The Massacre Mechanism (The Downwinders Book 5) (22 page)
Read The Massacre Mechanism (The Downwinders Book 5) Online
Authors: Michael Richan
I will,
she said.
I want to be able to
come visit you a lot.
He smiled.
I
wish your mother could be here.
She never
got it,
Deem said.
The
gift.
No, she
didn’t,
he replied.
She
sure didn’t. But I loved her just the same.
They sat for
a moment on the porch. Deem had a million questions, but she decided she had
time to ask them later. For now she just wanted to sit with her father and
enjoy being in his company.
It had been
a long time.
Winn pulled his
Jeep into the long driveway that led to Maynard’s house. He hadn’t heard from
Maynard since he referred him to Steven and Roy many months ago. He knew
Maynard had travelled up to Seattle to help them, but he’d been so busy with
Carma and David the past little while, he hadn’t had a chance to check in with
the man and see how things had gone.
Now he
wasn’t sure he’d be able to check in with him at all.
“Mrs.
Stout?” Winn said, standing in the doorway, looking at the small, thin woman.
“Come in,
come in,” she said. “Call me Peggy, please.”
Winn walked
into her home. She led him through the living room into a small family room
where a bed had been arranged; a large screen TV sat opposite it. In the bed
was an old, withered man.
“Maynard!”
Winn said, worried. “Oh my god!”
Peggy
reached for a remote and turned off the TV. Maynard’s eyes didn’t change; they
remained open, fixed ahead.
“They tell
me he might be able to detect sights and sounds,” she said, “so I keep the TV
on for him most of the time, tuned to the shows he likes.”
“That’s
thoughtful of you,” he replied. “What happened to him?”
“It was
about a week ago,” she said. “He was out working in the orchard when he said he
felt a sharp pain in his side. He collapsed. I thought he’d had a heart attack,
but the doctors couldn’t find anything wrong.”
“There’s
nothing wrong with him?” Winn asked, looking down at the withered man he’d once
known as robust and full of vitality.
“When he
came to, he kept talking about a pain in his side,” Peggy continued. “He said
it felt like he’d been stabbed.”
Winn paused.
“What day did this happen?”
“Last week,”
she said. “On Tuesday.”
Winn thought
back. That was the day he and David had confronted The Fist of God and his
wives. Winn remembered the piercing pain he’d felt as The Fist had stabbed him
with something — something he healed from quickly, but something Carma had been
concerned about.
“Yesterday
he made me get him a notepad,” she said. “He wanted to write. He could barely
talk. Now he can’t talk at all.” She paused, glancing down at her husband,
concern in her eyes.
“What did he
write?” Winn asked.
She pried
her eyes away from Maynard, turning to walk to a shelf filled with small books
and trinkets. She slipped a wire-bound notepad from the side and handed it to
Winn. “I didn’t read it,” she said, “except for the cover. That’s why I called
you.”
Winn took
the notepad. On the red cardboard cover were written the words, “To be read by
Winthrop James.”
He opened
the notepad and glanced through the pages. Most were blank, but in the middle
he found one that Maynard had written upon. He glanced it over.
“Does it say
anything that might help him?” Peggy asked.
“I’m not
sure,” Winn said, continuing to scan the page, reading:
Winn,
It took
lying here with my thoughts to realize it. Disaster is about to strike. I would
try to stop it myself, but whatever has happened to me forbids it.
I met
your friends, Steven and Roy, when I went up to Seattle to help them. They
shared with me a secret I am under oath to keep confidential. However, lying
here, contemplating a few things, I realized that I must break that oath, at
least to the extent of involving you.
They are
in great danger, and they do not realize it. You must help them — you’re the only
one who can. I could do it if I had the strength, but I’m getting worse, not
better. I will try to draw it out for you while I still have the ability to
move my hands.
Winn turned
the page. On the next sheet, there was a rough sketch of a triangle, with
circles at each tip. Inside each circle was a stick figure. Maynard had
scribbled a “V” next to one of the circles, and connected it with an arrow.
In the
center of the triangle was another circle, and inside the circle was a box,
divided in half. An “X” was placed in one box, and a stick figure drawn in the
other.
Below the
central circle Maynard had drawn spirals, filled in, as though they were
clouds, swirling down below the diagram until they reached the bottom of the
page. There, at the bottom, another “X” was placed, and the letters “DR,” with
an arrow pointing to the X.
Winn scanned
the drawing, trying to make sense of it. He turned the page again, where
Maynard’s last lines appeared:
Don’t
fail them, Winn. Save them.
He paused
and looked up at Peggy. “Anything?” she asked. “Anything at all that might help
him?”
“He’s more
concerned with helping others,” Winn said, closing the book and turning to
Maynard, examining his face, trying to discern from the wrinkles in the man’s
skin what the warning in the notebook could possibly mean.
###
Author’s
Note
While
The
Massacre Mechanism
is a work of fiction, the Mountain Meadows Massacre was
a real event that occurred in Utah in 1857. One hundred and twenty men, women,
and children of the Baker-Fancher wagon train were slaughtered at the site
mentioned in the novel. Do they desire revenge? Impossible to say. This story
was a way of providing some in an imagined way, and was not intended to
represent the feelings of the murdered, or their descendants.
You can read
more about the
Mountain Meadows Massacre at Wikipedia
.
Two
excellent books on the subject are
Blood
of the Prophets
by Will Bagley,
and
The Mountain Meadows Massacre
, by Juanita Brooks.
Michael
Richan lives in Seattle, Washington.
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The Massacre Mechanism
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More titles in
The Downwinders
series are coming, with
new adventures for Deem and Winn.
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And if you haven’t already, enjoy the books of the
companion series,
The River
.
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By
the author:
The Downwinders
series
:
The River
series:
A Christmas Haunting at Point No Point
The Dark River series:
All three series are part of
The River Universe,
and
there is crossover of some characters and plots. For a suggested reading order,
see the
Author’s Website
.