Hallowed (40 page)

It was coming up on twelve noon, but as I drove slowly up the gravel road, the maples that crowded around me cast such dense shadows that it felt unconsciously like evening to me.  This only added to my tension.  Having the sun go down on me in this foreign world, only made me more anxious.

I had been holding my cell phone for the last half hour, hoping for the slightest signal, when it suddenly began to ring in my hand.  The ID showed “Dad-Cell,” as I flipped it open.  Pressing it up against my ear, I strained to hear a ring, but there was nothing.  There was one lonely bar on the display.

“Paul!” the sound that exploded from the phone, caused me to hit the brakes involuntarily.  It’s a good thing that I did, too, because I must have found the only good signal for miles by sheer accident in this exact spot.

“Dad, I’m here!”

There was a dropout before I heard.  “…on our way!”

“Listen, Dad, I don’t have much time,” I exclaimed.  “I need to tell you how to find to the road to the house.  About a quarter of a mile from the water tower down Farm Road 3165, there’s a gate on the left.  You got that?”

I could hear a patchy voice.  “… headed there…”  then a moment later, “…water tower…”

Suddenly, a blood-chilling shriek came through the phone, a sound so crystal clear that it sounded like whatever had produced it was inside the car with me.  I dropped the phone to the seat and stared at in it shock.  When I got the courage to pick it up again, there was not one signal bar and after repeated attempts at calling Dad back, I finally gave up.

The three hours I had spent driving had only given me time to think about what I would do when I actually found this place.  If our suspicions were correct and Graham was here, I would have to defend myself and the gun Dad had given me for that purpose was probably sitting in the evidence locker at the Sheriff’s Department.

The closest thing I had to a weapon now was a simple utility knife that I kept in my glove compartment.  It was similar to a Swiss army knife in that it had tools such as a screwdriver, a serrated blade, and a set of pliers.  Although quite sharp, I had the distinct impression I was bringing this particular knife to a gun fight where it would do little good.  Despite, feeling a little naked, I still had its blade unsheathed and lying on the seat next to my right hand, just in case.

After about twenty minutes, the ride became a little rougher as I felt an occasional large bump and heard a few popping sounds beneath my tires.  Looking around, I realized that the maples had been supplanted by apple trees, and I was leaving sauce in my car’s wake.

The apple orchard.

I was close now.

Could he hear my engine?

I killed it and rolled my window down.  Taking a look up the darkened trail, I could see only as far as the next bank in the road about a hundred feet ahead.

I looked back and realized that I could be making a mistake by leaving the car blocking the road this way, but unfortunately, there was no room to pull aside or even turn around.  It was either forward or backward at this point.

Hesitantly, I grabbed my keys, snatched the knife off the seat, and climbed out.  Walking around to the trunk, I glanced inside at the contents: a dirty beach towel, a red rag streaked with motor oil, a bottled water, a can of window cleaner, a couple of water-swollen composition books, a yellowing Asimov paperback, a couple of empty CD cases, and a roadside emergency kit that I had entirely forgotten that I had owned.

Unzipping the kit, my eye fell on a mini first aid kit, a roll of black electrical tap, and flashlight inside.  Tucking the tape into my pocket, I grabbed the flashlight and flicked the switch expectantly.  Nothing.  I shook it and tried it again.  Nada.

I unscrewed the bottom and dropped the two “C” cells into my palm, one that had started to corrode.  Ah, there’s the problem.  I scrubbed the acid and white crust from the battery and the contact points within the plastic tube and popped them back inside.  Saying a quick prayer, I tried the switch again.

A dim light shown from its bulb.

Paranoid of the little life that must be left I snapped it off and dropped it back into the kit.  I zipped the bottled water into the emergency kit and tucked the kit beneath my arm.  Thinking: “You never know,” I threw the dirty towel over my shoulder and tucked the oily rag in my back pocket.

I closed the trunk and started forward.  As an afterthought, I turned back and put the keys back into the ignition.  Better that whoever came after me had the means to move the car out of the way and get through to me.

I walked slowly up the road straining my ears to hear something, anything at all.  For all intents and purposes, it was a typical Hill Country day in Texas.  Birds chirped and flittered about from tree to tree.  Occasionally, a bold one would dive bomb my head, and once I heard a high-pitched squeal and realized that not all of these tiny airborne shapes were birds.  I knew there were a good many bats out in this area, though typically they didn’t start coming out until after dark, unless they had been disturbed by something.  Though, the answer to what might disturb a normally nocturnal creature lay somewhere up ahead, further along this road.

About ten minutes later, the gravel road cleared the tree-line.  I stopped and stood in the shady border, staring at a dilapidated barn sitting in a field of knee-high wild grass.  The road ended there at that structure.  Beyond that I could see nothing more than trees.  The barn itself looked abandoned.

A barn, I thought?  I never saw a barn in any of my dreams.

I stood there for a few minutes waiting for insight, keeping an eye out for any activity.  There was none.

I tried my cell phone again, hoping that now that I was out in the open, I might be able to sneak in a little quality time with my father.

No signal.

I’m really alone now, I thought with trepidation.  There will be no one to back me up if I run into trouble.

It’s just a gardener’s barn, I told myself.  At some point, someone must have cared for the orchard and that’s where they probably stored the tools.  From the look of it, though, a few years had passed since there had been anything approaching care taken with the place.  Casting one last look over my shoulder, I strode forward to the barn.

I pulled open the door, the rusted hinges giving a scream of protest, causing my blood to run cold.  The sunlight cut through the dust clouds to expose a white truck inside, lines of sunlight streaming through the spaces between the planks of the back wall and creating a striped pattern on the aluminum cover over its bed.

I pulled it open further still, allowing as much light as possible to pour in.  Except for the truck, it was completely empty.  I crept around the side and glanced through the passenger side window.  The cab was empty.

I started to open the door to examine the interior more thoroughly, when my eyes were drawn to the covered bed.  I asked myself if I really thought the victims shared the cab with him.

You need to look back there, I told myself.

I stepped around to the rear and set the kit I held on the bumper.  My eyes were drawn to the ground below and I noticed a small set of tire tracks disappearing beneath the truck.  When Graham had arrived, there had been a smaller vehicle here and he’d taken it.  Judging from the size of the tracks, it was a single man four wheeler.  I looked back over my shoulder and realized that I had missed twin depressions in the high grass leading out from the barn.

Turning back to the bed cover, I ignored my fear and lifted the heavy aluminum cover.  Sunlight exposed an empty interior.  Spotlessly clean.

Had I expected blood?  Torn clothing?  What else had I expected from someone as meticulous as Nathan Graham had turned out to be?

I was just about to turn away when a slight change in my position caused the sunlight to reflect off something metallic, something shiny, in the center of the plastic bed liner.  I lowered the tailgate and hopped up into the interior of the bed where I was well aware that four unconscious—almost assuredly dead--human beings had all too recently lain.

Five, a voice inside me corrected.  Five unconscious, almost assuredly dead human beings.  No, she’s alive, I countered.  But once I had crawled forward on my hands and knees into the bed and recognized the object laying there, my heart sank.  I felt doubt for the first time.

It was a single tiny skull.  A charm from Claudia’s bracelet.

I snatched it up greedily and spun around expecting an attack that never arrived.

“What did you do with her?” I growled and the sound of my own voice in the confined space sent my heart into triple time.

Suddenly, the cell phone in my pocket began to vibrate and a second later, I heard the tune I most associated with Claudia.  I thrust myself out of the truck bed and yanked the phone from my pocket, praying in vain to hear her voice.

“Hello, Paul.”

“Tell me where she is, Nathan?” I asked in as measured a voice as I could muster, as my white-knuckled fist clutched the charm.  I heard in some TV crime show that you were supposed to use proper names when dealing with people like Graham.  Proper names were supposed to elicit feeling of identification with the other by implying a relationship. 

“Relax,
Paul
. 
Claudia’s
being a real good girl for me,” the familiar voice replied sardonically.  “I could have finished both of you there in
Patricia’s
kitchen, but I didn’t.”

“Why not?” I growled, my patience reaching its limits.  “I was unconscious.  Why didn’t you kill me?”

There was silence on the other end, and for a moment, I thought I detected another voice, a hissing sort of whisper, like a breeze through a field of reeds.  Then Graham’s voice, spoke up again.  “Are the other three with you?”

A thousand responses came into my head simultaneously.  Should I try and deceive him?  Could the discovery then endanger Claudia’s life?  I couldn’t take any chances.

“I’m alone.”

“I know that already, but I’m glad we’ve decided to be honest with each other.  It’ll make things much easier that way.”

“Now that I’m here, will you let her go?” I asked him, the pleading tone in my voice impossible to hide.

Again, I distinctly heard that disembodied whisper, like gas escaping from a leaky pipe, then Graham responded in a flattened monotone, “You’re not the one they want.”

The phone’s display went black.

I tried to redial.  No signal.

Dropping the useless phone back into my pocket with the charm, I snatched the kit from the bumper and rushed out of the barn.

I followed the four-wheeler tire tracks up a path that led past the barn and continued through the apple orchard with no end in sight.  Up ahead, there were a line of four-by-four foot wooden crates on the path, spaced evenly about every ten yards or so.

The bats had become more numerous now, most of them darting in the same general direction I was headed.  This only added to the unnaturalness I felt all around me.  Though I was in a huge living orchard, surrounded by fruit-producing trees, something felt artificial and wrong.  There was an overwhelming feeling of having trespassed.  It was more than a feeling.  Several times I glanced into the tree line, thinking that I was in the presence of another.  This compulsion only grew stronger as I got closer and closer to my destination.

Then suddenly, I came through the orchard and found myself at a quaint wooden bridge—one of a pair—that spanned a narrow man-made pond of which the water lay still and stagnant.  Connecting the two bridges, a gazebo stood on a small island in the center of the pond.

Another craggy stone hill rose just in front of me with a set of steps leading upwards about fifty feet up a sheer rock face.  From this distance, I could also see a thin ledge winding its way steadily up and around the rocky exterior like an ancient wheelchair ramp.  It looked just wide enough to support a four wheeled vehicle.

I marveled at the lengths Robert Folliott had gone to keep the public at a distance.  I had read that he was something of a recluse, which would explain the lack of a road connecting to the house—rumor was that he got around his other estate in Austin via golf carts and other motorized vehicles--but what it didn’t explain was why he used to give extravagant parties there.

I stepped up to the foot of the pond and looked down.  As murky as a swamp, the black water was a virtual mosquito breeding ground.  The wide dead eye of a coy fish stared at me from where it lay atop the stagnant surface.