A Time of Torment (50 page)

By then, Parker was close to the Square, Angel and Louis at his heels, troopers shooting at the houses until Henkel’s voice sounded over the loudspeakers, calling for everyone to cease fire. The last thing he wanted was to engage in a house-to-house clearance of the Square. So far, he had two injured troopers, and Channer was dead. The Cut’s casualties were higher, but only one of the defenders on the outskirts of the Square had been added to the list of the dead. Three more were wounded, and some of the rest were already laying down their weapons and raising their hands. Like a street fight, the conflict in the Cut seemed set to burn briefly, but there was not enough determination, or desperation, among its inhabitants for a sustained conflict. Most of these people were not killers. They probably didn’t even consider themselves criminals.

Parker, flanked by Angel and Louis, continued around the east of the Square, keeping to the trees, not drawing fire. Priska Tinsley had shared one crucial detail with them before the assault began: the blockhouse was where Cassander would be. It was their shrine, the heart of the Cut, although she claimed never to have been inside it, and when Parker mentioned the Dead King she looked away and went silent. Whatever lay at the heart of the Cut’s existence, whatever the Dead King might be, it was in that sanctuary.

They cleared the Square and moved north into the woods, until the blockhouse was revealed to them, and they paused to take it in. It resembled a construct from a child’s fairy tale, a castle for an ogre; squat and dark, with branches thrusting themselves through its walls, and a thinning crown towering above its roof, so that the whole resembled a head, torso, and arms, as though the blockhouse might in an instant uproot itself and disappear into the forest. The material of the structure and the wood of the tree had weathered together over the years, making it difficult to say precisely where one ended and the other began.

A door stood open at the foot of the blockhouse, but before they could get any nearer to it a shotgun blast tore the branches and leaves from the evergreen above Louis’s head, and a second later a burst of fire raked the ground beside Angel.

‘I have one of them,’ said Louis.

He drew a bead on a figure in brown moving through the trees to the west of the blockhouse, and fired three times. The man fell. Louis waited to be sure that he was down before he began to move toward him, keeping low. The shotgun fired again, but the blast was wild, the action of someone who could no longer lift his weapon from the ground. Louis circled, and came in behind him, but by then the man was already dead.

Angel and Parker concentrated their fire on the second shooter. He was staying under cover, using the undergrowth to change position without being seen before opening fire again. With his target neutralized, Louis continued on behind the blockhouse, while Angel kept shooting to the right and left of the gunman’s last position, keeping him down so that Parker could make a run for the building.

The rattle of sustained fire came from beyond the Square, followed by an explosion that might have been a grenade. Parker heard a woman screaming, and men shouting. Henkel’s amplified tones once again urged calm, and ordered the defenders of the Square once again to lay down their weapons and come out, assuring them that they would not be hurt. Parker saw Angel dart behind a tree, advancing cautiously as he and Louis closed in on the remaining gunman.

‘Cassander Hobb?’ Parker called. ‘It’s over.’

He stayed away from the door, although he wasn’t sure how much protection the old wood of the blockhouse would provide if someone inside decided to shoot. Then again, it had survived for this long, and the logs at his back felt as cold and hard as stone. Was Hobb even in there?

There was no reply. Parker risked pushing the door further ajar, and waited for the gunfire to come, but all remained dark and silent.

He stepped inside, and found himself in the court of the Dead King.

T
he interior of the blockhouse was lit only by the spears of morning sunlight that pierced its windows. The walls were hung with old standards and flags, some of them little more than rags, with only the barest trace of color remaining on them. Parker picked out a royal standard that might have been Spanish, judging by the preponderance of reds and golds; a colonial flag with the British colors in one corner alongside a series of faded stripes; and the distinctive red-and-white guidon of the 9th Cavalry Regiment, the black fighters nicknamed ‘Buffalo Soldiers’ by the natives. Alongside them were nineteenth-century U.S. flags, one with as few as twenty stars on it, and a number of Confederate Stars and Bars, mostly tattered and stained. Despite the strangeness of the blockhouse’s appearance, and its obvious antiquity, the air inside was peculiarly dry, which might have explained how the delicate banners had not entirely rotted away. They were less decorations than trophies of war, relics of those who had crossed the Cut during its history and not lived long enough to regret the encounter.

Parker smelled gasoline. He touched the walls, and his fingers came away damp. They must have been preparing to burn the blockhouse when the assault on the Cut began. Why it had not been accomplished he could not say. Perhaps they had been holding off in the hope that the spiritual home of the Cut might yet be saved.

The floor was made of wood and stone, and strewn with fresh straw, but Parker barely glanced at it, his attention drawn instead to two phantasmagorical sights. The first was the great tree that seemed to have birthed the dwelling, its trunk rising like a supporting column from the ground, its branches the beams upon which the roof appeared to rest. It was an awesome natural entity, which accentuated the contrast with the unnatural thing that sat at its base.

The Dead King rested on a throne carved from a single massive block of black wood. The throne stood at the top of a short flight of wooden steps, so that the figure dominated the room. A cloak of dark furs covered its shoulders and upper arms, and gold rings glittered on its fingers. It sat entirely upright, skeletal hands clasped on the arms of the throne, its feet flat on a small stool. Its ribs were unbroken beneath the cloak, its lumbar vertebrae straight and undamaged, the hollows of the ilium free of dirt and insects.

But it was the skull that haunted. It was the color of amber, although the lower jaw was slightly lighter in color, and better preserved than the rest. All of the teeth were still intact, but the nasal bone had been broken at some point, enlarging the fissure at the center of the skull. Parker looked into the hollows of its eyes, and the Dead King stared back, a messenger from a world into which all others must inevitably pass. A band of beaten gold lay upon its brow, decorated with finger bones that pointed to the heavens.

But as Parker stepped closer, he saw, despite the dim light, that the bones of the Dead King did not quite match: some were smaller and yellower than others; the right tibia was significantly shorter than the left; and the teeth were jagged and uneven, incisors and molars alternating with canines. Parker discerned the wires that held the bones in place, the careful acts of restoration and attachment, and he understood.

The Dead King was not one but many, a being fashioned from the victims of the Cut, each contributing bones to its creation, each death enhancing its potency. Parker wondered if something of Jerome Burnel was among them, and felt certain that there was. Only the neurocranium and facial skeleton came from a single source, the mandible excepted, and it struck Parker as older than the rest. This was the point of origin, the first victim. If the Dead King had any identity beyond that of the wretches who comprised it, then it lay there, but whatever name it might once have borne was now long forgotten.

A metal spike was set in the ground close to the throne, and from it hung two sets of manacles. Parker tested their mechanisms, and found that they moved easily. He thought again of Burnel, and the other unfortunates who might have spent their final days and hours in the company of the Dead King.

The blockhouse felt empty. Parker had been anticipating a sense of malevolence, of palpable evil, but he felt nothing beyond the deluded human baseness that had led the Cut to create a god of bone from the remains of its victims. The Dead King existed because the Cut wanted it to exist, but Parker did not have to believe in it. He turned away from the abomination. He did not want to look upon it any longer.

Angel and Louis were standing at the door, gazing at the hollow god on his throne. Henkel appeared behind them, and all three stood in silence for a time, taking in its decayed majesty.

‘What is it?’ asked Henkel at last.

‘Evidence,’ said Parker.

‘Of what?’

‘Generations of murders. Have you found Hobb?’

‘Not yet.’

‘When you do, that thing will damn him.’

‘This place stinks of gasoline. Nobody better strike a match.’

Louis had moved to the right, the better to examine the Dead King, when he paused.

‘Shit,’ he said.

Parker followed his gaze. A discarded cigarette pack, seemingly still full, lay open by Louis’s feet. It rested on a mound of earth.

‘Out,’ said Parker. ‘Now!’

Nobody needed to be told twice, not with the smell of gas in their nostrils. All firing in the Cut had ceased, and the muted sound of voices carried to them from the Square. Three state troopers were moving up the slope toward them as they emerged.

‘Get back,’ said Henkel. ‘We have a potential problem here.’

From inside the blockhouse came a hissing sound, followed by a low
thump
, like someone lighting a stove, and the problem moved from potential to actual. The blockhouse was illuminated from within as the incendiary device ignited the gasoline, and even from a distance Parker felt a blast of heat before the door slammed shut, as though the fire itself had decided that the Dead King’s immolation should be hidden from sight. The walls began to smoke before the first fingers of flame reached through, and then the whole structure was ablaze, tree and building burning together. All who were able to do so gathered to watch as the fire grew higher, and the walls and roof collapsed. The oak began to burn like a great hand, and in the midst of the conflagration they glimpsed a figure on a black throne, grinning as it was consumed.

C
assander paused momentarily to watch the smoke rising above the Cut. Had there been anyone to witness it, his expression would have appeared entirely neutral: no rage, no regret, no sadness. The Cut, as he had known it all his life, was gone forever. He would never return there.

But Cassander was not alone.

For the Dead King was in him.

I
t took most of the rest of that day to round up the remnants of the Cut, and transport the injured to hospitals and the dead to the morgue. The process of questioning and interrogation would require days, even weeks. As a precaution, every adult member of the Cut was arrested and Mirandized, while arrangements were made to get them before a magistrate as soon as possible, when they would again be informed of their rights and, where appropriate, granted bail. In West Virginia, any person accused of a felony offense had the right to request a preliminary hearing, either within ten days if the defendant was being held in custody, or within twenty days if released on bail. Plassey County, and the state of West Virginia, were about to have a lot of legal work on its hands.

But it was being made clear to the Cut that those who cooperated with the investigation, and helped with the recovery and identification of the remains of victims, would receive an easier ride. Already, fingers were pointing at maps, and tales were being told of the last days of men and women. Most were buried in the Cut’s cemetery, hidden beneath its own dead. Odell Watson, meanwhile, told for the first time of the woman he had seen brought down by dogs, and recounted again his tale of the hooded man being led into the Cut by night.

The next day, the digging would begin.

The West Virginia Department of Health and Human Resources stepped in to advise on how best to deal with the minors involved. After hurried discussions, it was decided that all the adults who had taken shelter in the prison hut during the fighting in the Cut should be charged initially as possible accessories to kidnapping, rape, sexual assault, and murder, with further charges potentially to follow, but the state would not object to bail, under strict conditions, among them that the Cut should remain sealed off from its former inhabitants pending forensic examination. The Plassey County Recreation Complex was designated as a temporary holding center, which enabled the state to kick a little further down the road any decision on what to do about the children. The male prisoners were split between the Plassey County Jail and a handful of the state’s correctional facilities.

But of Cassander Hobb there was no trace.

Cassander hadn’t intended to run. His two sons had been taken from him, and Cassander in turn had ordered the killing of the Cut’s leader, the man who was once his closest friend, and finished off Sherah, the woman both he and Oberon had shared. The attacks on Henkel and the private investigator had failed, and the captive women had managed to get away. The Cut was lost, but Cassander’s intention had been to die defending it, until he heard the Dead King call his name.

In the darkness of its court, the Dead King entered him, and any thoughts of fighting for the Cut vanished from Cassander’s mind. What was important now was that the Dead King should survive, and so Cassander would have to carry it inside him until a new nest of bones could be found. He felt the Dead King’s presence as a weight upon his soul and a shadow across his vision. It whispered and chittered in his head, and its madness infected him.

Cassander emerged from the Cut to the northeast, close to the Barnett property. Millard Barnett was a bachelor who used to raise broiler chickens with his two older brothers until his siblings passed away within a month of each other, whereupon Barnett stopped caring about chickens, or anything else, and settled into solitary retirement. Cassander shot Barnett dead when he answered the knock on his front door, and dumped his body down a disused well. He then took Barnett’s Saturn Ion and drove into Virginia. He made only one stop, and that was to call Daniel Starcher from a pay phone to alert him to all that had occurred, although Starcher didn’t need Cassander to tell him since he could see it for himself on TV. Starcher had already set about erasing any incriminating traces of his ties to the Cut, including the unofficial adoption service. He’d leave it for as long as possible before breaking the news to the unhappy prospective purchasers that they wouldn’t be receiving their little bundles of joy anytime soon. He’d also have to refund their money, which included the large goodwill deposit put down by the consortium for one of the children.