What follows is part 11 of the re-serialization of Westville Book 1. New parts drop every Monday, Wednesday and Friday.
If you’re new to Westville and want to dive in, you can get the books on Amazon or signed copies direct from my website:
33
Janus Global Logistics.
The name kept appearing, in all its variants. Janus, other times JG Logistics. Casey stared at the documents littering his kitchen table. Property deeds, business filings, purchase agreements. Robinson’s Gravel. The Allwell factory. And now, talk of buying the riverfront, including the old high school.
And then there was PRINCE Milling. On paper, it looked clean. Jack Thompson owned it outright through PRINCE Inc. But it was marked on the Sanborn maps. Just like the others.
Three of those spots belonged to Janus.
He flipped through pages, scanning for patterns. Janus Global was big. High-end logistics, government contracts, elite clientele. Yet their only small-town holdings were here. In Westville.
A barely-profitable factory. A gravel pit in nowhere, Michigan. A condemned high school.
There were two other marked locations. The intersection of Water and Main. Right where Fischer’s Café sat across from the old Methodist Church. A shadowed stretch of woods along the North Country Trail. Where he’d found Millie’s things.
He traced the hexagon’s lines again, an unshakable chill working into his bones. Something was wrong.
A knock at the back door.
Casey pulled the blinds back. Thick glasses. Pale eyes. A fading goatee framing a tense smile.
Heiser.
He cracked the door. “So you know where I live, just like that?”
“Perks of a small town. Just had to ask.”
“Uh-huh.” Casey folded his arms. “So from the way you darted out of Fischer’s when Lochlear and Reeves came in, I take it you’re Ex-FBI?”
“Not exactly.” Heiser adjusted his glasses. “It’s more complicated than that.”
Casey sighed. “Then uncomplicate it.”
“How about a proper reintroduction? Dr. Gregory Heiser, Dimensional Containment Bureau. Head of Phenomenological Studies. At least, I was. Until my… leave of absence.”
Casey stared. “Containment of… what exactly?”
Heiser glanced over Casey’s shoulder at the maps and documents spread across the kitchen table, pushing past him and notably past his question. “I see you’ve been busy.”
Casey exhaled sharply and stepped aside with an exasperated swing of his hand. God he was tired. But if Heiser could tell him anything that would help get to the bottom of what happened to Millie, what did he have to lose?
His sanity, maybe.
Heiser studied the papers. The drawn-on hexagon. The crisscrossing lines. “Interesting, aren’t they?” he murmured. “The old fire maps were designed to maximize detail. Structures, hazards, water sources.”
“Yeah, sure. But how about filling me in on why they matter.”
Heiser tapped the table. “I think you’re already figuring that out.”
Casey folded his arms. “Did you mark these maps?”
“No.” Heiser shook his head. “Those are the originals, marked over a century ago.”
“Then who did?”
“Another good question.” Heiser smiled faintly.
Casey exhaled through his nose. And of course, no good answers.
He tapped one of the hexagon’s angles. “What I know so far is most of these properties are owned by Janus Global. PRINCE Milling. A warehouse. A storage facility south of town. Two spots in the woods.”
“Go on.”
Casey narrowed his eyes. “Sorry to disappoint, but that’s about all I’ve got.”
Heiser nodded. “Well it’s a start. As I alluded to before, there’s something unique about your little town.”
“Because of those energy lines or whatever?”
“Ley lines. An intersection of them.” Heiser corrected.
“Right,” Casey muttered, his skepticism unwaning.
“Making Westville a Location of Power.”
“And what kind of power are we talking about?”
Heiser leaned forward, hands on the table. “Ley lines are like streams of raw geomagnetic energy. They run beneath the earth, forming a kind of grid. Usually self-regulating. But every so often, they… surge.”
Casey huffed. “So Janus is in the energy sector, too.”
Heiser’s lips twitched. “They tend to stick to their ‘logistics’ brand, focused on a certain kind of transportation.”
A pause. “Not sure I follow.”
“In Roman mythology, Janus was the two-faced god of beginnings and endings. And of doorways. Imagine a door that could take you, or many people and many things, across the globe in a near instant. Or even… elsewhere.”
Casey sat back, memories of the first and only movie date he and Aly had gone on to see Stargate in an empty theater, which he’d fallen asleep halfway through, only to be woken by Aly leaning to kiss him. He was awake then, but he didn’t see much of the movie. Still, the image of a sci-fi metallic ring radiant with blue energy was conjured in this mind.
“You mean like some kind of portal?”
Heiser smiled, apparently enthused. “Precisely.”
Casey ran a hand down his face. “Okay, got it. Great. You know, this all sounds… what’s the word…” He snapped his fingers in the air. “Ah, right. Insane.”
“I’ve come to expect that reaction from people. Granted, I’m new to disclosing classified information.”
Casey was suddenly aware he might be privy to government secrets he wasn’t supposed to know. Granted, so far, it all seemed about as credible as the lunacy scrawled on cardboard signs by the many homeless men wearing tin foil hats back in Chicago.
“You think I should be signing something first so I don’t end up in a federal penitentiary? Or Roswell.”
Heiser laughed at that, hard. The kind of overactive laugh of a guy who probably didn’t get out much. “All of this is rooted in science, I assure you. Though science and technology to an advanced degree are indistinguishable from the supernormal, to paraphrase Asimov.”
“Uh-huh.”
“It all has to do with the polarities and magnetism of the earth’s core, but in short, a doorway, or perhaps more a bridge, to a different plane of existence, when astronomical and geological conditions are right. At first brush, a little hard to comprehend, granted.”
“You think?” Casey exhaled sharply. “Alright, let me just humor you here. Your ‘Bureau,’ you what, shut these doors?”
“Yes,” Heiser said. “Well, we try to not let them open at all.”
“And Janus?”
“They open them.”
“Great,” Casey muttered. “So you’re the locksmiths, and they’re the vandals.”
Heiser didn’t disagree.
Casey pushed back from the table, shaking his head. “Unbelievable.”
Heiser stood. Met Casey’s gaze.
“Haven’t you ever seen or heard something, Mr. Benson… something you couldn’t explain?”
Casey stiffened.
Heiser’s voice lowered. “Something you wrote off as a trick of the mind? A sound that wasn’t right? A shape in the dark?”
A cold knot formed in Casey’s stomach.
The Scout cabin. Those whispers in the thick fog. The flash of red. His aching head.
You’re the guilty ones…
Casey didn’t answer. But Heiser knew. The way he looked at Casey, somehow he knew.
A frantic knock shattered the silence.
Casey and Heiser both turned. “Friends of yours?”
Heiser frowned. “No, I…” He hesitated. “Well. Possibly.”
Casey sighed. He gestured for Heiser to get out of sight. Casey crept to the door and peeled back the blinds just enough.
Olivia Fischer.
Standing on his porch. Wide-eyed and breathless.
He cursed under his breath, then threw the door open.
34
Olivia didn’t wait before shoving past Casey and into the house, heart racing.
“I need to talk to you.”
She stopped abruptly in the kitchen, an explosion of maps and papers sprawled across the table. The sight made her pause but only for a moment.
“Liv, what…”
“It’s about Millie. And the Skade… Skadega… Skadda…”
Casey raised an eyebrow as he shut the door behind her. “The what?”
“Ah screw it.” She spun to face him, gesturing wildly. “The ghost-witch! I just came from the library. And there’s something else. Arthur Thompson.”
“Olivia…” Casey started, his tone already laced with exasperation.
“Just listen!” she snapped, stepping closer. “Arthur Thompson, Millie’s great, great, something grandpa. He made a deal with the ghost-witch. The thing you’re looking for, it’s tied to him! There’s an old book in the library, or there was, it had records from when he…”
“Enough,” Casey said, cutting her off.
Olivia froze, her frustration boiling. She was about to fire back when a man’s voice, calm and measured, interrupted from behind her.
“That’s quite an accusation.”
Olivia spun, startled, to see a stranger, his thick glasses catching the light as he watched her with quiet interest. “And perhaps not without its merits,” he added.
“Who the hell is this?” she demanded, taking a step back.
“One. None of your business. Two. Watch your mouth,” Casey snapped, grabbing the phone off the counter and dialing.
Olivia’s face flushed. “What are you doing?”
“I’m calling Aly to come pick you up.”
“What? No! I’m not leaving!” Olivia shot back, her voice rising. “This is important!”
Casey’s sharp glare stopped her cold. “You are leaving. And this isn’t the time.”
She clenched her fists, pulse pounding in her ears. “You’re seriously just ignoring me?”
“That’s the plan.”
Olivia glared at him then turned her attention to the man near the table, who had been silently watching their exchange.
“So who are you?” she demanded.
The man adjusted his glasses, looking amused. “My name is Dr. Heiser,” he said evenly, then looked at Casey. “You can call me Greg.”
Olivia shifted, and thought she’d rather stick with Dr. Heiser instead of Greg. He didn’t look like a ‘Greg,’ and the name reminded her of Reggie Gregerson, one of the longtime cooks at Fischer’s who smelled of onions all the time and probably not just because of working the grill.
“Miss Fischer’s claims are intriguing,” Heiser said. “You may want to hear her out.”
“Don’t encourage her.”
“There’s something weird going on, Casey,” Olivia insisted, her frustration boiling over. “You know it too. I saw the look on your face when I told you about what happened in the woods.” She held out a finger to accentuate the point. “You believe me.”
Dr. Heiser cleared his throat, and gave Casey a knowing look.
Casey’s jaw tightened, and he hesitated before answering.
“I may have thought I heard… something. That first morning. But it was just the stress.”
The fact that Casey had just admitted that he had heard something, unlike the others, made her feel less alone. Even if he was trying to dismiss it.
“First instincts are often the most accurate,” Heiser interjected, his calm voice cutting through the tension. “Following mine brought me to Westville, and also got me fired.”
“How’s that?” Casey asked.
Heiser stood and paced past Olivia, walking aimlessly around the kitchen mumbling for a moment in which she caught Casey’s eye and wondered if he was thinking this guy was a little or a lot ‘off,’ too. He came back to the table, and looked at the maps and documents, and pointed a finger down at the one with the hexagon drawn on it.
“It started with a series of ley line spikes and spatial distortion activity. We’ve seen it before. First signs of an incursion. Electromagnetic disruptions. Anomalous weather patterns, often separated by a long distance. Not connected by basic logic, but when you consider our mapping of ley lines… well.”
Olivia thought of the power flicker at the library. Of the magnets at the nursing home.
“Most often these spikes resolve on their own, the earth’s geomagnetism rebalancing itself,” Heiser continued. “But, when there’s something pulling from the other side…”
“The other side of what?” Olivia asked.
Heiser looked to the ceiling, as if considering his response, then back to Olivia.
“There are many dimensions to our universe. At least ten according to String Theory, but probably more including the astral plane. We only occupy three of them. Between the others there exists a sort of liminal space. We call it the Seethe. Because often, it does just that. Seethes through a ‘thin spot’.”
“And you think it’s doing that here? In Westville?” Olivia asked.
“Where the rivers meet,” Heiser said smiling, looking between her and Casey to see whether his pun using Westville’s town slogan had landed. It didn’t.
He cleared his throat. “Or, where ley lines converge. My research of a particular phenomena brought me here, and its connection with Janus Global’s most recent activities.”
Olivia didn’t like the way he said that last word, and what it could mean.
“Correct me if I’m wrong,” Casey said, “but you worked for a top secret branch of the U.S. government, so why hasn’t some alleged secret cult company like this been shut down?”
A fair point, Olivia thought, and checked off a mental point for Casey.
“For one, they have roots much deeper than our great country, Mr. Benson. I believe they are and have been here in the area for many years now. Playing a long game of sorts. And, as Mrs. Fischer here astutely alluded to, may be tied to the oldest families. Even the Thompsons.”
Score one for me, she thought.
“How?” Casey demanded. “What evidence do you possibly have to back that up?”
“Nothing, yet.” Heiser made a strange, breathless noise, causing both Casey and Olivia to look at him. He stood and started pacing. “But it seems things are further along than I thought.”
“Alright,” Casey said, clapping his hands together, his lips stretched in a strained expression. “Let’s recap. You’re saying that some shadowy global organization has deep roots in Westville, is working with PRINCE Milling, and has abducted multiple young girls, including the CEO of PRINCE Milling’s own granddaughter. All to use them to somehow open a door to some other worlds or realms or whatever.”
“Dimensions,” Heiser interrupted. “More precisely, a bridge between here and the astral plane.”
“Great, thanks for the clarification. Are we going to talk about E.T. next?”
Heiser sat back in his chair. “Now that would definitely violate my NDA. Not that most of this doesn’t… but for the record I prefer the terms ultra or crypto-terrestrial.”
Olivia watched as Casey stood with a look of disbelief on his face, trying to wipe it away with a hand that stretched the bottom lids of his eyes and drooped his one brow even more.
Her throat tightened. It did all sound crazy, and she knew what she wanted to ask next sounded just as crazy. But all of this did. Their ‘research’ into a cursed town treasure and deals with bad spirits.
A shadow. A monster. Wherever it had come from.
“Is it possible that’s where Millie is?” she blurted. “In that other place? The… ‘in-between’.”
Heiser looked at her, lowering his glasses and nodded slowly. “The ‘in-between’ is perhaps the most precise way to put it, and it’s certainly a possibility. But I fear if she is there would be no getting her back. The Seethe, from all we’ve gleaned, is an endless ocean, consuming most minds who venture there.”
Olivia caught his wording of most and wondered about what that could mean for a beat before he pressed on.
“As for the astral plane itself, we’ve only just begun to comprehend…” Heiser trailed off. “Well there is a lot we don’t know.”
“Devil’s Peak,” she blurted, as soon as it shot to her mind.
Heiser looked at her curiously.
Casey glowered. “What about it?” he asked.
“I told you what we saw,” she said. “And when that thing was chasing us, the air was… thinner somehow.”
Casey’s face went pale, but Heiser’s went paler, and his eyes wider. “RE-728.” There was concern there, but also a strange intrigue. “You’ve seen it.”
The red orb. The jagged, jerking, wrong looking shadow. And that shatter of reverse hissing whispers when the flashlight beam hit it.
Heiser wanted to press more, she could tell, but Casey interrupted.
“So if I believed a shred of this, what do I do? What sort of police work would you recommend to find some evidence of… whatever we’re talking about.”
“Trans-dimensional spatial distortions?” Heiser offered.
Olivia’s nerves were electric within her, and her heartbeat faster, so there was no stopping the quip coming across her lips. “What he said. Keep up.”
Casey shook his head and pointed at her, while staring at Heiser.
“If nothing else, congratulations on leading an impressionable teenager along with your little song and dance.”
“I’m not sure I need to lead her anywhere,” Heiser said. He walked toward the table and held up one of the sheets denoting PRINCE’s dealings.
“The disturbances do align closely with the historical footprint of the Thompson family,” Heiser said. “The mill itself, the location where Miss Thompson went missing, and there’s the family history itself. The original mill owner, Arthur Thompson. And these dealings you mentioned with this local medicine man. Compelling.”
Olivia shook her head. “My friend’s grandpa, he mentioned some kind of sorcerer who lived up in the woods, right near Devil’s Peak.”
“Oh, a sorcerer,” Casey exclaimed. “Good.”
“More accurately to native culture, a shaman,” said Heiser. “Many incursion scenarios involve ritualistic and religious rites, burial mounds and the like, because they perpetuate belief. Not to mention hallucinogens like peyote and other stimulants trigger neural responses conducive to dimensional insights.”
“So getting high as a kite lets you see this stuff?” Olivia asked without thinking.
“Or, you just hallucinate,” said Casey.
Heiser smirked. “Maybe. But it is well documented that people in heightened or lowered states of awareness have had uncanny experiences. Consistent with many religious and mythological belief systems.”
Casey was looking over the papers Olivia had brought, a look of frustration coating his face.
“The Ottawa Treasure. I read about this once. The local chief buried the money from the sale of their lands.”
“And his tribe buried him,” Olivia finished.
Casey nodded. “And the treasure was never found.”
“That’s what we thought too.” Olivia picked up one of the newspaper articles, a headline reading ‘Arthur Thompson Acquires PRINCE Milling Company’. “Austin’s grandpa mentioned people would make… deals in blood with this shaman.”
Heiser nodded. “Often there is an item of importance at the center of the rituals like these. A family heirloom perhaps,” said Heiser, eyes gleaming with intensity. “Legends often carry a grain of truth.”
Casey leaned against the table and stared flatly at Heiser. “So now we’re talking about some Indiana Jones curse?”
“More like an imprint,” Heiser corrected. “Bound by belief, ritual, and blood. It’s likely to be disrupting the natural geomagnetic energies of ley lines, allowing for an entry point.”
Casey’s eyes narrowed. “Want to try that in English?”
“Something has been feeding on this town, siphoning.” Heiser said. “And now it’s waking up.”
“And ready to tear Westville a new one,” Olivia muttered, thinking about the rage and violence she’d felt emanating off that thing in the woods.
Heiser nodded. “In a manner of speech, yes. A tuning fork, reverberating and creating a feedback loop. Some converged objects are known to act of their own volition and cause strange phenomena as well. I’ve got plenty of examples I can…”
“No thanks,” Casey said.
“Whatever it is,” Heiser continued, unfettered, “it would attract attention. From both sides.”
Olivia felt the question coiling in her gut before she spouted it off.
“Attention from what?”
“There are things which are drawn to the Seethe, like moths to a flame. Often presenting in phenomena which people hold belief in, in the given area.” Heiser glanced knowingly, sympathetically, at her. “One of which being RE-728.”
She swallowed. “So, what should we do now?”
Heiser’s expression darkened. “That’s the question isn’t it. I do know that once to a critical resonance point, there will be an incursion the likes of which hasn’t been seen for some time. A dimensional bleed of sorts.”
Before Olivia could respond, the sound of tires crunching on the gravel outside broke the silence.
Casey glanced out the window. “This is over. Your sister’s here. Let’s go.”
“I’m not done…”
“Yes. You are.” Casey opened the door and gestured for her to leave, his expression making it clear the discussion was over.
“Are you even hearing any of this?” she protested.
“Yep.”
Fuming, Olivia stomped outside, brushing past Aly as she stepped out of her car.
She wasn’t done, and this wasn’t over.
Not by a long shot.
35
“Well,” Heiser said, giving Casey a thin smile. “I’ll leave you to handle… this.”
He glanced toward Aly and Olivia. “Keep pulling on strings. See what comes loose. I’ll be in touch.”
As Heiser walked off, Casey stood in disbelief, wondering just what kind of asylum circus he had just joined. The part that confused him the most was that some part of him had almost believed it.
As Heiser stepped past Aly, she furrowed her brow, smiled, and said hello, calling him by his first name.
He stopped, nodded politely, and climbed into his car.
Aly stepped forward. “He’s been coming into the café for a couple months now. Said he’s in town on business. Nice guy.”
“Yeah. Consultant for the feds,” Casey lied.
“What was he doing here?” she asked, concern feathering her jaw.
He watched as Heiser’s taillights disappeared down the street.
“Just stopped by asking for directions.”
Aly didn’t buy his thin sorry excuse for a sidestep. Why didn’t he just tell her? Oh right. Because all this was straight out of a jump-the-shark episode of The X-Files.
“Another thing you can’t tell me?”
“It’s not worth talking about.”
“Right,” Aly snapped. “Sorry about Liv.”
“It’s fine. She’s a kid. Aly…”
But she was already walking briskly to the car. Casey sighed and swore under his breath, shutting the door. He stalked back up the stairs to the kitchen table and put his hands on the mess of papers, his mind whirring.
Pull on some strings, he thought, replaying Heiser’s words.
He got in the shower, thinking about just which ones he could pull on, then put on his uniform and grabbed his keys.
He paused, and despite himself dashed back to the table, rolled up some of the maps and documents, and walked out the door.
A cup of coffee later, Casey started his patrol car, the maps in his passenger seat. He veered right out of the station garage. Straight for the Allwell factory. It was a place to start. A thread to pull on and see whether it held, being one of the marked locations he couldn’t draw a clear connection to. Everything that Heiser had been going on about, his theories on dimensionality, was completely inactionable for Casey. He only knew his job and how to do it. And he had to do something.
Semi-trucks came down this way regularly, making deliveries. The factory specialized in the distribution and manufacturing of marine parts, so they came and went from all over. It wouldn’t be the biggest stretch to assume there was some kind of illicit operation, equipment, or kidnapped people being trafficked through here, as Heiser made it seem Janus was in the business of doing. Certainly not any more of a stretch than the rest of the psychobabble he’d been spouting off.
Presently, a few cars were coming and going, the automated barrier rising and falling as workers changed over. Casey didn’t know what he was looking for, exactly. He just knew he couldn’t barge in and start asking questions. Not when he was already on thin ice with the feds, and starting to get there with Hart as well.
He pulled off to the side of the road, cutting his engine and lights. From here, he could see the quiet orange glow of the factory’s parking lot below, the still, ridged cement walls of the sprawling building, and steam rising from rooftop vents. Back downriver, PRINCE Milling glowed red, a watchful eye in the night.
To his left, movement caught his attention. Headlights floated onto the thin cement drive winding through the middle of the cemetery. Casey frowned. Midnight graveside visits weren’t exactly common in Westville, or anywhere, for that matter. He doubted whoever it was had seen him, his car partially obscured by the pines that lined the edges of the lot.
For a while, Casey just watched.
The driver killed the truck’s headlights and climbed out, moving toward a cluster of headstones, a shovel glinting faintly in the moonlight.
The sharp shing of metal meeting earth broke the quiet.
Casey rolled down his window, the cold air biting at his skin.
Sliding out of the car, he crept along the edge of the path, staying near the trees. He dipped behind the taller headstones, his breath fogging in the cold air. His fingers brushed the flashlight clipped to his belt.
He steadied himself, flicking it on.
The beam slashed through the dark, landing on a figure mid-dig.
And revealing the dark green and deep rust of a Toyota truck.
Ethan Crawley.
“Westville Police,” Casey barked, his voice cutting through the night. His other hand hovered near his holster. “Drop the shovel and put your hands up.”
The man froze, straightening slowly. A wool mask obscured his face, and he raised an arm to shield his eyes from the light.
Casey took a cautious step forward. “I said, drop the shovel…”
The crack came out of nowhere.
Blinding pain shot through Casey’s skull as something hard and metal slammed into the side of his head.
He hit the ground, ears ringing, vision swimming. Gravel bit into his palms as he tried to steady himself, his flashlight rolling uselessly away.
When his vision cleared, he saw a second man standing over him, another shovel in hand.
Casey blinked up at him, disoriented.
The man peeled off his wool mask, revealing Crawley’s gaunt, sneering face.
“Evenin’, officer.”
A boot came down hard on his face, and his world went black.