The girl at her side was a brunette of just about the same age.
“He won’t kill us, he’ll understand,” the brunette said.
“He wants her. It’s time. Victoria Preston. He said that the time is here, and he must have her. And he said that the first messenger failed. He needs her now. What will happen to us? Maybe...”
“Maybe what?” the brunette asked.
“Maybe we shouldn’t go back! I remember...”
“What? What?”
“I remember what it was like. Before. I mean... I had a life.”
“No, don’t forget, there is no going back,” the young brunette said worriedly. “We’ve turned our backs on God. We have given ourselves over to Satan. We can’t walk away. Carly, remember the things that we’ve...that we’ve seen?”
“Yes—things we’ve seen! I didn’t do any of it!” the girl named Carly said. “I was just...there. I was...scared. I’m scared now. We’ve failed! Darryl went to Boston and he...he failed. He didn’t come back. And Gloria went to Boston, and they said that she’s dead, too, that they killed her. They shot her down in the streets. Because she failed. Sarah, he’ll wonder why we didn’t punish ourselves. We failed. We are...done.”
“That’s not true at all! And we didn’t fail alone. The others are going to be back already. They’ll have explained what happened. Hey! We weren’t driving the truck. He was driving the truck, remember?”
He was driving the truck. The high priest? The man behind it all?
“We didn’t bring back the woman he wanted—we’ll be made to pay!” Carly said.
“Hey, we weren’t alone,” Sarah said. “We didn’t fail alone.”
“We’ve got to get back quickly. He’s going to drag out the messenger. He’s going to find Jehovah so that we may call upon the great master, Satan. We must—”
“You go back! I’m not going,” Carly said.
The two had stopped walking; they weren’t twenty feet away from Vickie.
“Carly, we’re almost there!” Sarah whispered. “Others could be watching us already.”
Almost there—almost where? Vickie tried to gauge where she was.
She was looking for a building that shouldn’t exist. The old insane asylum that wasn’t razed—because those who were supposed to have razed it had to wait, and it was written down as done.
The two stared at one another nervously, neither speaking for a minute. And then, suddenly, another voice, male and deep, broke through the forest.
“Help me!”
It was him—surely, it was him, Vickie thought.
Milton Hanson.
She’d seen his face so briefly—seen him sitting in the passenger’s side of the truck just a split second before the truck had broadsided the Jeep, sending her and Devin on a deadly roll.
He staggered toward the girls; blood was pouring from his forehead.
“Help me!” he cried again.
“No, no, oh, God, oh, no!” Sarah cried.
“Bitches! I’ll kill you!” Hanson roared.
Carly screamed; Sarah screamed. And the two were gone, racing away.
Milton Hanson came staggering on through the trees. And then Vickie realized that he saw her. He seemed to gain strength. There was a massive branch in his hand and he held it with a death grip. He was coming toward her, and he was going to bash her head in.
“There you are! You—there you are. God help me, I will make you pay!” he exclaimed.
She held no weapon; she wasn’t sure if she looked just as bloodied and torn apart herself.
She let out a cry; every bit of adrenaline in her came to the fore.
And she rushed toward him, using all her strength to shove him down. She was like a catapult, and when she hit him, it might have been comical. He staggered back and lost his grip of the branch. He went down as hard as a pile of bricks, his head cracking on a tree trunk as he fell.
He was out, she thought, looking at him. Out cold, like a prizefighter taken down with a surprise right hook to the jaw.
She gasped in a slew of air, stood over him a second and then looked for where the girls had gone.
Close, she was so close. She stepped over Milton. And there was a path. She went in the direction that the girls, Carly and Sarah, had gone.
It would lead, she was certain, to the old insane asylum. And once she was there, she would find Alex, and she would learn if Helena was, by any prayer, still alive.
She started to move. It wasn’t much of a path, but she could begin to make out the fact that it had been used often enough lately. It meandered through the rich growth of trees and seemed to elevate as she kept moving. At one time, she thought, she would have been leaving the valley below; she would have been heading up a slope.
Then suddenly, there was a break in the trees; an expanse appeared before her. Bushes and brush had grown about haphazardly, but she had reached what had once been a yard...some kind of a garden or a patio.
What had probably once been a garden table had been draped in black fabric and adorned with black candles. Around it, the trees, as well, had been dressed with skulls—from rams, or goats, she believed.
Real skulls.
Torches were stuck into the ground; fires burned already.
And on the stone garden table, shimmering in the torch light, was a knife. A large, curved knife.
A sacrificial knife!
Vickie held fast where she was, trying to judge where people were.
She was here! She had found it. And she was, of course, an idiot if she tried to go into any of the decaying buildings to find Alex or Helena on her own. She had to get back. If she could just find the road she had come from, Griffin and Rocky and a score of officers would be there.
She barely stopped herself from crying out as a door to the building opened, and people emerged.
They were wearing long red robes, and conical hats, and had red scarf-like face masks that fell from the hats, leaving nothing but their eyes visible. She couldn’t help but think that they resembled a flock of blood-drenched KKK members, the apparel was so similar—other than the color.
Two emerged from the building...
And then two more, dragging someone along behind them. Someone barely able to walk...
Alex!
For a moment she stood there, wishing that she’d gotten a branch and made sure that she’d bashed in Milton Hanson’s head. He was the leader here. And whatever he had planned was for tonight—not tomorrow night!
Hanson! He’d been coming out here...for how long? Years—thirty years? Would they find that they had been blind for too long, and that Hanson had been killing and killing and killing?
Well, she’d hit him pretty good. But his followers were all here, without him, getting ready...
Two more of the figures came out of the building. They were also in the crazy red costumes. And they were half leading, half carrying a woman. A blonde woman...
But not the woman from Vickie’s dreams.
Vickie didn’t know her, but she had seen her picture often enough.
It was Helena Matthews.
Vickie forced herself to remain still. The two were led out to the garden table.
The sacrificial table!
They were being forced down upon it.
Vickie’s breath caught in her throat. It wasn’t so much a matter of force. The two were so weak they obeyed. They needed help, even, to obey. They appeared to be half dead already.
Drugged? What was it?
Helena lay, faceup, in one direction. Alex lay, faceup, in the other. One of the red-cloaked thugs picked up the sacrificial knife.
Vickie’s heart seemed to stand still. She tried to tell herself that they were just being prepared for the rite.
r /> The rite that couldn’t take place now, because Milton Hanson had gotten hurt. He wasn’t there to conduct the rite. They would just be prepping...
One of them was behind the altar. He had the knife, the giant knife.
Vickie had to do something. There wasn’t time to wait. She backed against the tree, trying to think, trying to breathe. And then one of the girls she had seen earlier stepped by her. She was making her own way through the trees, trying not to be seen.
It was the very scared one named Carly.
Vickie crept up behind her, praying that she had what it took to make her plan work.
She caught the girl from behind, forcefully grabbing her, a hand over her mouth.
“You failed your master, but you can live. Help is coming. The law is coming. You can survive. You have to get the hell out of here, do you hear me?”
The girl nodded, swallowing hard.
“They’ll come with guns, so you need to be far away. Take this trail, until you’re out—far, far from here. Do you understand me?”
“Yes.”
“First, I need one of those.” And Vickie pointed.
The girl nodded strenuously. Vickie eased her hold and Carly turned to her. “My...my cloak is in the building. You’re...you’re her. You’re the true messenger. You know where Jehovah is.”
“Yes, actually, I think I do,” Vickie said.
“You can’t go in. Everyone has seen pictures of you. I’ll... I’ll get a cloak.”
The girl was shaking.
Vickie knew that it could go either way.
The girl could bring her out a cloak.
Or she could bring all the cultists down upon her.
But she couldn’t wait. Alex and Helena already lay on a table.
“Get me a cloak. Please.”
She prayed that she knew what she was doing.
16
Griffin cursed, wondering how the day had gone so quickly.
It wasn’t dark; darkness was still more than an hour away.
But here, around the Quabbin, the towering trees created shadowed canopies that seemed to rule even the light of day.
It was easy enough to find the road, and then the crossroad, where Devin and Vickie had been headed.
Griffin was in front, running, leaving Rocky to organize, to meet up with the others, to follow as silently as they could, lest they be seen, lest their arrival cause the high priest to demand instant sacrifice from those who served him.
It was a terrible, anguishing dilemma. They had to be so careful.
He followed what remained of the road; it disappeared into the trees.
He could hear a rush of water, and the thought that they were very near the reservoir, or one of the little streams leading to it.
The road was gone, but it seemed that a path remained. He hurried—as quietly as he could—along the path. And then he nearly tripped over a body.
He dropped down on his knees.
Yes, a body, lying prone on the pine needles. Griffin hunkered down, quickly trying to ascertain if the person was dead or alive.
It was a man. He quickly realized that it was Isaac Sherman.
Griffin felt for a pulse. The others were behind him, but Isaac seemed to need help—now. He’d been bashed hard on the head.
Blood dripped down his forehead.
He pulled out his phone, praying it worked out here. A signal! He spoke rapidly.
“Rocky, we need an ambulance, now. Someone has bashed Isaac Sherman on the head. He’s here on the trail. I’m going to keep moving forward.”
“Got it,” Rocky said. “Go.”
Griffin hesitated, moving away. “Are you close?”
“Yes.”
“Stay ahead of the med techs and others. I don’t know what’s going on. I believe that there might be someone following behind me. Keep close.”
“Gotcha.”
Griffin checked Isaac’s airway; the man was breathing on his own. He stayed hunkered down, trying to figure out how the hell he’d wound up where he was, beaten down on the path. The forest created such a strange darkness.
And finally, against the brush and the rocks and the shadows, Griffin saw a shape.
He drew his gun, and pointed it. “Get up, now. Show yourself.”
The shape began to rise. Slowly. And then he saw that it did, indeed, have human form.
“It’s not what you think. I didn’t do that,” the shape said. “I’ve been hiding. They used me. They knew that...that I wanted Jehovah so badly. I didn’t do it... I didn’t hurt that man. I didn’t want to be in the truck.”
It was Milton Hanson walking toward him. He was carrying a massive branch; Griffin couldn’t tell if it did or didn’t have blood on it.
“Drop it!” he told the man.
Hanson did. And, as he did, someone rushed through the trees, moving with strength and fury, coming straight at Griffin.
* * *
Vickie was so relieved that she began shaking.
She couldn’t let the girl see her shake. But Carly came back to where Vickie waited, wearing her red cloak and conical hat and mask.
Once in the trees, she began to divest herself of it as quickly as she could.
“Never, oh, God, never, never do I want to have this on me again! I don’t know why I believed. It was the stuff he gave us. It was so good and I was so happy here, for a while.”
“It doesn’t matter now. Go—just go. Quickly. Help is coming, really. They can’t be more than fifteen or twenty minutes behind me. Head out, head toward Route 9. Do you understand me?” Vickie asked her.
The girl nodded vigorously.
She impulsively hugged Vickie.
Then she turned and ran.
Vickie struggled quickly into the red outfit, making sure that her conical hat was on properly and that it allowed for the scarf-like face mask to fall well and conceal her face.
A mirror would have helped! she thought.
Then again, a nice big gun would have helped more!
She straightened herself and her clothing.
Then she walked out from her hiding place in the trees, straight toward the sacrificial table.
* * *
Griffin didn’t want to shoot; the sound would alert anyone nearby that someone with firepower was in the woods.
So he stepped aside, and the blurry figure coming at him pitched headfirst into one of the trees behind him before falling prone, jumping up, trying for Griffin again.
Easily enough, Griffin caught him by the shoulders, dragged him up and nearly belted him in the jaw.
“You!” Charlie Oakley gasped.
There was a rush of sound behind them.
Milton Hanson was trying to escape. Griffin rushed after him, tackled him and brought him down to the ground.
“That bastard! He was in the woods ahead of us! He attacked Isaac,” Charlie said.
“No!”
Milton Hanson was beneath Griffin then, protesting. “No, no, you don’t understand. They kidnapped me. They seized me when I was hiking through the woods. They threw me in a cell. Oh, Lord! It’s still there. The Mariana Institute is there—the asylum! From the 1800s! That’s how no one knows...because no one goes there. The woods here, so dense...” He broke off. “I swear to you, I swear to you. I was kidnapped! I was taken. He’s going for anyone—anyone at all who might be able to figure out Ezekiel Martin’s rite or message or whatever...to find Jehovah!”
Griffin looked back. Charlie Oakley leaned against a tree, panting.
Griffin reached into his pocket for a set of plastic zip-tie cuffs; he put them on Milton Hanson.
He pulled out his phone, but this time he couldn’t get a signal.
>
Rocky would figure out where he was.
“Where is it?” he demanded, the rage and urgency in his voice enough to make Hanson flinch.
“That way. Keep following. It winds... They used me! They put me in the car on purpose. You were supposed to see me, I think, and kill me. Satan...he’s Satan. You have to see him. I don’t know who, I just know that...”
Griffin left Hanson cuffed and lying on the path. He turned around, but Charlie Oakley was already gone.
Griffin kept moving forward, dodging here and there, trying to ascertain just what was part of the path and what winding trail took him farther away.
Then he nearly tripped over another body.
He bent down.
It was a man. Another man. He felt for a pulse...yes. Slight.
He rose. He had to leave the man. No choice. He had to pray that Rocky and Devin and EMT help would reach him in time, as well.
He knew the killer.
And he knew he had to hurry.
* * *
The first thing she had to do, Vickie reckoned, was get Helena and Alex off the table.
They were both so weak...
She wasn’t at all sure how she was going to manage such a task. But, of course, Milton Hanson was back on the ground somewhere. Nothing could happen until he showed up. Their grand master, high priest or head man—whatever!
And still, she felt the frantic urge to get them out of there.
She thought desperately, and then she raised her arms high and started walking straight out into the middle of the clearing, toward the table.
She thought of all the Latin she had learned in church when she’d been young—and she thought of the spattering of languages she’d learned during her years of study.
She wasn’t really sure what she said.
She tried to make it sound as if she was preparing the two people for a grand offering.
She was pretty sure that what she was really saying had to do with buying chicken soup and bread in the market.
Nevertheless...
She’d gambled well. People, clad in their similar red robes, were milling about, preparing to come out for the rite. Three...four...seven. She counted about eight young men and women, and she was quite certain that more were in the building.