Daemon of the Dark Wood (18 page)

Knott squeezed the steering wheel, his fingers expressing only a small measure of his mental stress.

Right, and the Tooth Fairy, the Easter Bunny and jolly ole St. Nick are waiting in your office for their next group therapy session
, Left-brain mocked.

He wanted to query the girl further, even though his professional judgment told him not to do it; as unstable and agitated as she obviously was, a moving vehicle was a dangerous place to ask probing questions that might make her want to throw open the door and bail out.

But he had to learn all he could from her before he turned her over to the ER physician at Dogwood Medical, who would examine her for physical injury and for evidence of rape, and then probably recommend transfer to Ridgewood for a complete psych evaluation with a full battery of psychological testing. Knott couldn’t wait; he had to know now. Susan was in trouble, and he needed all the pertinent information he could gather in order to understand her condition and determine the right course of treatment.

But what was the treatment for something like this? The
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders
would be of little use. Knott knew he was on his own this time, flying half-blind by the shiny seat of his pants. He could toss the holy DSM-V out the window this time.

Driving slowly through the fog, he kept his eyes on what little he could see of the road in the diffuse headlight-beams and said, “I would like to ask you a few more questions, if you feel up to it.”

“I know you,” she said, somewhat defiantly. “You’re a psychologist.”

“Psychiatrist,” he gently corrected her. “That means I’m a medical doctor.”

“I’m not crazy!”

“I know that, Judy Lynn” he said. “I’ll be honest with you. I have a personal interest in what happened to you because my wife heard that thing’s cry too, and it … did something to her. I’m trying to understand what happened to her. So I can help her.”

“What did it do to her?”

Though he felt he was betraying a personal
and
professional confidence, he told the truth. “She ran out of the house naked and turned violent when I tried to stop her.”

He glanced at her. Saw her nod.

“It called her out,” she said. “Just like it did me. I hit a deer and ran in a ditch, and I was waiting for the wrecker when I heard it. I … I pissed my pants I was so scared, but then …”

“Then what?”

“Then I wasn’t afraid anymore. It was like I was in a trance, you know? I left the road and walked into the woods to go to it. I
had
to go to it. I
wanted
to. Like nothing else mattered. And even after it stopped that screaming I went right to it, like there was an invisible rope pulling me. Then I saw it standing there and I got really scared again because I knew what I was seeing couldn’t be real, but it sure as hell was.
Real
. It looked like something cut out of a Grimm’s fairy tale book because it was too scary for little kids to see. It was … I don’t
even
know how to describe it.”

“Try. Please.”

“It had these short horns on its head and its legs were like an animal’s, a giant goat maybe. It looked sort of like that Pan dude, but … evil. Like an X-rated version, with that big … ugh.”

“Big what?”

“Big hard-on. Pointing right at me. I wanted to run away when I saw it, but I couldn’t. It made me keep going. And when I got closer I saw that it … he was like a … Whaddya call those things? Like in the movies, a
hologram
. Like it wasn’t really there. But he was because then he
touched
me.”

“Touched you how?”

“With his hands. They were cold and damp like really thick fog. Not solid, exactly, but I could feel them anyway. Like being felt up by a ghost.”

“He touched you in a sexual way?”

“Well,
yeah
. Whaddaya think, with a giant woody like that?
Of course
it was sexual. And I … couldn’t help it …” She trailed off and began to weep softly.

“It’s okay,” he said. “You’re safe now. He can’t hurt you again.”

“You don’t know that! You don’t know what he can do! You weren’t there. He can do anything he wants. If he wants your wife, he’ll come back and take her. And there’s nothing you can do to stop him.”

He wanted to tell her he didn’t believe that, but he held his tongue; she believed it, and he didn’t want to get into a pointless argument with the traumatized young woman. And the truth was, he was afraid she might be right. If she wasn’t delusional and there actually was an otherworldly being he had to contend with, he needed to learn all he could about his foe and understand how it exerted its sinister will in the real world.

“So … it … he raped you then?”

She didn’t answer.

“Judy Lynn?”

“It did
something
to me. I can’t remember exactly. It’s like it was a dream. A nightmare. But not. I’m not sure what all he did to me. But I still feel it. He … I think he put something
in
me. And it’s still there.”

She touched her fingertips to her forehead, then added: “Here.”

“What do you think it is?” he asked. He was accustomed to questioning delusional patients, so this question came out as a matter of routine.

“I don’t know,” she said with a sob that wrenched his heart.

Liza Leatherwood lay abed and listened to her blood.

The digital clock on the nightstand had extra-large numerals but when she turned her head on the pillow to look at them, all she saw was a red blob of light floating in the bedroom’s darkness. She could’ve put on her glasses to bring the glowing splotch into focus, but she didn’t bother. She knew she was well into the wee hours of morning; she didn’t need a clock to tell her that. Time told itself within her weary bones.

Unable to sleep, she listened to her blood pulsing through her thin veins. Since she’d punctured the drum of her good ear with the hatpin, the internal sounds of her biological machinery were louder than the sounds of the outside world. This was both a blessing and a curse. The cry of the dark man of the wood couldn’t claim her now, but the thudding of her age-worn heart kept her awake and reminded her of the frailty of her used-up body.

Her blood sluggishly whispered to her that Death was in the neighborhood, drawing nearer with each beat of her pulse. Even if the Grim Reaper didn’t come for her tonight, he would come soon enough to still her heart and take her soul to wherever it was that souls went, once the body called it quits forever. Soon enough,
she hoped
. Her great fear was that she would suffer a stroke and lie immobilized for hours—or days— trapped in a withering husk, helpless to do anything but contemplate the unforgiving reality of her lonely end.

Miss Liza?

The gravelly voice startled her. She held her breath and tried to listen to the silence-steeped room. Her weak eyes searched the darkness.

“Who’s there?” she croaked.

The Beast
…

She
knew
that gruff voice. She sat up and stared at the dark shape hovering over the foot of her brass bed, softly backlit by moonlight streaming softly through the window.

“Asa? Asa Edgar, what the devil are you doing in my bedroom?”

Set the women on me.

“Asa, what in hell are—” She all at once realized Asa’s voice had spoken inside her head, not out there in the gloom of the room. The shape shone with a faint luminescence, pulsating with each beat of her heart.

They’ve killed me
, Asa whispered despondently.

She fumbled for the little pull-chain hanging from the shaded lamp on the nightstand, found it and pulled the switch. She blinked in the sudden light, her eyes dry and sandpapery. Between blinks she glimpsed Asa Edgar’s mutilated face and torn-open throat. His one-eyed stare held her briefly, then the light in his eye dimmed and his tall form faded, receding into the out-of-focus background of the room.

Ghost tree,
he said in a voice as empty and cold as a plundered grave.

Then he was gone. Gone from the room and gone from her head.

“Oh Asa …” she said with a low moan. Overcome with grief, she clutched at her breast as if to hold back the profound sadness and deep futility that encroached upon her heart.

The man had done occasional odd jobs for her since Wilbur died, and she had grown fond of the eccentric rambler who called himself sentinel to these hills. When she’d learned that he regularly read the works of William Blake, she had introduced him to the tales of Nathaniel Hawthorne. Many an evening had they sat on her porch while she read aloud to him. The stories from her old paperback copy of
Twice-Told Tales
always seemed to touch him deeply, as if they satisfied some deep hunger he felt but couldn’t express. One October evening a year ago he’d brought his big book of Blake to show her the strange artwork and read some of the man’s poetry to her, but she hadn’t been able to make much sense of it. When she asked him to explain what he’d read, Asa blushed and admitted that he didn’t really understand much of it, but that the words soothed him and scratched an inner itch he hadn’t known he’d had.

Theirs had been a peculiar friendship, characterized by unspoken emotional needs and by long periods of silence spent gazing out at the hills. Liza had never spoken a word about the secret history of Widow’s Ridge, nor had she ever mentioned the Helling, but somehow old Asa must’ve known about the area’s shameful past. Why else would his ghost come calling to tell her the Beast had returned? He hadn’t come just to bid her a final farewell. He’d come to warn her. And to tell her something about the ghost tree.

Set the women on me
, he’d said. There was no mistaking the implication of those words. None at all.

The Helling had begun again. The beast of the dark wood had finally returned to have his way with a new generation of womenfolk and to demand sacrificial blood of innocent males. But why had Asa mentioned the ghost tree? And how had he known about it?

* * * *

The ringing phone rescued Rourke from a disorienting nightmare. He sat straight up in bed, breathing hard and sweating. In the dream he’d been running from an unidentified wild animal, and his pulse rate now raced accordingly. It took several scary moments to realize he was in his bed and not fleeing the relentless beast.

He grabbed the cordless phone from its base, thumbed the Talk button and said, “Rourke.”

The caller was Dean Elwood, the part-time nightshift dispatcher. “Sorry to wake you, deputy, but we thought you’d wanna know Judy Lynn Bowen turned up. They’ve got her at Dogwood Medical. Says she was abducted and raped. She’s apparently okay physically, but her mental state is questionable.”

Rourke was having trouble processing what he was hearing. Coming out of his nightmare-induced fight-or-fight mode, he glanced over his shoulder to make sure nothing was pursuing him, but all he saw was the blank bedroom wall. “Questionable?”

“Well, yeah. She says she was raped by a monster. Of the supernatural kind.” Elwood chuckled softly. “I’d say that qualifies as questionable, wouldn’t you, Rob?”

If you’d seen what I saw, you wouldn’t think so,
he thought, but what he said was, “So it would seem. We have a man with her?”

“Roger that. Deputy Sipes took her statement and he’s waiting for the docs to determine disposition. Ask me, I’d say take her to Ridgewood for some intensive psychiatric care.”

“Tell Sipes I’m on my way.”

Rourke hung up and jumped into his uniform. Lucy Fur was in the hall, pawing the bottom of the bedroom door and knocking it against the doorframe. Before going to bed, Rourke had banished her from the bedroom because the encounter with the thing in the backyard had left her agitated and in a high state of canine alert. When he’d returned from Mountview Villas, Lucy bared her teeth and growled at him again, leading Rourke to conclude that he still carried the scent of the phantom in the rain.

He pulled on his boots, strapped on his gun belt and opened the door. Lucy Fur whined and submissively lowered her head as if apologizing for her earlier misplaced expressions of hostility. Rourke reached down and ruffled the fur on the back of her neck. “It’s okay, girl. We’ve all had a rough night.”

He grabbed his hat and went out the door. As he walked to his car through moonlit mist, he made several glances over his shoulders to make sure nothing was coming up on his flank.

* * * *

Judy Lynn Bowen was sitting on the side of the gurney when Rourke swept aside the pale-blue privacy curtain and entered the cloth-walled cubicle. She looked up fearfully, her eyes bloodshot and misty. Wounded. A blue and white hospital gown that was too big for her hung loosely off her left shoulder. Her straw-colored hair was a nest of tangles. Her bare legs bore scratches and bruises that, at first glance, looked as if they might’ve been inked by a psychotic tattoo artist. To Rourke, she looked like a lost child, perhaps raised by wolves and just now rescued from the wilderness. Feral and afraid.

“Judy Lynn, I’m Deputy Rourke,” he said, removing his Stetson.

Relief flushed some of the fear from her face as she took in Rourke’s uniform, her eyes lingering on the pistol holstered on his hip. It seemed to Rourke that she was reassured by the gun, that she fully expected he might have to use it to defend what was left of her honor and her innocence. “Are you up to a few more questions?”

She shrugged, then sullenly pulled the gown up to cover her bare shoulder. “I guess.”

“I know you’ve already talked to Deputy Sipes, so I’ll keep it short. You must be anxious to get home.”

Judy Lynn nodded, eyes downcast. “If they don’t send me to the crazy house.”

“You think they don’t believe your story?” He moved a little closer, but not close enough to crowd her and make her feel cornered.

“How could they? I can’t hardly believe it myself, you know? You won’t believe me either.”

“You might be wrong about that. Try me.”

“Can you make them let me go home?” she challenged, looking him in the eyes. A tear trickled down her cheek.