Shadow Land Page 2

  “Was it raining when Sammy was out here?” I asked as I jumped down to the ground.

  “Only very lightly. When he wanted to go outside, I wasn’t going to let him at first because it had just started raining and I could see that it was going to come down heavier later. But he was so desperate to get some fresh air, I told him that if he put on his jacket, he could go out into the yard.” Her hand went to her mouth and she seemed to crumple slightly, reaching out to the jungle gym for support. “If only I’d kept him inside, none of this would have happened.”

  “It isn’t your fault,” I told her. “Something took him. You can’t blame yourself for that.”

  “Will you find him for me?” she asked, wiping at her tears. “The police are doing what they can but they’re looking for a person. It wasn’t a person that took Sammy.”

  “I’ll do what I can,” I said.

  “I can’t afford to pay you much.”

  “Don’t worry about that.” I’d already decided to charge the case to the Society. Although I hadn’t found any evidence of the paranormal, I had no reason to doubt Mrs. Martin’s account of last night’s events. There seemed to be some sort of preternatural creature involved in Sammy’s disappearance, so the Society could foot the bill. I’d make much less than if I were working for a private client but my only concern right now was Sammy Martin, not how much I was getting paid to find him.

  I checked the wet lawn for footprints, or whatever type of prints a fish creature might leave, but found nothing. “Can you show me where the creature took Sammy into the woods?” I asked.

  Mrs. Martin pointed to a line of bushes at the end of the lawn. They were at least a foot taller than me and provided privacy from the woods beyond. I could see an area where a number of branches were broken. “It’s this way,” Mrs. Martin said, pushing her way through the bushes.

  I followed, my shirt snagging on the grasping branches. When I finally reached the other side, I was standing on a stretch of dead ground that ran along the rear of the houses. It formed a twenty-foot wide boundary between the properties and the woods. Because of last night’s rain, pools of water had spread over the ground, reflecting the dark clouds in the sky, and the earth had been churned into mud.

  “Does anyone come back here?” I asked Mrs. Martin.

  “Oh, sure. Kids are always riding their bikes along here.”

  “Okay,” I said. “And where did you last see the creature?”

  “Right there,” she said, pointing at the edge of the woods. “It disappeared into the trees with Sammy over its shoulder.”

  I walked over to the place she’d indicated and peered at the shadows between the trees. If the police had searched the woods, it was unlikely I was going to find anything here. I made a mental note to talk with Deputy Amy Cantrell later and find out if the police search had turned up anything.

  “Do you see anything?” Mrs. Martin asked from behind me.

  “No,” I said, turning to face her. I paused and listened to a sound that had caught my attention. A low, rushing sound that seemed far away. “You hear that?”

  She listened and nodded. “It sounds like water.”

  “Have you heard it before?”

  “No, but like I told you, I don’t come back here.”

  Rain began to fall, lightly at first and then heavier, splashing into the puddles and rustling through the trees. I could still hear the rushing water in the distance but it was fainter now, drowned out by these new sounds.

  “I’m going to take a look around,” I told her. “Maybe you should go back inside. I’ll let you know if I find anything.”

  “Okay,” she said. “Thank you for taking this case, Mr. Harbinger. I pray you find Sammy alive and well.” The tears began again, mingling with the rain on her cheeks. She turned away and pushed through the bushes to get back onto her property.

  I stepped into the woods. The thick foliage kept out the worst of the rain in here. I couldn’t see any clear tracks on the ground but there were places where the undergrowth had been disturbed and sticks had been snapped. Those disturbances could have been made by a large animal but Mrs. Martin’s account of last night’s events meant they were more likely to have been made by the fish creature that had abducted Sammy.

  I followed the trail to a circular metal grate set in the ground. The rushing sound was louder now, coming up through the grate. I looked at the trees around me. The middle of the woods seemed like a strange place to build a storm drain.

  Digging in my jeans pocket, I found the small Maglite I always carried and clicked it on before shining it through the gaps in the grate. There was water down there, flowing along the underground pipe, carrying dead leaves and twigs along with it, but I couldn’t see anything else.

  The pipe probably took rainwater down to the lake. The creature could have used it to move unseen to and from this area. I inspected the grate. It was clean of dead leaves and sticks, which could mean it had been moved recently.

  Taking my phone out of my pocket, I called Amy Cantrell at the station. Her father, the sheriff, was probably in charge of this case but Amy would know what was going on. Besides, I got along much better with her than I did with her dad.

  She answered immediately. “Deputy Cantrell.” Her voice was clipped, officious, and I wondered how many calls from the media she’d had to deal with lately. A missing young boy was big news.

  “Hey, it’s Alec,” I said.

  Her voice was flat, unreadable. “Hey, how’s it going? Your office has been closed for a while, I thought you’d gone away.”

  Thought or wished? I wondered. Even though I’d solved the case of her mother’s murder and protected the town from a dark god that had been summoned to Earth to eat everyone, the police still hated me.

  Sheriff Cantrell thought I was a blight on the town and had no problem expressing that point of view. I had thought for a while that Amy’s opinion of me was different than her father’s but since the events at the lake involving the aforementioned dark god, she’d turned cold.

  “No, I’m still here,” I said. “I’m just calling to ask you something real quick. When your officers searched the woods behind Smith Street, the area where Sammy Martin disappeared, did they investigate the storm drain?”

  “What? Why are you asking that?”

  “Just wondering,” I said.

  “Harbinger, what are you up to? Leave that case alone, it’s police business.”

  “Did you hear Mrs. Martin’s description of the abductor?”

  She sighed. “Yes, I heard it. She said her son was taken by a monster. But wouldn’t anyone whose child had been abducted say that?”

  “She meant it literally. Scales, fins, the whole monster thing.”

  “It was dark, it was raining. She was in shock. Just because she thought she saw a monster doesn’t mean she did.”

  “I don’t know how you can say that,” I said. “After what you saw at the lake.”

  Amy sighed again. “I saw some weird shit, I can’t deny that. But that doesn’t mean I can blame monsters for every crime that is committed in Dearmont.”

  “Only the ones where monsters are actually to blame,” I said.

  “Harbinger, why have you been speaking with Sammy Martin’s mother? And why are you asking me about a storm drain?”

  That was the second time she’d called me Harbinger? Were we on last-name terms now? Not too long ago, she’d called me Alec and we’d been friends. At least I thought we’d been friends.

  I looked down at the grate by my feet. I had more urgent business than wondering about my friendship status with the deputy. “Did your officers search the drain last night?” I asked her.

  There was a pause and then she said, “The rain was too heavy. The drain was flooded. Of course we’re going to search it but we can’t endanger the lives of our officers.”

  “Okay, that’s all I needed to know,” I said. “See ya.”

  “Harbinger, what are you—”
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br />   I ended the call. Nobody had looked for Sammy Martin in the drain. The creature that took him could have used the pipe as a way to get to the lake or could have left the boy’s body down there.

  Steeling myself in case the latter were true, I hooked my fingers through the cold, wet grate and heaved on it.

  The damn thing was heavy and by the time I had lifted it and tossed it into the undergrowth, I was breathing hard, my heart pounding. I was pretty sure that wasn’t only due to the heaviness of the grate, though; I felt a growing dread that I was going to find Sammy down there in the dark.

  How was I going to tell Mrs. Martin that I’d found her son’s body in a storm drain?

  Letting out a long breath, I mentally prepared myself to drop into the drain and begin my search. With any luck, I wouldn’t be washed away by the raging water and end up floating in Dearmont Lake.

  “Alec, wait for me.”

  I started at the sound of the voice behind me and turned to see Felicity making her way through the wet undergrowth. She was wearing boots, jeans, and a dark red hiking jacket, much better equipped for the weather than I was in my flannel shirt and white tee.

  “Felicity,” I said. “What are you doing here? I thought you were in England.” Despite my shock at seeing her, I was happy she was here. I hadn’t seen her since I’d taken Gloria the faerie queen’s remains to their final resting place.

  “I flew back yesterday evening,” she said. “I was going to surprise you at the office this morning but when I got there, you’d already left. After cleaning up the mess you’d made, I came to the address you’d written on the notepad. Mrs. Martin wasn’t going to let me in at first because she thought I was a journalist but after I convinced her I wasn’t, she told me you were out here.”

  “Well, it’s good to see you,” I said, drawing her into an awkward hug. Her hair smelled of apple and cinnamon and the feeling of having her in my arms was a good one, despite the fact that we were both rain-soaked.

  She gestured to the storm drain. “So, what are we doing?”

  “Mrs. Martin believes her son was taken by a monster last night. A fish-like creature. I was snooping around and I found this. The police didn’t check it out during their search of the area so I’m going to take a look.”

  Felicity leaned over the drain and wrinkled her nose slightly. “Is it safe?”

  “Probably not. But if Sammy Martin is down there, I have to find him.”

  “We have to find him,” she corrected me.

  I grinned. It felt good to have someone on my side, especially after the conversation I’d just had with Deputy Cantrell.

  I crouched at the edge of the drain and shone my light down there again. The water was fast moving, pulled by gravity along the sloping pipe. The question was: how deep was it? I didn’t want to drop down there only to get swept away by the torrent.

  “We can use those,” Felicity said, pointing at a set of rusty iron rungs set into the wall.

  I nodded and lowered myself into the hole, searching for the first rung with my boot. When I found it, I gradually put my weight on it. It held. I climbed down gingerly until I was standing in the fast-flowing water, the soles of my boots on the bottom of the pipe. The water came up to my knees and although its pull was strong against my legs, I could stay on my feet with no problem.

  Felicity followed me down and, when we were both standing in the fast-flowing water, took her own Maglite out of her pocket and turned it on.

  Our flashlight beams illuminated the curved walls and ceiling of the drainpipe. The air smelled damp and moldy down here and there was a chill coming off the rainwater.

  “Doesn’t this seem like a strange place to put a storm drain?” I asked Felicity. “There’s no road or pavement to drain the water away from.”

  “This is Dawson Street,” she said.

  “Dawson Street?”

  She nodded. “In the early thirties, there was going to be a street here called Dawson Street. The storm drains were put here to serve the road that was going to be built but construction stopped and Dawson Street was never finished.”

  “Why didn’t I know that?”

  “Because you didn’t research the history of Dearmont like I did,” she said matter-of-factly. “Come on, let’s see where this leads.” She walked forward in the direction of the water’s flow, her flashlight beam bouncing off the sides of the pipe.

  I caught up with her. “Why didn’t they finish Dawson Street? Was the construction crew attacked by something that came out of the drain?”

  Felicity shook her head. “No, the explanation is a bit more mundane than that. They ran out of money.”

  We walked on, trudging through the water and casting our lights over everything, looking for evidence that Sammy Martin had been down here. There was nothing but mold on the walls and leaves and branches in the water.

  After ten minutes, we came to another grate. Light filtered down into the pipe from above, along with rainwater dripping off the metal grill.

  “We’re still in the woods,” I said, looking up through the gaps in the metal and seeing branches against the gray sky.

  We continued on, leaving the grate behind and becoming enveloped by darkness again, the Maglites providing the only illumination.

  Felicity suddenly halted and put a hand on my arm. “Do you hear that?”

  “No,” I said, “what is it?”

  She put a finger to her lips. “Sshhh. There’s something in the pipe ahead. It’s coming this way.”

  I listened. Above the rush of the water, I could hear splashes, the sounds of something approaching us from the darkness ahead.

  “If it’s a clown, I’m out of here,” I said.

  Up ahead, high-powered flashlight beams cut through the darkness. Now I could hear voices—two disgruntled male voices—complaining about the cold and the wet and the fact that they’d been picked for this “shitty duty.”

  Two uniformed deputies wearing waders came into view. They pointed their flashlights at us. I recognized them as deputies Elwood and Hobbs.

  “Hey, get those lights out of our faces, guys,” I said.

  “Alec Harbinger,” Elwood said, “I should have known we’d find you in the sewer.”

  “Very funny,” I said. “Have you found anything relating to the kid’s disappearance yet?”

  “We just got here,” Hobbs said. “So, no. And even if we did find something, we wouldn’t tell you about it.”

  “Unless it’s a werewolf’s claw,” Elwood said, chuckling. “We’d tell you if we found a werewolf’s claw. Or a vampire’s fang. Yeah, we’d tell you about that.” He laughed to himself.

  “You need to work on those wisecracks, Elwood,” I said.

  He stopped laughing and said, “Shut up, Harbinger.”

  “Where did you two get into the pipe?” Hobbs asked me.

  “In the woods behind Sammy Martin’s house,” I told him. “How about you?”

  “At the next grate.” He pointed his chin at the darkness behind him. “Did you find anything down here?”

  “No,” I said. “Nothing.”

  “I told you this was a waste of time,” Elwood said to Hobbs.

  “Well there’s nothing back that way,” I said, pointing back the way Felicity and I had come.

  “We’ll be the judges of that, Harbinger,” Hobbs said. “We were told to check out the storm drain so we’re checking out the storm drain. A civilian isn’t going to tell us how to do our jobs.”

  I shrugged. “Okay, knock yourselves out.” I moved aside to let them pass.

  Hobbs stepped past me without a word. Elwood, snickering, said, “Watch out for the ghosts down here, Harbinger.” Then he put his flashlight under his chin and made a whoooo sound, which he probably thought sounded like a ghost.

  When they were gone, their flashlight beams receding into the distance, I said to Felicity, “Deputy Cantrell probably sent them over here after I spoke with her on the phone.”

 
; “Well, they won’t find anything in that direction. There’s nothing back there.”

  “Nope, which is why we’re going to go this way.” I pointed my Maglite in the direction of the water’s flow.

  “How far are we going to go?” Felicity asked. “All the way to the lake?”

  “If we have to. At least then we’ll know if Sammy is down here or not.”

  “I really hope he isn’t,” she said.

  “Yeah, me too.” I was holding on to the hope that the creature had kidnapped Sammy, using the storm drain to get away unseen.

  The alternative was that the creature had murdered the boy and left his body down here. The force of the water meant that Sammy’s body would be washed along the pipe to the lake.

  I assumed there was some sort of grate where the pipe terminated, put there to catch debris such as branches and trash that got into the drain. I was hoping we wouldn’t find Sammy’s lifeless body trapped against that grate.

  After a couple of minutes, we came to the place where Elwood and Hobbs had entered the pipe. I looked up through the hole at the sky above. The rain was coming down even harder now. I could hear thunder rumbling in the distance. Water was pouring into the drain through the circular hole, splashing over the metal rungs on the wall.

  “Looks like a storm,” I said to Felicity.

  “Well, that explains why the water level is rising.”

  I looked down. The water, which had been up to my knees when I’d entered the pipe, was now a couple of inches above them. The rise had been so gradual that I hadn’t noticed it until Felicity pointed it out.

  “That’s just great,” I said. “We need to hurry.”

  She nodded and we resumed our trek, the rising water splashing around our legs.

  “I forgot to ask,” I said as we increased our pace, “how is your dad?” Felicity had been in England because her father had suffered a heart attack and Felicity had flown over there to help her mother care for him.

  “He’s on the road to recovery. The doctor is pleased with his progress and he seems much fitter again. I asked him if he wanted me to stay longer but he said he’ll be fine and that I should get back to work.”

  “That’s good,” I said. “I’m glad everything is okay.”