Missing pages. Recommence with page 231—
9 October, 1918
Bad news when dawn broke this morning. We saw a wide river to our front. My merry band of cutthroats, as well as I, were so exhausted the night before, we collapsed without noticing the sound of flowing water. I’m afraid—according to the very inaccurate royal map—we were looking at the Stikine River. Far north of where we were supposed to be, meaning we were in the harsh unexplored back country of British Columbia.
As I write this passage, the men are looking at the two children, and what I see in their eyes is sheer madness. Four of the mules from the now empty and abandoned wagons were slaughtered and eaten. I fear for the children because they have become objects of hate and superstition because of our wrongdoing—the men want the children given to them. I fear I may lose control very soon, but I cannot allow these fifty men to do what I know them capable of doing.
10 October, 1918
I must now note that I have made the gravest of errors. While studying the Twins of Peter the Great three nights ago in the dying firelight of our camp, and thinking all but the perimeter guards were asleep, I failed to see one of the men watching me from afar. When I returned to the Twins the next morning, I discovered one on the ground by the wagon, and the other missing from its gilded box. The thief must have dropped the diamond in the night, and then unable to find it in the dark, absconded with the one remaining Twin. The man is now missing, escaping with half of my prize for this fiasco. I am losing hope of surviving this ordeal, but now have only half payment and a growing attachment to the only two people I can trust—the girl and boy. The man I recognized, the thief, was Vasily Serta, one of the more intelligent guards, and a man I had trusted.
Postscript: The screams and the striking of wood has not only continued, but has grown far worse in the last few days. Five men are now missing, joining the thief, vanishing into the night. If they are deserters, that is something I can deal with; however, the alternative is something that scares me far more than freezing or starving to death, as I feel there is something stalking us in the night.
Last remaining page of journal—
2 November, 1918
The wagons have all broken. The men and I have hidden them and the gold in a large cave in the facing of a small plateau, and then covered the openings with tree, rock, and snow. They should never be found by anyone as lost as we. Upon study of this immense cave, we discovered the paintings of primitive man. Strange designs of hunts, of daily living, and of one particular painting of an animal that struck fear into all who saw it in the flickering light of the torches—a beast of huge proportions that walked upright like the hunters it towered over. Why did this ancient depiction frighten me so? Is it the sounds we hear at night? Or the men that we discover gone almost every morning now? Or is it the fact that we all feel the primitive intuition that we are being hunted, stalked, and taken in the night?
The forest around us is impenetrable and the river is starting to choke with ice. True winter has struck early. The men will soon be coming for the children, so I have decided it is better to die here and now, than to contemplate the fate that awaits the sickly boy and the proud young girl. I go with the knowledge that evil things come to evil men, and thus I would be satisfied with that particular outcome, but for the children. Especially the girl. I have become dependent on her bravery and intellect—she is no fool.
After much study of the ancient forest that surrounds us and the very terrain of our travels thus far, I have come to the conclusion that no man has ever passed this way before. At night, the trees crowd in and act as a smothering agent, at least to the hearts and minds of the men. The natural animal noises all cease after the sun goes down with the exception of the strange pounding of wood on wood. I have come to the bizarre conclusion that these are signals of some kind, an intelligence that is making a mockery of the most ruthless men in the world. This is unlike any forest I have ever ventured into.
My belief that there is an intelligent presence in the woods, back beyond the safe glow of our campfires, is persistent and disturbing. I believe myself a brave man, but I am quickly becoming unnerved by an element I do not understand. Annie, as I have come to call the girl, and I have spoken of the strangeness that surrounds us, and we both agree that a feeling of “knowing” has entered our thoughts, even our dreams. Knowing that whatever is out there, has been there for our collective memories to conjure in our waking lives. It’s as if we have lived this journey a million years ago, a retained and collective memory of danger in the night suffered by our ancestor. How the men in camp feel about this theory will go unasked, as we have had yet another two men vanish from guard duty the last two nights. With the Stikine River to our south and the woods surrounding us on all sides, we feel trapped. Game has vanished as we hear and see them running in the daytime hours, always in the same direction—away from the river and woods, and always away from our guns.
Finally, the men have started talking about the dark and almost impenetrable forest, and what it is that constantly surrounds our camp at night. The sickening boy has heard the tales the men tell, and is now not sleeping when the miserable and weak sun goes down beyond the mountains, making him weaker each morning than the day before. In all honesty, I find sleep just as elusive and I fear whatever hunts us is coming soon.
The large colonel checked the loads in his pistol, and then closed the hinged breech, snapping the barrel into place, and then he placed it in his heavy coat. He then walked over to the fire and knelt beside the boy. He lifted a hand and felt Alexei’s forehead. He smiled as he pulled his hand away, and then pulled the woollen blanket closer to the boy’s chin.
“Well, the fever has calmed; you just may make it,” Petrov said in a low voice, looking from the dull eyes of Alexei to the sad eyes of Anastasia. He stood and walked toward the girl who had become a woman in the short time away from her parents.
Anastasia watched, making sure her brother could not hear, and then turned to the tall man beside her.
“Colonel, my brother is ill; he shall not recover. We need not be told things that are mere flights of fancy because it eases your mind to do so. I am afraid we left our childhoods back at a dreary farmhouse in Russia.”
The princess looked around her and saw the stark white faces of the emaciated men that leaned against the broken wagons and fallen snow-covered trees. They were down to thirty-four men and they were starving. Anastasia remembered the horrible stories of the dark and forbidden woods read to her at bedtime, with the absolute worst, Hansel and Gretel, never far from her mind as she looked at the brutal, soulless men watching them.
“No, he shall not die. I believe he is of stronger blood than you know, young one.”
“Once more, Colonel Petrov, he is sick. He is a hemophiliac and is prone to infection. The finest doctors in the world from France, England, and America have treated my brother, and declared it so. He also has developed pneumonia.” She looked at the men surrounding the large fire again, placed the coat’s collar up around her neck, and held her small, delicate hands out toward the warm fire. She turned her head slightly toward the colonel, framing her beautiful face in the firelight, and then she looked into the blue eyes of the Bolshevik. “It would be best for us, I think, if you would place a bullet into both of our heads. We are brave, like my mother, my father, and my sisters. The fate of the bullet is far more merciful than the fate those men will have for us. It would be a kindness, Colonel.”
Petrov swallowed.
“You are far beyond your years for one so—.” He caught himself patronizing the girl and knew she would call him on it. “Your imagination is running wild. You will feel better with a hot meal in your stomach.”
“We wish to join our mama and papa. We do not fear the reunion, only the manner in which we begin our journey.”
“Anastasia, such talk will do no one any good.”
The girl ignored the colonel and leaned over the crown prince. When his dar
k eyes fluttered open, he tried to smile at his sister.
“Papa—he would have been very proud of you,” he whispered in his weakened voice. “So tough a girl.”
“No, it would be his pride and joy that shone brightly in his eyes. You, Alexei, were his and Mama’s entire lives. Why, they would have been so—”
“Colonel, we have come for the children.”
Petrov looked up into the face of Geroden—the sergeant—the very guard who had been left behind by Petrov, and the only one in their lost expedition to have actually taken part in the elimination of the Romanovs.
Colonel Petrov raised his left brow and stood. His knee-high boots cracked with cold and stiffness. He smiled as he placed his hat on his head, and then squared it up as if getting ready for an inspection.
“Is that so, Comrade?”
“Yes,” answered Geroden. The smaller man then looked away from the children, took Petrov by the elbow, and steered him away from the fire and their young ears. “I have convinced the men that you are not to blame for our . . . situation. I was able to sway them to the idea that the Romanov children have cursed us, making us lose our way.” He smiled, showing the four gold teeth in the front of his mouth.
“You know I am originally from the aristocracy myself, so why am I accorded such lenient treatment, Comrade?”
“Because, Iosovich Petrov, you left your family for the ideals of the revolution, just as we.”
Petrov laughed loud and heartily—strong, as if he had had a large meal just that evening and was feeling its strength, like a horse full of wild oats.
“The ideals of the revolution. . . . Is that how you and those fools are justifying your avaricious actions of the past months—for the revolution?”
“Comrade, all we want is the children. There is no need for you to—”
“Hypocrites! All of you, hypocrites! You betrayed your revolutionary ideals the moment you heard this plan and did not report it,” he said, but ceased his maniacal grin. “Just as I did,” he finished with distaste.
The smaller Geroden sneered and gestured behind him. Ten men started forward toward the children. Anastasia placed her hand on the chest of Alexei and closed her eyes in prayer.
Petrov never hesitated as he removed the pistol from his holster and emptied it into the approaching men. Five of the ten dropped into the powdery snow and the others dove to the ground behind the high wall of flames of the campfire. On the first click of the empty chamber, Petrov swung the pistol wildly at the stunned Geroden, striking him cleanly in the face and dropping him. Then he quickly grabbed up the boy and ran into the thick forest, quickly followed by the fast-thinking Anastasia.
Three men rushed forward to assist the bleeding Geroden to his feet. He angrily shoved them away, and spat blood and two of his gold teeth into the freezing snow.
“After them!”
Eight men broke away from the camp and spread out into the thick, ancient forest. The men remaining grabbed their bolt-action rifles and long knives, and went in the opposite direction as the first group. They knew Petrov was a master of deception and a skilled soldier, thus they thought he would try and work his way back to the last four mules and try to make his escape.
Geroden drew his pistol from its holster and angrily pushed away the men who had tried to help him. Then he gestured angrily in the direction where the colonel had vanished. As the three men reached the first line of thick trees, the clacking of wood started once more. Geroden stopped and listened. The noise was far louder than any previous night. As he listened, the cold wind picked up in intensity, but it wasn’t the wind that forced a chill to run down his spine; it was the closeness of the strange knocking.
“It’s all around us,” one of the three men said as he pulled the bolt back on his rifle, chambering a round, never realizing he had just ejected an unfired bullet from the rifle. He flailed the British-made weapon in all directions.
Except for the banging of wood against the trees and the wind in their branches, the forest seemed dead. The sound of the men crashing through the underbrush was becoming fainter as Geroden tried to pierce the night with his eyes. The man in front of him had backed toward the warming fire, still rapidly swinging the rifle toward any sound he heard. Geroden took hold of the man’s rifle and stilled it.
“Careful, you fool; you’ll shoot one of—”
The horrible scream of a man chilled the blood of Geroden and his hand slid slowly from the barrel of the frightened man’s weapon. The screaming went on for three seconds, and then abruptly stopped. The noise of the sticks striking the large and ancient trees continued. They seemed to be drawing closer and were very much louder, doubling the fear that was near to crippling them.
Several of the first group of men came rushing back from the surrounding woods and into the large circle of firelight, backing in as they trained their weapons on the woods behind them.
“Did you see it? Did you see it?” one man yelled at another as even more of the first group backed into the camp, their rifles also pointing into the forest.
Geroden strode quickly to the man that had spoken. He was wide-eyed and terrified.
“Why have you returned?”
The soldier didn’t hear the question. He shrugged the sergeant’s hand from his sleeve and continued to stare into the woods. The fear of the sergeant had disappeared as something far more dangerous had arrived.
“You,” Geroden said, pulling on the arm of another of the frightened men, “what is the matter with you?”
“There is . . . is . . . something out there . . . more than one I think.”
“What do you mean something?”
Before the man could answer, screams of pain and terror filled the darkened night once more. The men still out in the dark forest started to fire their weapons, making those in the camp stoop low and aim at anything that looked menacing, which of course was everything.
Suddenly, the large fire exploded as a shapeless object flew from the woods and struck. Flames and burning embers shot high into the air as the men saw what had hit: the mangled body of one of their own. His uniform and hair quickly caught fire as the men stood watching in stark terror.
The striking of wood against wood became louder. The beat was not uniform but it seemed as if whatever was out there was herding them together. Then came the first sounds other than the screaming of men, or the strange beating of the trees—a horrendous bellow of something inhuman. Other growls and roars answered the first cry. More men ran in from the trees, from front and back. They were all looking behind them in absolute terror. The night became alive around them, the beating of wood sounding as if it were right at the very trees next to the camp, just out of the large fire’s circle of illumination.
“For God’s sake, what is out there?” one of the men yelled just as a shot rang out.
Another, then another rifle exploded, and Geroden flinched as the second gunshot went off next to him. All of the men started firing into the woods, striking trees and snow-covered underbrush.
Two more bodies of their comrades were thrown into camp. The first struck a tree, sticking for a moment before flopping lifeless to the snow-covered ground. Then the second landed at Geroden’s feet. As he looked up in shock, the giant animals attacked the camp in force.
Geroden had taken aim at a darker-than-night shadow as it traveled from the thickness of one tree to another when warm blood struck him in the face, unnerving the sergeant. He turned and ran, running over one of his own comrades, knocking him into the fire as he tried to escape through the back of the camp. Behind him were the cries and defensive fire of his men. The nightmare of the past few weeks had made its presence known, and the reason man feared the dark forests of the world was made evident as the night became death.
Colonel Petrov held the children close to him as the murderous rage of whatever had been tracking them attacked the men inside the camp. The screams of terror and pain seemed to last all night as men fled, and then were taken
down and butchered just as others died, trying in vain to find and to kill the invisible intruders.
“Colonel, what is out here with us?” Anastasia asked, holding her brother hard against the large man’s body as they cowered behind two large trees that seemed to grow twisted against one another.
“Satan may have come for us this night,” he mumbled as he pointed his pistol into the night. Petrov found himself sliding back into his childhood—the days when he had been forced to pray at the cathedral with his family. The thought and memory made him wish for those times once more, the comfort in the belief of good.
“I’m frightened, Anna,” Alexei cried.
Suddenly the screaming stopped. There was one shot, then one more—then silence.
Petrov cocked his pistol and waited, sure that whatever had killed the men, would soon make him and the children their next target.
A crashing came through the woods and Petrov knew he had to try to save the children. If they remained with him, he knew they didn’t have a chance. He quickly stood Alexei up and pushed him into the arms of Anastasia. Then came a louder and harried sound of something crashing through the underbrush. While looking into the woods, Petrov reached in, pulled out his journal, made sure the oil cloth covered the leather book, and then thrust it into Anastasia’s grasp.
“Take this—you and your brother must run. Hide until morning and then head to the south, down the river as it flows toward the sea. Find other men—they will know what to do. Show them my journal and they will see to it you are reunited with family in America.”
Primeval: An Event Group Thriller Page 3
