A Silver Cross and a Winchester (Jed Horn Supernatural Thrillers Book 2)

by Peter Nealen

  Even though the sun was still shining through the ragged afternoon clouds, there was a gloom over the town as I pulled up to the one diner on Main Street. There was a McDonalds on the edge of town, but few other franchises had bothered with the place.

  The street was strangely quiet as I got out and went inside. There rarely was a lot of activity on Main Street in the early afternoon, but you could usually see somebody moving around. There were two cars and half a dozen pickups parked on the street, one almost indistinguishable from my old Ford F-100, but nobody was actually on the street.

  The bell on the door jingled as I walked in. There were three men, two of them vaguely familiar, though I couldn’t place their names right off, sitting at the counter, and a fourth in a booth against the back wall. Sam was in his usual place behind the counter, leaning on his elbows talking quietly to the three men there instead of hustling to and from the kitchen. All eyes turned to me as I appeared in the doorway.

  Now, not to sound like a jackass, but I can cut a pretty imposing figure. I stand about six foot two, and the work hasn’t encouraged any flab to form. As hollow and gaunt as my face might look, I still weigh in at just over two hundred pounds, pretty much all of it muscle. I don’t get a haircut often enough, and combing it isn’t very high on my list of priorities, so my disheveled black mop and thick stubble make me look like a drifter, and not a friendly one. I was dressed in my usual black jeans, boots, a faded work shirt, and a leather jacket that all too often shows the 1911 on my hip when it’s open, which it was at the moment.

  Sam straightened up as I came in. “Hey, Jed,” he said. “Long time no see. What brings you here?”

  While his expression stayed neutral, there was a note of something in Sam’s voice. Was it hope? He didn’t really know what I did, but he knew that when things had started getting a little crazy in the last couple years, each time I showed up, it slowed down or stopped. That was enough for him. Sam was interested in his diner and his granddaughter. That was about it.

  “Business,” I replied, which got me a nod or two. I finally put a name to the reddened, weathered face of the man who lifted his coffee cup in a sort of salute. Weiss. That was his name. He’d been one of the impromptu neighborhood watch that put itself together during that cult dustup a few years ago. As far as he’d ever said, he just figured it was a bunch of crazies out of their minds on drugs murdering people. He’d never lent any credence to any of the occult stuff—I don’t think most of the folks around Silverton did. Father Pat did. Reverend Bob did. A few of their parishioners knew what they’d seen. Most everybody else preferred to put it down to druggies and psychos. Granted, they seemed to get more than a lot of small towns, but that was to be expected with the hard times, wasn’t it?

  Sam waved me over, already pouring a cup of coffee. I think Sam figured me to be some kind of law enforcement, though I’d never said as much. “You came at a hell of a time, Jed,” he said conversationally. There was an underlying tension to his voice. He was scared.

  I accepted the cup and took a sip. It was hot as hell and strong enough to probably eat through the counter if I spilled it. “Why? What’s going on?”

  “We’ve got three missing people and the local priest in a coma is what’s going on,” Weiss said.

  “Hold on,” I said. They had my attention. “Back up. What happened?”

  Weiss looked at Sam, who waved at him to go ahead. He turned back to me. “Nobody knows for sure, including Johnny, but there was a new face in town that seemed to start it.” Johnny had been the interim police chief for about ten years. He held the post because he’d been the senior of the four officers left when Chief Andreas was busted for murder during the cult incident. It still said “interim” in his job description because the Mayor didn’t like him, but there wasn’t anybody else to take the job. And by the way, Andreas getting busted took the town’s police force down from five. It’s a really small town.

  “He showed up about a month ago and checked into the local motel. Seemed like just about every other tourist, except he started asking around to lease one of the empty stores downtown. About the same time he started talking about his new…what’d he call it… ‘mystical experience,’ that was it. Said he wanted to start up a ‘meditation center’ for the tourists and the locals. He talked a lot about getting back to the land and getting in tune with nature. A lot of it was about the evils of modern society; you know, the usual stuff.

  “We all figured he was harmless. Live and let live, you know? A lot of liberal types come up into the mountains these days, trying to get back to nature. They’re annoying, but we can use the money, you know? Especially with the lumber business being all but closed down now. Liberal tourists are about all we’ve got to keep this town alive anymore.

  “He found an old clothing store to his liking, put curtains in the windows, and got to work. After a while, he opened up the ‘New Vistas Center.’ He started posting up flyers around, especially at the school over in Tanner. People started showing up at his little ‘center,’ which he’d done a pretty thorough job of renovating.”

  “It’s a nice little setup,” one of the other guys at the counter put in. “Wood everywhere, big fireplace, comfy chairs and sofas. It looks like some upscale lodge. He’s got money.”

  “What’s his name?” I asked. Not that it would necessarily mean anything to me, but I was curious.

  “Colin Mayhew,” Sam said. “You ever heard of him?”

  I shook my head. “Complete blank. Go on.”

  “Well, he started having these ‘meditation sessions’ in the evenings,” Weiss continued, “usually after school. A lot of the high school kids started going—some with their parents’ okay, some without. You know how it is with these kids. And at first it really did seem like there was no harm done.

  “But three weeks ago, Alison Hanabaker didn’t come home after the session. Her parents had been a little ambivalent about the whole thing in the first place, but when she didn’t come home on time, they drove over to the center to raise hell. It was dark, but they woke Mayhew up banging on the door—he lives upstairs—and he came out to see what all the fuss was about.

  “When he heard that Alison hadn’t made it home, he got real concerned, and immediately called the police. O’ course, the cops were down east, helping out the Sampson PD, because another meth lab had blown up. So he gets in his car, invites the Hanabakers along, and goes looking for her.”

  He paused to take another sip of his coffee. I was starting to get a hunch. “They didn’t find her, did they?” I asked quietly.

  He shook his head, his mouth compressed into a line that vanished behind his white mustache. “Nope, not a sign of her. The search went on for a week, too, up past the old sawmill, into the hills, down the road, everywhere. It was like she’d vanished into thin air. She hadn’t wandered off, and even if she had, she hadn’t taken anything; all her clothes and things were still at her parents’ house.

  “Then, barely three days after the search was called off, Tera Singer went missing. Exact same thing. She went to Mayhew’s little session and disappeared on the way home. No sign of her anywhere.

  “People were starting to get a little suspicious. Two disappearances, both connected with Mayhew’s center.”

  The guy in the back piped up. “You guys are a riot. He’s just another New-Agey hippy. It was probably those meth-heads from down by Sampson.”

  I didn’t mention that I’d known more than one New-Agey hippy to be far more dangerous than their touchy-feely blather would suggest. While it was sometimes pure naiveté, it was also often a cover for a much darker agenda. But none of these guys knew what I knew, or knew really who I was, so I stayed quiet.

  “How do you explain not only the two girls, but Reverend Bob, too?” Weiss demanded.

  “Wait a sec,” I interjected. “Bob’s missing?”

  Weiss, Sam, and the other two guys at the counter nodded gravely. “He started preaching against Mayhew’s ce
nter right after Alison disappeared,” Sam said. “Then, a couple nights ago, he just didn’t go home. He wasn’t at the church, wasn’t anywhere.”

  “I’m guessing that was when Johnny called you in, Jed,” Sam said. Like I said, Sam’s convinced I’m some sort of law enforcement—probably because I had worked with Johnny a couple years ago when the cult had started murdering people. The fact that I hadn’t known about the disappearances before I walked in the diner apparently went right past him. Sam can be a little single-minded about his conclusions sometimes.

  “Actually, I never heard from Johnny,” I said. There’s only so far I’ll let the lies of omission go. “I’m here on an unrelated lead.” I frowned into my coffee. “At least I think they’re unrelated.” The truth was, I was by no means convinced of that. And if this Mayhew did turn out to be a maleficar, and he was doing business with a Shadowman…this could get really ugly.

  The conversation quickly devolved into Weiss and Sam arguing with the guy in the back, who maintained that there was absolutely no evidence that Mayhew was involved, and that it was all coincidental. I withdrew, paying Sam for the coffee and heading out to the truck.

  I don’t believe in coincidences.

  It only took me a few minutes to get over to St. Anthony’s Catholic Church, a block behind the brick post office. It was an old, white-painted plank church; not fancy, but solid. It had been there since the founding of the town, surrounded by the same lush churchyard, with the old cemetery in back. Apparently there had been some disturbances in the cemetery, but its status as consecrated ground limited what the Otherworlders could do. Plus, Father Pat Mulcahey had an eye like a hawk and a tongue like a whip. Anytime he caught someone up to no good in the church cemetery he set them running right quick.

  The parish house was a tiny building off to one side of the church. I parked on the street, again leaving the Winchester in the truck, and walked up to the door to knock.

  There was no response for a moment, then the door opened a crack and a woman’s voice answered. “Yes?”

  I couldn’t see much of her, just a green eye and a flash of red hair. “I’m here to see Father Pat,” I said. I hadn’t known Father Pat to have a secretary or a housekeeper. Who was this woman?

  “Do you know the Father?” she asked, “because we can’t allow any visitors who aren’t friends or family right now.”

  That sounded ominous. “We’re old friends,” I said. “Has something happened? Is he all right?”

  She opened the door, and I got distracted for a second. She was just about the prettiest girl I’d seen in a long time. She was short, maybe five foot two, and slender in a willowy way. She had wide green eyes, a heart-shaped face, and wavy red hair that spilled down past her shoulders. She was wearing a green sweater and jeans. I had to almost shake myself to pay attention to what she was saying.

  “He fell sick suddenly last night,” she said. “He usually says evening Mass on Thursdays, but he didn’t show up. Harry and I came over to see what was going on, and we found him unconscious on the floor. He won’t wake up, either.” Her voice caught a little, and I could hear her fear. She wasn’t sure what was going on, she cared a great deal for Father Pat, and she was deeply frightened that he wasn’t going to get better.

  I suddenly remembered Weiss mentioning the local priest being in a coma. I’d gotten focused on the missing people, and forgot to follow up on it. I mentally kicked myself.

  For my part, I was feeling a sick sort of dread in my gut. Father Pat might be getting on in years, but the old guy was healthy as a horse and strong as a bull. He was one of those old-school Irish priests, the kind you don’t see much anymore. He wasn’t just a caring, devout priest; he was also a crack shot, an artist with just about any tools, and one of the best boxers I’d ever seen. If something had taken him down, I highly doubted it was any kind of disease. It was more likely something up my alley.

  Tears were glistening in the girl’s eyes. “The doctor can’t find anything wrong with him,” she said. “That’s why he’s not in the hospital.” The closest hospital being almost an hour and a half away, that kind of surprised me. I would have thought that the docs would want him on hand for observation if he wasn’t waking up.

  “Ma’am, do you mind if I come inside?” I asked.

  She sniffled, and wiped some moisture away from her eye as she stepped aside, ushering me in. “I’m sorry, come in. My name’s Eryn, by the way, with a ‘y’.”

  “I’m Jed,” I replied. “Jed Horn. May I see him?”

  “In here.” She led the way toward the bedroom.

  Like I said, the house is small. There’s one bedroom, the bathroom, a living room, and the kitchen, and that’s about it. As was typical for Father Pat, the living room was full of books, and I mean full. The walls, aside from where there were windows and doors, were lined with bookcases, and more books were stacked on the threadbare couch and the chipped, battered coffee table. I’d sat on that couch more than once, and I remembered when that coffee table was new, a gift from one of his parishioners. Given Father’s habit of putting his feet up even with boots on, that hadn’t been all that long ago.

  There were more books in the bedroom, where Father Pat lay on the bed, his eyes closed. The crucifix over his bed hadn’t moved. There was an IV stand next to the bed, with the tube going under the covers.

  I looked around the room, looking for anything out of place. If this was an attack, which I was beginning to suspect it was, there might be signs. Sacred images inverted, out-of-place marks, things of that nature. I didn’t see anything, but I could smell something, faintly. It smelled metallic, with a hint of sulfur. That didn’t exactly bode well.

  I turned to Eryn, who was still standing in the doorway. “He’s been like this since Thursday night?” I asked.

  She nodded. “He hasn’t moved at all, except sometimes his eyes move rapidly, like he’s dreaming.”

  I pointed. “The IV?”

  “It’s the only way to keep him fed and hydrated,” she replied. “I’m a nurse over in Tanner most of the time, so I’ve been looking after him. I change the bag when it needs to be, as well as anything else he needs.”

  She tilted her head, studying me intently. “You look like you’re looking for something in particular,” she said. “What are you looking for?”

  I shrugged. “Certain signs that might indicate what happened.” I wanted to leave it at that.

  “What kind of signs?” she asked. “Are you a cop?”

  I shook my head. “I’m not a cop. I’ve just had some experience, and was looking for anything…out of place.”

  She raised her eyebrows. “Experience with sudden, inexplicable collapses without any medical explanation?” she asked.

  Her line of questioning was getting dangerously close to forcing me to either tell the truth and be thought a crackpot or out-and-out lie, neither of which I was comfortable doing. “I’ve seen some weird things in my day,” I evaded.

  She folded her arms and looked at me, her eyes narrowing as she pursed her lips. “That doesn’t answer the question.”

  I sighed. “If I answered your question, you probably wouldn’t believe me,” I told her. “But Father Pat trusted me. And now that he’s down, and Reverend Bob is missing, you’re going to have to trust me, too.”

  “Why?” she demanded. “What’s going on? Do you even know?”

  I looked around the room again. Whatever it was, it was subtle. The smell seemed a little more pronounced. “I’m not sure, but there’s definitely something going on here.” I looked back at her over my shoulder. “Someone is trying to do something very bad. I don’t know for sure what yet, but I already had a lead to follow before I got here.”

  “A ‘lead?’” she asked. “I thought you said you weren’t a cop.”

  “I’m not. I’m more of a…private investigator.” I looked back at Father Pat. “Weiss mentioned this in the same breath with the disappearances. I don’t know what, if any con
nection there is yet.” I was more thinking out loud than I was talking to her at that point.

  “Weiss isn’t much of a churchgoer,” Eryn said, “But he’s a lot smarter than he looks. He doesn’t like to admit believing in much, but he can come to conclusions that other people don’t. Though what possible connection there could be between the disappearances and Father Pat getting sick, I don’t know. The only thing I can think of is that Father Pat and Bob were good friends. That still doesn’t explain how he just collapsed, when he’s otherwise healthy.”

  I nodded. “Hmm,” I mused. Yes, spectacular oratory, that.

  I was looking around the room again, trying to put things together, and was actually far enough lost in thought that it took me a second to notice that she was staring at me quizzically. “What?” I asked.

  “You really think that those two girls disappearing and Father Pat getting sick are somehow connected?” she asked. “How is that possible? Kidnappings happen. Otherwise healthy individuals going into comas for no reason doesn’t. I’ve seen his bloodwork; there’s no poison or toxins at work here. So how could someone who kidnaps two girls and a Baptist preacher, assuming that it was one person, manage to do this to Father Pat?”

  I had to tread carefully here. I didn’t know this girl, and I sure didn’t know how she’d react to the revelation that demons, monsters, and black magic are very real and very dangerous. Hell, I didn’t even know how she’d react to the .45 on my hip or the cannon of a Winchester out in the truck.

  “Well, two girls associated with a New Age spiritualist disappear on the way home from one of his sessions,” I explained carefully. “Shortly thereafter, the two staunchest Christian leaders in the town are missing or incapacitated. Now that might seem to be a coincidence to some, but I don’t believe in coincidences.”

  “I already told you he wasn’t poisoned,” she said. “So how could your spiritualist do this?”

  I didn’t say anything.

  She studied me for a few moments. I’ve seen the look in her eyes before. She was already on shaky ground in that she, as a nurse, couldn’t find anything medically wrong with her patient. She had to start to contemplate other possibilities, something that comes hard to a lot of people. She also had to decide if she wanted to risk bringing some of those possibilities up in a conversation with a stranger, who might not react well to them.