The Witching Hours, page 7
She just grinned and shook her head.
CHAPTER 5
“‘Commendable’!” Skye repeated. She glanced at him before opening the door to get into the car.
When they were seated, she told him, “‘Brilliant,’ ‘remarkable’—so much better!”
“Glad you like me,” he told her, grinning as he revved the car to life.
She groaned again.
But Zach looked down for a minute, becoming serious and sighing. “We’ll need to stop back by police headquarters for a minute. We’ll need the keys to get into the Bolton house. And that means I’ll need to come up with an explanation—”
“Not with Lieutenant Bruns,” she assured him.
“Do you know what happened?” Zach asked, frowning.
“What happened?” Skye repeated. “Oh! You mean why does Bruns have such faith in Jackson? I think they’ve helped a few times up here. In fact, I heard about one case that occurred about ten years ago now, I believe. Craig Rockwell, aka ‘Rocky,’ and Devin Lyle were involved. Agents I’ve worked with. She has a home up here, I believe, inherited from a grandmother. I don’t know the particulars.” She made a face at him. “Hey, I’m just as new with all this as you are.”
“Maybe Jackson should have sent Rocky—”
“He’s working something in another city—already on that case,” Skye told him.
He laughed softly. “Well, you know more than me.”
“Maybe he thought that … Well, he calls me a ‘mystic.’ Maybe he thinks our talents are more useful working on this case, too,” she suggested.
He glanced at her quickly and almost smiled. “Well, here’s hoping!”
As Skye had expected, they were quickly able to find Lieutenant Bruns and he didn’t ask questions. He gave them the keys for the Bolton house, simply reminding them to lock up when they left and see that the crime scene tape, though ripped, remained.
“We haven’t kept officers on the house,” he told them. “There’s no one in it, and we don’t believe there’s any danger to the house.”
“No danger to the house,” Zach repeated. “But …”
“Go on,” Bruns told him.
“A child has been kidnapped. And it seems whoever is doing this is after children—and women. Young women, like Patricia, and Jane Howell is comparatively young as well, in her late twenties. But with a child, well, the kidnapper may need things.”
“So you believe they’re all still alive!” Bruns said.
“We do,” Skye told him with certainty.
“All right. I will see that officers are assigned to keep an eye on the house,” Bruns promised solemnly. “And the keys—”
“Will be personally handed back to you this evening,” Zach promised.
Then they were out of the headquarters and on their way out to the Bolton house.
“You have the little zebra?” Skye asked him.
He nodded. “Of course. But it isn’t going to hurt to have something that belongs to Jeremy Bolton, too. See if they are together and if he sees the same things that Sophie is seeing.”
“As you said. Of course.”
Zach drove onto the property and started to exit the car. He looked at Skye and said, “I’ll be right out. Stay!” He opened his car door and headed for the door, calling back, “You don’t need to go through it all again. I’ll be quick!”
“Hey! I’m not a dog. Don’t tell me to stay! I’m fine,” she assured him.
“Just wait for me!” he pleaded.
He moved like the speed of light. She’d barely gotten out of the car and made it to the front door before he was out.
He was carrying a toy superhero doll.
“It’s Jeremy’s!” he assured her.
“You don’t think an eleven-month-old baby might like a superhero, huh?” she inquired, deadpan, looking at him. “Zach, don’t go trying to protect me! We’ll never make it as partners if you do that!”
“I’m not protecting you. I understand that when bullets are flying, you’re just about a sharpshooter. I just can’t see sending you flying back into the past, when you don’t need to be there—not when it’s a painful past,” he told her.
“I … I’m all right going in places!” she argued.
“Really? So you had a vision of Salem in the 1600s just by being here, but—”
“Things like this, I sit down, I concentrate!” she told him. “But—”
“But … please let’s not argue. Sorry. We both have a lot to learn about each other. For now, I think we need to get into the woods.”
She winced. “Into the Woods—great show on Broadway!” she told him.
He groaned and started toward the back.
“We move quietly and together,” he said.
“Of course. But I’m willing to bet that they are deep, deep into the woods. So deep that the average hiker or bird-watcher would never go that far.”
“Exactly. And we’re back to the why,” he said.
“Why steal children and young women and go deep into the woods? Zach, sorry, you’re really sure that they’re still alive, right?” Skye asked. They had passed the in-law building where Mike Bolton had lived—and died. They entered into something that vaguely resembled a trail at the far rear of the property.
“Why?” Zach repeated as they walked. “We need the why. More so than ever.”
“You’ve gotten something from the superhero?” she asked.
“Enough to know that he’s alive—and Patricia is still with him. He trusts her; she’s telling him he’ll see his folks soon, and everything will be all right. Sophie is with her mother, and she’s scared when it’s dark, but in the day … she is just confused. But I’m right on one thing—they’re in the woods. Neither kid can figure out what they’re doing in the woods. I keep hearing the word ‘master’ go through their minds; someone out there is telling them that they’re the master. Or a master, and they’re supposed to look at the grass and the trees …”
He stopped speaking, stopped moving, and frowned, and looked away as if confused.
“Well, I’m not you, I don’t see the past.” He frowned.
“Zach! I’m not a mind reader! What’s going on?” Skye demanded. She had almost plowed into his back when he had stopped. She stood, watching him. “Zach!” she pressed. “Please! What?”
“‘Beware the devil in the darkness.’”
Skye stared at him; he looked at her. “They’re being told the devil may lurk in the forest! To watch out because the devil comes in the darkness!”
“This is crazier and crazier,” Skye said. “Someone dressed up in a wicked-witch costume is preaching to kids as if they were back in 1692?”
Zach shook his head. “Infinitely crazy, yes. So …”
“Well, I guess we can appreciate the trees and the grass and the bushes that are catching at my clothing and the stones that jab up into my feet,” Skye said.
She started to walk again.
There were areas here—as there really were in so many beautiful places around the country—where it seemed that the trees, the forest, stretched on forever and ever. She thought about driving on I-75 through the south of Georgia and into the northern realms of Florida. Sometimes it could seem that the trees and brush were endless.
Even in a car!
But they were on foot.
And already it seemed the back of the Bolton house had disappeared!
This was Salem, Massachusetts. A smaller city surrounded by other smaller cities. The forest could not stretch on forever.
Maybe it was the denseness of it. She didn’t think that even she would be particularly happy here at night, especially if there was no moon and the stars had disappeared into the heavens.
Zach, of course, was right behind her. She wondered if she should take the little superhero doll and the stuffed zebra away from him.
He was feeling too much.
Of course, she smiled inwardly, he hadn’t wanted her to relive something awful, over and over again.
She didn’t want the children’s pain filling his heart and soul so much so that it was all he felt!
“Ah, come on!” he said lightly. “The forests are something that we human beings need to appreciate and preserve. They take the bad stuff we put in the air and more or less recycle it so that we can keep breathing,” he reminded her.
“Science 101,” she said.
He laughed. “Something like that.”
“I do like forests. I think they’re beautiful,” she said. “I just like them when … well, when I know where I am!”
“Salem, Massachusetts,” he assured her.
She groaned and kept walking.
“How do you know we’re going the right way?” she asked.
“Branches.”
“You can read branches now?”
He laughed. “You can see that people have used this trail—”
“Trail!”
“Well, kind of a trail,” he told her.
“We look for the broken branches?” she suggested. “And you, of course, know where we’re going.”
“No, not at all. I just know that someone else has been here recently. And that this almost-trail, if you will, was created by someone walking through here recently,” he told her.
“But you know how to get out of here?” Skye asked.
“East, west, north, and south,” he told her. “Head back to the west, and we’ll wind up in something like civilization again. Warbler!”
“What?” Skye asked. “Warbler—a bird?”
He nodded. “In the trees. They’re together—Patricia and Jeremy and Mrs. Howell and little Sophie. They’re outside … with others. There are some other kids there … and someone is talking,” Zach said. “They’re all listening. Not happily. The kids look … uncomfortable. Scared. There’s a little girl who apparently had some kind of a fit—and she’s been made to stare at a tree, standing right in front of it … facing it, of course.”
“But who is it that the kids are watching?” Skye asked.
He looked at her, shaking his head. “The wicked witch,” he told her.
Skye let out a sound of extreme aggravation. “A green wicked witch is running around—and we can’t find him. Or her!”
Zach gave himself a shake, clearing his head of the images he was seeing through the eyes of the children.
“This person is careful, so very careful. He or she doesn’t want their identity known by anyone. Oh, there are other children there … three of them. And this one will get you—a young man, maybe a teenager, at most about twenty or so.”
“Others have been kidnapped, too?” she asked.
“I imagine that’s the case. I’m going to call in to Angela and have her find out who might be missing from surrounding areas, maybe down to Boston or beyond,” he said.
Skye was silent for a minute. She heard a bird cry, and she looked at Zach. “Warbler,” she murmured.
“These woods are full of them. Along with bobcats, moose, and more,” Zach said.
“Great. Nothing like running into a bobcat.”
He laughed softly. “You leave it alone—and most likely, it will leave you alone.”
“Most likely.”
“Hey, if a moose charges, hop up a tree as quickly as you can,” Zach said. “I hate to kill wildlife, but we are armed if we come upon creature trouble.”
“I hate to kill anything, but I’m extremely fond of living!” Skye assured him.
He paused. “Want to take a second and … see what you can see?” he asked.
She nodded. “Sure.”
And so, they stood very still. She could hear the birds, letting out their chittering, a cry now and then. She could smell the richness of the earth, feel the breeze, even the gentle movement of the branches of the trees and the brush as they moved with the soft wind in the air.
And then people!
Children moving along the trail. A young woman … Patricia Yale … sobbing softly.
And then …
The wicked witch. The green being wielding a gun rather than any kind of magic!
“Skye?”
She looked over at Zach, wincing. “You were right,” she told him. “They came this way.”
“All right, then. We keep moving,” he said.
“Okay, wouldn’t it make a lot more sense for us to get more people out here, searching?” she asked.
“Skye, come on! We need to find something, anything, that will give us some proof. There’s no way the local law enforcement will send an army slushing through the forest if we don’t have something to give them,” Zach reminded her.
“Maybe Jackson—”
“Jackson and Angela had to go back themselves. As many Krewe agents as there are, they’re out across the country and beyond,” Zach said. “Give me a minute and I’ll put through a call.”
She watched and listened as he did so, somewhat surprised he could get a connection from where they were. Neither Angela nor Jackson was there, but he spoke to one of their tech experts who would do a search for them.
“That’s done,” Zach told her.
“Okay, so we wander in the deep woods a while longer. We’ll find … something!” she said. “But what do you think we’re going to find? I’m not sure they’ll go for broken branches—or me telling them I saw the recent past, and they were walking this way.”
“Kids. One of them may have dropped something,” Zach said.
“Right. Good call. Let’s keep moving.”
“Up the hill,” Zach said softly. And he paused. “Look!”
It wasn’t a clue. It was a moose. Huge and beautiful, standing in a clearing amid a copse of trees and brush.
The animal was beautiful and majestic. And huge.
“Great. We don’t want to mess with him, right?” Skye asked.
“No. But he’ll move on.”
“What’s next? An angry bobcat?” Skye muttered.
“Hey, that moose is just standing there. Doing what a moose does. He’ll move in a minute, and it will take us longer than that to walk the distance.”
Birds kept chirping. The redolent smell of the earth was rich and it was true that the forest could be beautiful, that a walk here …
Might have been pleasant.
If it wasn’t such an urgent mission they were on.
Something rustled through the bushes ahead of Skye, and she stopped dead.
“It’s okay. Just a rabbit,” Zach said.
“Right. Okay, so birds, a rabbit, and a moose. Let me think. Black bears, possums, shrews, moles—”
“Don’t forget bats,” Zach said, grinning.
“At least, it isn’t night!” she snapped.
And then she was sorry. His face darkened.
“I’m sorry, I mean, I’ve been in woods, but I’m more of a city girl,” she said.
“No, no, it’s all right. I was just thinking about the kids. About them being so frightened when it’s night. About … about them being told the devil could get them in the night, and the devil could make them do things,” he said.
“Coyotes, wolves, and foxes,” Skye murmured.
He shook his head. “Whoever is doing this knows Northeastern forests like the back of his—or her—hand. I don’t think the captives are in danger from nature or from the forest animals. They are in danger from an animal—man. The only creature I know of that is capable of manipulation, coercion, and pure evil.”
“Like the devil in the woods,” Skye responded. “Okay, onward!”
“Onward.”
They kept walking for a while in silence, just listening to the world around them. Skye thought he had to be right about the creatures in the forest—they seemed to be fine unless they were bothered.
Then again, while the bears were probably after wild berries and the fish in the streams, the coyotes, wolves and such were carnivores, hungry …
For the cute little rabbits and things hopping about, she hoped. Not that she wished ill upon them.
Just …
Better than her!
“Stream,” Zach said suddenly.
She had been so focused on the world immediately around her, she almost ran into him again, but managed to stop at his side, instead.
They had, indeed, come upon a stream. It was beautiful. They were just about at noon; and the sun was high overhead, showering down rays of light upon the water, causing it to shimmer beautifully as it danced over pebbles and outcrops along the way.
“Here might be a good place to see what you can see,” Zach told her quietly.
She nodded. She willed a vision to come to her eyes.
At first …
The growth changed. There was a woman, a Native American woman, crouched down by the stream.
Washing clothing.
She winced, blinked, and gave her head a shake.
And then she saw them.
And she was stunned.
She opened her eyes and looked at Zach.
“You went back too far,” he said.
“Just at first. I saw a Native American woman—”
“Naumkeag,” Zach told her. “This whole area. Part of the Pawtucket Nation.”
“Right, I assume,” Skye said. “But then … I don’t know, I don’t know how I change it, by wanting to change it, maybe by needing to change it …”
“You saw the kids? Or a kid?”
She nodded. “You’ve been following the right way, Zach. I don’t know how. But yes, Patricia and Jeremy crossed the stream here. But, Zach, there’s something worse, much worse!”
“What’s that? Jeremy is alive; I know it—”
“No, no, it’s not that! Zach, there are two of them! Two people who are dressing up, painting themselves green and dressing up like wicked witches.”
“So it’s not just one criminal. But both responsible for murder.”
“Zach, they’re kidnapping children and young people and … trying to brainwash them from what you’ve seen. Yet you just made me wonder. If the kids and the young people are the goal, why did they kill Mike Bolton?”
“Interesting question,” he said thoughtfully. “I’m wondering …”
“What?”
“All right, they left the baby. The baby was too young for what they wanted. Too young to understand concepts, perhaps. And a baby couldn’t identify anyone,” Zach said.
