And yet I couldn’t help but wonder if, fumbling along that cord into the dark, we’d find out that the end was tied to nothing.
We drove to Lows Lake the long way, keeping away from the center of Crowthorpe Falls.
It was a tangle of meandering side roads, every one deserted.
We were in a rental—a black Jeep—but there was no way of knowing who in Crowthorpe was involved in what took place on The Peak property, and I didn’t want to risk drawing any attention. We’d monitored Perry Street, not to mention every car behind us during the drive upstate, and we didn’t appear to be followed.
I’d forgotten in the five years since I’d been here how impenetrable the wilderness was, how suffocating. Evergreens, maples, and beech trees swarmed the hills, massive branches reaching out over the road as if to smother us, soaking up what little daylight there was. Log cabins, groceries, out-of-business video stores stood forlornly in one crumbling lot after the next.
“It’s the next left,” said Nora.
Within a few yards I saw the sign: WELLER’S LANDING.
I slowed, made the left into the parking lot. There were two other cars, a blue pickup and a station wagon—probably other paddlers already out on the lake. I inched into a distant spot in the farthest corner, half hidden by a large hemlock, and cut the engine.
“We’re clear,” said Hopper, looking out the back windshield.
“Any last-minute concerns?” I asked. I looked at Hopper in the rearview mirror. His pointed stare back at me told me everything. Nothing would stop him now.
“Bernstein?” I asked.
Nora was yanking a black knit cap onto her head, tucking in the loose strands of hair.
“Oh, shoot. Can’t believe I almost forgot.” She reached into her vest pocket, pulling out two small plastic packets. She opened one, removing a thin gold necklace. Beckoning me to lean forward, she unclasped the chain and fastened it around my neck.
“This is Saint Benedict.”
It was a crude piece of jewelry, the pendant emblazoned with a gaunt, robed Jesus type.
“He’s the napalm of Catholic saints,” Nora said, reaching back to put Hopper’s around his neck. “You drop Benedict into a situation, you don’t need anything else. He’ll protect us from what’s up there.”
“Thanks,” said Hopper.
“You have one, too?” I asked her.
“Of course.”
“Then let’s move.”
We unloaded the car rapidly—to minimize risk of a witness noticing us. But also I knew that to hesitate now in any way would only let serious doubt flood in, like water in a rowboat full of holes.
Hopper carried the paddles to the load-in area. I unhitched the Souris River canoe from the roof. Nora grabbed the lifejackets, the backpacks. I hid the car key under a rock by the hemlock, in case we became separated and one of us made it back before the others. Hopper and I picked up the canoe, and with a final look back at the Jeep, we took off across the parking lot.
We lowered the canoe into the water, and Hopper stepped in, heading to the bow, shoving his backpack behind his seat. Nora clambered in after him, binoculars swinging from her neck. I grabbed my paddle, threw in my backpack, was just about to climb in, when I noticed my cellphone vibrating in my jacket.
I thought of ignoring it, but then realized it could be Cynthia. I pulled off my glove, unzipped the pocket. It was a blocked number.
“Hello?”
“McGrath.”
I recognized the voice. It was Sharon Falcone.
“Shit, this connection’s crap. Sounds like you’re halfway around the world. Let me call you back—”
“No, no,” I blurted, flooded with an ominous feeling that something was wrong. “What’s the matter?”
“Nothing. Just wanted to get back to you on that tip you gave us.”
“Tip?”
“For child services.”
The landlord and her deaf nephew back at 83 Henry Street.
I’d forgotten that I’d called Sharon about them.
“Sure you gave me the right address? Eighty-three Henry?”
“That’s right.”
“They checked it out. There’s no certificate of occupancy for the building.”
“What?”
“There was no one living there. No tenants in—”
Abruptly, her voice cut out. Loud metallic echoing filled the line.
“Hello?”
“… illegal … a couple times last week …”
“Sharon.”
“… knee-deep in major …”
Her voice cut out into wild static.
“Hello?”
“… thing was okay. McGrath, you still there?”
“Yes. Hello?”
A clanging screeched across the line and it went dead.
I tried calling her back, but it wouldn’t connect. I waited another minute, in the off chance she’d manage to get through again, but the phone had no service. I zipped it back into my jacket pocket, explaining to Hopper and Nora what she’d just told me.
“What do you mean empty?” asked Nora.
“There were no tenants.”
“But that’s impossible.”
“Is it?”
“No,” said Hopper. “Maybe they were illegal aliens. When we showed up, it was too much attention.”
“But Ashley’s neighbor,” interjected Nora. “Iona. She wasn’t illegal. She had an American accent, and she told us she’d lived there for a year. Why would she take off?”
“To avoid arrest for prostitution.”
Nora was unconvinced. “It doesn’t seem right.”
They fell silent, waiting for me to weigh in. I recognized the moment for what it was, the chance not to go ahead, to reconsider everything, and go back.
The sky had faded from white to gray, the surrounding forest hushed and still. I climbed in and grabbed the paddle.
“We’ll look into it when we get back,” I said.
There wasn’t a stream—only a swamp.
We’d spent the last hour crossing Lows Lake, Hopper and I paddling in silent tandem. Battered by shifting currents and a cold, unrelenting wind, we sailed past deserted islands crowded with pines and a ghost tree growing straight out of the water, its gaunt trunk and scrawny branches raised heavenward like an outcast pleading for his life. Now, having reached the north shore, we were doggedly searching for the hidden rivulet that would take us into The Peak. We were trapped in muddy water barbed with grasses and covered with thick green algae, which broke apart in clumps, then, after we’d edged through, resealed, erasing all signs of our passing.
The wind had dissipated—strange, as it’d been so turbulent minutes ago out on the lake. Dense trees surrounded us, packed like hordes of stranded prisoners. There wasn’t a single bird, not a scuttle through the branches, not a cry—as if everything alive had fled.
“This can’t be right,” said Nora, turning around.
I hadn’t realized, sitting behind her, how worried she’d become.
“Let me see the map.”
She handed it to me along with the compass.
“We should go back,” she blurted, staring into the reeds.
“What?” asked Hopper irritably, turning.
“We can’t get stuck in this in the dark. We can’t sleep here.”
“Who said anything about sleeping here?”
“We’re supposed to be following a stream. Where’s the stream?”
“We’ll give it a little while longer,” I said.
Within minutes, we were stuck on a submerged log. Hopper, without hesitation, clambered out and, standing thigh-deep in the muck, shoved us loose. Climbing back in, his jeans were coated with mud and that strange neon algae, though he didn’t seem to notice or care. He stared resolutely ahead as if in a trance, beating the grasses with his oar. I couldn’t help but imagine he was thinking about Ashley, because out here, the stark emptiness of the wilderness seemed to naturally summo
n regrets and fear.
Our progress remained slow. The swamp reeked of decay, a smell that seemed to be coming off the algae, which only grew thicker the deeper into this bog we drifted. We had to shove the paddles straight down to wrestle the canoe even an inch past the sludge and yellow reeds rising around us, forming a suffocating corridor.
I checked my watch. It was already after five. It’d be nightfall in less than an hour. Our plan had been to be on The Peak property by now.
Suddenly Nora gasped, clamping a hand over her mouth and pointing at something to her left.
A faded piece of red string had been knotted to one of the reeds, the end dangling in the water. I recognized it immediately. Marlowe had claimed Cordova discovered such strings when he’d first moved to The Peak. They’d led him to the clearing where the townspeople performed their rituals.
“We’re going the right way,” said Hopper.
We pushed on, the swamp suddenly deepening, the mud thinning. A frail but discernible current appeared, seemingly out of nowhere. The only sounds were the laps of the water, the grasses bending around us, whispering against the sides of the boat.
“I can see the fence,” said Hopper.
Sure enough—far ahead, I could make out the dark silhouette of Cordova’s military fence cutting across the stream, marking the southern edge of his property.
When we were twelve feet away, we extended the paddles to the bank. The fence looked like something surrounding a defunct prison, the chain links rusted, the top looped with razor wire. Where the water passed underneath, the wires had been brutally hacked—exactly as Marlowe had described, the ends gnarled and twisted back, leaving a triangular hole about a foot wide.
“See any cameras?” I asked.
Nora, looking through the binoculars, shook her head.
I unzipped my backpack, removed the fluorescent bulb, and climbed out, heading to the fence. Immediately I spotted three wires running horizontally across the distorted chain links. They hung loosely, and on the closest metal fencepost they’d twisted free of the casings.
I tapped the metal end of the bulb against the wires. It remained dim touching the first two. But on the third, the one closest to the ground, the bulb glowed orange and blew out.
After all these years, it was still a live wire. I stepped closer to the stream, following the cable’s path as it hung slackly between the severed links, dangling across the top, continuing on the other side.
“There’s an electric current in the wire,” I said, stepping back to them. ”It just blew out the bulb.”
“Killer security system,” Hopper said. “No pun intended.”
“It’s not funny,” said Nora, looking at me uncertainly.
“There’s enough room to pass,” I said. “We each lie down. Go through one at a time.”
The other option was to swim through—without the boat, it’d be easy to get by unscathed—but for us all to be soaked from the neck down in temperatures about to fall below twenty degrees would be a major handicap, making a systematic search of the property difficult. Passing under the wire inside the canoe was our best bet, so long as we each stayed lower than the boat’s rim. The canoe was fiberglass, but there was aluminum detailing along the outer edges. I wasn’t an electrician, but it seemed possible it might conduct current if the wire grazed it.
“Hopper,” I said, “you’re first.”
He shoved his backpack into the center of the canoe and, lying down in the hull, crossed his arms.
Pulling away, we took a moment to reposition ourselves, angling the bow toward the mangled opening. It was probably just my eyes adjusting to the fading light, but as we glided forward, I swore the fence’s wires seemed to constrict, squirm like plants sensitive to movement.
When we were two feet away, suddenly we slipped into a strong current and were whipped sideways, crashing against the opening, the wire lowering from the impact.
“It’s about to touch,” whispered Nora.
“Keep your arms off the metal,” I ordered.
She raised her paddle as I shoved mine in, forcing the bow through, the chain links scraping the boat. We eased in another few inches, and I realized the wire was lowering again—as if it were a rigged trap. Before I could react, it struck the rim of the canoe. I waited for a white blast of electricity.
Nothing.
I thrust the paddle into the water, keeping the canoe steady in the undercurrent. I propelled us forward another foot or so. Hopper was on the opposite side, the wire in front of Nora, the chain links rasping.
“You’re clear,” I said.
Hopper sat up. Nora slid the oar to him, and she inched forward, curling up into a fetal position in the hull.
“If I get zapped and it’s my time to go, I just want to say I love you both and these times have been the best in my life.”
“It’s not your time quite yet, Bernstein,” I said.
We jostled forward. There was no sound but the water, the screech of the wires as they curved, protesting against the boat. Suddenly, we hit something submerged and the wire dipped, tapping the sides. I swore I heard a faint sizzle of voltage charging around us, though as soon as I did, the wire raised, we slid through, and it was my turn.
I lay down in the hull, the water rumbling around me.
“Any last words?” Hopper asked.
“Try not to kill me.”
The canoe lurched, that thin wire striking the sides inches from my nose. It slipped over my head and was gone.
“We’re in,” whispered Hopper.
I sat up, checking behind us, surprised to see the fence was already quickly retreating. The current had increased, the water pooling, as if excited by the prospect of delivering us to—what? But that fence wasn’t actually a fence. It was a booby trap. Maybe Marlowe hadn’t mentioned this secret entrance so innocuously, but to plant a seed in our heads, so we’d try to enter exactly this way. Why? To annihilate us on that wire? Or was it to get us securely inside Cordova’s property, trapping us in here?
As we paddled on, the night descended around us like a black tide coming in.
Before, the forest had been blanketed with an unsettling stillness. Now noises echoed from every direction. Branches snapped. Leaves rustled. Trees shuddered—as if all the wild animals that hid during the day were rousing now, crawling out of their holes.
My eyes gave up trying to discern anything beyond Hopper’s silhouette at the bow and Nora’s hunched shoulders in front of me. I recalled, with a twinge of anxiety, the feeling of suffocation Olivia Endicott had described when visiting The Peak. I wondered if I was experiencing it, a vague sense of disorientation, detachment, drowning. I assumed it was just adrenaline and nerves, but then I felt, very clearly, a marked heaviness, as if after inhaling all of this moist air, it was now suffused inside me, slowing my limbs, suppressing my thoughts.
Hopper motioned ahead. Visible at the end of this black tunnel of trees was a shimmering surface.
Graves Pond—where Genevra, Cordova’s first wife, had drowned.
We reached the mouth in less than a minute, pulling over to the bank, listening. Nora pulled the binoculars away, nodding, and we silently eased the canoe out, veering right, keeping tight to the perimeter under the cover of overhanging branches.
Far to our left on the opposite side, a wooden dock became visible.
It looked abandoned, a crude wooden ladder hanging over the side and into the water. Steps led onto a stone path that twisted up a steep hill gradually coming into view.
Suddenly, Hopper and Nora jolted upright.
And then I saw what was coming, what was slowly rising over the crest of that hill like a dark sun.
The Peak.
It sat in moonlight, a hulking mansion of such absolute darkness it made the surrounding night gray. Its grandeur looked straight out of the European countryside, a lost world of horse-drawn carriages and candlelight. Spiked gabled roofs pitched upward, lancing the sky. I could discern an ornate
entrance pavilion, a colonnade across the front drive, three stories of windows, every one unlit—all of it fortified with shadow, as if shadows were the very mortar that kept it standing. In fact, the house seemed to challenge the laws of the physical world, the inevitable slide of man’s grandest constructions into decay and ruin, boasting instead that it would be rising over that hill for centuries to come.
A wild overgrown lawn raced breathlessly up to it from Graves Pond. There was no sign of life, no movement. My feeling was the mansion had been abandoned for some time.
We extended the paddles ashore, the canoe beaching in the mud, and the three of us climbed out, pulling on our backpacks. Hopper and I carried the canoe up the bank and into the trees, set it down behind a fallen log, covering it with leaves and branches. Nora shoved a stick into the mud to use as a marker, so later we’d know where to find the boat. Then we took a moment to survey one another. Hopper looked invigorated, his face toughened by the dark. Nora looked disconcertingly blank. I squeezed her shoulder for reassurance, but she only fumbled with her jacket zipper so it was zipped all the way to her chin.
“Remember the emergency plan,” I whispered. “Anything happens, we meet back here.”
With a nod of mutual agreement, we took off. The plan was to check the house first, see if we could get in, and from there find the clearing in the woods where they performed the rituals. We walked due north, keeping to the perimeter of the pond, and then proceeded single-file up a steep knoll through the woods, heading in the general direction of the house. We reached the summit, staying hidden along the tree line, overlooking the eastern wing of The Peak.
Up close, the mansion was palatial, yet I could see how weathered the façade was, the limestone streaked and discolored. I could make out elaborate detailing on pediments and corners, black ironwork and carved stones along the roof. Perched on window ledges and above doorways, what at first glance looked like real birds roosting there were gargoyles in the form of crows. There was a domed glass solarium on the ground floor that led out onto a columned loggia, so soaked in darkness it was as if a black vapor had leaked out of the house and fermented.
A stone pathway led away from the terrace steps, winding through tall grass to an enormous wall of neglected privet at the rear of the house, vanishing somewhere beyond it. I knew from aerial photographs it led into the estate’s sprawling gardens, which had featured prominently in Cordova’s To Breathe with Kings. A check of Google Earth had revealed that hints of the elaborate landscaping were still there—pebbled pathways and sculpture—though most of it was shrouded under wild greenery.
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