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  Even if it all turns out to be false, you still have to trust that it’s real. Peggy and Connor’s lives could be at stake.

  But what if it’s not real?

  Stop driving a wedge into your sanity with stupid ideas. You aren’t lying in a hospital bed in a coma. No fucking way…

  As he left the house, he noticed a picture taped to the front of Connor’s bedroom door. It was a family portrait the boy had drawn with colored pens. Peggy, Connor and Robert were standing on a sunny beach with big blue waves crashing behind them. Nugget was swimming in the surf of course, while a whiskered sea lion strained its neck to watch.

  A smile spread across Robert’s face. Connor’s artwork always had the same affect on him. The boy had a gift for capturing those special moments when they were together as a family, and Robert had bought him scrapbooks to save his drawings in.

  I’m not imagining this. Not a chance in hell…

  Being careful not to tear the taped edges, he removed the picture from the door and folded it before sticking it in his pocket. If he ended up dying tonight, at least he’d have something to take with him.

  After he locked up the house, he drove in search of a quiet dark place where he could eat some dinner and think.

  CHAPTER 10

  Jared Horn had not always filled his neighbor’s hearts with such hatred. For years he’d led a quiet, idyllic existence just outside Wrath Butte.

  On Friday afternoons Horn and his family would ride into Wrath’s main street to conduct their business with the town. While his wife shopped for essentials, Horn and his two sons would deliver the orders they’d filled for their handmade furniture. Many of the locals in Wrath Butte owned things the Horns had made over the years. The quality of their work was stunning. Horn’s porch chairs weren’t only a marvel to look at, but could make you feel so comfortable you’d sooner go hungry than be called from it at suppertime.

  After finishing their business, Jared would send his sons away with some spending money while he sipped a few whiskeys with the local men inside a cool saloon. He was well known for having a sense of humor and a deep laugh, and men seemed to gravitate to his table whenever he visited. On the few occasions he might have had trouble with someone, he’d simply pick up his hat and leave and the offender would soon find himself an unwelcomed customer.

  As always, some folks in town had the need to find faults in others they deemed unworthy of success. Brandon Dukes had the worst habit of anyone around. At one time a skilled wood craftsman, Dukes’ drinking finally landed him into serious debt problems with a dangerous gang and ultimately the loss of a hand. He referred to the Horn family as “damned Amish” although they were known to be unaffiliated with any religion and never came to church. After he’d once tried to sell Horn a load of pine riddled with beetle damage, Dukes became furious when Horn declined the deal.

  Horn had felt sorry for Dukes, and didn’t want any trouble. And despite his offer to allow Dukes to find him a better product, the drunk’s fragile pride could not be mended. From then on the Horn’s weekly visits to town began to deteriorate. Dukes began spreading vicious rumors to anyone who’d listen, manufacturing stories about the Horn family being involved in devil worship and the like. Folks laughed at first, but Dukes’ lurid stories started poisoning opinions and soon the town became edgy when the Horn family came for their Friday visit. Even people Jared considered friends began to look upon him with suspicion. Thanks to Dukes, people stopped buying their wares and often the Horn family would return home with very few provisions to get them through the coming week.

  Over the next several years Horn’s visits became less frequent. People had grown tired of the stories Dukes had spread, and began to question why they’d believed him in the first place. They’d seen no evidence to support Duke’s claims that the Horn family was in league with the devil. But it was still too late to change what had happened. The damage was done. The proud family they’d once admired was dying from starvation, their bodies reduced to skin and bone. Mrs. Horn, who’d once turned heads when she walked along the boardwalk, had lost most of her shimmering red hair and now kept her head wrapped tightly with a scarf. Horn’s sons no longer smiled or waved, but cowered with fear of the other children who chased after their wagon and threw stones at them. A jealous drunk had turned them into outcasts. There was no one left they could trust.

  Jared, distraught by the betrayal of so many, began to wander alone into the mountains for days at a time, filling his sketchpad with the things he saw. Once, after being gone for several days without food or water, he had a vision that changed everything. Instead of producing a great quantity of tables, cabinets and chairs, he decided to sharpen his focus on images he could engrave in wood.

  The strategy paid off. Although in far less quantity than their once popular furniture, the Horns delivered more intricately carved pieces—wall hangings and jewelry boxes, decorative figurines and chests. The townsfolk couldn’t resist them and soon forgot about the ugly past. Most said they were ready to make amends and showed it by opening their purses.

  Horn’s new works were a success. When news reached Dukes that several of the wealthier townspeople had standing orders, Dukes’ fury hit the boiling point. His goal to drive Horn permanently away had ultimately failed. He couldn’t believe how quickly his neighbors had gone from treating the Horns like pariahs to going soft headed over his new carvings. Something had to be done before Dukes found himself being run out of town.

  It wasn’t too long afterward that Horn’s Trojan horse began to take its toll...

  ****

  A bruised sun dropped toward the serrated outline of the Cascades. Dark purple clouds sat perched on snowy peaks like behemoth gargoyles. Underwood and Logan hitched their horses to a fence post not far from a cottonwood towering next to the Horn farmhouse. The gloaming tonight was eerily devoid of sound. When several crows hiding in the branches of the cottonwood abruptly flew off, Underwood noticed they made no sound. On the other hand, he could hear every sound he made, from the creak of his bad hip to the smallest grains of sand whispering against the heel of his boot.

  When they reached the tree, Underwood bent down and passed his palm over a bed of dying coals, determining in his own mind how long the fire had been burning. He glanced up at a branch high above him and noticed a piece of rope still clinging to the blistered bark.

  “I reckon Horn is somewhere in this mess,” he said turning over the ash with a stick. “Otherwise, he’d be out here giving us hell by now.”

  “You want me to check the house?” asked Logan.

  “Might as well be sure of it,” he said without looking up. “But I doubt if there’s any survivors.”

  Logan nodded and walked toward the farmhouse, rifle braced against his hip. The likelihood of someone rushing out of the house with a loaded weapon seemed remote indeed. It was just so damned quiet you could almost hear the air pop as you moved.

  Underwood picked out a leather strand from the ash pile, a bootlace perhaps, and examined it before throwing it back. When he stood up and backed away from the tree, he almost tripped on an empty bottle. He picked the bottle up and probed the neck with his finger. It was still wet with whisky.

  Wrath Butte vigilantes… more like shit for brains.

  Underwood shook his head and wondered why on earth they’d brought the boy. The men should’ve had more sense and stayed home. It wasn’t as if they hadn’t known what Horn might be capable of. Did they think the town would have handed out medals for what they did?

  Most likely…

  He lifted the whiskey bottle and flung it into the brush where it smashed against a rock.

  “Jared Horn. Are you in there Jared Horn?” Logan shouted as he approached the doorway to the house. He noticed the windows blown out from fire. The soot-streaked front door was tilted inward, held up only by a lower hinge. Something told him not to go into the house, but he brushed it away like he always did when such warnings came to him. Logan cr
edited his survival to learning long ago how to ignore his fears, especially of the dead. It never made sense to him anyway why a corpse scared people so. What was dead was dead, and if you thought it could still come after you then you were a fool.

  He kicked the door off its only hinge and watched it splinter when it hit the ground. Stepping inside the house, Logan’s eyes probed at the damage. Horn’s scenic carvings were mounted all over the walls. And although they were nothing more than charcoal now he could still make out the rendered landscapes and portraits of wildlife and people. The sharp smell of burnt wood prickled his eyes and made them water.

  When he heard a hissing sound in the next room, his heart skipped a beat. He released the safety and moved forward. With the muzzle of his rifle leading the way, Logan turned the corner and saw the small wood stove in the corner of the room. On top of the stove was an iron pot full of boiling water.

  What the hell?

  ****

  Underwood had gone back to his horse to get some headache powder. He could no longer think straight. His head felt like someone was inside his skull, trying to kill a fly with a hammer. The medicine’s bitterness tasted good as he washed it down with water from his canteen. After he closed his eyes and started to rub his temples, he began hearing Logan’s screams coming from inside the house.

  He lifted his rifle and hobbled toward the house, his bad hip sending a hot stitch up through his lower back. By the time he reached the front doorway, Logan’s screams had stopped. Goosebumps traveled up Underwood’s back and across his arms. He hadn’t heard a man scream like that since the time he’d come upon some Indians on a moonlit night during his first year as sheriff, had witnessed a man being skinned alive for raping and killing a young woman from their tribe.

  Underwood shouted Logan’s name as he made his way into the house, staring at the wooden pictures on the walls. It seemed as if the things depicted in Horn’s carvings had started moving, like the moving picture machine he’d once seen at the state fair. Except these were different. They swirled and hummed with a life of their own, transforming into scenes from a hell never before imagined. He watched in horror as a herd of elk melted into vile creatures playing catch with squirming naked humans, impaling them on their horns. In another grisly tableau a group of cowboys sat around a campfire on a starry night, drinking coffee. Suddenly, hellish beings made of fire leaped out of the campfire and engulfed the men in balls of flame.

  He swore he could smell them burning. It was so real, and then again it wasn’t.

  Underwood shook his head to get rid of the bad thoughts streaming inside. He recalled the havoc played on the Wrath Butte residents unfortunate enough to have something made from Horn’s hands. In some ways he could understand why a vigilante party had formed and done what they did. So many folks in Wrath Butte had nearly gone insane. Underwood’s neighbor, a mother of four, was preparing to put out her children’s eyes when their father had heard the cries and stopped her…

  He stepped into the room with the wood stove, but the pot of hot water Logan had seen was gone. A crimson sunset bled between the boards nailed across the room’s only window. There was no sign of his deputy anywhere.

  Suddenly the floor below Underwood began to drop. He instinctively tried to back up, but the trap door caught him in the lower back and sent him plunging into a deep pit of carved rock. The wind was knocked from his lungs when he hit bottom, and he heard the fractured ends of bones tearing through skin. His left leg had snapped apart above the knee and his right arm was dislocated and twisted behind his back. Glancing up, he saw his bloodless palm looked as if it were about to pat him on top of the head.

  Next came a sickening squeal, and when the Sheriff looked up he saw the square of floor settling back into place. He gripped his rifle one-handedly and fired. Splinters rained down onto his face, but the door continued to rise until it settled back into place. Now in complete darkness, Underwood gradually lost consciousness. He felt as if he were bobbing on the surface of a black tide. He remembered taking his wife to see the Pacific Ocean not long after they’d married. They’d sat up on a cliff together and just watched the waves for hours, eating a picnic lunch of fried chicken and apple pie.

  Caroline…

  Eventually the presence of light caused Underwood to open his eyes. He’d toppled over sometime during the night, and the side of his face was pressed against the cold floor. He felt like an insect that had been crushed under someone’s boot and left in a tangled mess. His clothes were covered with damp, bloody straw. He heard water dripping from further back in the cave. As he lay craving a drink of it, he saw a child moving toward him, clutching a tiny lantern.

  “Help me...” Underwood pleaded, lifting his only good hand.

  The child backed away several steps and stared at him, the expression on its thin white face both scared and curious. Its head was shorn and scabby. Underwood let out a sigh and gently motioned the child over. The child didn’t move. It stood silently, studying Underwood’s mangled body, the stream of blood flowing from his left ear and down to his jaw where it fell off in thick drops.

  He couldn’t even tell at first if the child was a girl or a boy, until he eventually recognized him as Horn’s youngest son. It had been a long time since he’d seen any of Horn’s children, so long since anyone had seen much of the Horn family at all. Rumor was the mother and eldest son had fallen victims to a disfiguring disease, leaving only Jared and his youngest child capable of making their bi-monthly trips into town.

  “Don’t be afraid of me boy. I mean you no harm.”

  He began to drag himself across the floor so the boy could see his face better in the wavering candlelight. The boy stepped back and lit several candles in a small alcove. As Underwood’s eyes adjusted to the light, he wished he’d stayed put.

  Holy Christ…

  Resting on a bed of dirty yellow straw were thick blocks of clouded ice. One lay split apart and leaking. Ice like that, Underwood knew, could only have been taken down from the mountains in the back of a mule-drawn wagon.

  In the flickering candlelight he could make out a grayish form suspended inside the unbroken block. It occurred to Underwood the steaming pot of hot water sitting next to it was there for the purpose of helping it melt. When the child touched the block with his palm Underwood was startled by a shadowy movement inside. The boy took his hand away and giggled.

  “What is it?” Underwood asked, not believing his eyes. Torrents of pain passed through his body, creating hallucinations that played tricks on his mind.

  The boy grinned and picked up the lantern from the floor. Before Underwood could say another word the boy disappeared. He thought he heard the padding of bare feet ascending a wooden staircase and shouted at the boy to come back. As the night wore on, he watched the candles sink into runny puddles on top of the blocks of ice. Then, just as he was going to shut his eyes again, he heard the sound of something moving toward him through the near darkness, its hot breath stinking of raw flesh and death.

  “Sheriff… Sheriff…” hissed a voice just outside the golden refuge of candle light.

  Underwood strained to see, but it was too dark. Then the candles began to go out, one by one, and with each candle he could feel the temperature of his blood drop several more degrees.

  It can’t be Horn. Horn’s dead…

  He loaded his rifle and braced it against his good knee.

  But then again it might be….

  “Sheriff… Sheriff…”

  He could have sworn the voice was a woman’s.

  He had an idea. A desperate one and the only damn card he had left holding…

  “You and I’ve got no bad blood between us,” he shouted to the unknown presence. “I’m asking you to let me live. I’ve got a wife and a daughter who need me. If you just put me on my horse, I can take myself home. I’ll tell them all you’re dead so they won’t come looking for you.”

  Underwood waited. Whoever—whatever—had stopped calling hi
s name. But it hadn’t stopped coming toward him. He listened to the gritty scrape of its feet.

  “I’m begging you. Please…”

  Shaking badly, he reached into his pocket and pulled out a wooden match. He struck it against his silver belt buckle, stretched out his good arm and held it there.

  A shape suddenly blurred into view, a human monster covered in sticky yellow fat. Its jaw sank into the sheriff’s wrist and tore it away in seconds. Blood sailed from the ragged stump and pattered against the candle-lit blocks of ice. The match he’d lit still flickered in the palm of his severed hand.

  When Underwood fainted the thing leaped on top of him. In the pitch black he felt its muscular thighs rock against his groin, and its long hair fell into his face and tickled it just as his wife’s sometimes did. He felt himself getting hard, and forgot for a bittersweet moment he was probably bleeding to death. He lifted his hips and moaned, his mind engulfed by an unspeakable ecstasy as long finger nails twirled playfully with his ears before plunging deep inside, stirring the delicate bones and flesh into a pulpy soup.

  He couldn’t even hear his own screams.

  He splashed backwards into a heaving sea and floated along an obsidian surface until a swift current gripped him by the legs and pulled him under. He knew he’d never be coming back.

  Underwood’s final thoughts were of his promise to take Caroline to see the Pacific again in late summer. With luck, perhaps they’d meet there again in some form or another, yet he knew in his heart it was all just gambler’s foolishness, for the cards you were dealt in life held no meaning after you took your last breath.

  Absolutely no meaning at all…

  CHAPTER 11

  Peggy had no idea where they were until they were ordered out of the van. When she smelled the dry air spiced with juniper, she was certain they’d come as far as central Oregon or Southern Washington.