The Whittier Trilogy Read online

  THE WHITTIER TRILOGY

  A Trent Walker Supernatural Thriller

  BOOK BUNDLE Collecting

  Books 1-3

  By Michael W. Layne

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Trent Walker Books 1-3

  Trapped in Whittier Novel

  Hunted Under Vegas Novel

  Buried in Alaska Novel

  Bonus Content

  About the Real Whittier

  What’s Really Under Vegas

  Spirits in Alaska

  Back Matter

  Author's Note

  Acknowledgments

  Other Works by Mike

  Connect with Mike Online

  Copyright Notice

  TRAPPED IN WHITTIER

  A Trent Walker Supernatural Thriller

  BOOK 1

  By Michael W. Layne

  Copyright © 2013 by Michael W. Layne

  “Every profound spirit needs a mask: even more, around every profound spirit a mask is continually growing.”

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Whittier, Alaska

  2012 Population: 220

  Land Area: 19.7 Square Miles (Mostly Water)

  Population Density: 18 People per Square Mile

  Land-Based Entry: Single-Lane One-Way Tunnel

  Last Tunnel Opening to Exit Whittier: 11:00 p.m., Daily

  Prologue

  THE MAN SHIFTED uncomfortably in the fold-up metal chair. He had done this before. They all had. But he had never gotten used to it.

  The growling. The snapping of the teeth. The shaking of the cages in the dimly lit room. He knew the bars were strong enough to hold them—that there was no way for them to escape, but it unnerved him to think of what they would do to him and anyone else who got in their way, if they did.

  None of them had gotten loose before, but the Elder had made a special point of warning him this time—told him to stay vigilant—that there might be trouble coming their way. Maybe not this month, but soon.

  The man turned his head from the cages, calmed his breathing, and tried to will his heart to beat slower. He reached into his pocket, found the little oval pill, and dry swallowed it.

  Maybe it would also help if he changed his way of looking at the situation. He wasn’t their warden. He was caring for them and making sure they survived another full moon.

  That made him feel a little better. But he still wished this could be done another way. These were his friends. His neighbors. His family.

  But until the morning came, they were also dangerous and had to be treated that way.

  Tonight, they were no longer humans.

  Tonight, they were animals.

  Chapter 1

  TRENT WALKER glanced at his watch. He was on schedule to arrive in the remote Alaskan town of Whittier, with plenty of time to catch the 12:30 cruise and see a few glaciers. If things went according to plan, he’d even be able to get in a little practice, catch the 6:00 evening tunnel opening, and return to his cousin Jay’s house in time for dinner back in Anchorage.

  He looked out the window at the monumental views along the Seward and the Portage Glacier Highways. A seemingly endless barrage of lush green mountains with snow-covered tips towered across the inlet on his right, and mountains loomed overheard on his left, capturing his car in their shadows and slicing up the warm, sunny day.

  The weather was so nice in fact, that he felt a little overdressed in his thick black suit, maroon shirt, and slightly darker tie. But he was traveling as more than a mere tourist this day, and wanted to be prepared. He unconsciously touched the tip of the folded red silk handkerchief poking out of the top of his left breast pocket and ran his fingers through his thick, but perfectly unruly shock of jet-black hair.

  He checked his watch again. He had to be exactly on time or even early for this, so he pressed the accelerator down a little more and felt his cousin’s black Nissan Maxima slowly come up to speed.

  Jay had been quite clear that there was only one way to enter Whittier by land—a two and a half mile, single-lane tunnel that cut straight through the mountain with only one aging railroad track running down its center. The length of the tunnel made it unique, but what fascinated Trent was the fact that it only opened for cars to enter Whittier at half past each hour, and it only opened at the top of each hour for people to leave.

  If he missed this next opening, he’d be stuck in line for an hour waiting for the next opportunity to enter the town. If he for some reason didn’t get out of Whittier when the tunnel closed at 11:00 that night, he’d have to stay in town overnight and wait for the morning to leave.

  After another sixteen minutes on the highway, Trent eased up on the accelerator and brought the car to a crawl as the tollbooths for the tunnel came into sight and the traffic thickened.

  He wasn’t sure what he had been expecting, but the famous Whittier Tunnel was underwhelming on first encounter. It looked more like a small mine shaft than a passageway large enough to accommodate the trains that supposedly used it during the times it was closed to car traffic.

  When it was finally his turn, he paid his twelve dollars at the tollbooth, and pulled up into the queue.

  At exactly 10:30 a.m., the green light came on, and the line of cars began snaking its way into the belly of the mountain.

  The Germans, famous for the punctuality of their public transportation, had nothing on the tunnel operators of Whittier.

  As he drove into the darkness, the car radio went to total static, and his mind automatically settled into its calculations.

  He knew the length of the tunnel. At twenty-five miles an hour, each car would take six minutes to go through the tunnel, assuming a constant velocity. Taking everything into account, including the fact that no one drove at a consistent speed in the real world, he estimated that the trip would take him close to seven and a half minutes.

  Others might say that he was too concerned with details or even obsessed with them, but observing and being mindful of them had given him his livelihood and had even saved his life on more than one occasion.

  In his favorite Sherlock Holmes story, Watson asked Holmes about the difference between seeing and observing. Holmes replied by asking Watson how many steps led up to the apartment they were in at the time. Watson, of course, did not know. Holmes replied that this was because Watson had seen the stairs hundreds of times, but had never observed them.

  Holmes knew the exact count of the stairs was seventeen, because he had both seen and observed them, and that is exactly how Trent tried to live his life.

  As he drove along, he was amazed at how close the mountain walls were to the sides of the car, the whole tunnel being no wider than sixteen feet at most points. With dark gray rock on either side of the vehicles, the Whittier Tunnel was a claustrophobe’s nightmare.

  After exactly seven minutes and forty-five seconds, he exited the tunnel and arrived in Whittier, Alaska.

  Almost subconsciously, he had counted 316 overhead white lights, 47 closed circuit video cameras (that he could see, at least), and 8 safe houses built into the interior of the mountain approximately every 1600 or so feet.

  He laughed.

  Sherlock Holmes would be proud.

  His estimate for the trip had been slightly off, but he reminded himself that precision did not always exist in real life. Sometimes, you had to take the best data available and make an informed guess. The key was to learn from your mistakes and to do better the next time.

  It was a maxim that had always served him well, both in his personal life, and in his professional life as a mentalist.

  Chapter 2

  THE SMALL TOWN of Whittier was rainy, overcast, and Trent estimated the temperature to be in the 50s. By contrast, w
hen he had entered the tunnel in Bear Valley, it had been sunny with warm air in the high 60s.

  Within the first minute of being in town, his head started to throb, a slight headache coming on, maybe from the sudden change in barometric pressure on this side of the mountain. He reached into his pocket, took out a small pill container, threw a couple of good old-fashioned aspirins into his mouth, and swallowed them dry.

  As he waited for the pills to take effect, he took in the rest of the area.

  He had looked at a satellite map of the town online the night before, but the image on the web had not prepared him for its reality.

  A huge cruise ship was docked over to his left, its massive hull almost as big as a quarter of the town—a vivid contrast to the size of Whittier itself.

  The entire town was comprised of a handful of roads that loosely formed a triangle, with one point of the triangle pointing directly into the nook of the mountains and the opposite base of the triangle running along the water’s edge. By his eye, each side of the virtual triangle was no more than half a mile in length at best. The middle of the triangle looked like a combination junk pile and boat yard.

  Only two buildings rose up more than a couple of stories to dominate the town’s skyline.

  If he were to stay straight on Whittier Street and continue for half a mile, he would just about run into a huge, abandoned barracks made of scorched concrete. If he took a right on Eastern Avenue and went for half a mile, he would end up at a fourteen-story building painted in garish blues, pinks, and tans that resembled a prison more than the apartment building he knew it to be. His research the night before had confirmed what Jay had told him—that the monolithic building was known as The Towers and that it housed over ninety percent of Whittier’s 220 residents.

  As Trent eased his car along the road that paralleled the waterline, he was amazed at the stillness outside. A few tourists shuffled here and there in their rain jackets, but despite their presence and the fair number of cars and trucks parked everywhere, the year-round ice-free port discovered in World War II and later turned into a military base felt neglected and unfinished.

  Even the sign that was posted at the edge of town warning of a bear sighting had been hastily, and from the freshness of the ink, recently scribbled in black magic marker.

  On his left, a slightly more professional sign for the boat tour promised to show tourists twenty-six glaciers over a five hour period, during which time they would be fed fish and chips and be able to order drinks and snacks from the bar.

  That was another thing he had noticed about Alaska. There were bars and alcohol everywhere. People in Alaska enjoyed and eagerly sought out their beer and their booze. And after spending no more than five minutes in Whittier, he was beginning to understand why.

  All he could think of was how depressing it would be to actually live in this sort of isolated town year-round. He was reminded of a video he had found on the Internet the night before. It was made by a group of local Whittier students who referred to themselves as prisoners of the town. Looking around at the mountains that surrounded the place on three sides and the arctic water that bordered the fourth, he understood the reason for the name of their movie.

  With that thought in his mind, he parked in the lot near the entrance for the glacier cruise, stepped out of the car and stretched, and then paid for a day of parking. He was early for the cruise and had almost an hour to kill in a town that wasn’t big enough to run a 5k without doubling back on oneself.

  But before he did anything else, he needed coffee.

  He walked over to a set of weathered shops and pulled open a rusted screen door. He stepped onto a covered porch with a sliding glass window apparently used to accommodate to-go orders.

  As he walked across the old porch, the wooden floor sagged and creaked. He waited at the service window, peering through the glass at the shelves of canned goods and other supplies that were stacked to the ceiling. A half dozen snack bars—the kind only eaten by health nuts—were stacked just on the other side of the sliding glass window.

  A paper menu labeled gluten-free sat to one side.

  When the female server finally showed up and slid the window open, he began to wonder if Whittier held more surprises for him than he had first anticipated.

  She was attractive, in her early thirties at the most, with a model’s smile and mousy blonde hair that would hang just past her shoulders if it weren’t in a ponytail. He glanced again at the items behind the window, but this time with a renewed focus on deducing information about the woman.

  In an instant, he mentally catalogued three pens, a tin of mints, a Nine Inch Nails CD, and a small spiral notebook. He also noticed a brown paper bag rolled up and sitting on the shelf behind her, with the name Christina written on it in black marker.

  He almost smiled before remembering to control the expression on his face, but he never failed to be surprised at how easy it was to ascertain information about complete strangers.

  There were always clues, if you knew where to look.

  “Can I get you something?” she asked with a slight southern accent that he placed as originating from West Virginia.

  Encouraged by the multiple health food products on display, he decided to ask for the near impossible.

  “Do you have soy mm-milk?”

  “It’s your lucky day,” she said.

  “S-s-soy latte, medium,” he said laboriously before spitting out, “Thank you.”

  The beautiful girl looked at him for a second, taken aback by his stutter. People tried to hide their reactions when he spoke like that, but he could read their expressions, no matter how subtle.

  When he met folks for the first time, they were either instantly annoyed by or put off by his stutter. Occasionally, people felt closer to him because of it—maybe because of a personal experience or perhaps because it helped them view him as more vulnerable and therefore less dangerous.

  Christina dialed down her thank you in advance for the huge tip smile to one that was a little smaller, but much more genuine in nature.

  “It’s not a problem,” she said.

  She made eye contact that lingered a fraction of a second too long to be completely professional, and then she closed the sliding glass panel.

  Not a problem?

  He couldn’t even get soy lattes at his local donut shop back in Reston, but here in this isolated Alaskan town, a beautiful woman behind a sliding glass window had soy milk readily available.

  He began to think that maybe Whittier wasn’t such a bad place after all. Then he reminded himself that correlation didn’t imply causality, and that perhaps the owner of the little restaurant was simply lactose intolerant.

  While he waited for his coffee, he sauntered across the porch to a wooden stool at a high table that was beaten and pocked from abuse by the elements. He nodded to an old man a few seats down who had joined him on the porch without being noticed. This was particularly odd given how aware Trent usually was of his surroundings and given the fact that the old man was inebriated, swaying back and forth on his stool, and smoking a pipe.

  Christina must have distracted him more than he’d realized.

  The old man’s skin was brown, and his features were dark, suggesting that he was of native Alaskan heritage. His eyes were glassy; his nose was bulbous in the way that those of alcoholics often turned; and the smoke he blew had a slight rubbery or chemical smell to it.

  As if it took a while for his neurons to start firing, the drunk slowly nodded back and smiled, showing a few missing teeth amongst the yellowed ones that still remained. Some of them appeared to be broken with jagged edges, like he’d bitten down on a piece of metal and shattered them outright.

  “Have a good time today, boy. But don’t stay too late. Not tonight.”

  “It’s a n-n-nice town you have here,” Trent said, “but I’ll be la-leaving right after my cruise.”

  The old man mumbled something to himself and slurped the last drop of beer
from his clear plastic cup. He shuffled over to the service window and rapped on the sliding glass door with one knuckle while staring at Trent.

  The stunning woman opened the window and slid out another plastic cup full of beer before the old man could even order. He laughed lightly, took the drink and walked off the porch and into the overcast drizzle.

  The woman behind the window motioned for Trent to come over. Stepping up to where the drunk had just been standing was like entering a cloud of alcoholic toxins that had seeped from his pores. It was a brutal stench, but Trent forced a smile as she handed him his latte.

  “Don’t mind him,” she said, nodding her head in the direction of the old man now ambling through the parking lot.

  Trent half turned his head back to look, then decided to focus his attention instead on the woman.

  “I’m surprised you have s-s-soy milk up here,” he said, punctuating the end of his sentence with his best charming smile.

  “We don’t get a lot of orders for it, but with the cruise ships, it happens every now and then. I get a feeling that you’re not from one of the ships though, are you?”

  “No, but I’m not from around here either, that’s for sh-sh-sure.”

  She arched both of her eyebrows.

  “And?”

  He considered lying to her, not because he didn’t want her to know where he was from, but because deception was an essential skill in his profession, and he practiced it often, especially when there was no harm that could come from it.

  “Virginia,” he finally said. “Hope you don’t mind, but I g-g-gotta ask…”

  She pressed her lips together and shook her head slightly.

  “What’s a girl like me doing in a place like Whittier? Right?”

  He blushed for real.

  “I moved up here a few years ago from West Virginia, after spending way too many years in an office,” she said. “This place doesn’t pay much, but…”