Another Kind of Eden (Holland Family Saga 3)

“What about them?”

“They’re black sockets. They’re not eyes.” I slowly accelerated. Ahead of us, lightning forked into the top of a mountain that penetrated the clouds. “I think he’s the man called Bible-thumping Bob. I also think that’s not his real name.”

She peered into the whiteness of the snow swirling at us. “He’s gone. How could anyone survive out here by himself?”

“Does he look like somebody you used to know?”

“Don’t do this to me, Aaron.”

“Tell the truth. Stop denying what we’re seeing.”

“I know the difference between the dead and the living. My father is dead.”

“What was your father’s first name?”

“Robert,” she said, her mouth a tight line. “It was Robert.”

“There’s no possibility that’s your dad?”

“I looked for him two years. Robert McDuffy is dead.”

“I’ve talked with him, Jo.”

She stared straight ahead, her brow furrowed. “I think this man is here to see you, not me, Aaron. Maybe it has to do with your friend who died in Korea.”

“Saber was MIA.”

“That’s what I mean,” she said. “Your friend is dead. He’s not coming back. And neither is my father.”

A bolt of lightning struck a huge tree not over thirty yards from us, splitting the trunk in a clean V all the way to the roots, turning every leaf on every branch into a tiny flame. I would have sworn I saw Moon Child standing by the tree, her face as expressionless as bread dough, her bangs and eyes jet black.

“What did you just see?” Jo Ann asked.

“Nothing,” I said. “There’s nothing out there. Shadows play tricks on you.”

“Aaron?”

“What?”

“I can’t say this.”

“Can’t say what?”

“Do you think this is hell?”

* * *

I WAS GUESSING AT the destination of Stoney and Jimmy Doyle and their friends. My friend at the Sally had mentioned Cordova Pass and the Sangre de Cristos, both in alpine country filled with peaks over eleven thousand feet high. The road I chose had no signs, no campgrounds, not even a Forest Service lookout tower. The road was six inches deep with mud and in some places eroded away, particularly on corners that overlooked thick stands of fir trees two hundred feet straight down. The only gifts the road offered were the deep, swerving tire marks of a very heavy, very large vehicle such as a school bus, and a four-foot-broad ornamental wood star that may have fallen off its roof.

“Look at the snowbank between those two Ponderosas,” I said. “That’s the star my friend at the Sally was talking about. He said Marvin had a star like that tied on top of the bus. German farmers in the Midwest call it a hexe. They think it will bring them good luck. They evidently don’t know hexe in German means ‘witch.’?”

“Tell me what you saw when the lightning struck the tree.”

“Moon Child,” I replied.

“I saw her, too. I’ve never been this afraid. I’m just too tired to show it.”

We went over a rise and around a pile of broken rocks that had rolled down the hill. We kept going until we were above the storm, at an elevation where the road was dry and the stars visible through the clouds. The road ended at a box canyon, its walls high and sheer, a reddish-brown color more like river clay than rock, forming a natural amphitheater.