Crimson Falls (The Depravity Chronicles) (3 page)

“What the hell?”
Trevor blurted in confusion. He unhooked his seatbelt and slowly turned in his
seat to look behind them. There was no sign of anyone. Smoke was flowing into
the air from under the hood and was beginning to stream through the vents.

“Gotta get outta
here,” he mumbled to himself. He opened his door. Although it creaked in
protest against his pushing, it opened with little effort. He slipped trying to
get out and fell face first onto the ground.

“Damn,” he
winced. His face toward the rear end of the Ford, he opened his eyes. Across
from him, on the other side of the truck, he saw Sam lying on his back. He was
staring at him. “Sam! Thank God!”

Sam said
nothing.

“Sam?”

Still nothing.
Suddenly Sam began sliding forward. It didn’t take Trevor long to realize that
he was being dragged by his legs. He gulped, and began crawling under the truck
as quietly as he could. He could see blood on Sam’s mouth. He tried to collect
his senses. The heavy steps of whoever was dragging Sam seemed deafening. Trevor
stretched his neck to try and see what the stranger’s feet might look like, but
they were hidden by the large front tire of the Explorer. Without warning,
Sam’s legs fell to the ground and Trevor heard the heavy steps of the stranger
quicken. He watched in horror as the shadow ran deep into the woods.

“Trevor!
Trevor!” he heard his mom screaming. Within seconds she was on the ground
beside him. She reached out her hands and pulled Trevor from under the vehicle
and onto his feet.

“Mom!” Trevor
yelled.

“It’s okay,
honey. You’re okay.” She threw her arms around her son.

Meanwhile, Jake and
another deputy, Michael Mullins, were tending to Sam.

“Is he alive? Is
he alive?” Trevor asked repeatedly.

“He’s got a
pulse!” Michael screamed.

“Holy Christ, I
thought he was dead,” Jake breathed.

“He’s in shock,”
Anna instructed. “Quickly, get blankets from the back. Get another ambulance
here stat!”

“Mom, holy shit,
Mom,” Trevor whispered.

“What happened,
baby?”

“Someone in the
woods,” he said, trying to catch his breath. “Someone, something, it was
running, and then it was here. Sam was being pulled…” He planted his face in
his mother’s shoulder. He didn’t care if he looked like a wuss.

“Hey boss,” Jake
interrupted. “Check this out.” Both Anna and Trevor walked around the front to
where Jake was standing. Trevor continued to look in all directions, convinced
the shadow was still somewhere close by, lurking.

“He was being
dragged, alright,” Jake observed.

“What the hell
kind of tracks are these?” Anna asked.

“I’ve been
hunting these woods since I was a kid. And I ain’t ever seen nothing like
this.” Jake shook his head. Then, as if a light bulb was lit above his head, he
shook his head again as if arguing with himself.

“What, Jake?
What is it?” Anna pushed.

“If I didn’t
know better, I’d say this is a person.”

Everyone looked
at him in confusion.

“What the hell
else would it be?” Anna laughed.

“No, you don’t
understand,” Jake said irritably, still shaking his head.

“Then enlighten
us,” Trevor demanded.

“It’s a person,
but whoever it is wasn’t wearing shoes.”

Anna leaned down
so she could take a closer look at the tracks. “Aren’t these a little large to
be someone’s bare feet?”

“What, you think
it’s Big Foot for Christ sake?” Jake hissed.

Anna shot him a
look that expressed both her frustration as well as her authority. “Then why do
you look so confused, Jake?”

“I ain’t ever
seen feet as big as this,” he said as he used his hands to estimate the size of
the feet. “If this is a person, they gotta have at least a size eighteen.”

“No one in this
town is that big,” Michael said.

“Well, there is
one person,” Jake said.

“You can’t
really think that, Jake,” Anna said.

No one said
anything for what seemed like an eternity to Trevor. Finally, he broke the
silence. “Okay, I’ll ask. Who can’t it be?”

“Father
McMillan,” Jake said with confidence. Everyone laughed at him. Trevor noticed
that it wasn’t a laugh of comfort and humor. It was one of confusion and
disbelief.

* * * * * *

4

Anna took one
last look around the smoking Explorer for any sign of movement.

“I’m thinking
he’s long gone by now,” Jake said as he watched her studying the trees.

“I seriously
doubt Father McMillan can run like that,” Trevor offered.

“Run like what?”
Michael asked.

“Trevor said the
suspect was running alongside the patroller,” Anna reported.

“He’s just a
kid, we can’t be sure of what he saw,” Jake said, ignoring Trevor’s rundown of
the events leading to the accident. Anna became irritated with Jake’s flippant
attitude toward her son.

“We can be sure
that Sam wouldn’t simply run off the road and then fall out of the car, in
shock, as someone began pulling his body away,” Anna shot back.

“We’ll have to
wait and see what Sam has to say before we make any assumptions.”

“I’m sorry,”
Trevor interjected, “but isn’t my mother your boss? A little respect, don’t you
think?” Jake turned away, his face reddening his light Irish complexion.

“The dogs will
be here any second,” Deputy Aaron Peterson shouted as he jogged toward the
group. Only 24 years old, quite attractive with sandy hair and brooding eyes,
Aaron was one of Anna’s finest cops. At least he usually was.

“Does anyone
else find it strange that a town as small as ours has a team of dogs?” Trevor
asked.

“Rural towns
need dogs for search and rescue,” Anna lied. “All of us have them.” She knew
Trevor could read her well. She analyzed his expression but could not tell if
he believed her or not.

“Well I am going
to pay a visit to St. Mark’s,” Jake said. He looked to Anna for her approval.
She nodded and waved him on his way.

“He’s an ass,”
Trevor said when Jake was out of range. Anna laughed as she hugged her son
again.

“Come on, Trevor,”
she said. “You’re coming with me.” She looked at deputies Michael and Aaron as
she began walking toward the cruisers parked in the driveway several yards
behind the Explorer. “Call dispatch and have all available units here to secure
the area. Call deputies Felber, Staley, MacDonald, and Gross and have them
report to the station. I’ll be there waiting and setting up the command post.
We have to catch this guy before he hurts anyone else.”

“Will do, boss,”
Aaron said.

“And have the
others go through the house. I have a sneaking suspicion that Alan may have had
cameras set up throughout the property. He was as paranoid as they come. It may
be what helps us solve this case.”

“Anything else?”
Aaron asked.

“Yes, when Dr.
Styles leaves with the paramedics, I want you to stay with him. Observe him
while he figures out the cause of death. He will most likely object to this, so
make sure you tell him that it’s what I ordered you to do.” Aaron nodded and
walked to his cruiser to radio Janet.

She didn’t want
to show it, but Anna had been shaken badly. During her first year on the force,
her predecessor, Sheriff Ron Kelly, had told her about similar occurrences.
Much of the information obtained by police had been sealed so that panic would
not grip the small town. People lived and vacationed here for the quiet,
pristine environment. Tourism was a key part of the economy and any talk of
danger in the woods would devastate the community campgrounds.

Although the
cases remained cold, three similar deaths had occurred in 1990. Each victim was
reclusive, and each of them had part of their brain stem ripped from their
bodies. She remembered back to their cryptic conversation.

“A couple years
ago some serious shit went down in these woods. Only a few people know the
intimate details,” Sheriff Kelly had told her.

“Why?” she
asked.

“Well, as you
know, we keep information close to our chest,” he said as he bit down on his
pipe, lighting it. Smoke swirled around his face.

“Of course,”
Anna agreed. He paused and chose his next words carefully.

“We never found
the killer,” he said as he leaned back in his chair. Anna respected the gravity
of the situation, as well as the drama the sheriff attached to the story. “And
who’s to say that he won’t do it again?”

“So what did you
do to prevent more murders and keep people safe? Obviously it’s been almost
five years and nothing’s happened.”

“Well, we used
dogs for about six months. A few times a week we covered about ten square miles
of Crimson Falls, looking for any kind of clues or evidence of someone hiding
out.”

“So that’s why
we have such a strong presence of K-9s here,” Anna said.

“Indeed. Most
folks think they’re about keeping kids off the marijuana and so forth. So we do
drug checks in the schools to keep up appearances. And should the time come
that we need them, we got ‘em.”

“What else?”

“Well, come with
me.” The sheriff led her to a door in the back of his office, locked by three
deadbolts. His large key ring jingled as he slowly unlocked them. When they
walked inside Anna was floored.

“This is the
best technology we could afford, given the fact that we had to, let’s say,
resort to some unseemly measures to pay for them.” Television screens, at least
twenty of them, lined the walls. Each of them revealed parts of the woods, some
of them familiar to Anna, some of them remote. She studied them intently.

“They’re set to
go off if something goes past them. You know, triggered by movement and
whatnot.”

“Did you find
anything?”

“Funny you
should ask,” Sheriff Kelly laughed, pointing at her. He leaned over, his large
stomach hanging nearly to his knees as he reached behind a shelf for a
videotape simply labeled “11/11/90.” He slid the tape into the VCR and clumsily
hit ‘Play’.

Anna sat down as
she watched the video. At first the screen was black, as if the camera was off.
Without warning a video appeared, like someone had been sitting high up in a
tree and recording the ground beneath the camera. A doe walked by, followed by
her small offspring. Picking up on Anna’s slight impatient shuffle in her
chair, Sheriff Kelly laughed.

“Keep watching,
Anna,” he instructed. She nodded. Suddenly the doe disappeared from the
camera’s view. Anna noticed that the camera was not stationary, and as it moved
she could hear its buzz as it shifted position. The small fawn’s tail became
erect, her body frozen in terror. Then, just like its mother, the fawn simply
vanished.

Anna sat back in
her chair, incredulous. “What can you deduce from this video?” she asked.

“Well, nothing
when you watch it in real time,” he noted. “But when you slow down the
video...” He rewound the tape to just before the event. Then, in slow motion,
Anna watched in horror as a large, make-shift noose was thrown around the
deer’s neck and then heaved off camera. Anna gasped. Then, a smaller noose
snatched the fawn.

“But how?” Anna
asked.

“That’s the
million dollar question,” the sheriff remarked.

“No one is that
fast. Or strong,” she insisted.

“Then how do you
explain it?” he pushed.

“The camera must
have malfunctioned. I don’t understand how any person could have pulled a full
grown deer off her feet and out of the purview of the camera.”

“I agree that no
human could do that,” he said.

Anna didn’t like
the look of grim resolution she saw on his face. Grasping at straws to make
sense of what she just saw, she laughed nervously.

“Surely you
aren’t saying that an animal was able to do that?” Anna said.

“I did not say
any such thing,” he retorted. “Anna, I believe you have great promise. I see
you taking my job one day. You were born and raised here and people respect
you.”

“Thank you,
sir.”

“First thing you
need to remember in this job is that there ain’t much in this world that’s
impossible.”

“But unlikely,
for sure,” Anna said.

“Yes, unlikely,”
he repeated as he stared at the smoke from his pipe. “But not impossible.”

“So you showed
me this tape to teach me that the impossible is possible? I’m not sure I
follow.”

Sheriff Kelly
laughed, his stomach jiggling like Santa Claus. “What you need to follow, Anna,
are your instincts. What would you have done if you had viewed this footage
when it occurred?”

“I would have checked
it out.”