Coldwater Read online

  © 2018 by Samuel Parker

  Published by Revell

  a division of Baker Publishing Group

  P.O. Box 6287, Grand Rapids, MI 49516-6287

  www.revellbooks.com

  Ebook edition created 2018

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—for example, electronic, photocopy, recording—without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.

  ISBN 978-1-4934-1254-9

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  Praise for Purgatory Road

  “Parker, unlike lesser suspense writers, succeeds in making the reader feel the tragedy.”

  —Publishers Weekly, starred review

  “Parker’s dark debut thriller will grip suspense aficionados from the first page.”

  —Library Journal, starred review

  “Seamlessly melds elements of thriller, suspense, and the supernatural to create a scorcher.”

  —Killer Nashville

  “This is a skillfully written, gripping thriller, well supported by the author’s fine eye for setting and ear for dialogue.”

  —Booklist

  “Not for the faint of heart, Purgatory Road is a compelling story that suspense fans are sure to love.”

  —BookPage

  For Kris and Kim,

  this story is not about us.

  And as always, for my wife, Elizabeth,

  who makes this all possible.

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Praise for Purgatory Road

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  31

  32

  33

  34

  35

  36

  37

  38

  39

  40

  41

  42

  43

  44

  45

  46

  47

  48

  49

  50

  51

  52

  53

  54

  55

  56

  57

  58

  59

  60

  61

  62

  63

  64

  65

  66

  67

  68

  69

  70

  71

  72

  73

  74

  75

  76

  77

  78

  79

  80

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Also by Samuel Parker

  Back Ads

  Back Cover

  Midway upon the journey of our life

  I found myself within a forest dark,

  For the straightforward pathway had been lost.

  Ah me! how hard a thing it is to say

  What was this forest savage, rough, and stern,

  Which in the very thought renews the fear.

  —Dante, Inferno

  one

  THE DAY WAS BORN IN DARKNESS.

  Michael opened his eyes and saw nothing.

  Blackness.

  The motes in his eyes drifted across the void.

  His mouth was sealed with what felt like tape. Michael tried to lift himself and felt the hard knock of wood against his forehead. A light sprinkle of sand fell on his face, but he was blind to its source, he could only feel it as it dusted his lashes, scratching at his pupils. He raised his head slowly again until he felt the board press against his skin. He lay back down. His shoulders ached, his back. He tried to move his hands up to his eyes to rub the grit out of them but found they were bound together. He started breathing faster, nostrils flaring in the dark.

  He was as a newborn cast out into the vacuum of space.

  He could feel his heart beat faster as his mind raced to keep up with this discovery of himself. Michael could feel his nerves begin to fire in all his limbs as electric panic coursed through his body. He lifted his head again and hit the boards, a few inches above him.

  And again.

  Banging his head against the darkness with the dirt washing his face.

  He tugged at his arms. They were bound at the wrist and the tape dug into him with each movement. His feet were fastened together at the ankles as he tried to kick at the darkness. His knees found the roof of his coffin and sent a spark of pain up his thighs. The motion caused more dirt to fall into his open eyes. They felt thoroughly encrusted with grime.

  Michael tried to force breath out of his mouth, but the tape’s seal held. His nostrils felt too small to supply the air he needed as he kicked around in his confined cell. Sweat started to form on his body as he lurched back and forth.

  Suddenly, he stilled. His mind slowly calming, moving from the rapid chaos of panic to the quiet, disembodied trance of a hopeless man.

  Breathe, he thought.

  Just breathe.

  The sound of his lungs echoed in his head as he worked to slow himself down, his breathing easing to long, deliberate exhales. He closed his eyes to shut out the blackness and felt the sand in his eyelids grind his corneas with fire.

  Just breathe.

  Michael could feel his pulse dissipate from the thunderous bass drum to a softer beat. His mind began to clear and assess his situation. Flailing around was not an option. If he wanted it all to end, as he had wished many times, then he could just go on doing what he was doing until the air ran out or the sand from above buried him in an hourglass of his own making. But his thoughts focused on hope, as illogical as it was to do so, and he willed his body to soften, to cooperate with his mind.

  He focused on his hands. One by one he touched fingertip to fingertip, thumb to thumb, index to index, until he was assured they were all there. They were. For some reason this brought him a sense of comfort.

  He tried to bring his hands to his face and failed several times. The box wouldn’t allow him to move his elbows from his sides, and when he kept them tucked in, his hands would press against the ceiling before he could bring them up to his chest.

  Breathe.

  Slowly and methodically, he started to rotate his wrists back and forth, attempting to loosen the binding. It felt like duct tape. It was impossible for him to guess how many times it might have been wrapped around his wrists. He concentrated on his breathing and the rhythmic turns of his hands.

  Inhale, twist. Exhale, twist.

  The hairs on his arms pulled with each turn until Michael was assured that none were left. He told himself he had all the time in the world, or at the least, all the time he had left, to get his hands free.

 
He kept twisting his wrists until the skin burned. In the dark, he felt as if it had rubbed down to the bone. The dirt sifting from above him got under the tape, and though it worked as an antidote to the adhesive, it also added to the grinding down of flesh he felt with each twist.

  Eventually he loosened the tape enough to turn his hands and grab onto each wrist. The tape had rolled in spots, and he could feel the stickiness of it mixed with warm fluid. It felt like raw skin and blood. In this position, and keeping his elbows in, he was able to force his hands up to his face, where he instantly grabbed the strip across his mouth and pulled it free.

  Like a skin diver resurfacing from a deep descent, Michael gulped in the stale, moldy air around him. The dirty and confined area flooded his senses, but he did not care at the moment. With his mouth free, he bit into the binding at his wrists, yanking and pulling with his teeth at tape and skin. His hands came free with ripping fire and he screamed.

  Now unbound, Michael was able to feel around his confinement. He was, as he had figured, in a box. He could feel the rough-hewn pine all around him. The cheapness of the wood and the fact that it was still holding up meant that he was not buried too deep. He assumed that too much earth would have come crashing in already. True or not, it added weight to a sliver of hope.

  Michael had never been buried alive, but his mind offered up the blueprint of escape as if it had been programmed with the script for survival. Up. Up was the way to freedom. Scratch, claw upward. He had to get to the surface quickly—that or he would suffocate or be crushed before he knew it.

  In the dark, he beat against the boards until his hands shot white-hot pains up his forearms. The dirt dropped onto his face as one of the boards cracked, filling his mouth and absorbing the air from his lungs. He spewed out the earth as he beat and dug and scraped upward.

  The ground came down heavy around him, threatening to replace the wooden coffin with an earthen one. His fingers gripped the soil and pulled.

  He was a rhythmic engine of adrenaline, pushing up against the world, and then shoving the incoming dirt down to the end of the box. Over and over again until the lid started to give more and more.

  As the dirt flowed in, Michael worked to push it to the corners of the box. It was damp and clumpy but not tightly packed, two things incredibly in his favor. He worked furiously, his muscles screaming. His pulse pounding in his ears, stifled by the packed ground.

  Then he felt it. His hand punched through to the cool air of the living world. With one last colossal effort, he got his feet under him and drove up through the loosening soil, breaking out to his waist into the majestic air of night.

  Michael pulled himself out of the grave.

  His whole body screamed for oxygen and the open air embraced his constricted muscles. He lay on the ground and looked skyward, but his scratched and swollen eyes were packed in a gritty embalmer’s salve, obscuring his vision into a watery blur. His breath formed small wisps of vapor in the dark and then dissipated.

  He was in a forest. He dragged himself away from the entrance of his tomb and braced himself against a tree. This was the closest to death that he had ever been, but he knew it would not end here. They would not let this rest. They would never let it rest until he was buried for good.

  two

  WHEN HE STAGGERED TO HIS FEET after freeing his legs, the smell of earth and mold permeated his senses, the chill of early autumn passing through him like a phantom breeze. The moon was out tonight, and it illuminated the woods with a menace, a black-and-white world on the verge of preparing to sleep through the upcoming winter, itself to be buried by the cold indifference of Mother Nature.

  His eyes burned with the scratched rubbing of his lids still caked with dirt as he peered into the darkness. It was impossible to get his bearings. A blind man in a maze. All he could smell was the grave. But he listened to the quiet of the woods. Faintly he could hear running water in the distance. He took a step toward the sound, using the tree as a crutch and holding out one arm to break a fall that was all but assured. The noise of his steps masked the water.

  Step.

  Quiet.

  Listen.

  Repeat.

  His body was wrecked. The men who had jumped him had pushed chemicals into his cells and then tenderized the muscles. He could feel his clothing rub against the bruises on his chest and back with each movement. His legs throbbed as if the sinews were wrapped too tightly around the bone. His hands were numb from the tape that had cut off his circulation. One finger felt dislocated, an issue that, with a tug and a shriek of agony, he quickly remedied.

  Each step was a torturous effort, a willing of the mind to force the body forward.

  Step.

  Quiet.

  Listen.

  Repeat.

  Soon the consistent sound of the river guided his steps, and he made his way forward with arms outstretched, knocking branches out of his way, stumbling on exposed roots that lay hidden underfoot. Michael blindly felt the ground slope toward the water but soon lost all sense of balance and fell. He rolled down the embankment, adding bruises to his already beaten body, until he came to rest on the rocks next to the river. He got to his hands and knees and crawled to the water.

  His throat was bone-dry and the cool water shocked his system. The burning thirst overcame the repugnant smell of the river, and after a few gulps, he took a deep breath and plunged his face into the depths.

  The coldness of the creek stung his senses, but he held himself under, flushing the earth from his eyes. The sensation of no pain in his sockets brought him back to the surface and he collapsed.

  With his blurred vision slightly improved, his head resting on stone and sand, Michael peered out across the river, the moonlight slashing a gouge in the black water.

  A puzzle piece locked into place in his brain, a sense of reassurance that he was closer to knowing where on earth he was. There was only one major river near Coldwater, a river named after the town—or vice versa—and Michael knew this must be it. From what he could tell, however, it was a portion that he was not familiar with.

  He hadn’t ventured out to the river much in his life anyway, but he knew enough to get some sense of direction. He was on the northern bank, judging from the slow current. The river cut against the upper part of the county and eventually made its way down south through South Falls, a good sixty miles away by road. Upriver, its source was hidden in the reptilian ridges of the north woods. He knew of several crossings, all of which would keep him away from Coldwater, but he wasn’t quite sure which one he would come to first. Upriver would be the right course to take. He knew that, and it settled in his mind as the only correct option.

  But for now, exhaustion was getting the best of him.

  He crawled back to the embankment and found a hollow that fit his body decently enough. The night was cool but not frigid, and as he closed his eyes and listened to the flow of the river, he slept the sleep of a dead man, a dead man resurrected to a dark night.

  three

  THE TWO MEN DROVE OUT from Coldwater that morning in silence, like the quiet of two men going to work, content to allow each other to wake up and process the day without the aggravation of conversation. The truck motored north up the county road several miles and then headed east on gravel, and the gravel turned to dirt, and the dirt slowly gave way to a two-track heading into the woods. A developer had attempted to plot out a subdivision in the area but gave up when the market told him that city folks didn’t want to live this far in the sticks.

  Coldwater was sixty miles from the nearest “metropolis.” City, really. Sixty miles from where a family could buy groceries was the more proper way to say it.

  The old Ford pushed on through the woods until the two-track finally gave up its ghost and terminated in a large clearing. The truck came to a stop. The passenger, who was half slumped in the seat, spoke first.

  “Go on, Kyle, check it out so we can get out of here.”

  “Why me?”
<
br />   “Well, I sure ain’t going to do it!”

  “Why don’t we both go?”

  “Come on. You know I got this bum leg in the mornings. Just walk up there, check it out, and we can head back.”

  Kyle hesitated, staring into the woods. A tremor of fear slowly crept into his face as he white-knuckled the steering wheel.

  “Here, take this,” James said, handing over a long hunting knife.

  “What good is that going to do?”

  “You serious? He’s tied up . . . underground. How much more protection you need?”

  Kyle stepped out of the truck, forcing his body to move as his nerves were getting the best of him. He almost tripped over one of the ruts in the mud made by the vehicles the night before. They were all over the clearing. He was braver last night, when there were so many of them, but now, on his own, his courage was long gone.

  He stood by the truck.

  “Get going!” James yelled from the cab. “You’re the one that wanted to come here. Now go check it out.”

  “Now that we’re here . . . I don’t know.”

  “Just do it! Otherwise you’ll be bugging me all day to drive back out here. Go check it out, see that he’s still buried, so we can go home.”

  “This is stupid.”

  “It is stupid, but you ain’t going to leave me alone until you see it with your own eyes.”

  Kyle wiped a sweaty hand on his jeans. “I didn’t sleep at all last night.”

  “I knew Haywood never should have let you come along.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means exactly what I said. You were all gung ho yesterday, but now you’re giving me an anxiety attack. Don’t make me get out of this truck and drag you up there. ’Cause when you see he’s still underground, I’ll be mad at you for wasting my time.”

  “Okay, okay . . . calm down.”

  “Just go already.”

  Kyle closed the truck door and walked up the trail into the woods. About a quarter mile up, he saw the small clearing in the trees, saw the disturbed dirt. He inched his way closer, slowly. The site scared him. He was startled by sounds coming from every side of him. The birds, the insects, the sound of the swaying trees in the light wind. He approached the clearing.

  He saw the spot where they had buried Michael. Saw the earth pushed aside and sunk down into the crater, saw the drag marks from the hole and the footprints that led off deeper into the woods. In one quick second, his mind had processed the whole scene. His nightmare had come true, his guilt had been telling him all night that his fear was real.