The keepers, p.29
The Keepers, page 29
Jessie slid the fork back and forth over the oilcloth beside her plate of half eaten eggs. If she wasn’t truly going insane Jack’s argument made sense. Hadn’t she known, even before this, that these people weren’t bothered by laws? They walked in the dark shadows, lived by their own rules, and took what they wanted from the daylight world, without fear of reprisal. It seemed that their protection was that no one could believe that they existed. It was frightening to be pitted against them. What power did she and Jack have? Her small ability to recognize them when she looked into their eyes was useless. At least it had never helped her.
Jack sat down and scooted his chair close to hers. He put his arm across her shoulders.
“You think we have both gone crazy, Jessie? You think part of my mind don’t scream against everything I’ve said? Nobody is going to believe us. Hell, half the time I don’t, and I’ve lived with it for six years.” Jack paused and slowly stroked her arm.
“Maybe running wouldn’t be the answer, Jessie. But if you want, we can try it. We can find Andy and then get out of here. Who knows, we might have a few good years before they find us. Maybe they would even forget about us. It might be worth a try.”
Jessie turned to him with a sad smile. “Thank you for the offer, Jack, but I don’t think you could leave. I doubt you can let them go unpunished for what they did to your child. I know I can’t let them finish what they have started to do to my family. I have to try to save them. No matter how Stan is acting I owe him that much. And I could never abandon Denise to them.”
Jack patted her shoulder and then moved away. He heaved a heavy sigh. “I thought it was worth a shot, but I guess you can’t leave any more than I can. I was going to get you and the boy away and then come back to finish them. If I didn’t get them this year I’d do it the next time they were here.”
Jessie set about clearing the table. There didn’t seem to be much to say then. Jack got two white mugs from the cupboard and filled them with steaming black coffee from the blue enamel pot. They didn’t speak until Jessie had finished cleaning and then sat back down at the table. She wrapped her icy hands around the hot cup.
“I always thought a divorce was the worst thing that could happen to my family. Now, if it would keep them from this evil I’d be glad to let Stan and Denise go their way. There must be something we can do to stop this!”
Jack’s fist clenched into a brown, oaken knot on the tablecloth. “You bet there is. Kill every last one of them. Pick them off one at a time. Dynamite the lodge when they’re inside. Anything you want. You pick it.”
“We’re talking about murder, Jack. You can’t kill that many human beings.”
“They ain’t human and you damn well know it!”
“Stan and Denise are. At least they were.”
“Jessie, I don’t mean them. With the others gone maybe they’ll come to their senses.”
“I hope so. But are you ready for what the police will do to us if we go through with this?”
“I don’t care what happens to me if I can do away with them. And don’t worry, Jessie. I won’t let none of the blame fall on you.”
“Thank you, Jack. But we are getting ahead of ourselves. Maybe there is another way. First we should find Andy. I have to talk to him. Sometimes he knows things. I’ll explain someday, then maybe you’ll want to blow me and Andy sky-high, too.”
Jack turned his damaged face toward her, a glint in his coffee brown eyes.
“Something you ain’t telling, Jessie?”
“Nothing that makes any difference, Jack. Not right now, anyway.
Chapter Thirty-Three
At dawn the first dazzling sun-rays streaked across the cliff and gilded the dense billowing treetops in the valley below. Andy awoke and looked up into the green and gold leaves that swept the blue sky. He sat up in his nest of dried leaves and looked around, trying to remember why he was here. The forest came to life with birdsong and the scurrying of tiny feet. In the distance a woodpecker pounded, his bony beak rattling out a woodland message. Andy brushed the bits of twigs and leaves from his pants. He stood in the lush Ozark morning, a lost and lonely nine-year-old boy.
As he started walking he began to remember what had happened last night. It came back to him like a faded, red nightmare. He began to understand things about his father and sister that made his chest tighten and his throat ache as if he were about to cry. His helplessness added to his burden. What good was knowing such things if he couldn’t change them? He was only a little boy; skinny, weak, and afraid. And like the whiny baby Stan accused him of being he did want his mother. Abruptly, Andy stopped walking, he raised his head and looked around, he was going in the wrong direction. Posey’s house was away from the cliff, more toward the river. Last night, in the dark, he had missed the house. But now he knew which way to go. Andy swung around and started to retrace his steps, but it was hard to walk, as if he were pushing against a powerful wind. And a strange tingling played over his skin.
It was coming again!
Andy’s pointed chin quivered, he wanted to go to Posey’s where he might find safety and food. This wasn’t fair. He struggled on, straining against the force that was holding him back. Then with a cry of defeat Andy stopped. He gave in to a will greater than his own and turned back toward the cliff. Now it was easy to walk, almost as if something were helping him move. But it was frightening and Andy wished he understood It better. Maybe it wasn’t right to go to Posey’s. Maybe that was why he’d gotten lost last night. It seemed the only thing he could do now was go where he was directed and hope it was right.
High on the bluff the dark stone ruins stood like a broken crown. Each wall was outlined with liquid morning gold, it poured around the sides and seeped through the cracks. When Andy saw it gleaming there a sob rattled in his dry throat. He was tired and hungry. He didn’t want to go on. Why couldn’t It let him rest? Andy stumbled along until he reached the base of the cliff. He gazed up the face of the sandstone bluff. It was dotted with twisted cedars and bristling clumps of weeds and jagged rock. He wasn’t climbing up there! No matter what It wanted.
Andy dropped onto a rock and cradled his chin in his hands. He tried to close his mind to the strange feelings and concentrate instead on his physical needs. The sleep had not rested him, and he was weak with hunger. Maybe, if he waited a minute, the tugging and urging might leave, freeing him to choose his own direction.
Then, for the first time, he heard a voice. It was clear and distinct. “Andy. Come. Follow and trust.” It was soft, yet commanding, and it ended as quickly as it had begun.
Andy stiffened with shock, then he swung around looking for the person who had spoken. He saw no one. He was alone. He sat still and listened, but there was only the whisper of his own breathing. The tension in Andy grew, and with it the certain knowledge that he must do as he was told. Feeling small and unhappy, Andy stood.
Andy wasn’t required to climb the cliff. Instead he was taken through the rock strewn bottom. Further and further along toward the rounded end of the valley where the river came out in a wide slate-blue surge. Yet before reaching the source of the river his gaze was drawn upward to a square opening in the side of the bluff. He saw rotting gray timbers that framed the mouth of a tunnel. And a spill of gravel stretched out like a rough tongue making a pathway up the slight incline. Andy hesitated, but the pushing at his back grew stronger, almost painful. He climbed toward the tunnel. When he reached the patch of gravel he walked closer to the entrance. A wave of cool, underground air washed over him.
“Oh boy,” Andy whispered to himself. He was supposed to go inside. He felt it, and he didn’t think he would be strong enough to refuse. He peered into the tunnel, its depths were black as night. Andy shuddered.
Maybe this was a place for him to hide. That seemed logical. But what could he eat, and how would it help his mother, or change Stan and Denise? Andy wiped his stubby nose with the back of his hand and shuffled into the abandon lead mine. It didn’t seem to matter if he understood or not, he had to do as he was told.
To Andy’s right he saw a rusted bucket with a bulging, bent bottom, beside it was a small pile of rotting boards. These were things left over from when the lead mine was an active place. Andy wished it were now. But as he walked past the bucket his eyes slowly began to adjust to the dimness.
It was hard for him to trust something he could not see. Was it a part of him, or did it come from outside of him? One thing Andy did know, It was much stronger since they had come to the lodge. Andy sighed. Maybe if he trusted the voice, and didn’t fight doing what it ordered him to do, he would finally understand what It was.
Suddenly, from a few feet in front of Andy he heard the rattling sound of tumbling tiny stones. Andy stopped. He tilted his head and then carefully crept forward. Once he paused to look back over his shoulder. The light from the tunnel entrance had played out to a dusky gray. Now only shapes were visible, Andy could not see much detail. Still, as he moved forward there came a fragile, faint lifting of the gloom. The new source of light drew him like a small beacon. Then he saw where the light came from. It was an opening in the right side of the tunnel, about waist-high on Andy. It was floored with damp red clay. Andy stood in front of it and looked down its length, there seemed to be a reddish amber glow at the far end. The hole looked like something dug by a gigantic worm. Andy lifted his shoulders with a tired shrug of resignation and bent forward to put his arms inside. He braced his elbows against the sticky clay and gave a jump to hook his stomach over the lip of the smaller tunnel. Then he wriggled and squirmed until he was on his hands and knees. He began to crawl toward the amber light.
It seemed the older he got the stranger his journeys became. A ripple of mild fear puckered the skin at the back of his neck. He wondered why he was being taken through these tunnels and what sights awaited him. Still, whatever he found it could not be as bad as the scene at the bridge. That had been the crest of the wave for Andy. When he had seen the girl and her mother being killed it had left him nearly senseless, shaking, and unable to think or talk. But he had survived, and he could do it again. Maybe he was getting stronger.
As he crawled and scooted along the passageway it gradually changed. It became taller and narrower. Finally Andy could stand up and walk. Then he came to the end and found himself standing before a great inverted V shaped crack where the rock walls came together. It was through this crack that the light came. Andy frowned and put his hands on either side of the split and tried to look out, but a great slab of upright rock blocked his view. Andy stepped through the wide crack, peered around the side of the rock slab, and looked out into an underground chamber. His breath whistled through his teeth and dried his throat to a crackling harshness.
The huge cavern was lit by black iron baskets hanging around the walls, their potbellies holding flower-like flames, short and flickering red. In a half circle, on a raised rock ledge, stood ten high-backed chairs. They had deep crimson cushions. In front of the chairs stood a long, gray stone table with rusty stains on its top. An icy fear crawled up Andy’s back. These were the ten chairs he’d seen in his vision before he moved from Florida. Andy looked down and saw that it was a short jump to the cave floor. And before he had time to consider his action Andy jumped to the floor of the great room. His feet made a dull thump on the rock floor and the vibration seemed to linger in the coolness. Andy pressed himself flat against the wall and looked around to make sure he was alone.
The huge room looked empty. Yet it was a crowded place, it brimmed with sensations. Silent screams hung in the dead, ancient air. Something older than Andy could imagine billowed and rolled, turning back upon itself. Then it loomed out again, like invisible clouds boiling across a stormy sky. And twisted through it was the whispering, hissing chant of a thing so vain and proud that it recognized nothing but its own simpering, evil voice. A strange smell made Andy wrinkle his nose and turn his head, shying away. He sensed a color as well as an odor. It was heavy, rusty red, and sulfurous. It fouled his mind bringing pictures of pulsing purple blood and living white bone. Andy gagged, then bent double as his stomach cramped in revulsion.
This was their place. It was bursting with the wicked shades of what they had done here beneath the earth. And the wild lusting and panting after more beat like a thudding heart, hammering and pounding against the cavern walls. Andy covered his ears. The being wanted out, to devour the world. Here it fed and grew strong, and the power of it was overwhelming. Andy staggered and felt as if he were shrinking, as if his vital juices were being sucked out by the sly, slavering lips that simpered and taunted him. He was dizzy and reeling from the onslaught. Andy forced his lungs to draw in the cloying scent. As Andy edged along the wall his legs trembled, barely able to support him.
He had seen enough. He wanted out of the cave.
This was where the men at the lodge wanted to bring him, and to do to him what they had done to the girl on the bridge. He turned, looking for the slit in the wall. The innocent darkness of the mine shaft seemed like a haven now. But the opening had disappeared! Andy’s heart raced in fear. He felt along the wall, searching with his hands as well as his eyes. Then he found the opening behind a jutting fold of rock. The crack was still there, but hidden by the rugged slab of rock.
Far across the wide room was another entrance. It appeared to be a huge hallway. Andy wanted to climb up into the fissure and leave the way he had come, but he felt drawn toward the other passageway. Andy breathed a heavy sigh and started across the cavern, he knew that it did no good to refuse.
When Andy reached the hallway he found it was large enough for three people to walk abreast. It was not shored up with timbers like the mine. Instead it was hewn out of the solid rock, and at intervals black iron wall lamps lit the way. The rock floor rose steadily upward, the incline was gradual but Andy’s tired legs soon ached from the constant climb. Along the way there were other openings branching off in different directions. Then, as Andy thought he could not go another step, the hallway narrowed and ended in a set of rock stairs. Andy looked up the stairs to a flat wooden trapdoor. Slivers of daylight seeped between the boards and fell in blue-white streaks upon the stairs. This was the regular entrance, Andy knew it was, his lips knotted in a dry hard pucker. He had been shown another way into the hateful place. It could be a way out, too. Perhaps his strange guide was finally giving him some useful information.
Andy climbed up and pushed at the door. It rose and flopped open with a rattling bang. A square flood of blinding light fell on Andy. He blinked and crawled into the daylight. As he looked around, he felt like a gopher coming out of an underground maze. He was in the bottom of the castle ruin. Andy huddled above the trapdoor and looked across the basement floor, it was overgrown with a miniature forest. He took a last look down the rock stairs and then closed the trapdoor. To his right was a pile of brush that had fallen aside when he opened the door. Andy pushed it back over the wooden door and then checked to make sure it looked undisturbed.
This was where Melanie, Denise, and the others had come the night his mother had followed them. In the midday brightness it seemed calm and peaceful, yet Andy shivered. He sat down on a large stone, drew his legs up, and wrapped his arms around his knees. There was something about the place that heightened Andy’s special awareness and messages came pouring in upon him. The sun beat down on his bowed head and it burned the tender skin at the back of his neck, but it could not dispel the icy terror in his heart.
Blackness and death hung around him. He could feel the evil reaching out for him. He and his mother had to get away. Andy tried to think of a place for them to hide. He raised his head and gazed at the far wall where the Virginia creeper dug delicate green tendrils into the cracks between the stones. For a long time Andy stared at the wall. He sat as motionless as the rock beneath him. Then the leaves of the vine began to blur and the wall receded into a fuzzy gray backdrop. The familiar sensation of seeing with different eyes clouded his mind. Andy relaxed, letting his thin shoulders droop. Maybe he would be shown a hiding place.
Instead he saw his mother.
She was sitting at a kitchen table with a man. She looked sick and beaten and the man looked worse. She wasn’t frightened and the man’s brown head was bent toward her in earnest conversation. They were at Posey’s house. Then his father and three men burst through the front door. Andy’s eyes widened in terror and he opened his mouth to scream a warning, but no sound came. He tried to stand up, but his feet made only small shuffling strokes. The scene was so real. He must warn his mother. Andy continued to witness his vision.
The men stomped through the frame house, their steps shaking the walls. They were like giants filling the kitchen, making Jessie and the man small and powerless. As Stan reached out a claw-like hand to grab Jessie’s shoulder Andy blinked and the picture vanished.
Andy fought to bring it back. He had to know what happened. Or maybe it hadn’t happened yet, or was happening right now! Andy squeezed his eyes shut and willed the vision to come back, but it was gone. Andy stopped, he was exhausted, and every fiber of his body quivered. It was too much for him. He wasn’t strong enough to live on the edge of such danger where he could see evil this clearly. Maybe that was why he had never grown big and strong. This other sense kept growing and sapping his strength.
When he got to his feet, his knees buckled, then caught, and finally held him. Andy started to run. He found the long winding path over the bluff top and when he reached the valley below he headed toward Posey’s house. Andy’s fear gave him speed and strength. If his mother was at Posey’s house, and if Stan and those men hadn’t found her, then maybe this time his vision could save her.
Chapter Thirty-Four
The back screen door slammed and Jack stiffened, his sore muscles drawing up in painful knots. Then, as a small boy came panting and running into the kitchen, Jack quickly relaxed. In a flash the sandy blond head was buried against Jessie’s chest. She crushed the boy to her, she laughed and cried at the same time. So, this was Andy. As Jack watched them he choked on old memories of a little girl throwing her tiny arms around his neck. While Jessie fussed over her son, brushing his damp hair away from his pale freckled face, Jack’s happiness for them disappeared under an avalanche of icy hatred for the creatures that meant to harm them. He had to find a safe place for Jessie and her son then he would deal with the bastards who had caused this misery. Whether they were men or demons, it made no difference. They would soon know the wrath of Jack Tanner.
