As I say good night to Iris, my headache getting worse as I move, she asks how the project went today.
“I didn’t get anything written. Not yet.”
“That’s okay. There’s a lot to make sense of.”
“Only about a hundred folders with scraps and pieces of stuff.”
I want to say it’s worse than the photo project she gave me.
“There is no deadline, Chris. Take your time.”
“Sure.”
“And one other thing.”
I stand at the doorway as she stares intently at me.
“Take care of yourself. Please.”
She says this as if she knows.
As if she’s aware. Of everything.
64. Afraid of the Dark
I can hear rain falling through the speakers in my room and on the trees outside, and I find I’m having a hard time seeing the difference. I’m waiting, killing time, worrying, listening to The Cure’s Disintegration, worrying a little more. It’s Sunday morning and Mom is gone to work and I’m home alone without a car or a life, but I do have a plan. Or I have Poe’s plan. Now I’m waiting for a good time to leave the house and meet her downtown.
It appears I’ll be riding my bike in a downpour.
The plan is to sneak and spy while the pastor speaks and lies. Maybe I should write song lyrics.
A crack of thunder gently shakes the house.
Midnight sits on the bed beside me, oblivious to the sound and the shaking. I remember Brady’s dog back home and how it would go berserk at the faintest hint of thunder. Sometimes it’s better not knowing the things we’re supposed to be afraid of.
Maybe there are families that wake up and have breakfast together and watch television while they get ready for church. They go out and see their friends at New Beginnings and listen to Pastor Marsh preach some inspiring sermon. Or maybe they don’t listen to all of it because they have other things on their minds, like Sunday dinner and starting work on Monday and the rest of the week and the rest of their life. They don’t notice how odd the pastor’s words seem, and they forget how odd the whole town around them happens to be.
Some people do this.
Others get ready to break into the pastor’s house.
What I’ll find, I have no idea.
The clouds appear full and angry as I finally venture outside with a cap and jacket to keep me remotely dry.
I have everything I need.
I think.
“I’ve been waiting for half an hour.”
Obviously she doesn’t notice how wet I am, or doesn’t care, as I sit down in the front seat of her car. The good thing is that the rain coats the windows and keeps us hidden from any outsider’s view.
“I was hoping for the rain to die down.”
Poe is in black jeans and a black T-shirt, appropriate for the day. The only piece of clothing that’s not black is her denim jacket.
“When are you going to get a license?” she asks as she pulls away from the parking spot on the far edge of the street where she told me we’d meet.
“I don’t think my mother is in too big of a rush.”
“Why’s that?”
“Because she probably knows if I had a license I’d get in the car and drive back to Illinois.”
She ignores my comment. “You ready?”
“I think so. Not like I do this every other weekend.”
“I just hope nothing weird happens, like he decides to let someone else preach today and stays home.”
“You’re coming in with me, right?”
“No. I’m going to be outside to let you know if anyone’s coming.”
“So how are you going to do that?”
“Get the bag in the back.”
I open her black leather purse and find two cell phones.
“Take my iPhone. The other one belongs to my mom. So when are you getting a phone?”
“I’m not getting one around here. They’ll put something in it.”
Poe doesn’t laugh. “If I see anybody coming up to the house, I’ll call you.”
“You sure it’ll work?”
“These aren’t walkie talkies. Yeah, it’ll work.”
The rain is coming down harder. As Poe drives, she turns up the music. I don’t recognize the punk band. They might be current or thirty years old.
“You really think this will work?”
She shrugs. “What else can we do? You okay?”
“What do you mean?”
“You look pale.”
“You’re one to talk.”
She laughs. This girl is a lot like Jocelyn—tough. I wonder why I’m always around tough girls.
“The biggest thing is going to be getting into the house,” I tell her. “If there are passageways like the tunnels I told you about—then, who knows.”
“Just use common sense.”
I want to tell her there’s really no common sense in the man with the empty eye sockets that I encountered in the tunnel but decide against it.
“It’s hard knowing where you’re at when you’re underground.”
“Use the compass on the iPhone.”
“Fancy. Do you have an app for discovering the undead?”
She ignores my joke. “Just don’t break it.”
I touch her phone and see the picture on the screen. For a second I feel gutted. It’s a picture of Poe standing between Jocelyn and Rachel. They’re huddled up and smiling and acting like they couldn’t care about tomorrow.
Tomorrow never came.
“I can’t bring myself to change it,” Poe says. “She was really something, wasn’t she?”
I nod.
It’s a nice reminder why we’re here.
This isn’t some silly mystery where we’re trying to solve a puzzle and find out the criminal.
The puzzle doesn’t need solving.
It needs proving.
And that’s why we are—or I am, anyway—about to break the law.
It takes me about twenty minutes to get in sight of the house.
At one point as I’m walking through the dripping woods, Poe opens up her car door and shouts to me to hurry up. That helps a lot. Really encourages me too.
I think I expected a haunted house at the end of some deserted road, but this is quite the opposite. It’s another large log cabin that’s high up on the side of a mountain. There’s no huge valley to see at any side, however. Just a cocoon of trees.
The driveway is paved, with plenty of space for parking. Two wraparound covered porches surround the three-level house. It looks newly built, with ornately carved trim and posts everywhere. It doesn’t look daunting. In fact, it looks very inviting.
I’m pretty sure this is the south side of cabin. Poe has parked down the street, away from view. The driveway and surrounding grounds are very open, and it wouldn’t surprise me if they were watched with cameras.
Maybe someone already knows you’re here.
I’m about a hundred yards away from the house, but so far I don’t see the doorway Heidi Marsh described in her email. Then I stumble over it. My foot hits something hard that’s jutting out of the ground, and I go face-first into the dirt. It’s wet and soft, and I get even muddier as I stand and pat myself off. I turn to see leaves and dirt covering a wooden door. There’s a latch on the side, and though I expect it to be locked, the door opens without a problem.
I look down and see darkness.
The rain continues to pour, the trees providing a little cover but not enough. I can taste water running down my cheek and landing on the edge of my mouth. I take out the big heavy-duty flashlight that I recently bought, a 13.1-inch aluminum LED one that I paid about sixty bucks for. This sucker’s not going to go out if I’m being chased. In fact, it’s long and heavy enough to be used as a nice weapon to beat someone’s face in.
I turn it on and am surprised again at how powerful the beam is. It lights up the entire square hole going down from this doorway. There’s a metal r
ailing on the side, this one a little more clean and visible. This tunnel or passage looks freshly built.
I wipe my forehead and then proceed down the ladder. It takes me a few minutes to reach the bottom. I wonder if this passageway is attached to the ones going out of our house and the little cabin just beyond us.
Does the whole town play games with each other at nighttime?
It heads straight ahead for maybe twenty or thirty yards. I walk for a few minutes and then test Poe’s cell phone.
“You okay?” she asks.
“Just wanted to make sure this works.”
“Of course it works. Where are you?”
“Underground. In a carved-out passageway.”
“What do you see?”
“Dirt. Rock.” I move the beam of the light and study the soft ground I’m walking on. “A footprint.”
“Hurry up. I’m getting creeped out waiting here in the car.”
“You’re getting creeped out? Why don’t you come down here?”
But she’s gone. I shake my head.
The air is musty down here. I see thick tree roots sticking out from the ceiling and sides of the passageway like random curls on a head. I hope I’m going the right direction, but it’s the only direction there is. I keep darting my beam back behind me. Just making sure. I hate those horror movies where they never bother to check behind them until Oh no it’s too late! and they quickly die a grisly death.
Soon the passageway ends in a split. One tunnel leads to my left and continues going forward. The other leads to my right and seems to go back the way I came.
I get the compass on Poe’s phone to see where I’m at and decide to go to the right, which is more north than the other way.
The ground is more rocky and uneven here, and the passageway is smaller. I have to keep bending my head to make sure it doesn’t scrape the dirt and clay above me. The beam of my flashlight bounces off the walls. My breathing seems to echo off these shrinking barriers.
The passage bends a bit, so I can’t see exactly where it’s headed. It just seems like I’ve been walking a lot longer than the hundred yards it should’ve taken to get to the pastor’s house.
I let out a sigh, and then hear the voice.
Are you afraid of the dark, Chris?
It’s not an audible voice. At least I don’t think it is.
I stop and shine the flashlight behind me, around me, in front of me.
Are you afraid of being left alone in a tiny little hole?
That’s not my mind talking. It’s someone else’s voice. It’s his voice, the voice of the pastor.
But of course I’m imagining it.
I keep walking, a little faster now.
What if something happened and nobody knew you were down here and you were left for the animals for the dogs for the maggots?
Again I stop. I shake my head, hoping the thoughts are like dead skin I can simply brush away onto the floor.
Then my flashlight goes out.
I curse and can hear my own voice loud and clear.
Then in the darkness, I hear something else.
The sickening, crawling sound of laughter.
Real laughter, not imagined.
65. Hell Is Here
When you’re running in the dark not knowing where you’re really going and feeling something scraping at the top of your head and imagining you’re hearing footsteps behind you, you can be as brave as possible but you’re still about ready to pee in your pants.
I hear something in front of me before I actually feel it. I slow down just as I crash against a wall.
For a second, while I’m on the ground, I fumble and try to turn the flashlight back on. My hands are shaking so badly I’m like a junkie holding a syringe. Finally I press the button.
Light. Just like that.
I wave it all around me like a deranged man.
There’s nothing down there. I’m at the end of the tunnel. A door about three feet tall is at the bottom.
I find the cell phone in my pocket.
Everything’s fine just stop imagining things Chris.
I feel the door and find a handle. It turns with ease.
I think I expected a dungeon or something like that. Instead, I’m walking through an ordinary—well, more like a nicely finished—basement.
The door opens up to a narrow, long, closet-like room that turns out to be a wine cellar. On both sides of the room, racks of wine bottles go from the floor to the ceiling. The door I came out of blends into the wall, not as if to hide it but more as if to keep with the decor of the room.
It’s not like he’s trying to hide this passageway.
But then again, I don’t know what he’s trying to do.
Once out of the cellar, I walk down a hallway and see a few other rooms—a bathroom and a couple of bedrooms. Then I enter an open area that appears to be a media room, with a gigantic flat-screen television on the wall and several couches around it.
Everything looks new and expensive and appealing.
I guess I never really thought I’d get into the house. But now that I’m here, I’m not exactly sure what to do. I think of calling Poe but then decide against it. I don’t want her barking in my ear.
I quickly survey the rest of the downstairs. A wet bar, a storage room with lots of stuff like golf clubs and skis and toys rich people have. I don’t find any horse heads or dead people or upside-down crosses.
Maybe I’m wrong about the pastor.
But that’s crazy. I’m definitely not wrong about the pastor. The question is what can I find on him. And how quickly I can do it.
I find a set of wide wooden stairs heading up. Again I think about calling Poe, but I don’t.
I start up the stairs, my legs feeling stiff and unsure of themselves.
This place is cold. Unusually cold. I shiver and hold the flashlight that I no longer need in my hands, ready to use it like a baseball bat. Ready to swing and then get out of here.
Upstairs is a home fit for a movie star. This could be Tom Cruise’s Carolina getaway. Everything looks and feels and smells new. Open windows reveal the woods in the distance. Everything looks neat and organized. Suddenly I realize what’s making me so uncertain. Besides the fact that I’m, like, breaking and entering.
There’s nothing personal in this house. Nothing at all.
Even Mom has a few pictures of the two of us around the house, along with the mementos of a life being lived. We’ve been here just a little over six months, and she has more in her home than Pastor Marsh has in his. There are no pictures of Marsh and his family, no piles of mail, no messy counters or pillows on the floor or random remote controls in the wrong places.
Everything seems too perfect.
I check the cell phone to make sure Poe hasn’t called. Then I go down a hallway past the kitchen. I find a study that looks more organized than a library. A guest room. A bathroom. A laundry room. Then another door leading to a garage.
When I open it, I can’t believe what I’m seeing. The silver Mercedes SUV, the same one the blond was driving when she picked me up. If I needed proof, here it is. The woman driving the SUV, this SUV, was indeed Heidi Marsh.
I go back into the main room and again look outside. It’s still dark and raining.
I’m not going to find anything here. Nothing at all.
I wonder if the pastor even lives here.
All of this will be pointless if I don’t find something, anything. It’s still not noon and church hasn’t gotten out yet. I have to go upstairs.
For a second I pause by the large stairway. There’s a loft area with rails that overlooks the main room below. I take a few steps and then hear a shriek above me.
Up in the loft, wearing a white robe like some wicked witch from Oz or Narnia, stands a woman with crazed hair and an even crazier face, opening her mouth as wide as it can go and screaming at me.
I’m so startled I miss a step and stumble backward.
From my posit
ion sprawled on my back I see that it’s the blond.
Heidi Marsh.
But this time I see eyes red and evil and makeup smeared and grotesque like a clown. She looks pale and sickly, at least from what I can see of her under the oversized robe she’s wearing.
“Get out of here, you devil! Get out, you whoremonger! You liar! Get out!”
She screams again, and I scamper like a wounded, wet dog. I bash my hip against a couch and search for the front door. At this point it doesn’t matter how I get out. I’m already in deep trouble.
Her howling is awful, and it doesn’t stop. I swing open the door, and as I glance back I see the woman on her knees, bony arms hanging on the rails of the loft like a prisoner in a concentration camp grabbing on to barbed wire.
“Hell is here, and he will not die!”
Those are the only words I can make out before I reach the driveway and rain falls on my face and I run and keep running and almost run right past Poe’s parked car.
66. Love
It takes me a while to stop hyperventilating or whatever my lungs are doing.
I tell Poe to drive.
Again a part of me wonders what would happen if we just drove and kept driving and kept driving far away from this place.
I finally manage to tell her what happened. I include everything, from the laugh I heard in the tunnel to finding a deranged Heidi Marsh demanding a housewarming gift.
“You think she’s crazy?”
“What’s your definition of crazy?” I ask. “A year ago I would’ve said yes, but I don’t know. I’m beginning to think I’m crazy.”
“I never see her with the pastor.”
“You’ve been watching?”
“I see him all the time. He’s everywhere.”
“She’s not right. But then again, if I were married to that weird pastor, I wouldn’t be right either.”
“We have to tell somebody.”
“No,” I say. “I’m already in trouble—she’s going to tell him.”
“You think he’ll believe her?”
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