Der Schädelring: Thriller (German Edition)

peaceful and humbling. But the trees surrounding the open ground were a little too gnarled, with knotholes like obscene eyes.
    "Here's where they found the girl," Walter said, fighting to catch his breath.
    Julia looked around. Flat stone. Cold against her own back. Bad people around her. The knife's blade touching her belly.
    Her muscles quivered from the exertion of the climb, but she didn't dare sit on the rock. The place felt evil. Like the barn near her childhood home in Memphis, the air here tasted like poison, and a sick energy worked its way through the soles of her feet.
    Julia wondered how many other altars of human sacrifice existed. Was the entire earth stained with blood and bones, the substance of the innocent given to the dirt for the satisfaction of a demanding master? The devil might not exist, but his followers most certainly did. His followers were legion. More widespread than anyone dared guess.
    Walter knelt with his back to her, scanning the woods below for any sign of Snead's people. "Hartley disappeared right after they found the body."
    "Didn't the police do anything?"
    "Hartley had ways of keeping folks quiet. One way or another. I reckon that's Snead's job now."
    Julia shook her head. She couldn't believe that Snead and Hartley were connected, that Snead took the job when Julia moved here. The only people who knew she was thinking of moving to Elkwood were Mitchell and Dr. Danner. But the conspiratorial network apparently existed long before she left Memphis.
    She stared at the flat stone. Julia tried not to picture the girl, small and shivering and nude on the stone, mad people dancing around her under the cold and soulless moon, chanting their sadistic prayers. She shut her eyes to fight back tears.
    She felt Walter's hand lightly touch her shoulder. "Let's get out of here," he said.
    "It's all too crazy to be real."
    He wiped at her face with the sleeve of his flannel shirt. "I've been telling myself that for a long time. Ever since my wife walked off the face of the Earth."
    She opened her eyes and looked into his. The loss was there again, inside him, that big hurt that would stay hidden if she didn't know it was there. "Do you believe in the devil?"
    "I believe in Hartley ," he said, looking away, up at the veiled sky. “The Lord never makes it easy.”
    He took her hand. "The Jeep's only a few hundred feet from here. There's an old logging road that runs down the valley."
    They left that sorrowful clearing, Julia wondering just how many sacrifices had been offered at this unhallowed site over the centuries. She walked gingerly, as if over the graves of infants.

 
     
    CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
     
    The Jeep was parked in a high bank of weeds, amid goldenrod and white Queen Anne's lace in fall bloom. Walter stepped onto the leaf-covered logging road that wound between the trees across the slope, looked in each direction, and climbed behind the wheel. Julia got in beside him, tired both from tension and exertion.
    "What now?" Julia asked as Walter started the Jeep.
    "I know a place where they might not find us."
    She touched his hand that was cupping the gear shift. "Why are you helping me?"
    He looked at her. "Let's just say I got a debt to pay."
    Walter pulled out onto the dirt road, the Jeep bouncing on the ruts. A few saplings had taken root in the roadbed, and the Jeep's bumper pushed them over. Their tracks were barely visible in the damp leaves.
    The Jeep lurched over a rut and a book slid from beneath the seat and bumped Julia’s ankle. It was a Holy Bible. Walter saw her looking at.
    “I got somebody riding shotgun,” he said. “You ought to try it sometime.”
    “I’m not ready to believe in anything,” she said.
    “Except the devil?”
    She picked up the Bible and opened it. “I’m hardheaded, okay? Just don’t try to save me.”
    “I can’t save you. You can only save yourself.”
    The Bible fell open to a page with a folded-back corner. “Luke” was printed in bold in the header. A section of the text was highlighted in yellow and Julia read it aloud. “'To thee will I give all this power, and the glory of them; for to me they are delivered, and to whom I will, I give them.'”
    “Luke chapter four, verse six. The devil said that to Jesus. I use it to remember to stay on my toes.”
    Or maybe to remember who’s the real boss. 4:06, huh?
    She closed the book and tucked it back under the seat. "We're going to have to tell the police."
    "Julia, those were the