by Peter Nealen
“It doesn’t take a demon to make a couple of teenage girls disappear,” Father Pat said grimly. “All that takes is somebody with enough meanness in them.”
Johnny shifted his weight where he was leaning against the counter at the back wall. He was frowning at his shoes. “I’m still not all that comfortable with all this talk about monsters and demons,” he said, “even after what I’ve seen and heard. But I do have to point out that it’s been years since Bob went anywhere without his Bible and that enormous Super Redhawk of his. Whether it was thugs or cultists or...” he swallowed “…something else, it had to be some serious business to make him vanish without a trace.”
I nodded solemnly. “I never said this was going to be safe or easy.”
“And you want to just walk in there?” Eryn asked, incredulous. “Walk into some place that might be full of violent kidnappers at the very least?”
“Want to?” I snorted. “Hell, no. I’ve been doing this for eight years, and it still scares the crap out of me. Walk into a possible nest of cultists, Otherworlders, and maybe even a hole to the Abyss? Makes me feel a little sick just thinking about it. But what other choice have we got? We can’t just let this get bigger. This is a war, a war that’s been going on for a long, long time. The only options are fight, or surrender.” I managed a lopsided grin. “I’ve never been very good at backing down, and when that option means getting eaten, or worse, damned, it looks even less palatable.”
There was a long pause after that. Finally, Johnny broke the silence.
“He has his sessions on Wednesday nights,” he said. “That’s tomorrow night. I’ll show you where his little center is.”
I had decided that I needed to get a look inside before the “session,” which as far as I knew could be anything from some hippy hand-holding and “spiritualist” nonsense to a full-on summoning. So I was sitting in my truck, across the street from the New Vistas Center, sipping a Coke and watching examining the front of the building.
It had been a storefront once, but Mayhew hadn’t stinted on remodeling. It looked like he’d actually pushed the front of the building back, granting room for thick bushes that obscured a lot of the front, except for two homey-looking windows, white trim against the dark brown siding, and the front door, which was also a residential white door with a frame window in it. A painted sign in front of the bushes to the right of the door showed the sun and moon in a dark blue sky over a mountain range, with a dream catcher between them, and the name “New Vistas Center” in flowing script across the lot of it.
The entire façade was carefully designed to be as inviting as possible. It was completely lost on me.
When you’ve been immersed in fighting very real evil for most of your adult life, you get attuned to things that most people never perceive. It can be a curse as much as a blessing; you can walk past places that most people see every day without being bothered, and suddenly have your guts twist as you sense whatever is lurking in the shadows there. It can be a scent, a glimpse of the Otherworld, or just an oppressive feeling that you can’t place. Whatever it is, it’s never pleasant.
I was getting that oppressive feeling coming off the New Vistas Center so strongly that I didn’t even want to get out of the truck.
It felt like those windows were eyes, watching me, filled with hunger and malice. The door, for all its quaint Americana, was a ravening maw, slavering to devour anyone who came in.
I squeezed my eyes shut and rubbed them. There was something bad there, no question about that. And if it was this strong in broad daylight, what was the place going to be like after dark?
I caught a glimpse of movement out of the corner of my eye. Quickly shifting my gaze, I caught a glimpse of yellow, vaguely reptilian eyes, then there was nothing.
Great. Whatever was in there had external security, too. I was so screwed.
I took a deep breath, crossed myself three times, kissed the little silver crucifix before tucking it back in my shirt, checked that my .45 was out of sight, then got out of the truck and started across the street.
The sense of oppressive malevolence only increased as I got closer. I had to fight not to hunch my shoulders as I opened the door and stepped inside.
The lobby was pretty big; it took up the front half of the building. There were two open offices and a closed door at the back of the room. The ceiling soared above, crisscrossed with large wooden beams. The interior paneling was all done in some sort of blond wood; I wanted to say it was poplar. The floor was slate, with dark rugs laid out, and there were deep-cushioned chairs and couches scattered around the room. A small fire crackled in the large, brick fireplace in the center of the lobby. There was a dreamcatcher, an Odin’s cross, and a pentagram hanging on the mantle. The walls bore New Age and animal totem paintings, in which ravens, wolves, and the moon featured prominently. A table near the fireplace held a bunch of literature on the spirit of nature, the spiritual power of the sun and moon, and a bunch of other stuff like that.
On the surface, it all looked very New Agey, Native American spiritualist, and hippy nature-lover. A lot of these places are relatively harmless; while they might be leading people astray, worshiping creatures and created things instead of the Creator, they weren’t in the business of dealing directly with monsters and summoning demons. Those groups were outside of my purview; they needed missionaries, not the striking Hammer of God. But if you looked deeper—and not all that much deeper—this wasn’t just a place for New Age dreamers to get together.
I could see the patterns woven into the rugs, faintly etched in the weave of the dreamcatcher, carved into the wildlife scenes that were burned into the beams under the cathedral ceiling. They’d be hard to pick out if you didn’t know what to look for. Once you saw them though, they wouldn’t leave you for a long time. They were twisted, wrong, disquieting.
I almost left right away. Those patterns spoke volumes about what was going on here. They weren’t there by accident; no foolish dabbler in over his head put them there. This place was designed as a portal.
As I was looking around and preparing to beat a retreat to consider how to burn this place down, Mayhew himself came out of the back office, a wide smile plastered across his face.
He looked like he’d come out of one of those glossy health magazines, the ones that I’m pretty sure are aimed as much at women as they are at narcissistic men. His hair was long, brown, and shiny, his clean-shaven face was smooth and without a flaw. He had to be in his thirties, but looked more like his mid-twenties. He was dressed in a polo shirt and slacks, with moccasins on his feet. He had a necklace around his neck with a raven skull on it. He was really trying to play up the Native American angle, even though he was whiter than me. And most of the tribes hadn’t dabbled in the kind of crap he was into.
“Good afternoon, and welcome to the New Vistas Center,” he said, holding out his hand. As I shook it, I noticed there were fine lines etched into the raven skull. They didn’t seem to form much of a pattern, but it made my eyes itch to look at them. There was definitely something wrong about them, along with so much else about this place. “I’m Colin Mayhew, the director. Feel free to look around, ask me any questions, or even just sit down and let the peace of this place enter into you.”
“Thanks, but I’m here on business,” I told him. His expression stiffened for about a fraction of a second, his eyes narrowing as he studied me, but the practiced smile was back in a flash. “I’m a private investigator,” I explained, “hired to look into the disappearances of Alison Hanabaker and Tera Singer.”
His face fell. “Oh, yes. That. I’m sorry, but if you’ve talked to the police they’ve probably already told you everything—certainly more than I could. I did urge both of the girls—especially Tera, after poor Alison disappeared—to accept an escort home, but they were both very strong willed. I’m hoping that that strong will is keeping them alive. We’ve been sending positive energy for their discovery every session since. I’ve even attemp
ted to look for them astrally…”
He was really laying it on thick. I didn’t believe a word of it, but played dumb, if slightly incredulous. Your average PI wasn’t going to accept a lot of crazy talk about astral projection and positive energy any more than I was, and I’d seen weirder. At the same time, I didn’t want to come off as hostile just yet. I wanted to know more before I started picking a fight with this guy. That caution has kept me from getting my heart ripped out and eaten more than once. Plus, I was on his turf, with his friendly beasties watching us from just out of sight. I was not in an advantageous position at the moment.
“So nobody saw anything?” I asked. “Neither of them were acting strangely, no one saw anyone unfamiliar hanging around before or after the session?” I already knew he was going to lie through his teeth, but I had to play out the role. I’d already seen enough that I wouldn’t need to attend one of his “sessions.” Heaven help me if I did; I doubt I’d get out unscathed. That would be dancing a little closer to the edge than I care for.
He shook his head, chewing his lower lip. “No, I’m afraid not. It was a normal night, both times. The second time, I made sure I watched Tera until she was out of sight down the street; she must have been taken after that.”
I sighed and looked around, playing up the frustrated detective. I could feel his eyes on me, and it was making me downright uncomfortable. “Damn it. I was hoping to find a new lead that the cops hadn’t caught.”
Mayhew spread his hands apologetically. “I’m sorry,” he said. “As I told the police, I wish I could be of more help, but it’s as much a mystery to me as it is to anyone else.”
I grimaced and shrugged. “Well, that’s the way it goes sometimes,” I said. “I’m working with the police on this case, so if you think of anything, give them a call. They’ll let me know—having me working on it frees them up for more of the day-to-day police work.” I wasn’t about to give this guy a direct line to me, even if it was only a phone number.
“All right,” he said. He gestured toward the closed door in the back. “Would you like a look around, see what we’re doing here?”
Not just no, but hell no. I shook my head. “Maybe another time. I’ve got to get back to work. Every minute those girls are missing, the colder the trail gets.”
“I understand. Feel free to come by anytime,” he said.
I wouldn’t, but I just nodded and left, immensely relieved to get out of that building. I caught another glimpse of something on the way out, but whatever it was wasn’t interested in showing itself, or coming after me, so I still couldn’t get a good look.
Chapter 5
As night began to fall, I headed back to the St. Anthony’s parking lot. It wouldn’t be the first time I’d spent the night in my truck next to Father Pat’s house, but I parked and went in to talk to him anyway.
I knocked on the door, and Eryn opened it to let me inside. I admit I was more than a little pleased that she was still there. I don’t get to socialize much, and certainly not with girls as pretty as Eryn. The whole “loner with lots of ammo and holy water, living out of his truck” thing kind of puts a damper on getting to know many women past the “holy crap, he’s out of his mind” epiphany.
I followed her into the small kitchen, where Father Pat was sitting at the table. The stove and counter were cluttered with pots, pans, and utensils, and there was a really, really good smell coming from the stove.
“Sit down, Jed,” Father Pat said as I came in. “Eryn insisted on sticking around to fix some dinner; after apparently being on intravenous fluids for a day, I didn’t need much convincing. I’m hungry as a horse.”
I pulled up one of his old wooden dining room chairs and sat down, my weight making the chair creak a little. “I didn’t realize it until I smelled what’s cooking, but so am I,” I said. “That smells fantastic.”
Eryn glanced back with a little smile at that. I struggled not to grin. Damn, I was acting like a teenager. I had to focus on what was going on, namely Mayhew doing something with demons. That wiped the smirk off my face.
“Did you find anything?” Father Pat asked.
I nodded grimly. “There are glyphs woven all over the lobby,” I said. “I don’t know what a lot of them stand for, and frankly, I don’t want to know, any more than I want to know what it looks like deeper in. You’d be in peril of your life and your soul just walking into that place at night.”
He looked up at me from the book he had sitting open on the table. “You think the girls never left?”
“It’s possible,” I said, “except from what Johnny said, there were witnesses that saw them leave. Whatever happened, it happened outside. Did Bob ever go there?”
Father Pat shook his head. “He knew what Mayhew was from the first. He refused to set foot on the premises until Mayhew was ‘gone, and we can burn the place down and sanctify the ground.’ His words.”
“Hmm.” I rested my chin on my hands, elbows on the table, and thought. “Whatever is going on here, it’s not limited to Mayhew’s center.”
Father Pat chuckled a little. “That’s no surprise. This is Silverton, remember? The whole town’s a battleground, has been for fifty years.”
Eryn brought dinner over. It was some kind of baked chicken, well-seasoned, with wild rice and broccoli. It was delicious, especially after weeks of my own, rudimentary at best, cooking.
She sat down at the end of the small table and joined us. “So, Jed, Father says you have been here a few times. What brought you to Silverton the first time?” she asked.
I grunted. “Dan Weatherby brought me up here the first time,” I recalled. “He’d been here for the first…incident fifty years ago. He was showing me the ropes, bringing me along and letting me help out. There was a pack of ‘Stick Indians’ that had moved into the hills and started causing havoc.”
“I remember that one,” Father Pat said. “That was nasty. Hardly anyone saw them. People just started losing their minds, running off into the woods, attacking other people, or just freezing up and dying a few days later. I’d never heard of these things, but fortunately Dan had.”
“’Stick Indians?’” Eryn asked. “Isn’t that kind of…racist?”
I laughed. “That’s what the Salish call them. Remember what I said before about drawing some Otherworlders to you by saying their names? Stick Indians are like that—you say their name in Salish and you’ll attract their attention.” I forked another bite of chicken into my mouth. “Trust me, you do not want to attract their attention.”
“What are they?” she asked.
“Tall, skinny, hairy things that can get into your head and drive you insane,” Father Pat said. “They whistle in the woods, and can draw people out with those whistles, where they either murder them, eat them, or spirit them away. The Salish, Cayuse, and Yakama peoples all warned about them.”
“Bigfoot?” she asked kind of incredulously.
“Oh, no,” I replied. “Sasquatches are harmless. They just want to be left alone, and they’re terrified of humans. They’re even more terrified of the Otherworld. I think that’s why I’ve never seen or heard of a Sasquatch within fifty miles of here.”
She put her fork down and looked carefully at both of us. “If I hadn’t seen that goat-thing in the hallway,” she said, “I’d think you were both messing with me or had completely lost your minds.”
“Hey, you were the one who said you’d seen some weird stuff,” I pointed out.
“Yeah, weird stuff like unexplained lights, a few noises that could have been just about anything, things moving from one place to another without an explanation I could see,” she said. “You guys are talking about actual monsters.”
“Ghosts, demons, monsters, yeah,” I said. “That’s been happening up here too, but most people who don’t directly witness it kind of shut it out, for the same reason you’re having a hard time processing this conversation as anything but the rambling of either a couple of delusional nutcases or the bigges
t liars you’ve ever heard.”
“Why here?” she asked. “You’ve talked a few times about this being somehow more…I hesitate to say ‘normal’…here in Silverton.”
Father Pat and I exchanged glances. “Fifty years ago,” Father Pat began, “some kids, who should have known better, started messing around with the occult. It went badly. Some things manifested that should never have taken form in this world. People died. Other people went insane. A couple of houses burned down. It was actually a lot worse than I’m describing, but in the interests of sleeping soundly tonight, I’m not going to go into much detail.
“What happened over that couple of weeks left a mark, a stain of sorts, on the town, a mark that’s never been wiped away. Jeff here thinks that something took up residence around here, and hasn’t left.” He suddenly got up to turn on some more lights. “Whatever the case, it’s drawn a lot of evil here over the years. Otherworlders, cultists, evil spirits—they’re drawn here like flies to a corpse.”
“As apt a description as any,” I said.
“So these Otherworlders…they’re monsters?” she ventured.
“That’s what I call most of them,” I said. “Some aren’t so bad, but they’re all dangerous, if you’re not careful.” I motioned toward my Winchester and bandolier, leaning against the wall in the corner. “Some are worse than others. I keep silver jacketed rounds for the really bad ones, the ones closest to demons and the Abyss. Most of the rest are sensitive to iron, so that’s what the steel jacketed ones are for.”
She snapped her fingers. “The horseshoe over the door tradition,” she said. “That’s for real?”
I shook my head. “Most Otherworlders don’t like cold iron, but you have to touch them with it,” I explained. “Just having it over your door won’t do squat. I’m sure some of the nastier baby-stealers get a good laugh about those little talismans.”
