The Forest of Forever (The Soren Chase Series, Book One)

by Rob Blackwell

  Soren looked at her in disbelief.

  “No,” he managed. “That’s not true. The police—”

  “They what? Made up a report about a shotgun? What possible motive is there for that? Why would they lie?”

  Soren just looked at her, unable to speak. A memory surfaced of John lying on the ground, holding out his hand to Soren. There was no fire, but there was blood all over him. That couldn’t be right. It had to be a false memory.

  “My God, you actually believe your own story, don’t you?” Meredith said. “How is that possible? The police interrogated you so many times. Surely you knew the details of what they were accusing you of.”

  Soren knew—or thought he did. He remembered something now, a police officer shouting at him about a shotgun. But somehow he’d forgotten about that, too.

  “Well, allow me to disabuse you of certain notions,” Meredith continued. “Edward didn’t die from a knife to the chest. He was strung up by a noose in one of the bedrooms. Did the police make that up, too, Soren? What I don’t understand is why you never checked the report. If you’re going to spout off bullshit, shouldn’t it at least conform to the basic facts of the case?”

  But Soren couldn’t comprehend what Meredith was saying. He knew what he remembered. He had replayed those events time and time again. He even dreamed about them. He remembered what happened that night.

  A small voice popped up in his head: Are you sure about that?

  “Your story is a lie,” Meredith said. “Mikey was also found inside the cottage. His throat was slit. So other than the fact that every part of your story was wrong, do you still believe it?”

  His mind reached for the only explanation it could muster.

  “The Association must have—”

  “I saw the police reports years before I knew about the Association, Soren,” Meredith said. “I was busy trying to exonerate you. I thought playing a little Nancy Drew would save you. I didn’t think you’d done it. But then I found the e-mails between you and Sara and everything changed.”

  Soren looked at Sara and then back to Meredith.

  “What are you talking about?” he asked.

  “Come on, Soren! Don’t pretend to forget everything important!”

  As she shouted, Meredith waved the gun around casually, pointing it vaguely between Sara and Soren. He dropped his hands to his side and subtly reached around to the backside of his pants. If Meredith was distracted for just a moment longer, he could end this.

  “I really don’t know what the hell you mean,” Soren said.

  “The e-mails,” Meredith said. “I know you couldn’t forget those. The ones between you and Sara. The ones about how you were supposed to tell John about your affair.”

  Soren stared at Meredith in shock. He was so surprised, he forgot what he was doing.

  “That’s not true,” he said, sounding shrill even to himself.

  Soren looked at Sara, who lay on the ground listening to everything.

  “Tell her,” he said. “We never . . .”

  But Sara wasn’t looking up at him; she was instead staring at the ground. When he looked back at Meredith, there was a bemused smile on her face.

  “You can’t honestly expect me to believe you don’t remember that, can you?” she asked. “Funny that you mentioned all the tastes you and John had in common. Liked the same games, same sports. But you didn’t say women, and apparently you shared that, too. Not that John had the wandering eye that you did.”

  Soren kept trying to see Sara’s face, but she wouldn’t look at him.

  “No,” Soren said. “You’ve got that wrong. It wasn’t like that.”

  “So you don’t love Sara?” Meredith asked. “Is that why you called her name when you fucked me?”

  Sara glanced up at that, even as Soren turned to face Meredith again.

  “I called your name, not hers!” he told her.

  Meredith started laughing.

  “No you didn’t, honey,” she said. “And I’d remember. I might even have let your death be quick if it was my name. But you called hers. Several times.”

  Soren felt like the earth was quaking beneath his feet. His hand fell away from his gun and he took a step backward. He tripped and fell to the ground.

  “He doesn’t remember, Meredith,” Sara said. “I hadn’t been completely sure until the other day, but . . . he didn’t know.”

  Soren turned to look at her and felt his vision grow blurry.

  “We . . . ?” he asked.

  There was an almost imperceptible nod of her head. Meredith was laughing again.

  “This just keeps getting better,” she said. “He forgot you, too. I can’t believe it. He killed for you, Sara. That’s how badly he wanted you for his own. But in the end it must not have been that memorable.”

  Sara looked at Meredith.

  “Listen to me,” she said slowly. “You don’t understand. My relationship with your brother was . . . more complicated than you seem to think it was—than both of you do. John Townes was not the saint you both see him as.”

  “Is that your excuse?” Meredith asked. “Is that how you justify cheating on him? My brother was a good man.”

  Sara nodded her head.

  “Yes, a good man,” she said. “But not a perfect one. There are extenuating circumstances. If you could put the gun away and let me explain—”

  “No,” Meredith said. “The time for that is done. He killed for you, Sara. How can you stand to be in his presence? He’s the reason John died!”

  “Whatever you may think you know, that part’s not true,” Sara responded. “Soren Chase did not kill John. He never would. Never.”

  “Then why doesn’t he know what happened, Sara?” Meredith asked. “Why is the story he told me—when he thought I was his friend—so totally and utterly wrong?”

  “He hit his head!” Sara shouted. “He lost some part of his memories. It’s not a put-on. The fact that he didn’t know who you were should be proof of that.”

  Soren sat on the ground. For once in his life, he was totally speechless. He thought he knew how to get out of every situation. But not this one. He felt like there was a dagger in his heart and he was bleeding to death.

  “I want you to know something,” Meredith said, still looking at Soren. “I helped the Association at every turn, but I always intended to kill you relatively fast. I didn’t need you to suffer. I’m not a monster. And then Chastain showed me something I never uncovered when I was a kid.”

  Soren didn’t reply. He couldn’t reply. He had no idea what to say.

  “When he showed it to me, he told me exactly how he wanted you to die,” Meredith continued.

  She lowered her gun and took a silver canister out of her jacket pocket. This was Soren’s moment. All he had to do was to pull the gun out of the back of his pants and shoot Meredith. But he couldn’t move. Instead, he watched as she strolled toward him and unscrewed the lid. She poured a liquid over his head and stepped back. It was startlingly cold, and he recognized the smell immediately. She had just doused him in gasoline. It jarred Soren alert.

  “Chastain had such specific instructions,” Meredith said. “I had to bring you to this very spot for it to happen. And I had to kill you in exactly this way.”

  There was a voice in Soren’s head telling him to go for the gun, but he still found it difficult to move.

  “But Chastain knew my doubts,” Meredith said. “He knew that in my heart I must still care for you, that I might not want you to suffer. So he showed me an e-mail that John composed to Sara but never sent. It got stuck in the server somehow and the police never found it. But the Association did. That e-mail convinced me Sara wasn’t in on it. It was a simple message. Do you want to know what it said?”

  Soren looked at her dumbly.

  “It was just a sentence, typed while he was at the cottage with you,” Meredith said. “‘If something happens to me, don’t trust Soren.’ How do you explain that one, Soren Chase
? You still believe you were set up? John didn’t trust you. He knew what you were planning. He knew you were going to kill him.”

  It was one emotional punch too many. Soren knew she was lying because what she was saying simply couldn’t be true. The police report was a fake. The e-mail was a lie. He was there. He knew what had happened. Even if he’d been having some kind of relationship with Sara, he would have never harmed John.

  Her lies brought him out of his stupor and he stood up. He reached around to his gun, but Meredith pointed her weapon at Sara’s head.

  “Don’t even think about it, Soren,” she said. “Throw the gun away.”

  He tossed it into the trees. Meredith nodded and smiled.

  “It’s almost over, lover,” she said. “There’s just one more thing I have to do.”

  Meredith walked slowly forward, keeping the gun trained on Sara’s head.

  After the shock from Sara’s earlier revelation, Soren’s brain was working again. He knew what Meredith was preparing to do.

  In that instant he realized how Coakley was able to kidnap people—and why the Association wanted him killed in this manner. Meredith dropped the canister and dug her left hand into her pocket. As she pulled it out to reveal a small object, he understood how the door to that other world—what he thought of as Darisam—swung open.

  He looked over at Sara in a panic.

  “No, wait, Meredith!” he said. “You don’t understand what will happen!”

  But Meredith didn’t slow, instead casually flicking the lighter in her hand to produce a small flame. Sara was screaming as Meredith tossed it toward Soren. He had a second to see it cross the small space between them, watching it in slow motion as it flew through the air. And then it hit him and obliterated all thought.

  The gasoline on his clothes lit immediately. Soren Chase was consumed in flames.

  Part IV

  October 1813

  I barely made it through the fire.

  My companion is dead, killed by my father. I had hoped to save her, but hope is a dying star in this place. It burns brightest before it is extinguished altogether.

  Everything turned on the accursed gem. I led the Charred Man home. I became the Judas my father had foreseen. The Charred Man told me of his mission, his desire to save another. He brought along others, the souls of the lost and weary.

  His plan was deceitful, worthy of the devil he’d become. He does not understand the truth; he seems as adrift as the rest of us. But he is clever.

  I will not recall all the events here, only that we were doomed from the start. We had hoped to trick my father, but he knew what we were after. We suffered terrible losses. My father was ready for us. He’s been waiting all his life for this.

  I succeeded in getting close to my father and wresting the gem free. I looked inside of it and saw myself.

  I cannot describe what I witnessed, but suffice it to say that all the awful judgment my father delivered was insufficient to understand the depth of my sin. I was a betrayer and a coward.

  But I was also free. My mind survived its journey, and I left the forest alone and bereft.

  I do not know what happened to the Charred Man and those few not destroyed by my father’s rage. I was able to give the treasure to him, and I know he will use it to go home. There are not enough of my father’s acolytes to stop him. But I fear what awaits him when he does so. There are others even more dangerous than my father in this world.

  This is my final journal entry.

  There are so many things I do not understand, chief among them what became of my father. Does he yet live? And if so, can he find me here again? I will not run from him any longer. If he wants me, he will find me here, waiting.

  Reapoke Forest is my final resting place.

  —Edolphus Coakley

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Everything happened at once.

  There were three of them in the clearing, and then there were dozens more. A ring of white-robed figures appeared, as if they had been patiently waiting the entire time.

  Their leader, a stout man with a thick white beard, stepped forward and grabbed Meredith, while Evan, the young man Soren had originally been trying to help, seized Sara. Both women seemed too stunned to resist.

  Even as they were taken, Soren was immobilized by an explosion of pain. The flames whipped around his body, the fire burning through every nerve. He stumbled away from the congregation, who watched him with passive, uncaring eyes. He saw Sara screaming, not for herself but for him. Her eyes were wide with terror.

  His last conscious thought was to run. Without understanding why, he fled into the forest.

  He ran without purpose or direction, the pain devouring him. He was inside of it and it was inside of him. They were fused together in what seemed like an eternity of agony.

  His clothes melted into his flesh, his skin blistered red, and his hair burned, but still he ran. He was no longer aware of what he was doing. He saw the faces of men and women standing in the forest, watching him. They were old and young, wearing clothing from various eras, but he paid them no attention. All that occupied his mind was pain.

  When he opened his mouth to scream, flames seemed to leap in. They poured into his stomach like lava, burning him from the inside.

  He took no notice of a young man and woman lurking nearby, nor an older man, clearly of the Chickahominy tribe, who watched him approach. The older man ran from him and vanished from sight, but Soren kept running as the fire finished with his skin and worked its way into his bones.

  Soren waited to die. He begged for death and would have happily given all the money in the world for its embrace. But the lancing torment seemed to stretch on forever, never abating, only growing stronger. As he ran, he remembered other words for pain in languages he did not know he understood—dolor, bolest, itami. He knew them all and inscribed them into his heart.

  Finally, after an eternity, he fell forward, landing on the ground and thrashing in the soft earth. He wanted to bury himself. He had failed John and Sara. And now his defeat was complete.

  He lay on the ground as the light from the fire around him died out. He closed his eyes and hoped for oblivion.

  Soren was dead.

  He had to be dead. He understood that logically, and yet somehow his consciousness lived on. He lay on the ground for some time. It might have been minutes or years—he couldn’t remember.

  Eventually, he came back to himself. He rolled over and lay on his back, watching the branches waving above him. He looked at them for a while, content to listen to the sound of the wind. He felt a cool, refreshing breeze against his skin.

  His skin. Soren turned his head and noticed his arm. It was blackened and charred. The sight of it brought a memory of pain, but he didn’t feel anything anymore. It was as if all his suffering had been burnt along with the rest of his body. He turned slowly and looked at his other arm and could see bone beneath the flesh. A soft sigh escaped his lips.

  He was dead, and that was a relief. If he was dead, there was no pain and no one he needed to save.

  But then he remembered Sara. Coakley and his congregation had dragged her and Meredith off into the forest. The memory made Soren sit upright. He looked down at his scorched hands and feet.

  His first thought was that he had to help her. He’d run away when she’d needed him most. Of course he had. He’d been dying.

  And yet here he was. He didn’t understand what had happened. He looked at the damage to his own body, knowing it was beyond fatal. But as he checked himself over, he saw his flesh knitting itself together again. The place where he could see his bone was sewing itself up.

  It was Reapoke Forest; it had to be. Somehow he’d passed over into Darisam—and he was being protected from death. The gateway had opened when Meredith set him on fire, something he understood too late to warn her about. Coakley had been waiting for them.

  Yet somehow it must have kept him from dying. He didn’t comprehend it, but he c
ouldn’t deny it either. He moved his fingers and then his toes. His body was wasted, seared black beyond all recognition, but it responded to him. He looked more like a shadow than a man.

  Carefully, Soren stood up. He waited for the pain to return, but it was gone. He looked around him and saw only trees in every direction. He didn’t know which way he’d come, but he cautiously began walking forward. His limbs worked and his mind continued to function. He was a dead man, a burnt-out shell, and yet he moved. He looked down at his blackened chest and saw it rise and fall with his breath.

  He stopped questioning it. If Reapoke had preserved him, then perhaps he still had time to save Sara. Maybe he could still redeem himself.

  He plunged into the woods, searching for any sign of Coakley or his acolytes. He had no sense of how long he’d been running or where to go, but he let his instinct guide him.

  Soren stumbled through the brush and noticed someone watching him not far away. It was a boy in homespun clothing who looked roughly sixteen years old. He was staring at Soren with wide, frightened eyes. He had never seen a picture of him, but Soren recognized the face immediately.

  “Edolphus!” he called.

  The boy looked shocked. Soren knew this was his best chance. If anyone could help him find Sara, it was the boy. Soren walked forward, almost falling. The boy took a step backward.

  “Where is she, Edolphus?”

  He could see terror written plainly on the boy’s face as he shook his head from side to side. Soren sped up, afraid the boy would disappear. He held out his hands, forgetting for a moment how he must appear. Soren nearly reached him, but the boy suddenly turned and fled.

  Soren let out a cry of frustration.

  “Edolphus, no!” Soren yelled. “How am I supposed to find her? I can’t do this without you!”

  He tried to follow Edolphus, but the boy ran too quickly. Soren lost him as he vanished into the trees.

  Only after he was gone did Soren remember why the scene seemed so familiar. He had read it in Edolphus’s journal. It was the first entry, detailing how the boy had walked into the forest.