Whispers of the Dead - Страница 50

He lapsed into silence. I stared numbly at the road ahead. Dear Christ, don’t let this happen. But it already had, and the silent woods offered no relief. Insects bobbed through the broken columns of sunlight, insignificant specks beside giant oak and pines that had stood here since long before I was born. A slender waterfall tumbled through a cleft in the hillside, foaming white over dark rocks. We passed fallen trunks covered in moss, others being slowly choked by vines while they still stood. For all its beauty, everything that lived out here was in a constant fight to survive.

Not everything succeeded.

I’m not sure when I became aware of my unease. It seemed to come from nowhere, announcing itself first as a prickling on my forearms. I looked down and saw the hairs on them were standing up; a similar tickling told me those on the back of my neck had started to rise as well.

As if only waiting for that, the disquiet bloomed into a clamouring sense of urgency. I gripped the steering wheel. What? What’s wrong? I didn’t know. Beside me Paul still sat in haunted silence. The road ahead was clear and empty, dappled with sunlight and shadows from the trees. I checked the rearview mirror. There was nothing to see. Behind us the woods unrolled with indifferent monotony. But the feeling persisted. I glanced in the mirror again, and jumped as something hit the windscreen in front of me with a dull slap.

A large insect was mashed against the glass in a tangle of legs and wings. I stared at it, feeling the urgency begin to coalesce. Without thinking what I was doing, I stamped hard on the brake.

Paul braced himself against the dashboard as he was flung against his seatbelt. He stared at me in bewilderment as the car screeched to a halt.

‘Jesus, David!’ He looked round, trying to see why we’d stopped. ‘What’s wrong?’

I didn’t answer. I sat gripping the steering wheel, my heart bumping against my ribs. I was still staring at the windscreen. The dragonfly was big, almost as long as my finger. It was badly mangled, but I could still make out the tiger-striped thoracic markings. Its eyes were unmistakable, just as Josh Talbot had said.

The electric blue of Epiaeschna heros.

A swamp darner.

CHAPTER 22

PAUL WAS LOOKING at me as though Id gone mad as I put the car into reverse.

‘What is it? What have you seen?’

‘I’m not sure.’

I twisted round in my seat to look through the rear window, scanning the woods on my side as I backed up the road. Talbot had said swamp darners liked wet, wooded habitats. And amongst all the insects, there had been a blue sparkle in the trees I’d been too distracted to notice. Not consciously, at least. Just look at those eyes! Incredible, aren’t they? On a sunny day you can spot them a mile away.

He’d been right.

I pulled over on to the bank beside the road. Leaving the engine running, I got out and went to stand on the edge of the woods. A green, outdoor silence enveloped me. Sunlight shafted down between the tree trunks and branches, picking out mats of wildflowers growing through the grass.

I saw nothing.

‘David, for God’s sake will you tell me what’s going on?’

Paul was standing by the open passenger door. The sour taste of anticlimax was in my mouth. ‘That’s a swamp darner on the windscreen. The same as the nymph we found in Harper’s casket. I thought…’

I tailed off, embarrassed. I thought I might have seen more of them. It seemed far-fetched now.

‘Sorry,’ I said, and turned to go back to the car.

And saw a glint of blue among the green.

‘There.’ I pointed, my heart thudding. ‘By the fallen pine.’

The dragonfly zigzagged through patches of dappled sunlight, blue eyes shining like neon. As though they’d chosen that moment to appear, now I picked out others amongst the trees.

‘I see them.’ Paul was staring into the woods, blinking as though just waking up. ‘You think it’s important?’

There was a tentative, almost pleading note to his voice, and I hated myself for raising his hopes. Swamp darners or not, York wouldn’t have left Noah Harper’s body so close to a road. And even if he had, I couldn’t see how it would help Sam. Yet we knew York had headed out this way in the ambulance, and now here were the dragonflies as well. That couldn’t just be coincidence.

Could it?

‘Talbot said they like standing water, didn’t he?’ Paul said, with an excitement born of desperation. ‘There must be some round here somewhere, a lake or pond. Do you have a map in the car?’

‘Not of the mountains.’

He ran his hands through his hair. ‘There’s got to be something! Perhaps a slow moving creek or stream…’

I was beginning to wish I’d not said anything. The mountains covered over half a million acres of wilderness. The dragonflies could be migrating, for all I knew; might already be miles from wherever they’d hatched.

Still…

I looked round. A little further down the road I could see what looked like a turning on to a track.

‘Why don’t we take a look down there?’ I said.

Paul nodded, eager to seize even the slimmest hope. I felt another stab of guilt, knowing we were probably just clutching at straws. As he got back into the car I picked the dead dragonfly from the windscreen. When I turned on the wipers the water jets sluiced the remains from the glass, and it was as though it had never been there.

The turning was little more than a dirt track running off through the trees. It didn’t even merit a layer of gravel, and I had to slow to a crawl along the rutted, muddy surface. Branches and shrubs scratched at the windows. They grew thicker with every yard, until eventually I was forced to stop. The way ahead was completely blocked, maples and birches fighting for space with straggly laurel bushes. Wherever the track might have once led, we weren’t going any further.

Paul banged the dashboard with frustration. ‘Goddammit!’

He climbed out of the car. I did the same, forcing open the door against the push of branches. I looked round, hoping to catch a glimpse of another swamp darner, anything that would tell me this wasn’t a waste of time. But the woods were mockingly empty.

Paul’s shoulders had slumped in defeat as he contemplated the enclosing tangle of trees. The hope that had briefly fired him up had burned itself out.

‘This is useless,’ he said, his face a carving of despair. ‘We’re miles from where York abandoned the ambulance. Hell, we’re almost back at where he had the accident. We’re wasting our time.’

I almost gave up then. Almost got back in the car, accepted that I’d over-reacted. But Tom’s words came back to me: You’ve got good instincts, David. You should learn to trust them more.

For all my doubts, my instincts still told me this was important.

‘Just give me a minute.’

The branches overhead whispered as a breeze disturbed them, then fell silent again. I went to where a rotting tree trunk sprouted pale, plate-like fungi, and climbed on to it. The vantage point made little difference. Except for the overgrown track we’d followed there was nothing to see but trees. I was about to get down again when the branches overhead stirred and rustled as the breeze returned.

And then I caught it.

The faint, almost sweet taint of decomposing flesh.

I turned my face to the breeze. ‘Can you…’

‘I smell it.’

There was a tightness to his voice. It was an odour both of us were too familiar with to mistake. Then the breeze died, and the air held just the normal scents of the forest.

Paul looked round frantically. ‘Did you get where it was coming from?’

I pointed across the hillside, in the direction the breeze seemed to have been blowing from. ‘I think it was that way.’

Without a word, he strode off through the woods. I gave the car a last glance, then left it and hurried after him. The going was difficult. There was no path or trail, and neither of us was dressed for hiking. Branches plucked at us as we picked our way along the uneven ground, the thickets of bushes making it impossible to keep to a straight line. For a while we were able to use the car to keep our bearings, but once that was out of sight we had to rely on guesswork.

‘If we go much further we’re going to get lost,’ I panted, when Paul stopped to disentangle his jacket from a low branch. ‘There’s no point just wandering about without knowing where we’re going.’

He scanned the trees around us, chest rising and falling as he gnawed at his lip. Desperate as he was for anything that would lead him to York and Sam, he knew as well as I did that it might just have been carrion we’d caught wind of.

But before either of us could say anything else the branches around us shivered as the breeze picked up. We exchanged a look as we caught the odour again, stronger than ever.

If it was carrion it was something big.

Paul picked up a handful of pine needles and tossed them into the air, watching which way they were blown. ‘That way.’

We set off again, with more confidence this time. The smell of decay was noticeable even when the breeze dropped now. You don’t need a detector to smell this, Tom. As though to confirm we were heading in the right direction I caught a metallic shimmer as a dragonfly flashed through the trees up ahead.

Then we saw the fence.

It was partly hidden by scrub pine and bushes, eight feet high wooden slats topped with razor wire. The slats were rotten, and what looked like a much older chain-link fence ran round the outside, rusted and sagging.