Poisoned Soil: A Supernatural Thriller (13 page)

“Damn it...c’mon!”

He smacked the light against his hand as he always did when trying to coax more life out of a dying remote control. He switched it on and a light flickered forth. His hands quaked violently as he steered the flashlight to his left. In the utter darkness, the light reflected brightly off the glass and plunged him into momentary blindness, but not before an image of what was reflected in the glass burned into his mind’s eye. Two glowing orbs. Only, he hadn’t seen them
through
the glass. No. They were reflected by the glass. Behind him!

As his vision returned he swung the flashlight around to the passenger door and reached for the handle, remembering only now that it still hung open. There, glowing in the blackness were two slits, yellow eyes, each the size of a silver dollar, perched on the branch at the door’s entrance.

The night yielded one final blood-curdling scream, and it came from Jesse.

Chapter 10

Blake walked through the front door of his A-frame home just as Angelica hung up the kitchen phone. He breathed in the nostalgic smell of southern cornbread and smiled. Angelica’s eyes dropped, her lips not returning his smile as she said simply, “Hi,” with no discernible inflection.

Hmm, gonna be one of those nights
, Blake thought to himself as he strolled through the kitchen. The kitchen opened into an extended family room with a stone-walled fireplace on the far end. The dark, hardwood floor throughout gave the kitchen and family room the shape and appearance of a long and narrow alleyway. Blake plopped on the sofa and grabbed the remote. “Who was that on the phone?” he called to the kitchen, hoping for an innocuous way to break the ice.

“Rose.”

Blake didn’t want any drama, any stress. Couldn’t handle any more stress. In that moment he realized that he just wanted a sanctuary with Angelica. Just the two of them, the way it had been when they first got married. The way she said she wanted it to be and the way he—yes, he too now wanted. “Hey, you wanna watch a movie tonight?” Blake managed a smile with the question that Angelica couldn’t see, but she picked up on the tone. She turned her head from the stove back to Blake.

“Sure!”

Blake admired Angelica’s ability to forgive and forget as much as he was jealous of it. He hadn’t found a way to do that in life no matter how hard he tried, but Angelica didn’t even
have
to try. It took no effort and seemed unfair to him. “You can pick it out,” Blake said partly to be generous, but mainly because he just didn’t care.

Angelica drained potatoes in a colander over the sink. The evening was starting to get better and she thought of asking Blake if he wanted to help with dinner but quickly thought better of it. She put the potatoes back in the pot and cut off some home-churned butter, adding it to the pot with one hand as she grabbed the hand mixer with the other. On numerous occasions, she had thought of getting an electric hand mixer, but could never bring herself to do it. She just cranked her grandmother’s hand mixer and slowly drizzled warm cream into the potatoes.

The phone rang. Angelica put the mixer down and answered since it was next to her.

“Blake, it’s for you.”

The stress boiled in Blake’s gut and billowed to his chest almost instantly. He had no idea why he got upset so quickly, but tried to calm himself by taking a deep breath. He rarely got a phone call at home and sure as hell didn’t want one now when he had mentally checked out for the day. If it was a telemarketer, Blake swore to God that he’d let him or her have it.

Blake walked to the phone, footfalls heavy on the hardwood floor.

“Yep,” Blake answered. There was nothing on the other end of the line, only a faint scratching sound. “Hello,” Blake said.

“Blake,” the voice on the other end was out of breath and difficult to understand. “You got--a g-- -p h-re!”

“What? Who the hell is this? You’re breaking up,” Blake said.

“You gotta get – here!”

“Who is this? Jesse?” Blake tried lowering his voice, but there was no place to hide.

“No -t’s Terry. I on-y got one b-r on my ph-ne. Y-u gotta get up --re now,” he said gasping for breath.

“Damn it,” Blake began, then tried to compose himself in front of Angelica. “What is it that can’t wait til tomorrow?”

“Jesse and Shane are missing, haven’t been back since midday,” Terry shouted. “And that’s not all—we got some escapees.”

Blake fumed. “Where are you now?” he asked between clinched teeth.

“I’m,” Terry began, “I’m – t-e wo-ds, at the sheds.”

“I’ll be right there.” Blake slammed the phone on the cradle and dropped his head, preparing himself for disappointment both inside the house and out.

Blake was about to speak, but Angelica did it for him.

“I know,” Angelica said, looking the other way. “You’ve gotta go. I’ll leave your dinner on the stove.”

***

Terry sat on a log in the darkness outside shed number one and watched the headlights from Blake’s F-150 fishtail up the mountain road. Blake drove right to the shed, putting Terry in his high beams. Blake’s farm truck was sitting there around the cul-de-sac facing down the mountain. There was no sign of Jesse or Shane.

Blake jumped out and looked in the direction of the main fence charger as he approached Terry. “Why is the goddam fence off?” Blake asked.

“What?” Terry replied dumbfounded.

“The green light is on,” Blake barked. “Hell the fence ain’t even turned on!” Blake threw the lever up turning the fence back on, the red light glowing. The fence was hot again. A five-joule charger was powered by a large solar panel that Blake had installed, which in turn juiced a bank of twelve-volt batteries. There was no electrical power on the mountain and no lights.

“Where are Jesse and Shane?” Blake asked as he stormed by Terry and headed back to his truck.

“Hell if I know,” Terry snorted. “I got my damn ear bit off and was knocked unconscious for a bit. I came to about 1:00 this afternoon or so and nobody was here, but the truck still was. Jesse, he’s got the keys. I don’t know what the hell happened!”

Blake fumbled through his center console until he found a flashlight. He shined the light at the right side of Terry’s head and grimaced. Dried blood painted the side of Terry’s head like Gorbachev’s stain, with the back center of his ear completely bitten off. His ear had the shape of the number nine.

“D-A-M-N,” Blake said. Terry looked up, anger and disbelief in his eyes.

Blake went back and cranked the truck so that the battery wouldn’t die as the high beams lit up everything in their path. He walked toward the old, beat-up F-100 farm truck. Just as Terry said, there was no sign of Shane or Jesse. Blake shined the light inside the truck. The keys weren’t in it, but two cell phones were on the seat.

“Do you have your cell phone, er, do you have a cell phone?” Blake asked Terry.

“Yeah, got mine. It was in the truck with theirs and I used it to call you. I waited an hour before I even got a bar on it.”

Blake walked along the fence and moved the light inside as the corner of his eye caught a large black mass on the ground. Eduardo lay dead, just as they left him. “Why’d you guys leave him here?” Blake shouted, almost instantly realizing that must have been when the trouble began. “Never mind,” he said.

Terry followed Blake as they walked around the perimeter into the woods and followed the back fence lines. The fence was on and it was tight all around. Made no sense to Blake.

“You said some escaped,” Blake said, “how do you know that?”

“When Jesse and Shane didn’t come back I had some time to kill since I didn’t have no way to get down the mountain,” Terry said, “so I did a count. One black fella missing from this cell, one red head missing from up top. That’s it.”

“GODDAMN IT!” Blake said. “You know what’ll happen to us if someone finds out we’re holding them on this land? We can’t take that chance!”

“You figure that’s where Jesse and Shane went?” Terry asked. “To fetch ’em?”

Blake stared at Terry and wanted to tell him what a dumb shit he thought he was. How he was no different than that running back that missed the block on the safety, only this time the safety took off Terry’s ear before trying to wreck Blake’s life. Again.
Can’t catch a friggin’ break
, Blake thought to himself.

“Maybe they chased them and came out somewhere else,” Blake said to Terry, seeking approval of his idea.

“I figured they’d have found a phone and called if they’d done that,” Terry quickly surmised.

Of course they would have, you dumb shit
, Blake said to himself.

They walked along the back fence line to the top of the encampment and shone the light into the woods. The harsh light made it surprisingly difficult to see. It brightly illuminated the face of each tree while plunging the backsides into utter blackness, casting long dark shadows on the ground. Blake took a few steps forward and Terry followed close behind, looking over his shoulder all the while to make sure he could see the truck lights. Blake realized almost instantly how pointless it was. He had no idea where to go, what to do. He stopped to think for a moment.

A shriek from above pierced their ears as a huge raven descended and swooped at them. Blake and Terry ducked just in time to see the raven fly into the headlights of Blake’s truck before ascending, out of sight.

“Shit!” Terry said, already heading back toward the truck lights. “That scared the hell out of me!” Blake followed, knowing there was nothing he could do, not now. This was serious and he needed time to think.

“I’ll take you to the hospital,” Blake said, acknowledging the obvious but wishing there was another, any other way.

“What’ll I tell ’em?” Terry asked. He knew he was sworn to secrecy; Blake had made that crystal clear when spelling out the terms of the three thousand dollars in cash he was going to receive the next month. Cash. More money than Terry had ever had in his hands.
Who needs to get a GED
, Terry had thought when Jesse hired him, thrilled that he had found a way to earn so much money.

Blake thought about it and figured a dog attack was the most likely answer, but they’d want to know where it was and what kind of dog so they could go after it. Then the doctors would call the police. Just more questions that he didn’t want Terry to have to deal with.

“You know, hospitals are slow,” Blake said as he led the witness. “What if I take you to someone who could clean that up for you without having to go to a hospital or to see the police?”

Terry wanted to say something but didn’t know what to say.

“Tell you what,” Blake continued. “There ain’t nothing they can do for you anyway except put antibiotic cream on it. How about I go get you some from the drugstore and a splint for your fingers so you can doctor it yourself. You can tell whoever asks that a Rottweiler attacked you but you kicked him good. Just tell them it was away from here...over on Wolf Creek or something. That way we can finish all this up here and I can give you the three thousand bucks I promised you in a few weeks.”

“Yeah,” Terry said, hearing nothing other than the words three thousand bucks.

“C’mon. I’ll take you home,” Blake offered. “You’ll have to show me where you live.”

Blake and Terry descended the mountain in silence. This was serious, Blake knew that much. Terry’s ear was nothing, the least of his worries. If any forest authorities caught sight of those escapees and were able to find out where they came from...that Blake was holding them captive on federal land! If something unspeakable happened to Shane and Jesse or, worse yet, even if they were all right but they spilled the beans on him...

It was only in that moment as he slithered down the mountain that Blake realized what a snake he was. Somehow, he had seen only dollar signs. He was no different from Jesse, no different from Terry just a moment before, and hadn’t
seriously
considered the risks of what he was doing. At least he had the good sense to not tell Angelica about any of it so that he could keep her protected, but still...

All of Blake’s worst thoughts and fears ran across his mind like an old fashioned ticker tape. His first thought was that he might not get the money he had worked so hard for during the past two years, the money he had counted in his sleep and dreamed of. Then he thought that maybe, somehow, he could be in trouble with the law.

“I’ll go out first thing in the morning and look for Jesse and Shane,” Blake said to Terry. “You just take the day off and recover.”

“Fine by me,” Terry said. “Hell, I’ll need some time to mend up anyway.”

“I never asked you, but how well do you know them fellas?” Blake asked.

“Shane and Jesse?” Terry answered. “Not at all. They’re Rabun County High fellas and I live up near Sky Valley, closer to Highlands than Clayton. I just happened to see one of Jesse’s posts on Facebook one night when he was was fishing for a helper. I shot him a message once I caught wind of it, that’s all.”

“So you don’t know them at all? Their families, where they live...nothing?” Blake asked.