The Canyon of the Lost Read online

  The Canyon of the Lost

  A Jed Horn Story

  By Peter Nealen

  This is a work of fiction. Characters, locations, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination.

  Copyright 2016 Peter Nealen

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, to include, but not exclusive to, audio or visual recordings of any description without permission from the author.

  Printed in the United States of America

  http://americanpraetorians.com

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  Also By Peter Nealen

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  Nightmares

  A Silver Cross and a Winchester

  The Walker on the Hills

  The American Praetorians Series

  Task Force Desperate

  Hunting in the Shadows

  Alone and Unafraid

  The Devil You Don't Know

  Standalone Fiction

  Kill Yuan

  When the pretty waitress leaned over my shoulder to ask if I wanted another cup of coffee, I readily said, “Yes,” and not just because she was one of the best-looking women I’d seen in a while. Even after the first decent night’s sleep in over a week, I was still tired as all get out, and I needed the coffee. This would be my third cup.

  “You’d better slow down, bud,” Dan said, sipping at his own cup. “You ain’t gonna be able to sleep for a week.”

  I raised an eyebrow at him. “After this last week? I’m not too worried about it.” I lifted the steaming cup. “I could probably go take a nap after I finish this.”

  I’d been working with Dan Weatherby for almost a year, learning everything I could while we hunted the Otherworldly predators that stalked the shadows of the Western US. Our most recent case had involved a hag in the woods of northern Washington. It had been my introduction to those particularly nasty creatures, and it had been one of the hardest cases of the last year, aside from the little encounter I’d had with Professor Ashton and his homunculus at the beginning. Never mind the character who had been pulling Ashton’s strings.

  We were presently sitting in a little greasy-spoon diner in Brook’s Flat, just south of Mount Baker. Brook’s Flat had been a logging town once upon a time, but since the local logging industry had declined, the town was barely holding on as a tourist trap, catering to the hikers heading up into the mountains. There was still a little bit of logging going on, though, and that particular diner seemed to cater mostly to the loggers and the farmers, which meant that Dan and I were generally more comfortable there. We didn’t fit in well with the tourists.

  I looked around at the rest of the diner as I sipped my scalding hot coffee. It was kind of late in the morning, so the clientele was a little thin; most people were at work. It made us stand out a little bit, but I hadn’t been able to haul my aching body off the thin mattress in the hotel until almost eight o’clock.

  The door jingled as two men and a woman came in and went to the bar. The woman and one of the men were dressed in local sheriff’s department uniforms.

  “You’re early today, Sheriff,” the waitress behind the bar noted.

  “Got to get it to go today, Meg,” the man in uniform said. “We’ve got another missing kid up in the hills.”

  “Right away,” the girl said, turning toward the kitchen. “The usual?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” the sheriff said, before turning toward the rest of the diner.

  I looked over at Dan with a raised eyebrow. He shrugged, as if to say, If you think we should. While our job was usually focused on tracking down the weird and supernatural, neither one of us was averse to the occasional simple Good Samaritan sort of thing. God called on us to help our neighbor, after all. Helping to find a missing kid was certainly under the heading of “good works.”

  “If anyone has some extra time,” the sheriff said, “I’m looking for volunteers. The bulletin’s going out on the radio and the county website right now, but we’ve got a little girl missing up in the mountains, and time is of the essence. Her name is Amanda Hoyt, and she disappeared this morning. The more eyes we can get out in the woods looking for her, the better chance we have of finding her, hopefully while she’s still alive. Anyone who can spare some time and effort to help will be appreciated.”

  Without another word, Dan and I got up. We were already packed up, with our stuff already crammed into our trucks, and we really didn’t have much of anything else to do right at the moment.

  “We’ll lend a hand, Sheriff,” Dan said, sticking his hand out. The sheriff shook it, eyeing both of us. We had cleaned up, but neither one of us was dressed all that nicely; we had neither the money nor the inclination to dress fancy. But he was looking for help, and we were offering, so he just nodded.

  “Sheriff Leahy,” he said, by way of introduction. “This is John Meacham and Deputy Bellefleur.”

  “I’m Dan Weatherby, and this is Jed Horn,” Dan replied.

  “Hikers?” Meacham asked. He was a heavy-set man with a large beer gut, going bald. The way he said the word suggested some mild distaste, though I couldn’t tell why.

  “Something like that,” I replied. Needless to say, we didn’t go around telling everybody about our real job. When you start talking about spooks, monsters, sorcerers, and demons from the Abyss, most people start looking at you funny and wondering what the number to Mental Health is.

  The fat guy sneered a little, but the sheriff, who was tall and lanky, with longish hair and about two days’ growth of beard, though it was neatly trimmed, shook his head a little at him before turning back to us. “You guys have any search and rescue experience?” he asked.

  “Some,” Dan said, without elaborating. “We’ve both worked a few missing persons’ cases.” All too often, I’d found, our jobs started with somebody going missing.

  “I’ll take it,” Leahy said. “We’re kind of short-handed right now, and there’s a lot of woods and mountains to search. And since this is one of the weird ones, we’ve got no choice but to grid it off and sweep the entire search area.”

  That caught my attention. “What do you mean, one of the ‘weird ones,’ Sheriff?” I asked carefully.

  Meacham looked impatient, and Bellefleur looked like she really wanted to roll her eyes, but Leahy looked around at the diner, stone faced, and sighed. “You might as well know now, along with anybody else who’s coming along. Supposedly, little Amy disappeared in the middle of an open meadow, without a trace. Her parents turned away for a moment, and when they turned back, she was gone.”

  Bellefleur snorted. “So they say,” she said. She was a pretty redhead, but her voice dripped with contempt. “More than likely, they just weren’t paying any attention for a lot longer than that, and they’ve made up the story to cover up their own negligence.” Meacham looked like he agreed.

  “It’s possible, but I don’t think so,” Leahy said. He ignored his companions and talked to us. “I’ve been at this long enough that I’ve gotten pretty good at judging when people are lying to me. Either these folks are really good at it, or they’re sincere. Of course, time will tell, but I don’t think they’re lying. The fact that the dogs haven’t been able to pick up the scent anywhere near where the kid disappeared makes it weirder.”

  Dan shot me a look, his eyes narrowed just a little. I couldn’t quite read it, but apparently that description rang some alarm bells.

  But all he said was, “That is weird.” He didn’t comment further, in part because at that point, the waitress came out with their food. Leahy and the others collected their brown p
aper bags and covered cups of coffee and headed for the door. I peeled off a couple of bills and put them on the table for our waitress and then Dan and I followed.

  The sheriff was already getting into his Explorer. “If you guys want to follow me, I’m heading up there now,” he called. Dan just waved his acknowledgement before heading toward where his Bronco and my old Ford F-100 were parked. Both vehicles had seen better days, but they ran.

  Before we went to our separate rides, Dan murmured, “I didn’t want to start asking the more pointed questions with Meacham and that Bellefleur chick around. They don’t look like the flexible-minded type.”

  “I’d tend to agree,” I replied. “You think this is one of ‘our’ cases?”

  “I’m almost certain of it,” he answered. “You know the drill by now. We find out what we can first, and we keep our questions as vague and careful as possible.”

  I just nodded, glancing over my shoulder at the sheriff, who was sitting in his Explorer, waiting at the exit from the diner’s parking lot. “You think the sheriff might suspect that something might have taken the kid?”

  “Doesn’t really matter,” Dan said, as he opened his Bronco’s door. “If we can avoid involving him directly, we will.”

  With that, I got in my Ford and started it up, backing out of my parking space and turning to follow the sheriff. I knew why Dan was reticent to talk too much to the sheriff about the spookier part of the world. A lot of people in this day and age don’t react well to such things. In my admittedly brief experience, a lot of lawmen tend to be a bit more open-minded about the weird; they see a lot more of it than most people. But knowing that there’s weird stuff out there and dealing with people who treat it as a clear and present danger on a daily basis are two different things. If he decided we were nothing more than dangerous crackpots with guns, we might find ourselves “invited” out of town at best, in the slammer at worst.

  The sheriff led the way out of town, and soon we were driving up twisting, narrow roads that threaded their way through the mountains with walls of towering spruce, pine, and fir on either side. It was a reasonably clear day, which was rare enough in that part of the Pacific Northwest, but the sun didn’t make it all the way to the roadway all that often, and glimpses of the white bulk of Mount Baker were almost as rare.

  We didn’t have far to go before we turned off the paved highway and started up an old dirt logging road. We trundled through the tunnels of trees for another couple miles, then bounced out onto an open meadow where several other trucks and SUVs were parked, not far from a shelter and a pretty good-sized antenna. This must be the rescue field headquarters.

  Leahy parked his Explorer and got out, waving us over. We complied, our doors slamming pretty loudly in the wild meadow, as another man came over to join Leahy.

  This guy was small and wiry, and his face was so weathered that he could have been anywhere between fifty and eighty. His hair was longish and snow white, as was the stubble on his jaw. His eyes were green, in a mass of crow’s feet and squint lines, and his skin was burned a permanent dark brown. He was dressed in a flannel shirt and wool pants with suspenders, in marked contrast to all the Carhartt, North Face, and Under Armor everybody else in the clearing seemed to be wearing.

  “Steve, this is Dan and this is Jed,” Leahy said, pointing to each of us. “They’re passing through and volunteered to help out. I’m putting them with your team, that all right?”

  Steve squinted at us, looking each of us up and down as if he was taking our measure. Finally, tight-lipped, he nodded. “Fair enough,” he said. “You boys done any search and rescue?”

  “Some,” Dan replied again. “Not around here, but in a few other parts of the country.”

  Steve didn’t look all that thrilled, but he shrugged. “Well, a few more eyes won’t hurt. Just keep close and don’t get too far ahead or behind the search line. Don’t want to have to go looking for some lost searchers in addition to a missing girl.” That last seemed almost just muttered to himself. He sort of shook himself and looked keenly at the two of us. “Grab what gear you’ve got and meet the team up by that yellow flag,” he said, pointing. “And hurry up.” Then he turned and stumped off, looking grumpy about the entire situation.

  “Don’t worry about Steve,” Leahy told us. “He’s a bit cantankerous, but nobody knows these mountains as well as he does. If you’ve got any questions, don’t hesitate to ask him. He might grumble a lot, but he’ll answer eventually.”

  Dan and I thanked him. We’d already grabbed our knapsacks out of our trucks. We kept them packed with basic survival gear as well as a few things more specifically suited to our occupation. We’d left our long guns behind for the moment, so we slung our packs and started up the shallow slope of the meadow, following Steve.

  He looked up as we approached, and if he was somewhat impressed that we weren’t dithering around our vehicles like it seemed a majority of the would-be rescuers were, he didn’t particularly show it. He was peering at the hills and the trees, apparently comfortable enough with the country that he didn’t feel the need to do any kind of map study before moving out. We, on the other hand, could use the familiarization time, so I dragged out the topographical hiking map of the Mount Baker area and started studying it.

  Steve must have thought I was all right if I was looking at the map, because he came over and looked over my shoulder to point with a twig to a spot just to the east of Brook’s Flat. “We’re here,” he said. He traced the twig some distance up the nearest draw, then stopped near the top of a ridgeline. “This is where the parents reported that their kid disappeared. And the dogs have followed the scent that far, and no farther. They just sit down.” He sighed. “Here we go again.” Again, the final sentence seemed to be mostly directed at himself.

  I frowned. “This has happened before around here?” I asked. Dan shot me a cautionary glance; Dan tended to be a bit warier about asking questions until the locals could be felt out more extensively, and he was probably right, but I was still new at the job. While I was still cautious about telling people much, I guess I figured that questions were something else.

  Steve nodded grimly. “On average, about four times a year,” he said. A note of bitterness crept into his voice. “Of course, nobody sees it that way. All just isolated incidents, that’s what the Forest Service says. Only a paranoid nutcase would see a pattern to it.” He spat.

  I looked at Dan and raised an eyebrow fractionally. He rolled his eyes a little, and I had to suppress a grin. Dan often played up his irritation when I charged in where angels fear to tread and turned out to be right.

  “Have you pointed this pattern out to anybody?” Dan asked.

  Steve squinted belligerently at him. “Of course I did,” he snapped. “Pointed it out the first couple of years I noticed it. They treated me like a senile old man.” He spat again. “Except they can’t afford to leave me out of the search and rescue efforts, because I know these hills better than anybody else. They just don’t want to listen to me.”

  Dan spread out the map. “Can you show us where more of the disappearances have happened?” he asked. He was taking a chance, but if this really was one of our cases, and there was an Otherworldly predator involved, we probably couldn’t afford to waste time. If Steve was willing to talk, we needed to pick his brain and get moving.

  He looked back and forth at us for a moment, suspiciously, as if trying to decide if we were just another couple of punks out to make fun of him. After a moment, though, he seemed to figure out that we were in deadly earnest. Still looking a little dubious, he pulled out a small pair of square-lensed glasses and squinted at the map. “One of you got a pen?” he asked. I dug in my knapsack and handed him mine. He started to draw little “X”s on the map, scribbling dates next to each one.

  It was quite a spread. A cloud of little pen strokes marked disappearances dating back almost twenty years, judging by the dates he’d scribbled in tight little handwriting next to them. They we
re spread across close to a hundred square miles. There were so many that Steve must have made a very extensive study of these disappearances. Either that, or he was the fevered, senile old coot that everyone else apparently thought he was, and he was making most of this up.

  “I’m probably forgetting a few,” he said. “But those are the high points. All the same pattern, too. Mostly kids, disappeared without explanation, most of them never found. The ones who were found were dead, and found miles away from where they should have been. Dogs could never track them, either.”

  Dan was studying the map. Finally, taking the pen from Steve, he drew a circle around the cluster of marks. After another moment, he pointed to a ridge that lay just about in the center of the circle. Strangely enough, there were no marks on that ridge. “What’s up here?” he asked.

  Steve frowned at the map. “Nothing,” he said. “Nobody goes up there. There are bigger ridgelines and mountains all around it, no real views for people to see. Just another ridge.”

  Dan and I shared a look. I’d learned enough about these sorts of things over the last year to know that that was a huge red flag. If there was weird stuff going on, and there was someplace in the vicinity that somehow nobody paid any attention to, that was usually where you should start looking.

  “The sooner we can get going, the better,” Dan said. “Quick question, first, though. Is it going to raise anybody’s hackles if we go up there armed?”

  Steve was studying both of us carefully. I could see the wheels turning. He wasn’t sure what to make of us. We had accepted his story far more readily than he was used to, and now we were asking about going up into the mountains with guns, as if we thought there might be something dangerous up there that might have taken the kid, which, of course, we did. We’d both seen enough to know that there really are things that go bump in the night. We could probably come up with some justification about bears and mountain lions, which wouldn’t be far wrong. It just wouldn’t be the whole truth.