KnockOut

marched across her nose, her jeans were dirty, her shirt ripped and wrinkled, but she hadn’t given up. Ethan imagined he looked as bad as she did. Actually, now that he thought about it, he thought she looked terrific.
    Blessed looked down at Autumn and smiled. His voice was gentle, admiring. “I know you did that, Autumn, you somehow called that agent at the motel when you were in the bathroom. But he’s not coming, he doesn’t have a clue where we are, and that’s why I made sure you had a nice long nap. If you call him now, it won’t matter because you don’t know where you are.”
    Autumn stared up at him. She said, “You need to shave. All your whiskers are white. You’re old.”
    Ethan decided in that instant that he’d do whatever he had to to keep that little kid in his life. He wanted to watch her grow up, with Joanna—
    Blessed stared at Autumn for a moment, then threw back his head and laughed. “You haven’t seen old yet, Autumn. You just wait. Now, if you two want to stay conscious, you walk over to the barn.”
    Joanna didn’t move. “I want Autumn with me.”
    “I want to be with my mama,” Autumn said.
    Blessed stared at her, then released her hand. Autumn ran to her mother. Joanna clutched her child to her, dropped a kiss on her hair, another on her forehead.
    When they reached the barn, Blessed walked ahead of them to the huge set of double doors, so rotted Ethan didn’t know how they were still standing. Blessed pulled the door out enough to slip inside. He stuck his head out. “Come this way.”
    When their eyes adjusted to the shadowed interior, they saw rotted hay bales stacked haphazardly, rusted tractor parts strewn over the rotted wooden floor planks, the parent of the parts, an ancient John Deere tractor, sitting off in a dim corner, missing two tires. The air smelled fetid and stale. At least it wasn’t as hot in here as it was outside. Ethan’s foot crushed down on an animal carcass.
    He realized then that all the display of rot, the rusted machine parts—it was all staged. This was what someone thought an abandoned barn should look like, down to the John Deere tractor.
    They watched Blessed push aside a couple of hay bales and two old car seats, the material covering them long rotted, and kick away straw from the floor, clearing about a four-foot space. He leaned down and pulled on a rusted old handle that was nearly flat against the wood, and a hole appeared in the floor. Blessed stepped back and smiled, waved his hand toward it. Joanna and Ethan looked down onto blackness.
    Blessed reached down into the darkness and pressed some buttons. There came three short beeps, and then light suddenly filled the dark hole, but there was still nothing to see except wooden stairs that led downward. Blessed nodded to them. “The two of you will climb care-fully down the stairs. When you get to the bottom, wait for Autumn and me. Don’t forget, I’ve got Autumn, so don’t try anything.”
    Joanna and Ethan climbed down the wooden stairs. They were solid pine, thirty of them; Ethan counted them.
    The stairs ended in a small square room with whitewashed walls and a clean wooden floor. There was a single table with a telephone sitting on it, and nothing else.
    They heard the trap door close above them, the low hum of air-conditioning. The air was cool. It had to take a good-sized generator, Ethan thought, to run this place.
    Blessed walked past them to the phone, picked it up, and said, “The Keeper is here.”
    Joanna arched an eyebrow at Ethan.
    At the end of the small room they watched a panel in the opposite wall slide silently open. Blessed nodded for them to go inside.
    Joanna went first, Ethan close behind her. More than a rotted old barn for the Children of Twilight, Ethan thought. They stopped and stared at the vast, empty white space, almost dizzying it was so white, no other color to break it. The room was maybe forty feet by forty feet, the wooden floor painted as white as the walls and ceiling. Another stage setting, Ethan thought, this one doubtless meant to represent purity and innocence, maybe a bit of heaven? Or more likely, this was another stage setting to prove to cult members this was a holy place.
    A young black man came through a white door set into one of the walls. He was wearing a white linen shirt and loose white pants, a thin rope tied around his waist. His feet were bare.
    “Hello, Kjell,” Blessed said. “I’ve got her.”

57
    WINNETT, NORTH