Daemon of the Dark Wood (31 page)

Deal. And let the sacred cards fall where they may.

She looked up at the westering sun, the all-seeing eye of fire.

She didn’t have long to wait now.

She could feel it coming on hot summer currents, riding waves of inevitability.

“The goat-man cometh,” she whispered to the room, unable to keep a big grin off her face.

* * * *

Rourke was doing paperwork when Alice Marsh entered Gladstone’s office, saying, “I know it isn’t the end of the world …”

He gave her a puzzled look.

“Remember? You said don’t disturb you unless it’s the end of the world?”

He nodded, remembering.

“But I thought you’d want to know that two more women are missing. Marian Kemp and Charlotte Champion.”

Rourke bit his lip to keep from cursing. He wanted to set a good professional example now that he was in charge and Sheriff Gladstone’s condition was not much improved. Seeing Alice in a tight uniform tailored to show off every seductive curve of her body, his thoughts were anything but professional.

“Here are the call notes,” she said as she put two handwritten forms on the desk.

He caught a whiff of her perfume and vividly recalled the musky scent that had assaulted the search party. “Thanks,” he said.

As she headed for the door, he said, “Wait. I’ve been meaning to ask you. Have you heard any strange noises outside your home?”

“No. Just the usual noisy neighbor stuff. Why?”

He shrugged. “There’ve been reports. Some sort of weird wild animal cry.”

She studied his face a moment, then came closer, leaned her thighs against the desk and spoke in a low voice. “Rob, what really happened on the mountain this morning? The guys aren’t themselves. They’re … sheepish. They all have this whipped-dog look in their eyes and it’s like they’re afraid to speak of what happened. I mean, I know a poor man was killed by a pit bull but this is … something else.”

“When I figure it out, I’ll let you know.”

Her mouth fell into a deep frown. Her eyes misted.

“I didn’t mean to sound so snappish,” Rourke said. “Things happened up there that I can’t explain, and I just don’t know how to talk about it yet. I’m sure it’s the same for the other guys. You had to be there, you know?”

Alice nodded. “Well, if you ever want to talk about it, I’ll buy you a beer and you can give it your best shot, okay?”

“Okay. Thanks.” He tried to smile and felt as if he’d suddenly grown heavy jowls that weighted down his lips.

“You’ll find that I’m a good listener. If you ever take the time.”

“I will,” he said. “Soon as all this has blown over. I promise.”

“Good. It’s a date, then.”

“Yeah, I reckon it is.”

Pausing at the door, Alice looked back and caught him staring at her backside. She smiled, winked, and went out.

As soon as the door snicked shut, Rourke felt his face flush flame-red with shame.
Busted, you chickenshit hump
.
Thinking with your peckerhead instead of your brain. And you damn well know why. Because you’re shit scared. Because that monster on the mountain got the best of you. The rain-thing, the screechy-thing, the mind-fucking thing almost made you his bitch and you don’t know how to fight it. Because you’ve been avoiding the truth: you’re a poor excuse for a cop, much less Acting Chief. You’re clueless. Out of your league. Just sit back and lick your wounds, lick your balls, stroke yourself silly because you can’t fight this fiend with the unearthly power to control wildlife and cloud men’s minds with insane lust.

He rubbed his face with his hands, the coarse stubble bristling and reminding him he hadn’t shaved since yesterday.

“What the fuck can I do?” he asked his hands.

You could shave. Or maybe you could get it up long enough to stick it in Alice Marsh but you’re impotent when it comes to fighting the monster
.
Face it, Deputy: You’re fucked
.

He had recovered one woman—poor Sarah Melton—and Judy Lynn Bowen had escaped on her own, but both women were, in very different ways, mental casualties.

Rourke had considered calling in the FBI but hadn’t because the women hadn’t actually been kidnapped. How could he explain to a federal agent that a supernatural being was using some sort of mind-control to abduct area women? He couldn’t, not without sounding like a complete idiot or tinfoil-hat kook. The FBI was out. This was entirely Rourke’s problem. A problem he couldn’t solve. The ball was in his court but he couldn’t even see the net, much less take a shot.

He reached down and drew the pistol from his holster. He stared at it. The so-called
equalizer
. Felt the gun’s cold dumb weight.

If I could just get close enough. I could end the bastard’s reign of sick terror. Failing that, I could go out with a bang
.

The bear moved through the underbrush with agility that belied its five-hundred-pound bulk. He was ranging far from his usual territory, moving toward the place into which the sun would soon sink for its dark sleep, answering the powerful call the wind had carried to his sensitive ears before sunup.

The bear had never heard that sound before, yet it seemed familiar, resonating with internal thunder and spurring him on like thorns in his massive flanks long after the call had ceased.

He had paused in his long journey only long enough to drink from a cool stream and to eat small portions of sweet berries and tender roots. He had ignored the small female bear he encountered along the way and had gone on without mounting her.

Now he was nearing the end of his trek. He sensed his destination before he saw it. He heard the weak chattering voices of humans in the distance, just over the next rise. He caught their fleshy scents. The few times the bear had come upon men, he had slipped away unobserved, instinctively knowing that the hairless creatures were best avoided. But now something stronger than instinct drove him. It was that thorns-in-the-flanks feeling that urged him on and angered him. To overcome his fear of men, the anger bloomed into rage.

Even when the shrill noise of the shiny thing one of the men held in his hands started up, the bear did not shy away or change course. The ugly whining noise grated on his ears, infuriated him, and drew him toward the man with the noisemaker.

The bear broke cover and charged the man making the offending noise.

* * * *

Liza Leatherwood sat slightly slumped in the passenger’s seat of the professor’s sporty little car and held her breath as the tree man touched the chainsaw’s speeding belt of teeth to the bark of the haunted tree. Thorn and the two boys from the college were standing about twenty paces behind the man with the chainsaw.

Liza had seen many a tree felled in her time. Before Wilbur died, she’d watched him take down three pine trees behind their house with his new chainsaw, so she knew how it was done. She knew the tree man would cut a huge pie-slice wedge out of the trunk in the direction he wanted the tree to fall and then when enough of the trunk was sawn away he would cut through on the opposite side of the tree and then stand back and let gravity finish the job.

“Lord, I hope this works,” she said, her words unheard over the chainsaw’s racket.

The spirits trapped in the tree had told her it would work. The ghosts of Wilbur and Asa had lingered long enough to facilitate her communication with the imprisoned spirits, otherwise she probably wouldn’t have been able to receive the otherworldly message.

The message was clear enough. One of the original wild women had planted the seed given her by the dark man of the wood in this unhallowed ground, and from that seed this cursed tree hand sprung. As long as the tree stood, the souls of the slaughtered men would remain imprisoned. Take the tree down and their souls would at last be freed, and their righteous rage would be strong enough to drive the goatish god away and break his supernatural hold over the current inhabitants of this hill country. As far-fetched as it seemed to her, Liza had to believe in the hard-won wisdom of the spirit world; she had to believe it would work.

She prayed that it would.

The sun’s shadows were growing long, and she shielded her eyes with her hand because the bright rays hurt her tired eyes. In the ear with the punctured drum, the chainsaw sounded like the buzzing of a mosquito.

She blinked her eyes. She squinted behind her bifocals. What was that coming out of the woods? At first she thought it was another devil dog, but as it charged clear of the underbrush and trees she saw the thing for what it was: a huge bear!

Transfixed by the terrible beauty of the great lumbering beast, she sat frozen in a long moment of pure awe. Then a harsh shudder ran down her spine and the spell was broken.

The others hadn’t yet seen the black beast. She shouted a warning but no one could hear her above the chainsaw’s steady whine.

She threw open the door and half-stumbled out of the car.

The bear was coming up on the professor’s left, gaining speed as it ran toward the haunted tree. Liza knew then that the goat-man demon had sent the bear to prevent the felling of the tree. She knew this as sure as she knew her own name. As sure as God created Heaven and Earth.

She ran with one arm outstretched toward Thorn. Her clunky shoes and arthritic bones made her movements painfully awkward. She wasn’t running, she was
shambling
, doing the Old Folks’ Shuffle as if on wooden legs and locked ankle joints. Her heart was a fluttering hummingbird trapped in her chest, wings beating in panicked desperation.

The black bear was less than five yards away from Thorn and the two boys. Liza shouted, “Hey!”

Professor Thorn turned his head her way just in time to see her stumble and fall to the hard ground. Her head landed on her outstretched arm, knocking her bifocals off her face.

What she saw from down there was a maddening blur of violent motion colored with heartbreaking splashes of blood.

* * * *

When Thorn saw Mrs. Leatherwood trip and fall, he immediately started toward her, to help her up. He hoped her brittle bones weren’t broken. People her age often died of medical complications resulting from broken hips and such. Her face was a scrunched-up mask of wrinkles, eyes wide, mouth working soundlessly.

As Thorn dropped to one knee beside her, Todd Beasley flew into the edge of his field of vision, tumbling through the air as if doing an acrobatic cartwheel in the sky, a rooster-tail of blood growing from his head.

Thorn turned and saw a giant bear charging toward Carl the Tip Top Tree man. Wearing protective goggles and a yellow hardhat, Carl was bent to his work with the chainsaw and didn’t see the massive beast bearing down on him.

Thorn shouted a futile warning. Then he remembered the pistol under his belt. He drew the .45 and took quick aim at the bear’s enormous hindquarters.

He fired just as the bear plowed into Carl and knocked the man to the ground with stunning force. The chainsaw hit the ground and chewed dirt as it sputtered and died.

Thorn fired again as the bear swatted a big paw at Carl’s head and shoulders. Then Thorn was walking toward the black-furred beast, firing shot after shot into its flanks and ass.

The bear roared as it turned toward Thorn. It was the most terrifying sound he’d ever heard. It communicated all the rage of the animal kingdom. It said:
I’m going to rip your flesh apart and crush your bones in my teeth!
It said:
I’m going to devour you in all your parts and shit your sorry remains in the dirt!

“Kill it!” the Leatherwood woman yelled.

“Jesus Christ!” blurted Jason Darby. Then he threw down his shovel and ran toward the Toyota pickup.

Carl the tree man’s head hung at an odd angle, partially detached from his neck. The bear’s claws had easily ripped through the man’s flesh, severing tendons and blood vessels but missing the vertebrae. Carl’s eyes were wide open and still blinking, as if his head didn’t know it was living on borrowed time now, effectively estranged from its body.

The bear’s close-set beady eyes locked on Thorn. It let loose another terrible roar and then came lumbering toward him, gaining speed and quickly eating up the meager distance separating Thorn from a grisly death.

* * * *

Marlene Tew was already exhausted. Her feet hurt, her lower back was achy, and she was getting a booger of a headache. And the busiest hours lay ahead of her. The Trucking-A was a popular stop, not just for truckers but for motorists in general and even for the locals who wanted a tasty meal in homey surroundings. What this meant for Marlene and the Trucking-A’s other waitresses was hour after hour of fast-paced table hopping, modest tips and few opportunities to slip out back for a cigarette or to collapse in a chair and put your feet up.

This afternoon the boss had called Marlene in to cover Karla’s evening shift because Karla hadn’t shown up, hadn’t even called in sick. It wasn’t like Karla to not show up without calling in, and Marlene was concerned for her old friend and co-worker, but the job kept her too busy to do much worrying. She had her designated tables to work, and it was her practice to never get behind, never to let the orders pile up on you. That was the only way to keep from getting worn to a frazzle in this job. Keep up! Stay ahead of the curve.
Never
get behind the curve. She didn’t exactly understand what that phrase meant,
behind the curve
, so she’d given it her own interpretation. Like a NASCAR driver, you wanted to stay ahead of the pack if you wanted to win the race. Behind a curve in the track, with other cars ahead of you, was where you didn’t ever want to be.

Right now she was ahead of the curve. It was too early for the supper crowd. There were thirteen diners, mostly men, except for a family of vacationers on their way to Florida, and most of the men were truckers. Sometimes Marlene would see a female trucker but not that often.

Of course, it was a damn site easier to keep up on the nightshift, and having worked all night last night, she hadn’t had her usual allotment of sleep—and no unwind-time at all—before having to put on a fresh pink uniform and return for the extra shift. So she was already exhausted.