The Devil's Woods

by Brian Moreland

  “Tonight.” Ray laughed. “You kids will have to be patient.”

  Chapter Eleven

  Sitting on the balcony overlooking the backyard, Kyle found a quiet place to write. Up here, he had a stunning view of the conifers and snow-capped mountains.

  He fired up his laptop and opened the last chapter that he had written back in Seattle. In the fifth installment of the Winterbone series, Ghost Vengeance, Detective Alex Winterbone was trying to help a ghost named Elena solve her own murder. In the mortal world, he was coming dangerously close to a backwoods serial killer. Winterbone was falling deeply in love with Elena. A sensual ghost, she could turn her body solid for an hour at a time. In that short window her body heated up and she could feel pleasure from his touch. And Alex could feel her flesh and the warmth of her lips. Their union, which broke the laws between spirits and mortals, angered a coven of soul snatchers called the Hollowers. These beings of the underworld scoured the earth, collecting souls who lingered too long.

  It wasn’t long before Kyle’s solitude was disrupted. In the backyard below, Jessica and Shawna came off the porch steps, talking and laughing. Kyle watched as they draped beach towels over two lawn chairs and then stripped down to their bikinis. The sight of Jessica in a bathing suit made Kyle feel distracted and, for the second time today, aroused. Two years was a long time to be a monk.

  Jessica looked up at him and waved. He waved back then looked away before she could see the hunger in his eyes.

  I’ve got to get my mind off of her.

  He started reading his manuscript. When Winterbone met up with his ghostly lover in a realm that lay between the living and the dead, their souls were at risk of being taken by the Hollowers. But Alex and Elena could not control their passions for one another.

  Alex awoke to the caress of a warm hand touching his chest. Elena was above him, her face radiant in the twilight hour. Their eyes met and held.

  He pulled her closer. “You shouldn’t be here.” Her scent of rose petals and honeysuckle enveloped him, calling up other times when they had lain together.

  “But I’ve missed you,” she said between kisses.

  Reading the love scene stirred Kyle’s own needs for touch and warmth. He stole glances at Jessica stretched out on the lawn chair below him, one slender leg bent at the knee. She was reading a paperback novel and absentmindedly curling a strand of hair around her finger, stopping only to turn the page. Again their eyes met, and Kyle focused back on his computer screen.

  “This is too risky.” Alex leaned away, attempting to put some distance between them.

  Elena was beside him again. She sighed and ran her fingers through his hair. Her breath was warm on his skin. That her hunger matched his never failed to surprise him. “Do you not miss me?” she whispered.

  “What do you think?” With that, he entered her and in their union life became death and death became life. “I’ve been lost without you.” His breathing was ragged. “But they’ll track us.”

  Elena stared into his eyes, even as she moved against the rhythm of his body. “We have one hour. Then I’ll be gone.”

  This time Shawna caught him staring at Jessica. His sister cocked her head and gave him a suspicious look.

  Kyle tried again to focus on the manuscript. As he reread the final passage, his eyes caught and held on the last lines. The strange phrase that his wife’s ghost had whispered two days ago had appeared in his novel, typed over and over, like a mantra.

  Fear wears many skins. Fear wears many skins. Fear wears many skins. Fear wears many skins…

  Kyle had no memory of his fingers striking those keys. Maybe his mind really was slipping. He tried to decipher its significance. Again any logical meaning evaded him. He deleted the repeated sentences. There. Now he could move on. He had to remind himself that as creator of a fictional world, he always had the power to edit.

  Feeling like a burden had been lifted, he continued to write where he’d left off. Before he knew it, new paragraphs filled the computer screen. And then he typed another page. His mind had again tapped into the Infinite Creative. That was how Kyle liked to think of those moments when words flowed easily. As he read over the new passages, he found the phrase again.

  In the shapes of man’s sins, fear wears many skins.

  He started to delete it, but his hand stopped short. There was a reason Elena had spoken those words. A hidden meaning in the phrase somehow. So he left the new sentence untouched. Frustrated, he closed his laptop.

  Kyyyle… A girl’s voice echoed in a raspy whisper.

  He saw a flash of movement in the forest, but it was gone too quickly. He listened, studying the trees beyond the backyard. Another hint of silvery white. A girl moved wraithlike through the trees, appearing then disappearing.

  Kyle looked down at Jessica and Shawna. Lost in their conversation, they seemed oblivious to the female specter that meandered through the trees toward them.

  I’m the only one who can see her.

  A teenage Indian girl stepped into the yard. Her image flickered like a hologram that couldn’t quite maintain its signal. He recognized her face and black braids.

  Nina Whitefeather.

  Her transparent hand beckoned Kyle.

  His body tensed. What did she want?

  Nina pointed toward the woods, indicating she had something to show him.

  What would Winterbone do? He thought about that a moment, then Winterbone, himself, spoke, “Hell, I’d get off my ass and follow her.”

  Kyle walked downstairs, out the back door, and past Jessica and Shawna, who looked at him quizzically.

  “Going for a hike?” Jessica asked.

  “Yeah, be back later.” Taking a deep breath, he stepped into the woods and followed the flickering apparition, doing his best to keep up. Nina’s wraith moved effortlessly through the forest. Kyle, on the other hand, had to weave around the trees and dense brush. Branches choked a trail that looked like it hadn’t been used in ages.

  As he ventured after Nina, he felt both excited and chilled to be interacting with the spirit world. Despite the fact that he had witnessed ghosts before, he had never had this close of an encounter. There were moments that the girl’s body turned almost solid. Other times he had to strain to make out her form among the pine needles. He lost her a few times. But she always stopped and waited for him to catch up, her eyes glowing like silver coins.

  Nina, now forever sixteen, was still as pretty as when Kyle was a boy. Seeing her again brought back a rush of memories—her reading books to him and his brother on the back porch…playing hide and seek in the village…then their parents telling them that Nina had disappeared…the whole family crying the day they learned she’d been found dead in the lake.

  Now, she turned almost fully visible. Was that a sign of trust?

  Kyle reached out to touch her, but Nina backed away and continued walking.

  “Where are you taking me?”

  She didn’t answer. Just kept moving along the trail.

  As he followed, Kyle began to feel vibrations in his feet and tingles along his spine. He passed through a few cold spots, yet there was no breeze on this hot August day.

  The path ended at a campsite that was different from the others. This one had a large fire pit in the ground and an old shed with double doors that were closed. The gray wooden building was long and narrow, as if designed to store a boat, yet this patch of woods was nowhere near the water or even a road.

  “What is this place?”

  She stopped where the trees bordered the campsite but gestured for Kyle to keep going. The wraith watched him closely but didn’t follow. Instead, she remained hidden behind a tree.

  Kyle walked around the campfire pit. It was full of ash and a few charred logs. The vibrations along the ground grew stronger as he eased toward the shed. He touched one of the doors. Behind him, Nina released a high-pitched scream.

  He walked toward her. “What is it?”

  She tried to sp
eak, but her voice sounded like water coughing through a clogged faucet. It was then Kyle saw the bruises across her throat. Her dress suddenly tore in several places. Bloody scratches appeared on her arms. Nina cried out and fell to the ground, kicking and screaming, as something unseen dragged her into the shed.

  * * *

  Kendra Meacham wandered through the thick and unforgiving woods in a daze. Endless trees with spiky pine needles filled her vision. She leaned against a crutch made from a dead branch. Her ankle was purple and swollen. Probably broken. She kept it raised above the ground, half-hopping as she walked. Her clothes hung on her in bloody tatters. Her exposed skin was covered in scratches. With every step fiery pain erupted between her thighs.

  What happened to me?

  Memories flashed through Kendra’s mind in horrid fragments…riding in a semi with a truck driver…the asshole trying to rape her, then abandoning her on the side of the road…some kind of animal dragging her into the woods, carrying her off to its den.

  She remembered nothing from last night, having blacked out. This morning she had woken in cold darkness, alone and shivering. She blindly found her way back to sunlight. Back to the woods. She had been walking aimlessly for hours. She was hungry, dehydrated, and terrified she was going to die out here in the sticks.

  All Kendra had wanted was to make a clean break from Calgary, from her ex-boyfriend, Jake, and her slimy manager at the dance club. She had thought hitching a ride to Hagen’s Cove was the answer. There she could start a new life. Kendra always made the worst choices. One day you’ll pay hell for it, her mother used to say. And now Kendra saw that she was right.

  She didn’t want to think about what that rotten-smelling creature was that took her deep into the forest and somewhere underground. She just wanted to get out of these godforsaken woods before it discovered she had escaped its den.

  * * *

  Standing before the strange shed, Kyle froze, his mind in shock of what he’d just witnessed. Nina’s screams now echoed from inside that wooden tomb.

  His heart felt like a bird flapping inside his rib cage. He wanted to run, flee up the trail and never look back. But something kept his feet rooted to the spot.

  She brought you here for a reason! Winterbone yelled inside his head. Save her!

  Kyle yanked open the double doors and the screaming stopped.

  The only sound now came from a swarm of buzzing flies.

  “Nina?”

  The shed was a single room with a dirt floor covered in dead leaves. There were no windows. Only bare walls with a few holes where the sunlight lanced the gloom. Nina was nowhere in sight.

  Kyle stepped inside. He moved toward the shadows in back. The flies swirled in front of his face. They dotted the walls like spores of black mold and landed on a stained mattress in the far corner. Kyle crept closer. The vibrations along the ground now felt as if a freight train were passing on some nearby railroad, yet there was no sound but the maddening buzz of the flies. The storage building reeked of damp soil and leaves and a stench like a rotten carcass. He noticed chains on the floor on either side of the mattress. The links were bolted to the back wall, which was mostly hidden in shadow. On the opposite ends were shackles.

  He held a hand across his mouth and nose. What the hell happened here?

  Use your gift, Winterbone whispered in his head. These walls can speak.

  Taking a deep breath, Kyle pressed his palm against a wall.

  The top of the mattress started moving. He heard crying coming from that spot. Nina appeared, barely visible. “Please. Don’t…” Her cries turned to screams.

  Another figure took form, a red wraith kneeling over her, its arm coming down in a hacking motion. Blood spread across the mattress.

  “Nina!” Kyle swung his fist, but it passed right through her killer.

  The girl’s screams ended with a gurgling cough.

  The red ghost rose from the mattress, taller than Kyle. He backed away. It walked right through him with a cold shock that iced his bones. The killer stepped outside, leaving Nina’s body splayed out on the mattress. Her blood was everywhere. Her eyes stared wide open, lifeless.

  Kyle’s knees buckled. He had to use the wall for support. “Dear God…”

  She shifted her head and looked up at him, reaching with a blood-soaked arm, and screamed.

  He ran out of the shed.

  He didn’t stop running until he reached the Cree village. His lungs hurt. He couldn’t get Nina’s violent death out of his mind. The dark shed. The stained mattress. Her screams.

  The red ghost of her killer.

  Kyle’s gut twisted with guilt. He wished he’d been able to save her. His rational mind knew that the vision was an imprint of a murder that happened twenty years ago. Her killer could have been someone from the reservation, but who? Back then there were over a hundred tribe members living in the village. No, the Cree people that Kyle had lived with the first ten years of his life had treated one another like one big family.

  Nina’s killer had to have been someone outside the tribe. A poacher? The reservation bordered the land that was owned by the Thorpe Timber mill. Kyle remembered years ago the elders complaining that the loggers had been seen deer hunting on the reservation. It had caused a feud between the tribe and the lumberjacks. Some of Kyle’s older cousins had gotten into a gang fight with the white kids at the high school. One of the loggers’ sons had ended up in the hospital not long after Nina Whitefeather disappeared.

  Kyle considered telling the others what he had seen, but decided against it. Who would believe him?

  He entered the cabin out of breath. The others were still hanging out, oblivious to the atrocity he’d witnessed. Kyle paced the den, his mind buzzing like the end of a live wire. He had to do something.

  The Hansons’ Rottweiler lay curled up on a blanket. Jessica had applied fresh bandages across his back. Kyle pulled out his cell phone and dialed Carl Hanson’s number, but the call didn’t go through. He tried again. Same result. There’s no signal.

  “Anybody’s phone work out here?” he asked.

  “It’s hopeless,” Eric said. “No texting, no internet. The whole village is a dead zone.”

  Kyle tried an old phone mounted on the wall, but the landline was also dead.

  Ray chuckled. “That phone hasn’t worked in ages.”

  “Then I’m driving into town,” Kyle said. “We have to return Chaser before Carl and his daughter leave the area.”

  Eric stood from the table. “I’ll go with you. I’ve probably got a hundred messages by now.” He looked at his girlfriend, who was fawning over the dog. “Jess, how about you and I hit the tavern for some pool?”

  “Shawna and I already made plans. She’s going to do a Tarot reading for me. You guys go on without us.”

  Eric’s eyes flashed with anger, but his tone was even. “You girls have fun.”

  Kyle grabbed the keys to the Jeep and looked down at the Rottweiler. “Chaser, let’s get you back to your family.”

  * * *

  The endless maze of trees finally opened up to a paved road.

  Kendra cried tears of relief. She’d made it. Her body was so exhausted and weak she felt the urge to collapse.

  Buzzards circled overhead.

  No, she had hiked too far to become road kill. Moving as fast as her battered body could go, she limped down the road. She felt déjà vu as she passed a green sign: Hagen’s Cove 10 Kilometers.

  She needed a ride out of this forest and prayed God would send her one. It wasn’t long before she heard an engine and tires rolling over asphalt. She turned and spotted a car coming around a curve.

  Kendra cried out and stepped into the middle of the road, waving her arms.

  The vehicle stopped in front of her. A man climbed out and rushed to her aid. “Dear Lord, what’s happened?”

  Kendra fell against him. She could barely speak through all the tears. “P-please…take me to a hospital.”

  “Sure
, sure.” He walked her around to the passenger side. The elongated car had an odd shape to it and a dark crimson paint job. Then she realized it was a hearse. A limousine for the dead. The man eased her into the front seat. “We’ll get you to town. Don’t you worry, sugar,” he said with a Danish accent. Then he rounded the side and disappeared for a moment. She heard the hearse’s rear door open and him rustling back there.

  Kendra suddenly felt nervous. Why weren’t they driving the hell out of here? Her mind had a vision of the predator charging from the woods and snatching him. She turned around in her seat to see what he was doing, but maroon velvet curtains blocked her view. “Can we please leave?”