Daemon of the Dark Wood Read online

  “Judy Lynn, I’m Deputy Rourke,” he said, removing his Stetson.

  Relief flushed some of the fear from her face as she took in Rourke’s uniform, her eyes lingering on the pistol holstered on his hip. It seemed to Rourke that she was reassured by the gun, that she fully expected he might have to use it to defend what was left of her honor and her innocence. “Are you up to a few more questions?”

  She shrugged, then sullenly pulled the gown up to cover her bare shoulder. “I guess.”

  “I know you’ve already talked to Deputy Sipes, so I’ll keep it short. You must be anxious to get home.”

  Judy Lynn nodded, eyes downcast. “If they don’t send me to the crazy house.”

  “You think they don’t believe your story?” He moved a little closer, but not close enough to crowd her and make her feel cornered.

  “How could they? I can’t hardly believe it myself, you know? You won’t believe me either.”

  “You might be wrong about that. Try me.”

  “Can you make them let me go home?” she challenged, looking him in the eyes. A tear trickled down her cheek.

  “That’ll be up to the doctors and your mom, but I might be able to give them a push in the right direction.” He gave her what he hoped was a knowing smile.

  She shrugged, then shook her head as she absently stared at the floor tiles. “What’s the point? They don’t even believe I was raped. I was, though. Even though there’s no physical evidence, I was. By a monster. I don’t know if he was a ghost or demon, but I know what he did to me.”

  “Can you describe him for me?”

  She glanced up sharply at him, clearly surprised that he was taking her seriously enough to ask for a description of her ghostly rapist. “Yeah, if you promise not to make fun of me behind my back.”

  “I wouldn’t do that. I promise you.”

  Judy Lynn closed her eyes and took a deep, shuddering breath. Keeping her eyes shut tightly, she said, “He was part man, part animal, like something out of a scary fairy tale. He had horns on his head, like the devil, and hooves for feet. His legs were like horse’s legs, but thicker. I don’t think he had a tail, though. I didn’t see one. He had a face like a goat-man with a mossy beard, and his teeth looked like they were made out of brown wood. His eyes … they were so dark I couldn’t see what color they were, but sometimes they shined and then they looked red. He had a great big woody … erection. Greenish purple. And he smelled like … like a barnyard, only sweet, like rotten meat. But the thing is, he wasn’t really there. I mean, he was, but he wasn’t. Like he was made out of electricity or dirty light. When he touched me, it wasn’t like a man touching me but like being touched by, I dunno, frozen fog? That’s why they didn’t find any physical evidence that he raped me. Because he’s not physical. He is but he’s not.” She opened her eyes. “Crazy as hell, huh? Bring on the straightjacket.”

  “No, it’s not crazy. Fantastic maybe, but you’re not the first to see something that can’t be explained.”

  Then Judy Lynn Bowen changed. From the illusion of the lost, feral child something else emerged—something wantonly adult, bold and dangerous. She fixed him with a gaze so penetrating that he took a step backward and tensed his muscles as if anticipating an attack.

  She suddenly cried, “You saw him! You did, didn’t you. You saw the son of a bitch.”

  Taken aback, Rourke wondered how she could know that. What had she seen in his eyes that gave him away? “I didn’t say that,” he said, raising his empty hands in front of him.

  “You did. You saw him.” She smiled. It was a strange smile, sensual and blatantly seductive. Her tongue flicked out to moisten her dry lips. “You know I’m not crazy.”

  “I saw something,” he said, trying to maintain an air of skepticism. “But it was raining too hard to get a good look at it.”

  “Son of a bitch, you did.” Then her face collapsed around a crescent frown and her tone turned angry. “But you won’t tell anybody because you’re afraid they’ll think you’re crazy too. You’re too chickenshit to tell the truth.”

  “I just told you, didn’t I?” He folded his arms across his chest, his hat dangling from his fingers.

  “Yeah, well I’ll tell you something I didn’t tell anybody else,” she said, jutting her chin defiantly. “I know what he wants. I know what he wants us to do. He showed me. He put pictures in my head. And he’ll make those other women do it, if you don’t stop them.”

  Rourke had debriefed Sipes when he first arrived at the hospital, and Sipes told him that Judy Lynn claimed the “monster” was holding three other women captive in a cave near Widow’s Ridge, so Rourke knew what she meant by “those other women.” She’d recognized Gladys Gladstone and Sarah Melton, but she hadn’t recognized the third woman.

  “I’m listening,” he said. “Go ahead.”

  She flashed him a whorish smile and said, “I’ll tell you if you make them let me go home. Otherwise, forget it. You’ll just have to wait and find out when the bodies turn up.”

  “I can’t make them do anything. But if you have foreknowledge of a capital crime, you have a legal and moral responsibility to report it. If you don’t, you could be charged with conspiracy to commit murder. Do you understand what I’m saying? You could go to jail if you don’t tell.”

  “Yeah, I get it. But I’m crazy, remember? They can’t hold me responsible. Hell, I hallucinated the whole thing, don’t ya know? I’m the psycho chick who ran off into the woods because she was afraid to get married. That’s what they’re all thinking. I’m just another ditzy runaway bride.”

  “That’s not what I think. I know something bad happened to you. Something that wasn’t your fault. But you have to tell me what—”

  “Judy Lynn,” bellowed Mildred Bowen as she stepped brusquely inside the privacy curtains, totally ignoring Rourke. She handed Judy Lynn a clean set of folded clothes. “Put these on, honey, I’m taking you home.”

  “Mrs. Bowen,” he said, “I need a few more minutes with your daughter if—”

  “Not tonight,” said the older woman. She was a tall, angular woman with a chiseled jaw and severe eyes. She looked every bit the hard-shell Christian she was. “I’m taking my baby home. She’s been through enough hell for one night.”

  “Thank God,” said Judy Lynn, “I’m dying for a cigarette.” Then she smirked at Rourke, and he marveled at the way she’d changed before his eyes from a lost little girl to a mockingly sly femme fatale.

  “She needs to get dressed,” Mrs. Bowen said, “so you’ll have to step outside now, officer.”

  Rourke nodded, set his Stetson on his head and reluctantly started away. Then he turned back and said, “Remember what we talked about, Judy Lynn. I’ll be in touch real soon.”

  She puckered her lips and kissed the air, effectively kissing him off.

  Chapter Sixteen

  * * *

  Rourke saw Trey Knott hunched over a medical chart at the ER nursing station, his brow knotted with concentration as he scribbled a notation. The doctor looked up when Rourke approached the large horseshoe-shaped counter. Knott’s face was haggard, his eyes bloodshot. If Rourke didn’t know better, he might’ve thought the good doctor was coming off a bender.

  “You’re sending Judy Lynn home?” Rourke asked.

  Knott nodded and closed the chart. “She’s not a danger to herself or to others, therefore she’s not a candidate for commitment.”

  “What’d you make of her wild story?”

  Knott leaned back in the chair and folded his arms over his chest. “To tell you the truth, I don’t know what to make of it. Confabulation, maybe. But I don’t think she’s delusional. She’s certainly suffered a psychological trauma of some sort, but the ER doctor’s exam revealed no evidence of forcible intercourse. Unless she was raped by a man with a very small penis and who was careful enough not to leave ejaculate, she wasn’t raped at all.”

  “She tell you about the other women in the cave?”

>   “She did.” Knott absently fiddled with the ball-point pen in his right hand.

  Rourke leaned his forearms on the countertop. “She identified two of them to Deputy Sipes. Both women have been reported as missing.”

  Knott abruptly leaned forward. “That certainly lends credence to her story. I suppose you’ll have to take a search party up the mountain to look for that cave.”

  “We’ll need your help with that, since you’re the one who found Judy Lynn. You can show us exactly where you picked her up?”

  “Close to it. I remember there was a Watch For Falling Rocks sign near the spot where she ran in front of me.”

  Rourke nodded. “I know it’s been a long night for you, but we’ll need you bright and early—which is only a couple of hours from now.”

  A heavyset nurse sat down at the opposite end of the desk and opened a chart.

  Dr. Knott stood and motioned for Rourke to follow him out of the nursing station. They walked far enough down the corridor to be out of earshot of eavesdroppers. Knott’s expression turned grave. “There’s something you should know, Rob,” he said, keeping his voice just above a whisper.

  “Okay.” Rourke leaned close so as not to miss what Knott was about to impart.

  “The hypnotic cry she says she heard? I heard something just like that a few hours ago outside my house. It affected my wife. She ran out of the house, like she had to answer the call. When I tried to stop her, she became extremely violent and I ended up having to hospitalize her.”

  “Whoa. That’s … I’m sorry to hear it, Doc.” Rourke immediately thought of the two young women at Mountview Villas. And about the rain-thing he’d seen with his own disbelieving eyes. In his mind’s eye he saw Mrs. Gladstone beaning the sheriff with an iron skillet.

  Knott wasn’t done. He said, “A patient of mine also reported hearing a similar sound that sent her into a state of panic. As much as I hate to admit it, I think something is out there, something with the ability to influence human behavior with its cry. What the hell could do that, Rob?”

  “Damned if I know. But I think I may’ve seen it tonight. Whatever the hell it is. It was raining hard and I didn’t get a good look at it, but what I did see was … I don’t know what it was, but it was like nothing I’ve ever seen before.”

  “What did it look like?”

  “Like I said, I didn’t get a good look at it.”

  Knott gave him an appraising stare, then after a moment of thoughtful silence, he said, “You know the wildlife in our area, right?”

  Rourke nodded.

  “Do you know of any animal whose cry can turn people wild?”

  “There ain’t no such animal,” said Rourke. “There’s no such critter anywhere in the world, as far as I know.”

  Knott nodded and then said, “Not in this world.”

  * * * *

  While Dr. Knott finished his paperwork, Rourke slipped back to the exam area where he’d interviewed Judy Lynn and found the hospital gown she’d left on the exam table. With a pair of banding scissors, he cut off a swatch of the gown and stuck it in his pocket.

  A few minutes later, Rourke raised HQ on the cruiser’s radio and told the dispatcher to call in all law-enforcement and fire-department personnel, including the roster of volunteer firemen. “I want a search party ready to go at first light,” he said. “No stragglers. And send a deputy to Asa Edgar’s cabin to bring him in for questioning.”

  Knott was in the passenger seat, talking into his cell phone. “How’s my wife?” he asked. After a pause, he said, “Call my cell if there’s any change. Thanks.” Then he closed the phone and stuck it in his pocket.

  “How is she?” Rourke asked as he drove out of the hospital parking lot and into the street.

  “Sleeping. I hope to God she’s all right when she wakes up.”

  “She’ll be fine,” said Rourke. “She’s got a damn good doctor.”

  “Thanks,” Knott muttered. “Normally, it’s not sound practice for a psychiatrist to treat a close family member, but …”

  “But this isn’t your normal situation.”

  “No, it’s not.”

  Rourke adjusted the rearview mirror, not because there was anything to see back there other than the trailing blanket of fog glowing red in the cruiser’s taillights but because he needed to do something with his hands besides steer the vehicle. He tended to fidget whenever he was nervous or uncomfortable, and right now, he was both. His nerves were still quietly thrumming from his backyard encounter with the phantasmal creature, and being at such close quarters with a man whose wife was psychologically reeling from a strange encounter of her own, Rourke couldn’t help but feel a stab of sympathy for the husband.

  His stomach growled, and he realized he might be able to level things out with a comforting plate of food. “What say we grab some grub while we have the time? That truck-stop just off the Interstate serves up a good breakfast. Good coffee, too.”

  “I’m not really hungry, but I suppose I should eat something.”

  “When you walk in and smell that hot griddle, you’ll find your appetite quick enough. The truckers say the Trucking-A is where you go to find a lost appetite.”

  Knott grunted.

  Rourke gunned the engine and turned the wipers up a notch to clear the fog off the windscreen.

  They rode in uneasy silence toward the Interstate. The fog blotted out the surrounding mountains. Rourke’s stomach growled.

  * * * *

  Sharyn sat on the edge of the bed and opened the dummy book, Smuggler’s Nook. She’d purchased it on a whim from an Atlanta novelty shop several years ago, thinking at the time that she might one day have cause to use it, and sure enough, that day came when she reported for her current admission to the hospital. When the staff checked her belongings for sharps and drugs, they didn’t find what she’d secreted in Smuggler’s Nook.

  She opened the hardbound volume, thumbed to the hidden compartment in the back of the book and extracted her cell phone. Cell phones were considered contraband at Ridgewood; they were deemed non-therapeutic for the treatment milieu. There was a pay phone out in the hall, but middle-of-the-night calls were prohibited, so Sharyn used her cell to phone Alfred Thorn.

  He answered sleepily on the fourth ring. “Y’ello.”

  “Al, it’s me,” she said, speaking as quietly as she could. “Sorry to wake you, but—”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing’s wrong with me,” she said, a little too loud and too assertively. “But things are happening. Things related to what we talked about earlier.”

  “What, the mythology?”

  “Yes. Dr. Knott just admitted his own wife here. He told me she turned violent after hearing a mysterious cry in the wilderness. He heard it too! He told me so himself.”

  “Good lord.”

  “I couldn’t wait to tell you. I knew you’d want to know right away.”

  She heard him yawn. Then he said, “Yes, well I could’ve used another hour of sack time. I was up rather late. And there’s not anything I can do right now with this information. Is there?”

  “Uh, no, I guess not. I’m sorry. I couldn’t sleep and you’re the only one I could talk to about this.”

  “It’s all right, dear. I’m waking up.” He yawned again. “So Dr. Knott told you about his wife? Why would he do that? Hardly seems professional.”

  “That’s how shook up the man was. He heard it, Al. I mean, my God …”

  “Yeah, I got that.”

  “I told you I’m not nuts.”

  “Never doubted it.”

  “What are we going to do?”

  “Well, I’m going to keep digging until I find out what’s buried beneath the local legend. And you’re going to keep yourself together until we get the whole thing cleared up.”

  “You’re not getting it, Al. There’s something out there, something real. This isn’t an academic exercise. It’s not something you can ‘clear up’ with facts. Don’
t you see that?”

  “Sharyn, I have no idea what sort of animal can make a sound that drives people … wild—if that’s what in fact happened—but I can’t believe it will turn out to be any kind of supernatural beastie. I’m sorry, I just can’t.”

  “Goddammit, Alfred, get your head out of your journals and smell the feces before you end up wearing it.” She realized she was nearly shouting and lowered her voice. “I’m sorry, but you’re not grasping the reality of the situation here.”

  Thorn’s heavy sigh sounded like a stiff gust of wind in the cell’s tiny earpiece. He said, “Listen, love, I never should’ve showed you those journal pages or told you about my project. It was totally insensitive of me and I humbly apologize.”

  “You’re pissing me off, Alfred. Stop treating me like a mental invalid and hear what I’m saying. This thing is real. It’s having a real effect on real people. And apparently we’re the only ones with a clue as to what’s really happening. We have a responsibility here.”

  “To do what? Tell everybody to beware the ancient god of the woodlands? Just because we’re both tenured doesn’t mean we can’t make ourselves look like fools in the eyes of our colleagues and in the community at large.”

  “Yeah, well fuck you, Al. I’m thoroughly disappointed in you. I never imagined you’d be the one to let me down.”

  “Calm down, Sharyn. Calm down and just listen. I’m not letting you down. I’m trying to protect you from yourself. I don’t know what it is you think we should do, but whatever it is, I seriously doubt it would be to the good. Now, I’ve been trying to figure out what possibly could’ve made the womenfolk of Widow’s Ridge turn on their menfolk and slaughter them, and so far I haven’t come up with a single plausible idea. You seem to be convinced that it was a Dionysian creature with supernatural powers, but I’m not ready to make that leap myself. Not yet, anyway. You’re approaching the whole thing from a position of panic, and I’m trying to use my allotted powers of reasoning. I mean, how do you know that Dr. Knott’s wife doesn’t have a history of mental problems or that she might’ve gone ga-ga even if they hadn’t heard that mysterious cry? I’m just cautioning you against jumping to unfounded conclusions, that’s all I’m doing. Don’t you see that?”