Chapter 8
Chapter Eight
Eliana scanned the place, which at one point had likely been a beautiful resort—or a retreat center. On her side stood a huge barn with the door hanging off, only darkness inside. A chicken coup and a pen for what looked like sheep or goats. No animals in sight.
A river ran behind the livestock enclosures, maybe more like a trickling stream. It probably depended on what time of year it was as to how fast the water flowed.
The next few buildings looked more like cabins, arranged like a cul-de-sac, with a dirt track that broke off and circled in front of each. The roads were rutted with boot prints and thin tire tracks that might have been from a bicycle or ATV.
She pointed to the cabins. “We should check those out.”
A lot of them had shattered windows, like someone had stood outside and thrown rocks through the glass.
Carlos turned off the main lane, parking in front of the centermost cabin, then came around the front of his truck.
As she climbed out, Eliana heard a distant howl and stared across an expanse of grass that disappeared down a hill, blocking her view beyond the buildings. She looked back at the broken windows. “Seems like someone went to a lot of trouble to destroy this place.”
“Come on.” Carlos led the way to the center cabin. “There should be debris from outside on the floor.”
“There’s broken glass.”
“Right, but if this door has been open for weeks or months, leaves would’ve blown in,” he pointed out. “Or rainwater.”
“But apart from the glass, it’s clean.” Just desolate.
“It’s too early to say it’s anything, but the place hasn’t been like this long.”
She shivered, and not just from the cold. “Threadbare blankets. A bookshelf and only a rug to sit on. It’s like some kind of weird convent.”
The books on the shelf looked like old volumes of religious texts. She saw some names she knew, Puritans from hundreds of years ago. Multiple copies of the book of Revelation. Leather bound volumes with gold lettering, The Teachings of the Mother.
She had no idea what to make of it. “Why would Luci come here?”
Carlos didn’t look happy either, standing in the center of the cabin looking around at the bunk beds—no pillows. No lamps. No lights on the ceiling.
Eliana turned around. “This place has no electricity.”
“Those who live in darkness have seen a great light.”
“Huh?” She moved to stand by him.
Carlos shook his head. “She’s been on the party track since high school. After college, she kept her bartending job and her party friends. It’s only been a few years, and Dad and I figured she’d eventually calm down.”
Eliana recalled the two of them saying that about Carlos’s older sister back when they’d all been in high school.
Clearly not much had changed on the Luci front in the past few years, even if Eliana hadn’t talked to either of them much since she’d moved back to Wyoming.
After that, Eliana had gone to college in Denver for a while. Life had moved on.
He scratched his jaw. “I didn’t think she’d calm down to this.”
Eliana wanted to take his hand, but it seemed almost like the tension would snap somehow.
“She thought my beliefs meant I lived on a different planet. Like I considered myself better than everyone else.” She never would’ve pegged Luci for this kind of life.
“Religion is the last thing I thought she might go for. But if she came here, then she found something.”
“Or something found her,” Carlos suggested. “She might’ve been coerced, or as soon as she agreed to come and check it out, she wasn’t allowed to leave.”
“I think that might be above my security guard paygrade.”
He squeezed her shoulder. “Let’s look around some more.”
Eliana followed him to the neighboring cabin. “There are no personal belongings anywhere. How are we supposed to know if she was here?”
“Maybe they have files, or admin records of members. Let’s keep walking.” Carlos headed out. “Thanks for coming with me.”
She nodded but said nothing.
There was never a time when their worlds hadn’t overlapped, even when she didn’t see them much. She’d either hung out a lot with Carlos or with Luci. Usually not both. Sometimes it was good, other times there was animosity.
Her mom told her that Luci wanted Eliana’s life, but she just hadn’t been convinced.
Eliana had wanted anything but what she actually had.
Carlos probably found himself caught in the middle, trying to figure out how to make peace.
Until she cut ties with them after he broke her heart and didn’t come around much after that.
As they walked down the dirt track through the resort, she glanced over.
“Did you know she and her friends would invite me to the mall, then leave me in a store by myself and wander off? I think I was like nine. The employee figured out I was lost and was asking me tons of questions about my parents. They were on a job, so it wasn’t like I could say where they were—or who they were. I was staying the month with you guys.”
“What happened?”
“Luci and her friends came back. They had sodas. I think they didn’t want to buy one for me. Anyway, they told the employee it was me who wandered off.”
“Sounds like Luci.”
“When you’re with her by herself, she can be nice.” Eliana paused. “I really thought we were friends. But with the crew she always chose, then and now, they have this…way.”
It wasn’t how Eliana saw the world, or how she related to people.
Then again, she didn’t have many friends.
She had to know someone for a while before she trusted them enough to let them in.
It always seemed more like Luci could meet someone and, five minutes later, be their best friend and tell them all her secrets.
Carlos looked around. “What did she get sucked into?”
Eliana shuddered. “Does it feel kind of…dark here to you?”
“The sun is shining behind the clouds.”
She shrugged. “Places like this make me believe there’s a spiritual world and that it really does exist behind what we can see.”
“I’ve been in spots where crime seems to seep into a place. As if despair has a thickness to it and evil soaks into the walls and the floor.”
“So you know what I’m talking about?” She stared up at the gray sky. “This place just…feels evil.”
“Something happened here,” Carlos said. “But I’ve always chalked that feeling up to instinct. Maybe it’s God showing me what I can’t see.”
“This is not a place of peace.” She didn’t mean simply the broken windows or the way some of the doors hung down off their hinges.
“Thanks for coming with me, but I probably should’ve done this alone.”
Eliana frowned. “Because I need to be protected from this?”
“You’ve seen enough crime this week.”
“Don’t remind me.” The words slipped out before she could think through how she was reacting.
Carlos muttered, “Sorry.”
But he didn’t look sorry.
Eliana shook her head and walked toward a different kind of building. Bigger, single story, with shutters on the windows. “I didn’t like seeing that doctor, and I’m trying not to think about it. I can’t do anything to help him. He’s already dead and I don’t investigate crime.”
At this point in her life, she didn’t know if that was because she’d been taught that it wasn’t what her future should hold, or because she actually didn’t want to.
“You could,” Carlos said. “If you wanted to.”
He didn’t really think that, did he?
Eliana stopped outside the front door of the building. “You want me to invade your life even more?”
He’d made it clear enough how he felt about her, years ago, when she’d poured out her heart and handed it over. He’d shredded it in front of a cafeteria full of people.
She should hate him, but they were family. There was an ease to being together—something she needed in a place like this.
“Maybe not.” Carlos thought for a second, then said, “There was a point in college where I considered changing my major from psychology to something else. Giving up the idea of becoming a cop.”
She lifted her brows. “I didn’t know that.”
“I don’t think I’d have made it as a cop if I’d simply followed in my dad’s footsteps.
I had to go into it because it’s what I wanted to do.
Because I chose it. Same with faith. We’re taught as we grow up, and we see how faith works through the people around us, but unless we claim it for ourselves the foundation will always be shallow.
We have to be who we are because that’s who we decided to be. ”
Eliana looked aside at the land and the trees. Buildings. Birds flying overhead. She wanted to choose, but she didn’t know who to be.
A rustle behind her drew her attention. She spun around, Carlos caught her, and a second later she was behind him. She grabbed two handfuls of the back of his jacket to keep herself from falling over.
She peered around his shoulder just in time to see a raccoon rush out of the building, dragging behind it a white sheet, or dress.
“Stay behind me,” he told her.
Apparently, they were going in.
“Did you bring a gun?” she asked.
He drew it from a holster at the small of his back. “Do you carry?”
“I have this.” She drew out the knife the Board of Governors had given her, unsure why she’d even brought it tucked in the sheath she’d found under the velvet in the box. Fit pretty well in the thigh pocket of her pants.
It wasn’t like she actually wanted to stab someone.
“Fancy.” He took a step inside. “Doesn’t look like there’s anyone in here.”
“Just that raccoon.”
Carlos grunted.
Eliana peeked out from behind cover. She wasn’t going to contemplate what it would mean for him to take a bullet for her. He totally would, if only because of family loyalty. But that didn’t mean she wanted to stand back and let it happen just so he could be a better person than her.
The room had a short stage at one end, only a foot or two above the floor. A huge painting of Mary with Jesus in her arms hung on the wall behind the stage. Around the room lay white…
“Are those dresses?” She crouched and lifted the nearest one. “It is. This is like a nightgown.” Though not one she’d seen. It seemed more like something from Victorian times.
“And cups.” He crouched to lift one. Light from the window glinted off the metal. “Or is this a goblet?”
Eliana shrugged. “What happened in this place? It’s beyond creepy.” She didn’t even want to know what kind of people would occupy it. Or how Luci could’ve been caught up in this. It was unlike anything she’d ever seen.
“Who would lay out a group of nightgowns like this? There’s even one on the stage.” He shook his head. “It’s like they just disappeared and left their clothes behind.”
“That makes no sense.” She straightened out of her crouch and wandered between more of the nightgowns. It looked as if the person had been lying down and—what?—evaporated out of their clothes? “Someone went to a lot of trouble to set all this out. But why do it if no one is meant to see it?”
“Maybe everyone left and whoever it was lost their mind. There are other options, like the mass disappearance theory. But that probably comes from watching too many old sci-fi shows.”
Right. He’d always liked to watch those old retro broadcasts about spaceships and aliens.
Eliana sighed. “Luci isn’t here, and we have no way to tell if she ever was because there’s nothing personal. Just this stuff.” She waved a hand at the mess all over the room. Gowns and cups. And something else.
One of them wasn’t completely white.
She went over and lifted the gown, holding it up. A ring of red stain had dried to a dark, crusty color in the middle of the material.
“Someone was bleeding.” Carlos straightened, frowning. “This is a crime scene. I’m going to call it in, and we need to search every building. Find out if there’s anyone still here.”
Eliana dropped the gown, and it fluttered to the ground. “Where is Luci?”
“That’s what I intend to find out. But I can do it alone. You don’t need to be in danger if I run into any trouble.”
Eliana shook her head. “I want to help.”
He was already walking to the door.
She followed after him to the little alcove between the room and the front door. He stilled. Something hit her, but she couldn’t see it.
Her nerve endings pulsed and danced.
Then everything went black.