Mr. 8

Chapter 9: The Holy Trinity

Linda stood on the steps leading down to the den. "Are you going to have any breakfast?"

Denton looked up from his papers. "Yeah, in a bit."

She started crossing the room, but he put down the well-worn Moleskine notebook in his hand and met her halfway.

"Whatcha doing?"

"Just looking over some old notes. Last night, I had a new idea for a project I was working on awhile back."

"Didn't get too much sleep, I see?" She smoothed out some stray hairs above his ear, where strands of gray mixed with the dark brown.

He shrugged. "Just a little run down. I think I may be coming down with that cold that's going around."

"You better not be." She let out a resigned laugh that bordered on being a sigh. "You're such a hypochondriac."

Denton didn't like misleading her, but the last thing he wanted was to have to explain to her what was keeping him awake at night. He knew she'd be ready to believe that he was imagining yet another illness. Ever since the time he had thought he had come down with meningitis, Linda was convinced all of his ailments were in his head.

"Well, Gabriela's going to be here any minute," she said, letting him know she had to leave.

During good weather, Linda rode her bike to work. In the rain and during the winter, she got a ride in with Gabriela, who lived down the street and worked at the Savings & Loan.

"Don't get too distracted. You don't want to be late for class." Thursdays he had a nine o'clock lecture.

"I won't," he said. Then he kissed her goodbye.

It was the same as every morning: two small pecks followed by one long kiss, then two more pecks. It was a routine—their routine. They had done it so many times, it was taken for granted, but it was unimaginable that they would part without those five tender kisses.

When she was gone, and he'd heard the front door close, he went back to the notes he'd made about the shack in the woods.

On the ride back to the Ranger's Station, he had scrawled them down in the book, while he had sat in the back seat with the window open, getting fresh air. Going over the scribbles, Denton couldn't remember if they were written in such a trembling scrawl because the dirt road had been bumpy or because his hands had been shaking.

According to his summary, there had been no eights. Nothing had been written on the walls. There was no clear number of organs on the ground. They were decayed and splattered into pieces on the dirt floor.

His notation on the bull sculpture read: "Four feet high, about one foot wide, crudely carved, one horn pointy, one blunt, with what appears to be kidneys nailed to each eye."

It had sat on an altar, which was made out of four old crates covered in shiny black tar paper. Also on the altar were three other items: a vodka bottle containing a dark liquid, likely blood; a child's action figure; and a crucifix made from bones, tied with a black ribbon.

On the next page, he had the notes he made later at home. These were in a steadier hand and reading through them, he remembered the progression of his investigation.

"The building demonstrates resourcefulness but lack of skill. The carving also shows no skill," the first line read. These were straightforward facts. The shack was too makeshift to indicate any experience with construction or carpentry. But there was no easy access to the site. Most of the pieces would have had to have been transported there over trails.