The path twisted and turned with the varying topography of the forest floor, now rising to a height of land, now descending into a valley. Sunlight barely filtered through the heavy canopy overhead. Albright never stopped to check his position, but kept up a steady pace.
“I first met Nahum Blakeney in these woods,” he said over his shoulder. “I couldn’t have been more than ten, and I was practicing my bow-hunting skills on coons. He was maybe a year older than me. He’d never been to school a day in his life. First time I saw him, he just ran off. Melted into the woods. But then I saw him again, a few weeks later. I let him try my bow. Over time, we became…well, not friends—I don’t think the Blakeneys have any friends—but acquaintances. I taught him a few things, brought him some books—he was a poor reader, but he had an eager mind—and he taught me more woodcraft than even my daddy knew.” He shook his head. “One day, he brought me into the compound, introduced me to his people.”
“What were they like?” Logan asked.
“I think it would be better if I let you make that judgment on your own. I’ll wager you’ll discover soon enough which of the legends are true—and which aren’t.”
“Are you saying there’s some truth to the stories I heard in Pike Hollow?”
“Oh, there’s some truth, all right—if we can convince the Blakeneys to reveal it.”
The path was now hugging a steep rock face on one side and a narrow valley on the other. As best he could tell, Logan estimated they had walked about a mile, and the path was gradually trending eastward. Albright followed the invisible trail around a sharp bend in the cliff face, and suddenly Logan found himself confronted with another wall of endless twigs, lashed together with baling wire in vertical rows, seemingly as impenetrable as brick or concrete. This wall was shorter than the first he had encountered, however, and apparently less thick, and it disappeared into the surrounding forest on both sides almost immediately. There was no clearing before it, and the trees crowded in overhead; he could see nothing beyond the serried ranks of twigs, arranged so obsessively in their tightly fitted rows.
Albright stopped, turned to face Logan. “Listen carefully. I used to go inside fairly often as a kid. Since I’ve been back, I’ve only been inside two, maybe three times. If they do let us in, don’t rile them up. Don’t stare. Let me do the talking—until I turn it over to you. Follow my script, understand? And maybe—just maybe—you’ll see some serious shit. Remember what I told you about the Adirondacks, and the Blakeneys in particular—there’s history, and then there’s mystery. Well, the mystery is what lies on the other side of that.” And he jerked one thumb at the dense, ancient wall of twigs.
An old, empty drum of lubricating oil lay to one side, pitted and covered with rust. Picking up a stick, Albright hit the drum, first once, then a second time. And then he approached the wall.
“Nahum!” he called through the twigs, cupping his hands around his mouth. “Aaron! It’s Albright. We need to talk.”
No sound came from beyond the wall, except what sounded to Logan like the faint bleating of goats.
“Nahum!” Albright called again. “It’s important.”
A faint rustling noise from the far side. “Harrison?” came a hoarse, oddly accented voice.
“Yes, it’s Harrison. We have to talk—about the police who are watching your place. Something’s about to happen—something bad.”
A pause.
“I’ve got someone with me. Maybe he can do something to stop it.”
“What someone?” asked the voice from beyond the wall.
“His name’s Logan. He’s not from around these parts. And he’s not here to judge you. He’s here to help.” And with this, Albright turned back and gave Logan a significant look.
For a moment, nothing happened. And then there was an audible stirring on the far side: a sliding, shifting sound, along with the creak of metal. Then a narrow opening appeared in the wall—an entrance so well disguised that Logan would never have known it was there. The doorlike structure pushed outward—and Logan came face-to-face with a gaunt man about six feet four, with long, unkempt hair, deeply set brown eyes, and a beard that reached down to his chest. His ragged clothes were a mass of patches and rude stitching. His huge hands were dirty and heavily callused from years of manual labor. He looked at Albright, then at Logan—his expression becoming suspicious—before turning back to Albright again.
“Harrison,” he said.
“Nahum, we need to talk to your family—now. It’s very important. Vitally important.”
The man called Nahum scratched himself, seemed to ponder this a moment. Then wordlessly he stepped aside, allowing them admittance.
Logan ducked through the low enclosure—then stopped short, staring around in surprise.
30
In his travels as an enigmalogist, Logan had witnessed many strange things and exotic places: hidden tombs of Egyptian kings; the watery depths of Scottish lochs; the crumbling crypts of Romanian castles. But as he looked around, he had to stop and remind himself that he was standing on modern American soil. The Blakeney compound—at least, as much as he could see of it—looked like nothing so much as an ancient colony such as Jamestown or Plymouth. The site had been cut out of the living forest, and it used both impenetrable rocky cliff faces and the thick wall of twigs as protection from the outside world. He could see that the cleared area consisted of perhaps twenty-five acres or more. Dozens of buildings, some of them clearly a hundred or even two hundred years old, rose out of the grass. Many of them were crumbling, in the final stages of disrepair; others had been restored and expanded over time until they were rambling structures of the most bizarre architecture imaginable. Some of the buildings had tiled roofs; others were thatched or covered in wattle and daub. There was a smithy; a forge; what appeared to be a glassblowing apparatus; several barns; pens for poultry and livestock. Hogs wandered the area unvexed. Far ahead—toward the front of the property—were the outbuildings and fenced area for crops that he had spied on his first visit. There was no apparent order or planning to the community; it, along with the buildings it contained, appeared to simply have grown by accretion, making for confusion and a jumbled riot of workable, habitable, and barely habitable buildings. A few structures had in fact collapsed in on themselves and apparently been left to rot.