The Wicked Hour

by Alice Blanchard

  “Okay,” she said, feeling embarrassed because she shouldn’t have panicked like that. “I’ll call Sofia tomorrow.”

  “And Natalie, if you experience any other symptoms tonight, drop everything and get over to the ER. I’m leaving shortly, but Dr. Evander will be taking over, and I’ll fill him in on the situation. Okay?”

  “Promise. Thanks again.” She hung up.

  2

  Natalie splashed cold water on her face, straightened her uniform, and headed out again, turning west on Eastham Street, where the carnival atmosphere was ramped to eleven—drunks stumbling out of the bars, music blasting from every venue.

  She checked her watch. According to the duty roster, her next assignment was to join the team monitoring the large gathering on Abby’s Hex Peninsula, where the mannequins were scheduled to burn at midnight. Abby’s Hex was the last place in the world Natalie wanted to be. She could feel another panic attack coming on—that heart-skipping arrhythmia brought on by stress. Where were her boundaries lately? She used to have boundaries. Nowadays it was impossible to define the edges of her grief.

  She turned west onto Sarah Hutchins Drive, then took a shortcut toward the rutted parking lot behind the Barkin’ Dawg, where the CIU no longer had their weekly meetups. The Howard Street lot was one of Burning Lake’s best-kept secrets, since it provided the fastest way out of downtown during the hectic month of October, bypassing the worst of the traffic. Only the locals knew about it.

  There was a flyer stuck under the windshield wiper of her smoke-gray Honda Pilot—a discount coupon for the Midnight Graves Tour. She crumpled it up and tossed it in back, then got in and rested her head against the steering wheel. She swam in a kind of waking dream, not fully present. The grief was always there like a clinging mist.

  She powered down her window and let the night air cool her face. Like her father, Joey, used to say, “It’s not the burden that weighs you down—it’s how you carry it.”

  Five minutes later, she’d left downtown behind and was heading north into the woods. The northern quadrant of Burning Lake consisted mostly of conservancy lands and wealthy neighborhoods where the estates were passed down from generation to generation, and the driveways snaked elegantly into the woods. She would take Route 151 east toward the lake.

  Now her radio crackled to life. “Calling all available units…”

  Natalie scooped up the mike and responded, “This is CIU-seven.”

  “There’s been a report of a disturbance on Hollins Drive,” Dispatch said. “Private residence. A group of uninvited guests are demanding to be let into the party.”

  “I’m near that location now. ETA three minutes. What’s the address, Dennis?”

  “Seventy-three Hollins.”

  She knew who lived there. Hunter Rose, the founder of Rose Security Software. “Responding to the call,” she said and dunked the mike back in its cradle on the dash. She was grateful for the diversion. Abby’s Hex would have to wait.

  She took the covered bridge across Swift Run Creek, then drove past turn-of-the-century homes nestled in old pine groves. There were ten historic covered bridges in Burning Lake, and at least half of them were in desperate need of repair. The town council recently insisted the bridges were safe, despite the large cracks in the concrete abutments. The Swift Run Creek covered bridge was in the worst shape of all, having been damaged in last year’s spring flood. It was built in 1799, the year of President George Washington’s death, and remained an iconic feature in the town’s brochure to commemorate New York State’s 1799 declaration to end slavery. Now the old covered bridge was propped up with a bunch of rickety-looking scaffolding.

  Natalie drove through the woods for another mile or so before pulling up in front of 73 Hollins Drive. She could hear loud rock music coming from inside the house. Thirty-three-year-old Hunter Rose lived in this nineteenth-century mansion on twenty acres of rugged wilderness. He was one of Burning Lake’s most prominent citizens, as well as being an old flame of Natalie’s. Not that it mattered. Their fling only lasted a summer after her sophomore year in college—they’d fucked everywhere inside that house—but she hadn’t spoken to him in ages. They traveled in different circles now, and she remembered him being kind of a douche. He was very smart and good-looking, and so self-aware that he readily admitted he’d hurt people in his past, specifically women who’d fallen in love with him. He confessed to Natalie that he didn’t think much of it because he hadn’t promised them anything. She found his candor repugnant, but also refreshing, since most people would’ve gone to great lengths to hide their emotional cruelty, but Natalie and Hunter also shared a deeper history that felt like a soft bruised wound between them, and that was probably the main reason she’d broken up with him. Because he couldn’t let go of the past.

  Overhead, a few passing clouds briefly obscured the three-quarter moon. The sweeping gravel driveway was full of parked cars—BMWs, Bentleys, Lexuses—and there were more high-end vehicles parked on the roadside, where several valets were smoking cigarettes. Natalie spotted Brandon’s black Jeep Cherokee parked at the base of the driveway and wondered what he was doing there. Two detectives on the busiest night of the year was a little excessive for a response to a relatively minor call. Brandon and two private security guards in blue jackets were busy corralling a dozen rowdy costumed revelers on the lawn’s sloping incline.

  Natalie got out. The rambling stone mansion was huge and creepy-looking, a Romanesque Revival folly constructed in the late 1800s by a Boston steel magnate, who had turned it into a luxury resort. In the 1920s, it became a sanitorium for tuberculosis patients. In 1935, it was abandoned and left neglected until the mid-1980s, when Hunter’s father bought it and restored it to its former glory. Hunter and his brother had grown up there, which was something Natalie still couldn’t imagine.

  The clouds blew away and the moon shone down on the immaculate lawn. Festive hanging paper lanterns swayed in the mild breeze. The October air smelled of pine sap. As Natalie approached the group, Michael Myers started texting frantically, Spider-Man threw up on the grass, Esmeralda comforted a wilted-looking Ariel, and Chucky the Doll guzzled booze out of a paper bag. They were all complaining loudly, shouting questions at Brandon and not listening to his answers.

  “What’s going on?” she asked Brandon.

  “They weren’t invited. They’re creating a ruckus. Mr. Rose doesn’t want to press charges. He just wants them off his property.”

  Mr. Rose. Brandon always buckled to authority.

  Floodlights with motion sensors lit the property, and there were at least three outdoor security cameras she could spot. Now Chucky the Doll and Michael Myers were hollering obscenities at each other. Natalie introduced herself and said, “What seems to be the problem here, gentlemen?”

  “My girlfriend’s in there!” Chucky the Doll shouted, whipping off his mask. Natalie recognized Cody Dugway, the owner of a popular tattoo parlor in town called Cody’s Ink. A good businessman. Not a known troublemaker. “She called about twenty minutes ago and said to come over, and now these idiots won’t let us in.”

  “What’s her name?” Natalie asked.

  “Isabel Miller. They won’t let us in.”

  “It’s a private party,” Brandon told Cody firmly.

  “But my girlfriend’s in there,” he said stubbornly. “I’m not going anywhere without Isabel.”

  Just then, a twentysomething woman in a short black dress came hurrying out of the house, clutching her handbag and shoes. She looked around blearily. “Cody?”

  “Isabel!” Cody shouted, waving his arms.

  “Hi, babe!” She waved back.

  She was halfway down the stone path by the time Natalie caught up with her.

  “Wait a second. Are you okay?” She took hold of Isabel’s arm.

  “Fine. S’nothing.” Isabel tried to wriggle free. “Leggo. Wanna go home.” She hurried down the sloping yard toward the road, where her boyfriend and his friends were waitin
g for her. A drunken cheer went up.

  Natalie looked over at Brandon, who shrugged indifferently from the roadside, his face a blank in the moonlight.

  Cody swept Isabel up in his arms and spun her around. Then the uninvited guests got back in their cars and the caravan pulled away.

  Natalie turned toward the house, where the party continued unabated. Then she headed down the incline toward Brandon. “Crazy night, huh?”

  He opened the door to his Jeep and got in.

  “Hey, wait,” she said.

  His face was grim and rigid as hardened plaster. “What?” he said through the rolled-down window.

  Her disappointment was so profound that her mind felt stuck. She leaned against his door and said, “I need something from you, Brandon.”

  “Yeah, what’s that?”

  “A little sympathy.”

  An enormous roar went up inside the house, accompanied by laughter.

  “How long are you going to keep avoiding me?” she asked. “Why can’t we talk about this? When are we going to move past it and be friends again? I miss you.”

  He looked away, and she could see a tear glimmering in the corner of one eye.

  “When do you plan on forgiving me, you stubborn asshole?”

  He turned to her with brutal honesty. “Do you know what I did yesterday, Natalie? I stood inside my house … in the kitchen, on the spot where it happened … and I tried to picture how it went down that day. And I swear to God, I could sense Daisy’s presence … and it fucking killed me … the utter waste of it all. And I thought, How could this have happened? Why didn’t we see it coming? How could I have been so fucking blind?”

  Every word felt like the jab of an ice pick.

  “And by we—you mean me?” she said pointedly. “I should’ve seen it coming? I should’ve known?”

  He rubbed his eyes with his index finger and thumb, then heaved a tired sigh. “This isn’t about you, Natalie. You’ve apologized enough. I’m not looking for any more apologies.”

  “Then what do you want?” she cried. “How am I supposed to fix this?”

  He shook his head sadly. “Not everything can be fixed.” He started the engine.

  She wanted to say, “Fuck you.” She wanted to say, “I understand.” Instead she stood there feeling clammy and humiliated, and watched him go.

  3

  Natalie had never missed the burning of the mannequins in her life. But tonight, she didn’t want to be there. She didn’t want to see it. The spectacle. The scary buzz of the crowd. The raging bonfire lighting the faces of those closest to the pyre. The mannequins’ skirts dancing in the flames, accompanied by raucous, drunken laughter.

  Burn the witches.

  The revelers were out for blood tonight. Everyone squeezed a little closer, straining to see over the heads of those in front of them. See what exactly? The sad spectacle of three female mannequins on fire. What if that was Grace up there in the straw hat and colonial dress? What if it was Daisy or Bunny or Lindsey?

  Burn the witches.

  Natalie felt a growing tightness in her chest, like fingers wrapping around her heart. She didn’t want to revisit the place where her niece had been harmed by her so-called friends. She didn’t want to stand on the spot where Abigail, Sarah, and Victoriana had been falsely accused of witchcraft more than three hundred years ago and sentenced to death for their so-called sins. She wondered what had happened to the people of Burning Lake after 1712. How did the relatives of the accused handle it? How did they continue to live side by side with the judges who’d condemned their loved ones to death?

  A burst of maniacal laughter snapped her out of her reverie. Natalie had been monitoring the crowd for almost an hour now, listening to the gleeful chatter of people celebrating other people’s pain. She hated the concentration of bodies—too close, too warm, too loud. An ambulance was stationed at the entrance of the peninsula, just in case, and a handful of paramedics roamed the crowds, on the lookout for injuries or accidents. Sometimes people fainted or got too close to the flames. Sometimes they fell down and twisted an ankle. Every year around this time, the hospital emergency room would be clogged with visitors suffering from minor burns, cuts, alcohol poisoning, overdoses, nonlethal car accidents, food poisoning, sprains, and other complaints. During the entire month of October, Burning Lake bled Halloween through its pores.

  A great cheer went up. The ceremony was over. An unsettled feeling tickled the back of Natalie’s throat. She could sense the shift before it happened—hundreds of people turning around at once and heading back to town. She checked her watch. One o’clock. Her shift was over, but tonight’s festivities would continue until dawn.

  For the most part, the crowd was orderly and friendly, spontaneous conversations cropping up all around her as everyone made their way through the wooded peninsula back to their cars. These people weren’t so bad. They were here to be entertained. They weren’t thinking about the past. They were probably carrying around their own pain and needed a break from their routine everyday lives. Natalie straightened her shoulders, and a flock of birds exploded from the treetops as if she’d shaken them off.

  Fifteen minutes later, she entered the police station. The dispatcher’s phones were ringing off the hook. Hardly anyone was around tonight, except for the officers in charge of the jail and the booking process. There were plenty of drunks in the holding tanks. She could hear them caterwauling as she headed for the elevator bank.

  Natalie sorted through her messages as she took an elevator to the third floor, which was overheated and stuffy. The hallway was dark, with stray slants of office light spilling out of open doorways. She dropped her message slips on her desk and removed the cheap eye mask. The unit was quiet tonight. The guys had either gone home or were still out in the field, depending on what shift they’d pulled. She sipped her coffee, took a seat at her desk, and started typing up her reports. After a few minutes, she heard Luke’s mellow, confident voice echoing down the hallway. She wiped the fake blood off her cheek, tucked her hair behind her ears, removed the joke badge, and stood up. She followed the sound of his voice down the hallway to his office.

  The door was open, a triangle of yellow light slashing across the worn carpet. Luke was on his phone. He glanced up and nodded. “Yeah, okay,” he said into the receiver.

  She crossed her arms and waited.

  “Will do, Chief.” He hung up and tossed the newspaper in the trash. “What can I do for you, Natalie?” he said politely. The new Luke. Stiff and formal. The guy she didn’t like so much. Who created this monster? Oh, right. She did.

  She took a seat and said, “So how was your day?”

  He arched an eyebrow. “You want all the gory details?”

  “Sure.” She smiled. “Why not?”

  “Tonight was a clusterfuck.”

  “Yeah, it was total chaos out there,” she said vaguely, her mood toggling between hope and frustration that maybe the walls would tumble down, and they could be their old selves again. She missed their private jokes, traded smirks, and deep commiseration that came from their shared experience of the fucked-up-ness of humankind on this side of the law-enforcement line. When you stopped a guy for a broken taillight who had a severed deer’s head bleeding all over the seat beside him, then you understood what it was—deep in your bones—to be a cop.

  “Want one?” He offered her a packet of roasted sunflower seeds. He kept dozens in his desk drawer, along with protein bars and packets of granola.

  “No, thanks.”

  “Actually, it was pretty civil compared to last year,” he admitted, and she noticed the tiredness in his voice, the tiny etchings around his eyes. “Forty-two arrests, not including DUIs and traffic stops. Lots of alcohol-related transgressions, mostly bar fights, a few people selling souvenirs without a license, some property damage and random gunfire … in other words, not bad for this time of year.”

  “And now it’s over.”

  “Almost.” He smile
d uneasily.

  She didn’t know where to put her hands. She crossed her arms and uncrossed them, while an awkward silence filled the room. She raised her chin. There was an unmistakable tension between them.

  Tomorrow, November 1, the tourists would be heading home en masse. Order would be restored. The cleanup would begin. Brochures would litter the streets and dumpsters would overflow. Local merchants would close up shop for a few days and count their profits, and everyone would agree—this had to be the most successful Halloween ever. They said that every year. Except for a few hungover stragglers, peace and quiet would descend and the town of Burning Lake would return to normal again.

  Except for Natalie, things would never be normal again.

  Luke crumpled the packet of sunflower seeds and tossed it in the trash. “Anything else?” he asked. It was completely quiet up here. More desolate than on the first floor.

  She cocked an eyebrow. “Anything else? Hmm.”

  He looked at her sideways. “What?”

  “Yeah, okay, I’ve got a question for you. How long does it take to get over it?”

  His eyes narrowed.

  “Loss. Grief. How long does it take? When am I going to feel like a regular person again?”

  He stared at her with a mixture of uncertainty and compassion. “I advised you months ago to get into grief counseling, Natalie…”

  “I know, but I’m asking you. Personally. As a friend. All I feel is death all around me. Everything’s frozen in time, like that kingdom in the fairy tale where everybody is sound asleep. Frozen. For years. Like ice sculptures. It’s like … I reach out to touch things, but they’re brittle. They break apart in my hands. Nothing moves forward—ever. Everything stagnates. Day after day. It’s like I’m trapped inside a terrarium with my hands pressed against the sides, watching my own exhalations fog up the glass. What I mean is … tonight, for example, I was surrounded by people, and yet I’ve never felt so alone. And I didn’t think … I mean, we’ve been friends forever.”

  “We’re still friends,” he said, looking down at his hands.