by Abby Knox
Emmeline looked around self-consciously and then spoke in low tones. “The others all have another thing in common. They have all, shortly after their experience, gone up to Bell Mountain, disappeared for three days, and then come back, totally unable to account for the time they had been gone.”
Ada swallowed the hard knot of fear but also excitement forming in her throat. “Why am I finding out about this now? This information wasn’t reported to me or any other investigators that I’m aware of. How did you find out?”
The look on Emmeline’s face told Ada that sharing the information around Eden and attracting even more attention to the town was ill-advised. “Because we all decided it was…a game, and we wanted to keep it to ourselves. We all decided we…well…we don’t know what happened up on that mountain, but we all came back different people than when we’d left. Not literally, just better. Stronger. Healthier. And, like, knowing things we didn’t know before. For days afterward, we felt…”—she glanced around again to make sure nobody was listening to the conversation—“euphoric.”
“This happened to you?” Ada asked in wide-eyed wonder.
Emmeline nodded and said, “Twice.”
Not completely ready to accept all of this as fact, Ada pressed her with more questions. She considered whether what had been going on in Eden was a series of kidnappings in which the victims had been drugged, which would have been extremely disturbing if they hadn’t been reported to federal authorities, but she kept that thought to herself for the moment. “Have you or any of the other victims ever experienced interference with private radio channels right before one of these incidents?”
Emmeline shook her head. “No. I’ve never had that, but if you want me to ask the others…”
Ada told her no and was about to pose more questions but Emmeline put up her hand. “And…listen. Could you not call me or anyone else in this situation a victim? That’s not what this is.”
Ada had to protest. “If a strange, tall man is compelling townsfolk to go into the woods, and those townsfolk cannot account for the elapsed time afterward, I’m sorry, but that’s a crime. The people of this town need help. You need…I don’t know, deep hypnotherapy. And somebody needs to go and find that man and arrest him.”
Emmeline shook her head more vigorously. “No, no. It’s not like that at all. Look, I only told you because I think you had a sighting yourself, and I thought it was only fair to tell you what was about to happen to you.”
Ada wasn’t ready to accept that yet, but she had to admit to herself, it all made sense. So, the tall man had been the one who had interfered with the channel on Beau’s two-way radio. It was the same voice that had pushed into her brain.
“Do you think this man has anything to do with the Bell Mountain Giant?” Ada asked.
Emmeline snorted and swirled the ice in her sweet tea. “Doctor, that dude is the Giants of Bell Mountain.”
“And you’re sure it’s the same guy? Long dark hair, crazy intense stare?”
The mayor cocked her head, considering this question. “He seems to change his look. Of course, some people think there’s more than one of them, but…”
Ada was about to question Emmeline further when someone or something blocked out the sun and spoke with a booming voice. For one panicked second, Ada thought it might be the end of the world.
“Ada! Hi! Got a proposition for you!”
It was Jake from Super Hunters.
Why in the world was he interrupting a perfectly fascinating lunch?
Jake launched right in before Ada could reply or remind him that Emmeline was sitting right there and he had completely ignored her. “Listen, a few of us are going up to Bell Mountain tonight to film an episode, and since you’re a renowned expert, our producers think you would make a great addition to the show. For one or two episodes, no big commitment.”
Ada was so taken aback she couldn’t answer at first, and she felt rude as she was in the middle of a pretty interesting talk with Emmeline, who cleared her throat pointedly.
“Uhm. Listen, Jake. It’s nice of you to offer, but I think I’m going to have to pass. I’m due in Texas tomorrow.”
Jake put on a smarmy kind of voice that made her feel even more untrusting of him. “I don’t want to toot my own horn but this could be a once in a lifetime opportunity for you to get your face on the History Channel again, and I don’t mean a sound bite. After that, it’s a short walk to getting your own show.”
Yeah, Ada thought. And after that, it’d be a short hike to becoming an internet meme. That was not her scene.
She looked at Emmeline, who was sipping her sweet tea and facing the river, giving her a barely noticeable side-eye. “I don’t know. I’ll have to think about it.”
Jake replied, “Great. We’ll be at the Enoch Creek Trailhead tonight at nine p.m. Get ready to launch your career for real, Cherry.”
And with a wink that made Ada shudder inside in revulsion, he was off again and Emmeline was shouting past her with over-the-top sarcasm, “Nice to see you again!”
Ada turned to Emmeline. “I was not expecting that.”
Emmeline smiled at her. “Well, I was. You never know when destiny could be calling.”
Ada rolled her eyes. “Trust me, there is no destiny between myself and Jake from the History Channel. And, yuck! He called me Cherry…and winked! And he said it as if he was the first person to ever call me that. How original to call a redheaded woman Cherry. Anyway, get back to your story. I want to hear more. I have so many questions!”
Emmeline smirked and sipped her tea some more. “You could get all your questions answered right up there.” Ada followed Emmeline’s gaze across the river and beyond, to the top of the steepest mountain in the dense green woods.
“I think it would be intensely stupid to go into those woods with Jake,” Ada said.
Emmeline agreed. “Well, Casey will be there too, and the rest of the crew is a mixed bag, so stick with the women in the crew if you’re worried about Jake trying anything. It won’t take long for something to happen, though. And believe me. If you’ve already been scouted by the giant, nothing bad is gonna happen to you up there.”
Ada bit her lip. “Come with me. If you’re…one of his favorite victims, I mean captives, or friends…then I’d feel safer if you were there.”
Emmeline nodded again. “I would, but I’ve got a festival to run, remember? Besides, now that I’m a fancy-pants mayor, he hasn’t been back to scout me. Either he’s done with me or maybe it’s that he knows people will start a search party and the search will end up national news. I’m good. We’re good. I don’t harbor any ill will toward him.
“Maybe I’m deluded, but I think if it weren’t for my experience up there, I might never have become mayor. And now I’m the best damn mayor this town has ever had, if I may toot my own horn, as Jake would say. The lowest unemployment rate in these mountains. This park used to be tweaker central, now it’s the prettiest, safest recreation area on the river for a hundred miles in any direction. And not only have we kept the opioid epidemic away from our borders, but we have the most successful treatment center in the whole region.” Emmeline gestured with her chin up toward the dormant smoke stack up the river. “We’ve got a federal grant to turn the old paper mill into affordable housing.”
Ada nodded, but she didn’t understand the connection between the town’s success and these supposed kidnappings. “Impressive, but I hope you don’t think what happened to you up on the mountain made you a better leader, because that’s…super unsettling.”
Emmeline laughed. “It’s more like…they unlock your potential. I’m excited for you.”
If any of what she’d said was real, it was starting to sound like a cult.
Ada was still skeptical as all get out. “Tell me honestly. Is he a good guy or a bad guy?”
Emmeline laughed a wicked laugh but didn’t answer the way Ada needed her to answer. “Yes,” she said, and picked up a rock from the shore a
nd skipped it across the water. Ada watched the movement of the ripples.
Should she go or shouldn’t she? Should she cancel her appointments for the week? Reschedule her flight? Go out and buy a gun to protect herself?
One thing was for certain, she was dead curious.
Ada took the usual precautions. Pulling her phone out of her pocket, Ada texted the usual codes to her friend Zoey.
“Going on a snipe hunt. Probably no signal for a while. You know what to do if you don’t hear from me in 24 hours.” And then, using her map app, she texted the coordinates of the trailhead location.
She shook her head and sighed, looking out across the water and up at the hazy mountain on the other side.
“Guess I’m doing this.”
Chapter Six
Samuel
He had to go and do it, hadn’t he? He had to develop a sentimental attachment to a paranormal investigator.
His brothers had assumed that Samuel was out scouting a companion for the Summer Bacchanal when instead he was scoping out this scientist. She’d locked eyes with him, intruded on his mind. Samuel had not a drop of desire in him to scout out anyone else as a companion. Not that he had been interested in doing anything of the sort for decades.
The situation was becoming messier by the second.
Not only that but when he had taken it one step further and pressed his thoughts into her mind, she had felt it was him.
Samuel took a walk around the carnival to clear his head instead of following her and the mayor like a weirdo.
You are a weirdo. You are, in fact, the weirdest, most bookish one of all the giants. The one most likely to become a stalker out of all of them.
What could all of this mean? He hadn’t chosen to become infatuated.
Samuel had pressed thoughts into people before, many times, when it suited. But it was difficult work for him. It was easier for full-blooded angels. Having even a little bit of humanity in one’s DNA tends to take over everything; mortals are much more powerful than most immortals even comprehend.
Pressing into a human mind took the juice out of Samuel on his best days.
But she, Ada, that flame-haired human female, was not another run-of-the-mill paranormal investigator. She had degrees in anthropology and psychology. She did not carry around electromagnetic feedback readers or any other instruments, which are the tell-tale signs of people playing at scientists.
And now that they were linked, now that he could not stay away from her even if he tried, it was inevitable that she would learn the truth about all of it. The giants, aliens, the Wendigo, the Slenderman, the Jersey Devil, the Chupacabra—all of it was stored in his brain and the scrolls.
It was wrong, but he was as fascinated with her as she was with supernatural creatures. Ada was the real deal. Skeptical, yes. Still, her heart and her mind were open and honest. Pure. Zero motivation to prove or disprove the existence of aliens. She was an open-hearted—if skeptical—empath, and she felt him. When he had pressed into her brain, he saw her true beauty. In his brief push into Ada’s thoughts, Samuel saw what she saw. Visions and feelings that no other humans could experience, he was sure of it.
She needed guidance. She needed training. Most of all, she needed protection. His protection.
Ada had a power inside her to connect beyond the veil, into the afterlife. What humans call a medium, but more than that. Most so-called mediums were charlatans. The dead reached out to Ada and had always done so.
Intrigued, Samuel followed her at a distance down to Riverfront Park but stayed far enough away to avoid attracting her attention. He thoroughly enjoyed watching her walk; she moved like she was on a mission and her shoulder-length hair bounced with every swing of her hips. He watched while she and the mayor sat on the riverbank to eat their street vendor food, dipping their feet in the slowly rolling river.
The cloaked giant treated his mind to a brief fantasy. Maybe those were the kinds of treats he could sneak into the abbey for her for Feast Day during The Bacchanal with the brothers. He pictured the female sitting across his lap, eating grapes and expensive chocolates from his hand. Would she like that? Would she like to be cared for and hand-fed like a pet? Samuel watched the way she threw her head back and cackled at something funny the mayor said. He suspected she would not like to be treated as a pet.
This debacle is getting more knotted by the minute.
The fact was not lost on him that his six brothers would take turns murdering him for bringing a full-blooded human so deeply into their lives and culture, for even entertaining the thought of sharing Feast Day—let alone the entire three days of partying—with a visitor who was not only a paranormal investigator but a Seer.
He knew, once he had her for himself, he would not be able to erase her memory. Even if she was made better for it, there was too much in there. It was too risky. Someone with paranormal ability could be permanently damaged. The neurons were too spread out yet interconnected throughout the brain; it would be like trying to cut precisely seventy million microscopic slices out of her that were inextricably linked to the parts that held her basic human memories and thoughts and knowledge.
That kind of thing had happened before. But the Nephilim didn’t have that power. Only the archangels had done it. And the only time Samuel had witnessed it, Michael had turned that one poor soul’s brain into Swiss cheese.
Fuck that. Fuck all of that.
The terrible music of the Ferris wheel taunted him. If humans only knew what it was like to soar through the air for real…
Two facts remained. He had to have her, and he had to protect her from all other celestials: his brothers, the angels, demons, fallen angels, and the archangels. If he allowed things to get too messy, he’d even have to protect her from The Authorities. And there was no protecting anyone once The Authorities got into the mix.
How could he live with himself if he damaged her beautiful mind? And look how happy she was.
All of Samuel’s inner alarm bells went off when he spotted that insipid television personality approaching the women.
Samuel bit back the urge to teleport himself over there and push him into the river. Where did that instinct come from? The man hadn’t done anything wrong, yet. But he’d be doing women everywhere a favor if he went missing in the river. For fuck’s sake, get ahold of yourself, Samuel.
The emotions were roiling again. Having feelings frustrated and distracted him. Was this what it was like to be human? Is this what she felt like all the time? It made everything feel like it was a thousand times as urgent as a celestial would consider it. Humans lived a short span, so of course, everything had to be an emergency in comparison to the lives of a Nephilim.
Samuel kept his eyes trained on them, on high alert in case of a confrontation. Something inside him urged him to lunge toward them, to fit himself next to her and cover her. To stand between the perceived threat and her small frame. That ridiculous Jake may have been six feet tall, but in comparison to the giant in his true form, he was no match. Samuel could obliterate that jerk and no one would ever find him. And some deep, dark, unevolved part of him desperately wanted to.
A preternatural instinct inside him was ready to fight for her, scoop her up, and carry her away. He would enjoy the feeling of her tiny body clinging to him. He could snatch her right away if he wanted to and they could vanish in a flash. It would be so easy.
If only he didn’t care about traumatizing all the humans around her. If only he didn’t care about exposing the Nephilim, risking their survival. Some of his kind who had acted too brazenly had met tragic ends. Some of them had made a practice of appearing in spaceships and had been captured by the Air Force. Those Nephilim had died as prisoners, specimens in deep underground military science labs, their bodies never returned to their families.
His knuckles cracked as he watched Jake talking to Ada, but nothing untoward happened.
What are they saying to each other? Why is everyone smiling? What kind of plan is th
at little weasel hatching? Whatever it is, it can’t be good. I have to intervene. She must be protected at all costs.
But could he live with himself if he locked her up and kept her to himself? One couldn’t lock humans up in a tower and keep them indefinitely.
He shouldn’t press one more time into her mind; he should save his energy. But he had to learn what she’d been discussing with Jake. Samuel recognized the feeling of jealousy—jealousy!? A tragically human emotion entirely new to him. Surely, he was cracking up. What a terrible state of mind this was. If he didn’t know any better he would swear he was becoming a mortal.
Just one teeny, tiny thought. Samuel could not help himself. He inhaled deeply and latched on to the vibrations in the air. The instant he did it, and began reading her thoughts, she did something completely unprecedented. She pressed back.
Samuel felt all of the air go out of his lungs at the shock of it. The thought, the feeling that intruded into his mind came from her and it buzzed in his head like a swarm of bees. Not stinging, buzzing. “I don’t know who you think you are, walking into my thoughts, but I don’t take kindly to intruders.”
What in the world had happened?
In more than ten thousand years, no human had ever pressed back. Many humans were empathic with each other, but with half-human/half celestial, it was next to impossible. Completely impossible for humans to do so with full angels.
The off-kilter feeling caused him to step backward and stumble into a hot dog vendor.
“Whoa, you OK there, friend?”
Apologizing, Samuel helped the hot dog vendor clean up the mess he’d created and then bought ten hot dogs and instructed the vendor to give all of the food to the next few customers.
