Бентли Литтл - The Disappearance

Gary thought of the case Sheriff Stewart had told them about, the woman who’d been imprisoned in the Home for over a year and repeatedly raped by Father. He tried not to, but he couldn’t help imagining Joan being assaulted by the old man, and the pictures in his head made him want to strangle the son of a bitch with his own beard.

Sirens sounded from streets on different sides of the campus.

“What?” Stacy said into the phone, shocked.

Gary held his breath.

She looked over at them. “Someone’s been murdered in the Communications building!” she announced.

Brian.

Gary met Reyn’s eyes, seeing on his friend’s face a mirror image of his own feelings.

Stacy said a quick good-bye and got off the phone. “He’s coming over himself this time.”

“To the murder site first,” Reyn said.

Gary nodded. “Which doesn’t help Joan.”

There was a commotion near the library entrance, and the three of them pressed forward, along with the rest of the crowd. The cause of the disturbance had been discovered. A piece of cloth had been set on fire and placed near a smoke detector in order to make the alarm go off. A firefighter carried out the smoldering black fabric using a pair of long metal tongs, and another fireman rushed up carrying a metal container. The burned cloth was dropped inside.

Reyn sniffed the air, and an expression of excited recognition passed over his features. “I remember that smell now! I know where I’ve smelled it before!”

Gary breathed deeply. The smoke did indeed have the same woodsy odor as the fire that had destroyed his dorm.

“It’s Abrego’s Pitch!”

“What the hell’s that?”

“It’s sap that was used by Indian tribes as a kind of fire starter. The Spanish even used it in their lamps when they couldn’t get oil. It’s from a native tree that was nearly logged to extinction. We learned about it in my California habitats class last semester.” He looked at Gary. “As far as I know, the only place this tree grows is on a preserve in the Mojave Desert. It’s protected, but there’s, like, an on-site research facility run by the school. We went there for a lab class, and that’s where I smelled that smell, as part of a demonstration.”

“I’ll bet that’s where they’re going,” Gary said excitedly. “I’ll bet that’s where they’re taking her. How far away is this preserve? And how big is it?”

“Big,” Reyn admitted, and the note of discouragement in his voice made Gary’s heart sink. “It’s part of the Angeles National Forest, on the desert side of the San Gabriel Mountains, and it probably takes up fifty square miles. There are canyons, trails… .”

“So we’d never be able to find them,” Gary said dejectedly.

Reyn paused, thinking. “The thing is,” he said, “on another part of the preserve, in a canyon where we hiked and took notes on local plants, we passed an old abandoned ranch—a house, a barn, some stables—and I remember a big white cross painted on the rock wall above it.”

Stacy was shaking her head. “Sounds kind of hinky, don’t you think? They escape from their compound in Texas, are on the run from the law, and instead of holing up with one of their own in Texas or New Mexico or Arizona, they decide to camp out in a California wildlife preserve—one with a public nature center, no less—so they can raid the local trees for pitch to start fires at UCLA. It doesn’t add up.”

She was right, Gary thought. And yet…

And yet how much of what had happened to them made any kind of logical sense? From Joan’s mysterious disappearance at Burning Man, to her roommate Kara’s conversion, to his own abduction, to the Home with its deformed incestuous offspring, everything that had occurred had followed an absurdly irrational rationale. Were they now going to start applying the test of ordinary reason to a situation that until this very second had been its polar opposite?

“I think she’s there,” Gary said.

Reyn nodded. “I agree.”

“Do you know how to get to this preserve?”

Reyn’s phone was out and he was already accessing a GPS app. “I will in a minute.”

Stacy sighed, shaking her head.

Around them, some of the students had started to wander off. A fireman was announcing that the library would not reopen until it had been thoroughly searched, and the rest of the crowd started to break up. The excitement was over, it was getting late, and they began heading toward other classes or the student union or the dorms.

There was movement in the darkness to the left of the library building, and though it was too dim for him to be sure, Gary thought he saw two figures in peasant clothes hurrying behind the bulky, blocky structure. His pulse quickened, a primal fear response. A split second later, another man appeared, this one standing purposely in a square of light thrown onto the grass by one of the library’s windows. He faced their direction, and though he was too far away for his face to be seen, Gary had the distinct impression that he was smiling.

The man was oddly shaped, with a squat body held aloft by incredibly long legs. He was obviously one of the Children, and just the sight of him sent Gary into a rage. Fists clenched, he started forward.

“No,” Stacy said, grabbing his arm.

He turned to her.

She was looking in the same direction, an expression of alarm frozen on her face. “Don’t follow them. They’re trying to get us alone. Stay with the crowd.”

He peered into the darkness at the long-legged man still standing in the square of light and felt a tingle of fear. She was right. The man was attempting to lure them into the shadows, away from everyone else, and doubtless there were others waiting nearby to… to…

To what?

Kill them.

Yes. The Home was gone, Father was ruined, and he was out for blood.

Stacy had already manuevered her way between the departing students and was flagging down one of the campus policemen standing in front of the library doors. She spoke quickly, but whatever she said to the officer must have had the ring of truth because the man immediately returned with her and asked with some urgency, “Where is he?”

Gary pointed into the darkness at the side of the library, but the Homesteader was gone. In the few brief seconds he had turned away, the deformed man had disappeared. “I don’t know,” Gary said. “He was right there.”

“We’ll find him,” the policeman said grimly.

The three of them followed the officer around the side of the building. He had his flashlight out—a long metal cylinder that obviously doubled as a weapon when needed—and was shining the beam in a swiveling arc in front of them. But there were very few bushes or hiding places, and the area seemed to be completely deserted. They reached the spot where light from one of the library windows fell upon the ground, and Gary looked back at where they’d been standing. He knew all of a sudden that they would find nothing. All of the Homesteaders were gone.

He was right. They circumnavigated the entire building, but aside from a handful of students strolling past on a nearby sidewalk on the opposite side of the library, they saw no one. Certainly no malformed men in beige peasant clothes skulking around the shadows.

“There’s no one,” the policeman said. “Or, if there was, they’re gone.”

“We didn’t imagine it,” Stacy said.

“I believe you.”

“Well, thanks for checking it out,” Gary said. “But we’ve got to go.” With every second that passed, Joan was farther away, and he was anxious to be out of here and on the road. As tenuous as Reyn’s connection might be, he fully believed that Father and his followers were taking her to that nature preserve, to that ranch with a cross painted on the canyon cliff above. The notion rang true to him, and his mind had already begun concocting a scenario where that painted white cross was a secret symbol indicating that the ranch below was a stop on an underground railroad for religious fanatics, a safe haven for abortion clinic bombers, child-molesting polygamists and weapons-hoarding sect leaders.