The Beginning (Whispering Pines Book 1) Read online

Chapter 3

  He glanced at the radio’s digital clock that read 8:36 pm. His eyes glanced back to the highway in time to see a road sign that read West Creek was fourteen miles ahead. He was almost home.

  The conversation with Gail had ended a half hour earlier when she had fallen asleep, curled up in the seat beside him. She was great company and fun to hear. Her lively jabber kept things from going dull and her mouth was in constant vocal motion. He loved every sound of her soft country voice, rambling about anything and everything but now, except for the normal hum of the engine and road noise, the inside the car had fallen silent.

  Chuck glanced away from the road and stared at the raw beauty of the creature beside him. She was dazzling even in the dim wash of the instrument lights. Why, he wondered, did I buy a car with bucket seats like this one? She could be sitting next to me with her head lying on my shoulder. My arm around her...and... and...”

  He let the thought fade away but his eyes remained fixed on her beauty. He was glad she’d come and once savvy to all the mystery of Matt’s disappearance, he was even happier she hadn’t demanded he take her back home.

  It was full dark outside and the headlights illuminated the two-lane blacktop highway well enough. He enjoyed night driving because things seemed to go smoother and there was less traffic on the road. He seldom got sleepy behind the wheel. It wasn’t likely to happen either, especially now, with Gail along in the car and having talked away the worst of the boring miles as they passed.

  Chuck’s eyes had been away from the road ahead too long staring at Gail. It was as though his driving duties were totally forgotten the moment his eyes tracked over to her face. The car’s right side tires roamed off the edge of the pavement and the sudden bumpy ride on the rough right of way snapped his trance and attention back to the business of driving. He thought, if I keep this up, I’ll kill us both.

  A few moments later, his eyes were back, soaking in another long, inquisitive look. From deep inside he had to admit he had never seen a more beautiful creature in his entire life, and then the car tires slipped off the pavement a second time in as many miles. His eyes shot back forward and gave witness to an alarming scene up ahead. A deer herd was crossing, but they weren’t moving quickly enough to clear the road.

  Gail, startled awake by the car’s unusually bumpy ride, or her sixth sense, sat up, then with eyes wide in disbelief cried, “Chuck? Look out.” The herd froze in the car’s headlights. Unlike other creatures of that size, these were light sensitive to the point of paralysis and were now blocking the road ahead.

  With no obvious way to steer around or through without striking one of the hundred pound animals at 60 mph, habit forced Chuck’s foot down hard on the brake pedal. He knew there would be no stopping in time to avoid a collision so his intent was to get as much speed off the car as he could before impact.

  The anti-lock brake system engaged against the full force of his foot on the pedal and the seat belt retaining mechanisms clanked loudly doing their jobs.

  More from desperation than conscious planning, Chuck kept looking for an out and saw it forming slowly. A small opening had appeared between two of the light shocked animals, a hole perhaps just large enough to get the car through safely. He released the brakes, steered the car toward the space... and prayed.

  A top-heavy SUV such as his would not take kindly to plowing over two or three animals the size of half-grown cows. If such an accident didn’t kill him and Gail, it would create extra problems for the weekend ahead. He had enough problems already without adding a wreck to the list.

  Chuck’s life didn’t flash before his eyes nor did things move in slow motion. Stuff simply happened in the blink of an eye as the car veered toward the space between two animals. “Hit them at a glance and not direct,” Chuck’s mind screamed.

  Two deer rolled off the passenger side of the car and bounced away into the night. Then the hole before him opened wider. The Jeep zipped through, skimming one of the creatures on the butt and shoving it aside. Before them lay open clear roadway only the Jeep was angled toward the grassy edge. To try to correct it too quickly could send them rolling, and to not correct at all might send them flaring off into the trees or worse, into a deep drop off.

  Chuck felt the front wheels hit the grass and start to lose traction. His father, who had taught him to drive many moons ago, had impressed on his skills a unique knowledge about vehicle skids on clay-topped dirt roads. “When all else fails, stomp the gas.”

  Chuck floored the Cherokee. The centrifugal force snapped the front of the car higher, which added more force to the rear pulling wheels giving them extra traction. They broke free and spun which turned the front of the car just enough to dig into the grass, and this concludes today’s lesson on how to drive like an idiot.

  The Jeep sheered back toward the pavement and Chuck was able to regain control. Keeping in mind, the Jeep was top heavy, he let it slide down a not too sharply inclined embankment. There, things and motions stopped. The world was still. There had been no ear shattering crash sounds, no jolts or jerks, everything simply stopped moving. Except for the idling engine, all was quiet.

  Chuck and Gail looked at one another, then around outside in disbelief, realizing they were not upside down or smashed against a tree and on fire. If the Jeep couldn’t pull back up the slight incline, Chuck would engage the four-wheel drive and that would get them back on the asphalt. Maybe there would be no need to call a tow truck or the State patrol because there was no real accident...no damage and therefore, no wreck.

  Except for the car’s own headlights, the highway was dark and empty in both directions.

  Chuck turned to Gail and asked, “Are you okay?”

  “I’m shaken but not stirred. Were those deer in the middle of the road?”

  “Yea, they can be dangerous at night in this part of the State.”

  “I hadn’t noticed” Gail teased.

  Chuck laughed and shook his head. “That was my first experience with these new ABS brakes. I guess you could say they work rather well. Remind me to write a nice article next week about Lee Iacocca or something.”

  “I can’t believe what those deer just did.”

  With a straight face Chuck replied, “That ain’t nothing. Wait until you see what I just did.”

  They laughed hard and long, more to relieve tension than sour humor. Chuck wiped the tears from his eyes and eased down on the gas pedal. The rear wheels spun then caught traction and pulled the Cherokee up the incline. At the top, he spun the wheel clockwise and straightened out on the roadway, then pressed the gas and the car was back up to road speed quickly. “Fun ride, want to go again?”

  With a wary ear, he listened but heard nothing coming from under the car or the hood that meant anything broken. At least there were no shakes, pings, or knocks.

  “I can’t believe we missed them,” he said once convinced the car was in good working order. “God, there were at least a dozen just standing around back there...drinking coffee and shooting the breeze.”

  “You did good driving back there Chuck. At least, you didn’t kill anything or us. It’s a good thing you bought this Oldsmobile don’t you think?”

  “It’s a Grand Cherokee Jeep, Gail.”

  “Cars are cars. Motor oil is motor oil. Where did you learn to drive? New York City?”

  “I learned on the farm, in an old pickup truck. I was driving trucks and tractors before I was ten years old. Those clay top roads were slicker than ice when it rained and hard and dusty as concrete otherwise. You either learned to drive with the flow or against it and sometimes you were just free to spin the steering wheel and look busy while the truck went in whatever direction it chose.”

  “I’ll bet. Sort of like back there wasn’t it?”

  “No, back there was an expert piece of idiot luck handling.”

  Gail laughed. “I’ll take idiot luck any day of the week. I learned to drive on my Uncle’s farm. The first time I drove into town after getti
ng my license, I hit a man who was crossing the street. He walked in front of me. I found out later what the crosswalks were supposed to mean.”

  “Didn’t you see him quick enough?”

  She shook her head sideways. “I honestly didn’t see him until it was too late. I wasn’t going fast so he wasn’t hurt or anything. He bounced right back up and yelled, “What the heck is the matter with you, lady? Are you blind or something?”

  I yelled back, “Me? Blind? Hell, I hit you didn’t I?”

  Chuck roared with laughter and his already tired, reddish eyes watered again with tears.

  “I’m not fussing or anything” Gail said more seriously “I’m just curious. Why did you leave the Interstate and go this way? I would imagine a two-lane highway like this one is more dangerous, especially at night, than the Interstate. Isn’t it?”

  “Not entirely. I always come this way. Besides, you don’t get to see the real countryside if you’re locked to the concrete jungle of an Interstate. It’s hard to get a feel for an area if you zip through it at 70 mph.”

  “Maybe so,” Gail said. “But you don’t have to weave and swerve around deer herds often on the Interstate.”

  “Don’t bet on it. The deer cross the road wherever they please and they don’t care whether it’s a four-lane highway or a logging path through the woods. If they got someplace to go, then they go.”

  “Is that woods around us now or swamp? I can’t tell in the dark. I thought I saw some water back there underneath the trees.”

  Chuck pointed at the trees lining both sides of the highway. “This? This is a farm and you are in the middle of a row of crops. The water back there was probably a creek the beavers dammed up or something. They are a real pain sometimes.”

  “What do you mean a farm? I don’t see any corn or anything; just trees.”

  “Yes, just trees and those trees are the crops on the farm. Several large timber companies own this property and they plant those hybrid trees as crops. Lot of money you’re driving through right now. If you want to see real wild, natural woods then I’ll take you there tomorrow.”

  “I’ve seen the woods before, Chuck. It’s not like I’m a big city girl or something. Like I told you earlier, I grew up in North Carolina, not New York City. We do have woods in North Carolina, you know.”

  “Not like these around here. Some of these are strange. Matt and his timber crews can tell you about some weird stuff. They’ve had odd things happen while logging out an area.”

  “Yea we’ve got our share of so called Big Foot sightings and haunted woods back home too. You know the type. The haunted bridges, enchanted forest and stuff like that.”

  “Which company owns all this property? I haven’t seen so much as a house for the past few miles. All I’ve noticed is trees and the occasional wild deer.”

  Chuck laughed. “Most of this land coming up ahead is either owned or leased by my brother and me. We have over 1600 acres of pine saplings that will be ready for harvest soon. The rest we lease from private individuals. Timber is a good investment and Georgia is one of the nation’s top producers of pine. That’s what most of these woods have growing around here and they are worth a fortune if you manage them properly.”

  “You and Matt own this land? Goodness and what about the animals? When they cut all the trees where do the animals go?”

  “Most of them cross the road.”

  “So I see. Were those deer out looking for a new home because the timber barons are destroying their habitat?”

  “They were probably out looking for some poor farmer’s grain field. A herd like that can destroy a farm crop in one or two nights. Moreover, we timber barons are not stupid. We plant two trees for every one cut.”

  “Yea,” Gail chided. “But you barons only do it for profits and not habitat protection.”

  “A friend of mine and his girlfriend were out riding around one night. A deer jumped out in front of the car and he swerved, lost control and hit a ditch. The car flipped over and threw his girlfriend out. Neither of them was wearing a seatbelt and the car landed on top of her. She died later at the hospital.”

  “I’m sorry, Chuck. I’ve heard of things like that. It’s awful.”

  A moment of silence passed and Gail asked, “Why can’t they do something to keep the animals away from the roads?”

  “Well, they try. The state patrol and sheriff have this whistle like thing mounted in the grill of the patrol cars. It’s supposed to make a sound that deer don’t like. Some cops say they work and some say they don’t. The State lets the farmers thin a herd down between hunting seasons if the numbers get too large. It’s a tender balancing act between man and beast but Georgia regulates it pretty well every year.”

  “My daddy hunted a lot on my Uncle’s farm. It was a dairy farm.”

  “Did your pop ever shoot a cow thinking it was a deer?”

  “Well, my mom always said he was good at shooting bull.”

  Both of them laughed aloud. Chuck asked, “Do you like the taste of deer meat?”

  “It’s okay if it’s fixed properly to get the wild taste out of it. I can handle it.”

  “My mom could fix some of the best venison you’ve ever ate. She would stir fry the meat into her all famous gravy and let it simmer. God, I would commit murder for one of her deer steaks right now.”

  “I’ve never heard you talk about her. Is she still alive?”

  “No. She died about five years ago right after Dad died from cancer. They were a rowdy couple. It was not your perfect marriage but in later years, I realized they stayed together because they simply loved to fight and argue. Matt always said they loved and lived to hate each other. Anyway, they lasted for 42 years of emotional battles and we kids are no worse off for the experience.”

  “Your dad left the property and the timber mill to Matt when he died? What about you?”

  “He left it to both of us. I own half but Matt has expanded way beyond what we got from Dad. I would never take a dime out of the operation although I guess, legally, I could, but in my mind, it all belongs to Matt, lock, stock, and barrel. It’s earned some fairly good money over the years too.”

  “Why did you leave West Creek County? Why didn’t you stay and help run the Mill?”

  “I wanted to be a writer and newspaper journalist. Our hometown paper is not the New York Times. It’s also owned and operated by the Pary family which….”

  Chuck’s voice faded and Gail’s memory raced back to that night with the buffalo nickel. Pary, Abatha Pary, jealous, mad enough to kill, did kill. She had murdered Thomas Veal and his new bride, Claudia. “Veal?” some voice from inside her cried. It had not occurred to Gail that Veal meant anything until now. Chuck Veal her boss, the man driving her to the source of the vision?

  “Step back…step back…don’t touch the nickel.”

  Chuck’s voice returned, right where it had left off in mid sentence. “…Doesn’t see eye to eye with my family, so I decided to move away but you see how far I got with that, don’t you?”

  “Yes I do.” She said as calmly as possible. “You’re one of the best copy editors and summary writers in the business but I’ve never seen anything you’ve written beyond a few thousand words or so.”

  Should she ask? “Chuck? Have you ever heard of a place around your area called Whispering Pines Estate?”

  The shock of the name almost sent him swerving into a passing eighteen-wheeler truck. His eyes all but bulged out of their sockets and he spun his head and looked directly at Gail. “Where on earth did you hear about Whispering Pines?”

  She tried to act matter of fact as her mind assembled a quick cover statement, something she had learned to do over her life in hiding her abilities from others. “You mentioned the newspaper name Pary, and somewhere or other in my plundering around the internet I’ve come across the name or maybe even the online edition of the paper. Either way I’ve read about the family and their estate called Whispering Pines.” Then she thought
to herself, and if you believe that, there's a bridge I can sell you.

  She pointed back at the road ahead reminding Chuck that he needed to get back to the business of driving and take his eyes off her.

  Snapping his eyes back to the road, Chuck let her stumbling into Whispering Pines on the Internet warble around in his mind. “It is possible you know. Type Whispering Pines Estate into the Yahoo search engine and what comes up?” He’d never done it before.

  “Wow. Uh, yea there’s a Whispering Pines Estate down home and Miss Abatha Pary owns it and the newspaper in West Creek County. I’m amazed you’ve even heard of it.”

  Gail sighed. “He bought it, now quick girl, change the subject.”

  “Chuck? Are you keeping your best written material hidden or something; maybe working on a book perhaps?”

  “Yes, I’m working on a book. Who knows, one day it might be finished and published. It’s about this newspaper guy who meets a beautiful girl.”

  Gail smiled and held her eyes on him. The stare was so long he felt his face grow warm. “I’m just one of those people who are cursed with the need to put pen to paper and once I get going you can’t shut me up. I’ll write something longer than Gone with the Wind in one breath. I can’t cut off at the newspaper limit of a thousand words so I have to trash up my computer’s hard drive with stuff I’ve written that’s longer.”

  “Yea, I’m almost the same way.” A few miles passed underneath them and suddenly Gail was back at it again. “Curiosity is a terrible thing to waste.” She thought.

  “What was that about the Pary family? Are they the social leaders or something?”

  “They think so because Miss Abatha Pary owns everything in sight except our property and a few other small operations. Her nephew and niece watch after the family’s holdings because she’s up there in age, probably her late eighties or so. They stay with her at Whispering Pines.”

  “That’s enough, girl. Don’t push your luck.”

  Several moments of silence passed between them. The tree line on their right suddenly disappeared and an open, empty area faded off into the darkness. Gail squinted through the car glass and asked, “Is that a valley or something over there? Where did the trees go?”

  “I don’t think it’s a valley. The area around here is flat. That’s a field. Cow pasture I guess.”

  “I guess so. The farmers have to eat too even when the timber companies chase them off the land.”

  Chuck smirked kindly. “Raising timber in Georgia is a type of farming. We don’t have those hundred-year-old stands of hardwood like in the Pacific Northwest. If it were daylight, you could see the forests around here are set in rows, like a corn crop or something. The trees are money crops, just like anything else a farmer grows. The pine trees are the moneymakers for operations like those that Matt owns. These trees through here are about fifteen years old, I would guess and they are just about ready for harvest. Once cut, the field is planted again so the critters will return and all is fine and well for the next fifteen years.”

  “Did you and Matt buy up all this land around here?”

  “Well, our Dad left us about 1,000 acres when he died. I’ve rented my share to Matt. He also leases timber rights on another 10,000 acres from other people. Even with that much land under contract, he still has to buy trees from private landowners occasionally. He can’t keep up with the demand for rough cut timber otherwise.”

  A pair of small, reddish eyes appeared in the car’s headlights ahead. Gail stiffened and grabbed the car’s dash. Chuck slowed the automobile and then swerved into the opposite lane, missing a raccoon.”

  “This is a busy highway at night, in more ways than mechanical.”

  “Yea, I guess we’ve got those critters all over the place. I’ve seen many animals wander out on the highways. Bobcats, wild turkeys, wild hogs, I even saw a 400 pound bear that crawled out on I-16 early one morning. An 18 wheeler hit him.”

  “Bears in this part of the country?”

  “Not anymore.” Chuck said. “In the city of Macon, there’s a sign that reads, “Interstate 16...Bear left.”

  Gail gagged, “Oh God. You are sick. Take me home right now.”

  Chuck smiled and pointed a thumb behind them. “We can’t go back. That deer herd has us cut off. There’s no place to go but forward."

  A moment passed quietly. Chuck broke the silence. “As for your original question about taking 441rather than the Interstate; it’s a little further if you stay on I-85 to Atlanta and then head south on I-75. Normally I just get off on 441 above Athens, Georgia and come this way.”

  Gail, not liking the resulting silence that followed, said, “Bet that truck killed the bear, huh?”

  “What? Oh, the one on 16? Yes, and it didn’t improve the looks on the front of that big truck either and it caused a couple of thousand dollars worth of damage.”

  “I feel sorry for all the animals killed on the highways. They’re just trying to do their thing but we punch roads and stuff right through the middle of their living rooms.”

  “There’s a truck stop out at the Interstate. Do you want to grab something to eat before we head out to Matt’s place?”

  Gail shook her head. “If you don’t think your brother would mind, let’s stop at a grocery store, pick up a few things, and fix them at the house. I don’t know about you, but I love to eat grits and scrambled eggs late at night rather than for breakfast.”

  He couldn’t count the times he had rustled up a quick meal at midnight of the same thing. “Now that sounds like a great idea and I can make a mean ham and cheese omelet.”

  “It’s late, Chuck. Let’s just keep it simple and sweet. Plain old grits and scrambled eggs sound good to me.”

  A road sign zipped past the car. Chuck read it aloud. “Welcome to West Creek.”

  He took a deep breath, and let it out slowly. “There’s a Quick Stop just up the road. They might have eggs for a dozen dollars.”

  “I don’t suppose there’s an open Kroger anywhere close by? We could buy a dozen, dozen eggs for a dollar. The price you pay at convenience stores is ridiculous.”

  “There’s one in the next town but that’s ten miles away. We can burn the gas, waste the time, and save a few bucks or we can stop at the convenience store here in town. They only charge loan shark rates for a dozen eggs and some of the employees speak half-decent English. It’s your choice.”

  “I guess you are paying for the late night convenience like this. It just seems awful how they jack up the prices as they please.”

  The car rounded a curve in the road. Chuck eased off the gas and the car slowed. A railroad crossing appeared and the car bumped across it slowly. Then a scatter of buildings on both sides of the street closed about them.

  Chuck let the car ease along at 30 mph while glancing around slowly. He said, “Nothing’s changed, Gail. This place is frozen in time.”

  “It’s beautiful. When was the last time you were here to visit?”

  “Well, Matt came up to see me in North Carolina the last time we got together, so that would be Christmas. I guess it’s been a year since I came home. Wow, I didn’t realize it had been that long. I came down for a week to help Matt set up a computer system at the mill.”

  Pointing, he said, “There’s the convenience store up ahead. I’ll run in and grab some grub.”

  “You better grab some coffee, too. Instant will be Okay.”

  “If there isn’t coffee, real coffee at Matt’s house, then I’m going to call out the National Guard. He would freak out if I came trotting in with instant coffee.”

  Ten minutes later, they were back on the outskirts of town heading outbound. A few miles flew past then Chuck slowed the car and finally turned onto a clay-topped dirt road. Deep rain ditches marked the route on either side with field fences beyond that. The surface was rutted and wind eroded. The ride was bumpy and uncomfortable. Gail saw cattle loping about under the starlit pastures. Occasionally there would be a clump of smal
l trees and low underbrush near the middle. The aromatic twang of cow manure, mixed with decomposing grain and hay, found its way inside the car through the air-conditioning system. Chuck grinned, embarrassed, then twitched his nose and said, “Do you think cow methane expulsion is contributing to global warming?”

  “Did you forget my Uncle’s dairy farm? I spent most summers sleeping near cows and they smelled this bad if not worse.”

  “Matt’s place is a little more protected from this and there's a small fishpond in the woods out behind the house. Do you like to fish?”

  “I love to fish. I just hate baiting the hook with those squiggly little worms.”

  “We don’t use squiggly little worms. We use ugly, spider looking little crickets. They are better for catching the brim and blue gills we have in the pond. Two or three years ago, Matt stocked the place with channel catfish too. The cats, by now, should weigh about a pound apiece. That’s good eating size.”

  “Chuck?” Gail asked. "If you think something is wrong down here, isn’t it possible that Matt could be out in the woods hurt or something? I hate to think this, but what if he died of a heart attack in his sleep. I’m not trying to....”

  “No, Gail. It’s okay. I have already thought of that but, I remember a long time ago. There was this elderly man. He lived alone in an old shack, a sharecropper’s house. He died in his sleep one night and it was three or four days before anyone found him. If something like that had happened to Matt then somebody would have already known by now.”

  “How would they know?”

  “Buzzards, a farmer passing by saw buzzards sitting on the roof and front porch of the house. It was pretty gross but everybody knew what they would find after seeing those buzzards all over the place.”

  “That’s gross.”

  “Yea, it’s gross but it’s also a harsh fact. The humidity here is high. It’s just hard to tell with the car’s air-conditioner running. Right now it’s like a steam bath out there and the smells and such carry for miles.”

  “God, my parents had air-conditioning in the house from the day I can remember but at night, it stays fairly cool in North Carolina.”

  Chuck had to swerve the Jeep to avoid an angry looking pothole in the middle of the road, and then said, “I know but down here it’s not like that. As a kid, we had some big window units that roared like a freight train but God forbid turning the monsters off. If the power went out, which it does often on rural lines such as ours, it can get so hot that you can’t sleep, eat, or do much of anything.”

  “Did that old man who died have air-conditioning?”

  “No the windows were open and fans maybe. When he died, those buzzards knew and came running but that's their job you know. Cleaning dead things off the face of God’s little earth.”

  A small forest of tall, lanky oak trees seemed to swallow the fields and then hanging moss-filled limbs swallowed the Jeep. A hundred yards further, Chuck pointed at a small mailbox and single lane road to the right. “That’s the place. Now we are going to the woods, my dear.”

  He spun the steering wheel and started the turn smoothly. Loose gravel crunched beneath the tires. Suddenly, the trees folded back and yielded to a grass-covered yard. Neat flowerbeds flourished around the base of several tree trunks and a quaint, white house stood at the rear of the opening. After taking it all in, Gail let out a slow breath of air and thanked her lucky stars. The house before her was not the one in her nickel vision.