The Trail Page 23

  He would pass Tucker’s store. He wondered if he should kill Joe Tucker as well. The priest would get angry if he did. The priest said that Tucker was on their side, one of us. Tucker hadn’t even told the cop when Martin had scrawled the pentagrams on his door. Even so, Martin was getting tired of taking orders from the priest. And his blood lust was growing.

  He hiked towards Tucker’s Store.

  Chapter One Hundred

  The rowboat slapped against the waves. Scott dug the oars into the water with trained efficiency. He’d been a member of the crew team in high school, and rowing reminded him of earlier times. The dawn practice sessions along the Schuylkill River. The twinkle of lights from Boathouse Row. The Gothic columns of the Philadelphia Art Museum perched high on a hill, looming over the river.

  Now was a nice time, too, if Scott ignored the gun pointed at his head. The lake was beautiful. The setting sun illuminated splashes of deep greens and oranges where his oars caught the water and swirled tiny eddies. He’d missed the water. Missed his summers down the Jersey shore. His skin would turn a caramel brown and girls were so easy to get. He’d flirt with them at the beach during the day, and then fuck them that night. It was a perfect existence.

  College. Sure, it was fun. Jack was fun. The girls were hotter and crazier. But nothing beat high school. Nothing. The Todd Stork thing cast a pall over college. That and Susan. He killed a kid and got stuck in a long-term relationship. Which was worse? He chuckled to himself, lost his focus, and slipped an oar. Water sprayed Susan and Alex.

  Alex, you’re free, kid, Scott thought. Young. Single. Life is good. Don’t make the same stupid mistakes I made. Scott had heard the term “fate worse than death” before. That’s what marriage was to him: a fate worse than death. He wasn’t afraid of death. Wasn’t afraid to kill someone, either. The way Scott saw it, he was already dead—so what did it matter?

  “Where do you think he went?” Susan asked.

  “Don’t know,” Alex replied. “Back into the woods somewhere.”

  “I don’t like the fact that we can’t see him,” Susan said.

  “I can feel him,” Alex muttered.

  He’s right, Scott thought. I can feel him, too. It’s funny being watched. You can actually feel the eyes on you.

  Susan cautiously stood up and peered into the woods, momentarily dropping the gun to her side. “What are we gonna do if he’s following us? What if he’s waiting for us on the other side of the lake?”

  “He’s not fast enough to reach the other side,” Alex assured her. “We’re moving too fast.”

  Susan looked down at Scott. “Yeah, Scott. You’re doing a great job.”

  Scott looked up, feeling almost tender toward her for a moment. “Reminds me of high school. Stroke, stroke, stroke.”

  Susan laughed. “That’s right. You were on the crew team in high school.”

  “First boat. We won the regatta.”

  Susan smiled and turned away toward the shore.

  Scott stared at Susan’s back. His eyes lowered to the gun. He loosened his grip on the oars and leaned in. He gave one final half-assed stroke, just so Susan would hear the paddles hitting the water, then dropped the oars. His hands were free. He reached out—

  “Did you two know each other in high school?” Alex asked.

  Susan turned back toward the others. Scott grabbed the oars again.

  “No, we met in college.”

  Scott gathered himself and regained his rhythmic stroke. They were approaching the other side of the lake. If he was going to act, he needed to act soon.

  —whack!

  Scott’s right oar struck something solid. He peered over the side of the boat and found what appeared to be a twisted clump of laundry.

  “What is it, Scott? Why’d you stop rowing?” Susan asked.

  “Hit something.”

  “What is it?”

  “Don’t know.”

  Susan gingerly leaned to the other side, taking care not to tip the boat. The gun was inches from Scott’s right hand. He let go of the oar.

  Susan watched as the jumble of clothes turned over.

  Then she screamed.

  Chapter One Hundred One

  “Kim! Oh God, Kim!”

  Alex looked over, digested the image, and dry-heaved into the water.

  “Christ,” said Scott. “How do you know it’s Kim’s body, Susan? The head is, um...”

  “Scott, it’s her. It’s Kim.” She pointed at the black tribal tattoo across the corpse’s lower back. “Look, that’s her tattoo.”

  Scott was silent. She could tell by his expression that Scott had seen more than just Kim’s tattoo before her death.

  The jumble of cloth turned over again. Susan stared at the remains, unable to look away. Water had transformed the damaged flesh into a white cauliflower-like substance. Dead leaves clung to the neck. The legs were bloated and bluish. The left calf was mangled, exposing spaghetti strands of pale yellow muscle.

  Susan looked at Kim’s foot. At the puncture wound and gash from her previous swim in the lake. If only Kim had known how bad things would get. The gash in her foot was a paper cut compared to the atrocities that had awaited her.

  Poor Kim. Why didn’t she turn around right then? Susan wondered. Why didn’t she just quit and go home to where was she from? New Hampshire? Vermont? Some New England state. She didn’t go home because she wanted to have sex with Scott. Well, she probably got what she wanted. Funny, we both wanted to have sex with Scott. Now we both may end up dead because of it.

  Susan looked over at Scott. He held his head in his hands and leaned forward on the rowing bench. This was the strongest reaction she’d seen from him during the carnage of the past few days. Although he was mourning for a dead girl he’d had an affair with, she couldn’t help but feel touched by his sadness. Maybe Scott was coming around. For a few moments there, while he was rowing, he had seemed like his old self again. She had even felt a slight connection to him.

  Maybe holding the gun on Scott was a bit overdramatic. We are all in the same boat. Susan smiled at her own pun. She would have to remember that one later, if she ever made it out of here and told this story to Margaret and her friends at a bar. Although something told her that if she did live, she would never tell the story of this trip to anyone. For one thing, she never wanted to discuss the things she’d seen. For another, she’d forever be branded as that freaky girl who witnessed her friends get hacked to pieces on a camping trip. She would never be permitted to be normal again.

  Scott repositioned the oars in the oarlocks and started rowing mechanically.

  “You okay, Scott?” Susan asked.

  “Yeah, babe. Thanks. I’m alright.”

  Maybe he was alright. Maybe instead of pointing the gun at him, she should give him the gun. After all, he was a good shot. Alex had missed Martin Levy earlier. Maybe Scott could have hit him. Scott wanted to survive like the rest of them. He had to know that their chances of survival increased if they all stuck together and helped each other out.

  Susan heard scraping noises under the boat. She looked up and realized that they were approaching shore. The woods were getting dark. The undersides of leaves filled with shadow and gloom. Susan felt safer on the water. No one could sneak up on them. No more of that goddamn trail. But now, facing the forest and the leaves and the dirt and the darkness, her fears returned.

  “Scott?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Here, I want you to take this.”

  She handed him the gun.

  Chapter One Hundred Two

  I heard a fly buzz when I died, Sheriff Adams thought. He’d always remembered the phrase, some snatch of a poem he’d learned in high school. I heard a fly buzz when I died. Standing there in Tucker’s Store, looking down at a human arm covered in flies, the line returned to him.

  I heard a fly buzz when I died. He hadn’t understood the poem in high school. Hadn’t understood any of that English literature shit. Beowulf an
d the rest. Symbols and irony. Listening to some fag of a teacher explaining secret meanings.

  Adams always thought, if you’ve got something important to say, just say it. Don’t beat around the bush. But that one line about the flies, it had returned to him often. He still didn’t quite know what it meant, but he felt he was getting closer to the truth. The phrase always came to mind when he was the first responder to a car accident. He’d remember it when he looked at the guy in the driver’s seat, bloody and dying. The car’s left turn signal would still be flashing the final fatal command. And maybe there would be just one tiny fly, fluttering around the face, already locating the blood.

  If the accident took place in a rural area, like skidding off one of Crenson’s notoriously treacherous roads and slamming into a tree, the scene could be surprisingly quiet. Just that damn turn signal clicking, or maybe, if the accident happened on a rainy night, the windshield wiper blade, crunched like an accordion, twisting back and forth in the air. Eerily quiet. Perhaps a stray deer would nose its way down to the road, roused by the noise of the impact. That was all. No screaming. No heroes. No Hollywood ending. Just a life fading fast in the driver’s seat. Sheriff Adams imagined that one probably could hear a fly buzz.

  “Now hold on there, sheriff,” Joe Tucker said from behind the counter. “Just hold on there. I’ll let you take my truck. Here’s the keys.”

  “Your truck? Your keys? There’s a dead body on the floor of your store, Joe. You’ve got bigger problems now.”

  “I’ve got nothing to do with that body.”

  “It’s in your store. That means you’ve got everything to do with it. Mind telling me who it is?”

  Joe Tucker thought for a minute. “Nope.”

  “You’re not gonna tell me? You’re not gonna cooperate with a cop?”

  Tucker considered. “Don’t know who it is,” he finally said, then spit a wad of tobacco into the jar.

  “You mean to tell me that there’s a dead body in your store—” Adams stopped, toed the door open a little wider, then continued. “A dead naked girl, around eighteen, in your store, and you don’t know who she is?”

  Joe Tucker was silent.

  “Unless you start talking, you’re gonna go to jail, Joe. You’re gonna go to jail for a really long time. Hell, they may even execute you. Pennsylvania likes to execute someone every couple of years, just to keep things honest. Maybe that someone will be you.”

  “I found her. She was dead when I found her.”

  “You found her? Where’d you find her?”

  Joe paused, as though to measure his words, then said, “She washed up from the lake.”

  Now it was the sheriff’s turn to pause. He studied Tucker’s face. Joe Tucker. Isolated, lonely, dim-witted. Bad liar. The body washed up from the lake? It was possible. He’d have to examine the remains further to determine water damage, and if she drowned or was killed and tossed in the lake. Either way, if she was in the lake, from the look of things, she hadn’t been in there long.

  “Okay, Joe. Let’s suppose you did find her. And she did wash up from the lake. Why didn’t you call the cops immediately?”

  “Phone’s dead.”

  “Why didn’t you drive to the station? Why didn’t you tell us? Why didn’t you tell anyone?”

  Joe said nothing.

  “How long have you had her, Joe?”

  “Just two days, I swear.”

  “Joe, why didn’t you tell anyone?”

  Joe Tucker looked around the store, as if the answer were written on the back wall, then responded in a voice just above a whisper. “I wanted to play with her for a little bit.”

  Chapter One Hundred Three

  Father Glick was an expert on torture devices. The rack. The Iron Maiden. The Head Crusher. He favored Russian methods of torture. They’re such a marvelously inventive people, he thought. After Adams escaped, Glick had turned his anger on Bryson. The priest knocked the young officer off balance and drugged him with a syringe. The once robust cop was now dazed and listless in the small, dimly-lit room under the church.

  “Heeeelp,” Bryson whispered, lolling his head from side to side. Bryson was strapped to the Witch’s Chair, Glick’s favorite method of torture. Spikes protruded from the back and arm rests of the seat, while the officer’s ankles and wrists were shackled tight.

  “Heeelp.”

  The Witch’s Chair was designed to force a confession from an accused witch, but Father Glick wasn’t interested in confessions. He merely exulted in torture.

  After watching Bryson nod in and out of consciousness for a while, Glick ordered the officer and the chair to be moved from the catacombs beneath the church to the foot of the altar. Meanwhile, Glick himself ascended the steps to the church, and noted the parishioners had returned to the main hall, and were milling about the cathedral. The sight of Bryson, one of their own, strapped to the Witch’s Chair, drew considerable excitement from the crowd. The Witch’s Chair always meant that someone had turned on the flock. A wave of concerned murmurs rippled through the gathering, followed by amused catcalls. The mob swelled in confidence.

  “Traitor!” shouted a man towards the back of the church, and the others joined in. “Traitor! Traitor!”

  Glick stood behind the altar and gazed out at his people. He noted their blood lust. One day they will turn on me, too, he thought. When the people eventually realized that the cult of Crenson didn’t offer any real power, aside from the mindless ecstasy of the mob, they would seek his blood. Glick was used to the game. He knew when to get out. He had faith in his instincts and his visions. He saw that the end would come in flame.

  “We give you destruction, you give us protection!” Glick bellowed.

  “Destruction! Protection! Destruction! Protection!” the crowd echoed.

  “Yes! We have a traitor among us!”

  “Traitor! Traitor!”

  “Officer Bryson, once a member of our flock, has decided to turn away from us.”

  “No!”

  “Yes! He allowed one of our captives to escape!”

  The crowd gasped and murmured in muffled tones.

  Glick’s confidence surged. He preened in the candlelight. “That’s not all,” said the priest, thrusting his arms upward. His great cloak sleeves unfurled in the air. “He also tried to assault me!”

  “No!”

  “Yes! Of course, I was given protection, and now this pathetic little wretch will feel our destruction.”

  The crowd cheered.

  Glick smiled. “Officer Bryson will now know pain!” He held up a rusty dagger, the same one he had used to mutilate the young boy.

  “We give you destruction, you give us protection.”

  “Destruction! Protection!”

  Glick wheeled and plunged the dagger deep into Bryson’s chest. He extracted the knife and drove it in again, this time hearing the dull crack of his sternum. Glick rode the knife downwards to the navel, and watched as Bryson’s insides emptied in front of the altar. He thrust his bony hand into the officer’s chest and ripped out the fleshy organ.

  “Observe the heart of a traitor! Look at it. Know it well. The is the fate of anyone who turns his back on the flock!”

  Even the most sadistic among the crowd seemed to pause, as if a flicker of reality had broken through their collective fantasy. In another moment the flicker was gone. The crowd returned to its absolute allegiance to Father Glick.

  Bryson convulsed in the chair.

  “There is another one who must die,” the priest said. “Another officer of the law. The one who saw our ceremony has escaped, and now he seeks to alert the world. We must kill him before that happens. His name is Sheriff Adams.” The crowd murmured. “Some of you know him. He has been an officer of the law for many years here in Crenson. The only way we can assure our protection is through the sheriff’s destruction. He is most likely somewhere in the woods south of Crenson. Somewhere on the trail.”

  Glick looked out at his congregati
on. He held Officer Bryson’s heart up in one hand, the dagger in the other.

  “Find Sheriff Adams and kill him!”

  Chapter One Hundred Four

  Scott ran his fingers over the smooth handle of the gun. Kim’s gun. He puzzled over why she had brought it camping. She was a strange girl, Kim. White trash. Wild. Now she was dead. He wondered if he had ever slept with anyone else who was now dead. Maybe Susan, soon enough.