October Skies (42 page)

Trusted him.

Lance placed his hand back on her thigh once more. ‘But look, it’s just a quick assessment in a bar. And shit, I’ve had a couple of beers.’ He shrugged casually and flashed her a mischievous smile. ‘My mind’s on other things here. Ain’t going to be a hundred per cent accurate, you know?’

‘Yes.’ She smiled. ‘I suppose you’re right.’

His hand wandered a little too far along her thigh in the wrong direction and she gently grabbed a hold of it and squeezed.

‘Look, uh . . . Lance,’ she said awkwardly, ‘you’re a gorgeous guy and I’m sure you break hearts right across the state, and I’ve really been enjoying talking to you . . .’

His friendly grin slackened a little. ‘But?’

‘But . . .’ She nodded. ‘I don’t want to come back with you tonight.’ She forced a rueful smile onto her lips. ‘If that’s all right.’

He sighed. ‘Shit, that’s a kicker.’

She guessed by the look on his perfectly chiselled face that being knocked back wasn’t an experience he was too familiar with. She felt the slightest pang of guilt for exploiting the boy’s hormones and despite Lance’s chivalrous protest, she settled the bar tab.

She thanked him for a lovely evening, wandered out of the bar to where her car was parked, and decided she was more than sober enough to drive back to Blue Valley. All the while, she was wondering about the seed of doubt the young man had inadvertently placed in her head.

 

They’ll be coming for us some time today. That’s what Keats has been saying to the others. I can’t help but think he is right. There are some - Mr Weyland and Mr Bowen - who have been arguing that we should all do as Preston demanded and leave immediately. But Keats said to do so would mean freezing to death. Instead of leaving, we are preparing to defend ourselves. Keats assures us that with a small enough space to defend, we could hold them off indefinitely.

The morning has been spent by every available hand ripping apart our sorry cluster of shelters and using the materials to build a small enclave, a barricade of branches and wood ripped from what remains of our wagons.

Which begs the question . . . what shall we sleep in tonight?

 

The air had been thick with heavy, tumbling snowflakes, jostling each other on the way down throughout the morning and reducing visibility to no more than a few dozen yards. It was letting up now, the downfall little more than sporadic dust motes, and the sky above them showed teasing glimpses of cerulean blue.

Once more they could see to the far side of the clearing.

Ben studied the crowd of people gathered around the other campfire and listened to the murmured chant of prayer.

If he could see them, then surely they could see the frantic activity going on here. Ben was surprised they had been left alone to build a stronghold in plain sight. He wondered if Preston was simply being very shrewd - watching them pull apart their shelters so all he had to do was wait. By tomorrow morning they’d be nothing more than two dozen frozen statues inside their hastily erected barricade, exposed, as they now were, to the elements. Once the sun went down, they would suffer the bitter, freezing night unprotected.

As he watched, the prayer meeting finally began to dissolve as people got to their feet and groups, families, meandered back to their shelters for warmth. Many of their faces - from this distance, no more than pale ovals framed by tightly wrapped shawls, dark beards or bundled scarves - peered furtively their way. He could feel their suspicion and anger wafting over the icy no-man’s-land towards them like a toxic cloud.

He wondered what Preston’s words throughout the morning had turned them into. A vengeful crowd? A lynch mob?

Behind him, leaning against their frail, waist-high barricade of stacked branches and lumber, he heard Keats frantically barking orders to the others as they - men, women and even the youngest children - worked industriously to finish shoring up their defences.

‘What do you see, Lambert?’

Keats had entrusted the watching of Preston’s people to Ben, whom he considered to be the keenest pair of eyes in their group.

‘The meeting’s broken up and they’re dispersing . . . for now.’

Preston’s people filtered away into their various shelters, leaving a few clusters of men brandishing guns and staring back at them. He scanned the men for sight of Preston. Even now, he wondered whether a last-minute dash across the empty ground between them and a plea at his feet for common sense and mercy to prevail would sway the man and allow them all to weather this ordeal together.

Of course not.

His eyes finally picked out the tall, slender figure of Preston. As the others clambered back inside for warmth and shelter, he pushed his way through knee-deep drifts towards the edge of the clearing, walking beneath the big cedar tree from which Vander had been dangling this morning and stepped up the incline. His head was lowered, abstracted in thought and prayer or perhaps internal debate; Ben could visualise the bloodshot and dilated eyes, the numerous little tics in his face, and skin slick with sweat . . . very much his last close-up recollection of the man. He climbed the gentle slope and without a moment’s hesitation or any apparent fear for what might be out there in the woods, he disappeared amidst the thick tree line of snow-laden spruces.

‘Where are you going?’ Ben whispered to himself.

Ben looked down at his journal and for the first time realised how much the cold seeping into his aching hand affected his writing; or perhaps it was fear of what was to come. The jagged lines struggled illegibly across the page in a slant descending towards the bottom, the diluted ink spreading and blotting, making his words look uncontrolled like the scrawl of a child. Undeterred, he continued, his pen scratching dryly across the page, guided by fingers numb and struggling to hold the pen.

 

I believe I’m right in thinking now that it was Preston who killed the Dreytons. I had harboured a suspicion for a while that it might have been Vander. But clearly the butcher’s blade was not held by him. Preston, I suspect, is the kind of man who can kill with brutal efficiency, and bury awful deeds behind the most compelling façade. He is a powerful man, powerful in his hold over those who follow him. That kind of man is dangerous. But what makes him a magnitude more terrifying is that he is also afraid. A man like that will do anything.

Did Emily see this man carve her brother and mother to pieces, like a shop butcher?

Ben looked down at his journal, at the childish marks his stiff hand was making. He suspected the scribbled lines would make sense to no one else. At the end of the last line, the pen’s nib running dry had scratched a groove into the paper, the last few words etched rather than written. He shakily dipped his nib one last time in the diluted dregs of the inkpot - now no more than a ring of dirty blue water that settled in the rim at the bottom of the pot.

 

Keats is right. Tonight they will come for us. But I believe he’s wrong to think we stand a chance.

 

The pen scratched dry on the paper again. He shook the pen to dislodge the last droplet held in the nib.

 

There’s ink for no more. That’s it. If none of us survive this night, let it be known it was no demon in a spiritual sense that did for us . . . just the madman William Preston. I am sure of it.

 

He closed the leather-bound book and placed it in the small travel trunk on the ground beside him. He had dragged that out, along with his other meagre possessions, just before his shelter had been pulled apart for its materials. From within the trunk he took out the photographic portrait of himself and his mother, taken the day before he set sail for the Americas. For a moment he caressed the plate with his fingers.

‘Sorry, Mother.’

He suspected he wouldn’t be bringing this book home for her to read and The Times to publish, after all. He put the photograph back in, snapped the lid shut and locked it.

Keats called across to him. ‘You keepin’ a watch, Lambert?’

Ben stirred, aware that he had momentarily abandoned his duty. He turned to look across the clearing. ‘Their meeting’s over. They’ve mostly headed back to their shelters.’

He looked again at them, bemused that their efforts at building a defence were not being prevented. Half a dozen faces watched them from afar, guns at hand. The snow falling this morning had disguised what they were up to; the noises might have been construed as the sound of them packing up. But now, with an unburdened sky, and clear air between them, Preston’s men looked on. They—

His train of thought stopped dead in its tracks.

Disguise.

‘Where’s Preston?’ Keats called out, but Ben ignored him.

Oh my God - a disguise.

He recalled Mrs Rutherford’s faltering description - a description Preston had clearly wanted his people to hear. A description that sounded terrifying coming from the woman’s trembling lips.

Made of bones.

‘Lambert? If you ain’t watchin’ you can give us a goddamn hand!’ Keats called impatiently, as he, Bowen, Hussein and Weyland pulled the remnants of a wagon chassis out of a bank of hardened snow.

A disguise. There would be proof of it, surely?

In that moment, Ben was convinced that evidence of Preston’s bloody guilt would be up in the hills, in that place, evidence everywhere: blood-spattered tools, clothes, drips and smears over the snow, screaming out his guilt as loudly as it stained darkly. It was Preston who had decided unequivocally that the trapper’s shelter be left well alone.

My God . . . yes!

Ben stood up and reached for his gun.

Keats looked on, confused. ‘Lambert?’

He didn’t want to stop and explain what he was up to. There wasn’t time. He had seen Preston head into the trees and could only imagine the insane bastard was on his way up to the trapper’s place to ready his appearance. Darkness was coming soon and he could imagine Preston appearing with the twilight, as the avenging angel of an enraged God, exhorting those frightened people of his to attack them. Eric Vander’s body would be fresh in their minds; the likeness of themselves, their loved ones, their children, superimposed on the man’s contorted face.

I can stop this.

He strode quickly across the small, enclosed space of their stronghold and clambered over the rear wall of their pitiful barricade, keeping low as he scuttled away across the clearing, to avoid being spotted by any of Preston’s men watching from the far side.

‘Lambert!’ Keats called after him. ‘Where the fuck are you goin’?’

Ben reached the tree line and glanced back. It appeared that his scuttling departure had gone unnoticed by the distant men. Keats, however, was shouting all manner of colourful profanities at Ben for running away like a coward.

He looked up at the thick mesh of fir branches and the rising incline of the ground, dark and forbidding in the deep shadows of such a pale and lifeless afternoon, and reassured himself again: There’re no demons or angels out there - just a madman.

That wasn’t the comforting thought he’d hoped it might be.

He crawled up into the tree line. A few moments later, the clearing behind was lost from sight and he was alone in the snow-dampened silence of the wood.