The Mad and the MacAbre (15 page)

Saying her name was a self-inflicted
wound.

“
I was hoping you might be
able to shed some light on that.”

“
What do you mean? How the
hell would I—?”

“
An anonymous tip led us to
the mountain lion den where we found the bone. Of course, it didn’t
take long to track the call to the man who poached the animal. It
was tagged and being tracked after all. It took all of about an
hour to place it on his property prior to its death and perform a
ballistics match on the bullet, but here’s the interesting part.
Mountain lions are nomadic. They tend to move around when food
becomes scarce. The Division of Wildlife had been monitoring its
movements for more than a year, and twice in that time it passed
within five miles of the cabins. The most recent of which was only
two weeks ago.”

“
You think it came across
Nathan’s remains during that time.”

“
Stands to reason,”
Cavenaugh said. “But here’s the kicker: they performed an autopsy
on the mountain lion and found it riddled with those
microorganisms. I figure that’s our most substantial link. We’ve
had cops scouring the mountain lion’s trail, but haven’t had any
luck. I was thinking you might have some stroke of genius that
could help us find where these microorganisms can live.”

“
I’m sure you already have
experts far more qualified than I am.”

“
I have a group of
scientists poring over microscopes and slides, giddy with the
prospect of publishing and naming these little bugs after
themselves, and a cold case for which the department can’t spare
any more manpower.”

“
What do you want from
me?”

“
I want you to help me find
my sister,” Cavenaugh said. Fire burned behind in eyes. “And
yours.”

November 10th, 2010

Wednesday

Gabriel hung up the phone and leaned back in the
chair. His heart was pounding and his palms were damp. He wasn’t
sure he was going to be able to go through with this. After nearly
a week had passed without word from Cavenaugh, he had begun to
think that he might never hear from him again, which had sounded
better and better as time had passed. It had taken planting the
cross on the peak of Mount Isolation to truly come to grips with
the fact that his little sister was dead. Granted, not knowing how
she had perished ate him alive inside, but worse was the prospect
of learning that she might have suffered. Finding a single
disarticulated bone didn’t bode well in that regard. Of course, the
authorities had until recently speculated that she was still alive
somewhere out there, that she and the others had formed some sort
of cult and were now living safely in some apocalyptic compound
praying for the Rapture. They apparently believed that there was a
fine line between a believer and a zealot, and that anyone who
disappeared into the wilderness looking for God had long since
crossed it.

But that wasn’t his sister. Not his
Stephanie. Hers was not a blind faith, but a carefully orchestrated
search for a higher power.

He supposed that was what he had been doing
all this time, too. In the years following their parents’ death,
they had both embarked upon a quest for answers. He had only been
sixteen years old and Stephanie fourteen when the car accident had
uprooted them from their stable lives in Hartford, Connecticut and
moved them to Denver to live with their maternal grandparents. It
wasn’t right for any God to orphan two children on what felt like a
sadistic whim. In retrospect, Gabriel understood that their
individual searches had diverged long ago. He had thrown himself
into a science lab where he worked through a microscope, not
necessarily to disprove the notion of God, but to prove that man
held power over Him, especially when it came to life and death,
while Stephanie had turned her eyes to the heavens.

None of that mattered now. He had promised,
if only to himself, that he would never let any harm befall her,
and he had failed. Maybe they hadn’t found her body, but deep down,
he knew. His little sister was dead.

Gabriel swiped away the tears and rose from
the chair. He walked into the kitchen and opened the refrigerator.
The discomfort in his stomach told him he was hungry, but nothing
looked remotely appealing. He finally settled on another bottle of
Rolling Rock and returned to the living room of the small
apartment, where he sat in front of the desktop computer. For the
last six days, he had felt its inexorable pull and had resisted
through sheer force of will, but now he knew the time had come.

Cavenaugh had made all of the arrangements,
just as he had promised he would. The cabins were rented for two
weeks, and four of the others would be meeting them there on
Saturday morning. Gabriel had already arranged his leave with the
university by cashing in every last one of his accrued vacation
days, while secretly hoping he wouldn’t have to use them. The short
notice was going to cost him two classes over the summer session,
but if he managed to gain some measure of closure, then it would
definitely be worth it. Until now, the trip had been something of
an abstraction, the kind of plan that never really materialized,
but now he was faced with the reality of the situation: in two days
he would return to the last place where his sister had been seen
alive in hopes of discovering how she had died.

He set aside the beer, which seethed like
acid in his gut, and typed in the web address.

After a moment, the home page opened and he
stared at the image on the left side of seven smiling men and
women, barely out of their teens. Their faces were flushed with the
prospect of adventure. Gabriel was certain that was how they would
have chosen to be remembered. Stephanie stood in the middle, her
blonde hair pulled into a ponytail, her blue eyes like twin
sapphires. She was wearing the yellow sweatshirt with the CU
buffalo across the front that he had given her three months before
on her twenty-third birthday. Had he known that birthday would have
been her last, he would have given her something special, something
meaningful. The cross she always wore hung over the collar: gold
with five diamonds, one in the center and another at each end. She
had been so vibrant, so beautiful, the kind of person who naturally
became the center of attention whenever she entered a room. To her
right stood Jenny Cavenaugh, who had short dark hair and her
brother’s stocky build. She had eyes a shade of shamrock green so
intense they looked computer-altered. Beside her were Levi
Northcutt, who was tall and gangly, and had yet to outgrow his
adolescent acne, and Nathan Dillinger, an average-looking guy with
a Rockies cap pulled down over his eyes, and both femora still
seated firmly in their sockets beneath his dirty jeans. To
Stephanie’s left was Grant Farnham, who reminded Gabriel of Peyton
Manning. He was discreetly holding his sister’s hand, which
confirmed what Gabriel had suspected for several months leading up
to their disappearance. Beside Grant were Chase Evans, a short,
chubby boy with moppish red hair and a crooked smile, and Deborah
MacAuley, a frumpy brunette with thick glasses and a palsy hand she
held close to her chest. And rubbing his flank on Stephanie’s shin
was her rescued orange tabby, Oscar, named for his frequently
rotten disposition. Even he had vanished without a trace, leaving
behind his empty food and water bowls, a used litter box, and his
traveling crate amidst the collection of clothes, personal effects,
and the food none of them had bothered to collect in their hurry to
join the supposed cult.

Gabriel felt a rush of anger at the thought
and realized he was grinding his teeth. After more than a year of
dissociating himself from his emotions, the last six days had
broken the floodgates and left him at their mercy. He wanted to
scream, cry, lash out, collapse into bed and sleep forever. But he
hadn’t opened the website simply to view the photograph. Though he
could probably recite the video blogs by heart, he needed to watch
them again.

A link on the right side of the home page
led him to the “Diary Page,” which listed all of the dates of entry
in columns beside the rectangular video screen in the center. The
seven had each taken turns. His sister had been first in the
rotation. He clicked the first link and Stephanie’s frozen image
appeared in the viewer. His heart caught and a lump rose in his
throat. With a shaking hand that caused the cursor to tremble on
the screen, he clicked the triangular “PLAY” button.

“
Well, here we are, Day
One,” Stephanie said. She wore the same smile she generally
reserved for birthdays and Christmas morning. She was so happy she
positively glowed. Her hand moved back and forth in the lower
periphery of the image, soliciting a contented purr from her lap.
Behind her, the window had been opened on a wall of pines and
whatever forest creatures chattered in the canopy. The walls were
paneled with wood so coarse it could give you splinters just by
looking at it. “We would all like to thank our families for being
so supportive of our little adventure. So, thank you.”

Stephanie blew the camera a kiss and there
was a chorus of assent from somewhere off-screen.

Gabriel smiled, even as the tears rolled
down his cheeks.

“
So, as you all know, we’re
here in the middle of nowhere searching for proof. Maybe we’ll find
it. Maybe we won’t. Either way, it’s going to be an exciting summer
that none of us will ever forget. Another year of grad school and
we’ll all have our master’s degrees. Some of us will continue on
and pursue doctorates, while the rest of us will venture out into
the real world and try to make a living in this primarily
theoretical discipline. I guess that makes this our final
hurrah.

“
And now our statement of
mission for posterity. We’re here on the western slope of the Rocky
Mountains, nearly an hour’s drive from the nearest indoor plumbing,
because this is where the scriptures have led us. When we say we’re
looking for proof of the existence of God, we understand that no
such thing can ever be found. God must be taken on faith. However,
what we can find is corroborative evidence to support the verses in
the Bible, peripheral proof if you will. Like Porcher Taylor found
what we believe to be Noah’s Ark on the top of Mount Ararat.
Astronomers have recreated the night skies to validate the presence
of the star that led the three wise men to the stable where Jesus
was born, and the lineages of the Caesars can be factually dated to
correspond with those in the Bible.

“
I would like to read a few
verses now.

“
This is from the Book of
Revelation, chapter twelve, verses seven through nine. And there
was a war in heaven: Michael and his angels fought against the
dragon; and the dragon fought and his angels, and prevailed not;
neither was their place found anymore in heaven. And the great
dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the devil, and Satan,
which deceiveth the whole world; he was cast out into the earth,
and his angels were cast out with him.

“
There’s another from
Second Peter, chapter two, verse four: For God spared not the
angels that sinned, but cast them down to hell, and delivered them
into chains of darkness, to be reserved unto judgment.

“
And that’s why we’re right
here, right now. We believe that somewhere, hidden in these hills,
we will find where the nephilim, the dark angels cast out of heaven
with Lucifer, landed on earth, and provide incontrovertible proof
that angels do exist. And by inference, we will be one step closer
to finding God.”

November 13th, 2010

Saturday

All mythology is rooted in fact.

Those six words returned again and again to
the forefront of Gabriel’s mind as he drove westward along the
winding highway, higher into the mountains. Throughout its history,
mankind has always sought to explain what it doesn’t understand.
Wild stories have been fabricated and deities created to
rationalize events that are now easily justified. Thunder was
caused by Thor’s hammer, lightning by Zeus’s hand. Sickness was the
result of angering the spirits and natural disasters were the
vengeance of the gods. While Gabriel didn’t subscribe to the
Christian notion of God, he couldn’t help but think the same
principles applied. How did man come to be? Why, God birthed him
from nothing and set him down in the Garden of Eden, of course.
Never mind the irrefutable arguments for evolution. The fall of
Sodom and Gomorrah? God did it. Scholars claim to have found the
Garden and the remains of both cities. If they had actually
existed, then what had truly happened there? And if the mythology
of the bible were based in fact, then what had his sister and her
friends found in these very mountains?

Gabriel was forced to slow his black Dodge
Intrepid as the snow, which until now had only come down in fits
and starts, began to fall in earnest. The impregnable walls of
ponderosa pines, assorted spruces, and bare aspens sparkled with
the recent accumulation, while the scrub oak packed between the
trunks remained sheltered beneath the canopy. Each bend in the road
granted a brief glimpse of the sharp white peaks in the distance
over the treetops. The flakes tumbled sideways across the asphalt
on the shifting wind, but had fortunately yet to begin to
stick.

He cranked up the radio to drown out his
thoughts.

The highway descended into a deep valley, at
the bottom of which was a wide river so blue it positively radiated
a glacial coldness. Its banks were already buried beneath several
inches of snow. Gabriel veered from the pavement onto the widened
gravel shoulder just before the bridge that crossed the river, and
turned right onto an uneven dirt road designated only by the 432
mile-marker post. The forest closed in from both sides to form a
claustrophobic trench. Tire tracks marred the dusting of snow
ahead. His car rattled over a long washboard stretch before the
road evened out again.