And it is then we stay frozen. The only action that feels safe is no action at all. We crawl within ourselves, sometimes for years. By refusing to make any choices—by ceasing to act—we believe we are ridding ourselves of all risk.
For me, it was none of the above. Or all of them, combined as one. For me, it was like finding yourself in a nightmare and not being able to coax the mind awake. No matter what you do, you can’t wake up—but neither can you shake the surreal feeling that this is not your life. Eventually you realize you are not asleep, but that you’d rather you were. Instead, you are faced with a living nightmare.
The scene at the staging ground was beyond what I could have possibly imagined. When we could not reach Amanda, Noon, or any other agents, we of course knew something was wrong. It was far worse than that. I have seen war. As a Marine, I served in Iraq during Desert Storm, just at the end of my enlistment. And although we did not encounter a large resistance, I saw firsthand what a monster does to his own people. Mass graves, the aftermath of death squads. But I was wrong. That was what a dictator did to his people. Spread before us, there at the staging ground, was the aftermath of true monsters.
It could not be said that we found bodies; bodies implies a measure of continuity or of noticeable form. There was no continuity or form in the total devastation before our eyes. It would take months—perhaps years—to identify what body parts were intact enough for a forensic team to attempt an examination.
I was not there at Ground Zero in New York. I have friends in the Denver Fire Department who were called out. I have read many of the accounts. I can only imagine it resembled the carnage that Rule’s demons had inflicted upon the poor souls who were here.
And I knew what this all meant to me, on a personal level.
It was hard to even think her name.
Amanda.
And our child.
“My God,” Jax said, his face pallid and bereft of emotion.
I couldn’t speak. There were no words. The wellspring of pain was pressing on my sternum, begging release. It felt as if I might crumble inward. Cease to exist.
“She’s gone,” I finally managed.
“We don’t know that.”
“Look at this carnage. Look at what they did. Nothing survived. This was meant as an extermination.”
More like a holocaust.
“I need to call in the State Police,” he managed.
“Call them,” I said and walked away.
In the trees, I searched for solitude. I needed to separate from the awful silence resounding from my own soul. Never had I felt so empty; so without purpose. What was left? What could I possibly find now worth going on toward?
“You have your son,” a voice from behind me said.
I spun around.
It was Tilson Wayne, sitting on a broken tree, smoking a hand-rolled cigarette. The coal glowed orange-red in the damp darkness.
“Where the fuck did you come from?” I hissed. “Were you are part of this?”
“Of course not,” he said.
“Why are you here now?”
“You know why.”
“No riddles. Not now. Just talk to me. I need to hear something.”
“It’s not over,” he said.
I was once again entranced by his rough, leathery features. So much history in those lines and scarred skin—too much for a man who died as a child.
“It doesn’t get much more ‘over’ than this.”
“There’s more to come.”
“That’s not reassuring.”
“Giving up is not in your nature,” he said.
“How the hell do you know anything about my nature?”
“You know the answer to that one, too,” he said, and drew smoke deep into his lungs.
“You aren’t even real. Go away. I’ll suffer the silence.”
“You know how the game is played. There isn’t an end, Bobby. There never will be.”
“Like I said, no riddles, ghost. Evaporate. Fly off. Whatever the fuck it is you do.”
“Every act is a part of the grand plan. Even one as heinous as this.”
“You’re not making sense,” I said.
“What have you learned about me?”
“About you?”
“My history.”
“That you died as a child.”
“I did.”
“Yet here you are.”
“I have no memory between then and now,” he said.
“That’s because you aren’t real. You are something I dreamed up. More evidence that I’m going crazy.”
“If you concocted me from your own imagination, how is it that I know you are about to make a discovery that will change everything?”
“What are you talking about?”
“If I were to predict your future, would that prove to you that I am who I say I am?”
“You can’t do that.”
“Your current search is about to be over. Only for a new search—a more important one—to begin.”
“Is it a rule—some kind of operating procedure? That you ghosts must speak in riddles, conundrums, and half-truths?”
Tilson Wayne—or whoever he was—laughed. Then he stood and simply walked away.
~ ~ ~
As I started back to find Jax, I heard someone crying in the forest.
“Who’s out there?” I said loudly, silently praying it was Amanda.
“Help,” was the reply. Distant. Somewhere in the inky blackness.
“Keep talking,” I said. “Make some noise.”
Nothing but silence. Whoever it was had too much fear that the murderous demons were still around, perhaps looking for them. This realization was as a spear pushed through my heart.
Amanda was incapable of such fear.
I kept walking toward the area I’d heard the voice, swinging my flashlight beam back and forth. Finally I heard another voice, different, even softer:
“I’m scared.”
It was almost a whisper. I was close.
“My name is Detective Bobby Mac,” I said. “I’m here with the good guys.”
“Over here,” the first voice said.
I moved the LED light toward the voice. There were three little girls, huddled together under two fallen trees. They were dirty, disheveled, and shivering. One of them was wearing a blood-stained, tattered dress—she had lost a shoe. The one that remained, though mangled and muddied, was clearly white.
~ ~ ~
We gathered the three girls together, fed them rations, and made them drink small amounts of water. They were clearly dehydrated and completely disoriented. All they seemed to remember was the mass attack that occurred at the staging area only hours before.
“What do we do?” Jax said.
His handful of deputies guarded the perimeter of the clearing, but it was a lackluster gesture. There were scores of FBI agents lying in pieces all around us. How much protection could half a dozen small town cops be? In fact, how much could anyone do?
I could not stop thinking about Amanda. She was dead. Before we really had a chance to grow together as one, she was out of my life forever. But I still needed to find her. What was left of her. It did not matter how long, or how much effort. I would stay there. After all, there was nothing left. Everything I cared about had been ripped from my life.
When we were kids, Paddy and Ma took us to mass every Saturday. We attended Wednesday night bible study. The story of Job had always troubled me. The man was a devoted servant of God and yet the Lord rained down so much tragedy on the poor soul that he all but renounced his faith—he did renounce the day he was born. All for what? A kind of wager with Satan? A way for God to prove to the fallen angel the mettle of a follower?
My own mettle too seemed to have been tested all these years. Far beyond what any reasonable person would consider a breaking point. But in my case, what faith could God be testing? I wasn’t sure I ever had any to begin with.
There certainly wasn’t an
y left now.
“I’m sorry,” Jax said, offering the girls some milk he’d warmed over the campfire.
I looked at him without answering. Hot tears ran down my cheeks. Tears of sorrow. Tears of mourning. Tears of anger and hate.
I had not cried since burying my wife on that wintry Denver morning. The realization made me even more resolute to never do it again. I wiped my eyes and walked away. I didn’t want anyone to see me, least of all the children. What had I been through compared to them? They were eleven-years-old. Who knew the horror they’d witnessed this past week and a half?
There was no need to traumatize them any more than they already were. We needed to be their heroes. I needed to be that for them, as ludicrous as my heart knew that idea to be.
~ ~ ~
“What are you doing?” Tilson Wayne said to me, just beyond the circle of light from the fire.
“Leave me alone, ghost. I don’t need your illusions anymore. I never did.”
“Those girls are not illusions.”
“Maybe not. But you are. You are an unwanted manifestation of my beleaguered mind.”
“How could I have known that you would find them?”
“I can’t answer that.”
“You asked before why I had come.”
“So?”
“I am no manifestation of your mind, Detective. I can’t tell you exactly what I am, but I know that I am real. Yes, I died when I was eleven years old. What you see before you is a man I cannot explain any more than you can.”
“So you are a confused ghost. Perfect.”
“Like you, I am forced to question who I am. I don’t like that. Yet I am aware of things—strangely aware of a purpose for me being here. I hate not having all the answers.”
“We are too alike for you to be anything but my own inner demon.”
“I have been brought here to tell you something. That the fight is winnable. Rule would never have you believe so, but it is.”
“How could you think you know that? Because God sent you?”
“I am not sure I believe in God.”
“We now have that in common, too.”
“You’ve given up your faith?”
“I’m not sure what faith I ever had. I have always at least believed there was a God. I am not sure I can any longer. What kind of father would allow this to happen to his children?” I said, gesturing to the killing field.
“What God would allow an eleven-year-old boy to be run over by a piece of his father’s own farm equipment?” Wayne said.
“I once accepted that God took away my leg, and my wife. I’m not one to shirk my own responsibilities in things. We all have to bear an amount of suffering, and I was more than willing to bear mine. But I cannot reconcile what happened here tonight. This is more than anyone should have to bear. God cannot explain this one to me.”
“I understand.”
“Do you?”
“I do. But that doesn’t change the fact that I am here to tell you that the fight is not over.”
“You keep saying that.”
“Because I know it to be true.”
“How can you know anything? You don’t even know who you are.”
“I am a friend,” he said. “Isn’t that enough?”
“Disappear. You are nothing more than my subconscious wishing on a star.”
“I will go,” Wayne said. “But there is something you need to know before I do. Something I do remember.”
“Tell me and then be gone.”
“I want you to know my mother’s maiden name.”
~ ~ ~
Meyer West was locked away in the back corner of the basement in the William E. Borah Memorial Library, nearly invisible behind the mountain of books. His eyes hurt. His back ached. His very soul begged him for a reprieve from the torrent of despicable history he’d been devouring for the past week. Terrible things. Unconscionable acts of torture. Rituals that would make the most stalwart sick.
But the answer was there. He knew it. And so he kept reading. Skipping meals. Drinking too little water. And now the toll was noticeable. He could no longer concentrate. And still, the only real clue he’d found was that of the three sisters. And that made no sense either. The missing girls were pre-adolescents, yes, but they were not sisters. According to the investigations, they were not even friends. Acquaintances did not fit the profile.
One last book, Meyer told himself. There was really only one last book he wanted to examine. Another on the language of the Coeur d’Alene tribe.
Where was it? He rooted through the books on the faux wood table, and through those that had either toppled to the floor or been resigned there.
It was there, somewhere, hiding from him, perhaps.
Then he found it.
And a sound jumped at him from the darkness.
“Hello?”
No answer.
Probably the night librarian, rummaging around and staying close so as to be at hand to remind him of closing time.
10 PM.
He knew. He did not need reminding. He’d closed the library down the past six nights. Tonight would be no different. But the gangly man who reminded Meyer of Ichabod Crane would still come, scolding, chewing on Meyer as if he were a schoolboy hiding in the depths to avoid the teacher’s gaze.
“I say, hello.”
Still nothing. And no more rummaging.
Meyer went back to his search and found the volume on languages. The Coeur d’Alene dialect was an extremely rare and complicated one. Translations were many times either completely contrived or varied. There was one term that seemed wrong to him now, after so much reading.
‘m’mi’msh.
Little box.
Meyer found the reference in the story of an ancient sacrificial ritual retold—a slang reference to a pre-teen girl. But that reference now felt wrong. Out of context. The book he’d just relocated had more literal translations of many other words. Maybe…
BOOM.
A pile of books toppled to the floor in the darkness, not ten feet away.
“Who is it?” Meyer said. “I am well aware of the time, sir. Unless you are leaving early, I have at least another twenty minutes.”
No response.
Meyer went back to the book, rifling through the pages, putting his photographic memory to the test. But he was tired. Not only physically and mentally but also spiritually. Too much evil; too much darkness.
And then he found it.
Exactly what he’d been looking for.
The needle in a pile of needles.
The original book he read that referenced the sacrifice of the children had a slightly different spelling of the Coeur d’Alene word; a variation he’d not noticed before:
One extra letter; a second ‘i’.
‘m’mii’msh.
THAT was the word.
Meyer continued reading.
“Oh, dear,” he muttered as the significance of the newer definition nestled slowly into his tattered mind. “This can’t be…”
Before he could consider it further, the monster came for him out of the blackness—a creature from beyond his worst imagination.
~ ~ ~
The FBI and State Police took over the crime scene in the Coeur d’Alene forest. It was unavoidable. Melissa Grant and the other two girls were transported to the county Children’s Services. Jax was not taking the federal and state intervention well, but even if he could have opposed it, neither one of us was in a condition to argue the logic.
We were each, in a word, devastated. Jax wanted to be with his family. With his girls. He wanted to release the township back to the comfort of their own homes. He needed his town back.
We both needed to be as far away as possible from the carnage north of Rocky Gap. Better that other agencies with stronger forensics teams work through the near insurmountable task there.
Back at the hotel, I used Meyer’s spare key to enter his room. He’d not slept there. I remember thinking
perhaps the librarian had allowed him to sleep off his exhaustion at the cubicle he’d commandeered since our arrival in Idaho. I decided to shower. I knew there was no sleep in my immediate future, so after cleaning up and downing a cup of coffee from the local barista shack, I drove over to the library.
I realized for the first time it was Sunday when I encountered the locked doors. I cannot explain the feeling that next came over me, but I was positive something had happened to my cousin. I moved around to the back of the library, to the loading dock. There was a door there with a standard knob, no deadlock. With a screwdriver from the truck I was able to jimmy the door.
I found Meyer in the lower level. When I first saw him I was convinced he was dead—that I had lost yet another loved one. My cousin was barely breathing. I called Jax and asked him to send an ambulance and to come by himself and meet me at the library.
Blood was spattered about the floor, spilled books, papers, and toppled shelves. I cannot say it looked like there had been much of a struggle. Clearly Meyer was no match for whatever had attacked him. The damage around him was caused by the assault, not by any valiant attempt by my cousin and friend to defend himself.
It was also clear that the intent was for him to die. The wounds to his body were mortal. Had I not come in to find him, he would have bled out by Monday morning when the librarian returned to open the building.
The paramedics arrived with Jax, and after they carted Meyer away, barely alive, my brother quizzed me:
“What the hell is going on? What is all this?”
“I’m not sure,” I told him. “This has more to do with our family, I think.”
“Like all we’ve seen is staged for our benefit.”
“Exactly.”
“Mice, running through a maze.”
“What?” I said.
“Like we’re mice. Being led exactly where they want us to go.”
“I saw Tilson Wayne again.”
“Where?”
“When we found the girls.”
“What did he have to say?”
“There is no ‘he’. I think I’m going crazy.”
“This,” he said, motioning to the destruction in the library. “This shit is crazy. Not you.”
R.S. Guthrie - Detective Bobby Mac 02 - L O S T Page 9
