The Massacre Mechanism (The Downwinders Book 5) (11 page)

David walked
slowly, waiting for the box to signal another spot. After walking another five
yards, it began to shake once again.

“Here’s
another,” David said, and Winn opened the box to remove a bone. Not wanting to
touch it any longer than necessary, he knelt down, searching for a good spot to
place the sharp, pointed tip. He dropped into the River and pressed, and as his
finger sunk into the earth, he felt something move along the skin of his palm.

Fuck!
Winn exclaimed, falling back. In the
ground below him he saw movement, something snaking away and out of sight. He
dropped from the River. “Did you see that?”

“What?”
asked David, looking down. “See what?”

“Something’s
down there,” Winn said, pointing to the spot where he’d pressed the bone into
the ground. “It touched me.” He felt himself begin to shake involuntarily, as
though a goose had walked over his grave.

“I didn’t
see it.”

“Well, it
was there!” Winn replied emphatically.

“I believe
you,” David answered. “Keep your voice down!”

Winn turned
over his hand, exposing his palm to David. “It touched me here,” he said,
running his finger along his skin as if he was conducting an examination of his
life line.

“What
touched you?”

“I don’t
know. It was cold.” He shuddered again.

“Did the
finger get pushed down far enough? Carma said none of it could be left
exposed.”

“Yes, yes,”
Winn replied. “It’s deep enough.”

David resumed
walking until he landed on a spot where the ebony box began to vibrate once
again. “Here’s one,” he said.

Winn reached
into the box and removed another. He dropped into the River and positioned the
bone, but before he could press it into the ground he saw fingers emerging from
the ground, reaching for his hand.

He tried to
press the bone quickly, but the soil seemed a little harder at the spot he’d
chosen, and the bone bent and snapped. As the fingers of the hand wrapped
around his wrist, he could feel the cold, clammy flesh of it, and as they
pressed down harder on his arm, he could feel the meat of the fingers dissolving,
becoming mush.

He yanked
his arm away, but the hand from the ground held on, the meat on its bones
quickly scraping off as Winn twisted and yanked, trying to escape its grip. The
gore dripped from his hand, chunks of dead flesh falling to the ground,
covering the spot where he’d tried to press the tiny white bone into the
ground.

He saw David
take a step back and realized his friend had entered the River too. Winn
reached with his other hand, prying the fingers from around his wrist, and
after a moment of struggle the bones relaxed and allowed Winn to pull away.

You see
it!?
Winn asked.

I do,
David replied.

They watched
as the hand rose another foot from the ground, half of its forearm exposed,
reaching, its fingers searching for anything to grab. It flailed in the air for
a moment more, then began to slowly sink back into the ground until they could
only see the tips of the fingers.

Carma
didn’t say anything about that,
David said.

No she
didn’t
, Winn
repeated, irritated.

What did
it feel like?

Cold,
Winn replied.
Cold and dead.

We gotta
finish this, Winn,
David said.
You know how important it is.
The box in his hand still
shook, indicating there hadn’t been a successful planting below them.

Winn reached
inside the box again and removed another finger. He quickly dropped to the
ground and selected a spot about a foot away from where he’d seen the
fingertips descend. He pressed the tip of the bone downward with as much speed
as he felt he could use without breaking it, and as his finger descended into
the earth to press it deep enough, he saw the hand re-emerge next to him, reaching
out to find him, its flesh restored.

Jesus!
David cried out as he jumped back,
watching as Winn quickly finished with the deposit and pulled away from the
emerging arm.

I might
have the hang of this,
Winn said, irritation still lacing his words.
Let’s try another.

They dropped
from the River, and David walked farther. Another ten feet brought another
vibration. Winn reached inside the box and removed a bone; he dropped to the
ground and inserted the tip, entering the River at the same time. This time he
was ready for it; the hand slid up from the surface of the meadow directly
under his palm, and he lifted himself away, choosing to plant the bone in a
spot about a foot distant from his original choice. The hand grew from the
ground, twisting in the air, searching for anything to grab, but Winn had
completed the planting and had stepped away before the arm rose above the
elbow. They watched as it tried frantically to reach them, but then gave up and
slowly slid back under the surface.

It’s not
exactly where you were standing,
Winn said.
But your box stopped vibrating. So it must
have worked.

David
checked his watch.
Twenty minutes left,
he said.
Let’s keep moving.

David walked
onward, and they repeated the process over and over, beginning to pick up speed
as the repetition increased their efficiency, and as Winn improved his evasion
tactics.

They had
traveled more than a hundred yards from the Jeep and had planted dozens of
bones when Winn knelt to deposit the next, performing his maneuver. Instead of
a hand rising from the ground where he first attempted to place the bone, a
head and shoulders quickly emerged, along with a long arm that reached for Winn
and landed its bony fingers around his wrist. He felt an excruciating cold pass
through him as he dropped the bone and reached with his free hand to try and
pry the ghostly fingers off his arm. The contact with his attacker allowed him
to more acutely sense the emotions he’d detected earlier:

Darkness.
Patience. Revenge.

The thoughts
raced through his mind like angry blades, potent and concentrated by a hundred
and fifty years of building hatred.
It wants justice,
Winn thought.
It
may not care how it gets it.

Dirt fell
from the face of the corpse, its eyes rolling to settle on him. Winn felt
frozen, unable to move, as though the ghost had somehow paralyzed him. He felt
like a bug, pinned down to a board, his underside exposed for examination.

Not you,
he heard, and saw the ghost look
upward, turning its attention away.

You!
it hissed at David. The ghost
released Winn, using the free arm to try and wrestle the rest of its body from
the grave.

Run!
Winn yelled to David.
Run back to
the Jeep! Leave the box!

David
dropped from the River and placed the box on the ground, then took off running.

Winn watched
as the ghost continued to struggle to pull itself from the ground, unable to extract
more than half its torso from the earth.

You can’t
come out, can you?
Winn asked it.

I will!
the ghost replied.

But not
today,
Winn said.
You’re
not able to.

Soon!
the ghost hissed back at him, slowly
giving up on its attempt to escape the earth, and slipping back under the
meadow.

Winn turned
to see David still running back to the Jeep.

Let him
stay there,
Winn
thought, dropping from the River and picking up the box.
I can finish this.
He
opened it; there were still dozens of bones inside.

He pulled
his phone from his pocket, checking the time. Five minutes left.

He started
walking, waiting for the vibration to arrive. When it did, he pulled out a
bone, dropped to his knees, and within seconds after entering the River, he
faked his move that drew forth the arm. He quickly shifted a foot away,
planting the bone into the soil.

He repeated
the process as many times as he could. As he dropped to plant the next finger,
he entered the River and noticed the dark mist had disappeared; the meadow
looked exactly the same as it did before he dropped. He waited for the
oppressive feelings to wash over him, but none developed.

He stopped
to check his phone: 2:41. Carma had said that anything they planted after 2:40
wouldn’t matter.

He stood,
turning to walk back to the Jeep. When he arrived, he found David sitting in
the passenger seat, trembling from the cold.

“Time to
go,” Winn said, placing the box in the back of the vehicle. “You OK?”

“Freezing,”
David replied. “Turn on the heater, would you?”

Winn started
up the Jeep and cranked the heat, then slowly maneuvered the vehicle out of the
meadow and back to the road.

“When it
looked at me,” David said, “I felt the most intense cold I’ve ever felt.”

“It was pure
hatred,” Winn said. “I could feel what it was thinking. It wanted to kill you.”

“Why me?”

“Yeah, why
you and not me,” Winn repeated. “That’s a good question.”

“If it had
been able to reach me,” David said, “I’m positive I would be dead right now.”

“I have to
agree with you,” Winn answered. “Carma should never have sent us out here, not
without warning us at least. I’m tired of the secrecy. I want some answers.”

David looked
at him wearily. “What are you going to do?”

“When we get
back, if Carma won’t tell me what’s going on, I’m going down to see Lyman.”

Lorenzo?
Deem called.
Lorenzo?

She waited
patiently. She knew Lorenzo could only come out of the house for a while, and that
it took a great effort for him to communicate with her. What had just happened
to her was the biggest change she’d felt in a long time, perhaps for as long as
she’d been trapped.

Lorenzo?
It’s important. Are you there?

She waited,
hoping she’d hear from her friend, the only voice of sanity she’d been able to
engage for what seemed a very long time. She’d encountered others, but they
were hostile, violent creatures, even if they seemed normal to begin with. She’d
tried starting conversations with them, but it didn’t take long for the schizoid
behavior to come out and their pathological tendencies to manifest. She preferred
to avoid them altogether.

For months
now, Lorenzo had been her only lifeline to normality, to sane thinking. He was
her only friend.

Deem?
she heard faintly, Lorenzo’s
ethereal voice drifting in from wherever he was, stuck forever in a version of
the mansion where he disappeared over a century ago.
Lorenzo?
she called
again.

Deem!
It’s good to hear your voice.

Yours
too, Lorenzo,
she
said.
Something has happened.

What?
Lorenzo asked.

I feel
different,
she replied.
There’s…pressure.

Pressure?
Lorenzo asked.
What kind of
pressure?

It feels
cold and clammy all around me. I feel it from all sides, like I’m sealed inside
something. Like I’m…
She gulped.

Yes?

It feels
like I’m buried.

Lorenzo
paused.
Buried. As in the ground?

Yes.

As in a
coffin?

No, it
feels like there’s dirt all around me. Like I’m suspended in earth.

Oh my,
Lorenzo replied.
I don’t know
what to think of that.

I haven’t
felt it before, not until this moment,
Deem said.
Something has happened. This is the first
change of any significance since I got stuck here, Lorenzo. This must mean
something.

I hate to
suggest this, Deem,
Lorenzo started, pausing.

Yes?

Perhaps
you feel this way because you’ve been buried. Your body, I mean. Perhaps your
friends have given up and they decided to bury you.

Deem felt
her excitement turn to horror.
They wouldn’t do that!
she thought,
unsure if what she was saying was true. What Lorenzo was suggesting wasn’t inconceivable;
that might, indeed, be why she felt the sensation of dirt all around her.

I would
hope they wouldn’t do that,
Deem said with some of her normal conviction missing.

No, of
course they wouldn’t,
Lorenzo replied.
Not while there’s even the slimmest of chances, right?

Yes,
Deem replied.
Lyman knows where I
am. I’m sure he’s told Winn and David. And Carma. And they’re working on a way
to get me out. He said so.

You’re
right,
Lorenzo said
with a calm reassurance he’d used many times while conversing with Deem.
I’m
sure they are.

But
you’re not sure, are you? You’re just saying that. You may be right. I’ve been
buried in the ground. That’s what it feels like.

Well,
maybe I’m wrong,
Lorenzo replied.
Your friends, if they decided to bury you, would have placed
you in a casket, correct?

I guess.

Then you
should be feeling the soft linings of a coffin, not the cold and clammy
sensation of earth. There should be no sensation of pressure against your skin.

Maybe I’m
sensing the earth outside the casket.

Perhaps,
Lorenzo answered.
Do you feel
anything else?

Deem
searched within herself.
Yeah, I do,
she said.
I feel antsy.

Antsy?
What does that mean?

Fidgety.
Like there’s something I want to go and do, but I can’t quite do it yet. I feel
all kinds of bottled up energy that I can’t unleash.

What kind
of energy?

It’s…
Deem started but stopped, trying to
identify what she was feeling.
It’s anger, mixed with hatred. It’s how I
feel about Dayton.

Dayton,
Lorenzo repeated.
You’ve
mentioned him before. The stake president you dislike so much.

Yes. It’s
like that. But it’s stronger, more specific. I feel like there’s a heavy debt
waiting to be rectified, waiting for something to be made right. Does that make
any sense?

It does,
Lorenzo replied.
It’s the driving
force behind many ghosts: vengeance.

Vengeance?
Deem repeated.
For what?

I don’t
know,
Lorenzo
replied.
But that’s what it sounds like.

Deem let
Lorenzo’s observations rattle around in her brain, trying to decide if the new
sensations she was experiencing were her own personal hatred of Dayton or if it
was something else. Dayton was deserving of vengeance, that was for sure. Dayton
had David’s parents assassinated. Claude Peterson, too.

As much as
the sensations fit in with all of the emotions she felt about Dayton, there was
something else, something more: older, and poignant. It seemed as if it had
been waiting for a long time, and was now breaking free.

I’m a
little scared, Lorenzo,
she said.
The feelings are overwhelming. There’s a point inside me; a
tiny spot deep inside my chest that seems foreign. I can’t pin it down,
exactly, but something is in there, waiting.

Perhaps
change is coming,
Lorenzo replied.
It could be that your friends have figured out how to
release you. You shouldn’t fear it, Deem. Anything is better than the hell you’re
in.

You’re
right, Lorenzo. But I do fear it. These sensations, this point inside…it feels
like an anchor for something that isn’t me. I’m afraid it might grow and
replace me.

What
you’re describing sounds like a kind of possession,
Lorenzo replied.

Is this
how it starts?
she
wondered.

▪ ▪ ▪

Carma looked
perplexed.

“David was
one step away from an attack!” Winn said. “He could have been killed!”

Carma turned
to David. “I told you to hold the box and let Winn plant them!”

“I did!”
David replied defensively.

“And why
didn’t you tell me they’d come out of their grave?” Winn asked. “They were
grabbing at me as I pushed those things into the ground. I can still feel their
fingers on my skin! And what were those things you had us plant, anyway? They
looked like bones!”

Carma was
wringing her hands. “None of that was supposed to happen,” she replied. “I
promise you.”

“Well, it
did,” Winn said. “I don’t mind doing things for you and Lyman, but I’d like a
heads up about the risks going in. You made this sound like it was no big deal.
You should have warned us. We should have taken protection, at least!”

“I assure
you I would have warned you if I thought there was anything to warn you about!”
Carma replied emphatically. “I had no idea that would happen, I swear to you! ”

“What were
they, Carma?” Winn asked. “The little white things that looked like bones. Is
that what they were?”

Carma’s lips
pressed together tightly, a pose Winn had seen many times before. He knew
exactly what it meant.

Winn spun
around, walking away.

“Where are
you going?” Carma asked.

“If you
won’t tell me, I’ll ask Lyman,” Winn called back as he headed down the basement
stairs. “I know that’s where it all started anyway.”

Carma ran
after him. David followed.

“Lyman cooks
up these plans and asks you to have us do things for him,” Winn said as he walked
through the family room to the tunnel entrance that led to Lyman’s chamber. “He
should at least be able to explain why he sent us into harm’s way without a
warning.”

“I’m sure he
thought it was safe,” Carma replied, following him. “I’m sure there was some type
of miscommunication.”

“Your
defense of him is admirable, Carma,” Winn replied, walking through the tunnel.
“And I know you’re probably under some sanction from him to not tell us more.
So we’ll just talk with him directly and save you the anguish of having to
cross him to satisfy us.”

“I wish
you’d calm down a little before you talk to him,” Carma said, clearly worried.
“Let’s not unnecessarily antagonize him.”

Winn stopped
and turned to face Carma. “Antagonize him? He sends us out into a graveyard vulnerable,
David here nearly attacked, and no warning whatsoever? Like we’re just Johnny
Appleseed out planting trees? Something’s going on, Carma, and I intend to find
out.” Winn turned and continued down the tunnel.

“Alright, I
understand,” she replied. “But calm down. Don’t be angry. He can be a little
paranoid at times and I don’t want him to question your loyalty.”

Winn stopped
again and released a heavy sigh. “That’s pretty insulting, Carma.”

“I didn’t
mean it that way.”

Winn continued,
and within another half minute they were in the cave with the wooden table and
chairs. Winn dropped into the River.

Lyman!
he called.
Lyman! We need to talk
to you.

Lyman’s
youthful form materialized in front of him, a questioning look in his eyes.

Yes?
Lyman asked.

Why did
you send us to plant those things?
Winn asked, his tone confrontational.
What were they?

Lyman
stepped forward toward Winn, his chest rising.
Did you plant them?

We did,
Winn replied,
just barely. David
was nearly attacked. The ghosts underground rose up to grab at my hands. It was
dangerous; you didn’t warn us. I want to know why.

Lyman turned
to Carma.
I thought we discussed David staying back, just in case.

I told
him to hold the chest,
Carma replied to Lyman.
I asked Winn to plant. I was very specific
about that. I thought Winn needed the backup. He’s had a lot happen to him
recently.

Backup
for what?
Winn
asked.
I want to know what’s going on, Lyman.

Lyman turned
back to Winn, his countenance softened.
You are owed an apology,
he
said, sitting at the table.
Neither I nor Carma thought you’d encounter any
trouble, though we were worried somewhat about David. I think I must have
misjudged the impact of the radiation upon the massacre field. It’s made things
so unpredictable. In a hundred and fifty years they’ve never come out of their
graves like that. I think the fallout has made them unstable.
His attention
left Winn and he seemed to drift off.
Not entirely a bad thing, mind you.

It was a
bad thing, let me assure you!
Winn said.
Why were you concerned about David and not
about me?

David’s
ancestors were involved,
Lyman said.

Involved?
Winn repeated.

Involved
in the Mountain Meadows Massacre,
Lyman added.
He’s got a great-great-uncle who
participated. The spirits in the ground are finely tuned to the perpetrators,
and their desire for revenge is strong. That’s part of the plan.

Winn sighed.
What exactly
is
the plan, Lyman? Why were we out there, planting
those things? What were they? They looked like bones.

They are,
Lyman replied.
The fingertips of
small children.

Winn lowered
his head and shook it.
I thought so. I should have stopped when I first saw
them.

I’ve been
collecting them for years,
Lyman replied,
saving them, waiting for just the right time.

Children?
David asked, stepping forward.
You’ve
been robbing graves?