The wood dropped from his hands and he whirled around in panic. There was nothing there. The top of the hill was empty.
He was starting to Spock himself. He walked to the edge of the ridge and looked down. He could see the water of the lake shimmering through the round clustered leaves of the aspens, but he could see neither the car nor the camp. "Jack!" he called. "Wayne!"
There was no answer.
A cold breeze came up suddenly, swirling the leaves and blowing Matt's hair. He shivered, and goose bumps ran down his arms. He turned around and began once again to gather up wood. There was a name for things seen out of the corner of a person's eyes, he knew. He had read about it in his parents' People's Almanac one day. Some cultures thought they were ghosts, but there was really some scientific explanation for them. Out of the corner of his eye he saw something move again.
He grabbed one last chunk of wood, headed toward the edge of the hill, and tripped.
He fell sprawling, the wood flying out of his hands, his chin hitting the rough rock of the ground. His jaw was snapped forcibly shut and pain erupted through the nerve endings of his teeth. A sharp twig cut into his hand. A knee of his jeans ripped. Matt sat up, twisting around to see what he had tripped over. The wind was blowing hard now, tugging at his sleeves, and a few splashes of rain hit his face. He kicked at a clump of wildflowers next to his foot.
The leaves of the plant parted to reveal a small stone cross.
He jumped up, heart pounding, but fell immediately back down. His ankle was hurt, twisted, probably broken. He couldn't stand on it. He looked carefully at the rest of the hilltop. All across the flat ridge he could see tiny crosses hidden by weeds and wildflowers and piles of dead wood. He was surrounded by them.
A twig cracked behind him. "Jack!" he yelled. "Wayne! Jack!"
Another twig cracked. Closer.
"Jack!" he screamed.
But his voice was carried away by the wind and by the hard rain that had started to fall on the forest.
Annette Weldon stared down at the sleeping form of her husband as he tossed and turned next to her in the bed, rolling over onto his stomach then rolling back and throwing his arm over his face. His expression was troubled, his brows furrowed into a sleep-bound frown. His mouth worked agonizingly, opening and closing as if to scream, but no sound came out. She reached over and put her hand on the top of his head, letting her fingers run through the rough straw-like hair as she attempted to soothe him. She wanted to wake him up, but he got little enough sleep as it was and she didn't want him to waste any more.
Suddenly he sat bolt upright in bed, his eyes popping wide open, and screamed.
Annette screamed too, in shock. His glazed and staring eyes turned on her, then settled back into normalcy as his brain registered the fact that he was awake. He closed his eyes and opened them, blinking hard.
When he saw how scared she was, he reached out to put a hand on her shoulder and tried to smile. "Just a nightmare," he said.
"You never have anything but nightmares anymore."
"I know." He idly caressed her upper arm. "It's all these damn murders and all this .. . weird shit. It's really starting to get to me."
She stared at him and there was concern in her eyes. "You're going to get an ulcer."
"I know it." He sighed heavily and settled back down on the bed.
"Maybe I should turn it over to the state police." He looked at her.
"I've been checking into it, you know. The state police does handle things like this if the local operations aren't equipped to handle it.
And I don't think we're equipped. I'm tempted to just turn the whole damn thing over to them and admit that I'm baffled."
"You still don't have any leads? On any of these cases?"
He turned his face toward her on the pillow. She was still sitting up, looking down at him, and there was such a look of sympathetic understanding in her eyes, such kindness in the rounded corners of her mouth, that he thought about telling her his thoughts. His real thoughts. His crazy theories. But no, he couldn't do that. She wouldn't understand. She would want to understand, she would try to understand, but she would not be able to. Hell, who could? "No," he said. "We don't have any leads."
Shelayed down next to him and nestled close, laying an arm over his hairy chest, letting her hand rest in the crook of his arm. He put his hand on hers and they lay there like that for a while.
"Did you ever think that all of this might be connected?" she asked finally.
He had been about to fall back asleep. His eyes were closed and his mind drifted in that netherworld between sleep and wakefulness. But at the sound of her words he jerked awake, eyes opening, startled. "What did you say?"
"Did you ever think that all these cases are connected? I mean, it's common sense. I thought one of you would have noticed by now. AH those goats killed and their blood all over the churches."
"Well, we did put that together."
"And two of the farmers killed? And one of the preachers? It's obvious."
"We're not completely dense," he said defensively. He sat up against the headboard then looked at her indulgently, playing the condescending cop role, trying to remain outwardly calm though he was beginning to feel very excited. "We know they're connected. We just don't know how. Do you have any ideas?"
"Not really. It just seems to me that it's probably a group of devil worshipers or witches or a cult of some kind."
Close but no cigar. Their minds were not quite meeting. Still, they were thinking along the same lines. He was tempted to tell her about Don's dream, about his own dream, about Don's death, about the . . .thing ... he had seen and heard outside his office. Maybe she would understand. Maybe she wouldn't think he was that crazy. But as he looked at her he realized just how far off the deep end his ideas sounded. Her thoughts may have been courting his territory, but they made a hell of a lot more sense than his irrational theories of--what?
Supernatural forces? Monsters?
"You've been watching too many movies," he said.
She frowned. "You just admitted that you're stumped. My idea might be stupid, but it can't hurt to check it out."
"That's true."
"It's not as if you have a million other things to follow up on."
"All right," he said. "I'll look into it."
"Thank you." She settled back into his arms. They were silent for a few moments. "What was your dream about, anyway?"
He shook his head. "Nothing." "Are you sure you don't want to talk about it?"
"I'm sure."
Fifteen minutes later Annette was asleep, her mouth open, snoring softly. Carefully, slowly, so as not to disturb her, Jim crept out from under the covers and walked on tiptoe down the hall to the family room. He was awake already, he might as well call the office and see if Judson or Pete had come up with anything. He picked up the phone and automatically dialed the number. Pete answered. "Hello.
Sheriff's Office. Pete King speaking."
Jim smiled at the young deputy's formal Jack Webb voice. "What's up?"
"Oh, hi Sheriff." His voice relaxed for a moment then grew tense. "Is there anything wrong?"
"No. I was just up and I figured I'd call, see what's happening."
"Not much, really." There was a pause. "Something did come over the wire, though. I thought you might be interested so I put it on your desk. Two churches in Phoenix were vandalized the same way ours were, blood smeared all over them, words written and everything."
Jim's eyebrows shot up in surprise. "Really?"
"Yeah. I thought maybe the person who did it up here had moved on down to Phoenix, so I put the wire copy on your desk. I figured you'd want to check on it."
"Definitely. Thanks, Pete." Jim finished the conversation with a list of office questions he knew by rote, but he did not pay attention to the answers. So the same thing had happened in Phoenix. This really made it a candidate for the state police. Identical crimes in two jurisdictions were automatically investigated by the state men anyway.