The Vanishing (41 page)

‘‘I’m going to share this with the police,’’ Dr. LaMunyon said.

‘‘That’s fine,’’ Brian told her.

‘‘I hope this helps you.’’

‘‘It does. Thanks. I’ll talk to you later.’’ He clicked off the phone.

‘‘What is it?’’ Carrie asked.

‘‘That was Dr. LaMunyon, the linguistics professor. She translated those messages. My dad—’’ His voice caught in his throat. ‘‘My dad came home because he wanted me and my sister to go with him. Back to their . . . village, I guess. The place where they live.’’

‘‘So that’s where we need to go?’’

‘‘Yeah. That’s where I need to go.’’

‘‘We.’’

‘‘Okay.
We.
’’

‘‘But how do we know where that is?’’

‘‘It’s complicated,’’ Brian said, ‘‘and it doesn’t make any sense. But you know those messages scrawled in blood at the sites of the murders? Those were directions.’’

‘‘They’d better be pretty specific. Because you saw that new forest. Where would we even start looking? There’s probably dozens of scientists and government researchers crawling all over the area. If
they
can’t find anything . . .’’

He shook his head. ‘‘That’s not where we’re going. Do you have a map of Northern California?’’

‘‘Yes.’’ She frowned. ‘‘But—’’

‘‘Can I see it?’’

Carrie left the kitchen and returned a moment later with an Automobile Club map of California. She unfolded it, then turned it over on the table from the Southern California side to the Northern California side.

He traced a line east from San Francisco.

‘‘So where are we going?’’ she asked.

‘‘A town called Oak Draw.’’

Carrie paled. She picked up the newspaper and pointed to a headline just below the fold: PRESIDENT RESCINDS WILDERNESS PROTECTION FOR FEDERAL LAND. The dateline was Oak Draw.

Brian felt as though he were rushing down a tunnel made of ice. He was suddenly cold and his head was spinning. ‘‘Boiling point,’’ he said.

Carrie nodded.

‘‘Let’s go.’’

Twenty-eight

James Marshall walked up to the St. Millard Hotel, marveling at how much the city had changed. This was not the San Francisco he had first encountered those many years ago. This was a city to rival those in the East, proof if anyone needed it that the West was no longer wild and that culture no longer stopped at the banks of the Mississippi. Of course, he was an old man now, and almost everything amazed him. Sights like this, with well-dressed gentlemen and ladies in their finery streaming into a six-story hotel where every window blazed with gaslight, inevitably made him feel useless and out of his time. The future belonged to the young.
This
was
his
future. And it would be
their
past. The world moved on.

He had been summoned here by the man who’d hired the man who’d hired him to smith. Ordinarily, that would not have meant anything, would not have been enough to tear him away from his bottle and his home. Hell, he’d quit jobs for less. But this was a name he recognized, a name from the past, and even though his memories of that time weren’t good, they still had a hold on him, and he wanted to find out what the son of Whit Fields was doing with his life, wanted to learn how he had turned out.

Wanted to know what he looked like.

That was a big part of it, as sordid and base as it might be, and over the past week, leading up to this, he’d found himself wondering if there would be any sign of what the younger Fields really was.

Pulling his coat tighter against the increasing night chill, Marshall followed the crowd into the hotel, wondering not for the first time exactly why he had been summoned. The lobby was luxurious, floor and pillars marble, walls hung with expensive tapestry. A confident young man sporting tails and a top hat somehow picked him out of the crowd. ‘‘Mr. Marshall?’’ the man asked.

‘‘Yes,’’ he said.

‘‘I am Carson Fields. Very pleased to make your acquaintance.’’

Now he could see the resemblance. The beard was trimmed neatly, as was the mustache, but the broad nose was the same, as were the deep-set eyes. This was Whit Fields’ son.

Still, he kept shaking the proffered hand, looking hard at the face, looking for evidence of . . . something else.

Carson laughed easily, breaking the handshake and motioning Marshall toward the restaurant adjoining the lobby. ‘‘I’ll bet you’re curious as to why we wished to meet you.’’

Marshall frowned.
‘‘We?’’

‘‘You’re a living legend. My father, all of our fathers in fact, made their money in gold, but it was not something they liked to talk about. You are the one who
discovered
gold. You also knew many of our parents. At least that is what you wrote in your autobiography.’’

‘‘I didn’t write that,’’ he demurred. ‘‘I didn’t even read it. It’s probably a load of horseshit.’’

‘‘Nevertheless, we would like to speak with you and learn what we can. Did you, for instance, know my father? Whit Fields?’’

Marshall nodded. ‘‘I knew him.’’

‘‘Splendid! Then we do have a lot to talk about.’’ They had reached the restaurant, and Carson led him to a large round table where close to a dozen young men were smoking cigars, drinking brandy and talking among themselves.

He looked at the men seated at the table, the rich young scions of the Gold Rush generation. Their fathers had earned the money—or, in most cases,
found
it—but it was their responsibility to make it grow and pass it on, build for their families a foundation. And that they had done, starting companies, buying land, putting up buildings.

It was remarkable, he thought, how human they all looked.

Well, some of them probably were. And the others were at least half human. But there was no indication he could see that any of them were . . . anything else. He thought of that night he’d come upon Sutter in his ‘‘storehouse,’’ naked, sweaty and straining as he mated with that . . . thing. It was a sight he had never forgotten, one that still haunted his dreams to this day, and it was because of that that he had kept track of Sutter and his men throughout the years, sifting through rumor and story from far away and piecing together what was probably a pretty accurate account of what had gone on after his departure.

Carson made the introductions.

He sat down.

They talked.

Nearly all of them, he soon realized, were ignorant of their origins. Their fathers had married women, their mothers had married men, and whatever acts of monstrousmiscegenation had produced these offspring were buried in the past, the knowledge left in the vanishing wilderness, and now no one was the wiser.

He
knew, though, and his skin felt cold and clammy just being this close to them. More than anything else, he wanted a drink, a real drink, but he was afraid to imbibe in case he might need his wits about him. They claimed to desire only knowledge of their parents and the old days, but perhaps this was a test, a way to determine how much he knew and was willing to talk about.

A way to find out if he should be allowed to live.

He should not have come. He was nervous and sweaty, and each time the conversation veered too close to the truth for his comfort, Marshall deflected it, bringing up something new. He almost had the impression that some of them
suspected
, that they had questions about themselves and were hoping he would be able to shed some light. But he had no way of knowing if that was the case, and he was not willing to put himself on the line.

These men were all young, rich and successful. They had big plans for the future and the wherewithal to make those dreams a reality. Yet he discovered in the course of the evening that one of their ranks, Porter James—
Teagarden’s son?
—had recently killed not only himself but the two prostitutes with whom he’d been consorting as well as one of the prostitutes’ daughters. Although, Carson quickly assured him, Porter hadn’t really been
one
of them. They had known for quite some time that there was something more than a little off about the man.

Marshall found himself wondering if that was the type of occurrence that from here on out might be happening more and more often. He thought of the old Indian prophecy that removal of the gold would bring about the death and downfall of those who stole it and those who possessed it after, and he looked around at the rich, happy young men seated around the table.

Where will this lead?
he wondered.

He was not sure he wanted to know.

Twenty-nine

Oak Draw was a sleepy little tourist trap in the Sierra foothills that was centrally located for easy access to most of the big Gold Rush sites but had no real historical significance itself.

At least not that anyone had known.

Brian and Carrie stopped at the visitors’ center, a rustic A-frame adjacent to a
Twin Peaks
-ish coffeeshop. Carrie collected pamphlets from the wall display, while Brian questioned the old lady behind the counter about local legends, particularly anything to do with gold or Bigfoot-type monsters. Back at the car, the two of them sorted through brochures. ‘‘So,’’ Brian asked, ‘‘where do we start?’’ He felt anxious, frightened, overwhelmed.

Carrie held up a pamphlet about public hiking trails, pointing to a small, not very clear photo of what the caption said were Native American pictographs. A thin black line led from the photo square to a dotted red line labeled ‘‘Ridge Trail A.’’

‘‘Those aren’t ‘Native American pictographs,’ ’’ Brian said.

‘‘No.’’

‘‘I guess we’ve found our starting point.’’

They were completely unprepared for any sort of hike, so they stopped off first at a camping supply store. The brochure ranked the trail as ‘‘moderate’’ in difficulty and suggested that hikers bring comfortable shoes and plenty of water. They were okay on the shoes, but they had neither water nor anything to carry it in, and they each bought an overpriced backpack into which they loaded containers of sports drinks and bottled water from the grocery store. Brian also bought a first-aid kit, just in case.

‘‘How long are we going to be gone?’’ Carrie asked.

‘‘If it’s more than two or three hours, we’ll have to turn back because it’ll be getting dark. Then, I guess, we’ll just start again in the morning.’’

‘‘What are we going to do when we get there, wherever ‘there’ is?’’

‘‘I have no idea,’’ he admitted.

There were two military-style Humvees parked in the small dirt lot at the trailhead. That seemed a little odd, but he didn’t think much of it until he saw six men dressed in combat fatigues stand at attention when he and Carrie passed their vehicles.

‘‘Are you Brian Howells?’’ one of them asked.

Frowning, Brian nodded.

‘‘Move out!’’ someone called, and all six men marched straight over to the cattle guard fence that blocked the entrance to the hiking trail, each of them wearing a pack strapped to his back and carrying what looked like an automatic weapon in some sort of shoulder holster. One man held open the gate as they approached.

‘‘Who the hell are you?’’ Brian asked.

‘‘Your escort.’’ The one who seemed to be in charge, an older man with a walrus mustache, handed him a cell phone. ‘‘Press redial.’’

Carrie held on to his arm, frightened. Brian was nervous, too, as well as confused, but he was curious more than anything else, and he pressed the redial button on the phone.

‘‘Hello?’’ The voice on the other end was soft, hard to hear.

‘‘Hello,’’ Brian answered. ‘‘Who’s this?’’

‘‘Mr. Howells?’’ It was Kirk Stewart. Brian didn’t know how he recognized him but he did. He still sounded weak, but there was a determination in his voice that belied his condition.

‘‘How did you find us?’’ Brian asked.

‘‘Avis car rental. One night at the Best Western in Sonora, two rooms charged to your account. You were easy to track.’’ Kirk chuckled weakly. ‘‘Money has its advantages.’’

‘‘Yeah, but how did you know to look? What made you even think that we might be heading here?’’

‘‘I know where you need to go.’’

‘‘How—?’’

‘‘They’re
calling
me,’’ Kirk said, and of everything he’d heard so far, Brian thought that was the most chilling. For he could hear the struggle in the other man’s voice to maintain control, to keep the monsters at bay. ‘‘My dad was one of them.
I’m
one of them.’’

Brian didn’t know what to say to that.

‘‘I wish I could go with you,’’ Kirk said.

‘‘No,’’ Brian said. ‘‘You don’t.’’

‘‘You need me.’’

‘‘Who are these . . . men?’’ Brian asked. ‘‘What are they doing here? And what do you have to do with it?’’

‘‘I hired them for your protection.’’

‘‘Who are they?’’

‘‘Do you know what you’re doing?’’ Kirk asked.

Brian was getting annoyed. He felt sorry for Kirk after everything that had happened to him, but time was wasting and he didn’t want to engage in verbal sparring that led nowhere. ‘‘I have to go,’’ he said.

‘‘You’ve figured out what my father is, and the others, and you’ve traced them to that part of California. Now you’re going after them. But you don’t know what you’re up against. I do.’’ He coughed weakly. ‘‘That’s why I’m stuck here in this fucking hospital.’’

‘‘I do know,’’ Brian said quietly.

‘‘But you didn’t experience it. Let me ask you. What kind of weapons did you bring? None, right?’’

Brian was silent.

‘‘What did you think you were going to do when you found them? Interview them for a story? You’re a reporter and you think like a reporter, but that’s not what you’re going into here. This is a nest of vipers, monsters, ghouls. These things will kill you and eat your head for breakfast. Do you understand me? They’ll gut you like a fucking fish.’’ There was a hint of steel in his weakened voice, and Brian recalled the crime scene photos he’d seen, the savage brutality of the attacks.