Twenty-six
Sheriff Gene Packerson loved the new stroboscopic
LED emergency lights and the way they glittered off the metal of
official county and state patrol cars lining the blacktop at the base of
the slope. He pulled to the shoulder as close to the scene of the
accident as he could get and climbed from the car. Ben Reeves and Jim
Langton came racing toward him on foot. It had been twenty minutes since
he had received the call. Dense clouds of smoke still rolled from the
burned-out shell of the sedan.
Ben and Jim started talking at the same time. Ben
shut himself up. Jim blurted out a condensed version of the story in
flurry of nervous gestures.
Both men had been in the surveillance blind set up in
an erosion ditch a few hundred feet up the slope. They had been a quarter
mile away from the onrushing car when it had slid off the road behind
them, struck the tree, and then exploded. It had taken but seconds to
reach the burning vehicle.
"What do you mean the car had no driver?" Packerson
said when Jim's strange comment registered.
"We heard the car sliding. We saw it hit and burn.
But there ain't nobody inside."
Gene's heart beat dangerously hard. Approaching
fifty years of age, he had been on alert for telltale signs of heart
disease of late. He felt fine, but still dreaded the thought of dropping
dead during some early morning excitement of just this sort. He eyed the
smoldering car suspiciously, then studied the face of the slope. It
looked more open and empty than he remembered. What mystery could such an
expanse of nothingness conceal?
"This is bullshit," he said.
Ben and Jim shied from his anger. Gene refrained
from lashing out at the two. First Ben's story of strange figures
standing on the slope, and now this. He didn't know what to make of it.
He went in search of answers for himself. He
questioned the State Police that had responded to Jim's call for help with
traffic control. He then circled the charred remains of the car and
searched for the tale-tell skeleton of a burned body behind the wheel. He
found nothing, nor any likely spot for one to be hidden from sight.
He spent a half hour exploring the surrounding
terrain in widening spirals. He signaled for Ben and Jim to join him on
his way up the slope. It took twenty minutes to reach the crest of the
hill overlooking the eerie magnificence of Spruce Valley. Dawn was a
steel gray light beginning to illuminate the surrounding terrain.
"Something's wrong," Jim muttered unhappily.
Ben looked about with a frown as well. Gene stood on
the peak of a protruding shelf of rock and looked out over the valley.
News of Kahl's new factory to be built in the basin had hit the media
during the past week. Local residents were split in their reaction to
Kahl's commercial use of the valley. The younger generation saw the
promise of higher paying jobs. The older generation was already
complaining about the environmental damage and ruined scenery
industrialization would bring to the Ridge.
Gene glanced at John Hartman's house visible in the
near distance. He had entertained doubts of John's innocence in the
disappearances, but he could see now that no one man could possibly
engineer events so bizarre as those taking place beneath his very nose.
Gene turned back to the slope and scanned the barren
face from one side to the other. It looked more open than he remembered.
He had intended to take a moment to explore a specific feature of the
slope, but he couldn't remember exactly what that feature had been. The
boys had played near it prior to Jackie Kahl's disappearance.
Played near what?
"Get a report on my desk before you go off duty," he
told the deputies. "Make it damned comprehensive."
Gene started back down the hill to the car. He'd be
better able to coordinate events and monitor the flow of information back
at his office.
A white State Police patrol car tailgated him on the
drive back toward town, unable to pass on the narrow, winding road. Gene
ignored it, unaware of how slowly he was driving, the focus of his
attention dwelling on the mystery of the slope receding behind him in the
early dawn sky. Like a name on the tip of his tongue, it came to him when
his thoughts shifted elsewhere. He jammed on his brakes in startled
surprise. Behind him, the patrol car swung wildly to avoid a rear-end
collision and nose-dived into the ditch.
Packerson pulled to the side of the road. "Shit," he
said mildly, his heart palpitating in his chest.
He had made it a point to inspect the stand of trees
while at the scene of the accident. John had been seen near the trees
talking to ghosts. Jackie Kahl had disappeared at the same spot. The
stand of trees was what had been missing from his field of vision and from
his very memory.
How in God's name had four acres of sixty-foot spruce
managed to vanish from sight and memory?
