The Pineview Incident (5 page)

“You're going to be busy,” he said.

“I don't mind since it gives me more babies to love. I just wish I could get down to see them more often.” Donna's eyes roamed to the multitude of pictures on the shelves. The years seemed to drop away as she smiled at the images of her family.

“I've missed a lot. Maybe you could fill me in some, and tell me about the ones I haven't met yet.” Mark took a bite of a muffin and prepared to stay a while.

Chapter 7

Mark looked at his hunting supplies one last time. He'd toyed with the idea of using the face paint but decided against it because it would be hard to explain to the Gilbertsons why he was visiting them painted green and brown. His clothes would do a good enough job at hiding him so long as he stayed in the trees.

The phone rang, and he pulled himself away from the mirror.

“You almost ready?” asked Chief Michaels. “I need to know your status.”

Mark rolled his eyes glad the chief couldn't see him. “Almost. I just need to grab a few more things and I'll head out.”

“I'm not giving you official permission for this, but maybe you should take a gun.” The chief paused and took a deep breath. “And a tube of aluminum foil.”

“Foil?”

“Yeah, to wrap around your head. Cory and Ed both say it blocks the mind control devices.”

“I'm hanging up now.”

“Mark, wait. Just be safe and don't take any chances,” said the chief. “A little foil might go a long way.”

“I’ll be careful, and the best way to do that is to keep my rifle in the gun safe and the foil in the kitchen drawer.” Mark pushed the off button and tossed the phone on the counter. “Idiots.”

He grabbed his keys and headed out to pick up Donna for their date. Or mission, or whatever it was. Spying seemed too creepy an activity for an actual date.

Donna waited for him just inside her door. She wore John's old hunting jacket and pants, which were cuffed three or four times to make them short enough. When Mark drove up, she made a beeline for his truck.

“Afraid someone will see you?” he asked when she hopped up beside him.

“Yep.”

“Too late.” Mark pointed to one of the neighbors walking her dog. The woman's jaw had dropped to about knee level. “Might as well wave.”

Mark smiled at the woman and did just that.

Donna rolled down the window. “Afternoon, Tracy. Beautiful day isn't it?”

Tracy nodded weakly as her mouth slowly closed.

“Let's get out of here,” Donna said. The fake smile was still plastered to her face.

Mark gunned the engine and headed out of town. The foothills of the Sawtooth and Bitterroot Ranges loomed up ahead.

“I never realized how sinister they look,” Donna said.

“They've never looked sinister before today.” Mark looked over and grinned at Donna. She looked like a little girl sitting there in the oversized camo gear with her arms crossed.

“What?”

Mark returned his gaze to the road, but the grin stayed in place. “Just weird having you in my pickup after all these years.”

“It's weird being here. Fun, but weird.”

The grin got bigger. “Fun, really?”

“And weird. Don't forget the weird, Mark Lewis. I feel like the universe is going to explode now that we are actually friends. Or whatever we are.”

“Yeah, I kinda thought the earth would end last night when I went home.” Mark stretched his sore neck. He hadn't realized how stiff his shoulders were until now.

“How did the call to the Gilbertsons go?” Donna asked.

The soreness returned to Mark's neck. “It didn't. They let the phone go to the messages every time.”

“They don't know we're coming?” Donna's voice was unnaturally shrill.

“Not exactly.”

“Exactly what
do
they know, Mark? Our plan was to call them first.”

“If they listen to their messages, they'll know we're coming up to see them. If not, they're going wonder what the hell we're doing on their land in camo gear.” Mark's neck was spasming.

Donna glared at Mark. “This is not going to go well.”

“So long as they don't have mind control devices it should be fine.”

“Oh, that makes me feel much better.”

Mark looked out at the looming hills. “All we need to do is take a look. If it's innocent, we go up and say a friendly hello.”

“I've never looked particularly friendly in hunting gear,” Donna said. She eyed Mark. “And you don't either. In fact, you look a little scary.”

“I never said this would be easy.”

“I wasn't expecting easy, but I didn't expect impossible either,” Donna said. She turned away and looked out the window, cutting off any further discussion.

Mark drove in neck-spasming silence for the next half hour. Truth be told, he had no real idea of how to do what he'd planned without looking utterly foolish. Or frightening.

Donna was right. The higher the car climbed up the hills, the more sinister they looked.

The Gilbertson farm sprawled over a rocky plateau and several small hills. They'd somehow managed to find enough land to grow meager crops and raise a healthy number of sheep. Compared to the relatively “rich” farmers in the valley, the family's ranch was marginal at best.

A half mile from the border of the farm, Mark turned off the county road and followed a rutted pair of tire tracks back into the trees. After several hundred yards, he pulled to a stop and waved his hand at the path. “This leads to a trout stream I fish at. There's a path to the farm from there.”

Donna didn't budge.

“It's an easy hike. Not more than a mile at most. No one will see us,” Mark said. Still, she didn't move. “Really, it'll be a walk in the park.”

“I saw a horror movie that began this way,” Donna whispered.

Mark's mouth twitched up and he coughed once to cover his chuckle. “I've never seen a horror movie with two middle aged busybodies walking through the woods in badly fitting hunting gear.”

Donna nodded her head and slowly hopped down out of the truck's cab. She almost ran to join Mark at the truck's tailgate. “Fine. But if I hear even a hint of a chainsaw I'm outta here. And I'm not going through any corn. No way.”

“They grow potatoes and raise sheep,” Mark assured her. He handed Donna a pair of binoculars and an old camera. “No one makes a horror flick about potatoes and sheep.”

Donna looked unconvinced.

“Just stay close to me and it'll be fine,” he said. He turned and began walking up the tire track. Donna was so close on his tail her feet kept knocking against his.

“Maybe not quite so close,” he whispered after she tripped him the third time.

Donna's cheeks grew red. “Sorry,” she hissed. “I just don't like sneaking around.” Her voice was so quiet he barely heard her.

“There's nothing out here that can hurt us. Trout aren't harmful to humans,” he reminded her.

“Really? Then why are we both whispering?”

Mark cleared his throat. “Come up and walk beside me,” he said out loud.

In an instant, Donna was beside him. She nodded at him and they continued on the narrow path.

She was so close to him now that their arms touched as they walked. Mark's arm wanted to slip around her shoulders so badly it almost twitched.

#

“Is that a clown?” Donna nearly shrieked—if you can shriek in a whisper.

Mark turned his binoculars in the direction she pointed and focused in on a pair of bright yellow britches bending over the chicken pens.

The figure stood and Mark chuckled in relief. “It's Old Gil in some godawful pants and suspenders.”

Donna let out a loud breath. “Sorry. It looked like that clown from the movie.”

Mark had to admit, with a dark shirt and baggy yellow trousers, the old farmer did look rather clownish. “I haven't see anyone from those vans yet. You?”

Donna shook her head and went back to scanning the house and barns, using her binoculars for the further buildings. The afternoon sun was behind them, giving them a good view of the farm and hiding them in the dark shadows under a thicket of trees.

“I feel like a peeping tom,” she said after a few minutes.

“If you’re done, we could go up and say hello.”

“Nope. No, I'm good. Look, here come the kids.”

Mark turned his focus to the large barn.

They sat close enough to the house that they could see and hear almost everything, but the barn and outbuildings were too far away to watch without binoculars. They'd been spying on the farm for the better part of an hour now, and neither of them had seen anything more unusual than a particularly clumsy goat.

“What were they doing in there?” Donna asked. She leaned closer, as if that might give her a better vantage point.

The children came out in single file followed by three men Mark had never seen. The kids all wore their best clothes and marched straight up into the house.

Three other forms emerged from the garage. Mark stood to get a better view.

“Isn't that the Mackenzie's oldest girl?” he asked Donna.

“Yes, that's Bethany all right. I thought she was pregnant.” Donna stood up by Mark.

“Me too,” said Mark. He didn't mention he'd helped spread that rumor.

“And that's Tanner Johnson and Jasmine Lopez. What are all those kids doing here?”

The three older teens followed the strange men into the Gilbertson house.

Another man came out of the barn and began setting up bright metal poles around the house. He used a strange eyepiece every so often to check the placement of the poles.

“What on earth is he doing?” asked Donna. She ducked back down.

“Maybe I shoulda brought that foil,” said Mark.

Donna gave him a quizzical look and Mark went back to spying on the strange happenings at the farm.

The door to the home popped open and children of all sizes exploded back onto the front porch.

Ma Gilbertson shuffled out after them and pointed to the barn. “Go get a sheep! We can't do this without the sheep and each one of you needs one.”

The kids ran off to the barn and, one by one, reappeared either carrying or rustling a bleating animal. The older children held on to two.

Old Gil joined his wife to watch the children. His ridiculously yellow pants contrasted nauseatingly with her green dress. “Hurry now! We're running out of time to make the connection,” he called. “Get them to the field.”

Hand in hand the two older Gilbertsons hobbled down the steps and long path that led past the barn.

The man with the silver poles came up behind the children and began shooing the menagerie down the road.

“Think sheep love, everyone! Sheep love is what we're all about.”

He looked back at his silver poles one more time and paused, looking past them into the woods where Mark and Donna hid.

Mark ducked and hissed out a cuss word.

“Hey Greg,” the pole-man called. “Did we set any cameras in the woods over there?”

The long haired man from the black vans came out of the house and joined him. He squinted into the thicket where Mark and Donna crouched.

“No, why?”

“Because I think I see...”

Mark didn't wait to hear pole-man's answer. He grabbed Donna's hand and bolted down the footpath.

“Sheep love. They're going to make sheep love,” Donna repeated between gasps for breath.

“Don't talk. Just run.” Mark pulled her along behind him as quickly as he could.

The half-mile seemed to stretch on forever, and by the time they crossed the creek, Donna was wheezing and Mark had a stitch in his side. Neither of them slowed until they saw the old truck.

Chapter 8

Donna held on tight to anything she could grab as the truck bounced its way back down the dirt roads. Her lungs burned and side ached after the run through the woods.

She closed her eyes against the flashing trees and tried to make sense of what she'd seen, but it was all far too strange.

Too alien.

She shuddered at that word. Forcing herself to take slow, deep breaths, she replayed every scene in her mind until she tasted the dry road dirt on her tongue.

She closed her mouth with a snap and looked over at Mark. “Well... I... I just don't...”

“I know! I know!” Mark leaned heavily on the steering wheel, his eyes wide as they stared ahead at the road.

Donna looked around her, just now realizing how quickly the fence posts flashed in the truck's headlights.

They'd come off the hills a while back, and the sun was setting behind them. “Where are we?”

“Dunno.”

“Slow down you fool,” she ordered. “You're going almost eighty on a dirt road. What if we come up on an animal?”

Mark took two breaths and then slowly sat back in the seat. His white hands loosened their grip and pulled back from the wheel.

As if on cue, several cows loped across the dirt road ahead, and Mark pulled to a stop.

“Any of them look familiar?” asked Donna as the mass of brown bodies walked in front of them.

“You're joking, right?”

“I thought you knew everyone in town.”

“They don't bring their cows in for haircuts.”

They sat in silence, each looking out the window at the darkening horizon and meandering cows. Finally, Mark grunted and put the truck in gear. He began to move forward slowly as the bovine bodies moved away.

“Maybe we should go back,” suggested Donna.

“And do what, exactly? Join in the fun? It's all about 'sheep love,' remember?” He took his hands off the wheel long enough to make quotes in the air.

“Don't be sick.”

Mark squinted at the dark horizon and nodded at a clump of trees.

“I figured out where we are, and I know this road. Do you mind if we take a little drive? I want to show you something.”

Donna snorted. “How are you going to show me something in the dark?”

“You'll see.”

They lurched down the old road in silence until Donna raised the question that had been eating at her the entire ride.

“How are we going to tell the town about them?”

“Maybe we just caught them at a bad time.”

Donna looked at him in disbelief.

“It isn't likely, but it could’ve happened,” he said with a shrug.

“Are you saying we caught them at an awkward sheep-love moment and the rest of the time they act normal?”

“Um, yeah, maybe.” Mark gave her an apologetic look. “Maybe they only do sheep-love once a week or something.”

“That makes it
so
much better.” Donna rolled her eyes and sat back against the seat. She wanted a logical reason for what they'd seen, but couldn't think of one.

Mark turned down a narrower dirt road. The trees loomed ahead of them.

“What is this place?” asked Donna.

“It's my parent's homestead. I sold the farm when they died, but kept the house and its property. It has a spring off to the side. That’s why the trees are here.”

“I remember this,” Donna whispered as old memories played through her head. Mark turned down a rutted lane, and she could make out the white outline of a Victorian home.

“I love this old place.” Mark's voice deepened, becoming thick with emotion. “I know it's stupid, but my grandfather built the house. I always thought it would be nice to live out here, so I kept it up.” He shrugged apologetically and his shoulders hunched a bit more.

“I'm glad you did.” Donna looked over at the lonely man beside her. It hurt to think of him here, alone, keeping up the home of dead people.

Mark pulled to a stop in the dirt drive. The neatly kept house was clearly visible in the headlights now. Even in the dark, the house seemed elegant.

“Why didn't you move back?” Donna looked at the old home. It was only a little bigger than Mark's ranch house in town, but it's stature made it look like a small mansion.

It also looked a bit like the creepy abandoned home in many of the horror flicks she watched.

She was so busy looking at the old house that when Mark pulled open her door and held out his hand to her, she gave a little shriek.

“You okay?”

“Yes.” She made a mental note to stop watching scary movies. “You just scared me a little.”

Donna slid her hand into Mark's, and he pulled her from the car. He held a flashlight in the other hand led the way down an old stone path to the edge of a small slope that descended into the trees.

His hand fit hers well, which surprised Donna.

As they reached the bottom of the slope, Donna saw an almost perfect black oval just in front of them. Along the bank of the little pool, dead cattails and grasses stooped over, making it look like the pool was surrounded by lace.

“It's prettier in the spring. That early freeze we got last week did the plants in.” Mark's voice was gruff.

Donna could see the stars dance in the small ripples on the pool's surface. At the other end of the pool, she could just make out the hushed babble of a creek.

“Where's the swing?” she asked. She remembered this place, but only barely. She'd been very young when she'd last stood here.

Mark swung the light up towards the tree. He caught the old tire swing in the beam. Its shadow made odd shaped in the house behind it.

“I kissed you here.”

“Yes, you did.” Mark laughed and scratched his chin. “At my birthday party. The boys were watching us from the porch up there. I just about died from embarrassment.”

“So this is where it all went wrong,” she said to herself.

“Or where it went right for John, depending on how you look at it. He was the one who came to comfort you and give you ice for that black eye, remember?”

“I guess you could say it did indeed go right for John and I.” For a moment, her heart was torn between the memories of her good life with John and her regret for the life she never had with Mark.

“He deserved you more than me, you know,” he said to the dark trees. “He was the better man.”

“No better than you,” said Donna. “I can't believe I let childish hurt keep me from being your friend for so long. I'm sorry, Mark, so very sorry.”

“You have nothing to be sorry for. It was my fault, too.”

“So what do we do now?”

Mark shuffled his feet, but said nothing.

“Now you decide to be shy?” Donna teased. “You brought me here for a reason, you old goat. You might as well get to it.” She had a hard time keeping the humor out of her voice. Something about this place made all the years of anger seem laughable.

“I suppose we aren't getting any younger, are we?”

“Speak for yourself.”

Mark stood still and looked at the ground. Donna gently squeezed his hand. “Well?”

“Well, what?”

“What do we do now, Mark?” She prodded him gently this time. “What would
you
like to do now?”

He coughed and cleared his throat shifting his weight from foot to foot.

“Mark Lewis! After all those girls you've loved, how can you be nervous?”

“All those girls weren't you,” he said. “I keep thinking I'm going to ruin this moment somehow.” He gave her a sheepish grin. “Or I'm going to be struck by lightning. Or maybe that the world is about to end.”

Donna looked around the quiet yard. “I don't see any imminent danger. I think we might be okay.”

Mark stepped closer to Donna and gently ran his fingers along her jaw. Donna felt goose bumps spread over her skin at his touch. Good goose bumps, not the ones he usually gave her.

She let herself lean into him. He was taller than she realized and his shoulders broader than she remembered. Until this moment, she'd never understood why all the girls in school swooned over him.

Mark brought up his other hand and cupped her face. Her legs felt strange and her stomach fluttered pleasantly.

“This okay?” he asked.

“Yeah.”

“You seem a little, um...”

“Swoonish?”

His mouth pulled up in a lopsided smile. “I'm making you swoon?”

He leaned over and gently ran his lips over hers, but pulled away quickly.

“Oh, for the love of Pete. I did it once and I can do it again.” Donna grabbed Mark's shoulders, pulled herself up on her tiptoes and kissed him. It was not a gentle kiss.

His petrified lips didn't budge.

Donna pulled away and looked at him. “Are you going to hit me again?”

“Nope.”

Donna grinned at him. “Are you gonna run?”

“Maybe.”

She swatted at him and laughed. The sound of her laughter surprised her. She sounded young and happy.

“I'm a little nervous,” he said. “I'm new at this whole dream coming true thing.”

She looked at him and a small part of her heart broke. He
was
new at this. What she’d taken for granted for twenty-five years, he’d never had.

Donna wanted more than anything to make up for the years they'd spent at each others throats. She put her hands on his shoulders and rubbed. “Relax.”

He didn't.

“What are you worried about?” She put her arms around his neck and pulled her body tight up against his.

“That this is some kind of dream or joke or something,” he said. “I've wanted to hold you for so long it doesn't seem real.”

“Let me make it real for you.” Donna pulled him down and kissed him slowly. His lips began to move against hers and she followed his lead. His grip on her tightened and she sighed in contentment.

“I can't believe I get to do this again,” she said when he pulled back.

“Do what again?”

Donna felt her face heat. She hadn't meant to say that out loud. “Fall in love. Again.”

“This is my first time.”

“But all those girls—” Donna began, and then stopped herself. She wasn't sure how to ask him that.

“I fell hard for a few of them, but not hard enough to keep them,” Mark said. He looked nervously at her. “I said this was my first time to fall in love for real. It's not my first time to, you know, do, um, other stuff. I was waiting for you even though I knew I couldn't have you.”

Donna swallowed the lump that rose in her throat.  He'd waited for her. Even when she'd married his friend and built a life, he'd waited. She couldn't quite get her mind around that. “So that's why you’re so hesitant. You're afraid.”

Mark chuckled. “Terrified. I keep thinking I'm going to blow it.”

“I won't let you blow it. I promise.” Donna once again pulled him toward her. “And I won't break, either.” She kissed him again, and he responded in kind.

He pulled her up on her tiptoes, and Donna found herself completely wrapped in his arms. His lip tugged and pulled at hers in a desperate and insistent way. It was so unlike anything John had done, and yet so completely right.

She stretched further, trying to press into his kiss, but a shooting pain pulled her back to the earth. “Ouch!”

“What? What's wrong? Did I do something?”

Donna couldn't stop the small snort that escaped her nose. He acted just like some terrified boy at a dance. “Bend down so my toes don't get spasms.”

Instead of bending over, he scooped her up in his arms and carried her over to a wooden bench by the pool of water. She found herself sitting on his lap.

“I suppose this works,” she squeaked. She wasn't used to being carried like a child.

“At least until we work out the height difference issue,” Mark said.

“Maybe I could get a stool or platform shoes or some—”

Mark's fingers stopped her mouth from forming any more words.

“Just kiss me.”

Donna shifted so that her body was once again pressed up against his. “I suppose we have a lot of missed time to catch up on.”

“That's the way I see it.”

“Well, I'm about to make it up to you.”

Mark's eyebrows went up about an inch. She smiled at his surprised look, took his face in her hands, and set to work. She'd never been one to go back on her word.