Dark Hollow (15 page)

“Man,” Cory mumbled. “I ain’t drunk enough to understand any of this. Where’d you guys put my beer?”

Dale ignored him. “No dens isn’t even his real name. That’s what the Romans called him, because to say his real name out loud was to invite certain death and destruction. Most cultures just called him ‘He Who Shall Not Be Named.’ He pops up, in different guises, across Roman, Greek, Byzantine, and Sumerian legend. Always in connection to this labyrinth place—where satyrs are also said to originally come from.”

Merle scratched his head. “So No dens is a satyr, too? You said they were gods of the woods? If that’s so, then what are these satyrs doing hanging out in a maze?”

Dale shook his head. “I’m not sure. And I don’t think No dens is actually a satyr, either. It sounds like he could take any form he wanted. Smoke. Fire. A child. A satyr. Anything. But according to at least one Sumerian myth, all of the old gods originally came from this labyrinth.”

I sensed that we were getting off on a theological track, and turned the conversation back to the inscription. “This carving is similar to the one we found, but I still don’t understand how this helps us right now.”

“I thought you might say that,” Dale said, smiling. “So I drew this.”

He held up a sheet of paper. On it he’d transcribed the inscription we’d seen on the stone marker in the forest.

“Look at it again,” he told us, “using the inscription on the museum’s pillar as a guide.”

We studied the paper closely. The last two lines were exactly the same, but the first two were different.

I pointed. “This first line. It starts with ‘Devom,’ just like the one from themuseum. And ends with ‘Labyrinthi.’ ”

“Is that Latin for ‘labyrinth’?” Merle asked.

“You’d think so,” Dale said. “But it’s not. The person who carved our stone didn’t know Latin, but faked it anyway. Like if Cliff tried to pick up a girl in Spanish, and only knew ‘
Qué pasa
,’ but tried to speak it beyond that.”

Grinning, Cliff leaned back in his chair and exhaled smoke. “
Chinga tu madre
, motherfucker. I’ve banged plenty of Spanish chicks.”

“Then you’ve done your part to bridge the cultural divide.” Dale flashed him the finger. “I’m guessing that whoever carved our stone meant ‘labyrinth,’ but didn’t know Latin, so they fudged it. A farmer or logger, maybe—somebody with a high school education.”

I took a swig of Cory’s beer. “Any guesses as to who that person was?”

“Look at the second line,” Dale said. “You tell me. I want to make sure that I’m not jumping to conclusions here.”

I traced the second line with my finger. “NLEHORN-POSSVIT”

“I don’t see anything but gibberish,” Merle admitted.

“Me either,” Cliff said.

Cory belched.

I stared at the letters, running them around in my head. And then it dawned on me.

“ ‘N LEHORN.’ Nelson LeHorn. He made the stone marker we found?”

Dale nodded. “I think so.”

“Jesus Christ…” Merle’s jaw went slack.

Dale’s voice was low. “To the great god of the labyrinth, Nelson LeHorn has erected this pillar on account of the marriage which he saw beneath the shade.”

“What marriage?” Cory asked. “And seriously, where did you guys put my beer?”

None of us answered him. We stared at the inscription, not speaking. A hush seemed to have fallen over the neighborhood. There was no traffic on Main Street, and the houses around us were silent, no televisions blaring or children playing or parents hollering. A cloud passed over the moon, and the backyard grew darker.

The bug light on Dale’s garage crackled loudly, and I jumped in my seat.

“Okay,” Merle said. “The old man made it. But why?”

“Because he was fucking crazy,” Cliff sneered. “LeHorn killed his wife, man. He was a frigging witch.”

Cory leaned forward in his seat and reached for the ice chest. Dale closed the cooler’s lid before Cory could get a beer.

“I think he summoned the satyr,” Dale continued. “Nelson LeHorn worked black powwow, but first and foremost he was a farmer. Maybe he brought it here, asked it to bless the planting season or help him breed his livestock or something.”

“Then how did it end up a statue?” I asked. “And if it was out there in the woods all this time, why hasn’t anybody ever seen it before this?”

“Maybe the forest has been protecting it,” Merle guessed. “Until Shelly came along. All of this started on the first day of spring, right? Maybe the time was right for it to wake up again.”

I thought it over. As I said earlier, our town had always had a secret reputation for being randy in the spring. Maybe the satyr struggled to break free from his stone prison every year. Maybe he called to the townspeople when we were feeling horny. Maybe he’d even been calling to Becky and me back in 1987, when we’d gone parking.

I shivered. “That still doesn’t explain how it ended up a statue in the first place.”

Dale sighed. “There’s a lot we still have to figure out. But we know enough. The question is, what do we do with it? Should we tell Detective Ramirez?”

“Hell, yes,” I said, and reached in my pocket for my cell phone. “Let’s get him over here right now.”

“So he can arrest us all?” Merle cracked his knuckles. “Shit, Adam—this morning I still thought Paul was behind this. Now I know the truth, and I still realize how fucking crazy it all sounds. What makes you think Ramirez will believe us?”

“He’s got to,” I insisted. “He’s a cop. It’s his job to protect people. To track down any lead, no matter how bizarre. And besides, if we all stick together he’ll have to take us more seriously.” take us more seriously.”

Cory hiccuped. “I say we call the cops. Tell this Ramirez dude what time it is.”

Dale rubbed his forehead, looking aggravated with Cory. “Your vote is duly noted.”

“No offense, guys.” Cliff snuffed out his cigarette and stood up. “But I don’t believe any of this shit. And if the cop asks me, that’s exactly what I’m going to tell him.”

“How can you say that?” I asked. “You’ve seen the proof. The fucking hoofprint is right over there beneath my window. Take a look.”

“Doesn’t prove a thing.” Cliff shrugged. “For all we know it could have been a deer, wandered in from the woods. Do I believe you saw something? Sure. But it wasn’t some half man, half goat. That’s fairy-tale shit, Adam. The same fairy tales that Dale’s been reading to us tonight.”

“What about the stone?” Merle reminded him. “It’s just like the one in themuseum. How do you explain that?”

“I can’t explain it because I haven’t seen it,” Cliff said. “Let’s go look right now. You guys show me the one you found. Then maybe I’ll change my mind.”

He glanced from Merle to Dale to me. All three of us turned away.

“I’m not going back into those woods,” I muttered. “Not tonight.”

Merle shook his head. “Me neither.”

Cliff looked at Dale expectantly. “How about you? Want to show me this stone?”

Dale stared at his feet. “Not now, not after dark. Tomorrow, when it’s light…”

Swaying, Cory stumbled to his feet. “Shit, I’ll go with you, Cliff. Just give me a beer for the road.”

“You’ve had enough, kiddo,” Merle said, gently forcing him to sit back down.

Cory sagged back into the seat, pouting. “You guys treat me like I’m in fucking high school.”

I stood and squeezed Cliff’s shoulder. “Listen, man. We’re friends, right? Not just neighbors, but friends?”

“Sure we are.” He reached up and squeezed my hand. “You know that, brother.”

“I’m worried about Tara,” I told him. “Dale’s worried about Claudine. Can’t you try to believe this, just for us?”

Cliff was silent for a moment. He walked over to my yard, stared down at the impression in the grass, and then turned back toward us.

“I’m sorry, but I just don’t see it. Looks like a regular old deer print to me, and that’s all. You guys are scared. I understand that. Shit, the whole fucking town’s scared. Somebody is running around kidnapping women. But that somebody ain’t the goat man, and if you tell that to the cops, they’ll lock you up in the cell they’ve got reserved for Paul Legerski. They’ll treat you the same way they treat these guys that look for Bigfoot and flying saucers. You’ll be laughingstocks, and every disc jockey and late-night talk-show host in the country will be making fun of you by this time tomorrow night.”

He paused, lit another cigarette, and then continued. “Are we friends? Hell, yes, Adam. You guys are some of the best friends I have. And I don’t want to see any of that shit happen to you. But I ain’t gonna bullshit you either, just because it’s what you want to hear. You want me to tell you I believe in satyrs and musical flutes and that a crazy old farmer summoned up a demon from hell—I’ll tell you that, man. I’ll stand here and say it out loud. But that don’t mean I believe it, and I sure as hell ain’t gonna repeat it to no cop.”

“Okay,” I said, defeated. My shoulders slumped. “I understand.”

Dale nodded. “We all do.”

After that Cliff said good night and went inside, taking Cory along with him. Cory leaned against his shoulder, babbling drunkenly about satyrs and serial killers and how none of us ever took him seriously. Cliff helped him into his apartment and then went upstairs to his own.

“Well.” Dale sighed. “That didn’t go as well as I’d hoped.”

Merle sat back down at the table. “I hate to say it, but Cliff’s right. I mean, what have we got, really, other than a rock with some weird writing on it out in the middle of the woods? Some pictures of a similar stone in a museum across the ocean, and hoofprints in the yard. That’s it.”

“What about Big Steve’s reaction, and the police dog’s?” I began peeling the label off my beer. “Or how we all got erections when we heard the flute?”

“The dogs got scared and we got erections. It still doesn’t prove anything. Ramirez will think we’re a pack of idiots. Even if he does decide to humor us, all he’ll have are more questions.”

“For which we don’t have any answers,” Dale said. “You’re right.”

“What about LeHorn’s family?” I asked. “You guys know how to contact them? Maybe they could fill in the blanks for us.”

Merle shook his head. “His son is doing time upstate. We could see him in prison, but since we’re not cops we’d have to write him first, have him put us on his visitor’s list. That could take months.”

“Claudia moved to Idaho after her mom was killed,” Dale said. “I don’t know her married name.”

“Neither do I,” I admitted. “And her little sister, Gina, is teaching school somewhere in New York. I have no idea where, though.”

“I could look her up on the Internet,” Dale suggested. “See if we can find a phone number or an address.”

“No.” Frustrated, I lit a cigarette, the last one in the pack. “It’ll take too long. While we’re trying to track them down, how many more women will go missing? And even if we do find them, how do we know they’ll talk? The girls have tried to get as far away from this town as they can. It’s pretty obvious they don’t want anything to do with their old man.”

Dale frowned. “Can’t say that I blame them.”

Frowning, Merle slapped at a gnat. “So how about this? First thing tomorrow morning we get some hunting rifles and go into those woods and track that satyr son of a bitch down ourselves. Mount him on the fucking wall.”

“No,” I said. “We don’t know where he is, for one. Those woods are huge, and a lot of it is private property. We can’t just go traipsing through it. And remember, the trees tried to hide the hollow from us. They could be doing the same thing with the satyr.”

“Yeah,” Dale agreed. “And while a thirty-aught-six might bring down a satyr, it’s not going to do much against an oak tree.”

“You really think that could happen?” I asked. “I mean, we know theymove. But could they actually attack us?”

“I don’t want to find out,” Dale said. “Unless I’m armed with a chain saw, and even then I’d prefer not to learn the hard way.”

“Guess you’re right,” Merle admitted. “Shit, we don’t even know if a deer rifle would hurt this thing. It was a statue before Shelly brought it to life.”

I took a long drag off my cigarette, watching the tip glow in the darkness. “If LeHorn really did summon this satyr from elsewhere, then conventional weapons might not work on it. But we don’t know for sure. Just another question to which we need the answer.”

“So again,” Merle asked, “how do we find out?”

I exhaled, watching the smoke curl between us. “We go to LeHorn’s Hollow. First thing tomorrow morning we drive out there to the house and look around.”

Merle’s eyebrow twitched. “For what?”

“Answers.” I shrugged. “I don’t know—books, notes, LeHorn’s copy of
The Long Lost Friend
. Anything that helps us to understand what it is we’re dealing with.”

“The LeHorn place is a crime scene,” Dale reminded me. “Surely the police confiscated everything during the murder investigation.”

“Nelson LeHorn threw his wife out of their attic window. If the cops took stuff, it would be related to the murder itself. They wouldn’t bother with crap about satyrs. They’d think it was just nonsense.”

The night sky grew darker, and the wind picked up.

“It’s going to rain,” Dale said.

Merle rocked backward in his chair and appraised the sky. “You really think it’s that simple, Adam? That we’ll find a book called
The Care and Feeding of Satyrs
?”

I dropped my cigarette butt into an empty beer bottle. “You believe in magic, Merle?”

He blinked. “You mean like powwow? Sure. I told you, my grandma did it.”

“So did my great-grandmother. How about ghosts? You believe in them?”

“Well…” He paused. “Yeah, I do. Sometimes I think my place might be haunted. Supposedly a guy died there during the Civil War.”

The leaves rustled overhead, and for a second I wondered if the trees in our yard could move like the ones in the woods. A single cold raindrop splattered on my head. I ignored it.

“So you believe in the supernatural?” I continued. “You believe that LeHorn’s Hollow is haunted, and that whatever forces are at work in there have spread out into the rest of the forest?”