Innocents Lost (14 page)

Les followed his gaze and watched in horror as a pair of bound hands rose over the lip of the cairn, followed by a pair of arms wearing a suit jacket, and then a head, which nodded limply against a white shirt and loosened tie. The man’s shirt was covered in blood, his hair wet with it. He continued to rise until his entire torso was up in the branches, leaving only his legs hanging over the hole, twirling in slow circles.

It was the same man he had met in the forest with the sheriff less than an hour ago.

If he was here, then where was the sheriff?

The old man groaned as he tied off the end of the rope. He gave it a sharp tug to test its strength. With a satisfied nod, he ran his fingers along the length of the rope as he returned to the trees from which the man now hung.

Les felt his keys shift in his pocket.

When he reached the central cairn, the old man glanced over his shoulder.

Les closed his eyes and pressed himself into the dirt. He was sure that the old man had looked directly at him through rheumy, cataract-blotched eyes. Les forced his lids open just in time to see the crown of white hair vanish down the mouth of the well.

He listened for the sound of footsteps on the iron rungs, but heard only the humming in his head.

If he made a break for it now, there was no way the old man would be able to catch him. Les was no world-class athlete, but he felt confident he could outrun the hunched man. However, they had all underestimated the old man, and if he’d been able to overcome all of the police that had been here, then Les might not prove as much of a challenge as he thought.

And then there was the man strung up in the trees. His body wavered through the ribbons of heat as though roasting over an open fire in the pit. He couldn’t just leave him there, could he?

His mind shoved forth an image of the petroglyph. He envisioned the larger man in the sky connected to the one in the bottom of the pit by a series of squiggly lines.

He had no idea what was about to happen, but the sinking sensation in his gut told him he didn’t want to find out. The air around him was alive, positively crackling with energy.

Les pushed himself up to all fours and crawled cautiously out into the clearing.

He needed to get the man down.

VIII

Dandridge stared at the lifeless body on the table in front of him. Maggie’s skin continued to pale before his eyes, passing from stark white to translucence. Bruises blossomed through the smeared dirt and the spatters of blood. The pain was more than he could bear. He wanted to die, to escape the torture by any means possible. He had failed in the only responsibility that had mattered, and now his baby girl was dead.

His moans and sobs echoed back at him in the confines and haunted the tunnels leading deeper into the warren, but he no longer heard them.

In his mind, he was holding his swaddled child to his chest. Margaret had been so red and wrinkled, her tiny hand barely able to wrap around his index finger. He remembered that she had kept her eyes closed against the light, that her lips had quivered, then she cried, exposing bare rows of gums. He remembered holding this tiny, fragile part of him in his arms and vowing that he would never let anything happen to her, that he would protect her from the world and its evils.

And now the only thing he wanted was to free her from her bindings, cradle her in his arms one last time, and beg God to transfer his life force into her. Or else allow him to follow her into the grave.

He no longer deserved to live. He had forfeited that right.

An image of his wife’s face rose unbidden. He saw pain and anguish beyond anything she had ever experienced, and he saw the blame in her eyes. Even as she sat at home, waiting by the phone for him to call, he knew he had killed her as well.

A distant, hollow series of clanging sounds reached his ears, followed by scuffing footsteps.

Anger boiled inside of him, his thoughts a burbling cauldron of incoherence. He lusted for blood. He was going to kill this man with his bare hands. He was going to subject him to pain beyond the capacity of human suffering. He was going to strip him of his black soul and send him straight to hell.

The footsteps grew louder until the old man stepped into the bronze glow from the dark channel.

Dandridge roared and lunged at him, over and over, no longer feeling the strain in his shoulders and wrists, the blood flowing over his hands.

The man paid him no heed. He simply removed the video recorder from the top crate, tucked it into his jacket pocket, and walked over to the end of the workbench. One by one, he untied the ropes that bound Maggie’s wrists and ankles, and let them fall away from the particleboard. As though she were nothing more than a sack of grain, he hefted her from the table and slung her over his shoulder.

“Leave her alone!” Dandridge shouted. “Don’t take her from me again! I’ll kill you! No matter where you go, I will find you, and I will destroy you!”

“You will try,” the man said with a sigh, and cast a forlorn glance over his shoulder as he entered the tunnel. Maggie’s long blonde hair and limp arms swayed against his back.

And then he was gone.

Dandridge bellowed so loud it felt like his throat tore. He braced his feet and pushed away from the wall with everything he had. His shoulders cracked, but remained seated in the joints. The rope cut off the last of the feeling in his hands, and still he couldn’t pull them through the knot.

The footsteps faded into the resultant silence and he screamed in agony.

There was no way he was going to allow his daughter to be wrapped in barbed wire and posed like the others, to be violated even more in death.

He turned and studied the wall behind him. The rope was secured to a rusted eyebolt with a knot the size of his fist. He scanned the floor for anything he could use to cut it. The only possibility was his pistol, but even if he managed to reach it and maneuver it into firing position behind his back, there was no way he would be able to shoot with any kind of accuracy.

Again, he focused on the eyebolt.

He walked toward it and studied it closely. There was a small gap in the ring around the rope. It just might be wide enough…

Turning around, Dandridge grappled with the knot until he was able to force his thumbs down into the eyebolt. He wedged them in there all the way past the base, until he knew they wouldn’t be able to slip out too soon.

An odd calmness rippled through him. He became acutely aware of the current in the air, of the trembling ground beneath his feet, of the static electricity that raised the fine hairs all over his body. Of the pain that was soon to come.

He drew a deep breath, steadied his shaking legs, and fell forward to his knees.

The bones in his thumbs dislocated with a resounding
crack
. Pain raced up his arms and into his shoulders, where it burned, white hot, in the torn cartilage.

He screamed and fought to retain consciousness, while his body simply wanted to shut down.

Using his fingers, he folded his bloody, misshapen thumbs into his palms and threw himself forward. The bindings snagged on his wrists. He drove himself away from the wall, pushing harder and harder, until the rope fell away and he slammed into the table. The particleboard fractured under his weight. He slid on the wet surface, his daughter’s cold lifeblood soaking into his clothing, and collapsed to the floor.

Dandridge held out his mangled hands and evaluated the damage. His thumbs protruded at obscene angles. Streams of blood drained into his palms from the lacerated skin. Getting them back into their sockets was going to be a bitch, but he didn’t have time to screw around. He flattened his left hand on the ground, formed an awkward fist with his right, and aligned it with his crooked left thumb. His struck it with all his might and bellowed as he slammed it back into the socket. It hurt even more now, but when he flexed it, at least he could see it respond. Encouraged, he repeated the process on his right thumb, then hurried back across the chamber to where his Px4 Storm lay, and lifted it from the dirt floor.

It took a moment to find a solid grip with the ferocious pain in his thumb.

Holding the pistol in front of him, he crept into the shadowed tunnel, heart racing in anticipation of the kill.

Chapter Five

I

22 Miles West of Lander, Wyoming

The pain roused Preston. He felt like he’d been hit by a truck. His first thought was a splash of ice-cold water in the face.

The sheriff’s daughter was dead.

Those five words brought clarity to his shattered thoughts and cut through the humming sound in his head. He opened his eyes a crack, but the light was too bright, staining his vision scarlet. The sun beat down on him, burning his scalp. Blood trickled along his neck from the source of the searing pain. He tried to wipe it away, but his hands were unresponsive. He had no feeling in either upper extremity. He could barely breathe with the way his shoulders pressed against his head and neck. With a groan, he spat out a mouthful of blood and tried to open his eyes again.

The world of red resolved into a forest of green. There were pine needles everywhere. He tried to turn his head, but only managed to twirl in a slow circle. Raising his head summoned a fresh stream of warmth from the wound on the base of his skull and an explosion of pain that nearly chased him back into unconsciousness. He swung his feet in hopes of finding purchase, but found none. Calling for help only produced a dry rasp that stung his throat.

Slowly, the details around him came into focus. He was handcuffed with his arms above his head, secured to the trees. Below his dangling feet, which throbbed with the accumulation of blood, he saw the ring of stones that formed the cairn in the center of the medicine wheel. Somewhere down there was the hole leading into the series of chambers, but he couldn’t quite see it. The ground surrounding him wavered like a desert mirage, surely a symptom of the concussion the blow to his head must have caused.

He attempted to pull himself upward in an effort to evaluate the mechanism by which he was suspended, tried to wrench his hands out of the cuffs, but nothing worked.

A shape darted into view below him. It took his eyes a moment to track it. The professor climbed up onto the rock ledge, swayed until he found his balance, and grabbed him around the legs. He wrapped Preston’s knees to his chest and lifted.

“Can you reach the metal clips holding the rope?” Dr. Grant whispered.

Preston willed his numb fingers to move. After several attempts, he shook his head.

“Try harder. We don’t have much time. He could come back at any second.”

Preston strained against the cuffs, but his best efforts barely made his fingers twitch.

A hollow tapping sound echoed from far below.

The professor looked up at him, a wide-eyed expression of sheer terror on his pale face. He released Preston’s legs, leapt from the cairn, and sprinted out of sight.

“Wait…” Preston rasped. His newfound momentum caused him to swing around again.

The tapping noise grew louder and louder. He heard heavy breathing, the clatter of stones, and then the old man appeared, the naked body of Maggie Dandridge draped over his shoulder.

Preston sagged and nearly drifted off into unconsciousness again. There was no longer any doubt in his mind that the little girl was dead. He had never stood a chance of saving her. The old man had been in control every step of the way. All that remained now was to die himself. Undoubtedly, the sheriff had already been killed, and the professor was probably running for dear life into the forest. That left him alone, strung up like a deer waiting to be gutted.

It was all over now. A part of him resigned to his impending demise, while the rest of him became incensed at the thought of losing his one opportunity to avenge his daughter.

The cuffs ratcheted tighter on his wrists. His gun tugged against its holster and his keys shifted in the pocket of his pants. He started to turn in circles, but he had made no movement and felt no breeze.

Several minutes passed, during which the dizziness caused him to drift in and out of awareness. The old man reappeared below him, scaling the short wall. That awful wrinkled face looked up at him and flashed a foul grin, then, with a wink, the man descended into the darkness. His clanging footsteps eventually faded into silence.

Needles shivered loose from the branches surrounding Preston and spiraled toward the ground.

The air around him rippled.

He tasted metal in his mouth.

Pressure mounted in his sinuses, which released a trickle of blood from his nose with a loud
snap
.

Droplets swelled from his lips and chin, fell away, and swirled down toward the cairn.

II

As soon as the old man was out of sight, Les raced back out into the clearing and straight toward where the man in the suit hung. He had nearly abandoned the man to his fate when the old man emerged with the corpse of the young girl, but after watching the care with which the monster had brushed her hair from her face and posed her almost like a Precious Moments figurine, he had reached the conclusion that if he left now, he wouldn’t be able to live with himself. There was something truly evil about the old man that went beyond the act of killing the children. The old man needed to die, but he certainly wasn’t the one to do it. He had zero skill with a gun and couldn’t even determine if the blasted pistol had a safety or not. Surely the sheriff was already dead, which left the man suspended above him as his last hope.

The stones shivered as he climbed the wall. He struggled to find any sort of balance until he again grabbed the man’s legs.

“I can’t find anything to cut the rope,” he said, hoping the man could hear him over the humming sound, which seemed to intensify with each passing minute. He didn’t dare speak any louder. “So I’m going to try to pull you down. Maybe our combined weight will be more than the rope or the carabiners can support.”

He glanced down into the mouth of the pit. The sunlight stretched nearly to the bottom now, casting both of their shadows clear down the cement chute to the point where he could vaguely discern the circular outlet of the tunnel and the bottom of the iron ladder.

There wasn’t much time left before the sun aligned as it did in the petroglyph. Maybe nothing would happen, but with the way the ground shuddered and appeared to radiate heat that he couldn’t feel, he wasn’t willing to take that chance.

He hugged the man’s knees and jerked, tugged, pulled.

The man groaned in pain above him.

Les couldn’t afford to stop now. The earth trembled. The air shimmered. Even his vision shivered.

One of the flat stones wiggled loose and toppled out from under him. He fell forward, grasping the man’s slacks to keep from falling.

A shout from above him as their amassed weight was transferred to the man’s wrists.

With a
snap
, one of the ropes that formed the network in the trees split and dropped them several inches.

Les slid down the man’s legs and clung to his ankles, arms tight around his shoes.

He looked into the tunnel directly beneath him, no more than four feet down. If he fell, it would take some serious acrobatics to keep from plummeting straight down the chute. A figure stepped into view far below. The sunlight caught his wrinkled face and their eyes met across the distance. A momentary expression of confusion crossed the old man’s features, and then he smiled.

Les felt a surge of panic and tried to swing his legs back to the rock wall.

The old man raised his arms out to his sides as the sunlight enveloped him.

Les turned away. Golden stars appeared in front of the cairns in the outer ring, rising from the patches of turned earth where the DVDs were buried. The bodies of the uncovered children shook and almost appeared to raise their heads toward the blossoms of light.

His belt buckle pulled him downward.

His keys tugged against his pocket.

The force was too great. His arms slipped and he grabbed for anything within reach.

Blazing light below.

The golden sunspots around him, now circling around the cairn in tightening spirals.

Dead children, shaking, trembling.

Intense pressure in his head, a sensation of displacement, of something reaching inside of him and forcing out his every conscious thought.

Laughter in his ears, originating from the core of his being.

A smile on his lips.

He tasted blood, felt warmth pour over his chin.

Another rope snapped overhead, dropping them with a lurch.

His arms closed around nothing but air and he watched the pair of shoes rise above him against the blinding glare of the sun.

Falling.

Weightless.

Les was swallowed by darkness as he plummeted down into the tunnel.

III

Preston felt the ropes release him, and then he was falling. He caught flashes of movement all around him as the ground rushed up toward him. Small stars, like the sun reflecting from so many shards from a shattered mirror, rising from the earth and swirling around him. Movement throughout the clearing, stones tumbling away from the cairns, the bodies already exposed trembling and raising their desiccated faces to the heavens.

His torso flopped forward and he caught just a glimpse of Grant’s face before the professor vanished into the tunnel, staring directly into his eyes, reaching for him. There was no fear in his expression, no panic. Only a smile that appeared wider than his face could accommodate. A golden reflection from his eyes, and Grant was gone.

Preston’s chest struck the ring of stones, knocking the wind out of him. Ribs cracked. Pain exploded through his whole body. He barely managed to grab onto the rocks and drag himself over the rim just enough to keep from toppling backward into the hole.

The stone wall collapsed and toppled outward. Preston slid down the cascade of stones and struck his head.

He pushed himself to all fours, blood flowing from the gash across his hairline, barely able to gasp for breath through the searing pain in his chest, and crawled over the mound of stones to the hole.

Arms throbbing, the returned circulation flowing like lava through his veins, he eased down into the chute, found a tenuous grip on the iron ladder, and began his arduous descent.

IV

Dandridge staggered toward the end of the tunnel and the main chamber beyond. A blinding light forced him to shield his eyes. The old man was silhouetted in the heart of the glare, arms raised to his sides, back arched, staring upward with his mouth open in a soundless scream.

The sheriff leveled his pistol with the man’s knee.

Before he could squeeze the trigger, a dark shape appeared from above the old man and slammed him to the ground. There was a loud
crack
like a board breaking. A tangle of bodies rested on the floor in front of him.

Still. Unmoving.

Dandridge crept closer, weapon trained on the shadowed forms in the brilliant column of light.

One of them started to cry.

“Where am I?” a meek voice sobbed. “I’m not supposed to be here.”

As Dandridge neared, the intensity of the sunlight waned and details came into focus. The professor was crumpled on top of the old man, the back of his head resting on that filthy suit jacket. Grant’s knees stood from the ground at severe angles, his fractured fibulae poking out through his flesh, his tibias bent sharply. His eyes were closed. Dandridge couldn’t confirm that the professor had survived the fall until he was close enough to see the subtle rise and fall of Grant’s chest.

The crying intensified, filled with pain, fear, sorrow.

Dandridge felt no sympathy. He stared down into the old man’s face. Tears rolled through the wrinkles on his cheeks from milky white eyes. His shoulders shuddered, making the ends of the broken clavicles that had ripped through his jacket twitch.

“How did I get here?” the old man moaned. He pawed tentatively at the sharp bones protruding from his upper chest and turned to face Dandridge. “Help me. Please. Please help me…”

The sheriff leaned over, grabbed the old man by the collar of his jacket, and dragged him out from beneath the professor, whose head fell to the ground with the
clack
of teeth. He hauled the old man up and dropped him to his knees.

The old man fell forward and caught himself with his arms before his face could hit the ground. He screamed in pain and sobbed even harder.

“Look at me,” Dandridge said.

The old man hung his head like a beaten dog, his whole body shaking.

“I said look at me!” Dandridge pressed the barrel of his pistol against the bone protruding from the old man’s jacket. Hard. He wailed and raised his eyes to meet the Sheriff’s.

“I don’t know why I’m here,” the man whimpered.

Dandridge grabbed a fistful of the man’s hair, jerked his head back, and shoved the barrel into his right eye. He heard an irregular clattering sound and looked up to see Preston struggling down the ladder. Their stares locked for a long moment.

The old man cried and tried to pull away, but Dandridge pulled his hair even harder to hold him in place.