Garden of Darkness (15 page)

“Where should I park?” she asked. There wasn’t even a shoulder, just a weedy ditch.

“Pull forward.” Franklin waved his hand. “You should come to a lane that leads into a neighbor’s cornfield.”

She accelerated, wishing Franklin had driven. Apparently his truck didn’t always run, and all four of them wouldn’t have been able to squeeze in anyway.

When she was young, Gabriella believed in many things. But as she’d aged, she’d become more skeptical. That didn’t mean she voiced her doubts. It didn’t mean she wasn’t still looking for something that felt real and right. But at sixty-two she feared that would never happen. The time for believing was past and tied more to the path she’d already walked than the one ahead of her.

And so she’d decided to pursue this Wicca thing, hoping to find something. But all it turned out to be was a bunch of silly women doing silly things. But she liked silly things. Everybody liked silly things.

“Here.” Franklin pointed in the green glow of the dashboard lights. “Take a right.”

She turned and pulled to a stop in front of a metal farm gate. They all got out of the car. Shirley checked and worried over her denim fanny pack, verbally cataloging the contents for the third time. “Water. Camera. Flashlight. Hand gel.”

“What about a container for the dirt?” Gabriella asked.

“I thought you were bringing it.”

“Noooo.”

Gabriella got back in the car and retrieved a Zip-loc bag she carried for dog walks. It didn’t seem the right thing for graveyard dirt, but she could shift it to something more suitable once she got home.

The women clustered and whispered.

Oh, the excitement! The darkness! The stealth!

They weren’t doing anything illegal, Gabriella had told herself several times. Old Tuonela used to belong to everybody. It should still belong to everybody, and would if Evan Stroud hadn’t purchased it out from under the city of Tuonela. Sneak.

It was just as much their place as anybody else’s. That’s the way she saw it.

“We walk single-file,” Franklin told them. “Keep your flashlights pointed at your feet. Never shine it at the trees or parallel to the ground. We don’t want to attract attention.”

They nodded and clicked on their small flashlights, chosen for their very lack of candlepower.

“This is so exciting!” Millie said.

“Shhh!”

She dropped her voice. “This is so exciting.”

Gabriella was excited too, but she hoped Millie exercised some self-control. Millie was a loud woman who liked to draw attention to herself, especially when out in public. Gabriella found it annoying. The last thing she wanted to be was part of a group of loud, obnoxious women.

They moved forward.

The first problem was finding the gate locked. They climbed it—not an easy thing for women their age. Franklin had to help Millie and Shirley. Hand on their waists, he guided them to the ground.

The day had been warm for late fall. Temperatures had dropped with the setting sun, but it wasn’t horribly frigid. Gabriella wore a pair of cheap stretch gloves she’d picked up at the checkout counter of Tuonela Discount. Right now the gloves made it a little hard to grip the flashlight.

The ground was uneven and soft.

Gabriella hadn’t been hiking in the woods since she was a young girl, and everything was much more difficult than she’d anticipated. There was a moment when she wondered if they should turn around.

“How much farther?” She gasped, one gloved hand clinging to a sapling, the flashlight hand braced against her knee.

Franklin surveyed their surroundings. “I think it’s just over the next rise.”

If it wasn’t, they’d go back. This was getting ridiculous. Three old broads wandering around in the woods. One of them could break a neck, or at least an ankle. What had seemed like fun in the safety of Gabriella’s living room was looking more foolish by the second.

On the crest of the next hill, they stopped to catch their breath. Franklin allowed the beam of his flashlight to move along the ground until it touched the foundation of a crumbling stone building. “There it is.”

The article in the paper claimed Richard Manchester had been buried under an oak tree in the church graveyard. That’s what they were after: dirt from the Pale Immortal’s grave.

“I think I’ll just wait here.” The excitement was gone from Millie’s voice.

“Me too,” Shirley said.

Gabriella wanted to wait with them, but that would be cowardly and senseless. “Let’s go straight to the grave. I’ll grab the dirt; then we’ll hurry back.”

She and Franklin moved forward.

The air seemed thicker, and their footsteps didn’t make as much noise. It was too quiet, like being in some kind of vacuum. Her head felt funny: Pressure was building in her sinuses and ear canals. Her scalp tingled; her eyes watered. She put a hand to Franklin’s arm for physical reassurance.

Franklin found a narrow path that led to a low stone wall. He stepped over and Gabriella followed. They paused in front of a rotting tree.

An oak tree had been planted over the grave of the Pale Immortal to keep him from rising up. A lot of people said the body should have been put back under the oak and not displayed in a museum. Gabriella hadn’t really cared, but now that she was here, now that her head was buzzing in such a strange way, she wondered if maybe she’d finally found something that was real. Something to believe in.

Two massive tree roots as big around as a man straddled a dark pit where the coffin had most likely been. While Franklin shone his light at the base of the tree, Gabriella dug with her gloved hand, scooping loosened soil into the bag. She closed the plastic zipper, straightened, and tucked the dirt into her jacket pocket.

Something had changed.

She could feel Franklin’s stillness.

It was too dark to read his expression, but there was no missing the clawed grip on her arm.

Did the simple act of believing change everything? Did it play an active role in an individual’s reality?

A flashlight aimed at her face suddenly blinded her vision.

“Are you looking for Richard Manchester?” The voice beyond the flashlight resonated in her chest. It joined the weird sounds and thoughts going on between her ears, making her wonder if she’d heard the words only in her head.

Was he communicating telepathically?

She waited for Franklin to answer, but he seemed unable to speak.

“My boyfriend and I . . . we got a little lost,” Gabriella stammered, her heart slamming. “Can you tell us how to get back to the highway from here?”

“If you’re looking for Manchester,” the man said, ignoring her lie, “he’s no longer in his grave.”

“Um . . . no. We aren’t looking for . . . whoever you said. We just want to find our car.”

“Would you like to meet him? Manchester?”

She frowned, perplexed. Was this Evan Stroud? Had to be. People said he was crazy. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Right.”

That was stupid of her.

“Everybody knows Richard Manchester.
Everybody.
”

“Oh, yes. Of course. The Pale Immortal. His body is at the museum in Tuonela.”

“Would you like to meet him?” he repeated.

“I . . . we might go to the museum. Right, honey?” She gave Franklin a nudge.

He found his voice. “Yeah.” He gripped her arm, and she could feel him shaking. “Tomorrow maybe.”

“Not right now?”

Her small flashlight was still aimed at her feet. She lifted it and shone it at the mysterious speaker.

White skin.

Black hair.

Eyes like dark pits.

He took a stumbling step back.

She grabbed Franklin’s arm and lifted it until his flashlight beam was parallel to hers, giving the man a double blast.

He dropped to his knees like somebody had kicked him in the belly.

Gabriella spun around, tugging at Franklin’s jacket. “Come on!”

They ran.

They hauled ass as if the Pale Immortal himself were after them. Seconds later they caught up with Millie and Shirley. “Run!”

Crashing through the brush, tree branches smacking faces, lungs burning, with no thought to a broken neck or broken ankle, they ran. Until they were back at the car and Gabriella was sticking the key in the ignition, firing up the engine, slamming the car into gear.

Reverse. Drive. Tromp the gas pedal and roar away.

Sweet mercy.

“Oh, my God!” Franklin curled into the passenger seat, hands pressed to the sides of his face. “Oh, my God. I’m never going back there. Not as long as I live.”

“What happened?” Millie said, leaning forward and grabbing Gabriella’s headrest. “You have to tell us what happened!”

Gabriella gripped the steering wheel tighter. “I don’t know.”

“What do you mean, you don’t know?”

“It was Evan Stroud.” Franklin was out of breath. “We ran into Evan Stroud.”

Gabriella wasn’t so certain.

She replayed the event in her mind, but no matter how many times she viewed it her memory was the same. Yes, she’d been scared shitless. Yes, she knew her take was skewed.

She’d been to the museum to see the Pale Immortal. Who in the area hadn’t? And now, when she pulled up the encounter in her head, she saw someone she swore was Richard Manchester standing there, not Evan Stroud.

But she wasn’t going to say anything about it.

“Now what?” Millie asked. “Where are we going to find the right dirt?”

In all the excitement, Gabriella had completely forgotten about the bag of soil she’d collected. She tugged off her gloves and reached into her jacket pocket, her fingers coming in contact with the pouch.

They’d gotten what they’d come for: dirt from the grave of the Pale Immortal.

Chapter Twenty-one

We lost our room.

One day after the psychic clip aired on WXOW, the owner of Tuonela Inn told us she was overbooked and we had to leave.

Kicked out.

We could have argued, but Claire pointed out that we were quickly becoming too unpopular. Soon nobody would be talking to us if we continued to cause trouble. And we’d find another place to stay.

We didn’t.

It might have been because of the whole tourist thing, but I had the feeling we wouldn’t have found a room even if every room in town had been empty.

So we were going to camp out.

Camp! I hadn’t been camping since I was a Girl Scout. And that was in somebody’s backyard.

Normally I’d just pack up and leave. This was bullshit. But no way was I leaving now.

I’d screwed up some things in my life. My big one was dropping out of college, thinking I knew enough people in the business to make a living. But Tuonela was going to be a turning point. I sensed it. I felt it. Like a breeze blowing across the surface of my skin. Or the way skinny-dipping touched you in unfamiliar places. Places that had always been there but you hadn’t noticed before. My blood was singing.

But we had to sleep in a tent. It was hard for me to hide my irritation.

We picked up two cheap pup tents at Target, along with camping supplies like lanterns, flashlights, and sleeping bags. “It’s part of the adventure,” Claire said.

I didn’t want to spoil her delusion, so I just nodded and stared forlornly at my Barbie sleeping bag.

I hadn’t told any of them about what had happened at Old Tuonela. That was my secret. My ticket to the future.

A guest appearance on
Geraldo
popped into my head.
Ick.
Erase that. Not
Geraldo,
although it’s true my mother once thought he was hot when he was young. Now he was just strange. That happened to a lot of celebrities. They went from intriguing to just plain weird.

No, I was thinking
Oprah,
although the story was probably too offbeat for her. How many middle-aged women would relate to a guy who thought he was a vampire and spent his nights digging up graves? No, this would be something for one of those hour news shows. Something they could sensationalize.

“Do you have a five?”

I snapped to attention, and saw Claire standing at the checkout, palm extended.

“I thought you were paying.”

“I’m five bucks short.”

I dug around and pulled out a five-dollar bill.

Normally I would be irritated. It was her fault we had to buy the sleeping bags in the first place. Instead I was grateful to her for not seeing an obvious opportunity. Instead I was trying to keep my secret enthusiasm from showing.

The clerk, a bored high-school girl, ripped off the receipt and handed it to Claire. I grabbed a couple of bags and we headed out.

If Claire wanted to turn this gig into fiction while ignoring what was right in front of her face, let her do it. Because even if I pointed it out to her, she wouldn’t see it or care. She wanted it her way and only her way.

“Why are you acting like that?” Claire asked as we headed for the van.

“Like what?”

“Pissed off. I can tell you’re mad. You never seemed like somebody who expected to be put up in a luxury hotel.”

“I didn’t expect to have to sleep in a Barbie sleeping bag.”

“It’ll be fun. Oh, it might be physically unpleasant, but that will add to the documentary.”

“You want to film our camping?”

“Yeah. Especially since none of us are seasoned campers. Could be funny as hell.”

I made a sound of complaint.

Claire stopped. I stopped. “What the hell is your problem?” She was mad. “Do you know how many applications I got for this job?”

“Ten?”

“Close to thirty. And I’ll bet most of them would be willing to drive here today if I called and asked them to.”

I was sure she was exaggerating. “So why’d you pick me?”

“I liked your films. You were funny! I thought you would get what I’m trying to do.”

“There’s a difference between funny and making fun.”

“I’m not making fun of anybody. These people are already what they are. Did I create a goddamn town where most of the people believe in vampires? Did I open a damn museum with a mummy called the Pale Immortal? How can you say I’m making fun of them?”