By the time he reached the igloo, second thoughts crept into his head. He didn’t doubt Eve and Katie had experienced something inside the bunker, but to test the theory left him waffling with indecision. On one hand, he knew the Mothman was real. He even believed the ghost of his dead sister, Maggie, had communicated with their mother over the summer. Boiled down to the dregs, the supernatural was almost commonplace in Point Pleasant if you knew where to look.
Ryan wanted him to communicate with the Mothman, but he didn’t have the power to summon the creature on a whim. The thing had a mind of its own. It came when it wanted, and lately hadn’t bothered. Which left the oracle, as Eve and Katie had taken to calling the unseen presence in the igloo.
It took him a while to reach the spot. Once or twice he thought he heard someone moving through the woods beside him, but each time he stopped, the sound ceased. Chalking it up to his imagination, he pulled a flashlight from his belt and stepped inside the old bunker.
Like most of the igloos in the TNT, the ammunition shelter had been cut into the hillside, making it hard to spot from the air. The crown was buried beneath a dense mat of grass, brambles, and weeds. Trees grew on top of the structure and clustered around it. Barricaded by metal doors, the bunker almost seemed a natural part of the earth.
One door stood slightly ajar, offering passage for anyone brave enough to enter.
Flicking on his flashlight, Caden stepped inside. The air was considerably colder, the darkness heavy and moist with the scent of mold and decay. He played the beam of the light over the crudely hewn walls, picking out scrawls of graffiti. Names and dates, a few symbols that may have been satanic in origin. A pile of rusted containers lay heaped in the corner, old metal barrels that had once contained chemicals.
“I’m looking for the Mothman,” he said aloud to the darkness.
Silence mocked him. Of course the damn thing wasn’t going to answer. Nothing was there.
He walked closer to the edge of the enclosure, playing the beam of his flashlight over the graffiti. Eve said the thing would only answer yes or no.
“Do you know where the Mothman is?”
More silence, heavier this time, as if something grew and swelled within the bunker. Cold air crept down his back.
“Did the Mothman kill the missing dogs and Wilson’s cow?”
A sensation of ice pebbled his exposed skin. The temperature plummeted a good ten degrees.
No, a voice said inside his head.
He spun, jerking the beam of the light behind him. Nothing there. Of course not. The thing had communicated telepathically.
He swallowed, his mouth dry. The air grew heavier as if an unseen presence shared space with him. Something foreign and wintry that couldn’t exist in a normal world. He hadn’t felt fear when he’d faced the Mothman, but a sliver of it washed over him now. His free hand strayed to the pistol holstered at his hip. Little good against a specter he couldn’t see, but the gun instilled a measure of security.
“I need to know what’s going on.”
Damn. Only yes or no questions.
Caden wet his lips. “Do you know what caused the dogs and the cow to die like that?”
Yes.
“Can you tell me?”
Silence.
Did that mean it couldn’t, or wouldn’t?
Turning slowly, he swept the flashlight to the far corners of the igloo. One section followed by the next, until he’d covered the perimeter. The only shapes snared by the beam were the heap of rusted barrels. The air temperature plunged again, a signal the thing grew irritated, impatient.
Caden’s breath plumed in the air. “Can you tell me where to find the Mothman?”
No.
Shit. Not that trying to communicate with the damn bird would do any good if it wasn’t involved in the latest rash of weirdness. He considered everything that had happened recently—the dogs, Wilson’s cow, reports of strange lights, Parker and his reference to Cold and Evening.
“Do you know Indrid Cold?”
Silence. Intertwined with a sense of surprise, even shock. In the darkness, something touched Caden’s face. A questing brush of fingertips like suction cups.
Recoiling, he whipped the light around, met with the same empty darkness as before. What the hell was he dealing with? Aggression would do no good.
“Do you know Indrid Cold?” His voice carried a thread of anger.
Yes.
How could this entity—whatever it was—be familiar with delusions created in Parker’s mind? Unless Cold wasn’t a delusion.
He shook his head. More likely he fed his own thoughts into the entity and the thing bounced them back.
“What about Evening? Do you know Lach Evening?”
Yes.
It needed to tell him what he didn’t know.
“Parker Kline is missing. Do you know where he is?”
Yes.
The reply drew him up short. He could spend all day asking about specific locations. Having a powwow with an invisible bogeyman was going nowhere fast. If Parker was out there, he needed help before he hurt himself or someone else.
“Is he still in Point Pleasant?”
Silence.
Tired of playing games, Caden stalked across the igloo. He swept the beam of his flashlight toward the ceiling, then down to the ground. “Come on, answer me, you freak. Ghost, demon, whatever the hell you are. I need a fucking answer!”
Cold air gusted into the bunker with the force of a small cyclone. Caught off guard, Caden raised his arms to shield his face. The tempest roared over him, pelting him in a whirlwind of leaves, twigs, and dirt. Ice engulfed him, cold and frigid as the Ohio River. The biting sensation reawakened the memory of being trapped in his car the night the Silver Bridge fell—a glut of twisted metal, dark water, and death.
Maggie. He had to save Maggie.
Staggering under the onslaught, he dropped to his knees. The flashlight slipped from his abruptly slack grip and struck the ground with a hollow thud. The beam winked out on its own, plunging the igloo into crypt-darkness. Caden covered his face with his hands.
Frigid water.
A blackness so cold it made him choke.
Maggie.
He gasped for breath, the pressure of weighted air slowly crushing his lungs.
It wasn’t real. The bridge hadn’t just fallen. He wasn’t pinned in the wreckage of his car, his sister about to die at the hands of a murderer.