by Koethi Zan
Cora couldn’t sleep again. She lay there on her pallet, looking up at the stars and wondering how she could even stand it. She was utterly alone. She hadn’t spoken to her father in three days and she would never speak to James again for fear she would weaken and tell him the truth. She longed for the distraction of school, now just days away. She needed to be with people her own age, needed to get out of the stifling environment of this camp before she went stark raving mad.
Something stirred in the woods behind the trailer, and she rolled over to see a figure approaching in the dark. She sat up, grabbing the pepper spray she kept concealed in her sleeping bag, ready to protect herself or run if need be. You never knew what kind of creeps would be out wandering in the night, looking for things to steal or vulnerable young girls to take advantage of.
As the silhouette took form though, she realized it was only James. Out on the prowl, ready to make another attempt at her she figured. She pulled her blanket over her head as he crept to her side. She couldn’t help herself though, she peeked out. He held a finger to his lips.
‘Relax, I’m not going to hurt you. You know that, Caroline.’
He was close enough now that she could see the giant gash across his forehead. His arm was in a sling made out of a ripped-up T-shirt. She threw off the covers and crawled over to him.
‘What happened to you?’ she whispered, not wanting to wake her father who had the trailer door propped open for air.
‘Oh, Caroline, there are Unbelievers here. There are those who cannot face up to the true facts of the universe. You must not mind them. The Chosen will prevail.’ He grasped her hands in his. ‘We will prevail.’
‘You need to see a doctor. That wound is still bleeding. That isn’t good, James.’
‘No, Caroline. I need no ordinary healers of the earth. The Spirits will heal me. But I have come to you tonight with a dire message.’
‘Let me at least get a wet rag,’ she said, still staring at his injury. ‘And some Tylenol. I need to clean that wound. It’s terrible.’ She reached up to touch it and he winced, pushing her hand away.
‘No. There is something more urgent. You see, I am leaving this camp. Tonight. And I want you to come with me.’
Her pulse quickened. Her father had been right. The others in the camp must have come after him. They were driving him away. Suddenly her heart flooded with pity. He didn’t deserve that. He was only trying to spread his beliefs. He knew about her, understood her when no one else ever had. Everything he’d said so far had been true.
Was it her destiny to be with this man? Had everything happened so that she would end up here, in this moment, faced with this choice? In a strange way it all began to make sense. Reed and the others, were they simply sacrifices that had to be made so that she could be brought to James in his hour of need?
‘I couldn’t. I mean, even if I were willing to do such a thing, I’d need more time to get my things ready, to pack. And then, I’m starting school soon.’ She felt a pang. She did want to go to school.
‘You won’t need anything. We can start a new following. The universe will provide for us both. You, you don’t need school. I have all the knowledge you seek.’
She looked at the belongings she’d gathered around her in her improvised shelter to see what she could take with her. Two trunks she was using for benches, but they held nothing but a bunch of worthless keepsakes. A plastic garbage bag beside her contained her thrift-store haul from the day before. Enough to make do for a few days anyway, until they got things sorted.
‘And your father. I’m sure you must feel some … hesitation about leaving him, but the child must part from the father. It is written. It is the way of all of life.’ He was whispering frantically into her ear, all the while running one hand up and down her arm. He didn’t seem like his normal self. She’d never seen him so worked up.
‘Caroline, you are special. So special. Your father does not understand who you are. But I do. I will treasure you. We will be partners. Helpmates. I will show you the true kingdom. The universe, the heavens, the stars will be ours. No one can stop us. This is your destiny. This is our destiny. Your father is beneath you. Are you letting your filial affections hold you back?’
She paused, taking stock of it all, her life, her father, the empty bottles of rum strewn about their yard, their poverty, her guilt, the fading memories of her mother.
‘No,’ she said firmly, deciding once and for all. ‘No, I’m not.’
She turned to James and at last their lips met as he held her in a passionate embrace. They parted and he stroked her face, beaming.
‘Help me get my things.’ She stood up and they held each other there in the faint glow of the moonlight.
He pulled back from her.
‘You are coming to me then freely? You know what this means, and you are accepting my terms as I have offered them? All or nothing.’
‘Yes.’ It was thrilling to her, taking this leap. She would let come what may. She would finally believe in something, in someone. She could put her whole heart in his hands and he would keep her safe.
‘And James?’
‘Yes, my darling?’
She looked deeply into his eyes, knowing she was making the choice she’d always been meant to make.
‘My name is Cora.’
CHAPTER 46
The Northwoods Resort was several levels above the Stillwater RV park. Not only were the campers top-of-the-line and the hook-up stations kept in meticulously good order, but rows of small cabins stood along the stream, each with their own front porches and window boxes that had surely been filled with annuals in the summer. At the front gate, actual security personnel had directed him to Cabin 32 on the west side. The home of Silas Lowry, the name he used now. Laura Martin’s father.
Adam pulled onto the patch of gravel next to a battered green Jeep with chipped paint and went to the door. He hadn’t given any advance warning this time. He’d traveled without thinking, knowing he would find the right words when he came face to face with the man who could be at the root of everything. He paused for a moment before knocking on the door, trying to calm his racing pulse. This was it. The answers were on the other side.
When Silas opened the door, however, Adam was taken aback. He’d expected a ruthless villain and instead found a stooped old man with the bulging red nose of a drunk and the sad sunken eyes of the misbegotten. It would be hard to rage against this man. He was just a broken-down sop.
‘Silas Lowry?’ Adam asked. At first, the man didn’t seem to recognize the name and Adam thought for a second, with relief, that he had the wrong place. Then he must have remembered his own alias because he begrudgingly grunted his acknowledgment.
‘My name is Adam Miller. I’ve been searching for your daughter for three years.’
Silas stared back at Adam, his blue eyes glinting, as if he were considering his next move. He was shrewd enough to try to hide his discomfort.
‘Well, you’re not going to find her here. She’s dead to me, that one. Gone these twenty-plus years. Run off.’ He studied Adam’s face. ‘But you can join me for a drink.’ He looked at his watch. It was ten thirty in the morning. ‘It’s time for gin, after all.’
Silas beckoned him into the tiny one-room cabin. In truth it wasn’t significantly bigger than an RV, but it had a certain woodsy charm. The sparse furniture looked as though it came with the property, built out of the same pine as the walls. Light flooded in through windows on all sides, each draped with cheery red-and-white checked curtains. Adam wondered in passing what kind of scam ‘Silas’ had been operating to end up with such fancy digs.
He followed Silas into the kitchen area, divided from the rest of the space by a slab of Formica. Silas gestured to Adam to take the solitary stool in front of it, while he rummaged around in the freezer for the gin. He pulled out two foggy glasses of questionable cleanliness and poured two fingerfuls of liquor into each. Normally, Adam would have been squeamish about such hygi
ene, but too much hung in the balance, and he wanted Silas to drink up to loosen his tongue.
‘Why are you looking for my daughter?’ the old man said suddenly. He swallowed his drink in a single gulp and poured himself another.
Adam decided to use the same ruse as with his sister. Besides, he liked the way it felt to make the claim, as if he were searching for Abigail instead. He turned up his glass and took the shot to bolster his courage.
‘I think we might be related. On her mother’s side.’ Silas snapped to attention.
‘That so, eh? That good-for-nothing whore.’ He paused, looking back at Adam out of the corner of his eye. ‘Did they ever find her anyway? I heard she skipped town. Probably run off with somebody’s husband.’
Adam gripped the edge of the counter, wondering how to answer without giving himself away.
‘No, no, she never did turn up,’ he dared.
Silas seemed to relax and let his guard back down. Adam had guessed right.
‘Yeah, crying shame,’ Silas said under his breath.
‘Did Laura – excuse me, I know she went by different names – is it okay if I use Laura?’
Silas stared down into the empty bottom of his glass, rubbing his brow.
‘Fine, fine.’
He poured a third gin for himself and held out the bottle to Adam, who shook his head. Any more of that and he’d lose his train of thought. And possibly never stop.
‘Do you have any idea what happened to her?’
‘Nope. Probably dead. Given that dirt bag she ran off with.’
‘Who? What was his name?’
Adam wondered if Silas would be able to remember anything with all that booze in him.
‘Some loser who went around pretending to be a preacher. James something. It wasn’t, like, a proper church or anything. Just a bunch of stupid shit about the skies and powerful life forces. Real cosmic, you know? People fell under that guy’s spell hard. I got into it myself for a few weeks because he’d made it out like he could solve your problems. He talked a pretty good game, but nothing changed.’ He lifted the bottle of gin. ‘This is the only thing that helps wash your worries and heartache away.’ He sniggered.
‘How old was she when she left?’
‘I forget now. Fifteen, sixteen. To tell you the truth, she was a bit of a slut like her mother. Good riddance to both of them, I say.’ He raised his glass. ‘Oh, sorry. No offense to your family. I’m sure the rest of you are nothing like her.’
Adam resisted punching him in the face. He twisted his fingers around the glass, boring it into the counter.
‘What happened to her child?’
‘Child? What child?’
‘I found a letter she wrote. She said she was pregnant.’
‘There wasn’t any child. She was a child herself, for chrissakes. A liar too.’ He chugged back the gin.
He looked genuinely surprised. Maybe she’d had an abortion before her father found out.
‘Why did she leave the camp in Roanoke?’
Silas shuffled around to the other side of the bar and motioned for Adam to accompany him back out to the porch. Silas plopped down in a creaky wooden rocking chair and Adam leaned up against the porch railing, hoping it would hold his weight.
‘Nicer out here, isn’t it?’
It was nicer. Adam needed the air.
Silas paused, taking a slim packet from his front shirt pocket. He slipped out a pinch of chewing tobacco and tucked it in his cheek, gnawing at it for a moment before spitting out a black projectile.
‘It was partially my fault. When I was in that cult, I had to make a kind of “confession” to the leader. I told him a couple of things I shouldn’t have. He probably used what I said, twisted my words. That’s how he was, you know? I was the idiot who made it easy for him.’
‘Do you know where she is now, Silas?’
He stopped rocking.
‘I quit looking for her years ago. It was pretty tough on the old man here when I first discovered her missing. I worried myself sick. Ran all over them damn woods searching for her. Crying my goddamn eyes blind, wasting tears on that useless girl. I guess we really loved each other, no matter all the bullshit that happened. I stuck around for a while, hoping she’d come back, then I gave up and made my way here.’
‘And you never heard from her again?’
He shook his head.
‘No. A few years later I heard a rumor that the preacher had been spotted in the Hudson Valley not far from Albany, up to his old tricks again. Later they say he gave up the calling, got into construction, transport, that type of thing. Oh, how the mighty have fallen.
‘By the time I heard where she might be, I didn’t want anything to do with her. She was a grown woman and could do what she liked. If she wanted to be his servant, she could. She’d betrayed me, left me like that in the middle of the night. Well, I don’t care about her. She’s dead to me. Dead to me.’ He spat out another dark stream of tobacco for emphasis.
Adam moved to the open door, his eyes sweeping the cabin one more time. He spotted a framed picture just inside on a small shelf. He lifted it, staring at the two images captured there. Only one interested him.
‘Is this her?’ In the photo stood a girl of about the right age with brown hair, next to a younger version of Silas looking the other way, oblivious to the camera.
Silas crossed over to him faster than Adam would have thought possible and ripped it out of his hands.
‘Give me that. You’ve got no business looking around here. Who are you – the cops?’
‘Please, just tell me, is it her?’
‘It’s all I’ve got,’ he yelled.
‘Okay, okay, I understand,’ Adam said. ‘Calm down. I’m not going to take your picture. It’s just that I’ve never seen one of her before.’
A slight smile broke out on the old man’s face. ‘That’s right. No pictures. Never any pictures. This is the only one.
‘If you do find her –’ he started, but then stopped, holding one finger to his nose as he stared down at the carpet. For a minute, Adam thought he wasn’t going to finish. ‘If you do find her, why don’t you tell her to drop me a line?’
Then he walked back to the kitchen and poured another glass of gin, this time filling it to the rim. While Silas put the bottle back in the freezer, Adam slipped his phone out of his pocket and surreptitiously snapped a photo of her picture.
He turned back toward the kitchen.
‘Was it about the murders?’
Silas froze, the glass almost to his lips.
‘What? What did you say?’ He put the drink down.
‘The murders in Stillwater? Is that what you told the preacher about in your “confession”?’
Silas’s face went blank. Adam knew he was on to something. He kept on.
‘Is that how he convinced her to leave Roanoke?’
Silas squinted over at him. ‘Listen, I don’t know who you really are, but you’d best just get out of here.’
Adam wouldn’t let this opportunity slip by.
‘Did she do it, Silas? Did she murder those three kids because that boy rejected her?’
Silas stood still, glaring.
‘She disgraced herself, Silas. Your own daughter. Fourteen years old and pregnant. Then this good-for-nothing kid turned her down. She wanted revenge. Maybe you did too. Did she do it alone, Silas? Did you help her? Or did you help her get away with it?’
Silas’s right eye twitched.
‘I had nothing to do with anything like that. Get out of my house.’ He moved toward Adam, fists clenched.
Adam edged toward the door. If he left now, Silas would clear out of there by morning and Adam might never find him again. He had to push forward.
‘There’s physical evidence, Silas.’
‘I guarantee you none of it can be traced back to me,’ he replied evenly. ‘And I daresay if you find any prints, they’d lead you to one person and one person only. And that person’s testi
mony isn’t worth a damn.’
‘So you do know something.’
Silas shook his head and a slow smile spread across his face.
‘Three years, you say you’ve been looking? Three years leaving no stone unturned, eh? Digging through trash, talking to lowlifes, trying to blend in with the scum of the earth until you finally tracked me down? And for what?’ He threw his head back and laughed. ‘After all that, there’s one thing you need to learn to accept, whoever you are.’
‘What’s that?’
‘Not knowing shit.’ He took a step toward Adam, his jaw set. ‘Now go.’
For a fleeting second, Adam pictured his hands around Silas’s neck squeezing the life out of him. That would be one path to justice. Who knew what this guy had gotten away with and would get away with in the future? How many lives had he ruined? And yet, Adam somehow knew that nothing would ever stick to this sneaky, manipulative son-of-a-bitch.
But he wouldn’t turn Adam into a killer. Adam would walk away from this poison.
‘All right,’ he said. ‘I’ll go. But if you see me again you’d better run, because it will mean I have hard evidence to put you away for the rest of your life.’
With that, he turned and left Silas staring after him.
Adam figured that in truth he’d never meet Silas Lowry again. The old man would change his name and move on, just like he always did. He was the undercurrent of evil that kept flowing through the world, destroying everyone in its path.
But Silas was wrong. Adam did know something. While he might never know exactly what happened that day in Stillwater, Silas had told him two crucial things. First, he knew now for certain that the unidentified set of prints at the murder scene was Laura’s. Second, he knew how to find her.
He would waste no time either. Things were worse for her than he’d imagined. She hadn’t escaped into a normal life after all, hadn’t risen above her circumstances. She’d fallen prey to a cult. Adam might not be able to bring one kind of justice to the world, but he could bring another. He knew what he had to do. He’d do it for Laura and for Abigail, for the women they might have been.
