by Lee Thompson
We came out on the ridge, both of us breathing heavy, Lucas farther along, down on one knee and scanning the area. Tripper said, “Hold up.”
We lowered to the ground and I whispered, “What’s going on?” He ignored me for a moment until the whir of a small plane’s motor thrummed above us and its white underbelly glided past, just over the treetops. Tripper stood and said, “Let’s move. We don’t have a lot of time before the ceremony and we have to get you ready.”
I grabbed his arm and spun him around. “Get me ready for what?”
“Abraham prepared something special for you.”
“What?”
Tripper laughed and pried my fingers from his bicep. He said, “Abraham Nutley thinks you’re special, Johnny. Why not entertain him? It’s going to help us find out how bad they’re hurting these kids, all right? If he had some dream about you, or he’s fantasizing over all the deaths in Division a while back, let him. We can use that.”
I nodded, seeing his point, but not liking it.
Lucas stood. He mouthed something to Tripper but I was never good at reading lips—in fact, I kind of envied people that possessed the ability—and Tripper nodded sharply. I fell in step beside him again, saying, “What did the kid say?”
“He said the ground trembles in anticipation for blood.”
“And what does that mean?”
“They’re superstitious.”
“You’re not answering my question.”
He chuckled and picked up the pace. We walked the ridge for over a mile in silence. When Lucas stopped again, he looked over his shoulder and grinned. It creeped me out, but he didn’t seem to notice, or didn’t care. Tripper moved up alongside him and patted his shoulder. I neared the edge of a cliff and looked over, expecting to see something entirely different than what waited. Tripper pointed to steps carved into the side of the mountain. He said, “Were they right? Does it feel like coming home?”
* * *
My legs were weak by the time we touched the ground, the rock steps slick with early morning dew, still lost in the shadows cast by numerous towering oaks. Lucas stopped and turned and pointed the tip of his machete at a circle of ramshackle buildings—four of them facing in on each other, only six feet or so between them. The windows were few and mismatched as if the people had scrambled through scrap yards, abandoned farms, the inner part of Scranton or somewhere else to steal what they needed, what others had left behind or never wanted to begin with. We crossed the open area, through knee-high grass that swished like the whispers of the dead, and I imagined there were bodies buried beneath the soil and the sleeves of green were nothing more than grasping fingers because being dead hurt.
The ground trembles in anticipation for blood.
We passed between the two closest buildings. Tripper sucked in a breath and went rigid two steps ahead of me and he stopped so quickly I almost ran into him. I stepped around him and clenched my hands, saying, “What kind of shit is this?”
In the center of the common grounds a totem pole etched of stone and stained dark by blood glistened in sunshine. A boy, maybe eight-years-old, writhed against the ropes binding him to it midway up, shit and piss running down his legs and staining his pants. I looked at the cottages, their open doors and the women who filled each of the four line houses. Their faces were serene, knowing, that same playful smile Tripper had worn when he’d snuck up behind me etched into their lips, around their eyes. I pulled the pistol. I said to Tripper, “You call their leader out. He’s cutting this kid down.”
The women didn’t move, only held their hands over their stomachs as if they all carried life inside them and it was somehow tied to the boy being punished. I grabbed Tripper by the collar and jerked him close. “Cut this kid down!” The air thickened around us, and somewhere above and below I heard the ground tremble and the wind echo my voice…cut this kid…and a hand settled on my shoulder, tight enough to make me cry out and drop the pistol, hard enough to drop me to my knees. And Lucas, this lupine-looking kid, smiled down at me, his fingers flexing around the machete handle, clicking his tongue as if I were a small child and I’d done a no-no. Tripper backed up, then changed his mind and scurried forward on hands and knees and grabbed my pistol. Lucas didn’t stop him. He didn’t need to.
Tripper pointed the gun at my chest. He said, “Let him up.”
The gun wavered as he wiped his eyes and he drew a bead on Lucas, his face set in stone. “Now,” he ordered. The boy stank of murder and want. He set the machete on my shoulder, drew the blade slowly along the side of my neck and wet heat ran in a trickle down my shirt. Tripper said, “I’m not going to tell you again.” He cocked the hammer and the machete pulled away from me. The women ran their hands across their crotches, all of them moaning softly in unison while I bled and the boy on the totem cried.
Tripper said, “Get up, McDonnell.”
I stood on shaking knees, surprise waning as I moved across the commons ground to the totem, wondering if I’d need a ladder to reach the bonds cutting into this kid’s wrist and ankles. I thought about the photographs in the file Kimberly LaPorte had given me, knowing this is where the bruises on their wrists and ankles came from, how they beat their spines against the column as they struggled, worried and frightened and no one willing to help them, everyone they loved smiling up at them.
My blood boiled.
Tripper held the gun on Lucas but something in his stance told me that he wouldn’t be able to use it if he had to. His face contorted in so many directions he looked as if the weight of the possibilities were tearing him apart.
I asked Tripper where the men were while the women climaxed all around us and Lucas chopped at the air next to his thigh as if priming himself to cross the distance between himself and Tripper at any moment.
Jack kept his eyes on the kid as he answered me. “How the hell am I supposed to know?”
Sunlight reflected off the grimy windows.
The totem creaked as the boy struggled.
There was no way to get him down without being defenseless. I imagined the men of this little sect laughing at us from inside every building, holding other children close to their chests, showing them that the rest of the world was powerless.
Then the women stepped from the doors with blood on their hands, their faces bloated and purple, and their feet bare and infected, burst open and pus-lined along their insteps. I pulled my cell phone and hit Duncan’s number hoping the state cop would pick up but there wasn’t any service this deep in the forest.
The women said, “Sonnelion,” their voices serpentine, soft, full of wonder and amusement.
Men filled the spaces between buildings like ghosts of some forgotten mountain town.
Their clothing was tattered and worn loose on bony shoulders, all of them aflame with disgust and pride. Tripper pointed the gun back and forth, unsure until a tall, lanky man wearing a dusty top hat and a ripped black cape broke away from the other men. He was older than anyone I’d ever known but he moved like Lucas. He pointed and the boy jabbed the machete in the dark soil and began to strip. Nutley turned to me. He smiled a tight, smug smile. He said, “Welcome to our little part of the world, Johnny. We’ve been eager to meet you.” He drew closer, the wind whispering in a thousand voices—all of them his from various points in his life—and the totem snapped and the boy screamed as he fell and hit the soil, and then there was only an awful silence, me on my knees before him, all of them circling closer.
I stared up into Nutley’s eyes, seeing the bright black stone nestled deep inside him, as intricate and organic as the black widow tattooed on his forehead. I’d known men like this, men who thought they could never break. He continued to smile as if life was a stage and he was cast in the main role, and I had to give it to him, taking what most people were prone to do and here he was bending reality to match his fantasy. Yet he possessed a true power that imposters couldn’t fake. His presence, just his shadow falling over me, chilled my bones. My teeth clatte
red. His smile widened, a hand lifted over my head—the patriarch blessing his disciple. His cape flapped in the wind like the darkest of shadows storming a path to hell. He said, “We can help each other, you know? I’ve seen you in dreams. All of you. Tasted your blood on my tongue. Felt the rapture birthed of your mourning.” He knelt in front of me, smelling of blood and semen. “Fate has awakened. And you’ve saved me time by coming here because now I don’t have to search for you and the others.”
He took my hands in his face and before I could jerk away, he kissed me, his tongue filling my mouth, thumbs pressing sharply against my eyes.
I’ve seen the devil. I’ve courted his wife and felt her teeth scrape my flesh in the blackest hour before dawn. And it’s sickened me. It always sickened me.
He pulled back and I shivered and spat, ready to swing, ready to rip his heart from his chest, but something fought the impulse, maybe fear, maybe something closer to terror, because so many alien emotions and memories flooded my eyes in a single moment. I couldn’t stop trembling.
He said, “We’re brothers, you and me.”
Lucas danced naked in front of Tripper, pissing everywhere and laughing like a lunatic. I assumed they all had to come from the New Wave Institution up the road a ways. They had to be crazy to be here, to let a man like this lead them. I wondered how many times Tripper had come out here since the children were found playing in the river, how many times he had believed that maybe these people, this group, was only misunderstood, or harmless simpletons. They couldn’t have been that great at acting, at hiding their natures. I quickly dismissed this, remembering how many serial killers led normal lives, how many successful and smiling people have gone crazy or taken their own lives or the lives of their children.
The air crackled between us with static electricity.
The boy bound to the totem, laying on his side in the dirt, cried like Christ purging himself of His final breath to save the world, and I welcomed the rage and disgust because sometimes love and forgiveness isn’t what you need to make a stand and defend the innocent.
I snagged Nutley’s ankle and jerked his leg forward, throwing a sharp uppercut to his groin, grinning as air burst from his lungs and he doubled over in pain, his top hat bouncing off the ground. Lunging forward, I slammed my palm into his chin. His head snapped back, the muscles around his throat as defined as burnished oak. I hit him in the sternum, expecting the other men to leap forward and trample me, expecting Tripper would pull the trigger and start splattering brains on their holy ground. Because this was their altar, the totem with its worn faces their god. They’d bled for it. And they’d bleed us.
Nutley straightened, trying to catch his breath and regain his composure. The others leered but remained motionless, maybe so well-trained that they no longer had minds or wills of their own—who they once were burned away with drugs, moonshine, doctrine. Looking at Nutley I saw my father. I grabbed a rock, squeezed it, glad to have something to hang on to as the women, holding knives, circled around Lucas, slashed at his thighs, and Tripper crumpled up in a ball crying because someone had torn his clothes off and a blanket of dark shapes that formed something like a large black raven wrapped his shivering form beneath its wings.
I whipped the rock and it bounced off Nutley’s forehead. He hit the ground in a heap. I faced the other men, hoping they couldn’t move without his order. My pistol lay by Tripper and the shadows mauling him. I didn’t want to get anywhere near them and I choked back tears because I couldn’t help him.
The women moaned as they lapped blood from Lucas’s thighs; Tripper screamed as if the shadows cast by oaks had impaled him; the men inched forward. I stole one last look at the weeping, bloodied boy strapped to the ruined totem, wishing I could help him, but wishes lack power. I ran for the woods, lungs burning and legs aching, thinking, I need a weapon before the women finish with Lucas.
THREE
I ran as far and as fast as I could before collapsing behind a fallen log. I listened for the sound of pursuit, but it proved impossible with my pulse pounding in my ears, so I got to my knees, moisture soaking into my pants, and glanced over the top of the rotting tree. My hands trembled as I scanned the forest, expecting to see Lucas walking silently between birches some fifty feet south, nose working like a dog, trying to catch my scent, his gaze roaming back and forth, watching for movement.
But the woods remained poised around me.
I searched the ground until I found a suitable club—all of three feet long, heavy and knotted. With it in hand I felt safer, even if it wasn’t so. I scanned the forest again, visualizing myself swinging the club, splitting Lucas’s head open, his blood spraying the trees and ground.
You have to make it out of here alive and get help…
I thought about Tripper being tortured, maybe amid a pile of wood because nothing called a god forth or pleased them more than sacrifice and a cleansing fire.
Once my pulse calmed I plodded northwest, hoping to cross Cold Run Road and make the trek back to town without stumbling into Nutley and his group of madmen. I figured once I got in range of my Jeep, only a couple miles south of Division, I’d at least have cell service and could get through to Duncan, have him send the state police, the county mounties, CPS, everyone. Fatigue quickly overpowered me though, not more than a half mile from where I’d found my weapon. Maybe everyone was right. I wasn’t ready for this. I would never be ready for this because I attracted things that are best left beneath rotting stumps, in the bottoms of bogs, in the hearts of gods.
And for that other people suffered.
I limped forward, a sharp pain cutting my shins. I cried for a while, ashamed of myself for fleeing instead of going for my pistol and shooting as many of them as I could—six bullets, six lives—and Tripper could have run with me. Now CPS’s best agent was dead. I knew it in my gut. They’d chopped him up; put his head on a stake to stare blankly at the gray sky and approaching winter. All of the kids he could have helped had just had their futures lose some of its hope, even if they’d never be aware of it.
My stomach growled as I walked. I got turned around a few times beneath a canopy of branches so thick at times it blocked the sun and threw my sense of direction into a tailspin. I kept an eye on my back-trail knowing I’d never hear Lucas coming. I had to keep that in mind. I’d hear nothing but my own footfalls one moment and his machete slicing air toward my head the next.
Birds darted overhead—blue jays chasing crows away from their young. Water ran over rocks, a soft murmur muffled by dead leaves, and my breath caught in my throat. I was closing in on the Loyalsock River. I could smell it, almost taste it, and with it came a mixture of hope and dread. I had killed my brother on this river before the demon Proserpine came to take a piece of me away, so torn between good and evil that balance never had a chance to show its face.
I blinked, sucked in a cold breath. Ghosts walked with me, ruined young who knew more savagery and misery than most people could ever understand, let alone conceive of. They held my hands, their lips cold against the knot of muscle lining my jaw, fingertips tracing the drying blood that had trickled down my throat and beneath my shirt.
The forest burned with shadows and sunlight, patches of light and dark in the fields of the gods. I knew I was getting delirious, was probably infected by more than shock, because Lucas’s blade wasn’t clean and every few feet I felt its heat drag a line along my neck, and saw Tripper pointing the gun, his hands trembling, darkness bending around him like Nutley’s cape.
I stumbled up a hill, several times losing my footing, scraping the palms of my hands as I lost ground and forced myself up, forward. The roar of the falls echoed through the forest and I glimpsed glistening water through the staggered trees, my mouth dry. A drink would help, a cool drink from God’s good Earth that would put things back in perspective. The ground leveled off. The ghosts accompanying me parted and April crawled past, crying, “Where’s my baby? Help me find him,” and I wiped tears away, allowing
myself to remember the good times—the brush of her lips, the late night talks about those we knew and those we didn’t, about ourselves and where we saw our future headed. But it was all for nothing. I felt her move alongside me, try to take my hand and jerk away, never committed enough to letting herself go. Maybe if she’d had too much lust and too much depravity she could have been one of the women counting herself among God’s Lost Children. She hadn’t though. There was that to be thankful for. She’d done her best. I told myself she had loved me. She’d loved her son. She’d grown desperate, terrified, so lonely in the space within which she moved that nothing else could ever provide her any warmth because any fire she’d had inside had long been extinguished.
I stopped at the last of the trees cutting the forest off from the moss-covered rocks surrounding the pool. Three women played naked beneath the falls, laughing and dancing as if the world were okay, as if everyone could be trusted. Campers probably, though it was a month too late in the season for that and the water cascading over the rim above them had to be frigid. Their skin glistened, wet, dark hair stuck to their backs. Triplets. Sisters. I stepped back into the woods, the hair standing on the back of my neck, but not before they saw me and stilled, all taking hands, their breasts rising and falling with heavy breaths. Maybe it was only the ghosts that frightened me. These three were beautiful and covered their breasts with their arms. They lacked the fury and bloodlust like those of God’s Lost Children. I yelled, “Get out of here! Run!” But they didn’t listen. They looked past me, their eyes filled with compassion and sadness.
And behind me, calls issued from the deep in the forest, laughter and howls. I staggered forward thinking I could end it here, make a stand by the water—because water was something by which I’d always found life and death.
The falls roared behind me as I turned toward the woods, thinking if nothing else I could protect the girls. These three would live, somehow. They would go on to do something miniscule or great.
