Blood of Cain

92

Courtney Burke tried to find something that wasn’t on the map of Virginia. At least not on modern maps of the state, and it couldn’t be located through satellite GPS. But it was there. Tucked away in a valley of ghosts, blurred by the lines of change and lost through the slivers in time. The remnants of the town were still there. Vine-covered buildings left standing. An old wooden post office. General merchandise store. A saloon. A half dozen ramshackle monuments to an age in Virginia of grist mills and moonshine stills. But like a faded tintype photograph of troops from the Civil War, the town of Mount Gilead, Virginia was a shadow of its former image.

Courtney needed directions, and she needed them from someone who knew the mountains well. She drove the red Toyota truck over roads winding through the Blue Ridge Mountains. It was mid-morning and she felt that she was getting close, felt the nervousness, the anxiety of seeing him again, face-to-face. Sometimes, even after the years, she could smell his sweat, the stench of his cheap cologne, feel the scratch of his beard stubble on her skin — her thighs, and she remembered his filthy jeans. He never removed them when he raped her, only pulling his pants down to his knees or ankles. His flannel shirt was always half unbuttoned. God, how she hated the pattern of those red and black colors.

She took one hand off the steering wheel, lowered it to the space between the seat and console, her right hand wrapping around the butt of the .22 pistol. She could do it, now she could. And he would never hurt another child. She knew he’d be wearing the ancient torc when she found him because he believed that was the source of his power. He believed all the crap about the druids, the Irish people of the Iron Age — how they thought forged iron and gold and locked in powerful spirits. They also believed in reincarnation and human sacrifice. He was just like them, the druids — the bastard.

She eased the Toyota off the road and slowed to a stop in the potholed parking lot of a 1950’s era gasoline station and country store. There was one gas pump in the center of the lot, directly in front of the entrance to the store. She parked at the pump. The only thing that didn’t resemble the 1950s was the price of gas.

Courtney entered the dim store, the smell of hoop cheese and pickles in the air. In one corner, two wooden chairs were next to an aged barrel with the stenciled words Jack Daniels on one side, a checkerboard on top of the barrel. A single paddle fan turned slowly, the uneven blades causing a slight squeak on each turn. Jars of honey, canned okra and green beans were sold from the top of a glass counter, hunting knives sold underneath.

Courtney rang the bell on the counter. A half minute later, a slender middle-aged man appeared, using a red towel to wipe grease off his bony hands. He had a basset hound face with an Adam’s apple almost the size of a golf ball. He wore his denim shirt tucked into his jeans, the jeans tucked into his boots. “Hep you?” he asked, his dark eyes almost veiled under the bill of a John Deere cap.

Courtney smiled. “I’d like to buy some gas.”

“Don’t accept no credit cards.”

“Okay. Here’s twenty dollars.” She slid the money across the counter.

“Pumps on. You know how to pump it?”

“I’ve done it before.”

“Bet you have.” He swallowed, his Adam’s apple rising and falling.

“You from around here?”

“All my life.”

“Maybe you’ve heard of a place called Mount Gilead.”

“Maybe.”

“Can you give me directions to it?”

“Ain’t much left. A few old buildings. A shut down grist mill. It’s a ghost town.”

“I’m a photographer, and I’m documenting places like that. Where can I find whatever’s left of Mount Gilead?”

“Take Highway 797 till you come to Goose Creek Road. Go left, ‘bout a quarter mile down there go right when you come to Shawtock. It’s dirt. Follow the road way up in the mountains. Road gets narrow, becomes one-way. You’ll have to back outta there. Not a good place to be in the winter. A fella got back in there two years ago. They didn’t find his body ‘till the spring thaw.”

“I plan to be gone long before winter.”

He leaned closer, his gaunt hands splaying on the counter, the smell of pipe tobacco on his breath. “If you go, you’d be smart to be outta there before nightfall. And once the sun takes a notion to set, it sets pretty fast. Gets dark real quick up in the hollow.”

Courtney almost passed it. An unmarked dirt road, maybe a half mile past a sign that read: Goose Creek Stone Bridge. She turned to her right, onto the unmarked road, scrub brush scraping against the side of the Toyota. She drove slowly through the winding back road, each turn gaining elevation, steep drop-offs less than three feet from the right side of her truck. She glanced down and could see a white water river hundreds of feet below her.

After another mile, the road seemed to dissolve into the thick woods. The road simply ended. There wasn’t room to turn the truck around. She shut off the motor and opened the driver’s side door. The air was cooler, hickory trees and pines grew high, and a hawk circled the blue sky over the ravine and the river. She could just hear the rush of the white water against the rocks far below her, the sound like holding a seashell to her ear.

Courtney lifted the pistol from between the seats and picked up her mobile phone off the console. She got out of the truck, not sure which direction to walk, or what exactly to say when she found him. She slipped a battery into her phone, waited a few seconds and then punched in the number. After two rings it went to his voice-mail. “Sean, it’s Courtney.” She blew out a long breath. “You said if I ever needed you … if I … never mind. I shouldn’t have called.” She disconnected and slipped the small phone into her bra. She quietly closed the truck door and began following the overgrown trail into the woods.

She walked more than a mile down the narrow path. The farther Courtney walked, she felt, the closer she was to finding him. She stopped in her tracks when she heard pounding. With her eyes only, she followed the sound, the hammering coming from a tree. A pileated woodpecker, its tuft of bright red feathers resembling a cap on top of its head, scurried around the bark of a pine tree drilling for insects with the ferocity of a small jackhammer.

Courtney swatted at a deer fly and continued, glancing down at the path, watchful for snakes. She stopped and pulled her left pant leg up. A tick, the size of a raisin, sucked blood from the skin over her calf muscle. She pulled the swollen insect off her, felt her shoulders spasm involuntarily, and she ran through the woods, her eyes on the obscure path.

She looked up just as she ran directly into a spider’s web that stretched between low-hanging tree branches, the sticky web covering her face, nose, and eyelashes. A black widow spider, large as a silver dollar, dropped from a limb, suspended by a strand of web, the spider’s blood-red hourglass rocking like a pendulum within a few inches of Courtney’s nose.

“Oh God!” she said, backing up and using her fingers to peel the web from her face.

“God. Do you believe you deserve divine help? My little niece, Courtney. I’ve been expecting you.”

Dillon Flanagan stepped out from behind a hickory tree.

Courtney reached behind her back for the pistol.