at the wall. "Juli told me your son was abducted, just like that other boy."
Rob met his eye. "The other boy. Nineteen eighty-seven."
"The dark-eyed man took him."
"I saw him in Mayfield. He told me how to get to Darlington." He was remembering the conversation now. The one that took place in the church. "He told me the way would lead to Darlington and Jimmy and that he'd meet me there. He knew Jimmy was in Darlington."
"He's the Elvis Presley of creeps," Juli said.
Asher ran a hand over his beard and said, "History repeats itself. But what's the connection?"
"I don't care about connections. I just want my son back. I'm going out there-"
"No." Asher was quick on the draw this time. "No, sir. Not tonight. You'll never make it, even with a light. There's too many of 'em come out at night."
Juli said, "He's right. Hide and seek with the darklings would be pretty dumb. Advantage them, every time."
Asher tapped his finger on the table. "First light and I'll go with you."
"I'm on that bandwagon too," said Juli.
Rob thought about that. If he was so easily duped and almost darkling food in broad daylight, there was no way he would find Jimmy at night with only a spotlight to light the forest and hordes of darklings on his tail. As much as he hated to admit it, Asher had a point. "Fine. First light and we're going. And I'm going, with or without you."
Juli pushed away from the table and stood. "With would be preferable." Then to Asher she said, "I know this isn't a diner, but since it's the only joint on the block, you have anything to eat? My stomach's been talking to me since this morning."
Asher unfolded his thin frame and walked over to the little kitchen area where the hutch and dry sink were. "I don't have much, but what I do have you're more than welcome to."
"You don't eat grubs and wild berries, do you?" Juli said.
Asher grinned. It was the first time Rob had seen him smile, and he liked it. The old guy had a warm and inviting smile that crinkled his eyes at the corners. "Berries, yes. Grubs, only in yogurt."
"You have yogurt?"
"Nope. No way to keep it cold. But I do have granola."
"It's not dried grubs, is it?"
"Not all of it," Asher said with a quick smile. He handed Juli a bag of granola and assorted nuts. "Help yourself. You too, Rob. Now, if you don't mind, I'll excuse myself to my cot over here and bed down for the night. These old muscles aren't what they used to be, and all the excitement today wore them out." He lifted a couple blankets from the cot and placed them on the empty chair by the table. "You can use these and sleep on the floor. It's not as hard as it looks."
"No mints on the pillows?" Juli said.
"If that bothers you, I can leave a few grubs. Maybe even dip them in chocolate first."
"I could go for some chocolate sans grubs right now."
Asher lay on his cot and pulled a blanket up to his waist. It wasn't particularly cool in the cabin, but the temperature had dropped more than a couple degrees since the setting of the sun. He rolled over to face the wall, his back to the rest of the cabin. "Night, all. Don't forget to say your prayers."
"Thanks, Gramps," Juli said.
She shoved a handful of granola in her mouth and offered the bag to Rob. He wasn't hungry but knew he should eat something. His body still needed food, and he'd need the energy for tomorrow. He accepted, scooped a palmful into his mouth, and chewed slowly. It wasn't the tastiest stuff, but it wasn't bad either.
With the oil lamp on the table the only source of light in the small cabin, everything took on odd shapes, and shadows dusted every corner. He looked at Juli, chewing away on her granola, and thought how much she reminded him of Kelly. Her wit and charming sarcasm were right out of Kelly's playbook. No doubt the two would get along just fine... if Kelly were there.
Juli finished chewing, washed the rest down with a gulp of water, then said, "You feel like talking about what happened?"
"What happened where?"
Rob went quiet. Already he could hear Asher's low, even sleep breathing on the other side of the cabin. Juli had poked at a tender spot. Zeroed right in on his greatest weakness. For anyone else but Kelly, he would never open up, but there was something about Juli, something comfortable and innocent that told him it was OK to be vulnerable around her. He shrugged. "I really don't know. My whole life, or at least as much of it that I can remember, I've been afraid of something. I don't even know what it is. I do know I'm afraid of the dark. Nyctophobia, they call it. Always have been. Crazy, isn't it?"
"Everyone's afraid of something. There's no shame in that. There's whole books full of phobias."
"But when the fear rules you, when it calls the shots, tells you what you can and can't do, when it paralyzes you for days on end and robs you of the freedom others enjoy so carelessly, that's crazy."
"Sounds like there's more to your story."
"Some days, I'm so fearful, so afraid of something, I don't know what, I can't even leave the house. It used to drive Kelly nuts. Then it would subside, and I'd be OK again."
"Must really put a cramp on your work life."
Rob shook his head. "I'm self-employed. I create and maintain Web sites, so that's never been a problem."
"So you're a techno-geek."
"Something like that."
Juli filled her mouth with granola again, chewed, and chased it with another gulp of water. "And Kelly and Jimmy?"
He knew they'd get there sooner or later. It was never anything he liked talking about, but Juli deserved to know. She was in this now too, and she seemed to know things Rob didn't. Important things. He drew in a breath and braced himself for an onslaught of painful memories. "A little over three months ago we were at a festival back home in Massachusetts. Kelly was originally from there, so when we got married we decided to settle down there. With my business being home-based, we could live anywhere we wanted. And Massachusetts is so beautiful. It was an unusually warm day."
"April in New England can be unpredictable."
"Yeah, but this was weird. Eighty in April? We'd spent the morning walking around, checking out the handcrafts, playing some games, you know, festival kind of stuff."
"Crafts. Games. Food. They're all the same."
"Jimmy was eating a candy apple and got his hands completely sticky." The memory came back to him in a rush. Jimmy's little hands covered in red candy coating. Sticky red smeared from the corners of his mouth along his cheeks. He even had some up his nose. "Kelly said she was taking him back to the car to get a hand wipe and clean him up. I said I'd meet them at the corn dogs. Jimmy loves corn dogs." "Who doesn't?"
Rob hitched in another breath. He'd waited so long for them, growing more and more worried by the minute. He shrugged. "They never came back." At first, he'd assumed they just got sidetracked by some interesting vendor, but thirty minutes later when he'd tried calling Kelly's cell phone and got nothing, he grew concerned. "At five, when the festival was winding down and people started leaving and they were still nowhere to be found, I called the police."
"Filed a missing person's report."
"Not then. That happened the next day. The cops, they thought maybe Kelly took off with him." He was so angry about that. Kelly would never do that. They had their problems like any other couple, but they were close. They had a good marriage, a good life together. "Then they looked at me." "
"A matter of procedure. Mother and child disappear, the husband is always a person of interest."
I know. I realize that now." At the time, though, he was livid and let Sandusky know-a move that didn't help his case any. But here they were barking in the wrong forest when his wife and son were missing and time was being wasted. "They never did show up. Leads were always dead ends. Days passed, and we heard nothing."
"But that day did come."
Rob's heart felt swollen, heavy in his chest. This was the first time he'd talked about that day, the day Sandusky told him they'd found Kelly. Unwelcome tears filled his eyes. He took a moment to compose himself. "Yeah, it came. Eight days after they went missing. It seemed like eight months. Two kids were goofing around in an abandoned warehouse in Salem and found Kelly. She was dead... it was awful. Jimmy was still missing."
When Sandusky told him, Rob couldn't stop the vomit. The thought of someone treating his wife, his love, that way ushered a hatred into his heart that roiled his stomach. His anger could not be contained. Fearing himself and not sure of what he was capable, he'd locked himself in his house for four days. When he finally emerged from his cave, Sandusky was there with news of Jimmy.
"You don't have to go on if it's too hard," Juli said.
Rob waved her off. He needed to say this, if not for her then for him. "A few days later they found what they thought was Jimmy's body in a saltwater pond near Newport."
"They thought it was his body?"
"It was... " Images of the photos taken at the scene flashed in Rob's mind. Fish had already done a number on the body. DNA tests were needed to confirm, and even they weren't a hundred percent. "... hard to tell. It'd been a week and a half or
"And mistakes happen."
"Yes, they do. At first I believed them and started grieving all over again. But as time passed, I became more and more convinced they'd been wrong. That the tests were wrong."
"That Jimmy was still alive."
Rob pointed a finger at her. "Exactly."
"Mistakes happen."
"Exactly."
Juli was quiet for a couple minutes, running her finger along the grain of the plank. Finally she stopped and held her finger on a knot in the middle of the board. "You lost your wife and son. When did you lose your faith?"
What awakened in Rob was not anger or contempt or even annoyance; what arose was a sense of loss, a great void that seemed to open its bottomless maw and suck him in. He'd done more than lost his faith; he'd abandoned it. He felt that in his greatest time of need God had deserted him, so what was the point?
He wiped at his eyes, smearing tears across his face. "Life was going well for us. We were a happy family. Loved spending time together. Loved laughing together. Kelly..." More tears leaked from his eyes and now flowed freely down his cheeks. He felt no shame crying in front of Juli. This was him, who he was now, broken, exposed, defeated, frightened. "... I loved her so much. I needed her. Jimmy was a surprise, we were young, but... oh, Jimmy. And then they were taken from me." The familiar anger was there again, gnawing in his gut, tightening around his heart. "Just like that, my life was ruined, turned inside out." He looked at Juli through blurry eyes. "God was nowhere."
Now Juli was wiping tears of her own. "I'm sorry." She went back to tracing wood grain. "Even when you can't see Him, when the lights are out and you can feel the darkness, God is still there."
That was it. Time to change the subject. "So what about you? You put on this laid-back, wisecracking persona, but I can tell you're scared too."
Juli thought a moment. "More uncertain than scared."
"So what's your story?"
She shrugged. "Average girl story, really. Dad was a psycho, abused me as an infant, murdered my mom when I was two, and I was raised by my grandmother. The record won't list the murder in there, but he drove Mom to suicide, and in my book that's murder."
"Average girl, huh? Did you ever doubt God?"
"Sure I did."
"Did. You don't anymore?"
Juli shook her head. "Nope. Now I only doubt myself."
"You never ask why God allowed all that stuff to happen to you? Why He allowed some sicko to abuse you as a helpless baby and drive your mom to suicide?"
"I asked the questions hundreds of times and never got an answer. I stopped asking years ago. Faith is my answer now. Just letting God be God and trusting Him to know what's best."
Rob could feel
his sadness turning to frustration. This was all the same mumbo jumbo he used to listen to in church. The same stuff Kelly believed... and he used to believe. Until it happened to him and he was the one asking the questions and getting no answers. "What's best? You really think what happened to you, what happened to your mom, was for the best?"
Juli looked at her hands then laced her fingers. "It doesn't seem like it, does it? I won't pretend to have God figured out. I don't. But I know this: bad things happen in this world, darkness is all around us-that's a reality we live with. And when bad things happen, God is always there. Always. He never leaves us, Rob."
Rob had heard enough. Why torture himself any further? He grabbed a blanket, stood, and walked across the room.
"Rob," Juli said, not looking up from the table. "I'm sorry you felt abandoned. I'm sure He never intended that."
What God intended or not didn't matter to Rob. Fact was, he was abandoned, and not only him but Kelly and Jimmy too. Well, he wasn't going to abandon Jimmy. His son was out there, and he would find him if he had to crawl on his hands and knees over every square foot of this forest.
After spreading the blanket on the floor, Rob climbed between its folds, lay on his side, and used his arm for a pillow.
Unlike the previous two nights, sleep did not come slowly. He seemed to rush into it like the downward dive of a roller coaster, plunging deeper and deeper, faster, until he finally awoke in a dream ... where he was suffocating.
Darkness was all around him, pressing down like a weight, slithering its tentacles down his throat and nostrils, robbing him of air. It was all he could do to accomplish one breath. The air was stale and thick and smelled of wet soil. He tried to scream, but his vocal cords were like taut bands, stretched to their breaking point. He tried to move, but something pressed in on him from both sides. Bringing his knees up, they bumped something above. His hands found it too. Hard like wood. To his right and left he found the same thing.
He was in a box.
Laying his hands flat against the board above, he pushed with all his strength, but it would not move, would not even give. He knocked, but the sound of his knuckles on the wood sounded dull and dead. On the side panels it was the same thing.
Darlington Woods Page 13
