“Why are you up here, Bobby Mac?”
“You know why. Because I can’t just let these things slide anymore. Not since…”
“Not since me?”
“That’s part of it. I miss you, Greer.”
“Problem is you didn’t miss me enough when I was alive.”
“I know.”
“I miss you, too, Bobby.”
“I wish you wouldn’t say that.”
“Because it hurts you too much.”
“Yes.”
“I did, you know.”
“Did what?”
“I really did love you.”
“I’m afraid that’s my subconscious, telling me what I want to hear.”
“Doesn’t make it any less true.”
“I’d give anything to believe that.”
“You can believe it.”
“Why come to me now? It’s been over a year…”
“This place isn’t safe.”
“So you’re here to warn me off?”
“Something like that.”
“I can’t do it, Greer. There’s too much at stake.”
“What about your nieces?”
“What about them?”
“What you need to be doing is saving them.”
“How?”
“He wants them all.”
“The children?”
“The girls.”
And then I awoke. The phone was ringing.
It was Meyer.
~ ~ ~
I called Jax at his house.
“Are Gracie and Celia all right?”
“Yeah, I mean I think so,” Jax said through the cobwebs. “Gracie is at her friend’s place.”
“Are you shitting me? With everything going on, Jax?”
“We have to live our lives. Gracie’s fine.”
“Get your daughter. I’m coming over.”
By the time I arrived, Jax was on his second mug of coffee and Trish had gone to pick up Gracie at the friend’s house.
“Hope this is good,” Jax said.
“Meyer is on his way.”
“Meyer.”
“Yes.”
“What’s this about?”
“He found something,” I said. “In the history books. Something about the children.”
“The children?”
“Young girls. Are you familiar with Three Sisters Peaks?”
“Yeah, I think so. In the range overlooking Lake Pend Oreille.”
Meyer burst into the room, sweaty and out of breath. He looked like he was about to drop. When Scots like Meyer become taxed, their fair skin turns tomato red and veins begin popping out where they were hidden before.
“Ease up, Meyer,” I said.
“We need to gather all the people in town with kids,” he said in-between breaths. “Especially young daughters.”
“Jesus,” said Jax. He snatched his cell from the table and dialed Trish.
“No answer,” he said. “DAMN it.”
“What did you find? Tell us,” I said.
“It’s in our own book. Can you believe it?”
“Calm down. What…did…you…find?”
“Sacrifice,” he said. “I think they are trying to sacrifice three young girls.”
“Mac said something about sisters,” Jax said, almost pleading. “Three Sisters Peaks.”
“I think so,” Meyer said. “The grouping of peaks was named from a ritual that occurred there a hundred and fifty years ago. A splinter of the Coeur d’Alene tribe. Witch doctors and warriors who believed the gods were angry with the white man—the French. They kidnapped three daughters of a French Captain…took one to each peak. And when the three fires were lit—when the signal was given between the three spires—the witch doctors threw the girls to their deaths.”
“What does this have to do with us?”
“There was a similar action in the fifteenth century. In Scotland. Two warring clans. One clan captured three daughters of the opposing leader. Burned them at the stake to show their resolve.”
“Their resolve to what?” I said.
“To end the lineage of their enemies.”
“And you think Rule is somehow reenacting this ritual.”
“I think Annir appeared as a god to the splintered tribe of Coeur d’Alene. Convinced them of the need for the sacrifices.”
“You talked about this before, right?”
“Yes. He had a different name then: Hamaltmsh.”
“The fly god.”
~ ~ ~
Trish arrived with Gracie and Celia a few minutes later. Jax grabbed the girls, checking them over as if they might have been damaged on the Jeep ride over. He next called his lead deputy.
“Severs. Use the reverse 911 procedures. All citizens are to congregate in orderly fashion in the school sports complex—use the indoor football field; it’s the largest. Put them in the gymnasium, too, if you have to. Round up everyone—County Sheriffs, too. Tell them it’s on my authority. And Bill…arm yourself.”
“We should call the FBI. Call Noon,” I said.
“Agreed. From the school. Securing the town, that’s first.”
I nodded and looked to Meyer, who had dropped on a couch and looked better.
“What else do you know?”
“As I said, there is a reference to a similar act in the Book of Ossian. Three daughters. Sisters. It was meant to end the family line.”
“When again?”
“The fifteenth century. The Clan MacDougal. Three young girls were captured by a marauding faction of an unknown clan. At the time the murders were believed to be politically motivated—the MacDougals were warring with several other clans and some of their nobles sided with the English. The poet who documented the event in the Book of Ossian believed otherwise.”
“What?”
“He believed the girls were sacrificed before the demigod Samhain. A ritual to end the MacDougal lineage.”
“Not a warring clan?”
“No. Demons.”
“This is in the book?”
“Yes…and also this depiction of a symbol, carved into the dead girls’ abdomens prior to the burning.”
“Jesus,” Jax said. “How do we know who to warn?”
“What is he talking about, Mac?”
“We’ve got our own disturbing news.”
~ ~ ~
When they had gathered all the residents of Rocky Gap in the gymnasium and on the football field, Chief Jax Macaulay calmed their fears. He told them the evacuation of their homes was strictly precautionary; that the best way for him and his deputies to protect the families and children of their tightknit town was to have them all in one place.
“We don’t need more disappearances,” he said to the people, most of whom he knew well; many whose sons and daughters played soccer with Gracie or with Celia on the playground. “What we can’t afford is panic. We’ve got food and water here from Alton’s Grocery, and Doc Carroll is here and can look at anyone who isn’t feeling well.”
There were questions, and Jax fielded them as well as he knew how.
No, he didn’t know how long they would be there.
No, there wasn’t any eminent danger to anyone.
Yes, the school would be closed in the morning.
For the most part, this demand of the job was easy. Compared, at least, to what he feared they might have to do later on—if their fears came to fruition, that was.
“People seem to be taking this in stride,” I told him.
“Why shouldn’t they? This is more excitement than most of them have seen their entire lives. Plus they have no idea what’s going on. Ignorance is being fat, dumb, and oblivious.”
“Have you called Noon yet? Amanda’s not picking up.”
“No. Figured I’d try now.”
He dialed the number on the back of the business card Agent Noon gave him.
“I’m going outside to see if I can find Meyer,” I said.
The nig
ht was aglow with the light from the waxing one moon. The only bodies outside were Sheriff and Police personnel. I nodded at Deputy Solon as I walked by her. She returned my nod nervously. Unlike the ordinary citizens, even though she did not know specifics, Solon knew there was a lot more to calling in every resident of a town than what Jax had let on.
Where the hell is Meyer, I thought. It was his normal modus operandi—disappearing, leaving the group to wander in deep thought. Having spent most of his adult life as a priest, Meyer was as personable as required; he did not do well in large groups.
There was a shout from behind the school and a noise like trash cans falling over. I drew my nine and moved quickly in the direction of the commotion.
I found Meyer, lying in a pile of refuse, having stumbled into the trash cans. The man had night blindness; the incandescence of the near-full moon wasn’t of much help to him.
I gave him my hand and pulled him up from the ground.
“You’d think I would learn,” he said.
“You’d think I would,” I told him.
“What, my friend, is that supposed to mean?”
“You test me. What are you doing back here?”
“Thinking.”
“Can’t you think inside the building? There are plenty of dark hallways.”
“The night air calms my nerves.”
“You are night blind.”
“A limitation to which I am not yet willing to relinquish control,” he said.
“You are as stubborn as me,” I said.
“NO ONE is that stubborn.”
“This might be one argument I‘m forced to concede.”
“You’ve never won an argument with me. I doubt you ever will.”
“Stubborn and egotistical,” I said. “Nice combination.”
“There is something I’m missing.”
“Things have gone so out of whack, I’d be shocked if we hadn’t missed something.”
“What I mean is, I’ve read hundreds of books this past week—yet my theories feel weak. Unsubstantiated.”
“So far you’re the one who has figured all of this out. Without your theories, we wouldn’t know anything at all.”
He contemplated this for a moment before answering me.
“Let me rephrase: I feel more like I have put together a puzzle, and we can indeed see what we are dealing with, but there are pieces missing. Perhaps critical pieces.”
“What more can you do?”
“I can go back to my studies. You are the doer. I am the thinker. We complement each other.”
“I’ll take that in the positive light in which I know it was offered.”
“Please do,” Meyer said. “And then drive me back to the library.”
“The library will be closed.”
He smiled. “There are ways around such things.”
-CHAPTER TWELVE-
THE THING Bobby Macaulay knew as Father Rule surveyed the legions his servant Annir had gathered for the attack. Rule had known many such subservient allies through the millennia, but none quite as eager and decent at his work as Annir. Truly one of the only creatures in the realm that cared not for praise or status or reward. Annir wanted to spill blood; he wanted to embody evil.
A Celt warrior of one kind or another, Rule had easily converted him. Converting the weak was one thing, but when a human exhibited such raw desire and aptitude for the taking of life, Rule’s job was as fulfilling as it was simplified.
All things had gone according to plan. Rule enjoyed the chess match; he relished each move, even when a thousand years between one and the next. The demon’s arrogance made the game more difficult to enjoy—so sure he was of his eventual victory. There was, however, no preordained outcome—much as Rule would have welcomed such reality. The Universe did not work that way. This war would last for infinity.
“It’s time,” Rule said to Annir. “They are not to return until it’s finished.”
Annir hobbled down from the precipice, joining the throng of black, spiny, hateful things. He walked among them, his thoughts permeated their dark consciousness, telling them to kill everyone—leave no one alive except the three.
Go. Destroy.
There were thousands. Far too many for those who would fight them below. Every manner of soulless creature from beyond the borders of Hell had been summoned. None resembled humans any longer. Column after column, row after row began to descend through the forest and toward the humans, picking up speed and beginning to howl with bloodlust. So rarely they were allowed to feed on humans, the fever enveloped them.
No tree or rock or hillside was left undamaged in their wake. The humans were not far, congregated below, resting, waiting for who knew what. Sitting ducks, Annir thought hungrily. Pigs awaiting the slaughter.
~ ~ ~
Byrne heard the demons before anyone else. How could she not have? She knew the sound; she remembered the terrifying cries from the wilderness in Colorado. Those inhuman screams still lived in her nightmares.
The hundred or so FBI agents had pulled back from the search in anticipation of nightfall. The choppers had landed and the pilots, agents, and other technical personnel were busy gorging themselves in the chow tent, laughing, joking, and telling stories of heroism—wagging their braggadocio for all to see.
So glib, Amanda had thought, just moments before. So nonchalant and carefree while there were still three young girls missing in the inhospitable Idaho wilderness.
Amanda pulled her sidearm and shouted “READY.”
Only a handful of agents responded, their training overriding any questions or confusion. The rest either stopped talking, wondering what the female agent was doing, or paid her no mind at all.
They would pay attention soon enough. The howling had grown to a kind of raging white noise. Soon all the agents began looking around, wondering from where the noise emanated. Two dozen more un-holstered their weapons.
The ground beneath the tent began shaking as the thundering herd came down the mountainside. In the shocked silence of the mess hall, the sounds of trees cracking apart and the now frenzied shrieks could be clearly heard.
There was a sudden explosion as the generators near the outskirts of camp were destroyed. The lights went out and the inside of the tent became pandemonium. Agents bounced off one another in panic, pulling their side arms, searching for automatic rifles, knives, anything that could be used against whatever approached.
Then the first of the demons arrived. Those first attackers tore through the outer walls and poured into the crowded tent. The room was completely shrouded in darkness, but the sounds of automatic and semi-automatic gunfire erupted on all sides of Amanda, pounding her eardrums and drowning out the sounds of the crazed demons.
Amanda tried to move to the center of the room, away from the edges of the attack where men and women were being decimated. The sounds of dying could be heard above the sound of gunfire. The stench of burnt cordite and fresh blood filled the air.
Agent Byrne pulled as many agents close to her as she could and they formed a small phalanx, weapons drawn, pointed outward, ready to fire. Amanda’s stomach tossed like a trapped animal inside her. She understood what they were up against; she knew the odds were worse than poor. They had to be outnumbered ten to one. Their enemy thrived in darkness, dwarfed them in numbers, and had an insatiable hunger for human life.
“Stay together,” she told those closest to her. “Remember your training. Put the rest out of your mind.”
The latter was not an easy command. They were losing the battle—inch-by-inch, moment-by-moment, death-by-death. The gunfire was lessening by orders of magnitude as wave upon wave of attackers slowly overcame what nominal resistance the humans could muster.
When the first cluster of gnarled, misshapen bodies reached Amanda and her comrades, she called for the agents to fire their guns. Short bursts. Shooting to kill.
It didn’t take long.
They would have run out of ammunition event
ually anyway, but the onslaught of demons was by then far too much for a handful of agents to stave off, even for a few minutes.
When it was over, every agent around her was eviscerated. Torn, mangled, and devoured. Bones crunched about her as if they were nothing more than twigs and toothpicks. And when they were done with the savage killing, the knot of creatures encircled her.
She was prepared to die. Her training had ingrained such a possibility into her psyche. What she found herself unready to face was the destruction of the life inside her. There was no manual, no amount of rote that could make her ready to accept that.
But she’d finally run out of choices.
Her last thoughts were of Bobby Mac and the children they would never have.
Part II
L O S T
-CHAPTER THIRTEEN-
PEOPLE BECOME lost in many different ways. I have discovered this reality over half a lifetime. Each of us figures it out eventually. It happens differently for every person, but there are similarities.
Sometimes, after having once been certain of our path and making progress toward what we believed to be our future, something happens. A life-changing event. This unthinkable happening then acts as a detour, sending us down an unfamiliar path. Once we’ve walked far enough down into the realm of the unknown, our ability to find the way back to the main route is forever lost.
We can also experience a much more subtle sense of loss. It is possible to simply wake up one morning like a man or woman with amnesia. Our life looks differently than when we drifted off to sleep. Unrecognizable. Unfathomable. How did we get to this place in our lives? Some call this mid-life crisis. Others, an epiphany or an awakening.
Another way we lose our bearings is by having too much taken away. An avalanche of tragedy can leave us bewildered, disoriented, trepid toward a step in any direction. We feel as if the immediate area is filled with landmines, tripwires, pitfalls—no way seems safe to traverse.
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