Ghost Light (38 page)

“What a fuckin’ hoot that would’ve been,” Alex said, slurring the words and laughing as he rolled his head back and took a deep gulp of beer. He swallowed wrong, and the carbonation surged, stinging, up into the back on his nose.

“Yeah,” he whispered, snorting loudly as he wiped his nose. “Maybe I
should’a
fuckin’ done it!”

But as much as he had enjoyed himself and the absolute power he’d had over that kid’s life, it still didn’t solve his immediate problem of finding out where Cindy had taken his kids. His guess was that Maine had been her goal all along, and that, more than likely, she hadn’t gone very far—probably not more than an hour or so out of Portland.

So all he had to do to find her was find that fucking camp on the fucking lake!

It sounded easy enough, but a quick perusal of his map showed him that there were plenty of lakes, even in the immediate Portland area. He had a lot of area to cover and a feeling that he didn’t have a lot of time left, especially with winter coming on. The first lake that caught his attention was the largest one—Lake Sebago. A little to the east of that was another, smaller lake designated as Little Sebago. Besides those two, there was Long Lake, Moose Pond, Thompson and Pleasant Lake, and a bunch of other unmarked little blots of blue on the map. Further north, above Lewiston, there were a shit-load more, but Alex decided to concentrate his search on the nearest lakes first. He might be wasting his time—”pissing up a rope,” as his daddy used to say—but he had to play his hunches. This whole thing was a crap shoot, and as much as he tried not to think about it, he couldn’t shake the gnawing feeling that Cindy had gotten away clean.

He might
never
find her!

Taking the pen and memo pad from the bed stand, he quickly jotted down the names of the towns surrounding Sebago Lake—North Windham, Raymond, Casco, Naples, East Sebago, Gray, and Dry Mills. These would be the first towns where he would check, but even in his half-drunken stupor, he realized that his prospects weren’t very good.

“Shit! Damn! There’s
got
to be an easier way to run her down,” he muttered to himself. A line of drool ran from the corner of his mouth, and he wiped it away with the back of his hand. Clenching both hands into fists, he wrinkled the map into a tight ball and tossed it at the wastebasket.

“But
how
, goddamnit? How the
fuck
am I gonna find her?”

As he was leaning to one side to replace the memo pad on the table, he momentarily lost his balance and started to fall forward. As he did, his hand shot out to catch his balance and knocked the telephone book from the table onto the floor. Before he could straighten up, he found himself staring, unfocused, at the list of names on the page the book had opened to, and like a jolt of electricity, an idea hit him.

“Fuckin’
yes
! That’s it!” he shouted, whooping for joy as he straightened up and carefully placed his beer bottle on the night stand. “That’s gotta be it!”

His hands were trembling as he picked up the phone book and started rifling through the pages, turning them so fast he tore several of them. He had a bit of trouble focusing his eyes as he dragged his forefinger across the top of page after page until he came to section marked “T”.

“Toland… Toland… T … T-O-L,” he muttered as he mentally ran through the alphabet. “It’s gotta be Toland, right?… Yeah, good ole’ Harry’s uncle… T-O-L-A-N-D.”

His finger dragged down the page, smearing the print.

“Yeah, all-fuckin’ right! Here it is.”

Shaking his head in an attempt to clear his vision, he stared intently at the two listings for the name.

Toland, Mark and Valerie
, on Maple Street in Westbrook, and
Toland, Richard S.,
on Campbell Shore Road in West Gray.

“West Gray… Campbell Shore Road in West Gray,” he said with a low, rumbling chuckle.

He picked the map up from the floor and, flattening it out with his hand, looked around the Sebago Lake area until he located the small, black circle designating West Gray. It was on Route 202, wedged between Interstate 95 and Little Sebago Lake, just above a place called Foster’s Corner at the junction of 202 and Route 302.

“Shit, yes” he said, scanning the distance it was from Portland. “That ain’t very far.”

Suddenly, he jumped up from the bed, letting the phone book and map fall to the floor, and did a crazy, spinning dance beside his bed, all the while shouting, “That’s gotta be it! That’s fuckin’-A gotta be
it!
”

He paused a moment, picked up his beer bottle and, tilting his head back, drained what was left in it before throwing it against the wall where it smashed to pieces.

“Yeah, you fucking bitch!” he shouted, cackling as he waved his clenched fists high above his head. “And you thought you could get away from me! Ha-hah! But you couldn’t! No-sir-ee! You can run, but you can’t hide!”

Hysterical laughter filled the small motel room until someone in the next room banged on the wall and yelled at him to shut the fuck up. Alex paused long enough to grab another bottle of beer from the six pack and spin off the bottle cap.

“Oh, yeah? Well, fuck you, too!” he shouted before taking another long, slurping mouthful of beer and spraying it onto the wall. Beer foam dribbled down the sides of his mouth like a Fu Manchu mustache, but he didn’t notice as he continued to laugh wildly and spin around the floor in crazy circles, all the while shouting, “
I found her! I fuckin-A found her!
”

3

S
omething made Cindy wake up with a start.

Suddenly, she was ripped out of the thin sleep she had slipped into after hours of lying in bed wide awake. Now she was instantly and completely conscious. She sat up in bed and stared at the dense darkness that filled the bedroom like ink. For a flickering instant a deep panic filled her when she didn’t remember where she was, but then, as her eyesight adjusted to the darkness, she recognized the camp bedroom. A thin wash of moonlight lit the windowsill with a dusty, blue glow.

“Jesus Christ,” she whispered, rubbing both hands over her face. Her skin was cool, almost clammy to the touch, and she shivered when she remembered a fragment of the dream she’d been having. She had been either lying down or sitting up in an almost totally dark room.

Just like this one!
, her mind whispered, but she tried to ignore it.

And she had seen a… a hand… a thin, almost skeletal hand, glowing with a peculiar blue light. It had materialized out of the surrounding darkness and had drifted toward her, floating like a log being swept along by the gentle current of a stream. She could clearly see the curled fingers, the wrist, and half of the arm up to the elbow, but then it simply faded away into nothingness. Cindy shivered, unable to deny the impression she’d had that the hand and arm weren’t so much a part of
someone
as they were a part of the darkness that surrounded her in her sleep and had materialized, reaching out for her, trying to grab her with wispy, ethereal fingers.

Was that what woke me up?
she wondered.

The bedroom was uncomfortably cold. She shivered again and pulled the musty-smelling wool blankets up under her chin. All the while her gaze was fixed on the cold, crisp bar of moonlight that was shining on the windowsill. Beyond that, outside the window, through the ragged silhouettes of dark, jagged pines, she could see the faint twinkle of a few stars in a cloudless, velvety sky. As she was staring out the window, a high-pitched howling sound suddenly filled the night, warbling up and down the register with a lonely, hollow echo.

The sound tingled every nerve in Cindy’s body. She pulled the covers even closer to her chin and stared, wide-eyed, at the window, wondering, even before the sound had entirely faded away, if it was really there at all, or if she was imagining it. She waited for the sound to come again, hardly daring to take a breath.

What the hell was that?
she wondered in a rush of frantic, icy fear.

It had sounded like a wolfs howl. She had no idea whether or not there were wolves in the state of Maine, but if there were, then there sure as hell was one in the area around the camp. Her memory magnified the sound, making her think that it had been right outside her bedroom window.

Tense seconds dragged into minutes as she waited for the sound to come again, but it didn’t. Her heartbeat was thin and high, pattering like raindrops in her chest. As she tried to recall the exact pitch and duration of the sound, she began to wonder if maybe—that’s what had penetrated her sleep and awakened her in the first place.

Yeah, the wolf’s howling at the door
, she thought, unable to laugh at the grim humor of the thought. It was all too true!

After a long wait, when the sound didn’t come again, she shifted out from under her covers and sat on the edge of the bed. The rusty bedsprings twanged like guitar strings as they stretched beneath her shifting weight. A chill went up the backs of her legs when her feet touched the cold wood floor. She glanced at the illuminated dial of her wristwatch and saw that it was already well past three o’clock. She sighed, exasperated by the thought that she wasn’t going to be able to get back to sleep again tonight and that she was probably going to be dragging her butt all the next day. After how hard she had worked, cleaning up the kitchen all day—not to mention the stress she had been under for the last several days—she was surprised that she hadn’t slept at least ten hours straight.

“Shit,” she whispered in a high, hissing voice.

She debated whether or not she should go downstairs for a cup of tea or something—anything—to relax her, but then she remembered that there wasn’t any gas to run the stove. Besides, she would have to walk through the bedroom where Billy and Krissy were sleeping, and she didn’t want to risk waking them up. She knew she needed her sleep and told herself that if she would just lie down and close her eyes, sleep would eventually come. She reminded herself that she wasn’t under any pressure to get the cabin clean or do anything else. She and the kids weren’t following anyone’s schedule. Hell, they might not even stay here another night. In the morning, she planned to call Alice and see how things were back at the apartment. And then, who knows? She just might end up taking the kids back to Portland where they could have a semblance of normal life. They sure as hell weren’t going to get it living out here in the boon docks!

“… Aunt Cindy…?”

When the faint voice came to her, she thought again—that it had been a trick of the darkness and her loneliness, but in a flash she recognized Krissy’s fragile, frightened voice. Standing up quickly, Cindy walked to the bedroom door and eased it open, giving her eyes a second or two to adjust to the darkness before entering the bedroom where the kids were sleeping. After a moment, she saw a white, indistinct blur that was the little girl sitting up in bed.

“Shussh. I’m right here,” Cindy said, tiptoeing forward, feeling blindly in front of herself so she wouldn’t bump into the edge of the bed. She didn’t want to wake Billy up; he was sleeping soundly, his breath whistling in and out like a hissing tea kettle.

“What is it, sweetie?” Cindy whispered. “Did you hear that sound outside, too?”

For several seconds, the room was completely silent, and Cindy became fearful that Krissy had called out to her in her sleep; but then she heard a low, shivering sigh.

“I… I don’t know wh-what it was,” Krissy said in a high, tremulous voice.

“No, I don’t either, but you don’t have to worry. We’re safe in here.”

No response came from Krissy, and—again—Cindy had the impression that the little girl was talking in her sleep. Her voice had a dragging, monotone quality to it that didn’t sound at all like it usually did.

“Do you want to come in and sleep with me?” Cindy asked.

Her answer was a rustling of sheets as Krissy slipped out from under the covers and crawled to the end of the bed. Cindy reached for her and was surprised how warm—almost feverish—the little girl felt when she put her arm around her shoulder and directed her to the bedroom.

“I was having trouble sleeping, too,” Cindy said, “but—hey, we can sleep ’till noon if we want to.”

“Uh-huh,” was Krissy’s only response.

They made their way back to Cindy’s bed, and after tucking the little girl in, Cindy snuggled close to her, inhaling the sweet, almost cat-like smell of her hair. The room was quiet for a longtime, but Cindy lay there with her eyes wide open as she waited for the howling outside the camp to start again… if it had ever been there in the first place. After a while, she became aware that Krissy wasn’t asleep, either.

“Is there something the matter?” Cindy whispered. Her mouth was close to Krissy’s ear, as though they were sharing secrets in the dark.

For a long time, Krissy didn’t reply, but then Cindy heard her sigh heavily and lick her lips before she said, “I… I think I… saw her again.”

A numbing chill raced up Cindy’s back, and almost against her will she found herself asking, “Saw who?”

“The… lady,” Krissy answered simply, as if she didn’t need to say any more.

“You mean the blue lady?”

“U h-huh.”

Cindy’s throat felt parched, and her breath caught in her chest like a ball of ice.