"Ready?" he grunted.
I lied and said "yes." After all, at this point, we weren't more than 30 or 40 feet from the old woman's door.
Every scenario imaginable flashed through my mind on the way up that hill — Kelto and B.C. held prisoner by that maniacal mountain of madness… or, worse yet, both dead… or…
Madden didn't even pretend to knock; he kicked, and the door flew open.
If Kelto's face was white, B.C.'s was even whiter. They were in a state of shock.
Glenna Austin was again positioned on the far side of the room in her rocking chair, still wrapped in her mismatched shawls designed to shelter her from the chill. As usual, she was glowering, but this time, there was a difference. Her mouth was slack and her tongue protruded. The perpetually pasty face was bloated and discolored.
"What the hell is going on here?" Madden fumed.
"That's the way we found her," Kelto protested.
B.C. raced across the room and threw her arms around my neck. She was shivering and crying. Her words were racked out by sobs.
Consolation has never been my long suit. It's not that I don't feel compassion; it's just that I'm not very good at expressing it. Besides, in this case, there wasn't much to do but hold on, and B.C. was doing that. I patted her on the back and mumbled something inane like "everything will be all right."
Kelto was equally shaken. His haunting brown eyes darted from Madden to me and back to the lifeless form of the old woman. He was frantically searching through the maze of pockets in his tattered old fatigue jacket.
"I heard from the Emissary," he blurted out. "I've got his note here somewhere." Finally his trembling hand emerged with a crumpled piece of paper which he shoved at me.
It was a piece of waterlined graph paper, torn in half and carelessly folded. It said simply:
THE DAY OF THE EQUINOCTIAL AWAKENING IS AT HAND. ALL IS PREPARED. WE WILL ACHIEVE ALL THAT IS GLORIOUS.
There was no signature.
I read it a second time and handed it to Madden. He had to hold it down by the flickering light of the candle to read it.
"What the hell does this mean?" he grunted.
"It's from the Emissary," Kelto answered piously.
"And just who is this so-called Emissary?" Jake came back at him.
Kelto dejectedly shook his head. "I don't know." He shoved his hands down in his jacket pocket and glanced over at the lifeless form of Glenna Austin. "I simply know that every eleven years there is an emergence, and that the Emissary is the one who prepares for the reawakening of the Ancient of Ancients."
Madden turned and looked at me. He was frustrated. More than that, he was uncomfortable with the mystical elements of Kelto's pronouncements.
"How did you get this?" I asked, pointing to the piece of paper.
Kelto shrugged. "I found it on my pillow when I returned to my room last night."
"Then you don't know who left it?"
Kelto shook his head.
"What the hell were you doing out there?" Jake fumed. "I gave orders that everyone was supposed to be housed in the village last night. Any one of my men could have mistaken you for one of those damn things and filled you full of holes. Or worse than that, you could have run into one of 'em and you wouldn't be any better off than that old lady over there."
"I have nothing to fear from your so-called creature, Constable Madden. They believe that I am one of them."
"How do I know you're not one of them?" Jake growled.
"I think he's telling the truth, Jake. Everything he's told me so far has checked out."
"What about the old lady?" Jake insisted. "Isn't she supposed to be one of the chosen?"
"She thought she was." I tried to slip in a sly grin, but it didn't work.
Jake was glowering at me again. "If these so-called true believers are supposed to be safe from this damn thing, how come the old lady is sitting over there very, very dead?"
"The thing you keep referring to as the creature didn't do that," Kelto said calmly.
"Then who did?" Madden was right up in the young man's face.
"The Emissary!"
Madden stared back at the young man, his mind rebelling. It was obvious Kelto's cool demeanor and almost academic approach to the situation annoyed him. "You want me to believe this incredible yarn, yet you can't even tell me who gave you the damn note."
"I can assure you that the Emissary walks among us," Kelto said confidently. "Otherwise, he would arouse too much suspicion as he made his preparations."
"Preparations for what?" Madden fumed.
"Sate will awaken; it is so written in the Book of Commitments."
Madden turned away from the young man in disgust and walked back over to the body of Glenna Austin. He studied her for a moment, then turned to B.C. "Okay," he began, his voice softening, "tell me what you saw when you came in here."
Brenda Cashman was hugging herself against the pervading chill. In the long shadows of the flickering candle, she somehow looked thinner and even more vulnerable than usual. She walked over to the door, her finger pensively stroking her lower lip and began to retrace her steps. "We just came in. We didn't knock because the door was ajar. We both commented that it was strange that the old woman would leave the door open because it was so damp and chilly. We could see that there was a candle burning, and we figured she had to be here."
Kelto confirmed it all with a nod.
"Kelto saw her first. From just inside the doorway it looked like she was just sitting in the rocking chair, maybe sleeping. I went over to wake her and, well, you can see what I found."
Madden's deeply furrowed frown had turned into a face mirroring compassion. Now it was Brenda who was caught up in the ugly little scene, and it made a difference.
"Did you check her?" he asked.
B.C. nodded. "She's been dead awhile. As E.G. well knows, I'm no authority on this kind of thing, but her skin is cold and hard to the touch. With all those wraps around her, I can't tell if there is any swelling or discoloration to anything other than her face."
Jake was still staring at the dead woman when I interrupted. "There's something you need to see."
With B.C. and Kelto following, I led the trio out the door and around to the rear of the cabin to the cliff overlooking the hidden inlet. Jake stared down into the fog-choked crevice with a puzzled look on his face. "I discovered this last night."
The look on Madden's face told me he hadn't put the two events together.
"You were still tending to Vernice when I came out here to talk to the old woman.
When she didn't answer, I started poking around the house, looking in the windows, doing anything I could think of to learn something about what was going on here. I could hear the rushing and surging of water. I knew I was several hundred yards from the shore, but I was certain about what I heard. That's when I discovered this hidden inlet. There's water down there, and it's rushing in either through some underground cave or the land west of here is a natural bridge."
Jake stared down into the yawning blackness, listening to the dull constant rumble of the swirling waters. "Damn," he muttered, "all these years and I had no idea there was anything like this back here."
"Well, it's sheer speculation on my part, but I've got one of those gut feelings."
"What's your gut tellin' you this time?" Jake asked.
"I figure that inlet down there is the very reason old lady Austin was here in the first place."