Ryan grinned, and though he wondered what all this had to do with the missing girl, he couldn’t help but play along. “Mr. Samuelson, I hope you’re not trying to tell me you believe in witches.”
The man rubbed his chin and pursed his lips. “No, not quite, though I have seen enough to discount nothing. You see, my friend, the land you come from is mysterious in its own right. And those who have not seen it would say that the southern parts of this country are the darkest, the most mysterious, the wildest, and the most filled with the unknown. But they would be wrong.” As Samuelson spoke, Ryan looked out the window of the car as it passed through dark forests of low hanging branches, across broken-down bridges and rock fences built with stones pulled from fields by the first men to ever break the land for farming. “This is an old place. Everyone knows, of course, that the first white settlers of this land did not find it abandoned. But what many do not know is that neither did the Indians who once roamed its vales and great, domed hills. There are ruined stone monuments, monoliths of an ancient culture far older than the Wampanoag or the Makitan. Who can say what purpose they served? Who can say what rites were howled upon them in the dark watches of some eldritch night?”
Samuelson shifted in his seat and took a long drag from his cigar, blowing a cloud of smoke that swirled and rippled through the air. “The settlers called these places the shunned lands, and, as the name implies, they avoided them. At least at first. Man’s spirit is weak and given to laziness and sloth. The great stone monoliths served well as foundations for houses and stores and even churches. The infamous trials of Salem were held in structures built upon the altar of some old religion’s stone of sacrifice. Ironic, don’t you think? Ah, I see you’ve gone dry.”
Again Samuelson uncorked the green bottle now half-filled with amber liquid, pouring another glass for Ryan, even as he tried to refuse. But his heart wasn’t in it. He had other, more pressing, interests.
“All that’s very interesting,” he said, “but I’m afraid none of it will help me find Angela.”
Bernard looked down toward his glass and sighed. In his frown, Ryan read disappointment. “Did you know,” he said, “that every year, hundreds of people simply vanish? Just disappear? That one day, they wake up and they go to work or to school or to church. They wave to their neighbors, they say good morning to their co-workers, perhaps they even say goodbye to them as they head home. But somewhere along the way, something happens. And in that moment of ultimate mystery, they simply are no more. No ransom letter. No sign of struggle. No overdue mortgage or embezzlement scandal to give rationality to an explanation, whatever it may be. A life with all its complexity, the story of a soul, comes to an end with nothing more than a fade to black. Tell me, Mr. Dixson, how do you feel about that?”
Ryan shrugged. “I guess I would disagree with the premise. No one just disappears, Mr. Samuelson. There’s an explanation, a story if you will, even if we don’t know it.”
“Ah yes,” the old man said, raising his glass, “you are right. There always is a story. And there is a story here, Mr. Dixson. But you must discover it. If you are to do that, you must see what I have to show you. You must understand the world better than you know it now.”
It was only a second later when the Mercedes pulled off the main thoroughfare onto another. Ryan had thought that the road through the forest was less than ideal, but it was nothing compared to the rocky path they now found themselves on, little more than a gash cut through a field. Ryan peered through the darkness, but although the trees had opened up to reveal a wide expanse of pasture, he could make out nothing in the cloud-obscured moonlight. But they hadn’t gone far when a stone edifice seemed to rise from the black sea of undulating grass. Ryan’s first thought was that it looked like a church.
“Long ago,” Samuelson said, “this was a place of worship. It has since lost any ecclesiastical association. This ground is no longer holy, though it is hallowed, in its own way.”
The Mercedes pulled in next to a long line of vehicles, many of which possessed luxury that put the German car to shame. As Ryan slammed the rear door, he looked up at the rotting steeple and wondered how many parishioners had spent countless Sundays called to worship by its bell. But that was long ago. The broken stained glass, the crumbling masonry. People had not come within those walls — at least to worship — for a very long time indeed.
“We enter through the back,” Samuelson said. “The main entrance collapsed years prior. It’s just as well. It would be unseemly, I think.”
The chill from earlier had turned to ice, the cold rain that had fallen stealing what little warmth the air had held. But the clouds had broken, and the sky was clear. In the light of the moon, Ryan had no trouble marking his way.
The two men — what had happened to the driver, Ryan couldn’t say — proceeded up the gentle sloping hill to a stone-walled fence that sat behind the church. The gate was open, rusted that way by Ryan’s estimation. Beyond was a graveyard of the oldest variety, a great ancient oak in its center. The stones were marked well with the heavy chisel of some undertaker from long ago, the winged death’s-head crowning most. Even in the wan moonlight, Ryan could make some of them out. The dead interred there went back to the Revolutionary War and beyond. Below their names were written their stories. Tales of men and women who travelled across the seas to settle the wilds and their sons and daughters who fought the battles to win them.
“These lands hold many tales. They were settled here long ago, during the first wave of immigrants from the old country. They found in this place something they did not expect, something that was far beyond the skills of the Wampanoag that made this their home. Something more akin to the old world than the new. A monolith of stone, one that went down into the earth. They could not destroy it, so instead upon it they built this church.”
They passed through the last of the graves and reached an alcove with a low overhang that Ryan had to bend down to avoid. A man stood in front of a sturdy wooden door — a door that, unlike the rest of the church, did not seem old or run down. He was sporting a suit that, to Ryan’s eye at least, was quite expensive. Either he knew Samuelson or information was conveyed to him through the plastic earpiece that he wore, because he nodded once before opening the door.
“The oldest and most honored tombs are within,” Samuelson said. “It is there that we go.”
“When was the church abandoned?”
“In the 1890s,” answered Samuelson. “The pastor was a rather excitable man by the name of William Hickman. He was an eccentric, even in an age of eccentricity. He preached to his flock of the end times, speaking to them of his apocalyptic vision of a coming collapse of all things. But for him it was more than just mere speculation. He believed it, and believed its coming was imminent. And he told them so.”
The chamber beyond was darkened, a black corridor. Samuelson removed two flashlights, handing Ryan one.
“There was an attempt once to light the church, but as you saw there is no electricity, and the noise of the generator was most unpleasant.”
The feeble beams pierced the darkness but slightly, and for a moment, Ryan felt as though he were an explorer of old, cast into the darkened tomb of the Pharaoh with nothing but the pale glow of a torch to lead the way.