Dark Hollow (18 page)

We stepped back into the living room. Despite their symptoms, Tara and Claudine wanted to know what was going on and where we were going. I opened my mouth, unsure of what to say, but Dale cut me off.

“Search party,” he lied, apparently having already rehearsed our excuse. “They’re going to go back over some of the ground we missed yesterday. They didn’t want a lot of people this time, so you probably won’t see it on the news. Something about too many searchers tramping over possible clues. They asked for a few volunteers, and since Merle, Adam, and myself are home all day, we agreed to help.”

“Yeah,” Cliff said, “and I needed a day off work, anyway. Can’t let these guys have all the fun.”

“Cory’s going to stay here with you until we get back,” I said.

Tara frowned, looking suspicious. “Why?”

“Just to be on the safe side,” I told her. “Nobody really knows what’s going on. It will make us feel better about leaving you here.”

“Besides,” Dale added, “if you’re both sick, Cory can take care of you.”

“How?” Claudine asked.

Dale shrugged. “Make you some chicken soup or something.”

Both women glanced dubiously at Cory, who was seated in front of my media shelf, thumbing through our video games.

I cringed. “Please?”

Tara nodded. “Okay. If you insist.”

Cory glanced back at us, clearly oblivious to the conversation.

“Dude!” His eyes sparkled. “You’ve got the new
Grand Theft Auto.
Care if I play it?”

“Knock yourself out,” I said.

“Sweet.”

“But remember what Dale and I told you.”

Cory’s face grew somber again. “I will.”

Claudine sipped coffee. “And just what did you guys tell him?”

Dale kissed her forehead. “That he had to wait on the two of you hand and foot and obey your every whim. He is your slave and you two are his masters.”

The girls laughed; then both of them stopped suddenly and winced, rubbing their heads.

“Oh,” Tara groaned. “Hurts to laugh.”

Merle and Cliff filed out while Dale and I kissed our wives good-bye.

“Be careful,” Tara whispered.

I hugged her tight. “It’s just a search party.”

She pulled away and looked me in the eyes.

“No, it’s not.” She kept her voice low, so that Dale and Claudine wouldn’t hear her. “I know you, Adam Senft, and I know when you’re bullshitting me. Like now.”

I started to deny it, but she interrupted.

“Whatever’s going on, I trust you. Just promise me you’ll be careful, and that you’ll tell me about it later?”

I squeezed her hand. “I promise.”

She squeezed back. “Then go.”

“If you need us,” Dale told them, “just call Adam’s or Cliff’s cell phone.”

Cory and Big Steve followed Dale and me to the backdoor. Cory’s demeanor had changed. He looked nervous and scared.

“Guys, what if that detective shows up? What do I tell him?”

“Don’t answer the door,” Dale told him.

“But what if Claudine or Tara answers it instead? If they let him in and he starts asking questions…”

“Then tell him the truth,” I said. “Tell him we went to the woods.”

“And if he asks about Shelly?” Cory grabbed my shirt. “Am I supposed to tell him about the goat man?”

“Hopefully by then we’ll have the proof, and we’ll tell him everything.”

“Yeah,” Cory said, “but if I tell him he’ll think I’ve been drinking and shit.”

“Cory.” Dale sighed. “He’ll probably think you’ve been drinking anyway. Just be careful, and watch over the girls.”

I bent down and patted Big Steve’s head. “And you watch over them all. Don’t let Cory give you any shit.”

He wagged his tail slightly, but the worried expression lingered in his eyes. He whined mournfully. I was suddenly overcome with emotion. While Dale and Cory watched, I knelt down and hugged my dog.

“I love you, buddy,” I whispered into his neck.

Big Steve licked my face. I didn’t want to let him go. Didn’t want to let go of my rock. As if sensing that, he slipped out of my arms and stepped backward. His eyes never left me.

They said,
Go…

Dale and I stepped out onto the sidewalk, and Cory shut the door behind us. The last thing I saw was Big Steve’s head, tilted, his eyes still watching me.

“Okay, ladies,” Cory called from inside, “who’s up for some video games?”

The grass was still wet from the previous night’s rain, and the muddy satyr tracks remained. They seemed toput things into perspective—made what we were doing more real.

Merle pulled his Chevy Suburban behind my car, and we all piled in, Merle and Cliff up front, Dale and I in the back. Merle turned the stereo on, and Ray Charles sang a cover of Hank Williams Sr.’s “Your Cheating Heart.” The song summoned up the image of Tara and Hylinus, and I fought to keep from puking.

We drove in silence.

TWELVE

After stopping off for more coffee and cigarettes, we went through Shrewsbury and Seven Valleys, passing into farm country, and then spent twenty-five minutes driving along one narrow back road after another. The weather was perfect, and we rolled with the windows down.

“Nice day,” Cliff said. “Feels like summer.”

We nodded in agreement, but said nothing.

I tried to get my head around the fact that we were going to the deserted home of a black powwow magician, where we’d search for answers regarding a horny satyr who’d come to life in our neighborhood. It seemed so bizarre. All around us were signs of normalcy: kids climbing into a school bus, a man mowing his lawn, a cop giving a ticket to a motorist, construction workers standing alongside the road, doing nothing but watching the cars pass by. We didn’t seem to fit into that equation.

“I brought guns,” Merle said from up front, as if to accentuate my thoughts. “In the cargo space behind you guys. Couple of deer rifles.”

Dale adjusted his window. “For what?”

“Just in case.”

“We won’t need them,” I said. “It’s just an abandoned farmhouse. The satyr isn’t hanging out there.”

Merle stared straight ahead and kept his eyes on the road.

“Anybody care if I smoke?” Cliff asked.

They didn’t, and he lit a cigarette. I joined him. The rush of nicotine woke me up and calmed me down. My cell phone rang—my publisher wanting to know if they could set up an interview with a newspaper. I told him to call back later. He asked if he’d interrupted my writing. I lied and told him yes.

Eventually, we turned off onto the dirt road leading to LeHorn’s Hollow.

“This is the right way, isn’t it?” Merle asked. “Been a while since I was out here.”

“Yeah.” I remembered my own last trip down this road, on my date with Becky back in high school. Things hadn’t changed much since then.

A vast expanse of barren cornfields stretched off to the left of the road, the rolling hills not worked since Nelson LeHorn’s disappearance twenty years earlier. They reminded me of NASA’s pictures from the surface of Mars. Nothing grew there now. The red clay-dirt was strewn with rocks and unturned clods of earth. To the right lay miles and miles of woodlands, untouched by the explosive development that had marred other parts of the state, with the exception of the portion Gladstone Pulp Wood Company logged for their paper mill.

The trees cast long, sinister shadows across the road.

“Spooky back here,” Merle mumbled. “Pretty dark, even in the daylight.”

On the radio, Willie Nelson’s “Dandelion Wine” was drowned out by a sudden burst of static. Merle pressed the seek function, looking for another station. Snatches of disembodied voices cut through the white noise: an infomercial for hair-replacement medicine, the driving beat of a hip-hop song, a preacher or a conservative talk showhost, it was hard to tell which. His voice swelled, seeming to boom from the speakers.

“In Ecclesiastes nine, verse three, King Solomon tells us that ‘there is an evil among all things that are done under the sun.…’”

Cliff groaned. “It’s way too fucking early and I’ve had way too little sleep to listen to this shit.”

“Sorry,” Merle apologized. “Reception sucks back in these woods. You guys might have trouble with your cell phones, too.”

“I didn’t bring mine,” Cliff said. “Was I supposed to?”

On the radio, the pastor’s disembodied voice faded in and out.

“Wouldn’t have hurt,” Dale answered. “I told the girls you had it on you.”

Cliff shrugged. “We still got Adam’s.”

I glanced at mine. Sure enough, Merle had been right about the backwoods reception. I barely had one bar.

“Won’t do us a lot of good back here,” I told them. “Must not be any towers around. Why didn’t you bring yours anyway, Cliff?”

“Didn’t want work calling me all day.”

“But you told them you were sick.”

“Yeah, but they’ll still call. Place would shut down without me.”

“And chapter eleven,” the sermon continued, “says ‘for thou knowest not what evil shall be upon the earth, and if the tree falls toward the south, there it shall be.’ And evil is upon the earth, brothers and sisters. It walks the earth with cloven feet and a burning lust.…”

“Give me a break.” Cliff reached out and clicked the stereo off.

“Hey.” Dale leaned forward. “What was he saying about cloven feet?”

“Who cares?” Cliff said, turning around to look at us. “It’s just more superstitious bullshit.”

“You don’t believe in God?” I asked.

His lip curled up in a sneer. “Hell, no. Why? Do you?”

I thought about Tara and the satyr, rutting in the backyard; about Tara’s miscarriages; our baby floating in the toilet, and the sound the commode madewhen I flushed it.

“I don’t know anymore,” I admitted. “I used to believe in God. Believed in powwow magic, too, somewhat, but not the paranormal. I wanted to believe more, but I never saw a ghost or a flying saucer. Needed to see proof. But I always believed in God. These days I’m not so sure. I think my beliefs may have gotten reversed. I’ve seen proof of monsters, but I haven’t seen proof of God.”

“Well, I believe,” Merle said. “When Peggy left I had nothing. No one. So one Sunday morning I come stumbling home drunk, turned on the television, and watched this preacher. Got up, still drunk, and drove to that Episcopalian church on the edge of town, right down near the Maryland border.”

“And you found God?” Cliff asked, his voice thick with derision.

“I found peace,” Merle said. “If you want to say that God is peace, then yeah, I found God.”

I considered the look on Merle’s face when somebody mentioned his ex-wife, and the way he still talked about her every day, and secretly wondered just how much peace he’d actually found. But I didn’t say it. Instead I turned to Dale.

“What about you? Do you believe in God?”

Dale stared out the window, watching the trees rush past. “I did,” he whispered. “Until last night. After Claudine and that …that thing…” He choked back an angry sob. “If God exists, then He let that happen. Like you said, we’ve seen the monster. Where was God while that was happening?”

Cliff muttered something under his breath.

“What’s that?” Dale asked, leaning forward.

“He was inside Adam’s house. Big Steve.”

I frowned. “What does that have to do with God?”

Cliff grinned. “
God
is
dog
spelled backward.”

He laughed at his joke, but Dale and I just shook our heads. Merle kept driving.

We passed by the burned-out skeleton of a cabin. Charred timbers jutted skyward, and the ground beneath them was ash. The destruction extended out into the outlying forest, carving a large swath through its center. The greenery had just started to creep back into the empty space, a fresh crop of new undergrowth sprouting from the scorched earth. Miraculously an outhouse, untouched by the flames, sat nearby.

Merle glanced at the wreckage and then looked away. His expression was grim.

“Adam, you remember when I told you about my buddy Frank?”

I nodded.

“That was his place we just passed.”

“The guy whose hunting cabin caught on fire?” Cliff asked.

Merle nodded, his knuckles tightening around the steering wheel.

“It’s remarkable how the forest is already growing back,” Dale said. “Almost as if it’s reclaiming the spot.”

We rounded a curve in the road, and suddenly LeHorn’s Hollow lay spread out before us. The farmhouse, barn, and other buildings stood weather-beaten and empty, providing a haven for rats, groundhogs, and other scavengers. Unplowed fields and old-growth forest surrounded the place. In the center of the forest, at the bottom of a steep depression formed by four sloping hills, sat the hollow itself. The trees sprouting from its center seemed taller than the others, up to the point where they joined the rest of the forest.

“Just think,” I said. “Those woods reach all the way back to our place.”

Merle chuckled. “Want to walk home and see if you beat us back?”

“I don’t think so.”

He parked a few yards away from the farmhouse and turned the Suburban off. We grew quiet.

Bright yellow police tape fluttered in the wind, ends still tied to various parts of the farmhouse. A few POSTED—NO HUNTING, FISHING, OR TRESPASSING signs hung from the tree trunks at the outer rim of the woods.

Cliff whistled, staring at the buildings. “Damn, this place is falling apart.”

“Did somebody finally buy the land?” Dale asked, pointing at the signs.

“No,” Merle said. “Those were leftover from when LeHorn was still living here. I’d guess you could hunt there now, if you really wanted to.”

Cliff nodded. “Your friend did, right?”

“Yeah.” Merle grunted. “And look what happened to him.”

Stretching, I cracked my neck. “So, we gonna sit here all day or are we going in?”

I opened my door, and reluctantly the others followed. We got out of the Suburban and studied the house. Red, faded paint peeled from the walls, revealing gray, insect-eaten timber beneath. Several of the windows were cracked or broken, unboarded against the elements, and a bird’s nest sprouted from the top of the chimney. Shingles were missing from the roof. One of the front porch steps had sunk, and the others looked rickety. Wasps had built a home above the screen door. The barn was in even worse shape. One entire section of roof had collapsed, and the doors hung off their hinges, creaking back and forth in the breeze.

I checked my cell phone. It flashed a message telling me there was no service.

Despite the fact that we were outdoors, it was quiet. No insects or birds. No distant traffic. No airplanes passing overhead. It felt like we were a million miles from civilization, deep in the middle of nowhere.

Merle opened the trunk and pulled aside an old, grease-covered blanket. Beneath it were two hunting rifles—a Mossberg .22 and a Remington 30-06. Boxes of ammunition lay beside them, along with a pair of binoculars and a heavy-duty flashlight.

I took the flashlight. Merle and Cliff each selected a rifle. Cliff lit a cigarette and sighed.

“Let’s do this,” he said. “Lead the way.”

Even with the sun overhead, the area between the house and the barn was covered in shadows, and I shivered as we crossed it. In the distance the trees of the hollow loomed over it all, watching us. I had the uncanny impression that the entire place was holding its breath.

We walked across the yard, if you could call it that. Years of neglect had transformed it into a tangled, overgrown mass of brown weeds. As we neared the house something crunched under my feet. I knelt down, brushed the weeds aside, and picked up a fragment of glass.

“Came from up there.” Cliff pointed.

I looked up at the third-floor attic window, still broken from the day of the murder, twenty years ago. Someone had nailed a piece of plywood over the opening, but that was all. It reminded me of a mouth. Jagged shards of glass stuck out of the rotting frame like teeth. A loose strand of police tape hung from one corner, flapping like a tongue.

“This is where she died,” I said. “Patricia LeHorn. Right here. On this spot.”

The weeds swayed silently in the breeze.

“Come on,” Dale urged. “Nothing here now but broken glass.”

We stopped at the sunken porch steps.

“Who’s first?” I asked, trying to smile and failing miserably.

“You are,” Merle said, nudging me with his elbow. “This was your idea.”

“And you’ve got the flashlight,” Dale pointed out.

“Yeah, but like Cliff said, you guys have the firepower. Maybe one of you should go first.”

“Can’t shoot what we can’t see,” Merle explained. “Flashlight’s gotta go first.”

I swallowed hard. “Want to trade?”

“Not on your life.”

I put my foot on the first step, experimenting with it. The wood groaned but supported my weight. I reached out and grabbed the handrail, then ascended. There was a sharp pain in my hand. I jerked it away. A gray splinter jutted from my palm, drawing a small drop of blood.

“It fucking bit me.”

The stairs groaned again, as if the wood had tasted my blood and was now hungry for more.

I reached the top, and the others followed.

“Watch out for that wasps’ nest,” Dale cautioned. “Don’t stir them up. I’m allergic.”

“It’s empty. Left over from last year.” I pushed the fluttering police tape out of the way, pulled open the screen door, and rattled the doorknob. It was locked. I turned back to them. “What now?”

Cliff sighed. “You mean we drove all the way out here and you guys don’t even have a plan for getting inside? Why not just break in?”

“We’re already guilty of withholding information from the police,” I told him. “We don’t need to add breaking and entering.”

Cliff shrugged. “Who’s gonna know? We’re in the middle of nowhere, man.”

“The back door?” Dale suggested.

“It’s probably locked, too,” I said.

Merle pointed to the side of the house. “Saw some storm doors over there. Maybe we can get in through the cellar.”

“Fuck that,” Cliff said.

“I thought you didn’t believe in any of this?” Merle said.

“I don’t, but that doesn’t mean I’m gonna go traipsing around through some old basement, either.”

“You scared?”

“No, I ain’t scared. I just got a thing about spiders. And basements have spiders.”

I grinned. “You’re afraid of spiders? You? Cliff Swanson, ladies’ man and all-around bad boy?”

“Fuck off, Adam.” He flicked his cigarette butt into the grass, and then stomped on it with his boot heel. “Let’s go try the storm doors. Probably locked anyway.”

They weren’t. The hinges were rusty, and we had to tug hard to get them open, but we did, revealing a wooden staircase descending into darkness. The air smelled like mildew. I thought I heard something skittering in the shadows, but I couldn’t see anything.

Brushing a long-abandoned spiderweb out of the way, I clicked on the flashlight and started down. Dust floated in the beam of light. Dale grabbed my shoulder. His Adam’s apple bobbed in his throat, and his eyes were frightened.