Invitation: The Call, The Haunted, The Sentinels, The Girl

by Frank Peretti

“Hang on a sec, Mr. Weldon.” I stepped to him and placed a hand on his shoulder. “I’m sorry you’re having a rough time. Maybe God will bless you for what you’ve done this morning.”

  He looked puzzled. “Um, okay, if you say so, Tank. I’m just doing what any man with a heart would do. . . . Why is your hand so warm? It feels like you been holding a potato fresh out of the oven.”

  I shrugged. “Thank you again, Mr. Weldon.” I released him and followed after Uncle Bart, praying all the way that we could find the child before frostbite had turned bare feet black.

  CHAPTER

  2

  “This Ain’t Right”

  7:20 A.M.

  We hadn’t taken more than a dozen steps when the gray skies began shedding more snow. The wind picked up, too. I was wearing an extra police jacket, nylon on the outside and stuffed with whatever they put inside to keep a body warm. It kept the wind out but couldn’t protect my face. Snow and tiny bits of ice nibbled at my skin, and the cold wind was pushing through my jeans and trying to freeze the hair of my legs. I didn’t focus on the discomfort much, not with some kid out here tromping through the snow with no shoes. Images fought for my attention and none of them were good. They all ended the same way: a dead child frozen in the snow. Help us find the child, God. Please, please help us find the kid.

  Prayer is natural for me. I’m not from a religious family, and I’m the only one of my friends who goes to church. Most just tolerate my beliefs; others poke fun at me. It makes no difference. Truth is truth, and it remains that even if I’m the last one alive to believe it.

  Uncle Bart, a man who could talk the ears off a statue, had gone silent and glum. I guess he had images flashing in his brain, too.

  “You’re worried about the snow covering the tracks, aren’t you, Uncle Bart?”

  He grunted. “It ain’t making our job any easier. That’s a fact.” He didn’t look up when he spoke. His eyes were glued to the impressions.

  I walked on the left side of the small trail; Uncle Bart trudged along on the right. Like my uncle, I had trouble tearing my eyes away. Still, from time to time, I scanned the white land in front of us, hoping, praying to see a small figure still upright and moving. All I saw was a thickening blanket of white and split-rail fence sixty or so yards ahead. As we neared, I could see the tracks continued on the other side.

  We stopped at the fence. Uncle Bart squatted near the tracks and studied the ones closest to the fence. He rose and looked over the other side, careful not to touch anything. “This ain’t right, Tank. Not by a long shot, it ain’t.”

  “What ain’t right?”

  He started to say somethin’ but held up. “You tell me.”

  “Uncle Bart, I don’t think we should be wasting time testing my detective skills. I don’t have any.”

  “Just look, boy. Look here.” He pointed at the last two tracks closest to the fence. I did. “Now look at the ones on the other side. Do they look the same?”

  I had no idea what he was getting at. All I could think of was the lost kid who was gonna need his feet amputated. Of course, I’d do what I could, but my gift is a little iffy. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. “They look the same to me, Uncle Bart. What am I missing?”

  “Should they look the same?” he pressed.

  “I don’t know, Uncle Bart, but I do know that if we don’t find that kid—”

  “I know what’s at stake here, Bjorn. I don’t need to be reminded. Just look.”

  He used my real name, something I hadn’t heard him do since I was in kindergarten. So I looked. And I looked. The prints on the west side of the fence looked identical to those on our side.

  Then I looked at the top rail of the fence. Two, maybe three inches of snow rested on the rail. The same amount on the rail to the north. The top rail to the south was different. Much of the snow had been knocked off. I could tell from Mr. Weldon’s tracks that that was where he crawled over. The disturbed snow on the other side was proof of it.

  “Do you see it?”

  I nodded. “How is this possible?” I’m not the brightest crayon in the box, but I’m not stupid, no matter what anyone else thinks. “If the kid climbed the fence, the snow on the rail would have been knocked off. Even if the snow continued, the amount on the rail would be less than that on the others.”

  “Right.”

  “So maybe the kid just crawled through. . . .” Dumb thought. Crawl through or climb over left the same problem. The snow on the rails would be very different than the snow on the rest of the fence. I moved closer and looked over the top rail. The tracks were unchanged. No sign of someone disrupting the snow by crawling through it or jumping down from the fence. It was as if the kid had just walked through the fence—no, as if the kid had floated over the barrier.

  “What’s your take on this, Tank?”

  I shook my head. All I could do was repeat Uncle Bart’s words. “This ain’t right.” Then a second later I said, “We’re not giving up, are we?”

  He narrowed his eyes but still managed to look disappointed. “Of course not, Tank. It’s my job to gather information as I go. Who knows what will be important later?”

  He scaled the fence and I followed by climbing the rails right in front of me. An easy job, but my foot was reminding me that I was still nursing a bad toe. A lineman showered his attention on me by pivoting his three hundred pounds on that toe. I’m good now, but sometimes the toe likes to remind me it’s there.

  “I can’t believe Weldon trudged all the way out here, not as old and sick as he is.” Uncle Bart shook his head. “I have to admire the old coot.”

  “He’s worried about the kid. He has a good heart.”

  “Yeah, I saw through that grumpy act pretty quick.” Uncle Bart followed the tracks with his eyes. “There’s the barn he mentioned. Let’s pick up the pace, Tank. That toe let you jog?”

  “I’m good to go.”

  We set off in a jog. Man, my foot hurt.

  We reached the barn. It was an old building but someone had taken pretty good care of it. The wood was painted brown and the roof looked in good shape—at least, it didn’t bow any. The blanket of snow concealed the roofing material beneath—

  What?

  I blinked a few times, then turned to face Uncle Bart, but he was rounding the barn. He reappeared a few moments later. “The tracks continue on the other side. You know why that’s impossible, right?”

  I didn’t answer; I backed away from the building.

  “What’s wrong, Tank?”

  I pointed to the top, to the snow, to the footprints walking up the slope of the roof.

  Uncle Bart followed my example and stepped back from the barn. He stared at the tracks on the roof, then looked at me. At first he said nothing. He returned his gaze to the roof, then the tracks on the ground. More silence, then a string of curses lit up the air. I didn’t interrupt.

  I no longer felt cold. I no longer noticed the wind or my almost-healed broken toe. I was numb, not from the freezing air but from being forced to face the impossible—again.

  “This is a joke, Tank. It has to be some kinda sick joke. And when I find out who’s behind it, I’m gonna kick his butt from here to Mexico and back. . . .” He went on like that for a couple minutes. He got hotter and his language got worse. I used the time to restart my brain.

  The fence with the undisturbed snow was too much to take in, but this, well, this almost shut me down. From the looks of things, the kid we were tracking had flown over a fence and, apparently, onto a roof. Maybe Uncle Bart was right: This was all a gag, a joke played on the sheriff. If so, then I could understand Uncle Bart’s reaction. Of course, I wouldn’t help him kick the perpetrator’s butt up and down the west coast, but I probably wouldn’t stop him from doing so. The way I felt at the moment, I’d be willing to sell popcorn at the event.

  “Now we know why Mr. Weldon told us to take a few moments here.” My voice sounded strange to me. I hoped I sounded normal to Uncle B
art. “I’m gonna check out the other side of the barn.” I had to assume that there was still a kid missing. If Uncle Bart was wrong and we turned back, then we could end up finding someone’s kid dead and alone. Before I rounded the corner, I saw Uncle Bart remove his smartphone and start taking pictures.

  On the other side of the roof was the same kind of tracks descending the slope. They went right to the eave, then picked up on the ground as if the hiker had twenty-foot-long legs with tiny childlike feet. The image would have been funny if I wasn’t standing in ever-increasing snow with a missing kid on my mind.

  I looked at where the tracks on the ground picked up. I had learned a couple things from Uncle Bart’s insistence that I study the fence. This time I didn’t need his encouragement. I did my best to look for clues, but the only thing I saw was the same set of tracks as we had been following. The stride was the same. The impressions the same. No sign that someone jumped from the roof. If this was a gag, then the guy pulling the joke was good. Really, really good.

  I heard an electronic squawk, then a voice. Uncle Bart was on the radio. He rounded the barn, then looked up beyond the roof to the slate gray skies. First came a thumping sound like rhythmic thunder, then I spotted the sheriff’s helicopter.

  “We’ll have answers soon.” Uncle Bart watched the craft sail overhead, directly over the tracks.

  “Did he see anything on the way in?”

  Uncle Bart shook his head. “They disappear two miles up the trail. Just disappear in the middle of a snow-covered field. I have him looking for other tracks. Didn’t make much sense to the pilot, but I told him nuthin’ about this makes sense.”

  He was right about that.

  CHAPTER

  3

  Found and Lost

  7:52 A.M.

  The warmth of the patrol car felt good even though I worked up some internal heat jogging back with Uncle Bart. The helicopter pilot had told us the tracks we were following ended two miles farther on from the barn. That was too far to trudge in the snow. Driving made more sense. Under Uncle Bart’s order, the ’copter kept searching. Maybe the kid transported or whatever to a place nearby. I would have thought that was a stupid idea if I hadn’t seen what I had seen.

  “You okay, Tank?” My uncle steered the patrol car down the slick road, moving faster that he should. Earlier he said he loved driving in these conditions. He didn’t look like he was having as much fun now.

  “I’m worried about the kid.” I didn’t look at him. I needed to keep myself together for Uncle Bart—for the kid in the snow.

  “You always did have a big heart. Maybe too big.”

  “You’re not worried?”

  He pushed his lips in and out a couple of times. “Yeah. I’m worried.”

  I believed him. I could hear it in his voice. Truth was he had a pretty big heart himself, especially when it came to children. He and Auntie June never had kids. It wasn’t talked about in the family, but it was assumed that they were just one of the couples who couldn’t have kids. All that love he would have had for a son or daughter got lavished on other people’s children and me. Lord help anyone who hurt a child in Uncle Bart’s presence.

  He let off the gas and let the car slow under its own weight. A couple of moments later he tapped the brakes. Anyone who hit their brakes on an icy road like this was looking for an expensive tow home. As the car slowed, he flipped on the light bar. Red and blue splashes of light danced on the snow and the trees that lined the south side of the road. He pulled onto the shoulder facing oncoming traffic—if there had been any—and let the car slide to a gentle stop.

  “Let’s go.”

  He was out of the car before I could unbuckle my seat belt.

  I had to jog a few steps to catch up to him. He plunged into a small stand of trees, the one the ’copter pilot told us about. He slowed, glanced around. “I’m going south, you go north. Maybe the kid ducked in here to get out of the snow.”

  The logical thing for me to say was “But the kid’s tracks stop in the middle of the field. The pilot told us so.” I didn’t say that. Why would I? I had seen the fence. I had seen the barn. For all I know, the kid flew to the moon. Once you cross over into the world of the impossible, you learn that anything can happen. I’ve been in a house that came and went as it saw fit, seen thousands of eyeless dead fish wash up on shore in Florida and equally eyeless birds fall from the sky. I’ve seen and been attacked by evil beings in a place that was supposed to be a school for gifted kids. These days I can believe the impossible without raising a sweat.

  “Got it.” I looked at the ground. I searched behind trees. I peered under bushes. The good news: I didn’t find a body. The bad news: I didn’t find anything. The stand of trees was not large, just the leftovers from when some farmer cleared an area for his crops. That probably happened decades ago. Some farmers and ranchers left trees up for a wind block.

  I wove my way through the trees, ignoring the snow bombs they dropped on me, and saw nothing. The whole time I prayed for help, but I couldn’t seem to get prayers above the tops of the trees. Once I reached the edge of the tree stand, I turned and worked my way back, taking a different path. When I got to where I started, I found Uncle Bart waiting for me. His expression told me he found no more than I had.

  “I wanna take a look at those tracks in the field. I don’t know that it’ll do any good, but I don’t want to overlook anything.”

  There was little more that he could do. The helicopter was still searching and every deputy in the region was driving the roads and lanes. I even heard Uncle Bart ask Millie to call up the volunteer search-and-rescue team. They would soon be searching using horses, dogs, and off-road vehicles.

  We slogged through the snow, leaving a set of our own tracks behind us. Ours and the kid’s were the only tracks visible. The kid’s steps just ended in the middle of the field. He had disappeared.

  “It’s like the kid just evaporated into thin air.” Uncle Bart was sounding discouraged and angry. “I see it with my own eyes and I still don’t believe it. This is impossible. I’m starting to question my sanity.”

  Before I could offer any encouraging words, his radio crackled to life. It was Millie from the station house.

  “Sheriff, you need to return to town.”

  He keyed the mic. “I’m not coming back until I have found this kid.”

  “That’s just it, Sheriff. We found her. She’s in town. Standing in the middle of Main Street.”

  “How do you know it’s the same kid?”

  “Well, she’s a kid and she’s barefoot.”

  “I’m on my way. Get an ambulance. She’s gonna need medical care.”

  “We can’t get close to her, Sheriff. She goes nuts if anyone approaches.”

  Uncle Bart paused, then, “You try, Millie. Maybe she’ll respond to a woman.”

  “I thought of that, Sheriff. She doesn’t like me or any other woman any more than she does men.”

  “I’m on my way. Keep people away from her. I’ll come up with a plan.”

  We sprinted, as much as the snow would allow, back to the car. Uncle Bart added a siren to the lights and had us motoring down the road in moments.

  “She’s alive,” I said. “Thank God, she’s alive.”

  “I got a strange feeling about this, Tank. I don’t know why.”

  I had a guess, but I kept it to myself.

  The drive back didn’t take long, but even with traffic pulling over for us, it seemed to take a day and half. Time is funny that way. We pulled into Dicksonville and onto Main Street just a few blocks past the sheriff’s station.

  The first thing I noticed was a patrol car pulled across the center line of the street in a one-car roadblock. Made sense. If the girl was in the middle of the street then someone had to stop traffic. I assume another deputy had done the same farther down the road.

  The presence of the deputies was no surprise. Uncle Bart had ordered them to return to town. He wanted eyes on the girl. S
lowly, Uncle Bart pulled around the parked patrol car and crept forward. People in the street stepped aside for him.

  A short distance away, I saw a circle of people surrounding a child. My heart broke. Being surrounded had to be terrifying. “No wonder she’s upset. She’s like a trapped animal.”

  “I was thinkin’ the same thing, Tank.”

  We exited the patrol car. A uniformed deputy approached. “Hey, Sheriff.”

  “Hey, Wad. Fill me in.”

  Deputy Waddle—everybody called him Wad, which I don’t think he liked but put up with—was tall, wiry, and had an inflated Barney Fife ego. He wasn’t the nicest guy I’ve met. Uncle Bart once told me that Wad was a pimple on most people’s butts. I’ve had trouble shaking that image.

  “Hey, Tank. How’s college life—”

  Uncle Bart cut him off. “Focus, Wad.”

  “Yes, sir. I was first back from the field. Someone reported a child in the street. When I arrived I tried to move her to the sidewalk. Didn’t work out so good.”

  “What do you mean you tried to move her?”

  “You know, Sheriff. I tried to pick her up and carry her to the side. She went ape on me. I had to back off.”

  From the look on Uncle Bart’s face I could tell he had a few words for Deputy Wad, but he swallowed them whole. “Let’s get the crowd back. They’re making me nervous, and if they make me nervous they gotta be terrifying the girl. Move ’em back, Wad. Let’s give the kid a little room to breathe.”

  I followed Uncle Bart but stayed well back of the kid. She didn’t need a mountain like me towering over her. Once the crowd cleared I could see the little girl. She looked to be about ten, had blond hair that parted down the middle and hung to her shoulders. Her hair was wet, which made sense since she had been in the snow. She wore a white, short-sleeved blouse, the kind with frill on the sleeves. I’m sure women have some name for it, but I don’t know what it is. She also wore jeans. They were soaked below the knees.

  It took a moment for me to muster the courage to look at her feet. A glance told me she wore no shoes, but I needed to look closer. I expected to find red skin on its way to frostbite black. I didn’t see that, but then I was several yards away. I knew she had been in the cold long enough to need medical care. A short distance down the street sat the ambulance. The EMTs were near the vehicle, waiting to be called in.