Ancient Eyes (12 page)

Something had changed. He felt an odd detachment from the woods surrounding him, as if he were a stranger and didn't belong, but even so, he felt it. He had expected to feel alienated, but there was something dark in the air, something menacing that reached out from each shadow. He frowned and hurried his steps.

On his left, up the mountain a bit, he saw the spire of the church rising against the blue of the sky.
 
The wood needed paint, and the roof was dark and patched. The high window on the steeple was shuttered, but one side hung limply out at an angle as if waiting for a wind to come along and put it out of its misery.

Abraham thought about cutting through the churchyard. It was a little out of his way, but he had the sudden urge to see the place. He needed to be sure that it was as he remembered it, not as it had been in his dream. If it were as run down as it appeared to be, then it was unlikely he would see the windows pouring light into the darkness, or deep, chanting voices rising from the eaves. He saw the flaking paint and loose shingles from where he stood, but these meant little. The note, crinkling in his pocket as he walked, told a different story.

Abraham had a sudden flash of memory. He saw his father's face, not angry—never angry—but set and grim. He saw torches lined up and stretching back into the forest like a giant flaming serpent, flowing away behind his father.
 
He saw that other face, the dark branching antlers and the wide, hate-filled eyes. He heard a keening that shook him to the depths of his soul and remembered ripping his eyes from that scene to stare into the pale gleam of a long-ago full moon. He had been so young then, and the memories—though vivid—held few answers.

He shook his head and turned back to the path.

The trail was worn, and he saw the signs of many passing feet. The prints ran over and around one another in a jumbled, scuffed map that Abraham read instinctively.
 
A great number of people had been this way recently, and the knowledge itched at his mind.
 
So much traffic didn't mesh with the unkempt steeple on the church, or the ominous, heavy emptiness of the air.
 
There was nothing along this path but smaller trails that trickled off deeper into the woods, and the church.

Although the road he'd left behind was the nearest route to civilization, it wasn't a big draw for the locals.
 
If they needed something from the city, they would go by truck, usually about once a month, and they would go in force. They wouldn't run out along a forest path and down the mountain. Besides that, Abraham had seen no sign of the tracks on the side of the mountain as he climbed. They moved in both directions along the trail, but without closer scrutiny, their destinations remained a secret.

When Abraham had left the mountain, the church building was already in decline. It wasn't as obvious then.
 
If you'd seen the steeple through the trees, as Abraham had just done, you'd have seen gleaming white paint and windows open to the brilliant light of the sun. Those who had remained behind after the cleansing—that was his father's word—had tried to rebuild.
 
They had tried to resurrect the church itself from the evil that had tainted it and re-consecrate it to the God of its original intent. The effort had changed them, eroded their faith and drained their spirit.

Something had pushed them away.
 
Though the rituals and the words, the hymns and the praise were the same, they seemed pointless and empty when shared within the church's walls.
 
One by one folks had wandered back out the door and into the hills, finding their own ways to God, or driving down the mountain on a Sunday. Once Abraham's father died…

He tore his mind from that thought and back to the church. It wasn't necessarily the paint and wood that had declined. Something had been won, and something had been lost. The rot that had begun within the walls seemed to have found its way to the surface and begun to eat through.

He remembered that steeple as one of the last things he'd seen as he'd walked this same trail to the mountain's side and the road beyond those long years before. The window had been open wide, staring after him like a single accusing eye.

It had not been daylight then. The woods had been shadowed and dark, the perfect cover.
 
Now, by the light of day, his memories seemed false. The building was decrepit and on the verge of toppling over to cast its boards down the nearly sheer cliff behind it to the floor of the valley below.
 
That image was not as incongruous with his memories as he'd at first thought it to be. To be this far gone after so few years, the building must have been broken down when he left.

There was a sound in the trees to his left, and Abraham halted. He saw nothing, and the sound wasn't repeated.
 
After a moment he continued. Then it came again. It didn't sound like footsteps.
 
It was more of a skittering, like leaves skimming the ground in the grip of the wind, rubbing their dry skins together in protest.

Then a shadow flitted between two trees and disappeared into a dense thicket.
  
At the same time, the sound echoed again. This time Abraham stood very still and waited.
 
His heart was trip hammering, but he didn't know exactly why.
 
The shadow hadn't been large enough to be a man, nor quite small enough to be a dog.
 
It had moved very quickly and quietly.
 
If he had been new to the woods, he might have missed it entirely.
 
Even his mountain-grown senses, after so many dulling years in the city, had only caught it on the periphery.

"Who's there?" he asked.
 
He didn't cry out, but his voice carried. He kept the tremor that threatened to surface from giving away his unease.

There was no answer, but the shadow moved again, and this time Abraham was ready. At the first hint of the sound, he launched himself at the end of the thicket. This time there was more than a flicker. A shape emerged from the shadows and flew away parallel to the trail. Abraham followed.

The skittering gave way to the pounding of bare feet. As Abraham crashed through the trees, cursing as branches slapped at his face and cut his shirt, he caught sight of long, auburn hair and bare legs. The girl turned once, glared at him with feral, haunted eyes. Then she grinned widely, revealing several gaps in her teeth, and fled into the woods. Panting from the exertion and coated in sweat, Abraham slowed and finally stopped.
 
He leaned heavily on a tree and stared after her.

Whoever she was, she was long gone. Abraham looked down at her footprints. For an instant the thought of running barefoot through those woods, with their brambles and branches, loose rocks and snakes, wrinkled his nose. Then he laughed.

It hadn't been that many years since those barefoot prints might have been his. One thing was certain—it would be only a matter of hours before everyone on the mountain knew that someone was coming.

Abraham turned and headed back at an angle toward the trail. He planned to cut across it further along than the point he'd left it and make up the lost time. The wind had picked up, and clouds scudded across a darkening sky.

"Where did that come from?" he wondered aloud. The sun that had raised waves of heat to blur his vision an hour before was obscured, and suddenly the way back to the path seemed less certain. Long shadows wove around one another and danced in the wind. Leaves skipped along the ground and whipped into his legs.

Abraham broke into a jog, being more careful with the whipping branches and low bushes than he had in pursuing the girl. He knew these mountain squalls well, and he didn't want to be caught in the trees when this one hit. Besides falling branches and the cold, slashing rain, the danger of being caught in a lightning strike, or becoming disoriented and lost deep in the woods was very real.

As the sky darkened, the trees leaned closer.
 
Their branches bowed toward the ground and their leaves swept in quick spirals across the path. Thunder rumbled in the distance, and the ground shook slightly.

There were other sounds as well.

At first Abraham told himself his mind was playing tricks.
 
Too many years in the city had bred distrust of things he had once taken for granted.

Deeper parts of him knew better.
 
He had heard those sounds before, furtive steps just beyond the reach of his senses. Voices tittering and whispering at the edges of his mind. A forest is a gathering of many things, trees, rocks, shrubs—even the trail that wound through its heart was a separate thing—but he knew this was wrong.

At moments like this, when nature screamed for blood and the light grew harsh; when the wind spoke with the voice of a thousand banshees and roared over the land and water dripped and splashed, whipping across the trail like the lash of a great whip, the forest was a single thing.
 
It surrounded him, and vertigo hit hard with the realization that if that forest were a single entity, he lay in its center. He could be part of it, or he could be consumed.

Abraham came up hard against the trunk of a tree, barely catching it with a hand before his face collided with solid wood. The shock cleared his head, and he took advantage of the moment to dig in and crash ahead. He found the trail, and with wind and water howling at his back and the invisible weight of a thousand eyes that could not be there pressing him forward, he burst suddenly from the trees.

Abraham stopped despite the storm. He stood, soaked and dripping, and stared at the little cottage nestled up against the woods. No smoke poured from the single chimney.
 
No lights glowed in the windows. He thought of the fairy tales of his childhood, witches gathered around cauldrons who shoved unwitting children into stoves. Then the images passed, and all he saw was the dark, desolate lines of his mother's cottage.

Memories threatened to overwhelm him, and he brushed them aside angrily.
 
This was not the house he had grown up in; though it was the last place he'd laid his head on the mountain before his "escape." Now he stood, trembling, more willing to brave rain and storm than those clear old eyes. More willing to melt into the earth at his feet and become one with the mountain than to brush his fingers over that carved wooden door, or to hear his name pass her lips.

Once again he had the sensation that something was wrong. There was no sign of life in the home. No one stood on the hearth to greet him. Abraham started forward once more. He knocked on the door and waited. After a few moments he knocked again, but there was no answer.

Abraham hesitated, then reached out and turned the knob. The door was unlocked. He opened it and stepped inside.

Katrina knew that something wasn't right the second she climbed out of her car. The phone was ringing. This shouldn't have seemed odd. The sun was peeking over the horizon, and Abe should be down running on the beach. He ran every morning, and he was an early riser.
 
She had wanted to get back before he woke, but the lines had been long, and a traffic snarl leaving the main road had held her up. She hurriedly gathered her bags and climbed the steps to the porch. Nothing looked out of place, but the house felt different. The insistent jangle of the phone grated on her nerves, and she frowned. Coming home was one of the small, hidden pleasures of her life. She had lived in a lot of places, but this was the first of them that she thought of as home, and the idea that someone waited inside, or down on the beach—someone who cared for her—made each homecoming special. She fumbled with the door.
 
The phone stopped ringing, and the silence in the wake of it was deafening. The door was locked, and that was odd. If Abe had gone running, he wouldn't have locked up. He wouldn't have any place to carry his keys, and they were so isolated here that the danger of break-ins was slim. The door was almost never locked. Once inside, she went straight toward the table with the groceries. She saw the note, trapped under the saltshaker, when she was still several steps away.
 
She nearly dropped the bag she was carrying, and cried out in shock. She stumbled forward and put the bag down, but before she could snatch up the note and read it, the phone rang again.

Katrina didn't think.
 
She jumped, frightened by the sound, then dashed over and grabbed the receiver.
 
She thought it had to be Abe, that something had happened, or he'd run too far and wanted her to pick him up—that he'd had a sudden urge for seafood and she should meet him at one of the restaurants up the road.

"Hello?" No one spoke. She listened for a moment, then tried again. "Hello? Abe, is that you?" No answer, but she heard a snapping sound, then a cough, and after that she was almost certain she heard someone breathing, harsh and heavy, and her hand shook.

"Hel…" She stopped halfway through her third attempt and slammed the phone back into its cradle. She stood and stared at it for a moment, then turned back to the note. When she did, the phone rang again. With a soft cry Katrina turned back, grabbed the phone and unsnapped the cord from its base. She heard the softer ring from the second phone in the bedroom, but she ignored it. She dropped the phone and went for the note.

She sat without looking up from the paper.

"Dear Kat,

"I couldn't leave without telling you where I've gone. If I had waited, and seen you, I couldn't have gone at all. I have to go to my mother, and I have to sort this out. There is darkness on that mountain, evil I didn't even begin to explain.
 
I will, I promised you that I would, and I will, but I can't take you into this danger. I woke up this morning from another nightmare, and if you had been there, I believe I might have hurt you. I'm caught up in something I can't escape—the only way out is through, and that is where, and why, I've gone.