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Chapter One
Adam Carson struggled to move, the knee on his temple holding his head firmly to the ground. He had been fast asleep just twenty minutes ago when he was awoken, hooded, and dragged from his bed by a sea of arms and clawing hands. The teenager’s screams for his parents were halted by several blistering blows to his head and stomach and, with his arms held firmly to his back, he was swiftly led through his house. His groggy mind traced the route; down the stairs, through the kitchen, then out the back door where the frigid night met him like an unwelcomed guest.
The dewy grass felt cold and slimy beneath his bare feet and stepping over a stone wall told him he was at the edge of his backyard. Once in the woods, he struggled to keep pace as the brush and broken branches stabbed and scraped his feet.
“What’s happening?!” he cried, terror in his voice. The hood stuck to his mouth and chin, so he used his tongue to push it away. “Why are you doing this to me?!” He asked this over and over again yet got no response.
Sometime later, Adam was pulled to a halt then slammed hard to the ground where he now lay. His hood muted the sounds around him, leaving only his labored breathing to fill the void. After being kicked in the legs and stomach several times, he was yanked to his feet and his back pressed firmly against a large tree. His arms were outstretched behind him and wrapped around its trunk then wide, rough metal shackles clamped over each wrist. His desperate eyes strained to see through the black hood but only found glimpses of shadowy shapes and muted spots of light. And as his breathing slowed, he began to hear distinct sounds nearby, the cracking of sticks, the rustling of pine needles. He watched through his hood as the blobs of light squeezed closer to him on all sides and, as he strained more, he began to hear the murmur of voices.
“Help me!” he cried. “Hellllp!” he yelled but still got no reply.
He then realized the murmurs were growing louder and that they weren’t just sounds, but words; a phrase being said in unison by many people, over and over. He strained to make out what it was, listening more intently until, finally, he realized it was a chant.
“For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
Adam began screaming uncontrollably to anyone, to everyone. He pleaded to be forgiven, pleaded to be absolved. He cried to be let go and begged for his parents but, as before, his pleas went unanswered. And soon Adam’s voice became hoarse, and his mouth went dry as tears covered his cheeks. And it was at that moment that his hood was removed, and he lifted his head to see what was before him.
A group of people in long, monk-like robes with golden ropes tied at their waists, their hoods pulled low, stood around Adam in a large semicircle. Some held fiery torches, others not, but each of them held a large Bible open in their hand as they continued to recite that same passage as a growing chorus.
“For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
Adam looked from person to person, catching flashes of familiar faces, but got blank stares in return. He begged again to be forgiven, to be let go; given another chance to please Christ Jesus their Lord.
And when he still got no reply, he begged for his mother. “She would explain,” he said, “She would make this right.”
The chanting stopped, and Adam saw a person to his right step forward and push their hood back from their eyes and his heart skipped with hope.
“Mom!” he cried. “Mom, help me! You have to tell them to stop!”
Adam’s mother took another step toward him and paused. She slowly looked around at the others and raised her fist high for all to see.
And then she cast the first stone.
Chapter Two
The old woman rested her hand on the tilted granite gravestone and carefully leaned over to read its front. IN MEMORY OF AMELIA. WIFE OF PAUL STANLEY. DIED MARCH 9, 1822. AGED 38 YRS.
“Find it?” her husband called, resting on one knee in front of a gravestone a row over in the small cemetery.
“Not yet,” she yelled back, her voice carried higher by frustration.
She swore to herself. If he kept asking her if she found the one she was looking for every time she stood in front of a gravestone, she’d dig a hole there for him herself. But Phyllis knew this would happen as soon as Rupert—her recently-retired husband—offered to drive her that morning.
“You said Charles Huntley, right?” he yelled to her, now two rows over.
She knew there was no way he’d read every gravestone that fast and that she’d have to go back through his rows again if she didn’t find it herself.
“Not Charles Huntley,” she hollered back, exasperated. “Carl Bentley! Carl! … Bentley!”
She sighed. Rupert was still adjusting to retirement, but she really needed him to get a hobby of his own. He had worked two jobs for most of his life so never really had time for much else. And any spare time he did have, he’d spent puttering around his workshop in the basement and fixing things around their old house. So now that his days were free, there were only so many odd jobs their small two-bedroom home had to offer so he seemed determined to make doting on her his new pastime.
“How you doin’?” he called.
She ignored him, pretending to be focused on one of the headstones.
Phyllis had retired from teaching about ten years ago—budget cuts and all that—so found her days free at the relatively young age of fifty. And she had read somewhere that one of the secrets to retirement was to stay active, stay engaged, and to establish a new routine so she had something to get up for in the morning. So Phyllis wasted no time diving into hobby after hobby; things she always wanted to try but never seemed to find the time.
She began walking at the mall but soon found herself in a walking group of other retirees that bitched nonstop the entire time about everything. So next, she took up knitting but quickly got frustrated with how much focus she needed to do it right. And it just had her sitting around her house anyway. She was an extrovert; she needed human contact in her day. So she then began volunteering mornings at the soup kitchen downtown and found she really liked it, but when COVID came, it closed so she was back at square one.
Then Phyllis’s father died unexpectedly. And while they weren’t terribly close, the one thing they had in common was that they each were the only child. She realized that with his passing also went all the knowledge of her heritage and where they’d come from. So Phyllis soon found herself a new hobby—researching her family tree.
“I’ve done my rows,” Rupert yelled, standing near the back of the old cemetery. “Need help with yours?” he added.
“No, no!” she quickly replied. “I’m almost done too.”
It took Phyllis almost three years, but she had assembled her entire family tree going back four generations. But the one hole she had was a great, great, great-grandfather on her mother’s side. At first, all she had was a name, so she dug more but found nothing. It had taken her three months of research until she finally found an old, handwritten death certificate online for a Carl Bentley in Oxford County, Maine. But, other than the date of his death, his name and that he was buried in the town of Kingston, there was no other information on it. She had never heard of Kingston, Maine before and when she found it had a population of just ninety-six people realized why.
Having done her share of research for her new hobby, Phyllis knew it was customary back in those days to put birth dates and other known family members’ names on a deceased’s gravestone. So once she found it was just a two-hour drive to Kingston from their home in New Hampshire, she figured she’d make the trip and see if this Carl Bentley was the one she was looking for and, hopefully, get the last piece to her ancestry puzzle.
She checked the last headstone in her row and, seeing it was a child’s grave, stood and stretched her back. She looked at the iron archway entrance with its cross and religious phrases then to the stone walls running from either side of it to the woods. This was the only cemetery on record for Kingston, Maine so it had to be here somewhere. She scanned the side Rupert had taken and sighed. If you want something done right … She was standing at the back corner, so figured she’d head to the end of the center aisle and work her way through the rows that Rupert had done back to front. The entire cemetery was the size of a tennis court, so it wouldn’t take her long to find what she’d come for.
Phyllis turned to walk along the tree line toward the center and noticed a small pile of fresh soil on the edge of the cemetery and abutting brush. And as she got closer, she realized it was dirt sprayed from an animal that had dug for something just inside the woods. She looked closer into the brush to see what was there and gasped.
Just feet from the cemetery, hidden in the scrub at the edge of a deep forest, was a freshly dug hole. Phyllis could see part of a plain pine box several feet beneath the surface, its boards having been clawed and chewed away. She leaned closer then gagged at the pulpy, ravaged face staring back.
End of Excerpt
