Ancient Eyes (13 page)

"By the time you read this I'll be well along the road to the mountain. Please don't follow. I'll call as soon as I can—there aren't many phones.
 
If you need me, leave a message through Greene's General Store. The owner's name is Silas Greene. He's the closest thing the mountain has to a Post Office.

"Remember that I love you. Abraham."

For a long time after finishing the note, Katrina sat still, held the paper in her trembling hands, and stared off over it toward the windows that overlooked the beach. He was gone. She had felt that when she stepped out of the car.
 
Now it wasn't a fear—it was real. She was here, and Abe was not, and she didn't know where he'd gone—not really—or why.
 
She only knew he was gone.

She rose and went mechanically through the motions of putting away the groceries. She made a pot of coffee.
 
She didn't want any coffee, but she made it because in the morning she always made coffee.
 
She made it fresh, the way Abe liked it, and when he came up from the beach, coated in a thin sheen of sweat and grinning like an overgrown boy they would share it, hers milk-toned and sweet and his as black as night.

She didn't make breakfast because she knew she couldn't eat, but she cleaned the kitchen. She saw that the small trashcan beside the stove needed to be emptied. She stopped, frowned, and reached for the bag. It was Abe's job to empty the trash, and normally she would leave it there until it annoyed him into action, but not today. Today the sight of it reminded her that he was gone, and she didn't need any further reminders. She knew he was gone because something inside her was broken. A frozen ball of barbed wire had coiled up like a snake in her stomach, and every time she moved it scraped away a little more of the comfort Abe had brought her.

She tried to watch television, but she hated to watch alone. Half the fun was the running commentary she and Abe provided behind the programming, and like the full garbage can, the droning voices only served to remind her of his absence.

Eventually she reconnected the phone line. She waited a long time, but it didn't ring.
 
Then, when she turned away, she stopped and looked back. There was no ring. Whoever had been calling had found the correct number, or gotten the answer they sought.

The late afternoon sun dropped away over the waves, and she shivered. It wasn't cold, but shadows loomed on all sides.
 
The small cottage where she and Abe bumped into one another so often they joked about living in a shoebox grew, moment by moment, into a huge, empty cage.

She'd found where he'd hit the bed. He'd hit it so hard that the springs were bent. Katrina stared at the mattress, then sat on the bed and ran her hand over the dent. It seemed impossible, but that's what it was. There was a dent in their mattress where Abe had smashed his fists into it, and that dent was right where her heart would have rested if she'd been home.

Was he right?
 
Was he losing it?
 
Was there some form of insanity in his family, or his past, that had finally caught up with him and was beginning to exact its price for all the sane, steady years of his life? Katrina had never even seen Abe get angry, but the violence of his nightmares was undeniable. Even if she didn't trust her memory, she had the evidence of the mattress.

When the shadows grew too long for her to dodge between as she slipped quietly and aimlessly from room to room, she curled up on Abraham's side of the bed.
 
She pulled the sheets and blankets up around her neck and tucked her head up under his pillow.
 
The sheets and pillowcase smelled like Abe.
 
She curled into a tight ball and closed her eyes. She thought she would lay awake all night, but the tension that had wrapped her into knots since that morning released, and she drifted off into dark, dreamless sleep.

Tommy and Angel drove slowly past Silas Greene's General Store and turned off onto a rutted, overgrown trail that veered into the woods. They followed this even more slowly, the truck jolting through potholes and the tires cracking dry branches. This road curled around the side of the peak and approached the old church. No one had driven down it in over a decade.

Angel stared straight ahead. He had spoken very few words since they'd arrived at Greene's store the previous day.
 
He had a lot to think about. He had made over thirty calls to the same phone number counting the two the previous night, and those he'd spent his time on that morning. Tommy was impatient and had threatened to take the truck and head back up the mountain, but Angel silenced his brother with a glance.

They both knew he'd do no such thing. Tommy had his visions, and his orders and Angel had some of his own.
 
He hadn't been told to share them with Tommy, and so he didn't.
 
Tommy had found the list of supplies they were to purchase in his pocket. In Angel's pocket a shorter note rested.
 
It had a single name written across it, Abraham Carlson.

There were no instructions on the card. It didn't say to call anyone on the phone, or why he would want to do such a thing. Angel just knew.
 
Since staggering out of the woods a few minutes ahead of his brother he'd known a lot of things he couldn't have explained, but it didn't trouble him.

After nearly thirty years of life, Angel Murphy knew what he was supposed to do with a certainty for the first time. He didn't hesitate, and he didn't spend time worrying over the consequences of his actions. He had a purpose, and he intended to fulfill that purpose. What happened beyond this was hazy, but again—it didn't matter.
 
Angel lived in the moment.

He'd found the phone number easily enough. There was only one Abraham Carlson in the San Valencez directory.
 
He'd been prepared to make the same call to fifty Abraham Carlsons, over and over, but fate was on his side.

He didn't speak to the man who answered the phone.
 
He didn't speak the next morning when the woman answered, though he'd wanted to. She'd sounded scared, and that always turned Angel on. He knew she stood clutching the phone and waiting to hear his voice, and that was enough. If things worked out, maybe he'd be able to attach a face to her voice before too long.

Angel knew the name. The Carlsons had lived on the mountain for over two hundred years, and Angel had known Abe Carlson when they were boys. Angel would have picked on Abe given the chance, just because he was older and stronger, but it wasn't done. Abe's father was the pastor of the stone church, and you didn't cross him. Angel didn't care about much, and he was willing to take a lot of punishment if the offense proved interesting enough, but he'd never messed with Abe.
 
Now, after so many passing years, he wondered if he was being granted a second chance.

Once the woman answered the phone, and he called a few more times for good measure, Angel signaled to Tommy that it was enough. They climbed into the truck, piled high with building materials, paints, tarps and equipment, and turned toward the mountain and home. Neither expected to
see
home any time in the near future, but the road was familiar and comfortable.

They bounced along the overgrown church road and energy crackled in the air.
  
The isolation of the drive up the mountain faded, and they sensed others waiting. The road was lined on either side by tall trees, and Tommy thought that, once or twice, he spotted flashes of motion among them. He almost said something to Angel, and then thought better of it.
 
If Tommy had seen them, and sensed them, he was sure his brother had as well.

They broke through the brush at the end of the old road and rumbled onto the churchyard without ceremony.
 
Clouds of dust rose as Angel ground to a halt.
 
Birds screeched and launched from the surrounding trees. The sounds faded, and the dust settled. Angel killed the engine and the two of them sat, staring at the front door of the church.

The door no longer dangled from its hinge. It was closed tightly, and the ground outside the door was cleared.
 
There were rake tracks in the dirt, and piles of debris lined the old walk. After a moment the door opened, and Silas Greene came down the steps, smiling.

Angel was the first to get out, and without ceremony he handed over a slip of paper.
 
Silas took it, glanced at what was written on it, smiled, and put it away in his pocket. Then he turned to the truck.

"You got everything?"

Tommy nodded.
 
He thought about pulling out the list and handing that over as well, but he didn't.
 
Silas knew what was on the list, and he had probably known what was in the truck, as well.

The door to the church still hung open, and from within Tommy heard the sound of voices. He glanced at Greene.

"The others are here," Silas said. "I'll send a couple of the men out to help you unload the truck. We have a lot of work to do."

Tommy nodded solemnly.
 
He inspected the walls of the old church, the cracks in the foundation, the peeling paint, and the tattered shingles haphazardly covering the roof.

Angel had already walked around behind the truck, and a moment later the tailgate dropped with a loud clang. Silas stepped to the church door and beckoned to someone inside. A moment later Matt Albertson and Tim Miller stepped out into the yard and blinked as if the light hurt their eyes. They stared at Tommy and Angel for a moment, and then noticed the truck. "Pile it all around the side there," Silas told them. "We'll get to it as we need it."

The four men unloaded the truck silently.
 
Silas watched for a moment, then pulled the paper back out of his pocket and read it again. All that was on the paper was a name and a phone number, but it was enough. He smiled, tucked the paper deep into his pocket, and turned away.

Inside the church the sound of nails being ripped from tired, rotten wood broke the silence. There was a loud snap, followed by the sound of more nails releasing their grip. The floor had rotted in places, and Silas knew they were removing the old boards and preparing for the new.
 
Two men and a woman had gone for emergency generators and lights. At the rear of the church, scaffolding crawled up the side of the building like a bizarre metal exoskeleton. Now that the truck had arrived, they could start on the roof.

It would take time.

Silas turned to the trail he had followed those long ago years with his parents and strode purposefully out of the churchyard and into the trees. The ground was overgrown and rough, but he didn't mind. It was a good long walk to his store, and he didn't mind that, either. They could get on well enough without him at the church—for now. He had other things to take care of, and the night was young. The paper with Abraham's phone number on it crinkled in Silas' pocket as he disappeared into the woods like it was trying to escape.

There was no one in the cottage. Abraham lit a fire and wandered about the small home aimlessly, looking for any sign of his mother—any indication of where she might have gone. He found nothing but the signs of everyday life. There was food. The pot she used to boil water stood on the stove, just as it always had, and there was water in it.

The sink held a single dish and a fork, as though she'd eaten breakfast and then left, expecting to take care of the small mess when she returned. Her bed was rumpled, and her closet was open.

All of it was strange to him, and at the same time so natural it felt like waking from a long dream. He knew this place so well that he felt he would have known if there were new cracks in the wall, but it was from another time and place, another world he'd left behind that had crashed back in around him. And it was wrong.

The cottage was just as he knew it would be, except that without his mother's presence, it felt like a stage setting for a bad movie. Everything was in place, but without direction and purpose. There were old black and white episodes of the Twilight Zone with a similar feel—characters wandering through familiar settings gone surreal. He half expected the ghost of mountain past to come and drag him off to show him the years he'd worked so hard to put behind him.

Abraham noted that the protections on the door remained intact. As he wandered from room to room, he ran his fingers over books and papers. On the mantel he found the small wooden box resting where it always had, and he lifted the lid. The leather pouch was inside, and though he didn't lift it free, he stroked the supple leather and ran a fingernail along the etched impression of the cross. He breathed the names of the archangels under his breath and closed his eyes.

The world shifted suddenly. Abraham clutched the mantel for support and arched his back. Pain flashed through him in a brilliant, excruciating pulse. Though his eyes remained closed he saw light, blinding white-hot light that seared his eyes and washed over him in waves.

Then he saw her eyes. Sarah stared at him, blinked, and then he saw her features, twisted in pain, soften to a smile. She spoke, but he couldn't hear her words.
 
Her eyes were dark, haunted pits and her lips were dry and crusted. Abraham strained to focus on that image and to hear her. His fingers dug into the wood of the mantel until the nails threatened to burst and the blood fled up his fingers into his wrists and left his palms tingling.