Chapter 20
He passes by a gravesite abundantly adorned with ancient flower bouquets, a handful of crucifixes, old Mardi Gras beads, and other memorial paraphernalia. He’s drawn to it and lets his eyes roam over the artifacts, taking them in one at a time.
Not able to take his eyes from the crucifixes, he instinctively reaches for one.
It’s antique, with a patina that complements the old-world feel of its carvings.
As his hand closes around it, he hesitates for only a moment, then quickly takes it.
He walks toward another row of tombs, holding tightly to the stolen offering in his grip.
Another mountain of keepsakes comes into view.
He picks up a coin from the pile and turns it over in his hand.
It’s got a scripture inscribed on one side: For the Lord loveth judgment, and forsaketh not his saints; they are preserved for ever: but the seed of the wicked shall be cut off.
On the other side is a cross. That same feeling ignites inside him, revealing that the coin belongs to him, so he places it in his pocket.
Strolling through the rows, he steals more pieces of people’s grief.
It’s a simple act of depravity that satisfies the hungry serpent coiled inside his gut.
For a moment he wonders if these people will come for him later, visiting his dreams or his bedside as angry specters seeking their lost offerings.
When he looks up, he sees it: the stag, staring at him with eyes that see nothing.
Its massive broken antlers take up all the space between tombs, almost touching the structures on either side.
For a moment, they just stand silent, each daring the other to make a move.
After several minutes, the stag walks away, disappearing into the rows and leaving a heavy feeling of validation in its place.
He’s meant to be here in New Orleans again.
The divine darkness followed him here, and it’s spurring him to action just like it did that first time he stumbled on the cabin.
He stares at the void the stag has left behind, the disrupted dust still swirling in the air, backlit by moonlight. It seems to hypnotize him for a moment.
Suddenly a shrill, inorganic noise pulls him from his meditative state.
He looks down at the intrusion to see a notification on his phone.
It’s a burner, one he had waiting around for moments like this.
One of the only apps he added to it was the app for his security system at home and at the derelict cabin in the woods.
He looks at the notification, assuming the system is alerting him to movement: probably an animal making its way through the yard or even a spider on the camera lens. But when he realizes that the system has detected a genuine person at the cabin in the hills, his blood turns to ice.
Flicking open the video feed, he sees a man walking curiously around the perimeter of the dwelling.
He’s wearing a baseball hat, cleverly disguising his features from immediate view, but Philip can see that he’s practiced in the way he moves, the way he investigates every step.
Philip switches to another camera angle as the man walks around the corner of the cabin.
For just a moment, the man’s head is turned enough.
Philip zooms in on the visual, desperately willing the intruder to look up so he can see his face. As the stranger moves around, he keeps his chin tucked, eyes hidden, under the brim of his hat. Philip’s heart thunders in his chest, and every hair stands on end.
Just before he decides to set off an alarm to try to scare the intruder away, it happens—the man in the video looks up for a brief moment.
Philip blinks, testing the image to make sure he is truly seeing what he thinks he is, because looking back at him is a face he has seen before, a face that has plagued his days as of late, threatening to unravel everything he has built.
Detective Hart’s face looks at the camera, unfazed and determined, moving along the edges of Philip’s property like a cat. Curiosity turns to anger in an instant, and Philip knows he has to get out of sight before he draws too much attention to himself.
Philip begins to walk, bursting through the stag’s dust storm and quickly taking a right into a dark corner of the cemetery.
He watches as the detective looks in a window, shielding his hand over his eyes for a better look at the dark interior.
Philip’s heartbeat continues to thunder in his ears, and he holds his breath, trying to think of what Detective Hart could possibly get a visual of through that dark window.
Once it seems like Hart is sure no one is home, he clicks on his flashlight and shines it inside.
By watching Hart’s movements, Philip can picture the beam of light bouncing around the interior of the cabin, but then the detective stops moving, his flashlight held steady.
Philip tries to take a mental inventory of everything in view of the window.
As Hart remains still, seemingly fixated, it suddenly occurs to Philip that he may be seeing the chair in the middle of the room.
A simple chair in the middle of a room would normally be nothing to cause any alarm.
After all, a chair is just a place to sit.
But this one is nailed to the floor and likely has some stains on it that could raise a few questions.
Immediately Philip tries to mentally flip through the laws regarding legal search in Massachusetts.
There’s something about it being considered lawful to enter a dwelling without a warrant if the cop can see evidence of a crime from outside.
But is this something that would hold up?
I don’t think he can search the rest of the house even if he went in to look at the chair.
He has to keep the scope of the search to the chair.
At least some of that pre-law shit stuck.
Hart leans closer to the window, clearly looking for more, but then he quickly retreats and walks around to the other side of the house.
Just when it looks like he’s about to take off, he doubles back and stops in front of the same window. Philip watches as he shines the light inside again, then lifts his phone and snaps a few photos.
Fuck.
Philip’s mind reels, seeing everything crash around him. Two important questions keep flashing like a broken neon sign in his mind; How did he find the cabin? Was the stag warning me?
This detective is resourceful. He shows up at the right times and digs into places his fellow officers simply won’t.
Philip shouldn’t have kept him alive and sniffing around this long, but taking care of him would have likely caused more issues than it solved.
Besides, he had bigger things on his mind and bigger adversaries to contend with.
He had such a reliable system, such an easy time until John Leroux and Wren Muller came sniffing around where they didn’t belong. Now, together, they’ve birthed some kind of mutated extension of themselves in the form of this pain in the ass, Lucas Hart.