Chapter Eleven
Paul gazed out the window of the plane as it was landing. It was dark and the running lights along the runway flashed past at great speed, slowing down as the craft braked to a slow turn at the end of the runway and made its way to the terminal. No one would be there to meet him. He chose it that way. Less to worry about. He could depend upon himself. No one else.
He was still shocked by the realization Rita was really against him. He could not believe she could not see he was doing this all for her. Her parents understood, finally. He used to think they didn't like him. Now he understood they were just worried about their daughter's welfare. No more than he was. Maybe they understood there was something unstable about her ideas of how life worked all along. Sometimes, he wished he could share with them the sacrifice he had made for her. He believed they would appreciate it even if Rita did not.
He did not require sleep any more, so he traveled at night to make time and be ready for his meetings the next day. Tonight's travel was a pleasure. No business meeting this time. This one was going to be a joy. He grabbed his overnight bag and made his way out of the airport. He flagged a cab over and got in.
“Tall Pines Campground, Please.” He instructed the driver.
The driver hesitated. Paul explained.
“About thirty miles down the interstate and then two miles out from the town.” He gave the driver directions because he did not expect the man to know where the campground was.
The driver gave him a look that asked if he was serious. Thirty miles away?
“Don't worry. I'll pay a night's wages for the effort and your trouble,” Paul reached forward and handed the man four one hundred dollar bills.
“Yes, sir.” The man reached for the bills. The deal was made.
As he made contact with Paul's hand, Paul locked his eyes with the cab driver's eyes and soon he was drinking of the man's blood. Just a small drink. It had been a long day and an even longer night. The cabby never knew the time it had cost him to reach for that money. To him no time had passed. When Paul was done, he released the cabby's hand and the man turned around to follow the directions he was given. His head felt a little light. He attributed it to turning around too fast. Spatial evacuation he thought he remembered someone explaining it to him once.
“I've heard of the Tall Pines Campground.” The Cabby made conversation like he did with all his customers. “Supposed to be some real nice place. Never been there myself. Just heard others talking about it. Lot of northerners come down to stay there. They've got two nice campgrounds there. Tall Pines is the Newest. You here on vacation or business?”
“I'm here to chop down the Tall Pines.” Paul chuckled.
Paul leaned back into the seat of the cab and rested his eyes. He wasn't tired. He just didn't want to have to banter with this cab driver all the way down the highway. He could sense the man was a talker. It was a good thing the man could not sense what Paul was.
John awoke with Rita beside him on the floor. He immediately covered her with a throw blanket he kept near the couch. She was unconscious. It was not just sleep. Her transportation from her place in the physical plane to his place was exhausting. At least he assumed it was that way. He felt the tiredness pulling at his own body even as he tried to sit up and rub his face, wiping away the sleep that he knew he wore there. He was sure the cloud had caused the excessive fatigue. It hadn't been there when he drifted off to sleep earlier. Since he had slept, he felt the tiredness was more a result of the spiritual exertion they had undergone.
The hour was late. He could feel it. The clock said it was four in the morning. Felt it, too. He sat still for several minutes letting his body acclimate to the fatigue it bore. Who knew that reaching out to someone in the cloud would be so tiring? Marcie probably knew. She just had forgotten to share that with him. Of course, she had warned him against using that property of the cloud connection. Maybe she didn't think he would need to know that since she hadn't expected him to use it.
He looked at Rita again. She was out cold. Her breathing was deep and regular. Almost scarily so. His eyes traced the form of her body underneath the blanket. She was the picture of tired if ever there was one.
As tired as he was, he immediately wondered why he had awoken. He listened to the sounds of the night outside his camper. Nothing unusual. All was as it usually was. Still, something must have awakened him. Sleepy people did not wake up for just any reason. Something substantial had to have happened. He concentrated on the noises around him.
Once convinced that the physical world around him was as it should be, he focused on the spiritual world. Maybe Kathy or Marcie was trying to get his attention. That was when he noticed the absence. Not the quiet. Not the emptiness. But the absolute nothingness.
He usually could feel the Mist all around him. Since the night in the maze of the Cabin, the Mist had roamed his property pretty much at will. It had become so familiar he had almost forgotten its presence. It was gone. Gone.
The thought scared him. Gone. How could the Mist be gone?
“Kathy? ... Marcie? ... Emil?” He spoke out loud but not loud enough to wake Rita if she was only sleeping.
Nothing. There was nothing there. His words fell into emptiness. Not the emptiness of a chasm or expanse of space where no one was present. It was the emptiness of nothing being there. More like the words fell against a wall and bounced back after being denied admission.
John felt alone. Rita was there. Even if she was awake, he would have still felt alone. The Mist had become his comfort zone. His bastion of peace. He had known that for a while. He had just never understood how much he depended on that comfort. He had thought of it like a comfortable shirt he had gotten used to. Now he knew it was more important than that. Now that it was gone.
“Rita?” His mind searched for alternatives to what had awakened him. Anything except what he was sensing.
Rising, he went outside closing the door behind him with one last look at Rita's quiet, still form on the floor beside his favorite chair. Maybe he should move her to the bed. The thought made him feel guilty. He didn't mean it like that. Just her comfort. Still, he felt like his mind was betraying him in a lot of things lately, taking him places he was not ready to go. No Mist. Guilty feelings about Rita.
Kathy? Was she okay?
The coolness of the night air was undeniable. Spring was well under way but the nights were still cool enough to enjoy the brief respite from the heat of each day. John shivered against the chill that assaulted his body when he stepped out on the deck. Some of it was the coolness of the night air. Some of it was the thought of what life would be like without the Mist around. Something was wrong. He was sure of that.
Marshaling his courage like he thought Kathy would do, he stepped down off the deck and made his way in the darkness up the road, headed for the woods where he had first encountered the Mist. He had to be sure. Maybe it was just his imagination or some reaction of fatigue associated with the transportation of Rita through the Mist. He was hoping for some answers.
Minutes later he was walking into the woods in the dark of the night, something that until a few months ago he would have never thought about doing. He was not afraid of the dark. Just unsure about what could be out there. Content to leave well enough alone. Funny thing was, he was more aware of what could be out there now than he was before. It wasn't the thing that might be there that gave him pause. It was the unknown of what might be there. Somehow, knowing made it okay to face. At the moment, he was more afraid of what he might not find.
In a few steps he was at the spot where he had entered the Mist on that fateful day a few months before. Then he had been in search of the love of his life. As he thought about it, he smiled to himself. He was still in search of the love of his life tonight. She was in the Mist, only she was part of it this time.
He felt the tingling sensation of contact with the Mist. Immediately he sensed the presence of Kathy, Marcie and Emil. The Mist was right where it had been b
efore.
“What's happening?” He asked. “How come I can not sense you in my camper?”
“We are not allowed past the confines of our original Mist boundaries,” Marcie answered for them all.
“Why?”
“He's returned.” Kathy spoke in his head.
“Who?”
“The Keeper of the Cabin.” Kathy responded. “And he's much stronger this time. Something is happening. He's rebuilding the cabin and setting up his torture chambers again.”
“How do you know all this?” John wanted to know.
“He's invited us to join him. He's told us he plans on absorbing the Mist inside himself this time.”
“Can he do that?” John was confused. “I thought the Mist was a plane unto itself.”
“It is but even a plane can be absorbed inside another plane. Like we exist inside your human plane, he can absorb us and draw us inside or wherever he wants us. It's part of his original deal with us. We exist where he wants us to exist.” Marcie explained.
“How did he get that strong?”
“Must have made more deals to build whatever it is he's planning now.” Marcie sounded worried.
“You don't know what he's doing.” John did not make it a question.
“Whatever it is, he's claiming back the deals he first made with rock and wood to reestablish his dominance at the cabin.” Kathy said.
“You broke his deals when you confronted him last year by brokering a new deal for you and Kathy.” Emil answered John before he could ask the question. “But the deals were still there if ever the Keeper wanted to return.”
“But his deal with me was that he never return.” John reminded them.
“That was with you and Kathy. Since she is dead to the human plane, he does not have to keep the deal he made with the two of you because there is only one of you now. In effect, he can come back and rebuild.” Kathy explained further.
“This can't be happening. This is my property. How can he be here if he has never made a deal with me? This is my land, not his. We're in the human plane, not his.” John rubbed his tired face even though he was speaking in his mind.
“True.” Marcie answered. “Maybe you should march right in there and explain that to him.” she was not joking.
“This is a nightmare.”
John spoke out loud and blew out his frustrations with a loud escape of air. At the same time he ran his hands through his hair trying to think things out. Nothing came immediately to mind. He wasn't sure he could survive another encounter with the Keeper of the Cabin. He had almost killed John last time except for some quick thinking and mentally outmaneuvering him by forcing him to break a deal which is tantamount to asking to be sent to the Place of Chains in the spiritual planes.
“It's real, John.” Marcie reminded him. “And he's on your property. He is reestablishing the deals he had before and making stronger ones.”
“Stronger?”
“Yes,” Emil answered. “He is offering to share the whole of the energies for support in his takeover of the Mist.”
“Can he do that?”
“His deals were predicated on the supply of life force energies. He can do that. His control over our section of the Mist is part of his deal with Air, under whose plane we exist in some part in every plane.”
“So, what do we do now?” John asked.
“There is nothing we can do.” Marcie explained. “We are part of the Mist here and subject to the Keeper of the Cabin because of the Deals he has made. For us to do anything against him would require us to break a deal. We can not do that.”
“What about my deal with you and our relationship?”
“Secondary to the Keeper's deal. His is primary because he was first.” Marcie explained. “We're sort of at his mercy, John.”
“You mean it's up to me?” John asked the question but he didn't need any answer.
Screaming erupted from the campground. Hysterical, loud and frightened. John's attention was momentarily pulled away from the world of the Mist and his coming battle with the newly strengthened Keeper of the Cabin. Something was amiss in his campground.
Making his way carefully out of the darkness of the woods, John charged down the somewhat better lit roadway toward the sound of the screaming woman. He was sure it was a woman. He thought he heard something moving in the woods to his left as he ran ahead to find out what was happening in the campground. Something moving away from the campground. His thoughts conjured up a stronger shadow of the figure that had once haunted his nights back when he was first building this campground. Too much happening at once.
Two minutes later, he was standing before a weeping mother telling a chilling tale of a huge man taking her child out of their camper. The crowd of people standing around suddenly saw the dispersal of every other mother there to go check on their children. At least the ones who had not followed them out to investigate the noise.
John tried to calm the mother but knew there was no calming a distraught woman. He had an idea it was the Keeper up to his old tricks, using the campground as his personal smorgasbord. But he could not say anything to these people about such things. Number one, it would ruin his business. Number two, it would do them no good to know about it. The Mist would rebuff every effort to penetrate to the cabin as long as it served the Keeper of the Cabin. Informing them would be a waste of time and energy.
“Someone call the police!” John instructed the onlookers. That was the response expected of the human plane existence he held. But he knew he had to go after that child himself. No one else could do it. No one else knew to do it. It was his responsibility.
Paul watched the excitement created by the hysterical woman. Her screaming had abruptly interrupted his plan. Kul had taken the kid before he had fully joined with the woman. Her desperation at the abduction of her child tore her concentration from his and she had her life back. He could still taste her kisses on his lips. Her skin against his felt so alive and vibrant. The memory made him want to finish what he had started.
Noticing the women leaving the crowd to go check on their own children, Paul formed another plan. He picked his way carefully, silently around the back side of the campers until he found what he was looking for. A young woman had just checked on her baby sleeping soundly inside their camper. She was in the process of returning to the crowd and her husband when Paul stepped out and confronted her.
With a soft voice, he asked her if she had seen his child. The question caught her attention and she looked directly into his eyes. In the darkness of the evening she had to look closely to be sure she had heard what she thought she heard. His voice pulled her focus. Her focus was her eyes. Another child was missing? Another parent was asking after their child's safety. She glanced back toward the camper she had just exited. Then she looked into the obviously hurting young man's eyes again.
His eyes were deep pools of languishing love and excitement and desire drawing her in. The compassion she felt was for the pain of him losing his child. The endless depth of love conveyed in those eyes. The darkness around the two of them. The peacefulness of her spirit as she gazed deeper and deeper into those wonderful eyes. All of it conspired to draw the young woman away from her own thoughts and allow her to bathe in the thoughts found in the depth of those eyes. Paul made no move toward her as he allowed his eyes to pull her inside and simultaneously allowed her to experience the love and sensations of love he could inspire with his eyes.
Several precarious seconds passed by and Paul felt her reach that place of complacency. He instructed her to move around behind the camper, deeper into the darkness near the woods, deeper into his control. There he took her in his arms and began to kiss her.
She was young and soft and tender to his touch. Without her knowledge he had fired her passions and drawn her own desires to the surface of her thoughts until they overwhelmed any inhibitions or societal patterns of decision making. She was fully engulfed with her desire to have this man with those w
onderful eyes. Even more, she wanted him to have her. All of her. She tore at her clothes to give herself to him. She felt his arms go around her and wrap her up. She tingled all over as he kissed and nibbled her neck. She could never remember such a feeling of complete abandonment before. Never before had she ever wanted to just take off her clothes with a man she just met and let him do whatever he wanted to her.
“Take me!” She demanded in his ear.
Paul smiled and did just that. He felt his arms melding with her flesh and diving deeper and deeper into her body until he was drinking heavily of her blood and fluids. He saw the surprise in her eyes when she realized he was joining himself to her in a way she had never experienced before. Not fear. Not worry. Just surprise. And after the surprise, longing. A desire so deep and extreme that her eyes now held his. He wanted what she wanted because she wanted what he wanted.
He kissed her on the mouth and she kissed him back. She was fully involved in giving herself to him. More so than that woman behind the bar. He had not understood the fullness of drawing her into his eyes, first. Now he knew. This one was totally his. She wanted to give herself fully to his desires. They were her desires too.
For several minutes he drank of her energies and felt her body tighten with the pulsing, vibrating climax of her womanhood. Her last physical expression of her life and no one was there to see it except him. Then she gave up the spirit to him and he felt her go completely limp in his arms. He released the shell of her being and dropped her to the ground, letting her lay where she fell. Her clothes were disheveled and torn. Good. An attempted rape – fulfilled murder – crime scene just a few feet away from a child abduction should destroy this campground's business once and for all. Paul felt satisfied. Internally and externally.
John waited for the police to come. Four cars pulled into the campground with blue lights flashing. Practically the entire force. He recognized the officers that drove up as people he had met before Kathy had left the police force. They acknowledged him because of her and he acknowledged them with a nod. They took statements, made a cursory search of the immediate area but did not want to disturb the area too much until daylight, when maybe the abductor could be tracked and followed.
The woman was becoming more coherent as time moved forward. Her story now included a strange, tall man who had captured her attention and tried to seduce her while his friend made off with her child. The young girl was seven years old. The age made John wince. That was the age his Kathy had been when the Keeper had tried to abduct her. To John's knowledge, Kathy was the only child ever to return after being abducted by the Keeper. He did not intend to let that record stand. He just didn't know how to get away. It would seem strange to people if he left the scene just yet. After all, he was the owner and proprietor of the campground. What happened here was important to him. Besides, if all held true, he knew the Keeper kept the children for a while before he absorbed them into his world. He still had some time to rescue the child.
Another yell got the attention of the crowd standing around watching the police work. At first, John and the police ignored it. Their hands were full with keeping the woman calm. The father had also entered the picture now. He was demanding action immediately or threatening to take action himself. Although crashing around through woods was not advisable and might disturb whatever trail the abductor may have left, no one was trying stop the man or do more than warn him he might be hindering the investigation. So far he was waiting impatiently for someone to do something. But the new commotion was building in volume and intensity as more voices joined the chorus of fervent need.
“Murder!”
That word got the attention of the police. Two officers separated themselves to discover the source of the noise and ascertain its relevance to the current situation. A missing child plus shouts of “murder” and “dead” did not sound very promising. The father of the missing child was leading the run towards the new shouting with the two police officers fast on his heels.
After a few more shouts of “murder” and “dead woman” John could hold himself back no more. A child missing. A woman attacked, maybe dead. He needed to get a handle on what was happening in his campground. The Keeper was back but this new, open attack on a human population was not his normal way of doing things. Then he thought of Rita, back in his camper. It was the first time her had thought of her in over an hour. The thought made him feel bad that he had forgotten her in all that had transpired in the last hour. After all, he was responsible for her being here in the first place.
John made the excuse he had to go change his clothes and put on something more appropriate for the night air and he left the police to uncover the situation. Quickly, he made his way back through the darkness to his camper at the rear of the campground. He was only halfway down the road after cresting the slight rise when he saw the door standing wide open. He was sure he had shut the door when he left. He remembered shutting it because he felt guilty about the look he had given Rita lying on the floor. Now it was a beckoning hole of his own mistake.
He ran the rest of the way, taking the steps onto the deck in one bound and stopping himself by grabbing at the sides of the doorway to keep himself from falling inside the camper. The scene that met his eyes was serene and empty. Rita was gone. He had already known that. He searched for signs that she had left under her own power. Nothing. The blanket he had covered her with lay in a pile on the floor. She had no clothes on. She would not have left under her own power in a completely naked state.
He stepped back onto the deck and searched the wood line around the camper with his stare. Nothing. No matter how long he stared into the woods, no clues gave themselves up.
Rita was gone. A child had been abducted. Another woman, or maybe that child had possibly been killed. John felt the fatigue of the ages climbing up on his back. In his mind the cloud was still approaching from the horizon. That confused him. If the trouble was still on the horizon, what was all this? He tried to reach Marcie, but there was still no connection to the Mist. The Keeper was controlling things at the moment.
Resignedly, John went back inside his camper and grabbed a sweater. Then he made his way back up the road after closing his camper door. He would keep Rita's disappearance to himself for now. He had not yet figured out how he was going to explain her appearance. He sure had no idea how he was going to explain her disappearance.