Silas: A Supernatural Thriller (10 page)

Interviews with neighbors and family friends came next. Everyone spoken to cried out against the horrifying event while tears streamed down their faces. There was no grandstanding or insincerity to be found. Their world had just crumbled and there they were, simple, everyday folk, left to pick up the pieces.

Just like me.

Though we weren’t best friends, I’d known John and Linda quite well. They were regulars at the flower shop where Wendy used to work. John built the shed in our backyard. I saw their children at town events. Max had wanted to be a writer, and I would discuss my favorite stories with him whenever he’d stop by the house on his bike while I was outside mowing the lawn in the warmer months. And now they were gone. I remembered the multiple radio broadcasts I’d heard over the last year, the reports of missing children I’d quickly turned away from because I didn’t want to think about the horror they implied. But now it hit close to home. I couldn’t glaze over the issue any longer.

Wendy squeezed my hand as a picture of Bridget Cormier lit up the screen. Her frozen image stared at us, black hair long and wavy, eyes glowing. Her gap-toothed grin radiated incorruptibility. I shivered.
What if this was
my
daughter?
I thought of our neighbor Joe and his precocious Jacqueline. She was around Bridget’s age, and they looked rather similar. It could’ve been her. It could’ve been
anyone. What’s the matter with the world?
My brain couldn’t come up with an acceptable answer.

A young boy appeared on the screen, most likely a neighbor. He pleaded into the camera for Bridget, promising he’d give whoever took her his entire allowance if only he could play with her again. Wendy lost it. She leaned into me and bawled, her body shivering with each gasping breath. I tensed up. Tears wanted to flow from my eyes, as well, but I held them back. It’s like my father used to say:
We have to be strong, it’s the women who’re given the license to cry, let them have it.

Silas, who’d been asleep on the loveseat, woke up. He gazed at us with tired eyes. Wendy sniffled, and he lifted his ears. Placing his front paws on the ground he arched his spine, rear end still propped on the loveseat, and yawned. Then he stepped off completely and moseyed on over.

He sat before us, leaned forward, and licked Wendy’s knee. “Oh, Silas,” she moaned, reaching out to pet him on the cheek. He nuzzled into her thigh and closed his eyes. Wendy’s breathing grew steadier, as if contact with him healed her sorrow like it had my heart.

I kissed Wendy, rubbed Silas on the noggin, stood up, and stretched. My loyal companion then turned away from Wendy, hunched on all fours, and growled. The hair stood up on the nape of his neck. I jumped back, surprised by his sudden aggressive behavior.

“What’s wrong?” I asked, backing away.

Silas looked at the television, where they were showing another photo of the missing Bridget, and then back to me. He did this three more times, as if he was telling me to pay attention. Another rumble ascended from his gullet. It reminded me of the sound he’d made during our walk at the Mancuso farm. It was the only other time he’d acted in such a way.

Then it hit me. Tire tracks. A large creature moving behind the trees.

I shook my head.

“No way,” I whispered. “It’s not possible.”

15

I couldn’t sleep. All night the image of young and innocent Bridget Cormier invaded my thoughts – her toothy grin, those guiltless eyes, that soft skin. Her visage melded with that of Colleen Miller, the other young girl I’d met whose life had come to an untimely end. That thought gave me pause, though, for Bridget Cormier
wasn’t
dead, or at least it hadn’t been confirmed yet. I got the guilty chills, thinking I may have written her off too quickly.

I also kept thinking of Silas and his strange reaction, both at the Mancuso farm and here at home. Had he sensed trouble in those desolate woods? Did he feel the terror Bridget must have felt, alone and trapped with evil men? Or was my mind grasping at straws, trying to make sense of the senseless violence surrounding us? It was probably just a stray timber wolf or coyote that caught his attention, my mind reasoned, and yet I couldn’t stop wondering.

It’s impossible
, I thought.
There’s no way he’d know something like that. He’s just a dog.
This is what I told myself, but something in back of my mind said to trust my instincts, just as
he
would.

That left but one possible recourse. I had to go back.

The next day I told Wendy I wouldn’t be going with her to
The Spinning Wheel.
She protested a bit, wondering why I’d call in like a lazy high-school student. I didn’t tell her the
real
reason – I couldn’t, she’d think me insane for sure. Instead I went on and on about how I had to fix the leak in the bathroom sink.

“We have the money to hire a plumber,” she said.

“I know,” I replied. “But there’s a certain satisfaction a man gets by doing things on his own that you just wouldn’t understand.”

She rolled her eyes. “Whatever you say.”

I watched her leave at six-thirty in the morning and went about preparing for our journey. The troubled organ beneath my ribcage thudded harder than it had since the heart attack as I packed supplies into my backpack – a sheet, flashlight, compass, Silas’s leash, a cord of vinyl rope, and a survival knife, just in case. I trembled at the thought of actually having to use the knife against some malevolent human predator.
Stop being paranoid
, I told myself.
You know you’re not gonna find anything out there. You’re worrying over nothing.

Too bad I couldn’t make myself to believe that.

I loaded Silas into the Subaru and headed off, watching in the rear-view mirror as he curled up in the back and closed his eyes. He didn’t act his usual way, pacing around tirelessly, poking his head in the front seat and coating my shoulder with slobber. In fact he seemed to be morose, as if he had some precognition about what was to come.

The drive made me nervous. My fingers tapped the steering wheel and my stomach clenched. I tuned the radio to the local classic rock station, catching the end of
Let It Be
. This helped soothe my frayed nerves a bit, but then the next song came on and I heard the telltale guitar twang and nasal beckoning of Art Lonnigan. Instead of changing the channel as I usually do I turned up the volume. This tune had become so ever-present over that last year that I couldn’t help but think that maybe the lyrics, in all their incoherent randomness, could help guide me.

The numbers of my stranded soul

Rattle through the cages of time

Nine, six, eight, two, four

In my brain without a rhyme

My shoulders slumped and I kept my eyes on the road while trying to decipher
Lonnigan’s
rambling. The chorus came next:

Five, seven, two, one, in a land once said

And through fields of green, I see the dead

In the shade of a blood-red morning

Which faulty math can’t repent

In the shade of a blood-red morning

With angels swimming ‘round my bed

It made no sense. There were no hidden messages there, no unforeseen guidance to be given. It simply was what it was, a silly tune written by a guy who was probably cracked out on LSD at the time. I lowered the volume and drove on. Silas never budged.

The farmhouse appeared on my left, rising like a haunted mansion above the overgrown shrubs and evergreens. I parked in the same spot as before, grabbed my backpack, and stepped out. I took a moment to breathe in the morning air, still saturated with dew, before opening the back door for Silas. He exited the car the same way as I, his movements slow yet steady.

We traced a line down the marked path. Sunlight illuminated the damp grass, making it glow in a rainbow of colors. My breathing kicked up a notch. Even though I told myself there was nothing to worry about, I wanted to turn tail and flee home.

I didn’t need to tell Silas what to do. He took the lead, pacing ten strides ahead and constantly looking back to make sure I didn’t lose sight of him. He led me across the field and made a beeline through the ravaged cornfield. His shoulders hunched and he kept his nose to the ground, sweeping his head this way and that, searching.

We arrived at the spot that had affected him so. I knew it was the same place because his half-chewed stick was still lying there, a few feet from the overgrowth. He stopped and allowed me to catch up, then gazed up at me with eyes that seemed to say,
you sure you want to do this?
I nodded in response to his unasked question. Silas turned around, dropped his nose to the ground again, and sliced through the foliage and into the woods.

I followed him down a twisting path, shoving aside branches, doing my best to ease the tension by pretending I was Indiana Jones cutting through some South American jungle in search of lost treasure. The path was treacherous and I had a hard time keeping up with Silas’s agile legs as they maneuvered over stumps, rocks, and gullies with ease. I trailed at what ended up being a brisk jog, constantly slipping and at one point coming quite close to tumbling head over heels down a sudden embankment. Silas, ever the keen protector of his loved ones, never let me lag too far behind. Every time it looked like he would disappear from sight he’d circle back and reel me in, sniffing around, following some hidden scent.

The trail ended but we kept moving forward, working our way down a steep, root-lined hill until we entered a gully. Dense flora covered the furrow, above which the largest maple trees I’d ever laid eyes upon loomed, casting the area into near-darkness. It was a difficult passage; vines tangled my legs and my boots kept slipping on loose rocks. Silas picked up his pace and a shrill buzz, much like a whale’s siren call, escaped his throat. I drew in a deep breath and marched on.

Silas came to a stop at the edge of the culvert. My beloved dog stood rock-still and leaned forward. I came upon him from behind, careful not to nudge him in any way. He looked frazzled, jumpy, and I feared he’d rip off my head if I surprised him. So I knelt down, placed a gentle hand against his side, and whispered, “It’s okay, boy.” He licked my face in response to that, easing me a bit.

I leaned over the ground before us. Something looked odd. The usual carpet of leaves and vines had been replaced by a seemingly random collection of fallen evergreen limbs. I glanced up at the dense canopy and saw only broadleaf trees above. The pines were at least a hundred feet away, back at the top of the rise.

Which meant they’d been stacked there.

One by one I pulled away the branches and tossed them to the side. Silas didn’t move a muscle as I did this. He stayed still, nose down, eyes staring at the mound of branches as if he could see right through it. I shuffled ahead on my knees to reach another branch and accidentally kicked a small stone. The stone rolled six inches and disappeared beneath the pile of sticks. I heard it strike the ground a second later.

There was a ditch underneath the pile. Shit.

My hands moved with a fervor built from equal parts excitement and dread. Sharp knobs of bark cut into my palms, making them bleed. I didn’t care. I was on a mission and wouldn’t be stopped. Slowly, the emptiness before me came into focus. It was a dark chasm, six feet around at most and only God knew how deep. With the broad trees overhead causing a perpetual state of dusk, I could only see the first few inches of upturned, clay-lined soil. I glanced at Silas, who looked back at me with one eye opened larger than the other. I slung the backpack over my shoulder and unzipped it.

I took out my cheap, dollar-store flashlight and clicked it on. I shone it down the hole and searched for signs of life. It looked like the break extended a good fifteen feet or more into the earth. Exposed roots covered with animal-like fur protruded from the dug-out sides.
The gate to hell
, I thought, and a shiver stole its way from my tailbone to the base of my skull.