by Nick Scorza
“Any idea what’s going on?”
To my surprise, Hector nodded.
“They’re burning sage and tobacco—kind of an old world meets new world idea. No one told me this, of course, but based on stuff I’ve read, I think it’s supposed to protect the town.”
“From what?”
“Everything they refuse to talk about. It’s almost Midsummer’s Eve—that’s one of the nights you have to be extra careful.”
With all my anticipation, the day ticked by at a snail’s pace. I served the few regulars that came in, which included the power walk ladies after their herb-burning duties were finished, and later the old man at noon as usual. I ate a tofu sandwich for lunch and eagerly greeted Ash when she arrived. She was happy to see me, too. I was glad things had changed between us.
“I called around a little to see what I could find out,” Ash said. “Neil and I broke up a month ago, which made working here hell. Neil was friends with almost everyone, but Danny Harris was his best friend since kindergarten, and the only one I heard mention his new girlfriend. No one else had even seen her.”
“Maybe it was just a rumor,” I said. “The old Canadian girlfriend, just to make you jealous. It’d be hard to not know who in a town this size. No wonder you assumed it was me.”
Ash nodded.
“Yeah, sorry about that again.”
For some reason, I thought of the ghostly figure I’d seen every morning at the café window. It was hard to tell, but if I had to guess, I’d say it was a girl.
“Don’t worry about that now,” I said. “We’re well past it.”
The power-walk ladies strode back in for their afternoon coffees, and Ash and I served them quickly. Once they left, we resumed our planning.
“If anyone knows what was up with Neil, it’s Danny. I haven’t seen him for a while. I went by his house the other day, and apparently his folks haven’t either, which is nothing unusual in the summer. No one from school’s seen him either, though, and that worries me. He doesn’t usually go to the parties, but he sometimes hangs out at the Excelsior.”
Ash clearly saw the question in my raised eyebrow.
“Don’t let the name fool you,” she seemed a little embarrassed. “It’s just an old house where some young guys live. They usually have beer and throw parties for the high school kids.”
Of course, this was a time-honored tradition. Rayna always said it should be an elected position—the Wooderson, another of her movie references, I guess—so you could vote for the guy who was least creepy (which usually wasn’t saying much).
I stayed with Ash through her shift, helping her run the café, even though she didn’t have many more customers than I did. While we worked, she asked me more about growing up in New York. I told her it was a mixed bag, exciting but stressful, and way too crowded.
“It’s crazy,” I said. “This town feels so small, but all the interior spaces feel huge. You have no idea how small bathrooms get in the city.”
“I think I could get used to it,” said Ash. “This place is stressful too, in a way nowhere else is.”
“Stressful how?” I said.
Ash frowned. I’d seen the same look on my father, on Keith, even on Hector. It was like everyone here had a sixth sense for the things they couldn’t talk about. A sixth sense much more accurate than Lady Daphne’s.
“You have to be careful about where you go at what time, and what you talk about. There are lots of rules to follow, and no one will tell you why, except that bad things will happen if you don’t. And if bad things do happen, no one wants to know why or how . . .”
All this time, I’d assumed everyone knew more than me. Now I wasn’t so sure. It seemed like most people in Redmarch Lake wanted to know as little as possible.
“My mom always says I need to remember where I come from and know my place,” Ash said. “She doesn’t want me to leave, or to break any of the stupid rules. Some days this whole town feels like a jail without any jailers. We could walk away at any time, or live how we want, but no one does because this is all they know.”
“Only one way to find out if that’s true,” I said.
“If we keep this up, that’s just what we’ll do,” said Ash. She was smiling, but I can’t say that made me feel much better. Neither of us mentioned that’s probably what Neil tried to do, too, though I could tell we were both thinking it.
When closing time finally arrived, Hector was waiting for us outside.
“I told my folks I was going to a summer study group. I don’t know if the fact that they bought it means they’re too gullible or I’m too nerdy.”
“They’re not mutually exclusive,” I said, giving him another little punch in the arm.
“I don’t think I’ve bothered giving my mother an excuse for anything for years,” said Ash. “I almost envy you.”
We hopped in Ash’s old Honda while I filled Hector in on the plan.
“I hear about that place all the time. I’ve never been invited.”
“You’re not missing much,” said Ash.
“Thanks for doing this, by the way,” said Hector. “I mean that sincerely. I know my default tone is sarcastic jerk. I feel like I can’t turn it off even when I want to.”
Ash nodded.
“I’m sorry for how people are here. Most of them suck, even when they will talk to you. For the rest of us . . . all I can say is that we’re cowards. We’re too afraid of anything that sticks out or goes against the grain that we just pretend it’s not there. It’s nothing personal, but that doesn’t make it okay.”
Hector’s mouth hung open. It was the first time I’d seen him speechless.
“I never thought I’d hear anyone say that out loud,” he said. “Thanks.”
A second later, he had his phone out, loading up a voice recorder app.
“Hey, could you say that again?”
Ash laughed. Hector put the phone away.
“But seriously, while you’re here and talking to us out-of-townies, there’s one thing I’m seriously dying to know. Is there like an organized conspiracy, or is it just a de facto thing?”
Ash frowned.
“The second one,” she said. “Unless there’s a conspiracy I’m not a part of.”
She was quiet for a moment, just like my dad when he was trying to think of how to answer something he didn’t want to.
“This town . . . I’m sorry, I know it must be hard to come from outside here, but trust me, it’s hard to be born here, too. No one answers our questions either; they just tell us what to do. You hear it enough, and it sort of gets inside you.”
In a few minutes, we arrived at a crumbling old clapboard house with a weed-knotted lawn that could only be the Excelsior.
“This is it, huh? Pure class,” Hector said.
I peeled back the rusty screen door and walked in, Ash and Hector following me. It slammed shut like a bear trap behind us. Inside, the windows had been hung with old bedsheets, blanketing the interior in gloom. Dust motes danced in the rays of light that peeked in through the gaps. Everything smelled like pot, both stale and fresh. From the next room, I could hear hushed voices and the sound of a bong bubbling. A song was playing on an old record player—points for being music snob creeps, at least—something slow and eerie I’d never heard before. It gave me chills.
Hector and I froze in the hallway, suddenly conscious of the fact we knew no one here. Ash walked toward the living room, motioning for us to follow. I recognized some of the people splayed across the various couches and chairs from the party in the woods. A few of them looked older, especially a guy with long, curly hair and a goatee who probably lived here. When we walked into the room, he raised an eyebrow at us. Everyone else seemed to defer to him.
“Hey, Kyle, have you seen Danny around?” Ash said.
“Ash, hey, why don’t you stay and party with us?”
He indicated a big glass bong on the floor among them.
“No thanks, it’s really imp
ortant I find Danny now. Has he been here?”
Kyle frowned.
“Moving on to Neil’s little best friend, eh? I don’t think he plays for the right team.”
Ash looked like she desperately wanted to shout something back at Kyle, but she couldn’t find the words. Her mouth hung open. Kyle turned toward me.
“What about your friend here? Maybe she wants to party.”
He flashed me a wolf grin. Beside me, I was surprised to see Hector’s hands curl into fists. I hoped he wasn’t about to do something stupid—Kyle was almost twice his size, but he hadn’t even looked at Hector since we came in. I guess he saved all his attention for the girls. I gave Kyle my best drop dead glare, the one I saved for street creepers in the city.
“Why don’t you just answer her question before I report you to the sex offender registry,” I said.
“Damn, okay. The one rule of this house is be mellow. If you can’t abide by that, I’ll have to send you on your way. Danny was here a few days ago. He said he had a fishing trip planned. Neil was supposed to go, too, but after what happened, I guess he went alone.”
“You’re right, I wasn’t missing anything,” Hector said when we got outside. “It was pretty cool to see that guy almost crap his pants when you told him off, though.”
“Yeah, thanks for that,” Ash said.
“Don’t mention it,” I said. “So where to now? Do we check the lake?”
“No one fishes in Redmarch Lake,” Hector said. “My father has to go two towns over when he goes fishing.”
“Yeah,” said Ash. “That was code for getting drunk at their spot by the lake.” She looked at her feet as everything she’d lost caught up with her again. “Neil used to take me there a lot. I doubt he or Danny have been fishing for real since they were little kids.”
Ash drove down a little winding road I’d never been on before, wending around the lake in the opposite direction I’d gone with Keith. As we drove, the shadows lengthened around us. The last rays of sun behind us glinted in the rear-view mirror. Every so often, I’d catch a glimpse of the lake through the trees. I had a queasy feeling in my stomach. Somehow I knew we were headed for something bad. It was like the drowning dream—right now I was floating above the surface, but I knew any minute I would plunge into the depths. I almost asked Ash to turn the car around, but I couldn’t. My fear held me just as still as the ocean in my dream.
Ash turned down a little dirt track I never would have noticed from the road, driving through a gloomy tunnel of close-grown trees to park at a little clearing.
“We’re here,” she said.
The queasy feeling hadn’t left my stomach, but I opened the door and stepped out. Hector seemed to be thinking the same thing—I saw an echo of my own fears in his face. Ash had been calm and confident driving us here, but now she looked just as nervous as the rest of us. Slowly, we made our way down a worn dirt track to a little sheltered cove on the lake shore. A few logs and stumps had been stacked along the edge to make places to sit, and an empty case of light beer sat next to the black and gray ashes of a campfire. The ashes were still warm, but there was no sign of Danny.
Then, behind me, I heard Ash scream. I looked out where she pointed and found Danny, floating face up in the shallows of the lake, a horrified gasp frozen on his pale face while the water around him was calm as glass.
Memories flooded over me—being pulled from the ocean by the lifeguard, the relief of air and light, but through it all wanting to dive back in to get my sister. I saw Danny out there in the lake, and though it was the last place I wanted to go, I couldn’t leave anyone there alone.
I waded out to him.
“Wait, don’t—” I heard Hector curse behind me, then he was wading out beside me when he saw I wouldn’t wait. I wasn’t ready for what I saw when we reached the body. The coroner’s report we’d read said Neil had been attacked with a knife or claw, but if it had been anything like this, they didn’t do it justice. Danny’s stomach was mostly gone, a red ruin. There were slashes all along his chest in some kind of cruel, whorled pattern. The knife had traced red spirals down his shoulders, and on his cheeks. Some sort of letters or runes had been cut into his arms. They looked eerily like the glyphs on the statues at the hotel, and on the statue of Broderick Redmarch.
On the bank, Ash was screaming into her phone, calling the sheriff, or whoever answered emergency calls out here. Hector was tugging on my arm, trying to pull me in to shore. I couldn’t hear either of them. All I could hear was my own breath rushing in and out like the tide. I had never met poor Danny, but it had to be hell to die this way. Who would do this to another person?
When I couldn’t bear seeing Danny’s body one more minute, I turned to the lake itself, still so clear and still. I saw my reflection staring back at me, beside Danny’s corpse. Then I felt a chill run down my spine. I recognized someone I hadn’t seen in a very long time. The reflection staring back at me had my dark brown hair, my almost-black eyes, but she wasn’t me. She was my sister, Zoe.
Identical twins are never perfectly identical. There are always differences, quirks that change and intensify as the twins grow. But Zoe and I were almost perfect mirrors. Even our own parents often couldn’t tell us apart. The differences were hard to spot—the line of the lips, the way she narrowed her eyes—but I would know her anywhere.
I could see blue and red lights flashing from the shore. The sheriff had arrived. I could barely hear the sound of someone shouting my name over my pounding heartbeat. I couldn’t move. After all this time, my sister had appeared to me here. Looking down at the lake, at that face that was so like mine in every way, I could see her lips were moving. It was hard to follow, I was no lip reader. I could only make out the last two words.
Efra mir.
Help me.
I felt hands take hold of me, pulling me back to shore. My father’s friend Deputy Bill was guiding me, gently but firmly. I didn’t want to take my eyes off my sister, but Bill’s grip was too strong. Slowly he pulled me back toward shore. On the bank, Deputy Chief Cross River was on her phone.
“No, I don’t care what they say, I need the state forensic team back. We don’t have the resources. Yes, it’s the same MO, markings and all.”
She hung up with a single, ferocious curse, then spent a minute staring out at the body in the lake, shaking her head.
“Bill, take the other two back to the station. I’ll take this one with me.”
Bill nodded and left with Ash and Hector in tow. Hector looked back at me, concern on his face. I tried to give him a reassuring wink, but it probably looked like some sort of nervous twitch, given the state I was in. He made the call me gesture with his fingers before Bill pushed him into the back of his patrol car.
As I waited for Deputy Chief Cross River to finish, I caught sight of something I’d missed before, a little notebook fallen beside one of the log benches. I flipped through the pages—it was some sort of diary, written in a messy, haphazard hand. I slipped it into my pocket.
As soon as she was done looking around, Deputy Chief Cross River motioned for me to get in the car with her. She let me sit in the front, next to her, which surprised me.
“We’ll get going as soon as the crime scene team shows up,” she said. There was a tense moment of silence as she seemed to be gathering her thoughts. Then the cool, competent shell she projected every time I saw her suddenly cracked, and she punched the steering wheel.
“I can’t stand this damn town. Everyone tried to warn me about it, it’s my own damn fault. The county tried to stick me on the Tribal Liaison unit when I joined up after the army. If I wanted that job, I would have stayed on the Rez. This was the first promotion that opened up, and no one else wanted it. You know why? Because of this god damned town. No one talks about it, no one says why, because no one wants to come out and admit this place is wrong. It shouldn’t exist. The goddamn Addams Family on the other side of the lake is tight with every politician in the region. And eve
ryone that lives here is convinced that if they just pretend it’s normal, that’ll make it true. Tell that to these poor kids.”
I could see she was venting, and not really talking to me, so I kept my mouth shut. I knew exactly how she felt. After a moment, she regained her composure and turned to look at me.
“I know you’re just trying to help your friend, and you did the right thing to call us here. You’re not in trouble, but do me a favor. Promise me, no more junior detective crap. I don’t want to lose any more kids. Stay out of trouble, and if you hear anything, or if trouble finds you, you call me. Can you promise me that?”
I nodded, though I knew I couldn’t. I liked Elaine Cross River, and I didn’t want to lie to her, but something in me knew I couldn’t keep out of trouble. Not if I could see my sister again.
XII.
By the time we got back to the station, my father was already there. The only other time I’d seen him this pale and tight-lipped was when they pulled me from the ocean that awful day eight years ago. He didn’t say a word as Elaine explained I would have to give a statement after what I saw.
They led me back to one of the little rooms in the Sheriff’s station, and my father and I sat with Elaine and Deputy Bill as I went over the events that had led us to finding Danny at the lake. I left out Hector getting his hands on the coroner’s report for fear that would land us in more trouble.
“Thank you,” said Elaine, “you’ve done a good thing, I want you to know that, but remember, no more good things. Being a normal teenager is hard enough, trust me, you don’t need to go looking for more trouble.”