drawer and dug around until he found a clean sheet of paper and a pen. He took them both back to the table.
After a couple of minutes, he began writing.
Chapter Twenty-seven: Connections
While Jake was wrestling with the idea that something paranormal was happening around him, Katelynn was pacing her living room, lost in thought.
Blake’s Bane, she kept repeating to herself as she moved about the room.
Blake’s Bane…, Blake’s Bane…, Blake’s…
She tried to sleep, but after lying in bed awake for half an hour she’d given up and gotten to work. The innate curiosity that had led her into a life of research assumed control and pushed her emotions back where they couldn’t interfere with her work. There they could simmer until she was ready to deal with them.
For the time being, Jake was forgotten.
Katelynn had bigger fish to fry.
Blake’s Bane…Blake’s Bane…
Father Castelli’s phrase had rung a bell somewhere in the dark recesses of her mind. Katelynn was positive she had heard it before. It didn’t even occur to her to doubt that the phrase was genuine; she was convinced that they had, indeed, been speaking to the deceased priest.
But when had she heard it? And where?
She had a hunch that if she could find the answer to either of those questions, then she’d also discover the answer to what had been happening to her lately.
Back and forth…
Back and forth…
Blake’s Bane…
With a sharp cry she dashed across the room to her desk and frantically dug through the stacks of books piled haphazardly on the floor, at last pulling forth a small, leather-bound volume that had seen better days. The book’s cover was torn, the corners bent, even the pages had taken on the yellowish-brown hue that belied old age.
She seated herself behind the desk unconsciously and, after turning on the light, began slowly scanning page after page of the small work.
I know it’s here somewhere, she told herself over and over again. I know it is.
Indeed it was.
On page 243, to be exact.
The volume itself was the traveling diary of Edward Beckett, a circuit-riding minister who traveled from settlement to settlement in the country’s early years, bringing the word of the Lord to any and all who would listen. Beckett had passed through Harrington Falls several times in the 1760s and she had been using his first-hand observations of the area as a sourcebook for her thesis. Harrington Falls had been only a fledgling community then, slowly spreading out into the surrounding countryside as the Blake family’s wealth brought more people into the region. Beckett’s observations provided a clear and accurate picture of life on the frontier. He apparently rode several hundreds of miles a year, preaching as often as possible.
A meticulous man, he recorded every little detail in the volumes of travel diaries he prepared along the way.
As chance would have it, he arrived in Harrington Falls on a cold evening in October of 1763, the same evening Sebastian Blake was accused of practicing witchcraft and wizardry.
The townsfolk had held an impromptu trial right then and there and passed judgment on their neighbor.
The sentence: Death.
Beckett had watched the trial and the punishment that followed, and, as always, had recorded his observations in his journal.
He had been the one to coin the odd term, ‘Blake’s Bane’.
Now, reading the words of a man who had long since turned to dust, Katelynn discovered some of the answers she’d been searching for.
And something else, as well.
She discovered that she was more frightened than she’d ever been in her entire life.
Chapter Twenty-eight: Forest Green Revisited
Having left Sam asleep on the couch, Jake now stood beside his Jeep, staring across the street at the entrance to the cemetery, forced by his own logic to see if his theory was true.
Two spotlights lit the concrete arch in a brilliant glare, making the darkness just beyond seem that much darker. It looked to him to be a solid wall of black, and as he strained unsuccessfully to see into it, Jake had the uneasy feeling that something was hidden within its swirling depths, hiding just beyond the range of his vision, crouched there in hungry anticipation of his arrival.
You don’t want to go in there, an inner voice warned. There’s nothing on the other side of that arch; no grass, no graves, no cemetery. Just one great, sprawling nothing, and it’s waiting for you.
Waiting to swallow you whole.
'Bullshit!' he said aloud. The echo of his voice in the otherwise empty silence of the night made him jump in surprise. It’s just dark, that’s all. That’s why you brought the flashlight, remember? he told himself. Though he knew he was being ridiculous; knew it was just an illusion created by the contrast of the lights and the night’s darkness, he still couldn’t help but cringe when he passed beneath the arch, expecting in that instant to be sucked away into the void, never to return.
Of course, nothing like that happened, and he emerged on the other side unscathed.
'Nothing to it,' he muttered beneath his breath as he wiped the thin sheen of sweat from his brow.
Turning on the flashlight, its beam lighting the way before him for a good twenty feet, Jake set off, knowing if he hesitated he might lose his nerve and turn back.
The darkness pressed in from all sides.
It was a hungry beast waiting to pounce, and more than once he stopped in his tracks and swung the flashlight in a slow arc around him, assuring himself that he was, indeed, alone. On the last such pass, a sudden realization came to him, and it was one that did nothing to improve the state of his already frayed nerves. Seeing the glistening marble of the headstones that stood in silent rows on either side of the path on which he stood, Jake remembered he wasn’t alone.
Not really.
Not by a long shot.
He had the dead for company.
He imagined them in their holes beneath the ground, lying languidly in their coffins, their flesh rotting from their bones, their lips pulled back to reveal grinning teeth, their eyes open and staring. Eyes that were alive with unnatural life. Eyes that could see him despite the wood and earth that separated them. He pictured their grins growing wider at the sight, their arms slowly rising off their chests to reach upwards toward him?
Jake shook himself violently, trying to dispel the images. He wasn’t entirely successful. The hair rose on his arms and the back of his neck. He had to force himself to keep moving. It couldn’t be much farther, he figured.
If you go on, you might not be able to turn back, that disturbing little voice whispered in the back of his mind, but he ignored it and continued on.
Five minutes later he turned off the path, his feet seeming to know the way on their own accord. Despite his unease, Jake really couldn’t believe he was doing this. Back home, with the night’s excitement still rampaging through his system and Gabriel’s voice echoing in his ears, the idea that some supernatural being was hunting in Harrington Falls had seemed possible. The strange coincidences that had been occurring around him had added fuel to the fire, seeming to add up to that conclusion as naturally as two and two make four. But here, in the depths of
