The Vanishing (13 page)

When they reached the edge of the clearing where the building stood, Max drew up short. She eased up beside him and peered through the brush. Before she could stop it, she sucked in a breath. It wasn’t just a couple of buildings. It was an entire village.

Cache.

Her heart fluttered as she scanned the rows of shacks that lined makeshift dirt paths. She pointed at a steeple, visible above the roofs of the row of shacks. A church.

Max glanced at the church and continued to scan the village. His worried expression made Colette stiffen slightly and she looked back at the village, trying to determine what it was that was bothering him. And that’s when it hit her.

The village was empty.

It was the middle of the afternoon and the weather was reasonably clear, but not a single person stirred in the streets of Cache. Not a single noise wafted through the dead air.

“We’re too late,” she whispered.

“We don’t know that,” Max replied and stepped out of the brush and into the clearing.

He paused for several seconds, probably waiting for the alarm that would never sound, then motioned to Colette and started walking toward the first shack. He stopped before they reached the doorway, and sniffed the air. She felt a sliver of horror run over her as she realized he was smelling for decomposition.

She sniffed the air as well, but could detect only the scent of bayou mud, dying brush and dust. Max must have been satisfied because he stepped into the shack. She followed close behind, with no idea what to expect, but bracing herself for the worst.

But all they found was an empty cabin.

Clothes hung on nails along one wall. A tiny table and chairs sat opposite a wood-burning stove. The table was set, as if the occupants were about to eat. Max walked over to the stove and lifted the lid of the pot.

“Oh,” he said and covered his nose with his hand as he quickly replaced the lid.

The smell of spoiled meat hit Colette and she felt her stomach roll.

“Let’s check the others,” he said and left the cabin.

It took only a matter of minutes to determine that the entire row of shacks revealed the same thing—meals left untouched, laundry left unfolded—but not a single sign of a human being.

She looked back down the row of abandoned cabins. “It’s as if they…”

“Vanished?”

“Just like the legend says.”

Max gazed around the village and shook his head. “It’s not possible. No matter how strange these swamps are, they do not swallow up an entire village of people and leave no trace of what happened.”

He started walking toward the center of the village and entered the church. Rows of handmade pews lined the assembly, and a pulpit carved from driftwood stood at the front. Colette reached down to pick up a book from one of the pews and was surprised to find it was a traditional hymnal that she’d seen before.

“I don’t understand,” she said, “If they observed the old ways, why have a church? This is a Christian hymnal.”

“I’ve known people who practiced both.”

“How do they reconcile the two?”

“I never asked.” He walked to the front of the church and opened a cabinet behind the pulpit. “Look at this.”

She joined him at the front of the church and peered into the cabinet, then gasped. It was filled with candles and jars of crushed herbs. A wooden bowl and pestle stood on a shelf just below a black mask that looked as if it were carved from wood.

“What is that?” she asked, pointing at the mask.

“A ceremonial mask.”

“What kind of ceremony?”

“I don’t know, and I don’t think I want to.” He slammed the cabinet door. “These people did not disappear into thin air. They must have left. Maybe they knew the threat Anna spoke of was coming, and fled the village.”

“But if they’re in the swamp, how can we find them?”

“I’m not sure we can.”

“You can’t track them, like you did Anna?”

“Anna was running from her attacker. She didn’t take the time to cover her tracks, but the villagers probably did. My guess is that we’ll find no sign of their passage.”

“But we have to help them. They’re in danger.”

Max blew out a breath, clearly frustrated. “I don’t know that we can. We have nothing to go on.”

“Surely somewhere in one of these cabins there has to be a clue…something that gives us a starting point.”

Max didn’t look convinced, but he nodded. “We can try.”

As they stepped outside the church, the light dimmed. Colette looked up to see a dark cloud passing in front of the sun with more surrounding it.

“We need to work fast,” Max said. “You take the row of shacks to the left that we’ve already given a cursory look. I’ll check the next row. I wish I could tell you what to look for, but at this point, I honestly have no idea.”

“Hopefully, we’ll know it if we see it.”

She glanced once more at the dark sky overhead and hurried into the first shack. She was afraid for the villagers, but she was afraid of being caught in the swamp in the storm even more. Even if they found something, they wouldn’t be able to act on it today.

It took very little time for her to dig through the villagers’ meager belongings. The shacks contained only the most basic of necessities—food, dishes and clothes. In one of the shacks toward the end of the row, nearer to the tree line, she found a handmade sock doll that made her pause and sigh. She hadn’t thought about the villagers in terms of families, but of course, there must be children. What must they be thinking—fleeing their homes at a moment’s notice? Hiding in the swamp from an unknown enemy?

Unless they knew him.

Maybe he’d tried to kill Anna in the hospital because she could identify him. If Anna knew him, other villagers might, as well. Or maybe she was completely wrong about everything.

She tossed the doll on a cot in the corner in disgust. Her throw was a bit too hard and the doll slipped off the side of the bed and fell between the cot and the wall. Then, feeling guilty that a little girl would come home and be unable to find her doll, she sat on the cot and reached down the side to retrieve the doll, hoping nothing else was dwelling on the floor with it.

Her fingers grazed the top of the doll and she leaned farther over. As she wrapped her hand around the doll, her fingers brushed something hard. She pulled the doll out and peered in the space to see what else was down there. It was dark, but she could barely make out the straight edges of a book. She reached back down and drew the book out.

It wasn’t dusty, which meant it hadn’t been down there very long.
Grimms’ Fairy Tales.
Figures. Cache was weird enough to belong in a Grimm fairy tale. She flipped through the first couple of pages, and a sheet of paper slid out. Her breath caught in her throat.

It was a pencil drawing of a young woman who looked exactly like Anna.

She turned the pages of the book, removing sheet after sheet of drawings. The quality was amazing. Whoever the artist was had captured the personalities of the people as well as their features. She studied each portrait to see if any others looked familiar, thinking if others had left Cache, they might be living in Pirate’s Cove, and they might know where the villagers would hide.

The last drawing made her pause. The face was somewhat familiar, but she couldn’t put her finger on where she’d seen the man. He was old with heavy lines across his troubled face. He had a scraggly mustache and beard and his hair was down to his shoulders. None of his hair showed any sign of recent grooming. Where had she seen him, and was it during their investigation?

Maybe Max would know.

She placed the book and the drawings on the table and hurried out of the shack to find him. As she stepped out the doorway, a shadow appeared across her path, but before she could spin around, something hard hit her across the back of the head, sending her down to the ground.

Colette’s vision blurred and she struggled to maintain consciousness. Turning around, she tried to get a look at her attacker, but all she saw through blurred vision was a black mask. She felt herself slipping away as her attacker grabbed her under the arms and started dragging her into the swamp. She tried to yell, but the strangled cry probably wasn’t loud enough to attract Max’s attention.

Think! She concentrated, trying to focus her fuzzy mind on her options. Even if he hadn’t hit her, she probably couldn’t outmatch him physically. She reached out, trying to grab on to something, if only to slow his progress, but he yanked her even harder, ripping the branches from her fingers.

She felt the flesh on her hands tear as the sharp branches sliced across them, and she cried out. Her attacker dropped her and a second later struck her head again. Then she sank into darkness.

Chapter Eleven

Max stepped out of the last cabin in the row he was searching and immediately checked the sky. The light had dimmed even more and the accumulation of dark, swirling clouds was the answer. It was time for them to leave even though they hadn’t found the answers they were looking for.

He walked around the corner and down the row of shacks that Colette was searching. “Colette?” he called as he walked.

Only silence greeted him.

A spike of panic hit him full force. Something was wrong. He ran down the row of shacks, ducking in and out of every doorway, but found nothing.

“Colette!”

She wouldn’t have wandered off, of that he was certain. He walked the line of shacks again, this time studying the dirt path that ran down the middle. At a shack close to the edge of the clearing, he saw two lines in the dirt that ran straight into the swamp. Like the lines the heels of rubber boots would make if they were being dragged.

He pulled out his pistol and hurried into the swamp where the line trailed off. Brush was flattened by the passage of something large. Tracking as fast as he could, he hoped he wasn’t already too late.

And that’s when he heard a faint cry.

It took him only a second to zero in on the direction of the sound and he was off like a shot, running directly through the brush, not even bothering to try to follow the trail. It had to be Colette, which meant she was still alive.

He burst through a clump of bushes and almost tripped over Colette before sliding to a stop just inches from her body. A patch of blood glistened in her hair above her ear and he felt his heart skip a beat as he felt for a pulse.

A wave of relief washed over him as he placed his fingers on her wrist to check her pulse. He scanned the swamp surrounding him for sign of her attacker and heard the crack of gunfire. He dropped to his knees and pulled Colette behind the bushes he’d charged through earlier. Then he peered through the foliage, trying to locate the shooter.

The shot sounded as if it came from the right, but sound direction wasn’t always easy to interpret in the swamp. Still, right was a better guess than nothing. Aiming his pistol toward a thick grouping of brush to the right of him, he squeezed off a couple of rounds.

A yelp sounded from some distance away, and Max knew he’d gotten off a good shot. A second later, he heard someone running through the brush, the sound growing fainter with every passing second.

Max scooped Colette up and hurried back to the village. There was no way he could risk carrying her to the boat with the shooter in the swamp. And for all he knew, the shooter may have found the boat and set it adrift. The village was hardly secure, but it offered a lot more safety than the swamp.

Thunder clapped overhead and he cursed as he picked up his pace. He’d forgotten about the storm, but it was coming. Whether they were ready for it or not.

He ran to the center of the village and paused for a moment to consider the options. The church offered a good view of everything and the advantage of a loft with windows. The disadvantage was all the windows downstairs, but he could grab blankets from the cabins and cover them. Mind made up, he dashed into the church and
gently placed Colette on one of the pews.

She was still unconscious, but the cut on her head was no longer bleeding and her pulse was still strong. He needed to find blankets, medical supplies, and food and water, but he hated the thought of leaving her here alone. Still, the windows were solid glass and there was no back door, so if he kept his cabin search to areas where he had a clear view of the church’s front door, he should be able to protect her.

He ran out of the church and into the nearest shack. Once the storm hit, gathering supplies would become only more difficult. He needed to locate as much as possible before it began to rain.

The first shack yielded two blankets but no medical supplies. All the food was spoiled, so he tossed the blankets through the front door of the church and sped into the next shack. In this one, he found a bag of potato chips, probably from trading at Danny’s gas station.

He managed to scour ten more shacks before the rain began to plummet, reducing visibility to almost nil. Dripping wet, he burst into the church and dropped the last of the spoils on the floor beside the others. He’d managed a decent haul in a short amount of time. Plenty of blankets for the windows and to cover Colette, a hammer and nails, bandages and peroxide, aspirin, chips and canned food, a couple of canned sodas and some jugs of distilled water. It wasn’t the Ritz, but it was enough to outlast the storm and the night, if necessary.

He went to check on Colette and was relieved to see her starting to stir. Her eyelids fluttered and her hand moved.

He placed his hand on hers and said softly, “Colette.”

Her eyes flew open and she tried to bolt up, but she barely lifted herself from the pew before clutching her head with both hands. She stared at Max, clearly frantic at first, but then the panic left her eyes as she focused in on him.

“Max! Thank goodness.” She lowered her hands from her head and glanced around. “What happened?”

“I was hoping you could tell me.”

“I was searching the shacks…” She frowned, her brow scrunched in an effort to remember. Suddenly her expression cleared. “I found drawings and wanted to show them to you. I left the shack and someone hit me on the head.”