by Pawlik, Tom
“I kind of got the feeling you were a little paranormal.”
Mrs. Bristol smiled but ignored his comment. “When I was twelve, I nearly drowned in the pond we had out back. Out here in the woods. It was in the winter and I fell through the ice. I don’t know how long I was under, but my father pulled me out.”
She went to the window and peered into the darkness. “I remember seeing the whole thing as it happened. I could see my father running with me in his arms. I could hear his frantic calls for help. I could see him crying. Tears, big and fat on his red cheeks. He made it here to the cabin. Farmhands used to stay here during harvest time. And he tried to breathe life back into my lungs.”
Conner felt a strange tightness in the pit of his stomach. He took a breath. “I take it he succeeded.”
Mrs. Bristol twirled a strand of hair as she stared out the window. Like a schoolgirl. “It was all so clear. I could see every detail. Hear every sound. I found myself outside in the snow, though I wasn’t cold. I wandered through the forest until I saw him.”
“Him?” Conner frowned. “Who?”
She turned and looked at Conner, her eyes almost alive with excitement. “The pale man. Out in the woods. He called to me. Said he was waiting for me.”
“The pale man?” Conner said.
Mrs. Bristol nodded. “He was beautiful… like a guardian angel. He said I had to go with him. But I didn’t want to. I could hear my father weeping and I wanted to go back to him.”
“So what did he do—the pale man? He just let you go?”
She looked down. “He said I could go back if I chose to. He said he’d let me live but that there’d be a reckoning someday. Someday he would come again. And if he did, I would have to do what he said.”
Conner glanced at Katie. Her face showed complete disbelief, but she didn’t say anything. He looked back at Mrs. Bristol. “So is this why you’re doing this? Your pale man? He’s telling you to do this?”
“Yes,” she said. Then her face grew solemn and she shook her head. “Oh, but it’s not what you think.”
“How do you know what I think?”
She turned back to the window. “You see, twenty-four years ago, when Owen was just a boy, he got sick. Very sick. And that’s when Pale Man showed up again. He was outside, at the edge of the woods. He said he was coming for my son. He said that was the price I had to pay for my life all those years ago. He was going to take my son.”
She looked at Owen and her eyes welled with tears. “But I couldn’t let him. I couldn’t give him my son. So I begged him. I pleaded for him to take me instead, but he wouldn’t. He wouldn’t do it.”
Conner glanced up at Owen Bristol, towering over him like a grizzly bear. Two months ago he would have written the old woman off as a superstitious, ghost-chasing nutcase. Or certifiably psychopathic. But not now.
“So what did you do?” Conner’s voice was trembling. “I mean, obviously you talked him out of it.”
Mrs. Bristol stared at Conner, her lips tightening. Almost as if struggling within herself. Probably debating how much to tell him. Conner could sense the battle. That part of her wanted—maybe needed—to tell someone. But part of her resisted the urge, warning her to use caution.
“He said I needed a substitute for my son.”
Conner’s voice grew shakier. “What… what do you mean?” Was this why the girls had been kidnapped? Some kind of sacrifice? Was that what he was going to be now?
“A substitute, Mr. Hayden,” she said. A kind of calm had come over her now, as if letting an outsider in on their dark family secret had given her a sense of peace. “Someone… someone to die in his place.”
“Someone to… So… so you killed someone else to save your son?”
“What would you have done?” She moved toward Conner and leaned her face close to his. “Hmm? What would you have done faced with that choice?”
“You’re a murderer,” Conner said. He looked from her to Owen. “You can try to explain it any way you want, but you’re… just murderers.”
“Really?” Mrs. Bristol’s eyes grew cold. “What would you do if your child was about to die and you could save him by some horrible deed? What would you do to save him?” She straightened up again. “What wouldn’t you do?”
Conner felt his breath leave him. The question hung in the air like a noose, wrapping around his neck. His thoughts flashed to Matthew, drowning in their pool. What would he have done to save his son? If someone had offered him the same kind of bargain, what choice would he have made? At the time, he knew, he would have jumped at such a deal. He would have done anything to get Matthew back. Anything.
Mrs. Bristol was chuckling now. “No need to answer. You know you would have done exactly the same thing. You’re no better than me.”
Conner blinked. “So who did you kill?”
“Carter.” Her eyes traced a path around the cabin as if barely able to recall the name. “Morris Carter. He was a drunk and a wife beater and he didn’t deserve to live.”
“I see. And you determined that?”
She looked at Conner and smiled. “Some folks, the world’s just better off without.”
“So, what? You just brought him here and killed him?”
“We didn’t have much time. We needed to bring Pale Man a substitute before the day was over. October 30. Twenty-four years ago. He met us here. He wanted to see it done. He wanted to watch.”
Conner closed his eyes and fought back a wave of nausea. He was getting light-headed. His voice was weak. “But that was twenty-four years ago.”
“The price was higher. Pale Man had demanded only one life for mine, but it was to be the life of my son. So now he had increased the price. Morris Carter’s death bought my son just one more year of life.”
“A year? You’ve been doing this for twenty-four years? Kidnapping innocent people and… and you bring them here to… to kill them?”
“Innocent?” Mrs. Bristol pointed a trembling finger at Katie, who was hissing profanities at the Bristols through her tears and spitting at them. “There are no innocent victims here, Mr. Hayden. We’ve been very careful to find only those who deserve to die. Thieves and drug dealers. People who peddle in filth. People who abuse their children and go free on some technicality!” She closed her eyes a moment and took a breath. “We’re doing the world a favor by getting rid of these sorts of people. And there’s plenty of them left. We never seem to run out!”
Owen moved behind Katie, grabbed a handful of her hair, and snapped her head back. “You know what this one did? You think she’s just an innocent victim?” He grimaced. “She’s a partier, this one. Just loves to drink. Can’t get enough. Trouble is she likes to drive after she’s had a few too many. She nearly ran me off the road last spring.”
“That’s no reason to kill her.” Conner tried to stay calm.
“It’s good enough for me,” Owen said. “She’s got no sense in her. No common decency. It’s only a matter of time before she kills someone.”
Conner shook his head. “If you just need one life to buy you another year, why did you have two girls here?”
“My Howard,” Mrs. Bristol said. “We needed to bring two souls this year. One for Owen and one for my husband. He’s been in that coma for nearly a whole year, and Pale Man said they would give him back to me.”
“You better hope so,” Conner said. “Because I’ve seen what’s waiting for him if he dies. What’s waiting for all three of you.”
Owen swung an arm and backhanded Conner across the face. Conner’s head jerked backward. His jaw throbbed. Blood dripped down onto his jacket. The room seemed to swirl as he teetered on the brink of consciousness.
“He’ll be here soon,” Mrs. Bristol said. “Pale Man. And when he comes, we’ll be done with you.”
As if on cue, Owen hushed them all and went to the window. Conner could hear Katie’s soft sobs, but beneath that, outside…
He heard the faint crunch of footsteps.
72
THE HOUSE SHIFTED under Mitch’s feet, as if the Keeper was trying to pick the entire structure up. Mitch burst through the back door and tumbled out into the darkness of the cavern. He crashed onto the cold, hard rock floor and rolled as far as he could, then crawled away on all fours.
He glanced back to see the black shape of the Keeper thrashing about in the midst of a pile of rubble that was once his father’s house. It used its enormous claws to dig through the wood and stones as if searching for Mitch.
Mitch felt his way up a rocky incline, smashing his hands and fingers against the stones. A light was coming from somewhere. Maybe the light he’d seen earlier when he’d first come upon the room inside the cavern. But then somehow the one room had morphed into an entire house with Mitch inside it.
The whole thing had seemed like the shifting realities inside a dream. But the light seemed to be coming from the house—or what was left of it. And it was quickly growing dimmer. Mitch could see a small opening, maybe three feet in diameter, about ten feet farther up the incline. He scrambled up the rocky wall and tossed another glance back at the beast.
The Keeper rose up. Mitch heard the horny protrusions on whatever head it might have had scrape against the top of the cave. He suddenly felt exposed. The beast turned toward Mitch and opened its jaws in another deafening roar. It lumbered toward him as Mitch pulled himself up and into the small opening.
Mitch found himself crawling through utter blackness. The rock beneath his hands was cool and relatively smooth. The cavern shook as the beast pounded against the wall. Rocks broke loose and tumbled around Mitch. He could hear the sound of scraping and pounding behind him.
Suddenly the darkness was pierced again by a soft glow up ahead. The tunnel began to descend sharply and Mitch felt himself sliding down while the beast raged behind him.
He tumbled out of the tunnel into a second, much smaller cavern. The light was coming from somewhere above him. Scraped and bruised, Mitch climbed to his feet and looked up. And gasped.
This cavern was maybe twenty yards across and in the middle stood a large, wooden cross. Its base was buried in a mound of rocks and dirt. A dim, bluish light seemed to shine around the cross and filled the cave. And Mitch could see the arms and torso of a figure on the other side, suspended on the wooden crossbeam.
The cavern shook and rocks crashed down. On the other end of the tunnel, the Keeper roared and pounded against the rock wall, hunting its prey.
Mitch circled the edge of the cave to the other side of the cross. There he could see the figure more clearly.
If the man had a face, Mitch couldn’t make it out. Partly because it was shrouded in shadows and long, blood-soaked hair, and partly because it was misshapen by bruises and lacerations. Blood soaked his beard. His lip was swollen. The flesh of his chest, abdomen, and thighs was torn open, and strips of skin hung off like ribbons, dripping with blood.
He was held to the wood with thick iron spikes through his hands and feet and by coarse ropes lashed around his arms. His whole body seemed to quiver, as if convulsing. After a moment, the man’s arms shook and he pulled himself up slightly. Mitch could hear a gurgled rasp of a breath. Faint. Then the body fell limp again.
The vertical timber dripped with long trails of blood. The rocks at its base were covered as well.
The muffled pounding and roars of the Keeper grew louder. The fury of the beast was dislodging larger chunks of rock from the cave ceiling. Mitch knew it would be only a matter of minutes before the creature brought the entire cavern down.
But Mitch couldn’t turn away from the image before him. He had no idea if this was a hallucination or if it had physicality like the house in the adjacent cavern had. He wasn’t about to climb up to the cross and touch it.
The sense of pain, of agony, was palpable, however. It hung in the air and stung Mitch’s ribs. He winced. But he couldn’t look away.
Then he felt a presence behind him and he spun around.
Someone was standing in the shadows, just outside the ring of blue light.
Mitch backed away. “Who are you?”
“Do you know why you’re here?” The voice was soft. Feminine. Mitch recognized it immediately.
“Mom?”
His mother stepped out from the shadows. Her hair fell in soft, blonde locks onto her shoulders. Her skin was so white it seemed to glow all on its own. “Oh, Mitch, can you see me? Do you know where you are?”
Mitch’s eyes stung. She looked so beautiful. Like she did before she got sick. Back when he was a kid. But now he was at the end of his rope. He’d been through too much. His emotions tumbled around inside him. He was relieved. He was frightened. He was angry.
He backed up farther. “Stop doing this to me. Please, just leave me alone.”
“Don’t be afraid of me.” She pointed to the tunnel. “Do you know what that is?”
The cavern shook with another roar.
Mitch shook his head. “The… the Keeper?”
His mother nodded. “Yes. The Keeper. Do you know what it is?”
The roars grew louder, more ferocious. Mitch looked back at the tunnel, his chest pounding. The rock wall behind him cracked. Rocks and dust flooded into the cave.
“That thing is… they sent it to try to keep me here.”
“No, Mitch. It’s you.”
Mitch stared at his mother—or at the image of her. “I don’t… I don’t understand.”
“It’s all of your anger. Your hate. This place gives it form. It becomes like a living thing. But it’s all from you. You’re giving it its strength. You’re giving it life.”
“Hate?” Another tremor shook the cave. Mitch fell back onto the rocks in the shadow of the cross.
“For your father. For God. You’ve let it fester and grow and now it’s become this monster. That’s what is keeping you here.”
Mitch blinked, his mind reeling. “What are you saying?”
“It’s been following you, appearing every time you think of your father. That’s why they keep making you think about him. They’re using your memories against you. All those visions. They’ve been trying to keep your hate for your father alive. To keep you trapped here.”
Mitch’s thoughts raced. She was right. The visions of his father started up again the same day Mitch had met Nathan. After he’d first mentioned to Howard that he wanted to leave. And the creature appeared when Mitch made his first attempt at actually leaving the farm. And ever since then—in the garage and at the hotel and now here in the cave—each time it was preceded by another vision of his father. Each time, Mitch’s anger had grown more intense.
Mitch nodded. “That’s why we couldn’t destroy it. That’s why it kept coming back.”
“You’re feeding it. You’re making it stronger.”
“But I can’t help it! I can’t stop hating him. It’s been too long.”
His mother shook her head. “Oh, Mitch, don’t. My only prayer was that you and your father would mend your relationship.”
“It’s too late for that, Mom. I killed you. He won’t forgive—”
“He has. He called you. He wanted to redeem what little time you had left.”
“He can’t forgive me,” Mitch said.
The Keeper roared again. It had almost broken through the wall.
His mother stood quietly amid the crashing rocks. “He can. Mitch, I love you. I never stopped loving you. Your father loves you. Even now he’s tried to tell you.”
Mitch’s eyes began filling with tears. He wiped them away fiercely. “I couldn’t stand it, Mom. I couldn’t take watching you suffer.”
“I know. And I know you blamed God for it. I know you hated Him. But God’s power is made perfect in weakness. I was suffering, but it was for a reason.”
“What? What reason could there possibly be for you to suffer like that?”
“For you. To show you what real faith was like. I know you only saw your father’s faith as empty religion. But I wanted
you to know mine was real. It was more than belonging to some church. It was a real relationship with the Creator of the universe. I never complained. I never blamed God for taking me from you. He took me so you and your father would need to work out your relationship together.”
Mitch could not keep himself from weeping now. “It’s too late for that.”
“No, it’s not. You can still let it go. You can leave it here and move on. Get back to your body. But you have to leave your hatred behind.”
“I can’t.… I can’t just leave it behind. You don’t understand.…”
His mother pointed to the cross. Mitch turned. The man was still hanging there, struggling for another breath. The cave trembled again.
“Let it go, Mitch. Give it up. There’s still time.”
The creature roared again. But it sounded different somehow. Instead of a blind, animalistic rage, Mitch could hear words. He could hear his own voice echo through the cave. It was a stream of profanity.
The man on the cross grimaced. His body stiffened, as if Mitch’s words drove another lash, tearing into his flesh.
I hate you!
The man groaned and threw his head back against the wood. Mitch could see His bruised and beaten countenance, contorted with pain. One eye was swollen completely shut. Blood dripped from the multiple lacerations along his forehead.
The Keeper roared again in Mitch’s voice. More profanity. More hate.
More pain racked the man’s body. His head drooped forward again. Blood, sweat, and saliva dripped from his face.
Mitch shook his head. How could he stop the raging beast? How could he just will himself to give up his hate? It had been with him for so long. It was a part of him now. An extension of who he was. It felt…
Mitch sobbed at the foot of the cross.
It actually felt good.
The tunnel gave way. Huge chunks of rock fell away. The beast had broken through and was reaching its clawed appendage toward Mitch.
Mitch rolled away from the cross. His mother had vanished. The creature’s claws wrapped around Mitch. Constricting his chest. He couldn’t breathe. The cross seemed to be fading into darkness as well. Mitch could see the man gazing down at him as the Keeper dragged Mitch toward the tunnel. It was going to take him back to the farm. Back to his prison.
