The Chosen

^{CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO}

Paul parked off a little layby in the woods rather than The Inn’s parking lot; he wanted to be discreet. He crunched up through the winter thicket. It was starting to snow. When he made it to the elaborate, paved cul-de-sac, he stood gazing up in awe.

The Inn was immense, grandly refurbished, eloquently lit by spotlights planted in the outer yard. It’s a palace, he thought, then noted with some astonishment that the resort’s parking lot was empty save for a beat-up Plymouth station wagon and two Lamborghinis. He traipsed to the huge stone-framed front door, passing granite verandas before high windows. But a sign on the door indicated that The Inn was closed for repairs.

All this money for this big place, and they’re closed? Paul wondered. Was Vera inside now? If so, what was she doing?

An oddity caught his eye: the large, finely cut gem-stone set into the door’s granite transom. Its darkness flashed in the strangest way. Midnight-purple razor-sharp facets. Amethyst, he realized. But the largest amethyst he could ever imagine.

He pulled away, skirted around the front facade. In the center of the cul-de-sac, a heated fountain gurgled, whose splattery noise seemed to follow him along the building’s left wing. He wasn’t even quite sure what he was doing; bitter cold air and some vague impulse propelled him around the corner of the building and down a steep slope. Several times he almost fell, and he had the sensation of submerging into dark. When he came around the bend, though, more floodlights lit the back of The Inn. And behind that, there were only dense woods.

Except…

He peered down, shivering. Through branches of winter-starved trees he spied what seemed a curving sweep.

It was the snow, he realized. Glittering on…pavement.

He followed the incline down farther, then pushed into the woods. Something was there, he just didn’t know what. Was it some kind of hiker’s trail? A service road, he realized once he’d trundled through the net of trees and vines. The light snow sparkled like halite on fresh, new asphalt. He followed the road around the bend.

Deeper, he discovered an embankment, a man-made one judging by the way it was cut against the declivity of the landscape. What he was looking at now appeared to be a loading dock, which made sense in a way, because all hotels had loading accesses. What didn’t make sense, though, was the distance. Why put the loading dock here? Paul at once questioned. It was a good hundred yards from The Inn. Almost as if the building’s designers had—

Hidden it, Paul realized.

Why hide a supply access?

Then he saw the stranger part.

Obscured amongst leaveless tree branches was the mouth of a great sewer pipe. A sewer pipe at a loading dock? It didn’t fit. A shiny white van had been parked next to the pipe’s exit, and that was the part that seemed even stranger. It wasn’t really an exit drain for a sewer pipe. There was no receptacle, no means for waste waters to exit. Then he thought:

If it’s not an exit… maybe it’s an entrance…

It made as much sense as anything could at this moment, before this bizarre sewer pipe in freezing cold. Paul walked toward the cement mouth of the pipe, then stopped—

Shit!

—then ducked back around the side of the embankment.

A sound had issued from the pipe, he felt sure of it.

Footsteps.

And a moment later, he knew he hadn’t been hearing things. He hunkered down, one eye peeking beyond his cover…

A figure emerged from the exit or entrance or whatever it was.

Bags of some sort seemed slung across the figure’s back. The figure was bald, Paul saw in the dim light, though he appeared youthful, strong, a spring in the step. But what struck Paul even more immediately was that the figure wore only a pair of jeans. No shoes and no shirt, though, in this killer cold. Paul watched, deflecting his breath…

The man disappeared down a thin divide in the trees, then reemerged a minute later, minus the bags he’d been toting. He was whistling. He paused a moment on the pavement, and in that moment Paul noticed something else:

A sparse pendant about the man’s neck, and at its end, laying between well-developed pectorals, hung a shiny, dark-purple gemstone.

Amethyst, Paul suspected, remembering the transom.

Then the shirtless figure reentered the sewer pipe and disappeared.

Who the fuck was that? Paul thought the logical question. Was he The Inn’s garbage man? And why dump garbage back here? There’d be a dumpster, wouldn’t there?

See for yourself.

Paul stepped into the narrow divide between the trees.

A scratch of a trail descended; leafless branches threatened to claw Paul’s face. The footpath wound down further, then opened into a large dell encloaked by trees. Paul noticed steam…

He couldn’t see much, but he could see enough. A faint stench drifted up in the biting cold air. Bags, he realized.

A pit had been dug out of the dell, and the pit was full of large, stuffed, plastic garbage bags. And the two bags nearest the top…wafted steam.

Paul climbed down.

His fingers, like cold prongs of stone, tore open the uppermost bag.

Paul gazed down.

Focused.

Then gasped.

His feet took him briskly back up the narrow, tree-lined trail. His heart raced, and his eyes, even if he closed them, refused to release the image…

The bag he’d torn open had been full of steaming human body parts.

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GOING… DOWN…