Devil's Throat (The River Book 6) Read online

  “Alright,” she said, and waited. Steven pulled the phone from his ear and pressed the button that would turn on the speaker.

  “Go ahead,” Steven said.

  “You there, Roy?” Eliza asked.

  “Yes, I’m here,” Roy said.

  “Well, I have someone you can talk to,” she said. “Her name is Deem Hinton. She’s a friend of a friend. I’ve never met her, but I hear she knows the lay of the land down there. My friend tried to reach her to give her your number, but her mother says she’s out in the hills for the day and won’t be back until tonight. So expect a call from her then.”

  “Did you say ‘Deem’?” Steven asked.

  “Yes,” Eliza said, “like ‘Dean’ but with an ‘m” in place of the ‘n’. Unusual name, huh?”

  “Yeah,” Steven said, “but who cares, we need all the help we can get.”

  “How is he?” Eliza asked.

  “He looks like he’s sleeping,” Steven said, “but you can’t wake him. Michael claims if we move him it might kill him.”

  “Could be true,” Eliza said. “Best not to take any chances.”

  “We appreciate your help again, Eliza,” Steven said. “You really are a lifesaver.”

  “I’ll keep researching up here,” she said. “If I can find out more I’ll give you a call. Stay safe you two. And let me know if there’s anything else I can do to help.”

  “Will do,” Roy said, and Steven hung up the phone.

  “What now?” Steven asked. “We don’t seem to be making much progress.”

  “Well,” Roy said, “we’re not going to hear from Deem until later. How about we nose around, locally? There has to be some reason why Michael brought him all the way down here.”

  “I noticed a museum when I was driving through town,” Steven said.

  “A museum? In this tiny town?”

  “It was called the ‘Lost City Museum’,” Steven said. “Looked open. It’s two minutes down the road.”

  “Sounds like as good a place as any to start,” Roy said, grabbing his book. “Let’s go.”

  “You’re bringing the book?” Steven asked.

  “I’m sure as hell not leaving it here for Michael to steal!” Roy said. “I don’t trust that asshole. He’d destroy it out of spite. I’ll keep it in the trunk while we travel.”

  ◊

  While the museum was interesting, it didn’t seem to offer anything to Steven and Roy that helped. As they were leaving, they saw a man selling maps on a small table in the parking lot. He had a large purple umbrella propped over the table, held up by a pole sunk into a five gallon drum of dried concrete.

  “Maps of the area!” he called to them. “Twenty-five cent donation!”

  Steven looked at Roy. They both shrugged, then walked over to the man. He had a number of folded pieces of paper on his small table. They all looked like photocopies.

  “I got all kinds of maps, you name it!” he said. Steven looked at him. He appeared to be older, with darkly tanned skin and very deep wrinkles. His nose was a little swollen and red. He had several necklaces around his neck. There seemed to be a slight odor of crazy about him.

  “We’re looking for unusual places,” Roy said. “Strange things.”

  “There’s UFOs!” the man said, grabbing a photocopy and handing it to them. Steven took it and opened it. It appeared to be densely covered with tiny handwriting, looking like the product of a deranged mind. There were one or two pictures of UFOs that looked copied out of old sci-fi comics.

  “Not UFOs,” said Roy. “Strangers. Disappearances. Spooky stuff. Ghosts, that kind of thing.”

  “Oh,” the man said, “there’s some bad places around here for that kind of thing. Waaaay bad.”

  “Like?” Roy asked.

  “St. Thomas, for one,” he said, grabbing a photocopy and handing it to Roy. “They made people leave when the water rose, but that was just to cover up the place, so it couldn’t keep killing. The Mormons knew, that’s why they left it! Mormons are very in tune with that kind of thing. Now, people go out there and don’t come back. If you go, you watch yourself, take some protection. This map’ll get you there – fifty cent donation!”

  “What do you mean the Mormons left?” Roy asked.

  “They knew!” the old man said, his gaze occasionally drifting away from Roy’s as he talked. “They all up and moved to Orderville to get away from it. Horrible, horrible! Since the water’s gone down, the drought and all, the town is exposed again. You can see the old foundations, as rich and dripping with evil as the day they were cast. Fifty cents!”

  Steven reached into his pocket and handed the man two quarters. “You took two,” the old man said, looking at the UFO pamphlet Steven was holding.

  “Oh,” Steven said, putting it back on the table. “Sorry, don’t want that one. But we’ll take the St. Thomas map.”

  “What else?” the old man asked. “I got more. Anywhere you want to go, anything you want to see. Haunted mines. Enchanted ruins. Serial killer used to live here in town, I got a map to his house. How about some fishing?”

  “As much as I’d like that,” Roy said, “I’m afraid we’ll have to pass for now. Come on, Steven.” Roy began walking to the car, the map of St. Thomas in his hand. When they got back in the car, Steven started it and cranked the A/C to high.

  “Hold on just a moment,” Steven said, pulling his phone from his pocket. “I want to check something. See if what he said about St. Thomas is true.” He pulled up a web browser and began searching for info.

  “I hope you’re not putting any credence in the ramblings of Mr. Lunatic out there,” Roy said. “The sun has cooked his brain.”

  “St. Thomas,” Steven said, looking at his phone, “is about ten miles south of here. It was founded in 1865 by Mormon settlers, but they completely abandoned the place in 1871. Other people moved in after the Mormons, and stayed until the town was submerged under Lake Mead in 1938 when they built Hoover Dam.”

  “Does it say why the Mormons left?” Roy asked.

  “One page here says it was because the state line for Nevada was redrawn, and instead of being in Utah, St. Thomas was then in Nevada, and the state asked the residents to pay back taxes. Rather than pay, they moved. But another page says that’s bogus – it says,” Steven began to read, “‘they moved because the ground was sour and they could no longer abide the evil in the land.’”

  “Sounds like religious wacko stuff,” Roy said. “I don’t see how this helps with Jason.”

  “This web page was written by a guy who lives in Orderville. Mr. Lunatic mentioned Orderville, didn’t he? I wonder if the guy who wrote this is a descendant of the Mormons who moved from St. Thomas?”

  “What if he is?” Roy asked.

  “Well,” Steven said, “I’d like to talk to him then. See if he knows the real reason they moved. Maybe family stories were passed down.”

  “Seems like a longshot,” Roy said.

  “What else do we have to go on at the moment?” Steven said. “Unless you want to follow one of Mr. Lunatic’s maps? Track down a UFO landing spot?”

  “Don’t be a jackass,” Roy said.

  “There’s an email address here, I’m going to write to this guy, see if he’ll respond. Hold on.” Steven tapped at his phone for a few moments while Roy closed his eyes and tried to relax as the car began to cool. The hot Nevada sun was relentless. The gauge in the car said it was ninety-eight degrees outside.

  “There,” Steven said. “Let’s see if anything comes of that.”

  “There’s got to be more we can do aside from that,” Roy said. “Just sitting around waiting for this friend of Eliza’s to call us tonight will drive me crazy.”

  “You should get the book, keep going through it,” Steven said. “I’ll pop the trunk, you get it out.”

  Steven reached under the driver’s console, pulled the trunk release, and Roy stepped out of the car to retrieve the book. As he returned to the passenger seat Ste
ven said, “Wow, that was fast.”

  “In this heat I feel like I’m moving in slow motion,” Roy said.

  “Oh,” Steven said, “not you. This guy. He already replied to my email.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He says,” Steven said, reading, “‘It’s my grandfather who knows the stories. Come see him if you want.’ And he lists his phone number. Signed Bert. I’m gonna call him.”

  “Still seems like a long shot,” Roy said.

  Steven made a call to Bert and chatted briefly about St. Thomas and Bert’s grandfather. He asked if they could some see him, and Bert agreed. Steven told him they’d be there as soon as they could, and hung up the phone.

  “He’s going to email me his address,” Steven said. “In the meantime, we’ll head to the interstate and back into Utah. It’s about a three hour drive. We can get there and talk to him before Eliza’s friend calls.”

  “Christ, back into Utah?” Roy said. “This day just keeps getting worse.”

  “Let’s just see what this guy might know,” Steven said, backing the car out of the museum parking space and pulling onto the main road. Soon they were back on the Interstate, headed north.

  Chapter Four

  The address Bert emailed Steven led them to an old, nineteenth century brick house that looked like it had been refurbished recently. When Bert opened the door, Steven could see a giant sixty inch flat screen television inside. The contrast of the new tech against the very old structure of the house was strange.

  Bert welcomed them in as if they were old friends, and asked them to sit. He looked like he was in his mid-fifties, balding on top, and had put on a little weight. He disappeared for a moment. Steven could see a picture of Jesus on one wall and pictures of Mormon temples on another. It made him a little uncomfortable. Soon Bert returned, pushing an older gentleman in a wheelchair.

  “This is Grandpa Hunsaker,” Bert said. “He’s ninety-three this year. His grandparents moved from St. Thomas, didn’t they grandpa?”

  “They did!” Grandpa said, smiling. “They sure did!”

  “Grandpa,” Bert said, “this is Brother Steven and Brother Roy.”

  “Are you home teaching?” Grandpa Hunsaker asked. “I thought we were done for the month.”

  “No, Grandpa,” Bert said. “They just wanted to ask you about St. Thomas.”

  “Oh,” Grandpa said. “My grandpa lived in St. Thomas. What did you want to know?”

  “Ask away, guys,” Bert said. “But I’ll warn you, once you get him going he might never stop.”

  Steven turned to Grandpa Hunsaker and smiled. “We just wanted to know why your ancestors left St. Thomas. From what we read, it was because of back taxes.”

  “That’s horse manure, that’s what that is,” Grandpa Hunsaker said. “Pure grade A horse manure. That was what they printed in the newspapers, but it wasn’t true.”

  “Do you know the real reason they moved?” Roy asked.

  “The same reason they went there in the first place,” Grandpa said. “Because Brigham Young told them to. He called the shots in those days, told people where to settle, when to relocate. And nobody questioned him, they just moved.”

  “That’s it?” Steven asked. “Just because of Brigham Young?”

  “Well, Brigham Young had his reasons,” Grandpa said. “My grandfather was the mayor of St. Thomas. He was the one Brigham talked to. He told me Brigham foresaw that the town had to be reborn because it was so evil. Kinda like Noah. God was so angry at the evilness of men, he decided he needed to wipe it out. So he sent a great flood. And that’s just exactly what happened to St. Thomas. Brigham Young was right. Sixty years later, the town was cleansed by the waters behind the dam, and the evil was drowned.”

  “What was so evil about the place that it needed to be cleansed?” Steven asked. “Did your grandfather ever say?”

  “It was what bothered him most when he was the mayor,” Grandpa Hunsaker said. “People would go missing, and never be heard from again.”

  Isn’t that what Mr. Lunatic said? Steven thought. Didn’t he say that people went missing out there?

  “At first they thought it might be the Paiutes,” Grandpa Hunsaker continued, “but that didn’t make sense, because the Paiutes always traded with the town and were always friendly, to Mormons anyway. They never did find out where the people went. And he used to say that they were sorely tested, like Job. They were constantly tempted to give themselves over to the buffetings of Satan. After a while they were so weary of it all, when Brigham commanded them to move, they didn’t look back.”

  “What does that mean, ‘the buffetings of Satan’?” Roy asked, trying to suppress his skepticism.

  “The sisters were always temped with immorality,” Grandpa said. “The men were tempted to steal, to commit adultery, to kill. People used to stand up in fast and testimony meeting and say the most heinous things. My grandfather, he was the mayor, but he was also the bishop. He was in a constant state of calling the saints to repentance. The moment they left St. Thomas it stopped. When they got here to Orderville they created one of the greatest communal living cities that has ever existed in this entire country – and the temptations went away. It was all because of St. Thomas. He thought the land was bad. My grandmother used to say that something evil walked the streets at night, prowling people’s homes, looking for trouble, looking for people to tempt and steal away. And sometimes the people who had gone missing would return, but they weren’t people anymore. They were evil spirits, walking the earth.”

  “Do you think that continued, even after they left?” Steven asked. “Other people moved in after your ancestors relocated. They were there until 1938.”

  “They were all damned,” Grandpa said. “We would hear from people who passed through. The town grew, but it grew on the destruction of others. People kept disappearing. No one was ever safe. It was like the angel of death, passing through Egypt, but it never stopped. They’d see the dead back in their streets, walking just like you and me. My grandfather heard that they’d made a deal with the Devil. That’s why God sent the flood, to bury them for their wickedness, just like he did in Genesis.”

  Steven had enough of the Biblical references and wanted to wrap it up. “Did your grandfather or grandmother ever say anything else about St. Thomas?”

  “He told us never to go there,” Grandpa Hunsaker said. “I thought that was kind of silly, since it was under water when he told me that. But he said never to set foot near it. ‘Don’t fish over it, don’t take a boat out near it,’ he said. And he said, ‘One day, that town’s gonna come back. And don’t you ever go there, not on your life.’ Scared me as a kid. When I got older, I went fishing near there with Levi. He’d heard all the same stories, his great-grandmother had a journal he’d read and it had scared him, too. We decided to take his boat out there, for kicks. He nearly lost the boat and we nearly drowned. You can talk to Levi if you want; he’s still alive, lives in LaVerkin. He knows more stories.”

  “We won’t have time,” Steven said, standing, “but thank you for talking with us. It was nice to meet both of you.”

  “Hope that helped,” Bert said. “There’s not many people left who would know anything about the place, second-hand like this.”

  “I’ll bet,” Steven said. “I’m grateful you were willing to let us meet him.” He turned to Roy. “You ready to go?”

  “Sure,” Roy said, getting to his feet. “Thanks again for your time.”

  ◊

  As they drove back to Overton, Steven asked Roy what he thought about the meeting with Bert and his grandfather.

  “You mean all the religious claptrap aside?” Roy said. “There’s something there. I think his grandfather, the mayor of St. Thomas, knew something bad was there. I don’t doubt that.”

  “The town has reappeared twice since the dam was built,” Steven said. “Some of the buildings reappeared above the surface of the water briefly. But the recent drought has broug
ht down the water levels. Now the entire town is exposed. There were pictures on my phone of the foundations of buildings. People hike out there to see it.”

  “How long has the town been uncovered?” Roy asked.

  “Almost a decade now,” Steven said. “It’s been a long drought, and it’s still going on. The Feds think the water will never rise to previous levels. For all intents and purposes, St. Thomas is back.”

  Steven’s phone rang, and he pulled it from his pocket and answered it. It was Deem, who invited them for dinner. Steven accepted and took her address, asking Roy to write it down as he dictated it. She lived in Mesquite, a half hour east of Overton.

  “Well, that’s perfect,” Steven said. “Solves dinner, too. And it’s right on the way back.”

  “And it’s out of Utah,” Roy said.

  “I don’t know what your problem is,” Steven said. “Bert and his grandfather were as cordial as you could be. Answered our questions without batting an eye.”

  “Humppff,” Roy said. “I don’t trust people who don’t drink coffee.”

  “How do you know they don’t drink coffee?” Steven said. “I read that many Mormons drink it in secret.”

  “Well then, they’re not likely to offer me any, are they?” Roy said.

  “Is that what the problem is?” Steven asked. “They didn’t offer you some coffee?”

  “Humpf,” Roy said, with a finality that told Steven the subject was closed.

  ◊

  “Please come in,” the woman at the door said to Steven and Roy as she swung the door wide and waved them inside.

  “I’m Steven, this is Roy,” Steven said, extending his hand. “Are you Deem?”

  “Oh, no,” the woman said. “That’s my daughter! I’m Margie. Margie Hinton. My daughter is Deem. She told me you’d be joining us for dinner. She’s due here any minute. Please! Come in, sit!”

  Steven walked into a beautifully appointed living room and took a seat on a white sofa. He glanced around at the furniture and decorations. The same picture of Jesus and pictures of Mormon temples adorned the walls. He began to wonder if every Mormon home had the same pictures.