by Dawn Gray
“But why not own up to it?” I questioned, a bit confused, but he put it a way that I understood immediately.
“If they told the sheriff that they were digging up their daughter because she arrived on their doorstep not less than a day ago, what do you think the man would have done?”
I nodded, knowing how ridiculous it sounded but how true it was. “I guess that means I should get dressed then.”
“Daniels is bringing more clothes down with him,” Zander said, glancing at the bathroom. “Do you want some help washing your hair?”
“I’d love some.” I watched the smile spread across his face as he took another sip of his coffee, cringing again as it burned his throat.
The water was warm, but with the body heat that I was giving off, there wasn’t any need for it to be any hotter. I stood there with my eyes closed as Zander ran his hands through the lather that he had created. He hummed quietly to himself, a song that seemed familiar to me but I couldn’t remember where I had heard it from, and gently used the suds to message my shoulders.
“You know, a guy could get in some serious trouble standing in the shower with someone like you,” he teased as I smiled at him. It felt good to joke, considering the tears were always threatening to break free, and I grabbed his wrists as he rinsed the soap from my hair. Slowly, I opened my eyes, and watched his sparkle with the lightening within him. “Oh, no,” he whispered, “you have me captured. What do you plan to do with me now?”
I stood up on my tiptoes, as I placed his hands upon my hips, and kissed him gently on the lips. The simple brush of his skin against mine brought the flames to their burning point as he moaned against my lips. He was immediately standing at attention and I could feel him pressing against my belly as his arms held me tighter.
It was then that there was a hard knock at the door, and he let his head drop backwards, staring at the ceiling, groaning as he did so. Kissing me softly, he stepped out of the tub, wrapped a towel around his waist and started yelling obscenities as he made his way to towards the door. I could hear Daniels addressing him and then there was a quick slam of the door and Zander reappeared with new fatigues.
“Ooh, you know, when we get out of here,” I said with annoyance as I looked around the curtain. “I don’t ever want to see green camouflage again!”
Zander laughed as he dried off and pulled on the pants that he was given, and then looked at me as I shut the water off and did the same. He stood in the doorway, watching me dress and brush out my hair, and then handed me the warm army jacket as we walked out the door.
Harris descended the incline first, holding on tightly to the thick rope that was tied over the mark I had made on the guardrail. Walters has attempted to make it down without assistance and failed miserably on the slick foliage, so the next option was the help of a rope line. I shivered against the coolness of the morning, the mist still heavy that far up the lake road and I glanced around as the whispers of the dead tickled my ears.
Zander watched me, as I peered off down the road, heading in towards town and gently rubbed my back, knowing just what I was experiencing as I shook under his touch.
I don’t see any of them, he whispered.
Me either, where are they coming from? I questioned, as the noises grew louder.
A strong wind moved up the road, blowing leaves in a funnel pattern as it moved closer to us. I took a deep breath, unsure of what I was seeing, until the face within the turning leaves was quite apparent. I ducked down, covering my head. Zander was right behind me, shielding my body with his own, as he watched the strange manifestation suddenly dissolve and the brittle leaves fell down upon us as if it was snowing.
Are you all right? He asked, his voice breathless with worry.
“Yeah,” I replied aloud, shaking so much I couldn’t concentrate to use my mental voice.
“Everything ok, Lieutenant?” Everett’s voice picked up over the collar transmitter.
“It’s clear,” Zander replied, but scratched his head. “I believe we just had a warning from the spook. Everyone needs to be on alert for anything out of the ordinary.”
“With all respect, sir, we’re ghost hunting,” Daniels muttered as he stopped hallway down the incline.
“I’m well aware of that fact, private!” Zander growled and shook his head. Gently, he helped me up and over the railing. He touched my cheek and smiled. “Keep a good grip on the rope. I’ll be right behind you, Rodriguez will be right in front of you so if you have any problem, one of us will catch you.”
“Yes, sir, Lieutenant.” I smiled, winked at him and slowly made my way down the hill.
Smartass! That was the only reply I received from Zander as I made my way into the darkness of the gorge.
I stopped a little ways down, taking in a few deep breaths, and listened to the forest around me. The whispers were still there, some pleading for help, others just talking, but it struck me as odd that they weren’t there the day before. Suddenly my eyes went black and I felt myself sink down into the moss-covered hillside.
The car slammed the tree with such force that the seatbelt broke, sending the young man through the windshield. His lifeless body toppled down over snow-covered rocks and downed saplings, coming to rest on the rock just above the pond. He should have been dead, but I could hear him moan as he struggled to open his eyes.
The wind picked up, and I watched with curiosity as the snow around him seemed to move, first moving his legs and then his upper body closer to the edge of the small cliff. The sound his body made when it connected to the thin sheet of ice on the pond below was an awful crack, the sound of a scull connecting with concrete, and I witnessed the small puddle of blood pool beneath his head.
The cracking ice echoed through the quiet valley, and suddenly it snapped. Zander’s body drifted to the bottom of the dark pond below, and I shivered as I saw the small black box pop to the surface after he had completely disappeared. It floated for a moment before it started to sink, and follow its owner into the darkness.
The snow fell faster, covering the track made by the young man as he fell to his death. The strange feeling of evil swept over me as the snow drifted in a specific pattern, swirling around to make sure there wasn’t any evidence of the body.
Down in the pond below, the snow settled in a thick blanket over the broken ice, making the black hole all but invisible to the naked eye. As I watched the strange and evil presence accomplish what it set out to do, I felt the fear chill down my spine. The swirling white powder formed the body of a creature I had come to know so well, and as it stood, looking over the edge of the rocks, my heart sank.
Sam? I heard his far away voice, knowing that my Zander was trying to snap me out of the memories, but I was too far in, and I watched the environment around me change.
The snow disappeared and spring came to the gorge. Watching over the pond, I witnessed the most terrifying thing as Zander’s body rose to the surface, blue and frozen in the moment of death. I shook with emotions.
Butterflies flew around him, and the water, that had been as still as I had ever seen it, began to move. It was bringing him down stream, over the heavy rapids as the river swelled with the spring thaw. I watched his cross catch on a branch that hung over the river, and once it snapped from the stress of bending, the gold disappeared onto the riverbed.
The memory started to fade out, letting me know that we had yet to make our biggest discovery and I watched as the concerned faces of several of the men, including Zander, sat staring at me.
“I’m all right,” I insisted, waving my hand at them as I tired to stand up. My legs were weak but they held and I gestured to them to all keep going.
What was that thing made of snow? Zander questioned, as we continued to move.
Your guess is as good as mine. You’ve got more experience with this type of ghosty than I do. Any ideas? I replied, settling on the soft riverbed at the bottom of the gorge.
“I’ve never seen anything like that be
fore. Most demons need a body to become a solid entity, this one seems to have the ability to make itself solid anyway it chooses.” He sighed and scratched his head. “We’ll have to look more into it when we get out of here.”
Moving was slow going as the river grew wider and the edge grew harder to navigate. We found ourselves walking into the cool rapids more often than not and slowly it began to affect the way we moved. The boots weren’t waterproof and the more we walked, the heavier they became. It was clear, halfway through the day, that we weren’t going to find much more than we had already.
The visions had confirmed that the body had floated down stream, the only thing I needed to do was confirm how much the river had swelled during that time to make it possible for him to navigate it without too much damage. Whether we found him intact or not, there was always the very slim possibility of not finding him at all. My heart ached at the thought of leaving him out to the elements even one more day, but there was little we could do being unprepared for the trek through the stream itself.
Everett called us back early evening, asking for exact locations to meet us with the truck. Unfortunately we found that the river hadn’t followed the lake road as closely as we thought and it was another adventure to make it to the road.
It seemed a combination of uphill and flat land as we made the half-an-hour hike to the paved lake road. Looking back down the way we had traveled, I noticed that the river had turned towards the south and away from the town itself, something that I don’t remember when I was growing up. Something had diverted the river’s path, altering its route of travel and with it, there seemed to be a feeling of dread that came with the thought of what might have done it.
Zander looked at me as I stared down, marking the rail with a rock as I had done the day before, scratching an X into the metal, and then he gestured to the truck with a slight nod of his head. My thoughts on this mystery would have to wait until after chow time, but I had to get to the bottom of it, and there was only one person that would be able to have me figure it out. Oh how I dreaded that conversation.
18
I took a deep breath, standing on the porch of my parents’ house, and raised my hand to knock. When the door opened my father looked out at me. He stood aside, and let me enter but walked me down the hallway and through the kitchen to the breakfast nook, having glanced at my humming mother in the living room on the way by.
He gestured to the seat along the crescent, cushioned bench and took the two coffee cups from the counter as he walked over and sat down across from me. With the warm cup in hand, I watched his face as he avoided my eye contact. With a sigh, he finally glanced over at me and placed his cup down on the table.
“I thought you might be over at some point this evening,” he said, giving me a fake grin as he played with his fingernails. “Sheriff Dodd told me about the fire at your house yesterday, and when he came to tell us about Sam’s grave, I knew it was only time before you came back.”
“Did you dig her up?” I questioned, keeping my voice low. I watched him nod. “To see if you were seeing ghosts?”
“To prove your story,” he stated, sitting back on the chair. “Sam, a lot of odd things have happened in the past three years since the day she died, things that should have told me something like this was bound to happen.”
“Like what?”
He took a sip of coffee and shook his head. “There have been a lot of unexplained happenings in Wilton, things that even my years researching the paranormal couldn’t explain. There were too many deaths, too many disappearances, and all of them seemed to have the same link: a demon without limits.”
I sighed as I thought of the evil in the gorge and shook my head. “Dad, what happened to the river? The one off the lake road?”
“So you have been up there looking for him?” he whispered and watched as I nodded before he took a deep breath. “Have you found anything that would tell us that he was in the car with Sam the night she died?”
“We found an engagement ring in the pond below where the car crashed, and Zander’s crucifix down the river not too far from the accident site,” I replied and watched him lower his eyes to the cup before him. “The visions I’ve had told me that he drowned in the pond, and that his body was carried downstream. The storm covered up any tracks that might have lead searchers to him, which is why no one really looked for another person. Dad, I really do need to know about the river. Why isn’t it following the road like it used too?”
“Reconstruction,” he replied, nodding, but his lips looked tight. “Half a decade ago, the mayor thought that expanding the road would make it safer for travelers to use. During the drilling the hill gave way, creating a landslide that fell into the river, altering the path of the water, leading it further away from the road.”
“Is that when things started happening?”
“Actually, yes, about that time. There was just something evil in the woods after that, it made me wonder if they unearthed something they shouldn’t have.” He shook his head and stood, reaching out a hand for me.
I took it, unsure of what we were doing, and I followed behind him as he brought me down the back stairs into the basement again, but we didn’t enter his lab. In fact, we turned into a part of the basement that was rarely used by anyone even when I was growing up. He pulled the chain and the light popped on, illuminating the maps that hung on the wall and showing me what my father had been up to while I was gone.
“These,” he said as he pointed to an old map of Wilton, “are where the river was charted to go only ten years ago. This,” he pointed to the one in the middle, “was after the construction on the lake road.”
I studied the charts, noticing the difference in the way the water flowed and pointed to the spot where we had stopped our search that afternoon. On the map, the river had flowed straight along the road, but it seemed to bow out and come back in the area that we had been in.
“It’s like it’s avoiding something, going around it,” I stated and watched as my father smiled. I stood straight and shook my head. “I don’t understand. What did they disturb in the ground to make the water run away from it?”
“They approached me, asking me to find out, but I had no intention of stepping foot onto that land. There was just something there that made my skin crawl,” he admitted, and touched my shoulder. “Be careful down there. Sammy, there is something evil lurking in those woods.”
“It’s the only way to find Zander.” I sighed, and shook my head. “You have to understand, Dad, he’s not at rest, and won’t be until we find out just where he went.”
“What if it’s too late for him?” he questioned.
“If it was, than he wouldn’t have come to me.” I sighed and thought back to that morning. “A creature came to me at the house and said to me, welcome back, that he had built this place for me. Then he told me that I was supposed to be with him. The voices were different but I recognized both of them. I can’t place the first one, but the second was Zander, not mine, but Sam’s, telling me that he was waiting for her. They were supposed to go together, but they’re both waiting for the other to come together.”
I watched his shoulders slump as if a weight had been lifted from him and I smiled, knowing that it was hard to feel something and not know what it was, and to not have someone who could help confirm it was even more difficult. The weight of his daughter’s death was being taken from his mind, and soon he would know that she was at rest, so long as I could find Zander before time ran out.
“Can I take these with me? They may be of some help to find him,” I asked quietly, watched him nod, and then he helped me take them down from the wall and roll them up. I stopped him as we walked out of the room. “Dad, we’ll find him, and we’ll take care of them.”
“Thank you, Sam. Just like I was of my little girl, I hope your father is just as proud of you.” He smiled but I shook my head.
“I wouldn’t know,” I whispered, taking a few steps up the stairs. �
�I haven’t talked to him in quite a while. Up until we met, I hated him for what he did to me when I was growing up.”
“He only wanted to help you.” He sighed, and I shrugged.
“Yeah, I’m sure that was his intention.” I closed my eyes before I glanced at him one more time. “Maybe when this is over, I’ll straighten it all out with him.”
He nodded, and watched me move up out of the dismal basement.
Tears slid down my face as I sat in the small car outside the house. I was trying to get myself together before driving away, but something about the property made me feel weepy. I took a deep breath, looking out into the dark woods. Just as I was about to start the car, I saw the strange twinkle in the trees.
Curiosity was something I had in abundance, and slowly, after grabbing the flashlight of the passenger’s seat, I made my way to where the light was coming from. My memories of the land we owned growing up made me feel as if I were on an endless mountain, surrounded by nothing but woods, but as I followed the glow, I realized that there was more to the story there than what I had seen.
I picked up the pace as the object I followed ducked in and out of the trees, and I found myself running to keep up with it. Low branches hit me across my arms and face, leaving scratches and drawing blood, but there was nothing I could do as it pulled me too it. Just as my feet hit the soft ground, the forest cleared and the edge of the lake flew into view. I grabbed an overhanging branch, struggling to support my weight as I put on the brakes.
Looking down over the ledge, I could see where my flashlight had hit the rock wall below me and came to rest on the beach below. It took me a few moments to catch my breath, and my heart, as I sat with my lower legs hanging over the edge. I shook my head as I tried to recall the maps that the SPIRIT men had out on the table that morning, and I rubbed my hands together as a chill curled around me. Both maps were the same, right down to the very street names, so why was it that I didn’t remember the fact that my house sat on the edge of a mountainside?
