Long lost

6

I don't remember driving south of town. I was so dazed by what I'd learned that it's a wonder I didn't drift off the narrow road and hit something. I really had no idea why I was going out to where the fire had happened. But the alternative was to drive pointlessly back to Denver, and I refused to do that. Payne's words kept coming back to me: "Nothing beats going to the places and people you want to know about." The ruined Dant farm became one of those places.

A sign at the side of the road was weathered, partially overgrown with brush. But something in my subconscious noticed it, bringing me to attention. A large piece of plywood. What I assumed had once been black letters had faded to gray.

REPENT.

That was all, but it was enough to make me realize that I'd entered Dant country. On the right, beyond a pasture, I saw a farmhouse. It was distant, but even from the road, I could tell that it was listing, about to collapse, and that its windows had been broken. The roof on a barn next to it had already caved in.

But the reverend had said that Orval Dant's property had been on the left, so I focused my attention over there and soon noticed scorched stumps bordering fields of knee-high crops. I came to a section of trees, where tall burned timber stood among comparatively shorter, lush new trees. Then the land opened out again, and I saw the weed-covered furrows of a dirt lane stretching back what seemed a quarter of a mile to a wide mound of something near another section of new trees.

A metal gate blocked my way. It had a lock on a chain. I got out and tested the lock, finding it secure. A strengthening breeze carried a hint of moisture. Earlier, the sky had been stark blue, but now it was hazy, darkening on the horizon. The rain wouldn't reach me for a couple of hours. Even so, I reached into the car and got my knapsack, which had trail food, water, and a rain jacket, among other things. The jacket was what most concerned me, but the truth was, I'd learned the hard way that even an apparently harmless walk in the woods might not work out as pla

I felt the pack's satisfying weight against my back as I climbed the fence. Dust puffed around my sneakers when I came down on the opposite side. I started at a walk, but as I looked at the bushes around me, I was reminded of something that Kate, Jason, and I had done the summer before they'd been kidnapped. An architect friend had bought an old cabin up in the mountains. Trees and undergrowth had almost smothered the log building, so one Sunday he'd invited his friends up to help clear the place in exchange for barbecued steaks and all the beer we could drink. Our families were welcome also. Jason had thought it would be fun working next to me, helping to drag the cut bushes away, and I'd felt my chest swell with pride that the little guy had tried so hard. He made Kate laugh when he objected to her wiping the dirt and sweat from his face and making him look like a sissy.

Now, frustrated that I was no closer to finding them, I increased speed along the lane, anger pushing me. I stretched my legs as far and fast as I could, the sun hot on my face, sweat beading my skin, my jeans and shirt sticking to me.

A quarter of a mile was too short. I felt so infuriated that I could have run for miles, as I used to before I'd left Denver. But back in Denver, I'd been hopeful, whereas my frantic speed along that lane was a measure of how strongly I felt defeated.

I reached the end and slowed. The wide mound that I'd seen from the road revealed itself to be the blackened walls of a collapsed wooden structure. Its boards had been reduced to long slabs of charcoal that had toppled into a chaotic pile. Dead leaves were wedged in the gaps. Thorny bushes and vines whose three-leafed pattern warned of poison ivy sprouted from the debris. Beyond, a larger structure (presumably the barn) had similarly burned and collapsed.

Despite the sweat I'd worked up, I felt cold. I told myself that I was only imposing my mood on what I was seeing. All the same, I couldn't ignore what had happened there. Lester Dant's parents had burned to death thirty feet from where I stood. Blackness overwhelmed me.

What the hell am I doing? I thought. I was about to go back to the car, when something beyond the gutted house caught my attention: an area of about thirty by thirty feet enclosed by a low stone wall. The stones had been darkened by the fire. Some had fallen. I passed the ruins, trying to avoid the poison ivy as I approached the walled-in area. It had an opening where a gate had once been, and when I came closer, I saw that the enclosed area, too, was filled with poison ivy, dead leaves, and thorny bushes. But, amid the chaos, I noticed regularly spaced clumps. Stepping closer, I realized that they were small piles of rocks arranged in rows. The pattern was too familiar not to be recognized as a graveyard. Instead of mounds, there were depressions, the earth having settled onto decaying wooden coffins and the moldering bodies within them. The depressions were common to most old graveyards. The only reason they didn't appear in modern cemeteries was that coffins were now made from metal and graves had sleeves of concrete onto which a concrete lid was placed after the coffin was lowered and the mourners had departed.

In that dismal enclosure, generations of Dants had been buried. I imagined the pain and the loneliness with which their loved ones had laid them to rest. What struck me most was how many of the graves were short, indicating the deaths of children. I don't know how long I stared at the graves, meditating about the independent community that the Dants had hoped to establish and how severely their dreams had failed. At last, I stepped away, going around the back of the ruins.

A small animal skittered through trees behind me. A squirrel perhaps. But because I'd detected no signs of life around the place, the sound startled me. There weren't even any birds.

Sweating from the stark sun, I noticed that the storm clouds were a little closer. Wary of more poison ivy, I continued around the back of the burned house. Abruptly my legs felt unsteady. For an instant, I feared that something was wrong with my brain, that I was having a stroke and my balance was gone. My footing became even more unsteady. My lungs fought for air when I realized in panic that it wasn't my brain or my legs. The ground beneath me parted. I plunged.

With a gasp, I stopped, caught at my hips. My legs dangled in an unseen open area. Heart racing, I pressed my hands against the ground and strained to push myself up through the hole that trapped me.

Immediately my hands felt as unsteady as my legs had. The more I pushed them against the earth, the more they sank into it. I dropped again, but not before I flung out my arms, blocking my fall an instant before the widening hole would have sucked me all the way down.

My legs dangled helplessly, my body swaying in the emptiness beneath me. Only my head and shoulders were above ground, my weight supported by my outstretched arms. Hearing muffled rattles below me, I couldn't make my lungs work fast enough to take in all the air I needed. The ground sagged again. As the rattles got louder, I shouted and plummeted all the way into the hole.