Was it impossible? Eight hundred years? How many would have been killed during that time? How many babies would have been born in this hole? Generation after generation unaware that the world above even existed. Raised like cattle for the slaughterhouse in the bowels of the earth. Veal locked in cages, blinded by the dark, flesh white from lack of sun, mutated by life without light.
“Then what happened?” he whispered.
Lonetree waved the glo-stick at the panels next to the rows of moons. Smooth rock extended beyond the curve of the structure. “Then nothing. The carving stops. But from the look of how they died,” he swept his glowing wand at the vacant stares of the skulls glowering at them from behind their bars, “it looks like the Sumac abandoned the place in a hurry. There’s no sign of a fight in the cave and no male skeletons anywhere.”
“Didn’t your father have any theories?”
“According to the notebook, his best guess was that they were struck by the same disease that hit the rest of the native cultures around that time in history.”
Thinking back to his early American history, Jack remembered that whole populations of Indians were decimated in only a few months after the arrival of European settlers. Suddenly he felt a little glimmer of reality filter back into his life. “Didn’t Indians die from small pox? It was an epidemic, right? Well, if these Sumac could be killed by small pox, then this whole story must be wrong. Maybe this whole thing, the cave, the cages, everything, was just some demented religious ritual. You said yourself that this was common with the Aztecs.”
“I’m not talking about small pox. Their bodies were not affected by disease.”
“What then?” Jack said exasperated that his rationalization was about to disappear. “What did he think it was?”
“Black powder. White men with guns. They could not withstand the kind of damage a gun does to a body.”
Jack still held out hope that Lonetree was wrong. He searched for a breakdown in the logic. He seized on the missing link. “O.K. Let’s suppose all of this is true. The shaman. The lost tribe. These life-giving powers from the rituals. Let’s just say this incredibly implausible and unbelievable thing is true. What in the hell does any of this have to do with my family?”
Lonetree held out his brother’s notebook. “My brother discovered that this is more than history. This is alive. This is happening now. Someone found the cave and started the rituals again.”
“Huckley? He’s doing this?”
“The girl you saw in the truck of his car? She was on her way here to be sacrificed.”
Jack’s throat was dry, painfully so. He dragged his tongue across is lips. He didn’t want to ask the next question but he could hold it back. “And they believe…”
“That the ritual prolongs their lives. Gives them powers. So you see, it doesn’t matter if you believe me or not. It doesn’t really matter if you believe the ritual works. All that matters is that they believe it works. They believe they’ve found immortality.”
“But…but that doesn’t explain why they want Sarah. You said yourself that Huckley took an unbelievable risk going after her like that. Why do they want her so bad?”
Lonetree shook his head. “I don’t know.”
“Bullshit. You know and you’re not telling me.”
“I wish I did, Jack. It would be helpful. All I know is that Huckley sensed something about her that made the risk worth it. You’ve found out that Huckley isn’t normal. He’s psychic, a telepath. Look, I know this is hard to swallow. This supernatural hocus-pocus drives me crazy too. But some things are certain. Men are using this cave for ritual human sacrifices. These same men tortured and killed my brother because he was getting too close to their secret. These same men are after your little girl and they will not stop until they capture her and sacrifice her.”
“Why don’t you kill them? That’s what you want right? What’s stopping you? Why are you bringing my family into this?”
“I told you before, I don’t know who all of them are. I know Huckley and a few of the others. But I know there are more. I know there’s a leader but he’s careful not to expose himself. Even the others only refer to him as the Boss. I need a way to flush him out in the open.”
A pit formed in Jack’s stomach as he realized Lonetree’s plan. Finally, he understood why Lonetree brought him to this place, why he needed his help.
“You want to use Sarah as bait,” he whispered.
“It’s in your interest, Jack. The only way they’ll stop is if they’re dead.”
“Are you crazy? I’m not going to…you’re out of your mind.”
“Who knows how many people they’ve killed. Look at this.” Lonetree dropped to his knees and spread out the bundle of loose papers that had been stuffed in the notebook. They were missing person notices. All young girls. All from states bordering Maryland. “This is only from the past few years. My brother plotted the missing persons reports over the past ten years on a map.” He slapped the map over the other pages. It showed a section of the U.S. from Maine to South Carolina and west to the Mississippi. Little dots pinpointed where girls had gone missing. Little clusters appeared around major cities, but most noticeable was a bulging ribbon of color stretching up into Pennsylvania and down into West Virginia and edging into the neighboring states. At the center of the ribbon was the nexus of the disappearances, Prescott City.
“How could the authorities not notice this?” Jack asked.
“Multiple jurisdictions. This cluster covers five different states.”
Jack stood up. “We’ve got to call the police. Tell them everything.”
“And watch these guys disappear? No, we’ve got to do this ourselves. Don’t you get it? If we don’t stop them they will get Sarah eventually. And they’ll go on killing these kids. Sarah is the perfect—”
“Never. I’m not going to put her in danger. I…I would never…what the hell?”
Jack’s voice trailed away. He felt the muscles in his stomach tighten. Up on the wall behind the stone structure he saw a light. Dim at first, like a reflection off shiny rock. There then gone. His first thought was that there was someone else in the cave. But the light glowed brighter. It was coming from the rock.
Lonetree turned to follow Jack’s line of sight. “What is it?”
“Don’t you see it? A light up on the wall.”
“Where?”
“There. Right in front of you. Don’t tell me you can’t see it.”
“I don’t see anything. What are you talking about?”
Jack didn’t reply. He was mesmerized by the light, glowing brightly now, rolling down the side of the cave wall. It was beautiful, like how he imagined an angel might appear when he was a child. He felt the heat of it against his face and breathed in deep as if he might fill his body with its warmth. He could hear Lonetree yelling at him but he couldn’t understand what he was saying. He tried to tell him to speak more clearly but when tried to turn toward Lonetree Jack realized he couldn’t move.
Jack willed himself to move but his body didn’t respond. He was helpless as the light moved closer and closer toward him. It pulsed, growing larger with each beat. He no longer felt any warmth from the light. It was replaced by a cold fear that something terrible was about to happen.
FIFTY-SIX
Stark branches faded into grey ghosts behind the fog heralding the approach of night. The cold air rolled over the mountains, damp and heavy, an invisible wave about to crash against the homes lying in the valley. The sun slipped below the horizon without fanfare, the only testament to its passing a slight darkening in the shade of grey that blanketed the sky. It was the worse time of year for living things. The time of the longest nights, where the sun escaped its life-giving responsibilities by drifting south, day after day, relinquishing its province to the night.