The Hollow Ones(43)

They drove there with all four car windows down. Solomon told him about finding the small footprint in the soft forest floor beneath the burnt leaves. He asked Blackwood again about the boy. “A very peculiar situation” was all Blackwood would say.

They raced the sunset there, and lost. There was a blue glow in the sky, but that wouldn’t help them once they were inside the trees. Solomon found a flashlight in the glove box and led the way. He wasn’t sure he would be able to find the site, right up until the moment he stepped into the small clearing.

He showed Blackwood the low branch and described the murder scene without aid of photographs. He kicked aside the forest debris to reveal the faint footprint, but Blackwood was less interested than Solomon expected.

“May I?” he asked, taking the flashlight. He examined the trunk of the hanging tree, its ridged black bark. Standing with his back to the trunk, he shone the flashlight up into the high branches of the surrounding trees, then began inspecting their trunks.

On one, he discovered a carving that in daylight would not have been readily visible. It was slight and small, a curious, crude design consisting of a large circle overlapping with a small circle and a line originating from the overlap, pointing northeast.

Blackwood shone the flashlight beam in the general direction of the odd line.

“What is it?” asked Solomon. “Like a hobo marker or something?”

“Something like that,” said Blackwood, walking ten or more yards to another thick trunk. “A marker indicates, warns, or suggests paths for the hungry and the desolate. So in that sense, this thing is similar…”

Another small symbol was rendered there, this one more elaborate, with curving, connecting lines and what appeared to be one half of a star. It could have been a character in a strange, primitive language, a hieroglyph or a pictograph. To Solomon’s eye, it looked like a sort of signature, as though dashed off by a spirit of the wood.

This symbol lacked a directional line, at least as far as Solomon could tell, but Blackwood turned the flashlight beam to blaze an illuminated trail to the next tree, and the next, each one with a faint carving…taking them deeper into the woods.

“Where are we going?” asked Solomon.

Blackwood stopped a moment, standing still, as though listening. “We are here.”

He played the light around a small clearing. Two wooden posts jutted from the ground, supports to a long-ago-destroyed sign. Blackwood cleared fallen leaves off eroded stone markers with words and dates carved into them. Only remnants remained. Partial names and partial dates, ending in the mid-1800s.

Solomon realized what it was. “This is a slave graveyard.”

Blackwood wielded the flashlight as Solomon stepped off burial stones set every ten to fifteen feet. This had been either a remote section of a slave owner’s property, or else an unofficial burying ground.

“My goodness,” said Solomon, imagining the pain of this place from just one century previous. “What a find,” he said. Then he remembered how they found it. “What does it mean?”

Blackwood examined the earth. “The graves are undisturbed.”

“Of course they—what?” Solomon closed the gap between them. “Why would they be disturbed?”

“I don’t know.”

“Tell me about the markings in the trees.”

“They are called sigils. Occult markings.”

“What do you mean, ‘occult’?” Solomon was getting spooked, standing in a forgotten graveyard in the middle of the woods, talking about black magic.

“I don’t know the translation,” said Blackwood. “But it is notable enough that they exist here.”

“Sure is,” said Solomon, having had enough of this. “Let’s get back.”

They retraced their steps to the hanging tree. Solomon was still trying to make sense of it all. “Are you thinking the hanging has something to do with the…the…”

“Sigils,” said Blackwood.

“Sigils,” said Solomon. “Or is it the graveyard? Or—the boy?”

“Yes, all three,” said Blackwood, playing the flashlight beam around the hanging site.

Solomon stepped in and relieved him of the flashlight. He didn’t want him to find anything else here.

Solomon said, “Since you’re not being very forthcoming, let me tell you a little bit about myself. I don’t like the world occult, for one…and I don’t really like spending time in graveyards after dark. I don’t believe in any of it, but I don’t believe it’s something to fun around with, either. I need to know what this is, and I need to know who you are.”

“Yes,” said Blackwood, looking into the woods past Solomon. “But first, we should ascertain who this is coming our way.”

Solomon turned fast. He saw flames in the trees, torchlights. Half a dozen of them—more—coming through the woods.

Solomon felt for his gun through his jacket flap, his Colt Detective Special reassuringly holstered on his hip. “And this is just what we needed here tonight.”

The torches slowed, voices talking back and forth. They had seen the flashlight beam.

“How good are you in a fight?” asked Solomon.

Blackwood said, “A fight?”

“A fistfight. You any good?”