The Altar (8 page)

The wood grew thick quickly, and before long she realized that her view was blocked by the heavy undergrowth and she found herself standing beside the iron railing that surrounded the cemetery. She’d seen this graveyard before, though she’d never been this close. The place gave her the creeps. Now, as she looked at the ancient, crusty headstones, she felt a sudden chill.

One headstone stood taller than the rest and seemed to stand over her like a statue, casting a long shadow across the ground. There was no doubt that the thing was old—older than she could imagine. Yet, unlike the other headstones, this one looked new and ageless. With a mixture of fear and fascination, she opened the iron gate and made her way inside the small graveyard. She walked around the edge of the cemetery, looking at the place as if it were another planet.

Unlike the cemetery where Grandpa was buried, this one didn’t have green grass or planted flowers. In fact, nothing seemed to grow near this place, as if the very ground were poisoned.

Frowning, she looked back at the largest headstone, the one that was so old, yet looked so new. Unlike the others, this stone was black and shiny, as if it had been polished like the side of a brand new car. While the other stones had funny, blue-green stuff on them, this one was perfectly clean.

Slowly, she walked around the thing, attracted by its strangeness. It had weird lettering on the front. The letters were hard to read. Some were normal, though worn with age. Other letters were different, things she had never seen before.

“I am watching you,” she read slowly

As soon as she read the words, she imagined the headstone actually
was
watching her, and she shivered violently. Sudden panic covered her like a blanket, blinding her with fear. She laughed nervously.

“This is like something out of a bad horror movie,” she said out loud, and then laughed again.

Then she turned away from the graveyard and a sudden, mindless panic gripped her, squeezing her heart, it seemed. She felt a horrible tightness in her chest and an overwhelming urge to escape. Without thinking, she ran as fast as she could, tripping over the gate, and then stumbling over branches and undergrowth as thorns bit at her legs. She ran with her head down, mute with terror and totally unaware of her surroundings. She imagined the thing—a nameless, horrible thing—watching her, chasing her....

Only after it was too late did she realize she had run off into the woods. By then she was already hopelessly lost.

-5-

Erik was astounded that there were over 4,000 entries under “Satanic Cults” on the search engine. Some were reputed cases of ritual child abuse by cultists. Some appeared to be the lunatic ramblings of paranoids who claimed that either (a) the government was a Satanic plot, or (b) they were personally being tracked down, chased, and persecuted by Satan and his minions. There were some “official” Satanic church sites that claimed that Satanists were really just rugged individualists who worshipped a god that favored “unique individuals,” a redundancy in Erik’s mind, and that these people used harmless magic to advance themselves and their personal causes, like getting rich, having lots of sex without shame, and obtaining power and control over themselves and their environment.

Then there was the site that required you to be “registered.” With some trepidation, Erik applied for a username and password, thinking that this would probably get him put on some sort of FBI hit list. He received the confirming e-mail, but still couldn’t log on until he verified his existence twice, confirmed his e-mail address again, and submitted to an age verification. He was just about to give up and move on when the password finally worked and he was able to find his way onto the message board.

There were literally hundreds of posts onto the message board, ranging from satanic theology to a discussion of when a child might be old enough to choose his religion for himself (16 years old seemed to be the consensus). Most of the messages were rather silly, and Erik had the impression that most were written by adult children who were playacting rather than serious.

However, buried deep within the archives of one of the threads he found a disturbing message from a man with the username of “Seti the First” who claimed that the voice of the Master was calling him home, calling him to the east and that he needed 12 disciples to follow him. Erik followed the thread and replies as this Seti plotted his course through the south and through New York and Connecticut. The writer claimed to have been sanctified in the blood of the innocent, and that he was personally going to set the Master free. Some of the replies treated him like the nut case he seemed to be, but there were some who seemed to be cheering this guy on, acknowledging his ideas about the flesh and blood of the innocent, and claiming to also hear voices.

Erik might have dismissed the entire thing as irrelevant were it not for Seti’s last post. He read it again.

“The voice is very close now,” Seti wrote. “I will find him before the full moon and set him free using the flesh and blood of the innocent. All who follow Him will be rewarded. Those who oppose Him will suffer misery and death at the black stone.”

The last entry was datelined Chepachet, Rhode Island.

-6-

Dovecrest turned off the six o’clock news and sat by the window, listening to the chirping of the crickets in the woods. He disliked the television news, and hadn’t even had cable TV connected until a few months ago. Now that it had all started again, he watched out of a sense of duty. He especially disliked the news reporters, who made a drama out of everything, and tried to look grim as they reported tragedy, but were secretly hiding their delight in covering other people’s misfortunes. This had been a particularly good news night, he thought, looking out into the woods and wistfully yearning for earlier, less complicated times.

He sighed and wondered how so many years could have passed so quickly, how he could have grown so old and so weak. He was tired of it all. Tired of the waiting and now tired of the responsibility. He felt like he had already lost the battle before it had even begun. If only he could just pack up and move and leave the worries to someone else. But as Medicine Man of the tribe, it was his responsibility, and had been for so, so many years. No one else would take over. No one else even believed. So he shouldered the burden alone.

He sat back in his chair and remembered that time so long ago when Running Deer lay dying in his hut, and how Dovecrest had sat beside his bed to obtain his wisdom. Running Deer had seemed older than the earth itself, then, and Dovecrest had wept to see him dying. But Running Deer smiled and welcomed death.

“It’s all right, my friend,” he said. “My time has come. I am old and worn out by time as the rock is worn away by the river. It is my time to go and I face my death with joy. It is your time to take over my burden. I give my medicine to you. You will be the watcher now, the guardian of the tribe and of the people.”

And when his spirit passed on later that night, his face glowed with the joy of death, as if a great weight had been lifted from his shoulders.

Now Dovecrest understood how Running Deer had felt. He, too, would be happy to lie down and die, to let his spirit go to the Great Beyond in peace. It had been long overdue; the years had drained both his spirit and his will. And now, after his last trip to the terrible place of death, he felt even more drained, as if he had been poisoned by his enemy.

This was not good medicine. Not good at all. And worst of all, he could not give up, could not even die, for he had no one to come after him, no one who would take up his heavy yoke of responsibility.

Reluctantly, he flipped the television back on again and channeled to a different station. The news was just going off and the anchor recapped the day’s top stories: a three car wreck on I-95 that left two people dead; a murder-suicide in Barrington; and an apartment fire in Cranston.

It had been a good day for the news—a busy day with plenty of human tragedy. The newscaster almost gloated in his good fortune. And already the first call had been put in about a single teenage girl missing from a Dairy Mart in Chepachet.

-7-

Seth was daydreaming when it happened, remembering a time that seemed like a lifetime ago. In the daydream, he was back in high school, a skinny, pimply-faced kid with thick glasses and no dates. This particular daydream had haunted him often, as he recalled just one of the painful incidents of his teenage years.

He was in gym class, which was bad enough by itself, but this was worse—this was gymnastics and, his worst nightmare, the parallel bars. He stood beside the bars with a half-dozen kids, all of whom hated his guts. They were spotting for Jeff, the school jock and his most-hated enemy, who was showing off all the tricks he could do on the apparatus. The kid moved across the bars as effortlessly as a chimpanzee. And, Seth recalled, he had about the same I.Q. as well.

Seth was useless as a spotter, of course. If the kid did fall he had about as much chance of catching him as he would have had being inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown. At best he would get in the way just enough to break Jeff’s fall, probably killing himself in the process. Not that Jeff was likely to fall. And not that he was likely to even try to catch him if he did.

He snuck a glance over to the girls’ side of the gym and saw Jennifer, blonde, blue-eyed, the head cheerleader and every high school boy’s wet dream, which meant that she was completely out of Seth’s league. For that matter, all the girls in his school were out of his league, even the ugly ones. This, of course, had done nothing to stop him from falling hopelessly in love with Jennifer, lusting after her every waking hour and through much of his sleeping ones as well.

He had watched her from the corner of his eye as she took her turn on the balance beam. The firm muscles of her long, smooth legs tightened as she began her routine. He watched in growing excitement as she did a forward roll on the bar, exposing one of the cheeks of her deliciously firm ass for one short but incredible moment, a moment that Seth would remember forever....

Then he heard his name being called. He blinked and saw Mr. Russo, the gym teacher, glaring at him.

“Come on Seth, you still awake? You’re next. Up on the bars.”

Seth gave him one of those “what, who me?” grins and the other kids began to giggle, already anticipating the train wreck that was about to occur.

“Come on, Seth. Get up there,” the teacher said, and before Seth even realized it, Jeff had come around behind him and hoisted him up and over the bars, one of which was now on either side of him.

He reached out and grabbed one with each hand, while Jeff lifted him up until his arms locked at the elbows.

“Just keep your arms stiff,” Mr. Russo said. “Then, when Jeff lets go, swing your legs up over the bars.”

Seth sensed the eyes of the entire gym class on him now, even those of Jennifer, watching with the other girls from across the gym.

“Ok, Seth. Are you ready?” Jeff said, his voice filled with contempt.

Seth wanted to scream out, to demand to be let down before he killed himself up here on this horrible torture machine, but everyone was watching, probably hoping that he would scream out in terror so they could use that as ammunition to torment him further, as if he didn’t already have enough misery in his life.

No. He wouldn’t cry out like a wimp. Not this time. He would do this. He
could
do this.

He nodded. Jeff let go.

For a split second he held himself up between the bars, looking out at the gym class and thinking that, yes, this wasn’t so bad after all. Then his muscles betrayed him and his arms let go.

He felt it and he knew it was happening, but he couldn’t stop it. Gravity pulled his body straight down, but his arms, locked at the elbows, flew out to the sides and the space between the bars wasn’t large enough to accommodate the impossible angle of his elbows....

He heard the cracking of his bones before he actually felt the pain. But what he saw hurt much worse than the pain he felt, even though each of his arms were being broken in two places, literally ripped apart at the elbow joints. As he fell he saw Jennifer watching him. But not just watching. Laughing. All of them were laughing. But in his own mind, he knew that Jennifer was laughing the hardest.

Later that night, he’d receive a nasty beating from his father, just icing on the cake, so to speak, for being a “wuss” and not a “real man” like Daddy was.

Seth felt the tears running down his cheeks and suddenly realized that the daydream had passed. It wasn’t the gym teacher calling his name after all, but someone else—make that some
thing
else.

He blinked rapidly, trying to clear the cobwebs from his brain. He wasn’t Seth anymore. He was Seti, and he was the main man here. And his new God was summoning him.

“Don’t you want to make them pay?” the voice chimed in his head. “Don’t you, Seti?”

“Yes. Make them pay. I’ll make them pay.”

“Excellent.” The voice filled his brain now, inhabiting every cell, every nerve of his being. “Let us begin.”

PART TWO: PURGATORY

Now I shall sing of the second kingdom,

There where the soul of man is cleansed,

Made worthy to ascend to heaven

—Dante

Demonic frenzy, moping melancholy,

And moon-struck madness.

—John Milton

CHAPTER NINE

-1-

The sun had just gone down and Erik was reading the newspaper when the doorbell rang. He opened the door to find a uniformed man holding out a badge.

“I’m Sheriff Roy Collins,” the man said. “We’re looking for a teenage girl and I hoped you might have seen her. She went missing at about six o’clock.”

“Come in, Sheriff,”

“Thank you. Call me Roy.”

Erik motioned him into the living room, where Vickie and Todd were watching TV together, and he made the introductions.

“Can I get you some coffee?” Vickie asked.

“No thank you, Ma’am. I just wanted to ask a couple of questions.”

The sheriff took a small photo from his shirt pocket and passed it to Erik. He recognized it as the young girl he’d seen earlier in the day at the Dairy Mart.

“I saw her this morning,” he said. “At the Dairy Mart.”

“Do you recall what time?”

“Well...it was this morning. Before lunch. I’d guess ten o’clock or so.”

“She was at the store until about suppertime,” the sheriff said. “You haven’t seen her since then?”

“No,” Erik said, handing the photo to Vickie. “I haven’t been outside since then. We just had supper and then were relaxing.”

Vickie looked at the photo and shook her head. “I’m sorry, Sheriff. Is there anything we can do?”

Collins shook his head sadly. “We may be organizing a search party. We think she may have wandered off into the woods.”

Todd leaned over and looked at the photo.

“I know where she is,” he said confidently.

“What? You’ve seen her?” Erik said.

“No. But I know where she is.”

“Then tell me,” Collins said, walking over to the boy. “Where is she, son?”

Todd looked at the sheriff for a long moment.

“The rock’s got her.”

“The...what?”

“The big rock in the woods. It’s got her. It tried to get me, but I got away, so it took her instead.”

-2-

Seti dragged the girl through the woods by the arm, ignoring the briar bushes and the undergrowth that pulled at them. It was pitch dark and he didn’t have a flashlight, but he knew exactly where he was going. The voice guided him, and all he needed to do was follow. The voice had told him where to find her, had instructed him to bring a roll of duct tape to stick across her mouth and stifle her whimpering, and had told him what to do with her when he found her. A couple of hard smacks to the face had taken the fight out of her.

He had wanted to kill her right then and there in the woods and probably would have, if the voice hadn’t stopped him.

“Not yet,” the voice had instructed. “Bring her back with you and be patient. I will tell you when the time is right.”

So now he dragged her back towards his car, an old Taurus which was parked on Route 102. He slapped her in the back of the head and tossed her in the passenger’s seat, then quickly tied her hands behind her back with a short length of twine. Tears rolled down the girl’s face as she whimpered, but the duct tape did its job and he didn’t have to listen to her. Not that it would have mattered. When they cried it only stirred him up. He never felt sorry for them, no matter what they did. And this one was a slut anyway, he decided. A little cock-teasing slut. He locked the door, then went into the driver’s side and climbed in.

The girl looked at him accusingly through a blackened eye, but he just grinned.

“I’m taking you home with me,” he said to her. “And we’re going to have some fun. You’re gonna like it!”

Then, with anticipation, he pulled out onto Route 102 and headed down the road to his makeshift campground in the woods. The voice had told him to be patient. But it hadn’t said he couldn’t amuse himself with his new victim in the meantime.

-3-

For the second time in a week, Erik found himself tramping through the woods in the darkness with a flashlight. Only this time, at least, he wasn’t alone. Several State Troopers from the Scituate barracks, Pastor Mark, and about a dozen volunteers from the village fanned out on either side of him, spaced 25 feet apart as they moved carefully forward through the thick forest. Each of them carried a portable walkie-talkie and a compass to keep them walking straight.

Erik felt about as comfortable in the woods as zebra would on a tight rope, but he really hadn’t been able to refuse when the sheriff had asked for volunteers. It could have been his own kid out there—in fact, if Dovecrest hadn’t found Todd when he wandered off, it
would
have been his kid.

He walked slowly forward, sweeping the ground with his flashlight beam. He still couldn’t help thinking about what Todd had said—the rock got her. And he couldn’t help remembering the last post he’d read on the Satanic web site—“those who oppose him will suffer misery and death at the black stone.”

Then there was the graveyard with the headstone made out of a meteorite. Could that be the black stone? Was there a connection? He wanted to ask the sheriff these questions, but the man had looked at Todd as if he were crazy when he’d said that the rock had got the girl. He’d laughed it off and told the boy he’d been watching too many movies. Then he’d asked Erik to go to the shopping plaza and meet up with the other volunteers.

Pastor Mark had already been there when Erik arrived, but he had not had the opportunity to ask the preacher any questions. He wondered if the pastor would think he was crazy, too. It was funny, he thought, how the Bible dealt with Satan and demons and people believed, but such things weren’t accepted in the modern world.

The forest was darker than everything he could imagine, and he looked to the right and the left and was comforted by the flashlight beams to either side of him. Whatever moonlight that shone was completely obliterated by the canopy of leaves overhead. There were no paths here, so the going was very slow as he pushed himself past and through bushes and around tree trunks. It looked as if no one had passed through this section of woods in decades.

Vaguely, he wondered what it was about these woods that attracted kids into them—first his son, and now this teenager. It didn’t make sense. Then he reminded himself that the actions of kids seldom did. Like the time he, as a little boy, had stuck a bean in his ears so he couldn’t hear the teacher, and then had been unable to get the thing out without a painful and embarrassing trip to the emergency room. That hadn’t made sense either.

He pressed forward, not knowing exactly what he was looking for. Occasionally the searchers would call out the girl’s name, but there was no response. He wondered how far into the woods she could possibly have gone. And that black stone—that still haunted him.

Then, just ahead, he caught sight of something white in his flashlight beam. He charged through a rhododendron bush and there it was, right at the base of a large oak tree.

He recognized it immediately—it was a girl’s white sneaker, and it probably belonged to the missing teen.

“Over here!” he called. “I’ve found something.”

Everyone on the line stopped as the word was passed down. The State Trooper on his right edged over to take a look.

“I’d say it’s probably hers,” he said. “Don’t touch anything. We may be looking at a crime scene.”

-4-

Todd woke up sweating, his heart beating a mile a minute. It was just a nightmare, he thought with relief. But it had been so real.

He had been in the dark, huddled in a tiny space with his knees up to his chin and his hands tightly tied behind his back. The knots hurt his wrists and his feet hurt with pins and needles where they had fallen asleep, as his mother called it. A thick piece of tape held his mouth closed and it was hard to breathe through his nose. Something had hit him in the nose, he realized, and in the eye, which was swollen almost shut. He also hurt in his private places, but he couldn’t even think about that because what had happened was just too scary and too disgusting.

He could sense the presence of the man who had done this to him—he was very close but he couldn’t see him in the dark. He knew this man would kill him. It was only a matter of time. He sensed it and he knew it.

Then he had woke up and realized it was just a dream, a horrible, frighteningly real dream that still echoed throughout his entire being. Yet he also knew that it was not a dream. At some level, it was real and either was happening or would happen in the near future.

Then, with sudden shock, he realized that he was dreaming about Melissa, the missing girl, and that for her, it was not a dream at all, but a terrible, terrible reality.

Todd wanted to tell someone about his dream and tell them the girl was in trouble. But he knew they wouldn’t listen. The sheriff had laughed at him when he’d mentioned the rock, and even Mom and Dad thought he was imagining things.

He rolled over and wished that Faith were here with him to curl up in his arms. He didn’t expect to get much more sleep that night.

-5-

It didn’t take long to positively identify the sneaker as belonging to Melissa. The searchers then converged on the spot, which was roped off with yellow tape. Erik joined the sheriff and one of the State Police investigators and they followed the girl’s trail through the woods until it abruptly ended on Route 102.

The State Trooper spent a long time looking around near the side of the road, and made Erik stand back and away so as not to disturb anything.

“I think we may have a crime scene here,” he said. “I’m calling in the detectives. It looks like the girl was put into a car.”

“Could someone have stopped and picked her up?” the sheriff asked.

“Well, I’m not a crime scene expert,” the trooper said. “But it looks to me like there was a struggle here. I’d say the girl was abducted. In fact, I think she was taken in the woods and brought back here.”

Erik shook his head. “Is there anything we can do?”

“We’ll put out a state-wide alert,” the Trooper said. “We’ll put her picture on the news and hope someone’s seen her. And we’ll follow the evidence and see what we can find.”

Erik didn’t like the sound of the man’s voice. It didn’t hold much hope.

“Come on,” the Sheriff said. “I’ll give you a lift home. There’s not much else we can do tonight. We’ll let the experts take over.”

Erik nodded and got into the sheriff’s car. It was almost midnight by now, and he was glad they were only a half mile from home.

“What was your boy talking about? The sheriff said. “A rock? Where’d he get that from?”

Erik sighed deeply. “He was lost in the woods a couple of night ago. I don’t know what it is about woods that attract kids,” he said.

“Happens all the time,” the sheriff said.

“Yeah. Anyway, he was lost for about an hour. Johnny Dovecrest found him and brought him back.”

“Now that one’s a weird bird,” the sheriff said.

“He does appear a little strange. But he found Todd in the woods. Todd wouldn’t say anything at first, but later he told me there was a big black rock in the woods, and that the rock tried to get him. He claims he got away by hitting the thing with his geologist’s hammer.”

The sheriff was silent for a moment.

What do you think happened?”

“I really don’t know. Todd’s not the kind of kid to make up things like that. He’s a pretty practical kid, usually. But it just sounded so farfetched. I mean, a rock trying to get him. I thought it was all in his imagination. Then I heard about that gravestone in the historical cemetery. I wonder if there’s a connection. I don’t think he could have wandered that far, but....”

His voice trailed off into silence. The sheriff pulled into Erik’s driveway and parked the car.

“There have been some weird goings-on since they dug up that cemetery,” the sheriff said.

“Like what?”

“Well, nothing I can really put my finger on. Just weird stuff. Like people reporting voices from the woods. Pets disappearing. And just...well...I don’t know how to say this....”

“Just try.”

“Well, it’s a creepy feeling. Like I said, I can’t put my finger on it. Just a creepy feeling. And now your boy going off into the woods and getting lost. And this teenager disappearing. I don’t know. It just
feels
wrong.”

“Yeah,” Erik said. “I think I’ve felt it too. I thought it was because I just moved into the place and it wasn’t familiar. But now I’m not so sure.”

He stopped and waited a moment before he opened the car door.

“Sheriff, have you heard any reports of a Satanic cult in the area?”

“Hmmm. There’s been rumors for as long as I can remember about things going on in the woods. Mostly the Indians get blamed. But it’s just urban legends. There hasn’t been a kidnapping or a murder in this town for fifty years, at least. I think every small town has rumors. I don’t pay any attention to them.”

“I heard there was a Satanic cult traveling east and they were in Rhode Island.”

“I’ll check into it. But my guess is that the devil hasn’t got anything to do with this girl’s disappearance. I suspect we might just have your run-of-the-mill pervert. Or it might even turn out to be a relative. I think the father ran off and left. Maybe he’s come back.”

Erik nodded. “You’re probably right.”

“Still, though, I’ll check with the State Police on your cult. If there is one around, I want to know about it.”

“Thanks,” Erik said, and climbed out of the car.

-6-

Johnny Dovecrest hadn’t answered the door when the police knocked. He’d pretended not to be home, and since the place was completely dark anyway, they had believed it, too.

Dovecrest didn’t need the police to tell him what was going on. Another child had disappeared, this time a sixteen-year-old girl. He’d heard it on a news bulletin, and even if he hadn’t, he would have known. He had
felt
the girl’s fear this time. It had been strong and close. He wondered if he could have helped her. He felt guilty for not trying, but he was convinced there was nothing he could have done. The entity had a human helper now, someone who was strong and swift, and guided by a power beyond anything that could be imagined on earth.

Dovecrest knew that his power was limited. Very limited. The entity might play with him and let him live, at least for now. He could almost hear the thing taunting him in his brain, daring him to come out and try to stop things.