Then he was suddenly at the door. It wasn’t as if he had run a few inches at a time until he had made it to the door; it was more like he just disappeared from the middle of his yard and reappeared at his front doorstep.
James reached for the door, but before his hand touched the knob, the door slowly began creaking open on its own.
God, don’t look at the floor, please don’t let me look at the floor.
Standing inside the door was a strange combination of James and the beast. It looked like a variation of the villain Two-Face in the Batman comics. The thing in the door was split down the middle with one half looking like a mirror image of James, and the other half looking like the beast-thing that he seen in Bob McCoy’s video.
The James-beast-thing pointed toward the floor.
Don’t look at the floor.
The James-beast-thing began to laugh in a horrible gurgling voice that echoed strangely through the house. It seemed the echoes grew louder the more they repeated themselves until the sound was deafening and James was forced to cover his ears.
James looked at the floor.
Angie’s arm and hand were visible from behind the James-beast-thing’s legs, as was the blood splotched wedding band on her finger.
James awoke with a jerk, clutching his feather pillow with both fists. Before, when he’d awake from one of the dreams of his wife’s death, which now haunted his precious few hours of real sleep, he would be crying. But no tears were in his eyes now. His mind was set on the vision he had before his dream. His mind was set on revenge.
He dressed quickly. He glanced at a small battery-powered alarm clock sitting by his bed: 8:15 a.m. He’d slept late. Bill and Sam would already be up.
James walked down the hall and past both security doors that hadn’t been locked since the inmates had been transferred to Jasper. He trudged on, not even exchanging pleasantries with Debra when she wished him a good morning.
He opened the door to Bill’s office without knocking.
Bill and Emilio were in the office going over some of the final details of the game wardens’ schedules when James burst through the door.
From the perturbed look on Bill’s face, he was probably about to remind James about the knock-on-the-sheriff’s-office-door-before-entering-by-God policy, but he only managed to get out, “Ja… ”
“Have you ever heard of the Beulah Church of God?”
Bill and Emilio seemed confused. They were only silent for about two and a half seconds, but it was too long for James.
“I saw that damn thing’s den,” James snapped. “It’s under an abandoned church called the Beulah Church of God.”
Bill spoke up, “There used to be a black church down an old dirt road just past Old Phelps Road. I think it was called Beulah Land or something.”
“Well, what are we waiting for?” Emilio said coming out of his seat.
As they started out the door to the Sheriff’s Office Bill called out down the hall to the dispatch office, “Debra, tell Banks to meet us at the city limits on North 87.”
“Is he at home?” Debra called back.
“No, he’s got the daytime shift in the city limits today.”
“Do we need to contact anyone else?” Emilio asked. “What about Sam?”
“Sam’s out at his dad’s place. It’ll take him too long to get here,” Bill said as he stepped out of the building and started across the parking lot at a trot, “And there’s only one road leading to that church and too many cars will make too much noise.”
Bill went to his cruiser and James and Emilio ran across the parking lot toward Emilio’s SUV.
“You drive,” Emilio told James.
At first James didn’t know why Emilio wanted him to drive, but as soon as they got in the Blazer, Emilio took the AR-15 down from where it was attached to the roll-cage behind the seats and laid it across his lap. James recalled that he had seen several marksmanship awards and trophies on Emilio’s mantle, including a second place trophy from a statewide NRA meet in San Antonio. Emilio checked the rifle’s magazine, then checked its chamber. Satisfied that the rifle was ready for action, he set it in the seat beside him, the barrel pointing toward the floorboard.
Bill led James and Emilio out of town. At the city limits sign they were joined by John Banks' city patrol car. The three patrol cars sped out of town at around ninety miles an hour without their lights or sirens. Only three miles out of Newton, at the familiar intersection of Highway 87 and Farm to Market Road 1414, they turned right, the opposite direction of James’ house. From there they continued about five more miles, when Bill put on his right blinker. Instead of turning right, he moved off the shoulderless road and got out and started walking to the Emilio’s SUV, which had pulled off the road behind him.
“What’s he doing?” James asked, as they pulled off the road.
Emilio pointed at what was less of a road and more of a break in the trees to the left of Farm Road 1414. Although Emilio was fairly new to the county, as a game warden he had made it his business to know every hiking trail and old logging road in his area. “That old road hasn’t been used for anything but logging and illegal hunting since the seventies. His car’ll never make it. Hell, I’m not sure we can.”
James rolled down his window to talk to Bill, but the sheriff passed up his door, opened the door, and behind him and got in. At almost the same time the right rear door opened and John got in the other side.
Emilio reached down in the floorboard and pushed the four-wheel drive lever to: 4W LOW. He sat back up and said, “Okay, let’s go.”
The SUV, now set in low-geared four-wheel drive, crossed the road then the ditch, and proceeded on down a barely visible road. Wheel ruts weren’t visible except where they had turned to mud holes. There were even chest high pine saplings growing in the middle of the road. These saplings were bent almost flat to the ground as the SUV passed over them and as they came out the other side they snapped back up, though they were not quite as straight up and down as before the four-wheel-drive ran over them.
Everyone sat in silence as the truck made its way down the path.
James looked in the rear view mirror at John Banks. He could see the confusion on the man’s face. The police chief was the only one present who didn’t know what was going on, but from what James knew about him, he wasn’t the type that liked to admit he didn’t understand a situation. He sat in silence nervously fidgeting with his seatbelt strap. Finally his curiosity got the better of him.
John shifted nervously in his seat. “What’s this all about, Bill?” John asked, his round head bobbing on his shoulders as the truck plunged through yet another mud hole.
Bill didn’t answer immediately. James knew Bill had informed Chief Deputy Carl Price about James’ visions, since he was Bill’s second-in-command at the Sheriff’s Department, but they had decided against telling Police Chief Banks. Telling John would be like placing an ad in the Newton County Reporter, or putting up a billboard downtown. John told his wife, Lula, just about everything, and Lula Banks was good friends with Alice Pender, the town gossip. It would only be a matter of hours, if not minutes, before their little secret became common knowledge in Newton.
John was about to repeat the question when Emilio helped Bill out with a simple, yet effective, fib. “A local kid was down this road last night with his girlfriend and thought he saw some sort of bear-like animal at the old Beulah Church.”
Only a four-wheel-drive could make it down this dirt road, and very few kids had access to one of these. And if this kid had a four-wheel-drive it was very doubtful he would pull all the way down the road to the Beulah Church just to do a little groping when ducking behind the first row of trees would do just as good. Nonetheless, John fell for it, hook, line, and sinker.