A faint rustling noise from the far side. “Harrison?” came a hoarse, oddly accented voice.
“Yes, it’s Harrison. We have to talk — about the police who are watching your place. Something’s about to happen — something bad.”
A pause.
“I’ve got someone with me. Maybe he can do something to stop it.”
“What someone?” asked the voice from beyond the wall.
“His name’s Logan. He’s not from around these parts. And he’s not here to judge you. He’s here to help.” And with this, Albright turned back and gave Logan a significant look.
For a moment, nothing happened. And then there was an audible stirring on the far side: a sliding, shifting sound, along with the creak of metal. Then a narrow opening appeared in the wall — an entrance so well disguised that Logan would never have known it was there. The doorlike structure pushed outward — and Logan came face-to-face with a gaunt man about six feet four, with long, unkempt hair, deeply set brown eyes, and a beard that reached down to his chest. His ragged clothes were a mass of patches and rude stitching. His huge hands were dirty and heavily callused from years of manual labor. He looked at Albright, then at Logan — his expression becoming suspicious — before turning back to Albright again.
“Harrison,” he said.
“Nahum, we need to talk to your family — now. It’s very important. Vitally important.”
The man called Nahum scratched himself, seemed to ponder this a moment. Then wordlessly he stepped aside, allowing them admittance.
Logan ducked through the low enclosure — then stopped short, staring around in surprise.
30
In his travels as an enigmalogist, Logan had witnessed many strange things and exotic places: hidden tombs of Egyptian kings; the watery depths of Scottish lochs; the crumbling crypts of Romanian castles. But as he looked around, he had to stop and remind himself that he was standing on modern American soil. The Blakeney compound — at least, as much as he could see of it — looked like nothing so much as an ancient colony such as Jamestown or Plymouth. The site had been cut out of the living forest, and it used both impenetrable rocky cliff faces and the thick wall of twigs as protection from the outside world. He could see that the cleared area consisted of perhaps twenty-five acres or more. Dozens of buildings, some of them clearly a hundred or even two hundred years old, rose out of the grass. Many of them were crumbling, in the final stages of disrepair; others had been restored and expanded over time until they were rambling structures of the most bizarre architecture imaginable. Some of the buildings had tiled roofs; others were thatched or covered in wattle and daub. There was a smithy; a forge; what appeared to be a glassblowing apparatus; several barns; pens for poultry and livestock. Hogs wandered the area unvexed. Far ahead — toward the front of the property — were the outbuildings and fenced area for crops that he had spied on his first visit. There was no apparent order or planning to the community; it, along with the buildings it contained, appeared to simply have grown by accretion, making for confusion and a jumbled riot of workable, habitable, and barely habitable buildings. A few structures had in fact collapsed in on themselves and apparently been left to rot.
One building loomed over all — the vast, many-winged, gambrel-roofed structure whose upper stories he had previously seen from over the wall. It rose to his left, near the center of the cleared area, its back section close to the cliff face. It had been repaired, expanded, and remodeled so many times that it was impossible to guess its age or original design. One thing Logan was sure of: this sagging, lichen-encrusted building was the heart of the compound.
He had been staring, openmouthed. Now he realized that — silently, almost stealthily — a number of people had emerged from various places and approached them. They had formed a semicircle before Logan and Albright, with the man named Nahum at their center. They all wore similar dress — rude homespun, patched and stitched to the last degree. Logan counted over a dozen. They were of all ages, from aged matriarchs to sturdy middle-aged men to an infant, sleeping in the arms of a young woman.
Recollecting himself, Logan tried to reach out to this ragtag assortment with his mind; tried to understand the emotions they were feeling. He sensed, not surprisingly, suspicion. He also sensed independence, fierce familial loyalty — and confusion. But he sensed no feelings of violence; none of the baby-stealing, backpacker-murdering emotions that, for example, were all too evidently possible in the mind of a Saul Woden. No: the overriding emotion Logan became aware of here… was fear.
Quickly, he assembled a mental picture of the group that stood before him: a close-knit, if admittedly uncouth and backward, extended family — one that had endured hostility and suspicion from the locals for so many years that they had grown extremely withdrawn. It was this, he expected, that had prompted their repulsion of his initial visit.
But what surprised him most — what he could not understand — was the strong, almost overpowering feeling of fear he sensed from the assemblage. Fear: and the unwelcome anticipation of some dread if familiar event that, it seemed, was about to happen.
Nahum turned to the assemblage and made a few hand gestures. Most of the crowd — after more furtive, curious looks at Logan — began to disperse, shuffling off in this or that direction, disappearing into dark doorways or headed toward the cultivated fields. Only Nahum and two men remained behind. The other two were older than Nahum, but whether they included his father, brothers, uncles, or some less savory combination, Logan could not imagine. What was clear was that these three constituted the elders of the community.
Now Nahum gestured to a fire pit some twenty yards away, surrounded by a series of long benches fashioned out of split logs. The three men started toward it, Albright and Logan following. The elders sat down on one of the log seats, while the visitors took seats across from them. The three elders conversed together a moment in low tones. And then Nahum — apparently the appointed spokesman — pointed to the man on his left, whose beard was even longer than his own. “Aaron,” he said in his strange, rough accent. Then he pointed to the wizened, elderly figure seated on his right. “Esau.”
Logan placed his hand on his own breast. “Jeremy. Jeremy Logan.”
Albright spread his legs, placed his hands on his knees. “Nahum,” he said, “we’ve been acquaintances of sorts, ever since we were young folk.”
Nahum nodded.
“You know that I wouldn’t lie to you, or do anything to harm you, or any of your kin.”
Nahum nodded again.
“But the people of Pike Hollow feel differently. You know about the murders — and you can guess what the locals are saying about them.”
Nahum did not answer, but his face darkened. The old man named Esau spat into the dirt.
“And now — well, a park ranger has been murdered. And that’s changed everything. You’ve seen the police car parked at the end of your road?”
“We seen it,” said the man named Aaron in a voice as deep as a gravel pit. “For days, they tried to get inside. Hollered, used them things — what, bullhorns. We ignored ’em.”
“Well, when we went past about an hour ago, there was not one, but three cars. The head of the state troopers for these parts, a man named Krenshaw, aims to drive you out of here — one way or another. He’s not one for half measures. I fear things may come to harm.”
“What harm?” Nahum asked.
“I fear he’ll burn you out, if necessary. You’re the only suspects he’s got — and the law’s on his side.”