Raven's Peak (17 page)

Sara absently touched the Band-Aid on her forehead, glancing back down at the crystal in her hand. Her expression became vacant and her tone monotone once again.

“Mommy says it’s an infection.”

“Do you want me to make it go away?”

Sara nodded.

“Take this,” Abigail said. She handed Sara the crystal. “And hold onto it very tight, OK?”

“OK,” Sara said. She continued staring at the little object, dazed.

Abigail reached up and gently removed the Band-Aid from Sara’s forehead, exposing the wound. It was still moist and about half a penny in size.

“I hope this works,” she muttered to herself, taking a deep breath.

Delaphene had said it would be uncomfortable to bridge a connection like this. Intelligent people didn’t do it. Abigail certainly had never done anything like it because it was anathema to the laws of the Council to mess with any demonic creations.

The ritual would allow Abigail to step into the bond connecting the girl and Arthur, only that connection belonged to the demon holding Arthur now. It would be awkward and disorienting at the very least because of how foreign it would be for Abigail. Or, at least, that was how Delaphene had described it.

Abigail chanted out the harsh words the demon had taught her back in the cabin. They were in one of the Deep languages, known only to a handful of Council members and forbidden from ever being spoken aloud. But Abigail was in the midst of breaking far worse rules, so that didn’t concern her: desperate times called for desperate measures.

As soon as she was done chanting, she felt her fingers tingling with energy. Like electricity, waiting to be discharged. She steeled herself, ready for the pain or discomfort that would come as she released the energy.

With a reassuring smile at Sara, she pressed her thumb against the open wound on the little girl’s forehead. She’d dealt with pain before; she could handle this.

She was wrong.

It started with a warm sensation in her chest, a sort of awareness as she entered the connection. It was huge, like someone hovering over her shoulder, but she knew there was no one actually there in the park with her. The presence was filled with amusement, as though more surprised than concerned that she was there.

Then it attacked.

It was like a hot iron was stabbed into her gut. It burned so bad it took her breath away; she felt like she was suffocating; like the pressure would rupture and collapse her lungs.

Then the heat spread like wildfire across her skin, triggering every pain receptor she had. It was as if she were suddenly standing in a bonfire and she could feel it torching her skin. But the pain didn’t diminish as her pain receptors were destroyed, but rather it intensified, overwhelming her. She tried to cry out, but she couldn’t breathe.

Yet the worst part of all: she understood that whatever was on the other end of the connection was holding back. It was toying with her, swatting at her like she was only an insect. It didn’t take her seriously but rather was simply hurting her for the pleasure of it.

She fought back, all hope of winning this encounter gone. She gave up her plan of using this connection to save Arthur, or even find out where he was being held.

Now all she wanted to do was escape. She had always thought that she would be an apt competitor in a battle of wills, but this was a fight for her life. She had never experienced anything this powerful, and she knew this creature was beyond anything she’d ever faced…

Except…

There was a familiarity to it, as if a drape had been pulled aside in her own mind. She remembered
this
demon possessing her, how it had used her body, broken her will and dominated her. She remembered how pathetic and weak it thought she was.

She remembered…

The demeanor of the demon changed in a flash, and she felt a spark of worry emanate from it. She sensed that it didn’t want her to remember.

After the events in the Church, all of her memories were gone. The demon had stripped them away, replacing them and overwriting them in her mind. The Council therapists couldn’t recover the memories, and they all assumed the demon had destroyed them.

But it hadn’t.

She had a startling realization that she had
known the demon’s
name
; when she first confronted it in the forest six months ago, before it had taken her body, she had known its true name. The demon hid the memory from her…

Inside her own mind…

Suddenly, the demon was gone, the connection severed. She fell to the ground, gasping. It felt like she’d been trapped there for an eternity, but it had only been seconds. She sucked in ragged breaths of air, her skin tingling and burning but physically unharmed. The demon couldn’t do real damage to her while she was here, only mental, but that had been enough.

She grasped in her mind for the name, but now that she was alone the memories were fuzzy. She felt them receding and dissipating. She nearly started crying in frustration that she’d come so close to unlocking her memories, yet they were still buried and hidden from her.

Sara was looking at her, a concerned expression on her young face.

“Are you OK?”

Abigail nodded slowly. She was anything but
OK
, but she said: “Yeah, I’m fine.”

Sara frowned. “Are you sure?”

“Yeah,” Abigail said. She pushed the pain and weakness away. “Look, your scrape is gone.”

Sara touched her forehead and started grinning. The skin was smooth, the seeping wound closed.

“It is,” she said excitedly. “I need to go show my mommy!”

Then Sara took off, running across the park to her mother. She dropped the little crystal behind her, unnoticed, and it bounced on the paved walkway. Abigail scooped it up and slid it back into her pocket, still kneeling on the ground.

It took her a long minute before she was able to climb to her feet. The pain was fading, and she was covered in a sheen of sweat. Everything hurt. She headed back to the car, staggering a little as she went.

By the time she got there, Haatim had returned from distracting the mothers and was waiting for her. He glanced her over, a concerned expression on his face:

“You OK?”

“No,” she said. “But I will be.”

“Did you find what you were looking for?”

Abigail shook her head. “No, but I know where I can find it now.”

“Where?”

“Inside my head. Come on, we need to get moving. We’re already late.”

“All right, then,” Haatim said. “But I’m driving.”

Bret wandered through the trees, bored and aimless. It was a cold and cloudy day; the sky looked like it was going to rain soon. He swatted at the branches and yawned, wishing his mom would just give up on this stupid vacation and take him back home. He would much rather be back at home playing video games than wandering out here in the middle of the forest with nothing to do.

He’d just passed his twelfth birthday, and of course, his dad hadn’t been there to celebrate it. He hadn’t even found the time to come out here on the family camping trip
he
planned with his son. He was too busy with work.

Bret’s mom brought him to the Smokey Mountains anyway, having already reserved the cabin. “Camping” in her vernacular meant staying in a secluded cabin, but one that still had all of the same amenities they had at home. Bret didn’t mind; he didn’t really like sleeping on the ground, either.

“Bret!” he heard his mom shout. He couldn’t see her through the trees anymore, but their rented cabin wasn’t very far away. “Where are you?”

“I’m out here,” he shouted back.

“OK, sweetie. Don’t wander too far.”

“I won’t,” he said. “I’ll be back in a bit!”

He kept walking, weaving around the tall trees and underbrush. It was quiet out here, peaceful and relaxing. The only sounds were those of birds and rustling leaves, and that was something he realized that he actually liked. He could have done without the mosquitos and other insects, though.

Lost in his thoughts, he tripped on a long metal object sticking out of the dirt. He caught himself on a tree, scratching up his hand on the bark, and managed to keep his feet. He hissed in pain and then angrily kicked the thing that had almost tripped him.

His foot partially dislodged the object, and he saw the edges of a thin sheet of metal. It was half-buried in the dirt, and when he dug it out he saw that it was an old signpost. Written on it were the words:
Raven’s Peak
.

Which didn’t make any sense to Bret. Raven’s Peak was the little town they had driven through on their way to the campgrounds. It was over an hour back the way they had come, not out here in the campgrounds. It was definitely strange to find the sign all the way out here.

Strange, but not unexplainable. Maybe someone had brought it out here and dropped it off, perhaps as a prank.

He kept walking, curious if he might find something else hidden out here.

After a few more minutes, he saw the squat roof of a building in the distance front of him. It was hidden in the trees, built on the side of a hill and tucked away.

A new thought occurred to Bret: maybe
this
was the original Raven’s Peak, and the newer town they had driven through was built later. He knew about old mining towns and how most of them had been abandoned over the years as the coal industry shrunk, he was just surprised to see all of this out here.

Places like this, if it was the original town, were usually tourist destinations. The campgrounds could rake in good money with visitors wanting to see a town built in the nineteenth century, but he hadn’t heard anything about old ruins being out here.

Maybe no one remembered anything was out here at all, but that didn’t sound reasonable. The idea that no one knew about something like this so close to the campgrounds didn’t seem realistic. More likely, it was just that the town was trying to keep tourists away.

If nothing else, it made his trip out here a lot more interesting.

As he got closer, he started to see other structures. He wondered if maybe he was the first person to come this far out here in many long years, and the thought excited him. He imagined himself as an explorer discovering a lost civilization.

All of them were old and falling apart. Many were built on stilts to stay level on the uneven terrain. He counted twenty buildings in all, as well as the foundation of eight or nine more; they were of varying sizes and levels of disrepair.

Near the center of the small town was the largest structure of them all, and it looked like an old Church or municipal building. Part of the roof was caved in, and he could only see the back from this side. He walked slowly past the other buildings, glancing inside the ones that weren’t too high off the ground but afraid to climb up any of the walkways.

It felt like a ghost town, and he was filled with excitement and trepidation at the same time.

He certainly hadn’t expected to find something like this out here: an old abandoned town in the mountains, built of brick and wood. How cool was that?

He kept moving forward, circling around the enormous building to get a glimpse of the front door. Definitely a Church, he decided. The walls were made up of faded and chipped paint; vines crawled up to the roof and mud caked the outside. Out front were four large poles, arranged to flank the entrance and stuck deep into the ground.

He looked at the poles curiously, wondering what they were for. They didn’t look like decoration and were covered in a reddish-black stain. He took a few steps closer to the door. This building looked sturdier than many of the others, and maybe he could take a peek inside.

Just a quick little peek.

The beams creaked under his footsteps as he climbed up the stairs. Gingerly, he reached forward and pushed the old oaken door open. Inside was utter chaos: broken wood, dust, and glass lay strewn about the floor.

Splotches of red covered the floor in various places, like wine had been spilled and left to dry, staining the wood. A raised dais near the front was also covered in debris, and behind it was that hole in the ceiling he saw earlier. And—

Suddenly something moved in the left corner of the Church.

It wasn’t empty.

Bret stumbled back onto the front walkway and ran toward the stairs. Something was in there, he realized, and it had just woken up. He heard footsteps coming toward him form inside the Church, boards creaking underfoot.

Bret jumped down the stairs and started sprinting, not looking back. He heard a screeching sound unlike nothing he’d ever heard, followed by cackling laughter. The door blasted open, but he was too scared to look back.

He fled farther into the town, away from whatever was behind him. He weaved around a few more buildings, feeling his pulse race, and saw a hole in the hillside up ahead. It looked like a carved doorway leading underground.

The mining tunnels.

It was pitch black inside, eerily so, but he didn’t see a lot of other options. He ducked inside, scraping his leg on the way in. Ahead, he saw a huge metal grate blocking his way. It was about four meters into the tunnel and barely visible. It was also locked, but there was enough room underneath it for him to wriggle inside.

He crawled past the grate and turned around, looking back the way he had come. Chilly air flowed up from the tunnels behind him, causing him to shiver. Inside here it felt thirty degrees colder than outside.

Past the grate he could see out the mine entrance and the buildings beyond. It looked quiet, peaceful, and he strained to hear anything. The darkness weighed on him like a blanket; the only sounds were his breathing and the soft dripping of water somewhere down the tunnels behind him.

He watched, hands shaking, waiting for someone or something to come into view. Whoever had been after him, they wouldn’t be able to fit through the grate like he had. He would hide until they had given up trying to find him and leave, and then he could slip out and find his—

There was a soft tickle on his neck as a shiver ran up his spine. He realized in horror that there was something behind him.