The Narrow Gate: A Supernatural Thriller (Solom Book 2) Read online

  She was still drawing air, but her eyes were hollow and sunken. He lifted one eyelid, just the way Henrietta would do. Betsy’s pupil was as tight as a BB. Her long skirt bunched around her knees, revealing a purple road map of varicose veins. Arvel felt the back of her head and found a raised place the size of a banty-hen egg.

  “You just got a little concussion, is all,” Henrietta would say. She spoke in that slow, reassuring way even when the patients were unconscious. Once Arvel heard her waltz a car-crash victim through death’s door with that same soothing kind of talk.

  Arvel didn’t think he could pretend to be Henrietta anymore, because he wondered what would happen if his wife stopped breathing. “Don’t die on me, now,” he said, a line Henrietta would never use in a hundred years. “I can’t afford to be alone. Not when I need more warm bodies between me and the Horseback Preacher.”

  What if it was HIM that come calling? What if those pounding noises were made by horse hooves?

  He went for the phone and dialed 9-1-1 with no problem, and then found himself talking to the communications officer in Henrietta’s words. “Is this Francine?”

  Of course it was Francine, because Arvel knew all the communications folks from the scanner he kept in his truck. When Francine said, “Yes, go ahead,” Arvel took a deep breath and said, “Sorry to bother you, but I was wondering if you could have the squad come down to 12 Hogwood Road in Solom. I’ve got a patient down.”

  “What’s the emergency, sir?”

  “I’m not no sir. I’m Henrietta. I mean, this is Arvel Ward.” Somewhere in his glove box was a sheet with all the emergency response codes, but since his job was putting out fires or occasionally directing traffic, he’d never bothered to memorize the list. All he knew was that, in car wrecks, “PI” meant “personal injury” and “PD” meant “property damage,” and you hurried with the red light and siren for the first of those but not the second. So he said, “We got a PI here, weak pulse, possible head injury. Plus something’s burning in the oven.”

  “Hold on, Arvel, we’ll get somebody right there. Are you with the patient?”

  “Not right now. I’m on the phone.”

  “I meant, is the patient in the house with you?”

  “Yeah. She lives here.”

  “Okay, stay on the phone and let me give you some instructions.”

  “I can’t leave her alone, and the cord won’t reach. Tell them to hurry, and send Henrietta.”

  Arvel hung up. When he got back to the kitchen, he knelt over her again to check her pulse. His fingers touched a wet place on the floor. He lifted his hand and saw it was blood, leaking from somewhere just above her waist.

  Arvel wondered if maybe Betsy had landed on a butcher knife when she fell, because it surely wasn’t her head giving off that much blood. He tried to roll her over but she was too heavy. Finally, he lifted her enough to see a rip in her dress and the burgundy maw of a wound in her side, a few inches below her rib cage. It looked like some kind of bite mark, because the edges of the wound were stringy and jagged.

  He looked once more at the back door, wondering what kind of beast had wandered in and taken a chunk out of his wife. And wondering why Digger hadn’t raised holy hell, and whether Henrietta would know how to handle something like this.

  Because, right now, with Henrietta’s voice in his head or not, he couldn’t think of a single comforting thing to say.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Sue Norwood turned around the sign in her window to inform any late-night cyclists that she was “Closed—Gone Fishing.” Not that she’d ever cared for sport fishing, even though she sold Orvis rods and reels, hip waders, hand-tied flies, coolers, Henry Fonda hats, and everything the genteel fisherman needed except for alcohol.

  Solom was unincorporated, which precluded a vote on local alcohol sales, and Sue figured in maybe five years the seasonal homeowners from Florida would own enough property to push for a referendum. For now, she was content to bide her time on that front. The pickings were easy enough as it was and the dollars trickled in, much of it in cash.

  In 1999, Sue purchased a little outbuilding that belonged to the Little Tennessee Railroad, one of the few structures in Solom to survive the 1940 flood. It sat within spitting distance of the Blackburn River, but was on ground just high enough to survive the calamities that Solom seemed to call down upon itself. Ice storms and blizzards were biannual events, high water hit every spring and fall, hellacious thunderstorms rumbled in from March through July, and the winter wind rattled the siding boards like they were the bones of a scarecrow.

  But all the outbuilding needed was a green coat of paint, a $20,000 commercial loan at Clinton-era rates, and sixty hours of Sue’s time each week to hang in there despite Solom’s lack of a true business climate.

  Sue converted an upstairs storage room into an apartment, and it was to this space she retired after closing. She passed the racks of kayaks that stood like whales’ ribs on each side of the aisle, making sure the back door was locked. As an all-season outfitter, she’d packed the place with every profitable item she could order, from North Face sleeping bags to compasses to Coleman gas stoves. Ten-speed bicycles were lined against the front wall, with rentals bringing in more than enough to keep her wheels greased.

  Ever since Lance Armstrong trained along the old river road before his third run at the Tour de France (a little factoid that Sue always managed to slip into her advertising copy, when she couldn’t get the local media to mention it for free), out-of-shape amateurs had been flocking to the area to rest their sweaty cracks on her bicycle seats.

  At $30 a day, they could hump it all they wanted. She was even willing to sponsor a community fundraising ride for the Red Cross each summer, a nice little tax write-off that paid back in spades.

  Sue counted the bikes before she went upstairs, her last official chore for the day. Two were still out. She checked her registration records at the desk and found the bikes were rented by a Mr. and Mrs. Elliott Everhart of White Plains, New York. Fellow Yankees. Sue was from Connecticut herself, but she’d graduated from the University of Georgia with a degree in exercise science followed by three extra years in Athens as an assistant coach for the women’s field hockey team, pretty much flattening her vowels and slowing down her speech enough to pass for Southern if she were drunk.

  At the age of 25, she’d written down the names of all her favorite rock-climbing spots, clipped them apart with scissors, and randomly pulled one out of a hat. Solom wasn’t on the list, but it had been the closest to the Pisgah National Forest, which featured Table Rock and Wiseman’s View. Solom was near a river, and rock-climbing wasn’t exactly a major source of commercial recreation income, since it required little more than a rock and an attitude. So she’d launched River Ventures and expanded ever since. Funny thing was, she’d been so busy these past few years with her business that she rarely saw the sun herself.

  The Everharts.

  Sue could remember them because the husband, Elliott, detected her up-coast accent and remarked upon it. Sue couldn’t remember the wife’s name, but she was a quiet, willowy blonde who spoke little and didn’t seem all that thrilled with the idea of human-powered transportation. They rented the bikes at 2 p.m. and estimated their return at 6 p.m.

  Elliott told her they’d rented a cabin on the hill above Solom General Store and had walked down so as not to take up a parking space in the small gravel lot. Sue had said, “Thank you kindly,” an artificial Southern response that had come more and more easily over the years, then sent the couple on their way with bottled mineral water—respectably marked up to $2 a pint—and a map.

  Sue checked the clock above the front door, the one that elicited native bird calls with each stroke of the hour. It was ten minutes away from Verio, nearly two hours later than the Everharts’ anticipated return of Crow.

  People who rented bicycles sometimes got flats. It was rare, because she kept the equipment well maintained. All those who rented g
ear, whether it was a propane lantern or a kayak or a ten-speed, were required to sign release forms absolving River Ventures of any responsibility. That didn’t mean people didn’t screw up, especially the types of deep-pocketed but shallow-skulled clients to which Sue usually catered. Even if the Everharts had gotten lost or suffered a breakdown, they most likely could have walked back to Solom, flagged a ride, or called for assistance on their cell phones.

  Except Sue could see three problems with that scenario, because she’d experienced each of them. Sometimes bikers got lost when they tried to walk back, since the going was so much slower that the maps became deceptive. Flagging a ride was no guarantee because there simply wasn’t that much traffic after sundown in Solom, and outsiders were loath to pick up anyone wearing fluorescent Spandex and alien-looking crash helmets. And cell phones were almost universally useless in Solom because the valleys were deep and the old families owning the high mountains had yet to lease space for transmitting towers.

  Sue considered a fourth alternative. The Everharts appeared to be in their thirties and were presumably childless, at least for the length of their vacation. Maybe good old Elliott had gotten a boner for nature and coaxed his wife into the weeds for a little of world’s oldest and greatest recreational sport. Or maybe the willowy blonde was the one to turn into a ravening maw of wild lust.

  As far as Sue could tell, there was no reason to call out the search-and-rescue team just yet. Besides, she earned an extra $30 for late fees and the Everharts had placed a $500 deposit on their credit cards to cover much of the value of the bikes. With depreciation, subsequent tax write-off, and the tip they’d probably give when they rolled in red-faced tomorrow morning, Sue figured the old saying “Better late than never” wasn’t quite as good as “Better late and then never.”

  She left on a small light above the desk, went up the stairs at the back of the store, and made herself a dinner of canned salmon, creamed rice, and fresh collard greens, all heated over a Coleman gas stove. The stove was a legitimate business expense. She’d checked with her accountant boyfriend, Walter, whom she’d met on a whitewater rafting expedition.

  Though the relationship launched on Class-Four rapids, it had drifted into shallow eddies by summer’s end. That was okay, too. The money she’d spent on condoms and Korbel champagne were a valid tax write-off. Sue anticipated a warm meal ahead and a vibrator waiting under her pillow, the famous Wascally Wabbit that was never too “hare-triggered” and didn’t lie or cheat.

  If the Everharts came knocking in the middle of the night, she planned to sleep right through it.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Elliott was being a total dick.

  Carolyn Everhart didn’t like to think of her husband in such bald, crude terms, but he’d taken the whole vacation as a measure of his testosterone levels. From booking the rental car to deciding on restaurant stops on the trip down, Elliott always had a snappy answer for her every question, and a good reason why he knew best. As they’d followed the Appalachian foothills south, Elliott seemed to have grown wax in his ears and a fur pelt that hadn’t graced humans since they’d started shaking their Neanderthal origins.

  They’d picked Solom almost at random. Elliott worked at PAMCO Engineering with a guy who’d attended Westridge University and said the North Carolina Mountains were relatively unspoiled (“A perfect place to get away from it all while still having it all”).

  An Internet search and credit card reservation later, and they were booked in the Happy Hollow retreat for a week, and since October was leaf season, the cabins cost a premium. A two-day drive from White Plains, with a Holiday Inn Express layover (“Complete with a ‘lay,’ what do you think, honey?”) in Scranton, Pennsylvania, and they had arrived with not a single argument over road maps.

  But here in the failing light, she couldn’t get Elliott to even look at the map, much less admit they were lost. The pocket map they’d picked up from the outfitters’ was fine as long as they stuck to the river road, which was flat and gently curving. But Elliott insisted on what he called “a little off-roading,” though after two hours her legs had begun to cramp and the air temperature dipped into the low 40s.

  Instead of complaining, she pointed out that the bikes were geared for road racing and not mountain climbing. Too late. The name “Switchback Trail” had intrigued him. Besides, he’d complimented her on how the biking shorts snugged her ass, and that bought him a little slack.

  Elliott chased down a forest trail barely wide enough for a fox run, and that trail branched off twice, crossed a narrow creek, and cut around a cluster of granite boulders that rose like a backwoods Stonehenge from the swells of the earth. Two forks later (“The road less traveled or the road not taken, what do you say, you liberal arts major, you?”) and he’d juddered over a root in the gathering darkness and been thrown over the handlebars. No bones broken, but some serious scrapes that would require antibiotic ointment.

  Now they stood in a cluster of hardwood trees whose branches were nearly devoid of foliage. If any houses were around, their lights didn’t show. Small, unseen animals skirled up leaves around them and darkness was falling harder and faster than a philandering politician’s poll numbers. Carolyn, a homemaker, Humane Society volunteer, and member of the Sands Creek subdivision bridge club, resisted the urge to say “Well, we really got away from it all, didn’t we?”

  Elliott pulled a pen light from his fanny pack and played it over the bicycle. “I think the front wheel’s warped. We’ll have to pay for the damage when we get back.”

  “You mean ‘if’ we get back.”

  “I know exactly where we are.”

  “Show me, then.” She pulled out her copy of the fourfold pocket map. It was bordered with ads for area tourist attractions, fine dining establishments, and investment realtors. The river road was marked by a series of arrows, and the Solom General Store and River Ventures were represented by red X marks. State highway 292 leading from Windshake was clearly delineated in thick black ink. Tester Community Park, about five miles from the outfitters’ judging from the scale of the map, was the last recognizable landmark they’d passed.

  “We’re right about here,” Elliott said, running the beam over the pen light in a printed area that represented two square miles.

  “There aren’t any lines there,” Carolyn pointed out.

  “Sure. But we were headed east, remember? The sun was sinking behind us.”

  Actually, Carolyn recalled only vague glimpses of the sun once they’d left the relatively familiar flatness of the pavement. What bits of scattered light did break through the gnarled and scaly branches seemed to originate from a different position with each new slope or fork.

  When the sun had settled on the rim of the mountains, the entire sky took on the shade of a bruised plum, and Carolyn was thinking by then that even a trail of bread crumbs out of “Hansel and Gretel” wouldn’t have led them back before midnight.

  “Can the bike roll?” she asked.

  “Sure, honey.” Elliott lifted the bike by its handlebars and spun the wheel with one hand. The wheel made three revolutions, the rubber sloughing erratically against the tines, before it came to a complete stop. “Well, it can work in an emergency.”

  “At what point does this become an emergency?”

  “Take it easy, Carolyn. We can walk out of here in no time. Once we find the river, we’ll be home free.”

  “Do you know where the river is?”

  “Sure, honey.” He took the map from her and fixed the pen light on the place he’d decided was their present location, despite having zero evidence. With the beam, he traced a line to Blackburn River on the map, which was conveniently marked with a sinuous swathe of blue. “We’re here and the river’s there. A half-hour’s hike, tops.”

  “I see the river on the map, but where’s the river out here?” Her voice took on the tiniest bit of sarcasm despite her best efforts.

  “Water runs downhill. Ergo, we walk downhill, and t
here will be the river.”

  “Ergo” was one of those annoying, know-it-all, engineering-type words Elliott occasionally sprang on her when he was feeling defensive.

  “I’m glad we wore athletic shoes and not moccasins,” Carolyn said. Elliott had stopped at a little souvenir stand when they crossed the North Carolina border, one with a fake moonshine still by the front door and a wooden bear sculpted with a chainsaw. She’d talked him out of buying the Rebel flag window decal and the Aunt Jemima figurine-and-syrup-decanter (“Just wait till the guys at PAMCO get a load of these authentic tastes of the South!”), but he’d gone for the genuine hand-stitched leather Cherokee moccasins at $29.95 a pair.

  “Do you have any water left?” He’d used up the last of his water rinsing his wounds.

  “A little,” she said. Though she was under no illusions that they’d be back in the comfort of their rental cabin within the hour, she didn’t think they were at the point where they’d need to conserve water to survive. She handed him her bottle and he dashed some in his mouth and swallowed.

  “Okay, let’s rock and roll,” he said, walking his bike back down the hill. Just enough daylight remained to reveal the darker cut of the trail against the thick tangles of low-lying rhododendron. She tucked the map in the tight pocket of her biking shorts and followed, the bike leaning against her hip.

  They had gone fifteen minutes before the invisible sun slipped down whatever horizon led to morning on another side of the world. Elliott switched on the pen light and its weak glimmer barely made a dent against the walls of the forest.

  “Remember those big rocks we passed?” Carolyn asked, the first time she’d spoken since they’d started their descent.

  “Yeah.”

  “We should have come to them by now.”

  “They’re probably uphill from us. We’re at a lower elevation now.”