Jim Castle was completely lost. The trails had turned him around, and though he could hear the water rushing through the deep groove of the gorge, he wasn’t sure how he could reach it. Once, he’d broken into a clearing that had turned out to be the stone face of a cliff edge. The Unegama River ran a hundred feet below, winding a silvery path toward an eventual, unseen ocean.
At that point, the gorge was the length of two football fields across. According to Derek Samford’s maps, this western side of the river was wilder, steeper, rockier, and more dangerous. There were only a few main trails, and they were so rarely traveled that it was easy to branch off into an animal path or a washed-out section that suggested an established route. Especially when walking by the light of a quarter moon that was often veiled by low gray clouds.
Castle was afraid to use the flashlight. He told himself it was because Goodall would see his approach and either sneak into the woods until Castle passed or else ambush him. But, in truth, he was afraid of attracting the thing that had taken Samford.
It wasn’t a thing. It wasn’t a bird-beast or a man-bat or an escaped extra from the set of Hellraiser. It was a hallucination, clear as day.
If Samford were still around- if it was a hallucination, how do you explain what happened to your partner? — he would undoubtedly have attributed Castle’s delusion to exhaustion, stress, and the trauma of having nearly been blown to bits or buried alive. That’s exactly how Samford would size it up, including the tricky little part where Samford himself was dangled in the air like frankfurters on a string. The Rook was a behavioral psychologist-or had been-and could make sense of such perverted stimuli. Castle, though, could only pretend it hadn’t happened.
While knowing it had.
And the rustling in the treetops can’t be just the wind.
The sound seemed to follow him, though he was constantly changing pace, one moment dragging his feet, the next breaking into a half jog, hoping to put more distance between himself and the hole in the ground, where the mountain had given way and opened onto a dark, cold space that might have been sealed off for aeons. He thought of his feet dangling in that emptiness, of the soft scratching against his boots. Maybe the thing that took The Rook had been released from some primal prison by the bomb blast.
A species that was probably blind and at home in the eternal dark. But that made no sense, either. Nature wouldn’t have given such a creature wings, and what kind of food would it have found?
A hallucination was much more comforting than its possible reality. Castle could accept a crack-up. Like taking a bullet for the team, it was an occupational hazard. More than one agent had been released from active duty and turned out to pasture at the funny farm after a harrowing hostage situation or a shoot-out. All the training in the world couldn’t totally remove the vulnerability that was hidden inside all humans.
A branch broke overhead. Here the trail was narrower, the canopy nearly unbroken, and in the quiet of the night, the sound was like a pistol shot.
Castle paused, ears filled with the roar of blood and his own breathing. One of the things was up there- yes, THINGS, plural, because one was trying to tug him down into the hole while the other had flown away with The Rook. No telling how many of them had crawled from that nightmare orifice — and even though he was positive they didn’t exist, he was equally sure that a wizened, leathery, gray-skinned creature was hovering in the treetops, marking him, drooling and hungry.
The handle of the Glock was slick with his sweat. In these conditions, with poor light and close quarters, the stalker had the advantage. But. 40-caliber bullets had a way of equalizing affairs in a hurry. Assuming the creature was made of flesh and blood and not fairy dust.
You’re over the edge, Castle. You don’t know what happened back there, but you figure a bullet’s going to solve the problem. Three bullets. One for the master, one for the dame, and one for the little boy who hides under sheets.
He wasn’t going to let any creature rip him from this world before he found the Bama Bomber. He’d made this vow to The Rook’s soul, though he believed in souls about as much as he believed in the Great Pumpkin. Or, for that matter, flying, man-eating backwoods birds.
“Come out with your hands up,” Castle said, the words sounding foolish even as they left his lips.
The only answer was the fluttering, dying leaves of the hardwoods. Castle scanned the trees, eyes straining to penetrate the deep shadows. No doubt the Appalachians were home to nocturnal birds such as owls, and other occasionally airborne mammals such as bats and flying squirrels. The Rook would know. He’d become an armchair expert on the region during their week of preparation. But maybe you never knew everything. Remote places, lost, harsh corners of the world, wild lands like the Appalachians, maybe they kept a few secrets.
After a couple of minutes, Castle’s heartbeat slowed. His mind was playing tricks, and was still the same mind that harbored little Jimmy’s dark bedroom fantasies. The mind was more cluttered with trivia and memories now, shaped by training and experience, but it, too, still kept a few secrets. The monsters were no longer under the bed. They were here, around him, scuttling in the dark.
He wanted to laugh. No monster could be as bad as Ace Goodall, a man who would probably kill again and again until he was caught. Capturing Goodall was the only mission here, the only mystery. He could sort out the rest later, after The Rook’s body was found and the forensics people went to work.
Sure, he was lost, but dawn was only about four hours away. Tomorrow, he’d be able to figure out where he was. He began walking again, and a hundred yards later, he came to a break in the trees. He walked out onto a granite shelf that was spotted with lichen. The gorge opened before him, and the moon was at its apex, limning the chalky cliff walls and throwing a gentle blue light over the wilderness.
Against the sky were the silhouettes of three flying creatures. Castle couldn’t gauge their size because he had no point of reference, but if he had to guess, they were about the size of the thing that had carried away The Rook.
The creatures rode the high wind, frayed wings unsteady, as if they were just learning to fly. They drifted aimlessly, their flights uncoordinated. Two of them nearly collided. They made no sound, though Castle imagined the rush of the water below might be their voices.
He didn’t believe in them, but that didn’t stop him from easing back into the cover of the forest.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Derek Samford hadn’t died instantly, as his partner believed.
He’d been keeping an eye out for Ace Goodall, tightening the rope as Castle climbed out of the hole. He wasn’t sure what type of explosion had triggered the landslide, because earthquakes were rare in the Appalachians. The mountain range was so ancient that some believed it had existed before the continental drift and ran beneath the Atlantic Ocean. The far end of the chain wasn’t in Maine, but Scotland. Those rounded hills amid the misty lochs shared a lot of geologic characteristics with these rocky, worn ridges. That much was in the research Samford had absorbed when he’d first gotten the assignment.
He had a week’s notice, and he’d met Castle only three days before they were dropped off at the border of the wilderness area. He’d heard of Special Agent Jim Castle, of course. Castle was the kind that fellow agents admired but the brass tried to bury. Funny that it turned out the Earth itself had tried to bury Castle.
And the sky had yanked Samford away.
Samford blinked against the darkness. It was complete, as solid against his skin as water. He was lying on a cool, hard surface that wasn’t quite flat. The air was stale and held a faint stench of fur and decay, like the den of a hibernating animal.
He couldn’t remember what had happened after the vicious jerk to his shoulder. His first thought had been that Goodall had crept up on him and grazed him with a bullet. Though Samford had never been shot before, he knew a bullet would have delivered a more powerful punch, shredding meat and bone. This wound had been cleaner, colder.
He reached to touch it now, his arm heavy and slow, and felt the soggy fabric of his insulated vest. He eased a pinkie tip into the gash. It didn’t hurt. Not much, anyway. He wondered if shock were setting in, or something worse.
