Sometime around 1813 the town was abandoned. The fate of Coakley and his followers was unclear, as was their rationale for leaving. Annika had underlined one report that claimed Coakley hadn’t left at all but engaged in some kind of ritual in the forest. The rumor among locals was that the preacher and his entire congregation had killed themselves.
Soren flipped over to the next entry, which was about a Civil War soldier named Samuel Mitchell, but had to stop. He put the files down and briefly took off his sunglasses to rub his eyes.
“Good God,” he said before putting the glasses back on.
He sat sifting through papers at his desk, while Glen had pulled up a chair to sit on the opposite side.
“I know exactly what you mean,” Glen said.
“I’m starting to wish I paid more attention in history class,” Soren said. “Is it common for one area to both get a religious nut and be the site of an Indian massacre?”
Glen looked up.
“It was the site of an Indian massacre?” he asked.
Soren nodded.
“Huh,” Glen said. “I haven’t been going back that far. I was more focused on the murders a couple months ago. I don’t know where our client is getting her intel, but she knows an awful lot about these kids.”
Soren looked down at his papers. Despite his interest in the subject, he worried his mind was going to turn to mush if he picked them up again.
“That’s a good place to start,” he said. “I’ve been caught up in reading the ancient history. I didn’t realize there would be so much of it. Let’s talk about the killings. What do you know about the murders?”
Glen seemed pleased to put down his files as well.
“There were four students,” Glen said. “Evan Turner, Melissa Rosen, Gavin Tulane, and Alice McDermott. They were graduate students at the College of William & Mary. Evan and Alice were in the history program, while Gavin and Melissa were at the business school.”
“Sounds like a fun bunch,” Soren said. “What the hell were they doing out in the woods?”
“Officially? They told people they were going on a camping trip,” Glen said.
“Why did you say ‘officially’ like that? What else would they be doing?”
“Not sure, but your friend has marked up the police report,” Glen said. “She has transcripts of a police interview with Evan. He claims they were camping, and she’s written ‘This is a lie’ next to that sentence. Here, look at it.”
He opened up a file and handed a piece of paper over to show where Annika had presumably scribbled notes on the side. The word “lie” was underlined in red pen.
“So Evan was our survivor?” Soren asked.
“The police found Gavin and Melissa swinging from a large tree,” Glen said. “Alice was never found, but the search ended two weeks ago. Nobody thinks she’s alive, but it’s a big area. Her body could be anywhere.”
“I’m assuming the police think Evan did it,” Soren said.
Glen nodded.
“It’s their only theory,” he said. “The problem is they don’t have a motive. As far as the reports indicate, these were happy, well-adjusted kids with minimal baggage. Apparently Evan got in trouble for selling weed in high school, but if that makes him a killer, then I might as well be Jeffrey Dahmer. I went to college off of pot funds.”
Soren ignored Glen’s foray into his past.
“So they think Evan hung his two friends from a tree, somehow disposed of Alice’s body, and then just, what, walked out of the forest?” Soren asked. “Stop me when that makes sense.”
“They think he got lost trying to flee,” Glen replied. “Here’s their guess in a nutshell: Evan was dating Melissa; Gavin was dating Alice. They think Melissa and Gavin hooked up, or maybe Evan hooked up with Alice. Either way, Evan goes nuts and kills Melissa and Gavin in some kind of jealous rage. Alice either helps him and he kills her later, or she somehow gets away, while he’s left to face the electric chair in Richmond.”
“That’s pretty weak,” Soren said.
“Tell me about it,” he said. “They might convict him, but only because it’s Virginia. They’ll give anyone a visit to Old Sparky in this place.”
“If that’s all they’ve got, he’ll probably get off,” Soren replied.
“If that’s true, not sure why they want to hire you,” Glen said. “I assumed it was about freeing an innocent man.”
Soren thought of Annika’s strangely semi-cheerful attitude.
“No, I don’t think so,” he said.
“Then why are you involved?” Glen asked. “I mean, it sounds like a haunted forest. But so what? It’s standard horror movie stuff. It even has a crazy dead preacher in the mix. And the solution is pretty easy . . .”
“Which is what?”
“Stay the hell away,” Glen replied. “It’s like the film Piranha Lake. The trick to surviving is you just don’t go near it. If this forest is cursed, let’s just rope it off and leave it alone.”
Soren shook his head. He was thinking of what Sara had said to him. If John thought there were answers in this place, it couldn’t be a straight-up haunting.
“There’s more to it than that,” Soren said.
“And you know that how?”
“A hunch mostly,” Soren said. “And I’m seldom wrong.”
“Except for that time with the gorgon,” Glen replied. “And with the witch. And the encounter with the gargoyle.”
“I said I was seldom wrong, not never wrong,” Soren said.
Glen was looking up at the ceiling and counting on his fingers.
“Actually, I think you’re usually wrong,” Glen said, looking back at Soren. “I can count a number of cases off the top of my head.”
“Can’t be that many; you have trouble counting past five.”
“I can dig through the files and come up with an exact count if you’d like,” Glen said.
Soren let it drop and turned back to the case.
“What’s Evan’s story?” Soren asked. “How does he explain it?”
Glen let out a short laugh.
“You want to hear this?” he said. “It’s the lamest of the lame excuses. He just says—”
Soren interrupted him.
“He doesn’t remember,” Soren said. He wasn’t smiling when he said it.
He flashed back to a different time, when he had sat behind a police interrogation table while two officers took turns trying to coax and bully him into giving a statement. The only words Soren had spoken were “I don’t remember.”
Glen was right; it had been lame. In Soren’s case, it had also been a lie.
“How’d you know?” Glen asked.
“Lucky guess,” Soren replied.
He looked over at the clock on the wall and saw the time.
“Damn, we’ve been at this a while,” Soren said. “You should get going. You can come in late tomorrow, not that you tend to keep regular hours.”
“I was here longer than you were today,” Glen replied.
“Fair enough,” he said. “But I’m headed out tomorrow morning to see our mysterious survivor.”
“What makes you think he’ll tell you anything different than he told the police?” Glen asked.
“Because I can be very persuasive,” Soren replied, tapping his glasses. “Besides, I know what cops are like. All they wanted was for Evan to confirm whatever theory they had dreamed up in their heads. Evan sensed that and clammed up.”
“And he won’t around you?”
“No,” Soren said. “Because I know there are things in this world that aren’t easily explained. Unlike the cops, I know monsters are real.”
Chapter Six
Annika Taylor pulled up to the curb of Soren’s apartment building in the smallest car he’d ever seen. He stood on the sidewalk gaping at it as she rolled down the window.
“You going to get in, or do you need a written invitation?” she asked.
“I’m worried if I do I’ll bre
ak it,” he replied. “Can your car handle the weight of two people?”
She laughed and tossed her blond hair back over her shoulder.
“Just get in,” she said.
Soren moved around to the other side, still staring. When he stepped inside and sat down, he had the unsettling feeling of the entire car shifting, but he couldn’t tell if that was just his imagination.
“Is this a Smart car?” he asked as she pulled away.
“A variant of that,” she said. “You like it?”
He turned to her and let his silence do the talking. She laughed again.
“Somehow I thought you wouldn’t,” she said.
“I have a bad feeling I’m going to need to get out and push if we’re going to reach Richmond by the end of the day.”
“It’s less than two hours away,” she said.
“I’ll be shocked if this can go over thirty-five miles per hour,” he replied.
But the car seemed to pick up speed as she headed down Route 15 and then over to the Greenway, the expensive toll road that was the fastest route to the Beltway from Leesburg.
“So why did you really change your mind about the case?” Annika asked.
“I told you, it intrigued me,” he replied.
Annika glanced quickly in his direction.
“Uh-huh,” she said. “That wasn’t it.”
“I find it curious that you think you know me so well,” Soren said.
“You’re an open book,” she replied before adding a caveat. “Mostly.”
“Oh yeah? Read it to me, then. I’d like to know what you missed.”
She looked over at him again.
“All right,” she said. “The file itself describes you in pretty dry terms—on the tall side at a little over six feet, brown hair and eyes, a tad on the skinny side.”
“Gee, stop now or I might blush,” he said.
Soren leaned back in the seat and closed his eyes, listening to her rattle off his life story.
“It gets better,” she said. “You’re athletic, a state finalist for track and field in high school. You came within a fraction of a second of beating the Virginia record for the four-hundred-meter run. Also highly intelligent. Your parents never scored you for IQ, but you were in advanced placement in most subjects. Notably, your grades were erratic, mostly high but dipping in certain subjects that appear to have bored you.”
“I hated chemistry,” Soren said.
“You’re charismatic. In high school you were active in student government,” she continued. “You were elected president of your class in its senior year, when you championed some, shall we say, unorthodox activities.”
“Coed mud wrestling is widely accepted in other cultures,” he said.
“Which brings us to your love life,” she said. “You had a string of girlfriends, including quite a number from the cheerleading squad. As far as we can tell, you were never serious about any of them. This suggests either latent homosexuality that you were trying to suppress or a fear of commitment.”
“Maybe both,” Soren said.
“You have problems with authority,” Annika continued. “You were suspended from a class at Mary Washington University after you loudly and repeatedly complained about the professor’s lectures.”
“He was a racist bastard and the administration protected him,” Soren replied.
“You’ve been arrested four times,” she said. “The first two were standard college student fare—drunken and disorderly conduct. The third was for resisting arrest while intoxicated. And the fourth time—that changed everything.”
“Here we go.”
“All in all you lived what most would consider a privileged existence until eight years ago, when your life fell apart,” Annika said. “You were involved in an incident at a popular vacation spot known as Greyslake. Three close friends died, and you were hurt in a serious accident immediately afterward. The accident caused head trauma and sporadic localized memory loss. According to official reports, you can’t remember the details of the incident itself.”
Soren opened his eyes and sat up again.
“You sound skeptical,” he said.
Annika cocked her head to the side.
“It seems improbably convenient, wouldn’t you say?” she asked.
Soren nodded.
“It does,” he said. “Doesn’t mean it’s not true. I really can’t remember some stuff. Oh, I recall the big ticket items well enough. I know who I am, who my parents are, stuff like that. I’ve just lost little things. I can’t remember stuff about music or movies the way I used to. Basically, I’m the world’s worst Trivial Pursuit player.”
“I think you’re underplaying it a bit,” she said.
“And why’s that?”
“We conducted interviews with several former acquaintances,” Annika said.
“Has anyone ever told you that you’d make an excellent Stasi agent?”
“According to one former high school friend, who ran into you two years ago, you had no idea who he was,” Annika said. “You claimed you never met him before.”
“What was his name?”
“Brad Baker,” Annika replied.
“Oh yeah, I remember him. Chubby guy with glasses. Played flute in the band.”
“Extremely tall, very thin. African American. He played basketball.”
“Well, I was close,” Soren said.
She spared him another look before turning her eyes back to the road.
“After the incident, the police—”
He put up a hand and stopped her.
“I’m convinced,” he said. “There’s no need for you to keep going.”
“But the next part is so interesting,” she said.
“I lived through it already. I could do without a rerun.”
“I wasn’t going to go into details,” she said. “All I was going to say was that the incident changed your life in many ways. For our purposes, that’s when you became interested in the supernatural. You quit your job and became dedicated to chasing the kinds of stories most would rather not hear about. You wrote a blog about several cases, though you never seem to publicize your most interesting ones. You also appeared at parapsychology conferences, acquiring a vast network of contacts.”
Soren put his hands together and clapped softly.
“Very impressive,” he said.
“What’d I miss?” she asked.
Soren turned and looked out the window.
“Nothing I’d care to share,” he replied.
There was a long pause, and he knew what she was going to ask. It was also a question he wouldn’t answer.
“We tried to find out what happened that day,” she said. “We were unsuccessful.”
He didn’t respond, waiting for it to come. He wasn’t going to help her, however. She’d have to work up the nerve for this on her own.
“So . . . can I ask?” she said. “What did happen at Greyslake?”
He turned to face her. Something in his expression must have given away his reaction, because she looked over and flinched.
“Let’s get this out of the way,” he said. “I don’t talk about that—not to you, not to anybody. Your research was extremely thorough. A little too much if you ask me. For the most part I’m happy to entertain anything you want to talk about, but I draw the line at Greyslake. I don’t want you to ever bring it up again, or I quit. No appeals, no nothing. I walk. Is that clear?”
She looked back at him and nodded.
“Crystal,” she said. “But for the record, you’re the one who wanted to stroll down memory lane.”
“We needed to have that conversation sooner or later,” he said. “You would have asked me anyway. Eventually, people always do.”
Annika didn’t respond for a moment, and Soren returned to looking out the window. Something nagged at him but he couldn’t put his finger on it until he remembered what he’d thought when he’d first met her.
“I’ve got a q
uestion for you,” he said, breaking the silence in the car. “Have we met before?”
The question seemed to catch her off guard. She kept her eyes on the road, but Soren could see her tense up.
“Why? Do I seem familiar?” she asked.
“Yes, to be honest,” he said. “Something about you feels very . . .”
He couldn’t think of the right word and finally stopped trying.
“You remind me of someone,” he said, “but I’ll be damned if I can remember who.”
“Like a celebrity maybe?”
“I don’t know any,” he said. “And it’s not your face, it’s your gestures, the way you talk. Just seems familiar. So have we met before?”
He watched her face carefully when she answered him.
“Yes, actually,” she replied after a minute. “You spoke at a conference I attended two years ago. It was the Summit on Parapsychology down in Atlanta.”
Soren had trouble recalling what she was talking about but was relieved when the memory resurfaced after a moment.
“Huh,” he said. “You’ll have to excuse me if I don’t remember much of what I said.”
“You were fantastic. Way better than the rest of the jokers there. Your talk was entitled ‘The Power of Myth.’ Your argument was that a lot of the creatures in mythology are based on something real. You had this radical idea that even the crazies in the back were shaking their heads at. Do you know what it was?”
“That science had it all wrong,” Soren replied. “That the world was once covered in darkness, with humans as slaves to demons and nightmares. It was only when humanity rose up to fight them together that we were able to push them back.”
“But there are some left,” Annika continued. “That’s what you told us. That the things many paranormal investigators encounter are the remnants of the old world. The problem is that we have forgotten how to fight them. We are too successful in pushing them out of our minds and into the shadows.”
Soren stared out at the road ahead.
“It wasn’t a very popular theory,” he said.
“No,” she said. “Some people even left during your talk. But I didn’t. I was riveted.”
“Why?” he asked.
“Because you weren’t trying to convince anyone,” she said. “In fact, you seemed to expect skepticism. You had dates and photos and vague references to what I now know are personal encounters, but it was like you knew no one would believe you—and you didn’t particularly give a damn. It’s what made me realize you were telling the truth. I was just there because I was bored, but that talk . . . it changed my life.”
The Forest of Forever (The Soren Chase Series, Book One) Page 7
