Valley of the Shadow (17 page)

    “Forgive me.” Howard sat down again. His anger drained from him. “I guess . . . I suppose you know best.”

    “I do, Beloved. I only ever do what is best for us.”

    Howard stared at the rubble in the kitchen. The shattered plates and glasses. His chest ached as a sudden wave of emotion hit him. He missed his wife and son. It seemed more than a decade since they had last been together.

    He would sometimes dream of Clarice. She would be standing on the porch, calling him in for supper. And Owen would come out from the barn, smiling. Then they would all go inside for a meal. Howard longed more than anything to join them again. To be together once more, like they promised.

    “How much longer must I endure this place?”

    The voice softened. “Soon, Beloved. Very soon now.”

MITCH FOLLOWED NATHAN
through the flat desert terrain toward the base of the mountains. Within fifteen minutes the dirt road curved sharply and headed up into the foothills. They followed it as far as they were able, until the road grew too narrow and steep to travel. Nathan stopped at a point where the road curved and got out.

    Mitch guessed they must have been a thousand feet over the desert floor. He could see the narrow ribbon of road winding back down the slopes. Below, the desert spread out into the distance like a carpet. It was nearly sunset and the gray gloom was deepening.

    Ahead of them, the road narrowed further and turned back on itself as the grade increased dramatically. Mitch knew he wouldn’t be able to get the Road King up that steep a slope. And the Ferrari certainly wouldn’t be able to make it either.

    “We’re going to have to hoof it from here, buddy,” Nathan said.

    Mitch was less than enthused by the prospect. He peered up the path as it wound its way out of sight. “How much farther?”

    “Maybe another half a mile or so, but it’s mostly straight up.”

    “Great.”

    Mitch untied his duffel bag from the bike and slung it over his shoulder. He noticed Nathan wasn’t carrying anything with him. No supplies, no extra clothes. Nothing. They were hiking into the wilderness, and all this guy had with him was the clothes he wore.

    “Dude,” Mitch grunted, “doesn’t look like you came prepared for mountain climbing.”

    “Looks are deceiving here, Mitch.”

    “Oh, right. I forgot. Are we at least going to come back this way?”

    “That’s the plan.”

    “You got a flashlight or anything?”

    “Nah. Won’t need one.”

    They followed the path up a boulder-strewn slope. Mitch found himself growing more and more uncertain of his predicament. To be sure, Nathan had rescued him from the creature—what had he called it? A Keeper? But still, this situation was becoming altogether too strange. It was getting dark and they had no flashlights, little food, and no shelter. Yet for all this lack of resources, Nathan seemed completely unfazed by the danger they were obviously in.

    Mitch huffed as the incline increased sharply. He scrambled around boulders and pulled himself up jagged outcroppings. Then to make matters worse, he found himself suddenly surrounded by a dense fog. They had entered the cloud cover.

    Mitch could barely make out Nathan’s shape in front of him. He was no more than a few yards back, but at times Mitch could not even see the guy.

    “How much longer?” Mitch said between breaths.

    “Just a little farther.” Nathan’s voice came back out of the fog.

    “Dude, the sun’s going down.”

    “Yep.”

    “We don’t have any flashlights.”

    “I know.”

    “But you know where you’re going?”

    “Yep.”

    “So . . . you can find your way in the dark?”

    “Won’t have to.”

    Mitch struggled up the slope. The air was growing thinner, but he could tell that the fog seemed to be lifting a bit. “Why not?”

    Mitch took seven more steps and gasped. The fog was completely gone. The slope had leveled off, and Mitch found himself standing on a wide, level section of rock. Nathan stood at the edge, facing him. Smiling. He held out his arms.

    “Because we’re here.”

    Mitch looked around; his jaw hung open and he could only manage a whisper.

    “Whoa.”

“WHAT ARE YOU DOING, DAD?”
Rachel stood in the entrance to Conner’s study, rubbing her eyes. It was just after six o’clock.

    Conner looked up from his computer. “Sorry, did I wake you up?”

    Rachel yawned. “I saw the light on. You working on a Saturday?”

    “Umm, just doing a little . . . research.”

    “What for?” She came around his desk and rested her arm on his shoulder.

    Conner shrugged. He didn’t want to tell her everything, but he didn’t want to appear like he was hiding anything either. “Getting driving directions. I have to run down to Indiana today.”

    “Indiana? What’s in Indiana?”

    “Uh, need to take a deposition.” Conner winced inwardly. He couldn’t believe he was lying to his daughter. It used to be so easy. Now it bothered him. But he didn’t want to get her involved in his goose chase. Really, it was for her own good.

    “Are you going to be back home tonight?”

    Conner looked up again and paused before answering. He honestly didn’t know how long it would take. He didn’t even know exactly what he was going to do when he got there. He was figuring this thing out one tiny step at a time. Finally he gave her a half nod. “Yeah, I’ll probably be home by supper. You know, unless something unexpected comes up.”

    Rachel kissed him on the cheek. “Well, good luck on your deposition.”

    She left and Conner clicked back off his Web browser. He had downloaded the latest version of Google Earth, a program containing a satellite map of the entire globe. He used it occasionally for fun, but now there was something he wanted to see. Something he needed to see.

    For two months Conner had completely ignored all of the information about Howard Bristol that Nancy had found. But after his latest dream, he decided to dig out the yellow legal pad from his drawer. He entered the Bristols’ latest home address into the map coordinates and hit Enter.

    The image of the earth on his screen rotated and zoomed in. Like he was flying in a spaceship, entering from orbit, descending over the eastern seaboard of the United States, moving west. It crossed over Pennsylvania, Ohio, and then zoomed in rapidly on Indiana. In a matter of seconds, the viewer came to rest, hovering over an area of land at what looked like an altitude of 1,500 feet.

    He could see a patchwork of farm fields and towns, spread out like a view from an airplane. Conner clicked the zoom control and the image zoomed in to three hundred feet. The resolution increased and the image came into better focus.

    He could see the top of an old farmhouse with a long driveway running out to what looked like a county highway. Behind the house were three outbuildings and a silo. Beyond the barn was a wide stretch of land that ended at a large patch of trees.

    It was exactly like he remembered.

    He’d seen this before.

    He had been there before.

    Conner scrolled the viewer slowly over the wooded area behind the farm. The satellite images were probably a few years old and looked as if they had been taken during the early spring or late fall. The trees were still bare but there was no snow on the ground. Conner scrolled a little farther and stopped. His mouth went dry.

    He could see a blotchy image that looked like a small building, nestled among the trees.

MITCH STARED AT THE SKY.
His mouth hung open.

    The vast black canopy of space spread out above him, flooded with myriad pinpricks of light. Each one different in size and color. No two looked the same. Mingled among them swirled thousands of galaxies of all shapes and sizes. And directly overhead, like a backdrop stretching from one horizon to the other, lay a brilliant purple nebula. Its massive billows and plumes were so clear and vivid, they looked close enough to touch.

    Nathan stood at the edge of a cliff, facing Mitch. He spread out his hands. Behind him, the cloud cover rolled out like a carpet. While from below, it had appeared as a drab, lifeless gray hue, from here above, it reflected the purple light of the nebula. Jagged mountain peaks jutted up through the mist like black islands of rock amid a vast purple ocean.

    “Whoa,” Mitch whispered again. His sarcasm was gone and he found himself—maybe for the first time in his life—at a loss for words.

    Nathan just smiled and pointed to the sky behind Mitch. Mitch turned and froze. The cloud carpet spread out in a long, wide swath toward the eastern horizon. And above the edge of that horizon loomed a vast swirl of light so enormous it took up the entire eastern sky—if in fact it was east. The light was like a massive spiral galaxy tipped on its edge, spinning slowly in space. Its arms swirled up and dissolved into the darkness. Its lower half disappeared below the horizon line and its center glowed with a dazzling spectrum of colors. Colors Mitch could not even recognize. He had never seen them before.

    Mitch found his knees growing weak as he gazed into the massive vortex. A sudden wave of vertigo washed over him and he knelt down to steady himself. His breath puffed out steamy tendrils in the cold, crisp air. “I’m… I’m genuinely impressed.”

    Nathan chuckled. “Thought you might be. See what I mean about perspective?”

    Mitch nodded, unable to take his eyes off the eastern sky. “Um… yeah.”

    After several minutes, he turned around. “Okay, so . . . we’re not on Earth anymore?”

    “Man, we’re so far from Earth you can’t even see the farthest spot from which you
could
see Earth.”

    “What?”

    “We’re at the edge of the universe.” Nathan nodded toward the glowing vortex. “On the doorstep of eternity.”

    “How . . . how did we get here?”

    Nathan spread his palms and shrugged. “Time and space don’t present the same barriers for the spirit as they do for the body.”

    Mitch looked down at his hands. But he had a body. He rubbed his arms. He felt solid to his own touch.

    “I know what you’re thinking,” Nathan said. “You can feel yourself. You still think that’s your body you’re touching.”

    “But it is. I’m solid to the touch.”

    “Hey, you’ve spent your entire life inside your flesh. It takes a while for your spirit to grasp the fact that it can exist apart from that as well. Your mind is just creating the sensation of a body because that’s all it’s ever known. Like a security blanket.”

    Mitch stood again. The cold and the altitude were making him feel light-headed. He tried to concentrate. He looked out over the clouds. The line of mountains they were on seemed to run laterally east to west. The clouds spread out to the north and far off, he could see another distant row of peaks running parallel to them. Two mountain ranges ran east to west with this sea of clouds between them.

    And below the clouds, down where everything was gray and colorless… It wasn’t Indiana. It wasn’t even Earth.

    Mitch spread his arms. “So where exactly are we?”

    Nathan moved to stand next to Mitch. “They call it Interworld. It’s like a passageway between life and death. Between the material world and the spiritual. Some people see it as that long dark tunnel with a light at the end. For others it’s a place that looks just like Earth, or at least their little section of it, anyway. Some people spend days here, terrified and alone. Others pass right over and hardly even notice it. But sooner or later, everyone travels through it to the other side.”

    Mitch shook his head. This morning he thought he’d woken up on a farm in Indiana. Now he discovered he wasn’t anywhere near Indiana. Not even in the same galaxy. He was in…

    “So then is this . . . y’know . . . some kind of purgatory? I heard about that in one of my classes at school.”

    “You’re not here to pay for any sins. It’s way too late for that.”

    “Then what? I don’t get it.”

    “It’s not life and it’s not quite death. It’s the place everyone travels through on their way to eternity.”

    Mitch was growing weary. This had to have been the strangest and longest day he’d ever experienced. He rubbed his eyes and looked again at the stunning view of space.

    And at that moment he saw something moving along the horizon off to the west. Coming right toward them.

THE WAREHOUSE WAS BUILT
sometime in the 1920s, they said. And it looked every bit its age. It was owned by a holding corporation that existed only on paper. If anyone tried to track down any of its officers or board members, they’d find themselves pursuing paper phantoms. Names and social security numbers from people long dead. Addresses and phone numbers that only led to more dead ends.

    Devon pulled into the empty parking lot and drove around to the back. Pale Man sat in the backseat humming to himself. Devon thought it sounded like AC/DC’s “Highway to Hell” but he couldn’t be sure. He hated heavy metal anyway.

    “Man, this is stupid coming back here. This dude ain’t gonna just give me a gun.”

    “O ye of little faith,” Pale Man sighed. “Have I led you wrong yet?”

    “I’m just sayin’ he ain’t gonna give me no gun.”

    “Well, he ain’t gonna have no choice. Let’s go, chief.”

    Devon got out and knocked on the rear entrance. A brown steel door next to a row of big garage doors along a loading dock.

    A minute later the door opened and a tall, burly white guy with a crew cut glared at Devon. He didn’t say anything.

    “I just need to talk to Mr. Karenga for a minute,” Devon said.

    The man turned away and relayed the information through a radio device in his hand. A moment later he received a reply in his earpiece and let Devon inside.