Deeper Than Red (Red Returning Trilogy) (12 page)

The binoculars tucked beneath her shirt, she retraced her path along the wall, a howling wind pushing from behind as if shooing her away. Something had stolen into her reserve of grit and self-confidence threatening to loot it bare. Despite her well-practiced defenses, she now ran scared, the trees swiping at her with low, spiked branches. A vine grabbed one ankle and almost brought her down, but she yanked free of it and stumbled forward. The woods closed in on her as she approached the divide between the university campus and the camp, where the wall met the chain-link fence. Suddenly visible, she stopped and peered into the dimly lit colony of psychics. Nothing stirred. Had the ghosts and their handlers all gone to sleep, as if such a normal thing were entirely within their paranormal grasp? But Tally knew better. And so she crept cautiously around the far reaches of a security light, its beacon harsh and repelling, and set her sights on home and her tower fortress.

She’d just found her stride again when something moved through the trees ahead. She stopped cold and listened. There was the outline of someone moving toward her. In the split second between immobile fear and flight, a voice spoke.

“Tally, don’t run.”

She didn’t respond. She couldn’t.

“Don’t be afraid.” The figure moved closer and Tally saw a face materialize in the gray wash of light. She knew this face.

“I watched you go there, Tally. You shouldn’t have done that.” Now, the figure dared to come closer, and Tally saw the thin, bent frame of the old man.
Mr. Fremont!
He was a sales clerk at the camp bookstore. What was he doing here?

“You have nothing to fear from me, child. Come quickly. You’re in danger.” He motioned for her to follow him.

Instead, Tally spun around and searched the long wall and woods behind her. Had someone followed her from the airstrip?

“This way,” he urged, waving her on as he turned toward a side gate to the camp.

If she had been followed, she sensed no quicker retreat than to disappear inside the forbidding grounds of the camp. The old man stopped once to look back at her. “Now.”

As she fell in step behind him, he said, “Stay close, and don’t look back.” Of course, that was the very thing she did—just in time to see two men stomping up the path from the airstrip. The old hand suddenly grabbed her arm and pulled her to the gate. He furiously worked the combination lock until it sprang open, then grabbed her again. “Hurry!” came his coarse whisper. He tucked his withered body into a hunched scurry which Tally mimicked all the way to an open shed behind one of the bungalows. They’d just dropped into the opaque shadows inside the dirt-floor shelter when running feet passed nearby and stopped.

Tally squeezed her eyes shut and listened to the labored breathing of her rescuer and to the clipped voices just beyond the fence. “Go straight to the road. I’ll search the woods.”

“Was it a man or a woman?” the other voice asked.

“Couldn’t tell. Get going. You know what to do.”

To me?
Tally turned toward Mr. Fremont. She couldn’t see his face, only hear him wheeze. Then he laid a calming hand on her shoulder, but said nothing. After a long, silent interval, he whispered, “Let’s go.”

They eased from their hiding place and looked around. Then he led her along a worn dirt path to a back corner of the compound, to a small, gray-shingle house nearly smothered in flowering vines whose colors faintly shimmered in the fan of Malibu lights lining the front walk.

A weathered picket fence enclosed the small front yard of the house where, she discovered, Spencer Fremont lived alone. He opened the wooden gate and ushered Tally toward a front door set deep on the porch. Tally might have commented on the American Craftsman charms of the little cottage, but her aesthetic senses had been eclipsed by the events of that night.

Tally trailed the man into his living room, then did a slow rotation, noting how sparsely furnished it was. There was only a small sofa and two matching chairs, a coffee table, and a bookcase against one wall. A worn hooked rug spread its faded colors over the wooden floor.

Spencer Fremont lingered at a front window before finally turning to Tally. “Please sit down. You’re safe now.”

Tally did as she was told, not understanding why she should trust this man. She’d only spoken to him once before when her mother had dragged her along to the camp bookstore. That was in the days before Mona Greyson fully submerged herself in the cosmic waters of the camp and Tally finally realized that she would have to enter those waters to retrieve the mother she’d lost to them.

Tally recalled that first introduction to Mr. Fremont. Against her mother’s objection, Tally had worn the new cross necklace Denise had given her for Christmas to the store that day. She stood next to her mother as a clerk, a woman working alongside Mr. Fremont, busily rang up the stack of books Mona had brought to the counter. When the woman finally looked up to announce the total, she smiled at Mona then glanced at Tally, and the smile abruptly disappeared. The clerk had locked on the necklace and her disapproval was palpable. “Who is this?” the woman huffed, pointing to Tally. “And why is she wearing that?” That’s when Spencer Fremont had stepped in.

“Rita, surely you’ve seen a cross before and most certainly will again,” he chided amiably. The woman slid a bristling look his way and recovered her composure. She faked another smile at Mona, avoiding Tally altogether. She had been shocked at the clerk’s reaction to the necklace. And Spencer Fremont knew it. He followed them into the parking lot, introduced himself, and, with Mona’s permission, pulled Tally aside.

“Please forgive my coworker’s thoughtless behavior. She’s usually more gracious than that.”

“She was rude,” Tally sniffed. “Was she afraid?”

Mr. Fremont looked curiously at her. “Why would she be?”

Tally had learned enough during the few months she’d been going to church with Denise’s family to answer the question. “A lot of people who don’t know God are afraid of him. They just don’t understand him.”

“Do you?” he asked simply.

Tally thought hard about that one. “I’m trying to.”

“Well, understand this,” Mr. Fremont said. “You know things these people here don’t. And they know things that are important for
you
to know.”

Tally stared into his lined face, at the eyes that held hers so intensely.

What were those things? And … “Why do you say ‘these people here’? she asked. “Aren’t you one of them?”

But he wouldn’t answer. Instead, he led her back to her mother and bowed slightly to them both, an out-of-date gesture, Tally thought, but one that seemed natural for this elderly and quietly composed man.

“Thank you for letting me talk to your daughter, Mrs. Greyson.” He looked directly at Tally. “She’s a perceptive young woman … who should be very careful.” He ambled away without explanation, and Tally watched him return to the bookstore, stopping once to look back at her.

Now, Tally looked more closely about the man’s living room, landing on the one thing that took her by surprise. A small wooden cross hung over the bookcase. She stared at it, remembering the question she’d asked him that day outside the store. She turned to confront him. “You aren’t one of them, are you?” It was more a statement than a question.

He smiled faintly as he lowered himself into one of the overstuffed chairs. “These old legs aren’t used to such strenuous walks—tracking foolhardy young women who sneak around in places where they shouldn’t be.”

Tally gaped at him. “You’ve been watching me?”

“Guarding you.”

“Why? And why won’t you answer my question?”

His gaze didn’t waver, though his words were slow in coming. Finally, he gestured again for Tally to sit down. “We don’t have long. Your mother will be looking for you.”

“My mother rarely looks for me,” Tally said, seating herself on the other chair whose seat cushion sagged. “I’m an adult who can take care of myself. She much prefers it that way. Besides, I told her I would spend the night with a friend.”

“Ah, the young woman you brought with you tonight.”

Tally balked again. “You saw us?”

He chuckled. “You aren’t the consummate spies you think you are.”

Tally noted the scolding tone and braced for more. But his next words fell more softly.

“Where is your cross, Tally?” he asked.

The question surprised her and her hand went to her neck, but she didn’t answer. Then he asked another.

“Do you believe in Christ?”

Who is this man who asks me such things? As if he already knows I can’t answer. I don’t know the answer.
A half lie would have to do. “Sure I do.”

“Why
sure
, Tally? Not everybody does.”

“Do you?”

He studied her a moment. “Light shines brightest against the dark.”

Tally didn’t understand.

“I had to witness the dark of this place to see him clearly. To understand who he was and why he had to come to us. To understand his warnings against the other powers.”

“What powers?”

He smiled, not in a patronizing way, but as one who’d long awaited this moment. “Ever since that day in the store, Tally … ever since I first spotted you spying on this place, I’ve wanted to ask if it was just mere curiosity or if you were earnestly searching for something. Before I go any further, you must answer that.” He drew back and waited.

Tally looked at the floor, perhaps
through
it as if the battlefield of her mind were laid out clearly on the underside. After a moment, she answered. “At first, I couldn’t believe there were other people like my mom, especially a whole community of them. It was like going to a freak show watching my first séance out on the field. Then, without her knowing, I followed her to the woods where I saw things I didn’t understand. Heard voices I wasn’t sure were real. It scared me. I was scared for her.” She looked down. “Since my dad died a few years ago, she’s gone a little nuts. No, a lot nuts. She sees things I don’t. Hears things I don’t. She craves all this heebie-jeebie stuff. That’s why she closed up our farmhouse in Georgia to bring us here. I had to prove to her, somehow, that it was all fake. But the more I witnessed, the more I wondered if it was.”

Spencer nodded, his understanding visible on his face. “And I followed my wife here. It was that or leave her, and I couldn’t bear to do that.” He repositioned himself on the sofa across from where Tally sat fidgeting with a loose thread on the upholstered arm of the chair, though her eyes were steady on his. “At first, she was just a dabbler in the occult practices here. In time, though, she became a licensed medium, discovering her clairvoyant gifts, she said, and wandering into transcendental fields where I couldn’t go. Because, like you, I didn’t believe in those forces. But that changed.”

It wasn’t what Tally expected. She’d hoped he’d be an ally, someone she might enlist in her efforts to drag her mother away from this place where frightening people hung their shingles with authority:
Spiritual counseling. Past life regression. Psychic healer. Connect with the departed. Channel a lost loved one.

He must have seen her disappointment. “No, Tally, I’m not one of them. But because of what I was forced to see, I ran the other way. To the cross. Because I finally understood.” He picked up a small book with a tattered cover and turned quickly through its pages until he landed on one. Slipping on a pair of glasses, he said, “From Ephesians, this is God’s letter to us, Tally. Listen. ‘For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.’” He removed his glasses and eyed her quietly for a moment. “I read that to my wife, but she wouldn’t listen and I couldn’t make her. I can’t make anybody listen, including you.”

But Tally had listened, and now she resisted the urge to spring from the chair and flee. Not from Spencer Fremont and his message, but from her own miserable confusion.

“Why are you still here?” she asked.

“After Millie died, the counsel here agreed that even though I wasn’t a follower, and certainly not a medium like the rest of them, they would honor my wife’s long service to this community by letting me remain in our home. It’s the only home I’ve known for fifteen years.”

“But how could you go on pretending to be part of them? To work in their bookstore and guide others to teachings you don’t believe in?”

“For the rare moment when I might keep someone—like an impressionable young woman—from falling into the abyss.” He tilted his head to one side. “You see? One of those moments just came. Hopefully, something I’ve told you will hold you back from plunging in after your mother, even if you think you’re just trying to save her. The others here would love to draw you in with them, Tally. That’s why I watched after you those nights when you slipped into the camp. Why I followed you tonight.”

“To the airstrip?”

“Yes, I wasn’t quick enough to stop you.”

Tally brushed past his concern for her. “Did you see the guns and that guy in the wheelchair?” She was almost breathless. “Did you see the crate?”

Spencer held up a calming hand. “I did. But you must forget that
you
did.” He leaned forward. “Tally, Curt Vandoren is the epicenter of a black hole. You stay away from him and his place down there.”

“But what’s going on there?”

“I don’t know. Right now, it’s more important that you get home safely and never go back there. And stop your nocturnal spying on this camp.” He wagged a finger in her direction and stood up. “You won’t approve, but I’m calling your mother to come get you. You can’t stay here, and it’s too dangerous for you to go out there alone. Those men will soon circle back to look for you.”

Tally shot up from her seat. “Well, they won’t find me unless you haul Mona Greyson in here and give her another excuse to scream and yell at me. That might attract a little bit of attention.” She outstepped him to the door. “You and I have a lot more to talk about, Mr. Fremont. Starting with that big box that must be real important to all those guys with guns. So I’ll be back. You obviously know how to watch for me.” She regretted her sarcasm only a little. The man had no right to stalk her. She wasn’t entirely sure it was for her own good.