The Brotherhood of the Wheel (27 page)

As they began to trudge again through the narrow passages between the trees, Dewey nodded at Cole. “Thanks, man,” he said.

Cole smiled and nodded.

It was completely dark by the time Chasseur's trek led them to the clearing. Cole wondered how they would find their way back. None of their captors seemed to have a flashlight or even a lighter. The clearing was about fifty yards in diameter, ringed by large, uneven, rough-hewn stones. The light came from the brilliant luster of the bloated, rising moon. At the center of the clearing was a huge ancient tree, rising up like a gnarled fist to heaven. It was a banyan tree, its network of vines and branches growing out of the crevices of the host tree, wrapping about them, melding with them, to make a vast web of branches, and transforming the long-ago devoured host into a vast gestalt. At the massive base of the dark tree was a series of low, relatively flat stones. Chasseur was headed toward them, and the Scodes made sure the captives all followed. The knee-high wild-rye grass hissed as the party moved through it. The rider sat on one of the low rocks, painted in dark shadows in the gleam of the moon. The Scode brothers forced the others to sit on the rocks as well. Everyone welcomed the rest, but the cold trickle of fear ran down into their stomachs. This was obviously the journey's end.

“He finally showed me the way to this place when I was a man,” Chasseur said. “This is the heart of his woods, the heart of him. After so many years of offerings to him, he finally showed himself to me and gave me my true name and purpose.”

There was a rustling in the grass all around them. Lexi and Cole froze at the memory of that sound, of the shadow people chasing them through the darkness. Large dark forms began to appear all around the stones they sat on, dozens of them.

“Oh shit, man,” Mark whispered. “Fuck me. Fuck us.”

They were in the shape of dogs—massive hounds, about four feet tall, two and a half feet at the shoulder, and looking as if they weighed over two hundred pounds. They were jet, not black, in the color of their fur but made of ink-black shadow itself, like the shadow people. Their eyes were the baleful light of the moon. Wald and Toby looked down, averted their gaze. Dewey stood, his legs quivering, as the hounds closed the circle and gathered all around and behind Chasseur. The rider petted one of the shadow hounds; it made no sound.

“Tell me,” Dewey said. It was a request, it was a command. His voice quavered in fear; his whole body shook, but he kept looking, looking at the hounds, at the dark rider. “Tell me your name, tell me your master. I deserve to know—we all do, don't we?”

“You know what's coming next, don't you?” Chasseur said, standing. The spiderweb branches of the ancient tree spread out from behind his head like huge antlers. The pack moved as a unit, as a single organism, in response to the rider's movement. They all stood poised, ready to pounce. “You are a wise man. In another time you would have been revered and heeded. This is not an age of wisdom, unfortunately. It is an age of suffering and blindness. Soon it will be an age of blood, chaos, and unforgiving death.”

Cole wanted to stand, to join Dewey, to fight, but the hounds froze him in fear, held his heart and stilled his legs. Chasseur stepped forward; the hunting knife shimmered with the ghost light of the cowering sun. The handle was old bone, yellowed with age. He grabbed Dewey by the hair and effortlessly threw the big man onto the flat stone before the tree. Dewey landed on his back, with a
whoosh
of air escaping his lungs.

“You do deserve to know,” Chasseur said, raising the knife. “
Tá
mé
an Máistir na Hunt, tá
mé
bás ag siúl ar an Domhan. Agus mé éilíonn tú, as mo thighearna agus Máistir.
”

“No!” Dewey screamed. Mark struggled to get to his feet, but the Scodes held him down. Lexi covered her eyes, her reason scampering away from her.

“I am the Master of the Wild Hunt,” Chasseur said. “You have looked upon the hunt and are marked and summoned. Your lifeblood feeds the Horned Man now.”

Dewey looked up, past the madman now sprouting real horns out of his head, to the infinite stars, the cathedral of light in the cold, eternal vault of space. Then he saw what stood in place of the ancient tree now, the towering being whose antlers cradled the very stars within them. It turned its gaze—burning, pitiless, emerald fire—upon him and licked black, leathery lips capable of devouring worlds.

Dewey Rears's last thought as the knife pierced his heart was that the stars were a graveyard of dead, ancient light. Chasseur, the Master of the Hunt, tore the still hot, gushing heart out of the journalist's chest and held it aloft to the looming Horned Man. The heart burst into blue flames as it was devoured in Chasseur's hand. The shadow hounds fell upon the body, ripping and tearing, annihilating it, leaving no trace of skin, bone, or blood. They shifted as they fought over Dewey's remains, melting and flowing between the forms of shadow people and the shadow hounds. The hounds bayed—a sound that frayed nerve endings. It was the sound of soul-deep despair, the sound all human beings make at their moment of greatest loss. The howls curdled the very air, raking the night with talons made of razor-pain.

Cole, Lexi, and Mark all beheld the being that stood where the vast tree had been. It was impossible for their minds to process where the Horned Man began and the earth and the sky ended. Mark fell to his knees and tried to claw at his eyes and cover his ears, but the Scodes kept him from harming himself. Lexi screamed, accompanying the baying hounds. Cole held her tight as she screamed, but the light of reason had drained out of her eyes, replaced by a darkness that made the absence among the stars seem welcoming by comparison.

 

ELEVEN

“10-14”

“So what is supposed to happen if you do let one of these black-eyed punks in?” Turla asked. They were searching the areas around the shopping-mall parking lots off Nameoki Road in Granite City. The ex-trooper had caught a ride with Jimmie, but Heck had insisted on taking his bike. They parked in the rear of the mall, where Jimmie's rig wouldn't get a second glace next to all the other 18-wheelers picking up or dropping off merchandise to the mall stores, snoozing in the their cabs waiting for the stores to open in the morning.

“That's the gotcha,” Heck said, sweeping his head from side to side as he lit a Lucky Strike and snapped his Zippo shut. This was stupid. The whole area was urbanized as hell. There was no way a girl's body could be hidden here for two fucking years and not be noticed. “Nobody knows what happens, because no one ever sees or hears from you again. You go, ‘Boo,' and all the Cub Scouts around the campfire crap themselves. It's all bullshit.”

“Don't be so damned sure of all that,” Jimmie said. He was walking a few steps behind Tula, and scanning the area opposite Heck. “That dog-man over in McHenry, not too far from here, the Hatchet Man in Bloomington, Aunty Greenleaf—the white-deer witch in Brookhaven, New York … I've seen plenty of things that were supposed to be bullshit, right up until they weren't.”

“I've seen my share of crazy shit, too,” Heck said, exhaling smoke. “But creepy little kids with solid black eyes that talk you into oblivion by whining to be let in? That sounds like Grade-A Creepypasta shit.”

Turla looked at Jimmie. “What the fuck is Creepypasta?”

Jimmie shrugged. “Beats the hell out of me,” the trucker said. He paused and looked around. “This is about as far as the original search grid went, right?” Turla nodded. “Okay, let's go wider and keep going in this direction.”

“Why this way?” Heck asked.

“If she ran the other way, she was headed for the front of the mall and all the traffic on Route 203. Since not a single soul reported seeing her, with all that traffic and lights and stores, and they were parked back here, in the rear lot, I'm assuming she ran this way.”

“Sounds legit,” Heck said.

They kept heading west. Off in the distance, a train's horn bleated. They started across a wide, vacant field nestled between the various large industrial buildings. The sounds of the train got louder. They each clicked on flashlights as the island of light from the mall's lot diminished behind them. It was cold, and the winter wind, perhaps angry because spring was, literally, only a few days away, bit into the three men as they searched, the beams of their lights sweeping the dark field.

Heck paused and knelt. He shut off his flashlight and closed his eyes for a moment. Something was making the back of his brain itch.

“What?” Jimmie said to the biker.

“Shut up a sec,” Heck muttered. There was an old pain here, smeared on the air, on the dirt of this place. Fear, regret, despair. Heck could almost taste it in the back of his throat, like black bile and molasses—thick, acrid, but sweet. Heck opened his eyes. “You're right,” he said as he stood. “She ran this way, fell here, then got up and kept running when she saw them coming across the field for her.” He pointed northwest, in the direction of another industrial building and parking lot past the field. “That way.”

Jimmie looked at Heck for a long moment. “That's some damn good tracking, if you're right.”

“I can't explain it, either,” Heck said, “but I know I'm right about this.”

“Okay,” Jimmie said. “Good enough for me, I reckon. Let's keep moving.”

Heck felt the deflection in Jimmie's words. No questioning about this weird feeling? No skepticism? Heck filed it away for another time. The trucker wasn't being a hundred percent with him, and sooner or later they would have words about that.

Past the concrete pad of a parking lot was a low hill, a grassy rise. Beyond that the searchers could see the slowly drifting colossus of a moving freight train. Its horn wailed mournfully again. They climbed the rise and looked down into a triangular quarter acre of sparse woods and scrub huddled near the train tracks. Off to the right loomed a white water tower, farther back from the tracks and slightly behind the woods.

“Okay,” Turla said. “Like I explained to you guys, we're breaking it down into grids. You search your grid, make sure if there's gnat shit in it, you know it. Once it's secured, move on to the next grid space. We do this nice and organized, by the book. You read me, Red?”

Heck shrugged and then nodded. “Yeah, CSI: Granite City, I gotcha.”

They began. The train passed after a few minutes, and the sounds of the city all around them became distant and muted. Their breath streamed out into the growing cold, silent banners of silver. The lights that ran along the train tracks at distant intervals fed deep, long shadows among the trees. There was trash everywhere in the woods—used condoms and condom wrappers, crushed soda and beer cans, broken brown and green beer-bottle glass, crumpled wet paper and plastic bags from nearby stores, and what appeared to be several piles of decaying human feces.

“Well, this must be the reading room for Granite City's homeless folks,” Jimmie said, kicking some dirt over one of the piles. “What do we do if some cops wander by to roust the locals or we run into a railroad dick?”

“You shut up and let me do the talking,
capisce
?” Turla said. “It's still too cold for the street folk to be outside yet. We should be okay.”

It was getting late. The cold was settling into everyone's bones. Jimmie had needed to take a piss for about an hour, but he hadn't yet hit the point of ducking behind a bush. They kept looking, searching for anything that might lead back to Karen Collie. Jimmie moved to the next grid and paused. There was a slight dip downward, like a bowl, and at the bottom of it was a concrete square; at the center of the square was a heavy, flat metal grate. The grate was covered with trash and long-dead leaves. It was locked down with a padlock that looked much newer and shinier than it should. Jimmie began to sweep aside the trash. Broken glass tinkled as it was shoved away. Jimmie knelt and picked up a wide, sharp jagged piece of brown bottle.

“Hey,” Jimmie said. “I think I got something.” Turla and Heck joined him. Jimmie was examining the padlock. “This lock is pretty new. Maybe before it got put on, she…”

“This is a storm drain,” Turla said. “All these parking lots and flat, nonporous surfaces around here, this is to catch and redirect rainwater runoff.”

“Can we get this open?” Jimmie asked, tugging on the padlock. He and Turla looked at Heck.

“What?” the biker said. “You two fine, upstanding citizens just naturally expect the scooter trash to be able to pop a lock? That's insulting.”

Both men continued to look at him. Heck sighed and knelt. He reached for the case file folder Jimmie had set on the ground and slid a large, thick paperclip off a bundle of papers in the file. He spent a few minutes bending and straightening the clip's wire and then snapped it in two. He bent one part into an L shape and then straightened the other end as best he could.

“Give me some light, you assholes,” he muttered as he began to slide the wires into the keyway of the padlock. “I hope you know this is disrupting my crank-cooking schedule.” In a few moments, the padlock popped open and Heck slid it off and tossed it aside. He helped Jimmie and Turla lift the steel grate and flip it back on its hinges. Turla swept his flashlight beam down into the dark concrete well.

“Gonna be tight in there,” the former trooper said. “She could have crawled in and pulled the grate shut behind her, but there's maybe two and a half, three feet of clearance in that pipe.”

Heck shined his flashlight on Aussapile's gut and then up and down over Turla's imposing frame. “Well, I guess we all know who's going down in there, don't we? You're welcome.” Without another word, he dropped down into the shadows of the drain and vanished from sight.