Forsaken: An American Sasquatch Tale Part 13

She crossed the road in a crouch and dropped to all fours in the field to the right of the house. She was still quite a distance away, but because the area was open, she decided it best to keep a low profile.

The path she chose would bring her out to the right of the property, between the house and barn. She was almost there when she sensed a dog, and then watched him emerge from a doghouse near the barn. She quickly bustled, and the hound sniffed the air, took a few laps from its bowl and then retreated into its den. Careful to keep up the s.h.i.+eld, she got up in a low crouch and ran to the darkened side of the barn, the opposite side of where the doghouse sat.

The scent from inside the building was repulsive. It had obviously been where the previous owner conducted part of his taxidermy business. Various stages of decomposition, from various species of animals wafted through the siding. It was all she could do not to lean over and retch.

Focus on Sage, she told herself, and for crying out loud, don't lose it now.

She stood, flattened herself against the rough planks and sidestepped to the front to check out the house from the shadows. She felt her pelt catch several times and grimaced, come daylight there'd be enough of her left behind to weave a scarf.

Near the front, Nathaniel's scent was stronger, but she still found no sign of him or Gabriel.

Parked a good distance down the road, the house hadn't seemed very big when she had come with Becky. But up close it looked ma.s.sive. Even to her, bigger than a human man.

On the gable end of the house, facing the field she'd crossed over, were a set of over-sized garage doors leading down into the bas.e.m.e.nt on sloped concrete. The doors were pulled down, but three small windows in each one showed a light was on inside.

Thick bushes lined the perimeter of the house and she worked her way around the ones on the backside, scrutinized each shrub to determine if Nathaniel and Gabriel had crouched and hidden behind one. All empty.

Surely they'd seen her, right? Humans couldn't detect Sasquatch auras, but hers was a vibrant gold with red chasers. She had to look like a giant glowworm. Why hadn't they signaled to her yet?

A television was on somewhere inside. The two windows above the garage doors were lit, as well as out of seven of the eight windows across the back of the house. She agreed with Becky. Certainly not ones for conservation. And why would they need the rooms so lit up? Maybe someone was afraid of the dark. She could relate to a degree. The dark was sometimes a dangerous, scary place.

A series of tiny rustles made her crane her neck, look into the patch of woods that bordered the backyard. Unable to discern any movement or abnormal shapes in the spa.r.s.e foliage, she turned back toward the front and jerked when she saw the hound dog peeking around the corner, sniffing at her.

She motioned him away, hissed a little and then almost bolted when the same exact wail she'd heard earlier, when she'd been with Becky, boomed down from the sky.

What the h.e.l.l? She looked up. Was there a Sasquatch on the barn roof? The hound started to nose around in the fur on her calf. She legged him, light for her, but for the dog it was a lot. He rolled and yelped. Thankfully he'd not gotten caught up in his chain. She wasn't sure she could bustle enough to quiet a panicked dog. The dog headed back to his side with a whimper, so at least she'd accomplished her objective.

A moment later, the wail sounded again and this time she looked around the front of the barn to see if she could tell where he was. She couldn't sense him at all, but even so, she knew it wasn't Nathaniel, Gabriel, or Adrian. The tone was unique. Almost foreign, though she couldn't place the area.

A halogen security light mounted on a telephone pole near the driveway flickered, and when it did she noticed a black box mounted near the top of it. Ten seconds later, another wail shrilled. A recording. A speaker.

Her stomach dropped. Movement in her peripheral vision made her duck back flat against the barn. Someone, or something, in one of the rear windows.

As she watched, a white aura appeared in the frame and Liberty's breath caught in her throat. It couldn't be denied. Sage was human and her aura had become white. Of course it had, Liberty bemused, her daughter was truly an angel. And coming home to be with her family soon.

The low hum of a motor came from the garage, and Liberty saw a slice of yellow reflected out onto the concrete as one of the doors began to rise. The smell of death carried out into the night. Her nostrils flared as she controlled the instinct to flee.

She looked back to the kitchen window and Sage was gone.

She wasn't sure what happened next. Whether he dog barked and lunged at her. Or maybe it was the sound of footsteps pounding directly behind her. But in the midst of activity, before she even had a chance to turn around, she realized she'd been struck.

She looked down at her right thigh and saw a cylinder of some type lodged into the fur, the meat, and as she reached down to grab it, someone flung a thick, weighted net over the top of her.

Yanking out the cylinder, she fell to her knees. A thick needle attached to the tube had plunged deep into the muscle. And it stung when she removed it. She clawed at the netting with arms that weighed as much as boulders. A light s.h.i.+ned in her face. Her lids slammed shut. Hard as she tried, she couldn't open them again.

A male voice calling out, "Dad, I got another one!"

Chapter Fourteen.

Her mouth ached. Hurt, actually. When she opened her eyes, she realized a hood of some kind covered her head. Rough material had been stuffed in her mouth so hard it pushed her tongue back toward her throat. She concentrated, breathed through her nose, so she wouldn't gag.

She sat in a straight back chair, her wrists bound to the arms of it, upper chest to the back, and her ankles lashed to the heavy legs of it. Her bare feet rested on cold concrete. She was in human form.

She wasn't alone. A man, somewhere past the hood, hummed along to a song on the radio. It buzzed and crackled, but didn't hide the other sounds. Paint remover, smoke, and decomposition a.s.saulted her senses. She needed to focus on one thing. She tried to turn her head, but the binds around her arms were attached to the one around her head. She was trapped, unable to move.

One thing at a time.

Where was Nathaniel? Gabriel? She'd gotten a whiff of death when the garage doors opened. Were they here, too? In a chair next to her? She couldn't see. The fabric on her head was too black, too solid.

Gla.s.s tinkled, metal shuffled, and then some solid item pushed along the floor, causing vibrations beneath her feet. She counted slowly with each inhale, reaching seven before her lungs started to shake, and she exhaled.

Sage. She was in this house somewhere. She concentrated, tried to listen beyond the room. She couldn't hear the television she'd heard from the yard. There was too much, and yet not enough, to take in. She counted to ten.

"Liberty," a man said in a sing-song voice, like a mother playing hide and seek who already knows where you're hiding.

She was at the Jenkins' house. There was only one man it could be. Russ. Though he tried to sound harmless, the inflection in his voice gave him away. Becky was right. Liberty felt the sound of her own name twist in her gut like a fist.

Her breath hitched. How did he know her name? She tried not to believe Sage would play a part in this. But how could he possibly know?

His turned, his words carrying away from her. "I apologize about your mate here, I do."

Nathaniel? Had she sensed him when the garage first opened? She moaned beneath the hood.

"I know. But in all fairness, he went after my son and wellayou don't go after a man's child and expect to live." He sighed, metal clinked in a gla.s.s like he stirred a spoonful of sugar into tea. "Your mate wasn't any interest to me, anyway." He gulped in swallows, exhaled, then spoke again. "You're why we're here. Me and Victor."

Her? She pressed herself back into the chair and felt cloth, flexed her thighs and felt some on her legs. She was dressed, something flimsy like a tank and boxers. She trembled. He'd dressed her?

"See, I'm a hunter. But all this here, this taxidermy thing, it's not the game I'm into. I'm a treasure hunter."

Clink, clink, swallow. A click silenced the radio.

"I'm not alone out here, there are a lot more of us. But we don't work together, not really. We learn from each other, that's it."

She heard him set the gla.s.s down, and then the sound of a door closing overhead.

"We follow the websites, watch for sightings of Sasquatch. It's a pretty big business. Anyway, I've been doing this for some time, and I found it strange that in the past decade, almost all reported sightings in this area stopped. I decided to come up and take a look for myself.

His feet scuffed against the floor, back and forth in front of her. He paced.

"Your kind are the s.h.i.+eld. Break through the armor, and find the treasure. Buckets of it.

He stopped moving.

"I'm going to take the pillowcase off your head. And if you do well with that, I'm going to remove your gag. I have a few questions I'd like you to answer before we take a little trip."

Liberty stayed still, though her nostrils flared and the fabric puffed from her heavy breathing. She didn't want to go for a trip. Please, her mind screamed, somebody help me.

"If you understand, nod your head."

She did. So tightly tied, the gag it pulled her hair as she nodded. She wanted to look, yet what she might see terrified her. She would do this. Stay calm. One thing at a time until she got a chance to break free.

He took a few steps and stopped in front of her. She could feel his presence next to her, the warmth of his body radiated, heated hers. Placing his hands on either side of her face, he reached underneath the fabric to lift the case, his skin connected with hers as he pulled it up an inch at a time. His rancid breath blew soft against her cheeks, cooling the sweat that had formed. She wanted to scream.

She closed her eyes tight until he'd finished.

"Open your eyes."

First a blurry slit, then all the way. Russ stood just out of her view, to the left, behind her. She faced a long wooden bench that sat against a cement wall, like the walls in the kennel. Three darkened television screens were mounted above it.

And like the busiest day in the history of the kennel, animals were abundant. Except none moved, some of them didn't even have eyes. Or bodies. Heads on the shelf, on the bench, on the floor. Antlered deer heads, black bear, racc.o.o.ns, and even a fish frozen mid-swim cluttered every inch of s.p.a.ce.

Her eyes darted around, took it all in. Wooden boxes full of tools on the floor, jars of marbled eyes on the back of the bench. Overhead fluorescent lights hummed and flickered.

Russ' head appeared over her left shoulder, he opened his mouth to speak, and his teeth looked wooden. "Nice, huh?"

Her eyes grew wide, his brown muddy aura matched his hair, eyes, and teeth. Dirt, or maybe dried blood, was caked in the deep lines in his forehead and she looked away. Was this her destiny now? Later that night, would her eyeless head be on the bench? Or, perhaps, the floor?

"Ooh, look," he said like he were a child with a new toy. "See this?" He walked to the bench, pressed a black b.u.t.ton mounted on the wall behind it.

The recorded Sasquatch wail.

"Call of the wild, huh?" He laughed, a party of one.

She shut her eyes. What had happened to Nathaniel? Sage? Russ started to push her, maneuvered the chair to the left. It sc.r.a.ped against the cement. In the far corner, a figure came into view. A body beneath a blood-stained blanket. Tears rolled down her face.

She'd been so mean to him for a year. Deceptive this past week. Cold. And he'd been nothing but patient and understanding. She hated herself.

And her daughter had been upstairs in the company of this monster's son. Was she still?

"Victor," he yelled out, "come here."

She jerked as his voice boomed behind her. She averted her eyes from the body and strained to see to her right as a door creaked open.

"Yeah?" Victor answered from above.

"Get your a.s.s down here, you need to go turn some compost."

The boy whispered "Now?"

"Now."

Feet pounded down the stairs, then Victor came into her viewa" his aura a deep blue, flecked dark pink, with an overlay of gray. Fearful, guarded, dishonest. She recognized him from the photograph Becky showed her. She cowered back into the chair as he crossed the room without looking at her. No acknowledgment. Like she were just another project.

She heard the stairs creak again.

"You can come down," Russ said. "I want to introduce you two, anyway."

"Dad, she doesn't care."

"Sure she does. Don't you, Sage?"

Liberty made a noise, a cross between a grunt and whine, and Russ bent over to look into her eyes. His were bloodshot and beady.

"You want the hood?"

Spittle landed on her forehead.

Liberty held her breath, tried not to retch behind the gag, and shook her head.

"Good, shut up." He elbowed her cheek as he straightened, then he turned and spoke to Sage. "I have you to thank, little girl. If I wouldn't have seen you on the tape, I might never have found her." Russ moved behind Liberty and kneaded her shoulders. She saw stars from the blow to her face.

Sage descended the rest of the stairs and came into view. Liberty stared at the pure, pulsating aura. Smelt the familiar scent. What she'd smelled at the farmhouse, a splash of honeysuckle. Saw her hair. She'd colored it in streaks. Like Liberty's. Sage blurred and Liberty blinked away the tears.

Sage didn't make eye contact with her, instead wore a look of indifference and said, "The tape?"

Victor dragged the body across the floor in front of Liberty. Between the vision of her daughter alive, and her husband's dead body, she didn't know where to focus her eyes. Or heart. It split in two.

"Uh huh," Russ said. "Since Victor and I moved here, we've done some scouting, put up cameras on nearly a hundred lots. Hoped to get lucky, he shook Liberty's shoulders. "And we did."

Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed the blanket had slid off to the side, showed the bare skin of the corpse. Sage's eyes flashed when she saw it. Liberty focused down at it and furrowed her brow.

It wasn't Nathaniel.

A white, ragged scar ran up the outer calf, above the knee, and then hooked toward the inner thigh.

Gabriel. He'd gotten it at the Clear Lake cavern as a teenager, after a nasty spill. He'd been a little too adventurous with his playmates.

Gabriel was dead. Not Nathaniel.

Even as she grieved for Gabriel, her hope skyrocketed. She'd caught Nathaniel's scent when she'd arrived. He'd been there as well. Maybe he was biding his time, waiting for an opportunity to rescue her. And Sage.

"A couple of days ago, when I was reviewing some footage from the northern corner of Fairfield, guess who I saw?"

Sage shrugged.

"You. I had to look at it several times, the quality wasn't that great, but not many leggy girls *round here with striped hair, are there?" He smoothed Liberty's hair as he spoke.

Sage slowly crossed her arms and sidestepped as Victor moved past her. "So what?"

Russ laughed, tugged Liberty's hair and she jerked in the chair. "I didn't just see you, I saw you climb into a hole in the ground wearing a flat backpack and come back up with something inside it. What was in there?"