The Glittering World (18 page)

“Hello?” Jason whispered into the receiver. “Is anyone there?”

For a moment he thought he could make out the sound of someone breathing. After a long minute in which he heard nothing else, however—only a hollow vacuum of noise, devoid of texture and tone—he decided the line was dead.

When Gabe finally awoke the next day and came downstairs around noon, Jason asked when he’d be ready to leave for their daily canvass. Gabe begged off, saying he was going to hang around the house, as he wasn’t feeling very well: something he’d eaten the previous night that hadn’t sat right with him.

“I can handle it,” Jason said. “Rest up, okay? We need you at full strength.” He said good-bye, headed out to the car, and started down the drive. Maureen’s red Toyota was parked across the lawn in front of her studio; she and Donald must have returned from Halifax sometime in the night.

When Jason reached the bottom of the hill, instead of pulling onto the main artery he took the small dirt road that led into the woods. He parked a hundred yards in—past a meandering bend that rendered the car undetectable from the property—and walked back on foot, sticking to the trees so he couldn’t be seen from the house.

He waited. Gabe appeared twenty minutes later via the rear deck, a six-pack of beer cradled like a baby in his arms. The boy walked toward the rear of the MacLeod House and through the tall grass, where he disappeared into the stand of firs skirting the lawn. Jason let another minute pass before following, and trailed after Gabe through the brush.

After some time Jason heard the sound of voices and slowed,
crouching to peer through the foliage. He spotted Gabe sitting cross-legged on a patch of packed grass beside the creek; it was where they had come across Donald their second day in the cove, directly behind the burned-out remains of the Colony. This time instead of Donald it was Fred Cronin in his place, the little man perched upon a rock with a walking stick thrust into the ground beside him like the stylus of a sundial.

Through the tangled briar, Jason made out a small arrangement in the center of a circle of stones: an apple, a loaf of barmbrack, a black-and-white bandanna tied in a knot, as well as a plate of half-devoured meat, bones jutting from decomposing flesh. It had the appearance of an abandoned picnic, or some kind of offering. A lure, perhaps, for an animal. The circle was laid out close to where the pair sat, though its placement gave the distinct impression of separation. Jason couldn’t hear what they were saying, only an occasional word as it floated on the wind like a dandelion seed.
Daylight
.
Indigenous
.
Essence
.

As he leaned in for a closer listen, a dog began barking from the opposite bank of the creek. Jason stumbled back, broke into a trot as he moved quickly through the bracken, and kept running after he hit the path. He jogged for a mile or more, brooding over Fred Cronin and Gabe’s secretive meeting. It had probably been Cronin on the phone last night with Gabe, filling the boy’s head with more talk of the Other Kind. Grimm tales of swapped children and glowing lights, all the legends that only a fellow local could either corroborate or contradict.

Jason emerged from the woods between Maureen’s house and her studio. And there she was, hanging laundry on the clothesline, linen tablecloths and wrinkled old napkins trembling on the line like stripped bark. He thought of the desiccated meat inside the circle of stones.

“Out for a run?” Maureen said as he approached.

“Yes. Well, an impromptu one.” He gestured to his khakis, sweated through at the knees. “I didn’t think to pack workout clothes.”

“I’m sure we can manage to rustle up whatever you need. Free of charge.”

“Thanks. Hey, I didn’t know you were back from Halifax.”

“We’re only here for a brief stay, unfortunately. I would have come found you but things have been so hectic. Donald hasn’t been doing so well lately. He hasn’t been the same since—well, since that night.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.” Jason had figured as much, what with all the appointments. “Is there anything I can do?”

“I think I should be asking you that instead, no?”

“We’ll call it a draw.” He looked over his shoulder and back at the trees, and felt that familiar and uneasy sensation of being watched from the woods. The sound of skittering through dry leaves, of pencil on paper.

Maureen placed down the plastic laundry basket and wiped her forehead. “Tell me, how is your canvass going? Find out anything?”

“Heard a few things. Some of them pretty strange, actually. As in, Body Snatchers strange.”

“You didn’t happen to speak to Fred Cronin, did you?”

“Indeed. He told us something about people living under the ground. Ultraterrestrials?”

She laughed. “Is that what he’s calling them this week?”

“What’s his story, anyway?”

“Oh, Fred’s always been something of a character. Even as a young man, he had that lone gunman bit down to an art form. But he really does believe in all that stuff.”

“I can tell.”

“It’s of a certain time, I suppose. He’s full of it, like a lot of the folks that have moved here over the years. Free thinkers that sometimes think
too
freely. It’s all devils and fairies to that lot.”

“Fairies . . . I’ve been hearing that word a lot lately.”

“There’s a ton of fairy talk around here. Done in private, mostly. Honestly, I never would’ve thought in a million years Donald would be a believer, but even he is. Surprising, for a scientist. But it was passed down to him in early childhood.”

“So he’s basically in Fred’s camp, then.”

“Well, funnily enough, Donald first came up here to debunk some of the more bizarre theories about the cove. That it held special power, contained a vortex of spiritual energy, like Stonehenge or down in Sedona, ley lines or what have you. We do have a great vibe going, I can tell you that—this is the only place I truly feel creative, for one thing. Is Starling Cove a magical place? I suppose. But who can say for certain?”

“So you don’t think there are otherworldly creatures inhabiting these woods.”

“If I did, I wouldn’t go around talking about it. That’s how you land up in the funny farm. Others, of course, have no such concerns.” Her face was still, tightening for a moment before her expression slackened and she smiled. “Start asking enough people in these parts what they really think and you’ll be waist-deep in baloney by dinnertime. There are some folks in the Highlands who think the CIA has a secret underground station out here. No kidding. They would blame a seasonal flu on the U.S. government if they could get away with it. This lady who sells native jewelry, down at the docks in Ingonish? She goes around telling anyone that’ll listen that the mussel factory in
St. Ann’s Harbour is a front for a military experiment in psychotropics. She’s not alone in that one either.”

Jason had forgotten how reassuring it was speaking with someone who shared his skepticism. “I try to be a patient listener,” he said. “It is my profession, after all. But sometimes it does become difficult.”

“I hear you. Donald’s always liked to talk nonsense about the cove. Mostly that’s how he passes the day, though not so much as of late. He may not be from these parts, but he once knew as much about the Highlands as any local historian. There was a time when the mere mention of the name William MacLeod was enough for him to chew your ear off.”

“William MacLeod? You mean the man who built the house we’re staying in?”

She nodded. “Donald used to collect all these wonderful old MacLeod artifacts. Maps, legends, you name it. I cleared out the attic last year and donated it all to the Gaelic College. Technically the MacLeod House is our guest house, but it’s far older than ours, at least the back half. The night MacLeod finished building it for his daughter and her family, or so the story goes, he banged his last nail into the wall, put his hammer down, and set fire to the place. Then he walked out into the woods, never to be seen again.”

“That seems to happen quite a lot around here.”

“Don’t people ever go missing in New York?” She sounded perplexed, and maybe a little offended. “Anyway, that was almost two hundred years ago. It’s a legend, which is pretty much code for claptrap. But hey, who knows? Maybe it is true.” Maureen stared across the lawn at the trees. “Like I told you a couple of weeks ago, these are some strange woods.”

“Did you?” Jason thought for a moment, listening to the
wind in the leaves, the snap of a pair of faded brown corduroys on the clothesline.

She looked down at the ground, the laundry basket. “Oh. No. I suppose not. I mean, I did say that, only not to you. I must have said that to someone else. Some time before . . .” She shook her head. “Anyway, I would hardly think to mention it. Not to put too fine a point on it, but what do you think people do up here all winter? They drink, my dear. Been doing it since the Scottish landed, and long before that, I’d wager. And what most of them do in the winter, half do in the summertime as well. So if what they say about MacLeod going off into the woods is true, believe me, he had a bottle in his hand as he went.”

She stared past him, over his shoulder; it was a gesture of pure obfuscation.
Dig deep, get inside a few heads
, he heard Dream Blue say.
If you’re ready to hear the truth.

“Blue was born here,” he said. “Did you know that?”

“He was?” She said it somewhere between a question and statement, and began fussing with the laundry basket, her fingernails, anything to avoid Jason’s eyes.

“Yes. His real name is Michael. Michael Whitley.”

“I—I knew that . . . He booked the house under that name. It’s been in the papers as well.”

“But that’s not the only reason you know it.”

She froze. Jason put a gentle hand on her arm; outside the confines of his practice, he was free to make physical contact to facilitate intimacy. There were no firm rules of ethics here, professional or otherwise.

“Maureen,” he said, and all of a sudden he understood. “You knew, didn’t you? You knew he was one of the children who’d gone missing in the cove.”

“Yes.” Her head wobbled, and steadily gyroscoped into a sort of nod. “Oh yes.”

“Why didn’t you tell us that? Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I suppose I didn’t want it to actually
be
him, back after all that time. I thought he’d gotten away.”

“Away from what?”

She allowed herself a faint smile. “Come inside the house. I’ll make us some coffee. Or something stronger if you’re interested.”

They went in through the back. Halfway down the hall abutting the living room, she stopped to peer inside an open bedroom door. Donald was seated on the edge of the bed in only a pair of white briefs, his aged skin spotted and wrinkled; he was hunched over a book, its purple cover cracked along the spine.

“The first volume, gone,” Donald muttered into the pages. “It’s gone.”

“We’ll find it, darling,” Maureen said wearily, pulling the door halfway closed.

Jason averted his eyes and followed her into the kitchen. They sat at a small table, its surface bare but for a green ceramic napkin holder and matching salt and pepper shakers, the table’s yellow leaves folded down like a wilted tulip. She poured them two mugs of coffee, and spiked hers with whisky; she tilted the bottle in his direction but he declined.

“I should have said something,” Maureen said after a while. She scrutinized the inside of her mug, a tea leaf reader searching for a sign. “To Michael, most of all. But I couldn’t. I just couldn’t. I could tell he didn’t know anything about what had happened to him, and the thought that he was going to start digging around and unearth what’s best left buried . . . I couldn’t stand it. Especially since I was close with his mother, back in the day.”

“Yvonne,” he said.

“Yes. How is she holding up?”

“Not well.”

“I’d imagine not.” A bird cawed stridently from behind the house; the cry of a hawk, maybe, as it circumnavigated the cove. Maureen sipped from her mug, and it was a long time before she spoke again. Which was fine; Jason knew well the distilling power of silence. If need be, he could wait all day.

“So, yes,” she eventually said, as if she’d caught her breath, though her voice had a fresh undercurrent of defensiveness. “I pretended that he was just another tourist on a summer getaway. He didn’t exactly volunteer what you all were doing up here, that he’d come to sell his grandma’s house. But I knew. I figured the second I got the inquiry about the rental that he must be coming to settle some business of Flora’s. So I didn’t say anything.”

“You didn’t want to stir up what had happened to him as a boy in the woods.”

She looked at him funny. “The woods?”

“What happened when he went missing.”

“Well, sure. But really because of what happened after that.”

Jason shifted in his chair, puzzled. Maureen sighed and rested her hands on the scratched wood of the tabletop. “I wanted to protect him from Flora.”

“From his grandmother? But why?”

“She was a troubled woman. Very troubled. Even before the kids went missing. She could never get a handle on her daughter, who was truly wild before she had Michael, just wild. Yvonne and Flora weren’t on speaking terms, what with Flora being very old-time religious and Yvonne being your average hippie girl. But then she got knocked up, and they softened to
each other. When Yvonne would go on one of her magic mushroom trips—quite frequently, I might add—she made sure to drop the baby off with Flora for the night. Sometimes for up to a week, or more. I’d say Michael lived at Flora’s place as much as at the Colony.”

“So you
knew
Blue, before. Back when he was Michael.”

“He was a lovely little boy,” she said quietly. “We were crushed when he went missing. It was like someone had cut a knife right through the heart of the cove. It was probably the first and last time the Colony felt any kind of real love from the surrounding community. But then the kids came back, thank God. To be honest, most people didn’t look too closely at what had happened, me included. We were just happy they were safe and sound.”