“Don’t you remember what Parker said? Cold must return. Evening will follow. Too coincidental, don’t you think?”
“That a guy in the looney bin happens to hit on some dipstick’s name?” He’d forgotten that quirky mantra of Parker’s. It wasn’t like Evening’s last name was Jones. How did a kid with little connection to the outside world know about a guy like Evening? “Look, the whole thing reeks if you ask me, but you’re going to have to handle that arrogant bastard on your own. I need to get to Katie.”
Caden nodded briskly. “I need to see someone too.” He headed for his desk.
Ryan came up behind him as he hooked the jacket from the back of his chair. “Who?”
“No one you know. At least not personally.”
“Should I be worried about that?”
“Grateful.” Caden smiled tightly and headed for the exit. “I’ll call you when I’ve got something.”
Caden made a quick trip to West Central for a brief discussion with Nurse Brenner. When he asked about the name “Evening,” she said the only time Parker had mentioned it was in his message to Caden. She’d thought he was referring to the time of day, not a proper name. Busy with her own mini-crisis involving a patient who insisted snakes had slithered into his bathroom drain, she pointedly showed him the door. Caden had wanted to talk with Parker’s doctors, or at least look at medical files, but the authorization involved paperwork, jumping through hoops, and navigating red tape.
Instead, he headed where he’d originally planned—the TNT.
Morning had given way to early afternoon by the time he arrived, the narrow roads cut through the old munitions site splattered with sunlight. Many of the trees still had their leaves, dense woodlands on either side marked by sienna, copper, and gold. Every so many yards a narrow footpath, marked by a swing-arm post at the entrance, sliced into the foliage. Dried leaves scuttled across the road, snared on the opposite side in clusters of thistles and ferns.
The TNT was the home of the Mothman. The first time he’d seen the creature, he’d been eighteen. He and his friends, along with a few girls, had come here on a Halloween night, hoping to scare up some fun. Nothing too terrifying, a harmless trick to frighten the girls. Near the igloo where the Mothman had been sighted, he’d planned to creep into the woods, then cry out as if he’d been trapped by the monster.
Instead, he’d come upon the creature in the darkness, a grayish-white bulk sheltering beneath the trees. A thing of nightmares and chaos, it was strung together by gray flesh and leathery wings. Squatting with its wings folded close to its body, it gazed at him with malignant red eyes. A splintered branch pierced the right wing, pinning it to the tree.
He should have yelled his head off. Called for Wyatt and Glen. Instead, he’d cautiously walked forward and extracted the branch. The thing had surged to its feet and burst into flight.
He should have been terrified. Anyone who’d ever encountered the Mothman reported an overwhelming sense of horror. Unlike others, Caden had seen the creature up close. Touched it, opening a channel between them. Dark emotion had poured directly into his head—confusion, melancholy, pain. A deluge of misery that left him gasping for breath.
It had been an eye-opening experience to learn emotion was the cryptid’s defense. A reflex means of driving predators away. But instead of flooding Caden with fear, it had used that power to share its misery. Quiet agony that had nothing to do with its wound but something ugly and raw, buried deep inside.
Several miles into the TNT, Caden pulled off the roadway. If he drove far enough, he’d encounter shells of buildings and old ruins tumbled among the trees. The Army left its mark behind when abandoning the site, including chemicals that leeched into the soil. Now a wildlife refuge, the TNT had been placed on the government’s Superfund site for clean up. In the meantime, the continued buzz over red water seepage and ground contaminants only fueled speculation about the Mothman and other strange phenomenon. As a kid, Caden had heard tales of three-headed fish in the ponds, squirrels with eight toes, and a red fox with a double snout.
He’d never seen anything out of the ordinary other than the Mothman, but Eve and Katie claimed to have spoken to an unseen entity with oracle-like powers in an abandoned weapon’s igloo. According to folklore, the TNT was bisected with ley lines. Those who put stock in the supernatural believed the igloo was positioned on one of those lines, creating a doorway, or “thin spot” between worlds. There were even tales of George Washington encountering unexplained phenomenon when he’d surveyed the land preceding the Revolutionary War.
Caden wasn’t entirely convinced the legends were true, but had the scars on his arm to prove the Mothman was real. Pulling off the narrow lane, he parked his car, then killed the ignition.
The air was crisp, layered with the musky scent of dried leaves and soil when he stepped outside. The primeval atmosphere never failed to amaze him, the hush of deep woods broken only by a soft sigh of wind through the tree branches or the occasional cry of a crow. Leaving the car behind, he headed down a rutted path. Within a few yards, the trail became buried beneath overgrown weeds and briars, the brown plants acting like a net to trap fallen leaves. The latter crunched under his shoes as he threaded his way deeper into the woods.