Mystery Dance: Three Novels (66 page)

She glanced behind her, saw Walter enter the forest, running toward her. He motioned to the creek that slid silvery and cold down the slope, the water splashing between dark mossy rocks. She almost took off along the creek bank, ignoring Walter and choosing her own random path. But she thought of the tears he had wept under the house. Creeps couldn’t cry.

She leaned against a big oak to wait for him, catching her breath. “Did they see us?” she asked as he dashed up.

“Shh,” he panted, stopping and putting his hands on his sides. Soft forest noises filled the silence, the settling of leaves, the high chatter of a bird.

“I don’t hear anybody.” Walter looked into her eyes. Dirty streaks ran down his face where he had cried.

“Are you going to tell me what this is about?”

“Later. My Jeep’s over that ridge. They’re probably already searching for you.”

“How many?”

He took her hand. “Don’t know. Enough. More than enough, knowing them.”

“Who is ‘them’?” Julia asked, but Walter was already tugging her along, leading her to the creek. He helped her across, stepping on slick stones. Julia scrambled up the muddy bank, holding onto a flaking grapevine. Walter nearly lost his balance and fell, but Julia grabbed his shirt and pulled him onto the bank.

They ran onward, Walter leading the way, Julia holding up her arms to keep the branches from slapping her face. Briars tugged at her clothes, and she stubbed her toe on a root. Once she thought she saw movement out of the corner of her eye and nearly shouted, but she turned her head and saw nothing but more trees, the corridors between them full of still shadows.

They slowed as they hiked uphill, reaching a clearing on the top of the ridge. Jagged hunks of granite protruded from the edge of the slope. A flat slab of gray rock sat in the middle of the clearing, worn smooth by the elements. Between the trees, Julia could see the mountains rolling away, blue and smoky in the distance. Layers of clouds wended over the ripples of land. Under other circumstances, the setting would have been peaceful and humbling. But the trees surrounding the open ground were a little too gnarled, with knotholes like obscene eyes.

“Here’s where they found the girl,” Walter said, fighting to catch his breath.

Julia looked around. Flat stone. Cold against her own back. Bad people around her. The knife’s blade touching her belly.

Her muscles quivered from the exertion of the climb, but she didn’t dare sit on the rock. The place
felt
evil. Like the barn near her childhood home in Memphis, the air here tasted like poison, and a sick energy worked its way through the soles of her feet.

Julia wondered how many other altars of human sacrifice existed. Was the entire earth stained with blood and bones, the substance of the innocent given to the dirt for the satisfaction of a demanding master? The devil might not exist, but his followers most certainly did. His followers were legion. More widespread than anyone dared guess.

Walter knelt with his back to her, scanning the woods below for any sign of Snead’s people. “Hartley disappeared right after they found the body.”

“Didn’t the police do anything?”

“Hartley had ways of keeping folks quiet. One way or another. I reckon that’s Snead’s job now.”

Julia shook her head. She couldn’t believe that Snead and Hartley were connected, that Snead took the job when Julia moved here. The only people who knew she was thinking of moving to Elkwood were Mitchell and Dr. Danner. But the conspiratorial network apparently existed long before she left Memphis.

She stared at the flat stone. Julia tried not to picture the girl, small and shivering and nude on the stone, mad people dancing around her under the cold and soulless moon, chanting their sadistic prayers. She shut her eyes to fight back tears.

She felt Walter’s hand lightly touch her shoulder. “Let’s get out of here,” he said.

“It’s all too crazy to be real.”

He wiped at her face with the sleeve of his flannel shirt. “I’ve been telling myself that for a long time. Ever since my wife walked off the face of the Earth.”

She opened her eyes and looked into his. The loss was there again, inside him, that big hurt that would stay hidden if she didn’t know it was there. “Do you believe in the devil?”

“I believe in
Hartley
,” he said, looking away, up at the veiled sky. “The Lord never makes it easy.”

He took her hand. “The Jeep’s only a few hundred feet from here. There’s an old logging road that runs down the valley.”

They left that sorrowful clearing, Julia wondering just how many sacrifices had been offered at this unhallowed site over the centuries. She walked gingerly, as if over the graves of infants.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

The Jeep was parked in a high bank of weeds, amid goldenrod and white Queen Anne’s lace in fall bloom. Walter stepped onto the leaf-covered logging road that wound between the trees across the slope, looked in each direction, and climbed behind the wheel. Julia got in beside him, tired both from tension and exertion.

“What now?” Julia asked as Walter started the Jeep.

“I know a place where they might not find us.”

She touched his hand that was cupping the gear shift. “Why are you helping me?”

He looked at her. “Let’s just say I got a debt to pay.”

Walter pulled out onto the dirt road, the Jeep bouncing on the ruts. A few saplings had taken root in the roadbed, and the Jeep’s bumper pushed them over. Their tracks were barely visible in the damp leaves.

The Jeep lurched over a rut and a book slid from beneath the seat and bumped Julia’s ankle. It was a Holy Bible. Walter saw her looking at.

“I got somebody riding shotgun,” he said. “You ought to try it sometime.”

“I’m not ready to believe in anything,” she said.

“Except the devil?”

She picked up the Bible and opened it. “I’m hardheaded, okay? Just don’t try to save me.”

“I can’t save you. You can only save yourself.”

The Bible fell open to a page with a folded-back corner. “Luke” was printed in bold in the header. A section of the text was highlighted in yellow and Julia read it aloud. “‘To thee will I give all this power, and the glory of them; for to me they are delivered, and to whom I will, I give them.’“

“Luke chapter four, verse six. The devil said that to Jesus. I use it to remember to stay on my toes.”

Or maybe to remember who’s the real boss. 4:06, huh?

She closed the book and tucked it back under the seat. “We’re going to have to tell the police.”

“Julia, those
were
the police.”

“They can’t all be in on it. The sheriff’s office, the State Highway Patrol, the S.B.I. The devil doesn’t own everybody.”

“Maybe not, but how do you tell?” Walter kept glancing in the rear-view mirror. “We better guess right on the first try, or else we’re in even deeper trouble.”

Julia fished in her purse for her cell phone. “Can’t we make an anonymous tip?”

“They screwed with your clock and VCR in ways I can’t figure out. You reckon they won’t be able to trace a phone call? For all I know they’ve planted a GPS tracker on my Jeep.”

Julia glanced at the cell phone and saw that it had no bars. “Dead.”

“Not many towers way out here.”

The logging road widened as the slope became less steep. The forest was a blur of gold, red, and brown as the Jeep gained speed. Julia fastened her seatbelt and held on to the roll bar overhead to keep from being thrown around by the juddering. Walter slowed briefly, engaged the four-wheel drive lever, and accelerated down the muddy road.

The trees thinned out, and they came to a stretch of pasture bounded by a barbed-wire fence. A few cows gazed at them, not pausing in their cud-chewing. The Jeep crossed a shallow creek that intersected the road.

“They were after me in Memphis,” Julia said over the roar of the engine.

“On your last trip?” Walter kept his eyes on the road.

“No. Before I moved here. I didn’t know it until recently.”

“What do they want?”

“I’m not sure. Either to shut me up or finish the job.”

“Job?”

“My father was one of them. One of the Creeps. When I was four years old….”

She didn’t want to tell the story again. She wanted to leave it undisturbed in the basement of her head, to let it gather dust and cobwebs until it was safely insulated, forever lost in shadows. Telling Dr. Forrest was difficult enough, but telling someone she’d only known a few days was impossible. She didn’t want Walter to think she was crazy.

But Walter wasn’t exactly unscarred, either. He’d suffered his own loss and harbored his own sorrows. But he still was holding something back, and she realized faith couldn’t be based on logic. She’d either have to trust him or jump from the Jeep and take her chances, and she was out of second chances.

“What happened when you were four?” Walter asked.

She studied his face. His jaw was set in determination, as if he were a man with a mission. He’d already made sacrifices for her. If only she could be brave enough, for once in her life, to let somebody reach her. And maybe help him in return.

Walter stepped on the brakes and the Jeep slid to a stop. “What’s wrong?”

Julia put her hands over her face. “You wouldn’t understand.”

Walter grabbed her wrist and pulled one of her hands away from her face. “Listen here, damn it. I don’t know what I got myself into. I just might be heading for a bullet, for all I know. I walked through hell to drag you away from the devil and now we’re driving into who knows what. Don’t tell me I won’t understand.”

Julia tried to look away from him, to the rolling hills, pastures dotted with barns, and stretches of woods that surrounded them. But she couldn’t escape the magnetism of his anger. She gathered air to speak.

“They took the ring,” she managed to say.

“Ring? You make it sound like some kind of elf quest or something.”

“They gave me to Satan,” Julia said, finally shattering, her tears erupting. But the panic quickly faded, became something new, transmuted into a calm, cleansing anger like lead changed into gold by a philosopher’s stone. “My father gave me to the Creeps so they could cut me up as a blood sacrifice and have a party with my body. At least, I
think
that’s what happened.”

It was Walter’s turn to look away.

“My father disappeared that same night,” Julia continued, before Walter joined those who judged her a hopeless head case. “The police never solved the case. My injuries went on the record as trauma from trying to climb out my broken bedroom window. I spent the next ten years in foster care, going from home to home, trying to forget anything had ever happened. I got lucky for a teenaged foster kid, was adopted by a kind, well-to-do couple. They died in a car crash when I was nineteen, but left me enough money to finish college and not have to struggle to make ends meet.”

Julia was surprised at herself because the story was falling out so easily. It had taken two years to tell Lance Danner that much about her past. Dr. Forrest had elicited such detail in a few months. Walter had drawn it out of her in two minutes, even after she’d promised herself not to tell him.

“Maybe you’d better drive on,” Julia said.

Walter nodded, seeming grateful at having something to divert his attention. He put the Jeep in gear and continued down the dirt road. The vehicle smelled of grease and gum, foam spilling from splits in the vinyl seats, the windshield grimy with bug guts.

“I’d met Mitchell Austin during my freshman year, during a summer house party at my adoptive parents’ country club,” she said, realizing that refined world was totally different from Walter’s rural, working life. “I know, boring old coots who play croquet and drink, it sounds more like a prison sentence than a vacation. But Mitchell was–”

She searched for the right word, fumbled over “pleasant,” “trustworthy,” and then found the most accurate one. “Reliable. He comforted me when my new parents were killed. He kept in touch while I finished college at Memphis State, and then asked me to marry him. That was about the time I started having my…little problems.”

“Problems,” Walter said. Not questioning, but not judging, either.

“Sleeplessness. Irritability. Forgetfulness. Fatigue alternating with periods of manic activity. Then it got worse. I broke out in a cold sweat when I was in cramped quarters or surrounded in a crowd. I’d have episodes of anxiety, when my heart rate doubled and my ears rang and I was afraid I’d never be able to take another breath.”

Julia actually laughed. After all the give-and-take, the careful baiting, the strategic questioning of psychotherapy, she’d forgotten what it was like to just
talk
to somebody. Somebody real. She had so little left to lose that she had embraced this different kind of surrender.

“Panic disorder,” he said, keeping his eyes fixed on the road. “Sort of like freaking out?”

“How do you know about that?”

“My wife started having that. Before she–”

His wife. Who had walked off the face of the Earth one night, just as Julia’s father had done.

Julia was going to ask about his wife, despite the sadness in his eyes, when Walter whipped the Jeep to the right. A police car was coming up the road toward them, silent but with its bar lights flashing.

“Damn,” Walter said. “They’ve cut us off.”

He steered the Jeep into an open hayfield. The Jeep bounced over the rugged terrain, Julia holding on, tools rattling in the back. She looked through the rear window and saw that the police car had stopped at the edge of the road.

“Thank God they don’t have four-wheel drive,” said Walter.

“Do you think the whole department’s in on it?”

He shrugged, heading for a copse of trees on the far side of the meadow. “Doesn’t matter. Snead can put out an APB and get his people out in force.”

They drove into the trees, and the police car was out of sight. The Jeep climbed a steep grade and, for one stomach-grabbing moment, Julia thought it was going to flip over. Then they crested the hill and reached the stream they had crossed minutes earlier, only now it was wider, the current slower.