Chapter 22 - Collin

After Lowyn leaves, I go to the front window and watch her walk off. I wish she didn't have work. I would like nothing more than for her to take the day off and to fuck her silly all morning.

That's one thing I hate about the Revival. It takes up your whole weekend. And yeah, it was fun. But I get tired of crowds. Sometimes you just want to be alone with your pretty girlfriend and not have to put on a show for strangers.

I will have to talk to Jim Bob. But not now. I just want to forget about all that crap.

I take my coffee out to the back porch where Mercy is, checkin' on her. She's just sleeping like she hasn't got a care in the world. Then I remember our little midnight treasure hunt. I left that piece of paper in the metal box down in the basement. And since I'm right here, just a few feet away, I go back inside, open the door, go down the stairs, grab the paper, and come back up. Then I take it and my coffee back into the kitchen so I can look a little closer.

Last night it looked like a bunch of scribbles, but this morning, with more light and a clearer head, I can tell that it's something like a crude map. In fact, at least one of those chicken scratches looks kinda like a skull.

After a couple more seconds, I come to the conclusion that this map starts at my house.

Well, Lowyn's house.

And then I'm thinking that whatever this piece of paper is, it belonged to my daddy. He drew this map.

I look up and around, then down at the map, trying to orient it. It begins at the back door.

"Hmm." Do I want to fuck with this? Or should I just leave this alone?

If Jim Bob had not told me that there was some big-deal secret waiting for me at the end of my one-year contract that has something to do with my baby sister's would-be kidnapper—i.e. the man I fuckin' killed—well, I might leave it alone.

But I already know that the secret is most certainly related to that and so there is no way in hell I am not gonna follow this map to see where it takes me.

I go upstairs, pull on some jeans and a t-shirt, slip my feet into my work boots, grab my jacket, and then go out the back door to Mercy.

She hops up, wagging and smiling at me.

I show her the map, then tell her, "Seek," just to see if this map was the reason she wanted to go outside last night after we found it.

She sticks her nose up into the wind, sniffin'. If Mercy was trained for cadavers, and Amon said she was even if she did flunk out, then she tracks scents through the air as well as the ground. This map has been in the basement for God knows how long, so I'm not expecting much, but she did bark last night. And I really do think that she smelled something relating to this map, or maybe the key that opened the metal box.

Mercy looks at me, then at the woods in the back of the house, and takes off in that direction.

"Well, fuckin' A." I shake my head, but I follow.

The hillside behind the house is muddy from yesterday's downpour, so I grab a stick to help pull myself up the trail—which really isn't much of a trail, since I haven't come up this way for nearly two decades, but it's easy enough to see it once I start looking. Plus, wherever Mercy is heading, it seems to be along the path.

The hills in West Virginia are some of the prettiest around because they are covered edge to edge in thick trees. And while this certainly looks nice when you're gazing out a window, it's actually not that easy to walk through. Especially when you're going uphill.

When Mercy gets to the top of the first hill right behind my house, she stops and sniffs the air again. There's a lot of forest up here, but typically I didn't go much higher up as a kid because all the interesting things, in my childhood opinion, were to the left.

The river winds around Disciple in a horseshoe, but it curves back and forth like that in hundreds of places up in the hills. That's how you can have a view of it from the front porch of Lowyn's house, another view of it from the back end of the Revival grounds, but still have to cross it when you venture up this way. Goin' left was the best part when we were teenagers. Because there's a waterfall up here. That's where all the high school kids gathered back then, and I'm pretty sure they probably still do.

But Mercy doesn't go left. She goes across a meadow and into the next bit of forest. I lose sight of her quickly and I find myself wishing she had a bell on, but once I get back under the canopy of leaves, I see her ahead. Waiting for me in a clearing.

As soon as she sees me coming, she takes off again, going straight up a hill, and there's no path at all this time. She makes it to the top in thirty seconds. But it takes me ten whole minutes to pull myself up the steep incline and come out into another mountaintop meadow.

Mercy barks. She's all the way across it, waiting to go into the next set of woods and trek up the next fuckin' hill.

I look out across a cliffside and figure I'm about done with this. But when I look over at Mercy to call her back, she's gone.

"Mercy!" I call her, then wait. I expect her to come back because she's not a pet, she's a protection dog. And she has spent every minute of her short life learning how to follow commands.

But she does not come back.

I call again, "Mercy!" Louder. But still, no dog appears. "Fuck." I let out a long breath and follow her. I certainly can't leave her up here, Amon would throw a fit.

When I get into the next level of forest the hill is not as steep and there actually appears to be a slight deer trail weaving through the underbrush. Then I hear barking. It sounds far though. "Mercy!" I call, loud as I can. Then wait, straining to hear anything up ahead.

I take a step forward, trip over a root or something, and almost fall, only just barely catching myself on a nearby tree trunk. I look down to see what it was and have to shake my head and blink.

What the fuck? I bend down, pick it up, and hold it in my hands, feeling like I just stumbled into my own personal Blair Witch Project.

Because it's not a root. It's a fuckin' bone. Like a leg bone. Like a human-sized leg bone.

That's when I look up and see skulls. One, two—at least ten. They are hanging from the tree limbs, more than ten, dozens of them, strung up on vines. Hanging down like a curtain of horror.

When I look around some more, there are more bones hidden in the dirt and leaves.

Mercy, the cadaver dog, brought me to a boneyard and I'm guessing that if I were to look at the map and trace my steps, this is exactly where that map leads.

Yep, I've seen enough. "Mercy!" I yell it as loud as I can. "Mercy, come here!"

I grew up here in these hills so of course, I've heard the stories about the mountain men and the granny witches and such. But they were ghost stories. Never in my life did I ever see any evidence of them.

"Mercy!"

The sound of an animal coming through the brush fills the air. I know it's probably Mercy, but it could be a boar, or a bear, or a bobcat, and I reach for my sidearm.

Except it's not there. Because I haven't carried a gun since I got here.

The sharp cry of a dog fills the forest and my gut sinks. "Mercy!" I run forward, my boots crunching over bones with every step, and come out into another cleared circle inside the forest. This time there is a definite pattern to the hanging bones. They make a circular curtain around a cleared patch of dirt. And inside that circle is Mercy, strung up in a net.

I stand there trying to make sense of everything. Trying to understand how the hell I went from Lowyn's house to this nightmare in the span of thirty minutes.

Then someone behind me pumps a shotgun.

I put my hands up and don't move.

"Collin Creed. You're trespassing on hallowed ground."

"Who—"

"Shut up." The barrel of the shotgun jabs me in the back. "I don't know how you got up here, or why you brought that dog, but I don't care either. This is your only warning and you're only gettin' it because the contract says I can't kill you without a tribunal."

"What—"

"Shut up." He jabs me with the gun again. "I'm not finished. And just in case you start to get any ideas about bringing your men up here to start some trouble, I want you to take a good look around."

He whistles sharply and from out of the brush, people stand up. Dozens of them. All wearing ghillie suits. Not homemade ones, either—not some sticks and leaves glued to a tarp, but real fucking military-grade ghillie suits. Their faces are all painted up in black and green with one eye squintin' down a sight that is aimed squarely at me. Another quick check and I realize they are all sportin' GhostMachines, which is a mighty fine semi-automatic bullpup rifle that goes for just under three grand apiece and is worth every fuckin' penny. We've got two dozen of them down in our bunker, so I should know.

With less than ten seconds to make a first impression, these boys have let me know that they are not fuckin' around.

And I believe them.

I don't know who they are, why they know my name, or what they're doing up here in these hills, but I believe them.

"Do you understand me, Collin Creed? You've got five minutes to cut your dog out of that trap and leave. Because if you don't, fuck the contract, I'll shoot you both."

Then they all seem to disappear. Almost silently. One by one, when my eyes sweep the area, they are gone. And when I turn, there is no one behind me.