Last night as Don lay in bed, thinking about the revival—one more thing to keep him awake—he’d found himself picturing some sort of bizarre mass hypnosis, which had made him think of Jonestown, Guyana, everybody having a little spiked punch because that’s what the leader said to do. He imagined Reverend Pfeil starting his own cult, getting the people on the island to turn over their property, maybe getting them to slip hallucinogens into the food of others, then bringing them to the next meeting. Was that what had happened? Had Allison slipped Sarah drugs? Was he next?
Although Don knew a lot of these notions were probably silly, his wife and then his daughter had started going to Pfeil’s revivals, and neither of them seemed able to remember a whole lot about what went on there. That was the part Don disliked most, their not knowing.
The door opened, and Patsy and Stan Brock stepped inside, both of them looking worried. “Can we talk to you a moment?” Patsy asked Don.
He joined them at the counter. The Brocks owned the Superior Motel, did all the cleaning and bed changing and maintenance themselves. Stan was a bony, awkward-looking guy, wiry like a long-distance runner, and he stood about six-five. Patsy was more than a foot shorter, a slight woman with olive skin, dark hair, and eyes that were nearly black. Her coloring was unusual for an Ice Islander, most of whom had northern European ancestry. But then Patsy wasn’t a native. Stan had met her while he was in the Army.
“I’m worried about Wes,” Patsy said. “He didn’t come home last night.”
“I told her it’s possible he’s just out being a teenager,” Stan said. “But Patsy’s pretty worried, and she wanted to talk to you.”
Don could tell Stan was worried too. Men did that sometimes. If it was something that made them seem emotional or caring, they said the wife was concerned about it. He wondered whether he was guilty of the same thing.
“He’s never even gone on a date,” Patsy said. “Why would he suddenly decide to stay out all night and then not even call to say he was okay?”
Stan gave his wife’s arm a gentle squeeze. “I’m not saying we shouldn’t be concerned. I’m just saying that a boy his age could be out having his first time with a girl or something like that.”
“Stan, he doesn’t even know girls exist, except for the ones on his computer network.”
Don said, “Why don’t you tell me what happened?”
“Yesterday evening, just before supper,” Patsy said, “these boys came by in an old car, and Wes went with them. That’s it. He’s never gone out with those boys before, and he hasn’t come back.”
“Did you recognize any of the boys?” Don asked.
“The one driving the car was Derek Aldrich. I’m not sure who the others were.”
“Did they say where they were going?”
“The revival.”
Stan said, “But I don’t believe that for a moment. That was just so we’d think they were going someplace wholesome, instead of what they were really doing. Those boys most likely had some booze in the car, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they had some girls lined up as well.”
Don wasn’t so sure about that. His wife and daughter had gone to that revival and couldn’t recall what had gone on. Irene Waggoner had gone to the revival, and now he was unable to locate her.
“Did they say anything else?” Don asked.
“No,” Patsy Brock said. “Only that they were going to the revival and that they’d grab some burgers for dinner. That’s it.”
“How many boys were in the car?”
“Four.”
“What kind of car was it?”
“An old one. Big, with a lot of rust. I guess the color was a sort of flat blue-gray.”
Don promised the Brocks he’d check into it and get back to them.
2
The Aldriches lived on Flint Street, between Huron and Michigan Avenues. Don found Derek in the garage, sweeping out the salt and sand that had dropped from the Aldriches’ station wagon over the winter. Because it was a one-car garage, Derek’s rusty Buick presumably lived outside. At the moment it was parked at the curb, looking like something that had escaped from a wrecking yard.
“Did you see Wes Brock last night?” Don asked.
“The little nerdy wimp?”
Don gave the kid what he hoped was an authoritative look. “I’m not interested in your opinion of him. I want to know whether you were with him last night.”
Derek Aldrich stared at the policeman, apparently trying to figure out what was going on. “Yes, I was with him last night. Why do you want to know?”
“Anyone else with you?”
“Yeah. Scott Bender, Ben Jones, and Russ Dowling. How come you’re asking me this stuff?” The boy eyed Don warily, his initial cockiness fading.
“Where’d you go?”
“The revival.”
For a long moment, Don just looked at him. Then he said, “A revival? I can see you and your pals drinking beer or drag racing on that straight stretch of Pine Road, but all you guys getting together to go to church just doesn’t seem to fit.”
“We did. Honest.”
“Why?”
“I … well…” He seemed puzzled. “I guess we figured there could be lots of chicks there.” Then, in an apparent attempt to reassert his cockiness, he added, “They say the ones who go to church are all just dying to get laid.”
“Why’d you take Wes Brock along?”
“I …”
He looked confused.
“Wes isn’t one of your regular buddies, is he?”
Derek Aldrich shook his head.
“You went by the motel and picked him up, that right?”
The boy nodded.
“He know you were coming?”
“No. We … we just went by.”
“Whose decision was that?”
“We … we just did. I don’t remember who suggested it.”
“What’d you do at the revival?”
The boy looked blank. “I… I don’t remember.”
“How could you not remember?”
The teenager opened his mouth, closed it. He seemed helpless, bewildered.
“How long were you there?”
“Couple of hours.”
“And you can’t remember what you did for two hours.”
“I… I can’t,” he said. “It’s the truth. I just don’t remember.”
“What’d you do when it was over?” Don asked.
“We cruised around a little bit, then went home.”
“Wes Brock too?”
“No. He … he …” Derek frowned. “He didn’t leave the church with us.”
“How’d he get home?”
“I guess he got a ride with somebody else.”
“Why didn’t he leave with you?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?”
“I don’t … remember.” He rubbed his forehead, as if trying to massage his brain, make its recollective functions begin to work again.
Although Don had managed to conceal it from Derek Aldrich, he was stunned. Talking to the teenager about the revival had been like talking to Allison and Sarah. And Kevin Waggoner. Why were people unable to remember what happened there? Don was beginning to find this whole thing more than just a little unnerving.
As he walked from the garage back to his car, Don thought about mass hypnosis again. And the power a fanatic could hold over his followers. Okay, gang, it’s hot out here in Guyana, so we’re all going to drink some of this spiked punch. Don tried to push the image away, but it refused to go. Over and over again, he saw the people drinking the Kool-Aid or whatever it was, dropping one by one, convulsing, their faces twisted in agony. And then the scene switched to the church. And the guy handing out the punch was Reverend Pfeil.
3
Russ Dowling, Ben Jones, and Scott Bender all told the same story Derek Aldrich had. None of them could remember what happened at the revival. None of them could recall why Wes Brock didn�
��t leave with them. Nor did any of them know with whom the Brock boy did leave. It was just like talking to Kevin Waggoner.
Don was kicking all this around in his mind—mixed in with the image of a smiling Jim Jones passing out the punch—when he got back to the station. Jake Spindler was waiting for him, pacing back and forth in front of the counter. Spindler and his two sons were the island’s only professional fishermen.
“Valerie’s missing,” Jake said, getting right to the point. He looked across the counter at Don, his expression full of confusion and worry. His limp gray hair, colorless expression, and lusterless blue eyes gave him a sort of weathered look, as if he’d been out in too many Lake Superior storms. Valerie was his wife.
“What do you mean, she’s missing?” Don asked.
“She went out last night and never came back.”
“Where’d she go?”
“To that revival at First Lutheran. The whole thing just doesn’t make any sense. Roberta Carnes came by and picked her up. I thought she and Roberta were mad at each other, not speaking to each other.” He waved his hand, as if dismissing that particular point for the moment. “Until Roberta showed up, I didn’t even know she was going to the revival. She … she never came home.”
“You talk to Roberta?”
He nodded. “She says Valerie got a ride home with somebody else, but she doesn’t know who.” He slowly shook his head. “When I tried to pin her down, she started saying she couldn’t remember. Before I came over here, I tried to see Reverend Pfeil, but Carolyn said he wasn’t home.” Suddenly his eyes grew moist, and he looked at Don beseechingly. “Val would have called me if she was going to be late. She’d never stay away and not tell me. Something’s happened to her, Don. I know it has.”
“Why were Roberta and Valerie mad at each other?”
Jake shrugged. “All I know is they’d been pretty good friends, and then they had a big fight about something.”
“I’ll see if I can find out what happened to her,” Don said.
“I don’t understand how Roberta could say she doesn’t remember. It was just last night. How could she not remember?”
“I’ll—”
“I don’t know what I’d do without her. I … I just don’t know.” Tears had formed in the corners of his eyes. He wiped them away, looking a little embarrassed. Men who fished the lake for a living weren’t supposed to cry.
4
Roberta Carnes behaved as the four teenagers had. She didn’t recall anything about the revival, and when Don pressed her, she became confused. She remembered taking Valerie Spindler to the church, but not how the woman got home. She said the reason Valerie and she had had a falling out was rather silly, looking back on it. When Valerie’s son, Marshall, got married, Roberta had been left off the invitation list. An oversight, Valerie had insisted, but Roberta’s feelings were hurt, and she wasn’t ready to forgive, so angry words were exchanged.
Why did she decide to take Valerie to the revival?
Roberta just stared at him, unable to remember. She recalled going over to Valerie’s, apologizing for her behavior, saying they should go to the revival, Valerie reluctantly agreeing because she wanted to make up. But not why. She couldn’t even remember having decided that she did forgive Valerie.
When Don left, Roberta Carnes was very upset, troubled by things she was unable to remember and by things she was unable to understand.
5
Next, Don went to see Reverend Pfeil. The church seemed deserted, so he tried the minister’s residence, located behind it. Carolyn Pfeil opened the door.
“He’s not here,” the clergyman’s wife said. She looked haggard. Her clothes were rumpled, her hair mussed; her eyes were red and had shadows under them.
“Know where I can find him?”
She nervously nibbled on her lower lip. “I don’t know where he is. He’s making arrangements for the revival tonight.” She paused, then added, “They’ve been real successful. He’s having another one tonight instead of regular Sunday services.”
“I’ve never been to a revival,” Don said.
Carolyn Pfeil said nothing.
“What are they like?”
She frowned. “Uh, well, I’m not sure.”
“You haven’t been attending the revivals?”
“No, no, I’ve been there. I mean, I’m the minister’s wife. I have to be there.”
“Then tell me what I’m missing.”
“Something wrong?”
“It’s just that I seem to … to draw a blank.”
“You can’t remember?”
“No. Isn’t that odd?” She didn’t look as though it seemed odd. She looked as though it seemed terrifying.
The two of them stood there at the Pfeils’ front door, the minister’s wife looking bewildered and afraid while Don tried to figure all this out. Three people had gone to the revival and disappeared. And it seemed that anyone who’d been there and hadn’t disappeared was unable to remember anything about it. He pictured Allison coming home without Sarah, looking puzzled when he asked her about it, then saying, “She must have gotten a ride with someone else, but I don’t remember who.”
As gently as he could, Don said, “Is there something going on here you should tell me about?”
She nibbled her lip again, except this time it looked as though she was literally biting it. “No,” she said.
“You sure?”
She said nothing.
“Look, you can trust me. I can help. It’s my job to help.”
She opened her mouth as if to speak, but no words came out. She seemed to be having a battle with herself, her eyes filling with all sorts of intense feelings Don could only guess at. Finally she just seemed to go emotionally limp. She slowly shook her head.
“Look, Mrs. Pfeil—”
“Come back later. Maybe he’ll be here.” She closed the door.
Don drove back to the station, trying to put it all together and not getting anywhere. Too many bizarre things were happening on the island at the same time. First a man was murdered, then an entire family. Right after that the revivals started. Coincidence? Or was there a link? Don was unable to see a connection. What could Reverend Pfeil’s revivals have to do with the murders? And yet all these peculiar things had happened together.
He stopped trying to link the revivals and the murders and concentrated on the revivals alone. Three people attending the revivals had disappeared. Irene Waggoner, Wesley Brock, and Valerie Spindler. If a store clerk’s adulterous wife, a teenage computer buff, and a woman who’d been married to a fisherman for thirty years had anything in common, Don was unable to see it.
What exactly was going on at the revivals? Pfeil was a down-to-earth Lutheran minister. Surely he wouldn’t be involved in anything untoward. Still, just holding the revivals was peculiar. And it was downright chilling the way the people who attended them were unable to remember what went on there. Don kept trying to explain it in terms he understood, like mass posthypnotic suggestion. And then he’d find himself thinking about Jonestown and all those people drinking that spiked punch.
Whatever was going on here was scary. And his wife and daughter were involved in it. He could all too easily envision one of them coming home from a revival without the other. Well, tonight he was going to the revival and staying for the whole thing.
Since becoming the island’s policeman, Don had never fired his weapon except on a pistol range. He had never even drawn it in the line of duty. But now, as he drove toward the police station, he was uncomfortably aware of the weight on his hip.
Suddenly he was sure something was riding in the car with him, but when he turned his head, nothing was there. He thought he’d seen a shadowy shape, glimpsed from the corner of his eye. It was just stress and lack of sleep playing tricks on his mind. He was being revisited by all the old childhood monsters that lived under the bed or in the closet and sometimes peeked in through his bedroom window at night. But the monsters weren’t real
, then or now. He was entirely alone in the car.
And then he realized that wasn’t true. He did have one companion: fear. It was riding along with him, keeping him company, an undeniable presence. And Don had the feeling that he could reach out and touch its cold, clammy flesh.
He shivered.
6
As soon as she closed the door, Carolyn Pfeil leaned against it and started crying. She’d had her chance. Why didn’t she tell Don Farraday about Carly? Something awful had happened to Carly, she knew it. Didn’t she care enough to report that her little girl was missing? It wouldn’t have been such a hard thing to do. Move your lips. Speak some words. Let the policeman know that something awful had happened to Carly. But she hadn’t done it.
And if Don Farraday came back and gave her another chance, she still wouldn’t do it.
She sobbed, her body shaking violently.
She wouldn’t do it, because she was terrified—no, more than just terrified, for she wasn’t merely frightened of the physical harm that she could bring on herself. She was afraid of what might happen to her core, that place where her innermost thoughts were kept, that private, sacred place where the true Carolyn Pfeil lived.
And she had no doubt that Douglas could hurt her there, reach in and destroy her. The thought made her shrivel up inside, for Douglas had become vile and corrupted and loathsome. He was evil. And not just evil in the manner of child molesters and rapists and torturers. This evil was pure and basic, and just thinking about it made her feel dirty, contaminated, and more afraid than she’d known it was possible to be.
7
Don drove to the church at seven o’clock. The place looked deserted. There were no cars parked out front, no people milling around, and the banner proclaiming a revival had been removed. Don parked his Jeep wagon at the curb and went up to the wooden doors, finding them locked. Carolyn Pfeil could have been mistaken about there being another meeting tonight, he supposed. Or it could have been canceled at the last moment. Although he didn’t think anyone was inside the building, he knocked on the door. To his surprise, he heard the thunk of a bolt being slid back. A young woman stuck her head out.
A Haunting of Horrors: A Twenty-Novel eBook Bundle of Horror and the Occult Page 41