Cities Of The Androscoggin: Out Of The Shadows

Chapter One: The Hunt

When Lewiston and Auburn were booming mill towns in the 1920s a population explosion led to the construction of hundreds of apartment buildings in what is now the downtown area.  Most of these buildings were still used for apartments eighty years later, although they were not as attractive as they were when they were first built.  These apartments still boasted the large kitchens and hardwood floors typical to their age, a few were still nice, most were not.

On the corner of Pine and Howard Streets one of these buildings stood and contained one of the nicer apartments.  Within it lived Darius Ryker and Monica Ideh. 

Darius was a short, beatnik looking man in his late twenties with terminally curly hair.  Monica was a sexy, full figured girl with very short, dark red hair and glasses.  She was only a few years out of high school but a computer genius.  That's why it stayed on a desk in her bedroom.  Darius was fairly different, he was a metaphysical bookworm who was horrible with people.  That's why he stayed in his own bedroom.

Their apartment was a spacious, three-bedroom place still with the ancient pressurized water radiators and most of the original light fixtures.  The bedroom they used as a study did not have these light fixtures so they were forced to put desk lamps on the bookshelves, of which there were plenty. 

Two of the walls were dominated by windows that filled the room with sunlight, a third wall had one window next to two glass, French doors which opened to the living room.  One wall, the one with no windows, between two bookshelves, hung two large maps, one over the other, of Lewiston and Auburn.  In the center of the room sat a large table, with only two chairs at it.

Into the room stumbled Darius at a little after eleven in the morning with a steaming cup of hot coffee in one hand and the morning paper recently retrieved from the hallway in the other.  He sat heavily in one of the chairs and drank from his coffee for close to ten minutes and stared blankly at one of the radiators.

After his third cup of coffee he opened the day's edition of the Lewiston Sun Journal without as much as a glance at the front page headlines.  He had far too little caffeine in him to try and digest any real news, so immediately he went to the comics at the back of the sports section.  He read them through while he finished two more cups of coffee, he giggled at the cat in Rose Is Rose like he always did, and moved on to the real purpose of a newspaper, the news.

He got himself the last cup of coffee from the pot and decided to not start another one.  Sitting back at the table he flipped the front page over and saw the bold print read "Fourth Teen Found Dead".  He stopped dead as a chill ran up his spine.  He read the article through and confirmed his fears.  It was connected.  He turned to one of the shelves behind him and pulled a brown binder from it.  He opened the binder to a certain plastic page and glanced at the articles he had cut and placed in.  The titles all read similar and were all from the past six months.  In February there was "Local Girl Dead In Alleyway", March had "Boy Dead Beneath Bates Mill", and May was "Body Found After Months".  Now there was this new one in the middle of June.

Darius had been worried when the first body surfaced, now there was number four and he was sure there was more to this.  He began the new article again and did not hear Monica stir in her bedroom and enter the room a few moments later.  She quietly sat in the chair opposite him.  He gave no notice of her for a moment and then spoke suddenly.

"Have you seen this?"  He said, a tone of amazement in his voice.

She sat quietly for a moment waiting for him to realize that she had just gotten out of bed and he was the one who had retrieved the paper.  Eventually she gave up waiting for him to figure it out, it was too damn early.

"Nope."  She said, shaking her head.

He handed the paper across to her.

"Check it out."  He said.  "There's been another one."

He leaned back and waited patiently for her to read the article but she only glanced over most of it.

"Hm."  She said plainly.  "That's the fourth one in six months."

"Yup."  He responded.  "The paper's not giving any details but LPD says they're all connected.  I've got one of those feelings, I have since the first one was reported."

Monica scanned the article again and gently placed the paper back on the table.

"So what do you think?"  She asked.  "Are you thinking there might be more to this?"

"Maybe.  It's worth checking into."

"Yeah, it can't hurt.  You think I should call Barnes?"

"Yeah.  See what he knows, there might be something they're not prepared to deal with."  He paused and thought a moment.  "I'll check out the crime scenes, there may be something they missed."

"Okay, sure.  Sounds good."

Monica stood and began to leave.

"You want some coffee?"  She asked, turning back to him.  "I just made a fresh pot."

"Naw."  Darius responded.  "I just finished one."

"Okay."

Monica walked out and Darius could hear her preparing a breakfast for herself in the kitchen.

He sat back and thought.  He had a real bad feeling about this whole situation.  His instinct told him there was a lot more to this.  Things the police were not equipped to handle.  He knew to trust his perceptions, especially this dark, nefarious feeling.  He pulled the paper over to him and read the article for a third time.

 

 

LEWISTON- Police today found the body of another local teen brutally murdered.  This may sound familiar to many, as it is the fourth such murder in this city in the last six months.  Deshawn Jackson, 16, a junior at Lewiston High School, was found dead in the forest near the Tall Pines apartment complex on Strawberry Ave. where he lived with his mother, Maria Jackson, and young sister Brandy.

          
"It's horrible," Maria Jackson, a 42-year-old sales clerk told reporters.  "these kids don't know any better.  It's the fault of the police and the school department that they can't keep the gangs and the drugs out of the schools.  How many good kids gotta die before they start doing something?"

           
The other teens found dead were all students at Lewiston High School, Sheila Rourke, 15, sophomore, Lawrence LaVoie, 16, junior, and Dominick Whitely, 16, senior.

           
Franklin Gagne, 17, a senior and friend had this to say:  "We didn't do drugs or gang bang.  That's just a ticket to jail or death and it ain't worth it."

           
Lead detective Nicholas Barnes refused

           
TEEN CONTINUED ON PAGE A3

Darius flipped to page A3, found the article and continued reading.

TEEN CONTINUED FROM PAGE A1

an interview but the Lewiston Police Department released a formal press statement that had this to say:  "While we are not releasing details at this time, we do believe these killings to be related.  We are working closely with state and county authorities and we believe we are close to apprehending the suspect.  Most importantly we do not believe there to be any cause for alarm at this time."

           
It appears, however, that most people don't seem to be very alarmed anyway.  In 1999 Lewiston had the highest violent crime rate in New England, a 26% increase from the year before, followed by Boston, a city ten times its size.  With drug and gang related violence at an all time high most of the population seems to have become desensitized to it. 

           
It is this reporter's opinion that perhaps more brutal police tactics and bigger, newer jails are not the answer and a real effort at urban renewal is.  Maybe it's time for the police and the city council to review how they are dealing with this crisis instead of simply treating the symptoms.

***

Monica lifted the receiver on their green and blue, patchwork, as Darius called it, phone and dialed the Lewiston Police's non-emergency number.  It rang only twice before an automated answerer picked up, the recording was a stern and short female voice.

"You have reached the Lewiston Police Department, if this is an emergency-"

Monica cut it off by typing in Barnes' extension.  The line rang again and was shortly picked up and answered by the gruff voice of Nick Barnes.

"Nicholas Barnes."  He said plainly.

"Hey Barnes."  Monica said.

"Hey there."  He said in a much brighter and less monotone voice.  "How's my girl doing?  Long time, no see.  Whatcha up to?"

"Oh, not a whole hell of a lot."

"Then why haven't you been in touch?"

"I'm still trying to get into school.  It looks good for the fall semester now."

"Well, that's good.  You still looking at network engineering?"

"Oh, yeah.  There's a huge market for it and it doesn't look like it's going anywhere."

"So what can I do for you?  You don't sound like you just called for the hell of it."

"Actually, I didn't.  I was wondering if we could do lunch and discuss business."

"Sure.  No prob.  Should I bring anything?"

"Yeah, I need all you can get me on this multiple murder case."

Barnes was silent.  Monica waited, wondering if the connection had been lost.  She was just about to see if he was still there when he spoke again.

"I'd, uh, rather not talk now."

"Why not?"

"I just don't want to talk on the phone, okay."

"Yeah, sure.  Jeez."

"Sorry...  When do you want to get together?"

"I was thinking we could do lunch."

"If we did it would have to be late, like two-thirty or three."

"That's fine.  I'll wait for you in the park.  Maybe we could get some dogs or something."

"Yeah, that would be good.  I gotta get back to work but I'll see you then, Okay?"

"Sure.  See ya Barnes."

"Yeah, bye."

He hung up and Monica was confused.  He had been uncharacteristically short and snappy.  She finally assumed he must have had a supervisor there and needed to go.  She went back to her work on the computer splicing pictures from Time.com with obscene porn for Internet posting.

***

Darius took their car, a battered, blue Ford Taurus, and commenced his investigation.  His first stop was the Canal Street Alley.  It amused him that the city had actually bothered to put up a green street sign marking the narrow alley that ran the length of downtown sandwiched between the one-way throughways of Lisbon and Canal Streets.  It also amused Darius that someone had recently painted the 'C' over with black paint naming the street something a little different.  One wall of the alley was comprised of the tall and tightly packed buildings that lined Lisbon Street.  The other side was partially parking lots and the low buildings on Canal.

Sheila Rourke's body was found near where the alley was crossed by Spruce Street, which ran down the hill and over the river into New Auburn.  It also amused Darius that it was still called New Auburn when the fire that devastated the area occurred over fifty years ago.

Darius parked in a parking lot that served both a music shop and a small, enclosed plaza that was empty except for the dust and the DMV.  He shrugged his olive green, military jacket on and shouldered his black, nylon, LL Bean satchel that held everything he would ever need on an investigation, and quite a few things he didn�t.  He had purchased the bag one night from the Freeport outlet store at two o'clock in the morning, the jacket he had gotten at Goodwill for fifteen dollars.

He locked the car and walked around the chain link fence that separated him from the alley.  He knew where the girl had been found despite the fact that the chalk marks had washed away quite some time ago.  She was the first body that was found, on a snow bank next to a dumpster in an alcove.  He found this alcove.  A rusted fire escape zigzagged its way up the dusty brick building who's back made the alcove.  Gang tags and general graffiti had been scrawled everywhere a vandal with a spray can could reach.

Darius removed a Nokia, thirty-five millimeter camera from his satchel and began snapping photos of his surroundings.  He took pictures of where the body was found, views from his vantage point and the graffiti around the area.  Sometimes in gang-related killings a tag or symbol is left as a kind of calling card.  The only other markings besides gang tags and general vandalism were some more recent satanic markings, pentagrams, inverted crosses, and six-six-sixes.

Darius eventually forced himself to move on, content that he had photographed everything important.  He walked back to the car and changed the film in his camera before pulling out into traffic and going up one block then across the canal to the parking lot of the Bates Mill.

He drove slowly across the cracked pavement.  A small portion of the mill had been renovated for retail space but the project barely got off the ground before it died.  At its height there had been a handful of small businesses, an Italian restaurant and a cafe movie theater.  Darius had taken Monica there to see End Of Days back when he was trying to court her.  That was a relationship that had died quickly.  Of all the businesses, only the restaurant still remained and it was dying quickly.

Darius parked, checked his things, and got out of the car.  He spotted a lone security guard patrolling the parking lot.  Darius gave him no notice and began walking for the mill.  When he did not walk toward the restaurant the guard started for him.  Before Darius reached the unmarked and dust covered, glass door he was heading for the guard reached him.

"Can I help you sir?"  The guard said.

Darius pulled a spare wallet from the inside of his jacket and flipped it open to reveal an identification badge.

"Darius Ryker, private investigator."  Darius said professionally.

The guard studied it for a moment.

"What do you need sir?"

"I just need to look around some, then I'll be gone."

"Just a moment sir."

The guard pulled a radio from his belt and held it up to his face.

"Base, this is sixteen.  I need a confirmation on a search request by a private investigator named Darius Ryker."

A voice came back quickly on the radio.

"Sixteen, this is Base.  Let me check."  The voice paused.  "There is nothing registered."

"Okay, thank you."  The guard said into the radio and clipped it back on his belt before looking to Darius.  "I'm sorry sir, if you plan on a search of this area you will have to first call the enterprise complex corporation and arrange it ahead of time."

Darius just nodded like this was news to him.

"All right."  He said.  "I'm sorry.  I'll do that."

"It's all right, sir."  The guard said.  "You have a nice day."

"Okay, you too."  Darius said before turning and walking back to his car.

He sat for a moment in the car.  He thought he might get in the easy way but that, obviously, was not going to happen.  He looked at his watch and decided to move on to the next site instead of pressing the issue here.  He started the car and drove out.  The guard waved as he was passed, Darius waved back.

***

Monica had walked the fifteen minute walk down Pine St. to Kennedy Park and sat in the shade reading an old, tattered copy of Red Dragon by Thomas Harris while waiting for Barnes to arrive.  Eventually he emerged from the Lewiston Police building and crossed the street into the park. 

He passed the municipal pool where the typical Lewiston, white trash swam in urine colored water.  Next to it there was a basketball game in progress composed mostly of gangers.  It was not uncommon for a vicious fight to break out on that court even though it was right across the street from the police station.  There had even been a brutal stabbing there only last summer.

Barnes approached Monica and she looked up to him.  He was a tall and commanding figure.  He was well built even as he neared fifty years old.  He had dark hair and a goatee that were both speckled with gray.

"Hey."  She said as she went back to her book.

Barnes sat down and began to speak before being hushed by a quick hand from Monica.  She read for a moment longer, then folded the corner of the page and set the book down next to her.

"Sorry."  She said looking over to him.  "I was at the part where Dollarhyde kills the reporter."

Barnes looked around nervously.  "It's okay."

"Chill out, man."  She told him.  "Nobody cares if you're over here."

"No,"  He said looking around again.  "but they will care that I have this file."

Monica perked up some.

"Speaking of which, let's see it."

"Not here."  He said looking again for signs of trouble.

"What in the hell has gotten into you?"

Barnes sighed.  "I'm sorry, I've been all screwed up sense I started on this case."

He lifted his briefcase, clicked it open, and removed a thick manila envelope.  Monica took it and placed it in her purple LL Bean backpack.  Barnes sighed again and ran his fingers through his hair.

"You all right?"  She asked, concerned.

"Yeah."  He sighed.  "I just kinda feel like I'm losing it.  I mean, my dreams are all fucked up and I swear to Christ I'm hearing things sometimes.  I'm not supposed to be dealing with this any more, I'm retired."

"Yeah, I know."  Monica had heard that one plenty of times before.  "What's going on anyway?"

"It's this case.  The first guy who was on it, Curtis, went loony a couple of months back and I feel like I'm following him."

Monica, now very curious, leaned forward.

"What do you mean?"

"Okay."  He began.  "The story goes like this.  Ian Curtis was handed the case after we got a call about the dead girl.  Not too long later the kid down under the Bates Mill was added.  He was found by some guys who were down there exploring, brave and crazy sons-a-bitches, if you ask me.  Anyway, Ian started the investigation but shortly after he started coming apart at the seams.  It�s like with every new body he went more nuts.  He started talking to himself, then he was definitely talking to someone specific, he called �em Cobain.  Not long before he was removed from the case he had taken to chewing on his fingers so they were always all raw and bloody.

"He was finally suspended when a security guard at the mill heard shouting and found him marking his territory like a wolf.  The responding officers said he was screaming to himself and was all bloody from rat bites.  The doctor's report later said that he had over two hundred bites covering his body.

"Our staff psychiatrist said that it was PTSD but I know better.  Something got to him, and I�ll bet you it was the same thing that is killing these kids.  It might even have taken him for a hunter."

Monica sat in silence for a moment.  Then she could only say.

"Wow."

After a moment longer.

"That's quite a story."

�And that�s not all.�

"Well, by all means, go on."  She said, entranced.

"Well, two weeks later his wife calls 911 saying that she's afraid of what her husband was going to do.  When officers arrived he had barricaded himself in the house and was holding his wife hostage.  They said they could hear him screaming from outside and when they approached the house he shot at them.  So, they decided negotiating was out of the question and they called in SWAT for a dynamic entry. 

"They arrived on the scene and shortly after moved on the house.  They stormed in and said that they found him crawling around the living room on all fours and chattering something they couldn't make out.  He rushed them and they shot him, blew both his kneecaps out, before he could get to them.  They said that he had chewed his fingers to the bone and had drawn on the walls and his wife with them.  He had her duct taped to the kitchen table."

Monica was simultaneously disgusted, appalled, intrigued and speechless.

"Where is he now?"  She asked finally.

"He got sent to AMHI for long term care.  There are charges pending against him currently.  His wife filed for divorce and moved to North Dakota somewhere to live with a sister.  That's when this was dumped in my lap.  It's all in the file."

"Well..."  Monica said.

Barnes sighed and looked at his watch.

"I've gotta go."  He said.  "I've got lots of paperwork."

"I though we were gonna go over to Simone's for lunch."

"I can't, I'm sorry.  Maybe next time."

"It's all right."  She said as they both stood and she shouldered her backpack.  "So, I guess I'll see you around."

"Yeah."

Barnes turned and walked away.

"Hey Barnes."  She called to him.  He stopped and turned.  "You keep your head down until this blows over, okay."

He grinned.

"Sure."  He said.  "I always do when you come around asking questions.  I know how you are."

***

Darius rolled into the wide, open parking lot for Marden's Surplus And Salvage and the attached shopping plaza.  Marden's, as was the building and the plaza, was a massive dusty edifice.  It had the appearance of a place the owners could not afford to maintain but were struggling to hold onto.  Like so many places in Lewiston and Auburn it looked like it was losing a long, vicious battle with entropy.

The shopping center rested near the edge of the north side of the urban center of the city well up Main Street.  Beyond it the number of houses dropped off quickly and fell to the forest that covered the majority of the state.  The north edge of the cities were very similar to all other borders, the urban center of Lewiston and Auburn, just like every other city in Maine, were isolated areas surrounded by forest.

Darius drove slowly across the cracked blacktop, which was covered with faded, yellow parking margins.  Despite the time of day the parking lot was nearly empty.  The ground sloped down as he rounded the building into the rear parking lot.  The rear portion of the lot stretched from the building until it's wear eventually turned it to dirt, the dirt was then claimed by scrubby grass.

In the back corner about a dozen rig trailers had been parked.  They had the appearance of unused age, the paint peeled and flecked and rust ran in long strips from their tops.  On many of them the doors hung open on rusty hinges to reveal their stained and dusty interiors.

Beyond the parking lot was a thick forest of massive pine trees.  Darius parked next to the trailers and walked toward the trees.  Over a grassy knoll was a narrow truck path used by the locals for four-wheeling in their loud, jacked-up, pick-up trucks.  He followed this trail into the darkness within the trees.  Here no sunlight penetrated the overhead canopy and everything adopted a brown or black hue.

Darius walked in oppressive silence.  The sounds of the city were distant, almost from another world.  There were places, he noted, that seemed disconnected, separated from our world somehow.  This area of woods was one of those places.  He started to become aware of the energies of this quasi-world when he felt something.  Something was in here with him.  He extended his senses outward but could not pinpoint it.  Then he realized it was all around him.  The forest itself was aware.

The shadows were too dark, the sounds too muted.  He decided to make his time here short and do what he had to do.  The most recently discovered body was found here.  From a bit of a distance he could see the remains of the yellow police tape that had been draped around the scene hanging in tatters from the trees.

Darius approached the scene and stepped out onto the top of a sheer granite cliff more than fifty feet high.  A portion of this cliff dropped to a small, sand beach on the shore of the river, the cliff then turned and followed the river north for approximately another five hundred feet.  Half submerged in the water and half on the beach was the rusted frame of an old snow mobile.

He began to look around and instantly spotted the white spray paint on the trees and the rocks.  There were various satanic symbols that were identical to the ones in the alleyway.  He removed his camera and took pictures of all of them.  Then he took pictures of the trail, north, where he had come in, it wound through the trees and emerged into a field behind Marden�s and south, after a quarter of a mile or so, it emerged near the scummy apartment complex Tall Pines.  The beach and cliffs were a popular party spot for many who lived there.

Darius followed the trail down to where it skirted the beach and exited out onto the sand.  The sulfur smell of the brown, foamy water was strong this close to it.  He snapped a few shots of the beach and the view across the river.  When he lifted the camera to photograph the top of the cliff he saw a darkened figure outlined by the trees.  He could not quite tell if he was seeing a person of a trick of the light.  The figure appeared to be a shadow except what looked like a white face with a black bar across the eyes.  Darius felt the oppressive presence grow stronger and he decided it best to leave.  He looked back up at the cliff and could no longer see the shadow with the white face.

He quickly made his way back to his car and was relieved when he emerged into the sunlight.  The presence was no longer with him.  He turned to look behind him and saw the pitch-black tunnel formed by the trees that marked the entrance to that place.  He jogged back to his car and drove away, ignoring his wheezing need for his asthma inhaler.

***

Mythos stepped from the shadows of the trees.  This land was his and he didn�t like that hunter poking around.  What he liked less was the intruder who had killed here.  It seemed he would have to take up the hunt again.  He had not had to do that sense he had cast the insane hunter Rajek from the peak of St. Michael�s cathedral at the end of the vampire war.

He had followed Darius before and knew that he was decisive and not a ruthless killer like Rajek had been.  He still needed to be taught his boundaries.

Mythos shifted his black frame and bone white face back from the waking lands of the living to the incorporeal surface lands of the dead where the tangible world could still be observed.  His spirit spread back out to encompass the land itself in his little domain.

When night fell he would again leave here to resume his hunt for this unwanted interloper to his cities.  Then he would destroy the psychotic creature.

***

Darius' next, and final, stop was the Lewiston reservoir where the bloated body of Dominick Whitely had been found floating two months ago.  East Avenue, in town, was a major artery but as it moved north and approached the forest it became a narrow residential street and then a dirt track that ended at a side entrance to the nature preserve Thorncrag.

Darius parked in the dirt turnaround.  Exiting from the turnaround were two gates, one went into Thorncrag and the other into the reservoir.  He walked over to the rusted, chain link fence that ran the perimeter of the reservoir.  The fence was topped by rusted and only semi-intact barbed wire.  Next to the gate a portion of the fence was pulled open enough to accommodate a large dog, one of many.

Darius crawled through and walked along the short, tree lined road that lead to the reservoir proper.  The reservoir was built into the top of a small hill.  The granite ledge had been blasted out of the hilltop and one side had been filled with a concrete wall.  The entire basin was filled with still, inky water.  At one corner of the basin a small, dusty brick building sat beginning to crumble.  Another larger, yet similar, building sat half in the trees beyond the pool.  Surrounding the building were stacks and piles of rusting metal piping and other unidentifiable objects.

The first thing Darius noticed when he emerged onto the dusty hilltop was more white spray paint on the concrete.  The symbols were identical to the ones at the other two crime scenes.  He pulled out his camera and photographed them, it took him some time due to the fading light.  The sun was dropping below the horizon and things were growing pale.

As he tried to photograph across the reservoir he felt a presence behind him.  This was different from before, this was a killing presence, a psychotic presence, and it was behind him.  Slowly he placed his camera in his bag.  Then he reached under his jacket to where his holster hung.  Also slowly he turned around and drew his small, silver Walther .308 automatic handgun.

He could not see anything but he knew it was there, he could feel it.  It was in the shadows of the trees on the trail back to the turnaround.  He moved toward it and it quickly moved back.

Darius jogged toward it as it moved back to the gate, there it paused.  Darius broke into a run and scurried through the hole in the fence as it moved back up the trail into Thorncrag.  Darius ran after it quickly but did not seem to notice the long, black tunnel of trees that he entered.

The trail followed an ancient, stone wall on the right as it moved through the thick forest.  The sun had dropped enough to turn all green and brown to shades of black and gray, only the ghostly white forms of birch trees stood out against the thickening blackness.  A light, thin fog hung low to the ground as it crept from the trees.

Darius continued to run, ignoring it all.  His prey moved quick, following the trail.  The trail turned at a sharp right angle and dropped through a small marsh where it lost the stone wall.  It then angled up steeply and was lost in the blackness of the trees.  Beside the trail, just before it disappeared, a massive apple tree stood guard.  It's leaves shimmered silver in the last bits of twilight.  Where the trail moved through the marsh the fog blocked it out in a thick band.

The presence moved up the hill and Darius ran after.  He moved through the fog, past the tree, and then he was lost in inky blackness.  He was mildly aware of the area's presence, a dark and secretive feeling.  From the blackness of the trees there were three shimmering archways of gray and silver, one of which he had come in.  His prey moved out the one on the right and he followed it.  Suddenly he felt like he hit an ethereal wall and the horror of his surroundings flooded in.

He stood upon a granite flagstone and was overlooking the remains of a colonial farmstead.  A solid wall of trees bordered the clearing.  At the edges silvery things moved, behind them, within the darkness of the trees, blacker things moved.  Spread before him were scraps of industrial carpeting, creating a blanket covering the ground.

His prey was lost and more powerful presences were before him.  An icy coldness seeped into him from the very air.  To one side he could see the dark archway he had emerged from.  On the perimeter, above where the things moved, the trees began to form gigantic faces of gray and black.

Intent to just do it and go, he replaced his gun and removed his camera.  He was only able to snap one photo when he heard a deep, guttural snort.  He jumped and turned around.  It had come from somewhere in the trees where the gray turned to black.  He stood frozen, unsure of what he had heard.  Then it came again, a deep blowing out of air, a snort.

He could tell its location but could see nothing in the blackness.  It would not allow him to see it.  Then it spoke to him on a level below speech.  His gut got the message. 

Leave.

The perimeter seemed to grow smaller as the things that moved there came closer.  His breath came in quick, shallow gasps as anxiety and panic welled up inside him.  He ran from his flagstone perch into the black arch and then out the left silver one onto the path.  The branches of the apple tree seemed to hang lower and he ducked lest they make a grab for him.  He ran through the fog, thicker now, that clung around his feet and ankles threatening to send him sprawling to the ground.

He rounded the corner and could see the exit of the tunnel.  The other side was nothing but a gray void.  The archway grew larger and soon he emerged into the dirt turnaround.  He jumped into his car, started the engine, and threw on the headlights.  They cut a swath of light into the trees but served only to intensify the things that swarmed in the blackness.

He dropped the car into gear and spun it around as fast as it would move in the loose dirt.  He sped over the hill with the reservoir next to him and just put distance between himself and that tunnel.  He felt weak and pathetic after he calmed some.  He had been afraid of the dark and what was probably just a deer in the trees.  He was supposed to be a fearless hunter of the supernatural, after all.

Novels Home
Prologue: Releasing The Darkness
Chapter One: The Hunt
Chapter Two: The Fae Of The Wood
Chapter Three: Spirits Of The Night