The Valley of Lost Children by David Barbur

Author:David Barbur
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

38

The assisted living facility was downtown. These places had a smell that Tye couldn’t stand. Not that it was dirty, quite the opposite. It smelled too strongly of cleaning chemicals, underneath the smell of too much bland food being cooked in the kitchen. Folks were sitting around a big day room, chatting, watching TV, and playing cards. They all looked up when Tye and Kaity walked in, and Tye saw several flickers of disappointment when folks realized they weren’t there for them.

There was an older man in the corner. When he saw them, he put his book down and waved towards two seats at the table beside him.

“Bruce Kingsley,” he said, sticking a hand out to Tye first, then Kaity.

He was slender and a little stooped, with sharp eyes that peered out from behind thick glasses. His hands were twisted and gnarled, and he had trouble placing his bookmark, taking long enough that Tye felt an urge to help him, but he knew it would embarrass the older man.

“Arthritis has me all twisted up. The pills only worked so long.”

Tye nodded. Kingsley got his book squared away, then blinked at them from behind his glasses.

“I have to say, Ernest McCaslin is a name I haven’t heard in a long time,” he said. “Your message has me intrigued.”

Kaity explained the high points, telling him about the two attempted abductions. She left out Ursa, Frakes, and Brian.

“And your interest in this is what?” Kingsley asked.

“I’m a friend of the family of the little girl.”

Tye could tell Kingsley wasn’t entirely satisfied with that answer. He pursed his lips and stared off at the corner for a moment.

“Do you know what the name Yacolt means?” he asked after a while.

“Uh… Something in the local native language?” Kaity said. “I’ve always meant to get into local history.”

“It depends on who you ask. My understanding is the closest translations are ‘the haunted place’ and ‘the valley of lost children.’ Before the whites arrived, the locals avoided the place. There are legends that years before, a group of children went berry picking and were never found.”

Kingsley shifted in his seat. Tye figured he did that frequently, trying to find a position that was less uncomfortable.

“You know McCaslin was from there?” he asked.

“Yes,” Kaity said, leaving out the fact they’d been to his old home.

“That’s where he became fascinated with myth and legends. He didn’t talk about it much. There were hints that maybe his childhood wasn’t the happiest, but he was friends with some people of native ancestry and heard some of their folk stories as a boy.

“That shaped his whole life. He had a brilliant mind and could have excelled in any field. But the anthropology bug bit him during his teen years, and he sailed through his undergraduate program. We met during graduate school.

“You have to understand that academia is its own little world, subject to whims and fashions just like anything else. McCaslin did excellent research at first, but most importantly, it was the kind of research the community wanted.

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