Daemon of the Dark Wood Read online

  “Did he rape you?” he asked.

  In the green glow of the dash lights, her face suddenly turned demonic, and just for an instant Knott feared that she might attack him in a fit of paranoia. Then her face softened a little, and she said, “Yes. He did, but not, you know, like a regular rapist. It was … worse. Not that I’ve ever been raped. He did things to us, to me, that I … I can’t talk about it now.”

  What were the odds, he wondered, of a delusional woman flagging down a psychiatrist on an otherwise deserted mountain road? Delusional or in shock, or both. But still … in light of what had happened to Susan … and with the sound of that screaming cry fresh in his mind, Knott wasn’t absolutely sure that Judy Lynn Bowen was delusional. He briefly wondered what Sharyn Rampling would make of this girl’s wild tale.

  “I think we have to get out of here,” she said with renewed urgency. “He could be coming after me. I don’t think Old Edgar could fight him off.”

  “Who’s Edgar?”

  “You know, the one-eyed wanderer. Old Edgar, the crazy hermit. Would you please just get us the fuck out of here?”

  “All right.” He pulled onto the blacktop and executed a tight U-turn. He shut off the hazard lights as he accelerated toward Dogwood. “I’m going to take you to the hospital. They will examine you and clean up your cuts. I’ll call the police and have them meet us at the emergency room and you can tell them what happened.”

  “No, that’ll be too late! We don’t have time for that. Those women—”

  “I’m calling the police right now,” he interrupted, hoping to quell her mounting agitation. He pulled his cell phone from his pocket and punched his speed-dial number for the county police. As psychiatrist, he often had dealings with the Sheriff’s Department, calling upon deputies to transport patients hospitalized by court order or to serve commitment papers. When the dispatcher answered, he said, “This is Dr. Trey Knott. I’ve just picked up a young woman on highway twenty-nine, about two miles east of Goat Head Hollow. She says she was abducted and raped, and that her abductor is still on the mountain with—” He moved the cell away from his mouth and asked the girl, “How many women?”

  “Three others.”

  He nodded, then continued. “With three other women.”

  “He had us in a cave,” Judy Lynn said.

  “No, she doesn’t need an ambulance. I’m taking her to Dogwood Medical myself. If you can have an officer meet us there, he can talk to her then.”

  He folded the phone and dropped it in his shirt pocket.

  Judy Lynn said, “I don’t know if the cops can do any good. I mean … what happens if they shoot the thing? He’s like a ghost. Bullets prob’ly go right through him. I shit you not. He’s like nothing in this whole wide world, nothing you’ve ever seen before. Huh.You think I’m a nutbag, right? Or on drugs. Yeah, sure, I know. But I swear to God I’m not. That thing is real.”

  “I don’t think you’re a nutbag. You’ve had a traumatic experience and—”

  “I’m marrying Reverend Jordan’s son, for cripe’s sake. You think he would let his son marry Psycho Girl? No fricking way, Doc.” She folded her arms across her chest. She seemed very small-breasted beneath the voluminous poncho. “I’m supposed to marry him. He may not want me after … this. God.”

  She began to cry. She hugged herself as if trying to contain her overflowing emotions. Her shoulders shook. Her tears made streaks on her muddy cheeks that reminded Knott of war paint.

  “I’m c-c-cold,” she said, shivering. “C-could you turn on the heater?”

  He turned the heater on and angled the vents toward her. She nodded appreciatively and hugged herself tighter, hunching her shoulders and tucking her chin to her chest. When her crying subsided, Knott said, “Did this thing that took you make a screaming sound, sort of like a wild cat?”

  She looked at him with surprise-widened eyes, then she narrowed them in suspicion. “How did you know that?”

  “I heard it earlier tonight, outside my house.”

  She nodded knowingly, jaw firmly set. “That’s how it gets you. Like it hypnotizes you or something, you know? God, I can’t get that sound out of my head. It’s like it’s stuck there, still … doing something to me.” She shivered harder.

  Knott’s imagination went to a place he didn’t like. His usual left-brain dominance gave way to intuitive right-brain speculation, and he was off on a magical mystery tour of possibilities—none of which he found reassuring. Some otherworldly creature was abroad in the night, roaming the hills with single-minded intent, issuing his irresistible call to the unsuspecting women who happened to reside within his newfound territory—his sphere of diabolical influence. But to what purpose? Why, to stash the women in a cave and psychically violate them, of course. To commit serial acts of supernatural rape. The formidable entity had the power to turn a gentle woman like Susan into a raging hellion, and he asserted that power by means of an ear-splitting cry. The creature’s call was so compelling that those victims it summoned would try to tear apart anyone who tried to stop them from going to him.

  So why didn’t Sharyn Rampling heed the creature’s call and rush to his side? This was Knott’s left-brain voice trying to interject down-to-earth logic into his internal dialogue. Right-brain, with its peculiar power to see the big picture, the gestalt in the mosaic, had an answer ready: Because her medication and/or the biochemical/genetic configuration characteristic of her disorder interfered with the process, her neural receptors having been altered by years of taking lithium. Instead of being seized with a compulsion to answer the call, Sharyn withdrew into a fortress of fear.

  Knott squeezed the steering wheel, his fingers expressing only a small measure of his mental stress.

  Right, and the Tooth Fairy, the Easter Bunny and jolly ole St. Nick are waiting in your office for their next group therapy session, Left-brain mocked.

  He wanted to query the girl further, even though his professional judgment told him not to do it; as unstable and agitated as she obviously was, a moving vehicle was a dangerous place to ask probing questions that might make her want to throw open the door and bail out.

  But he had to learn all he could from her before he turned her over to the ER physician at Dogwood Medical, who would examine her for physical injury and for evidence of rape, and then probably recommend transfer to Ridgewood for a complete psych evaluation with a full battery of psychological testing. Knott couldn’t wait; he had to know now. Susan was in trouble, and he needed all the pertinent information he could gather in order to understand her condition and determine the right course of treatment.

  But what was the treatment for something like this? The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders would be of little use. Knott knew he was on his own this time, flying half-blind by the shiny seat of his pants. He could toss the holy DSM-V out the window this time.

  Driving slowly through the fog, he kept his eyes on what little he could see of the road in the diffuse headlight-beams and said, “I would like to ask you a few more questions, if you feel up to it.”

  “I know you,” she said, somewhat defiantly. “You’re a psychologist.”

  “Psychiatrist,” he gently corrected her. “That means I’m a medical doctor.”

  “I’m not crazy!”

  “I know that, Judy Lynn” he said. “I’ll be honest with you. I have a personal interest in what happened to you because my wife heard that thing’s cry too, and it … did something to her. I’m trying to understand what happened to her. So I can help her.”

  “What did it do to her?”

  Though he felt he was betraying a personal and professional confidence, he told the truth. “She ran out of the house naked and turned violent when I tried to stop her.”

  He glanced at her. Saw her nod.

  “It called her out,” she said. “Just like it did me. I hit a deer and ran in a ditch, and I was waiting for the wrecker when I heard it. I … I pissed my pants I was so scared, but then
…”

  “Then what?”

  “Then I wasn’t afraid anymore. It was like I was in a trance, you know? I left the road and walked into the woods to go to it. I had to go to it. I wanted to. Like nothing else mattered. And even after it stopped that screaming I went right to it, like there was an invisible rope pulling me. Then I saw it standing there and I got really scared again because I knew what I was seeing couldn’t be real, but it sure as hell was. Real. It looked like something cut out of a Grimm’s fairy tale book because it was too scary for little kids to see. It was … I don’t even know how to describe it.”

  “Try. Please.”

  “It had these short horns on its head and its legs were like an animal’s, a giant goat maybe. It looked sort of like that Pan dude, but … evil. Like an X-rated version, with that big … ugh.”

  “Big what?”

  “Big hard-on. Pointing right at me. I wanted to run away when I saw it, but I couldn’t. It made me keep going. And when I got closer I saw that it … he was like a … Whaddya call those things? Like in the movies, a hologram. Like it wasn’t really there. But he was because then he touched me.”

  “Touched you how?”

  “With his hands. They were cold and damp like really thick fog. Not solid, exactly, but I could feel them anyway. Like being felt up by a ghost.”

  “He touched you in a sexual way?”

  “Well, yeah. Whaddaya think, with a giant woody like that? Of course it was sexual. And I … couldn’t help it …” She trailed off and began to weep softly.

  “It’s okay,” he said. “You’re safe now. He can’t hurt you again.”

  “You don’t know that! You don’t know what he can do! You weren’t there. He can do anything he wants. If he wants your wife, he’ll come back and take her. And there’s nothing you can do to stop him.”

  He wanted to tell her he didn’t believe that, but he held his tongue; she believed it, and he didn’t want to get into a pointless argument with the traumatized young woman. And the truth was, he was afraid she might be right. If she wasn’t delusional and there actually was an otherworldly being he had to contend with, he needed to learn all he could about his foe and understand how it exerted its sinister will in the real world.

  “So … it … he raped you then?”

  She didn’t answer.

  “Judy Lynn?”

  “It did something to me. I can’t remember exactly. It’s like it was a dream. A nightmare. But not. I’m not sure what all he did to me. But I still feel it. He … I think he put something in me. And it’s still there.”

  She touched her fingertips to her forehead, then added: “Here.”

  “What do you think it is?” he asked. He was accustomed to questioning delusional patients, so this question came out as a matter of routine.

  “I don’t know,” she said with a sob that wrenched his heart.

  Chapter Fifteen

  * * *

  Liza Leatherwood lay abed and listened to her blood.

  The digital clock on the nightstand had extra-large numerals but when she turned her head on the pillow to look at them, all she saw was a red blob of light floating in the bedroom’s darkness. She could’ve put on her glasses to bring the glowing splotch into focus, but she didn’t bother. She knew she was well into the wee hours of morning; she didn’t need a clock to tell her that. Time told itself within her weary bones.

  Unable to sleep, she listened to her blood pulsing through her thin veins. Since she’d punctured the drum of her good ear with the hatpin, the internal sounds of her biological machinery were louder than the sounds of the outside world. This was both a blessing and a curse. The cry of the dark man of the wood couldn’t claim her now, but the thudding of her age-worn heart kept her awake and reminded her of the frailty of her used-up body.

  Her blood sluggishly whispered to her that Death was in the neighborhood, drawing nearer with each beat of her pulse. Even if the Grim Reaper didn’t come for her tonight, he would come soon enough to still her heart and take her soul to wherever it was that souls went, once the body called it quits forever. Soon enough, she hoped. Her great fear was that she would suffer a stroke and lie immobilized for hours—or days— trapped in a withering husk, helpless to do anything but contemplate the unforgiving reality of her lonely end.

  Miss Liza?

  The gravelly voice startled her. She held her breath and tried to listen to the silence-steeped room. Her weak eyes searched the darkness.

  “Who’s there?” she croaked.

  The Beast …

  She knew that gruff voice. She sat up and stared at the dark shape hovering over the foot of her brass bed, softly backlit by moonlight streaming softly through the window.

  “Asa? Asa Edgar, what the devil are you doing in my bedroom?”

  Set the women on me.

  “Asa, what in hell are—” She all at once realized Asa’s voice had spoken inside her head, not out there in the gloom of the room. The shape shone with a faint luminescence, pulsating with each beat of her heart.

  They’ve killed me, Asa whispered despondently.

  She fumbled for the little pull-chain hanging from the shaded lamp on the nightstand, found it and pulled the switch. She blinked in the sudden light, her eyes dry and sandpapery. Between blinks she glimpsed Asa Edgar’s mutilated face and torn-open throat. His one-eyed stare held her briefly, then the light in his eye dimmed and his tall form faded, receding into the out-of-focus background of the room.

  Ghost tree, he said in a voice as empty and cold as a plundered grave.

  Then he was gone. Gone from the room and gone from her head.

  “Oh Asa …” she said with a low moan. Overcome with grief, she clutched at her breast as if to hold back the profound sadness and deep futility that encroached upon her heart.

  The man had done occasional odd jobs for her since Wilbur died, and she had grown fond of the eccentric rambler who called himself sentinel to these hills. When she’d learned that he regularly read the works of William Blake, she had introduced him to the tales of Nathaniel Hawthorne. Many an evening had they sat on her porch while she read aloud to him. The stories from her old paperback copy of Twice-Told Tales always seemed to touch him deeply, as if they satisfied some deep hunger he felt but couldn’t express. One October evening a year ago he’d brought his big book of Blake to show her the strange artwork and read some of the man’s poetry to her, but she hadn’t been able to make much sense of it. When she asked him to explain what he’d read, Asa blushed and admitted that he didn’t really understand much of it, but that the words soothed him and scratched an inner itch he hadn’t known he’d had.

  Theirs had been a peculiar friendship, characterized by unspoken emotional needs and by long periods of silence spent gazing out at the hills. Liza had never spoken a word about the secret history of Widow’s Ridge, nor had she ever mentioned the Helling, but somehow old Asa must’ve known about the area’s shameful past. Why else would his ghost come calling to tell her the Beast had returned? He hadn’t come just to bid her a final farewell. He’d come to warn her. And to tell her something about the ghost tree.

  Set the women on me, he’d said. There was no mistaking the implication of those words. None at all.

  The Helling had begun again. The beast of the dark wood had finally returned to have his way with a new generation of womenfolk and to demand sacrificial blood of innocent males. But why had Asa mentioned the ghost tree? And how had he known about it?

  * * * *

  The ringing phone rescued Rourke from a disorienting nightmare. He sat straight up in bed, breathing hard and sweating. In the dream he’d been running from an unidentified wild animal, and his pulse rate now raced accordingly. It took several scary moments to realize he was in his bed and not fleeing the relentless beast.

  He grabbed the cordless phone from its base, thumbed the Talk button and said, “Rourke.”

  The caller was Dean Elwood, the part-time nightshift dispatch
er. “Sorry to wake you, deputy, but we thought you’d wanna know Judy Lynn Bowen turned up. They’ve got her at Dogwood Medical. Says she was abducted and raped. She’s apparently okay physically, but her mental state is questionable.”

  Rourke was having trouble processing what he was hearing. Coming out of his nightmare-induced fight-or-fight mode, he glanced over his shoulder to make sure nothing was pursuing him, but all he saw was the blank bedroom wall. “Questionable?”

  “Well, yeah. She says she was raped by a monster. Of the supernatural kind.” Elwood chuckled softly. “I’d say that qualifies as questionable, wouldn’t you, Rob?”

  If you’d seen what I saw, you wouldn’t think so, he thought, but what he said was, “So it would seem. We have a man with her?”

  “Roger that. Deputy Sipes took her statement and he’s waiting for the docs to determine disposition. Ask me, I’d say take her to Ridgewood for some intensive psychiatric care.”

  “Tell Sipes I’m on my way.”

  Rourke hung up and jumped into his uniform. Lucy Fur was in the hall, pawing the bottom of the bedroom door and knocking it against the doorframe. Before going to bed, Rourke had banished her from the bedroom because the encounter with the thing in the backyard had left her agitated and in a high state of canine alert. When he’d returned from Mountview Villas, Lucy bared her teeth and growled at him again, leading Rourke to conclude that he still carried the scent of the phantom in the rain.

  He pulled on his boots, strapped on his gun belt and opened the door. Lucy Fur whined and submissively lowered her head as if apologizing for her earlier misplaced expressions of hostility. Rourke reached down and ruffled the fur on the back of her neck. “It’s okay, girl. We’ve all had a rough night.”

  He grabbed his hat and went out the door. As he walked to his car through moonlit mist, he made several glances over his shoulders to make sure nothing was coming up on his flank.

  * * * *

  Judy Lynn Bowen was sitting on the side of the gurney when Rourke swept aside the pale-blue privacy curtain and entered the cloth-walled cubicle. She looked up fearfully, her eyes bloodshot and misty. Wounded. A blue and white hospital gown that was too big for her hung loosely off her left shoulder. Her straw-colored hair was a nest of tangles. Her bare legs bore scratches and bruises that, at first glance, looked as if they might’ve been inked by a psychotic tattoo artist. To Rourke, she looked like a lost child, perhaps raised by wolves and just now rescued from the wilderness. Feral and afraid.