Whispering Pines

by Heidi Lang

  Caden stepped out of the doorway his brother had fallen through nine months ago. Was that the December energy spike Green On! had noticed?

  “Energy spike?” Rae asked.

  “Green On! monitors energy usage for most of the houses in Whispering Pines,” Caden said.

  Rae frowned. “I didn’t know that.”

  “It’s actually a great deal for you folks.” Patrick closed the furnace room door behind them. “You don’t have to pay for your energy as long as you’re willing to be hooked up to Green On!’s Energy-Efficiency Program. We monitor energy usage and use that data to help with our research into better renewable options.”

  “Seems almost like an invasion of privacy,” Rae said.

  Patrick smiled. “I think you’ll find, Ms. Carter, that most people are more than happy to trade away a little privacy in exchange for convenience and cost savings. It’s a very human trait.” He glanced at Caden. “Although there is the occasional hold-out.”

  Caden shrugged. His family had opted out of the Green On! system, but he didn’t know anyone else who had. His mom had always valued her privacy much more highly than saving money. And after what Caden had discovered in her Book of Shadows, he could understand why she’d want to keep her habits secret. Who knew what Green On! could figure out if they had access to the Price family’s energy levels?

  “Shall we?” Patrick waved a hand at the stairs, and Rae headed up.

  Caden paused by the shrine, studying the picture of Helen, the dried flowers underneath, the used-up candle. He could feel the echo of energy pulsating here, something beyond grief and rage. A quiet determination weighted down beneath deep feelings of despair.

  It made sense that Doctor Anderson was possessed by the Unseeing. He had been so desperate to make contact with his wife, and Caden knew how desperation could lead to vulnerability. His mom’s increasingly frantic attempts to find Aiden had led her to do sloppy summoning spells, and she knew what she was doing. Doctor Anderson was a dabbler in the Arts at best, so it was all too easy to imagine him leaving himself wide open.

  But now that Jeremy had been taken from the house, Caden had no sense of the Other Place at all. As far as he could tell, Doctor Anderson had been experimenting again, just as Patrick said. But he’d been experimenting on reaching the dead, not on reopening a portal to another dimension.

  This whole thing was beginning to feel more and more like a setup.

  “Are you coming, Mr. Price?” Patrick stood at the top of the stairs, a dark silhouette in his dark suit. And as Caden stared up at him, he couldn’t shake the feeling that they’d caught the wrong person.

  27. RAE

  So then Patrick insisted on following us home,” Rae told Vivienne as they wound their way through the crowded hallway the next day at school. “And of course my mom was there, and he told her where I’d been, and now I’m grounded for life.” Rae had only managed to respond to one of Vivienne’s increasingly frantic text messages yesterday, letting her know they’d caught Doctor Anderson and she was okay, before her mom took her phone away.

  “That’s a long time,” Vivienne said.

  “Hopefully,” Rae said.

  “That’s the spirit.” Vivienne grinned. “You caught the guy, right?”

  “We did. Thanks to Patrick.” Rae frowned. “I still don’t understand how he knew we’d be at the house then. But he wasn’t surprised to see Caden or me there at all.”

  “Hmm.” Vivienne looked away and adjusted her heavy backpack.

  “I mean, Green On! monitors energy usage, but it’s not like they have cameras pointed at the houses. Do they?”

  “I don’t think so,” Vivienne said. “But maybe?”

  “We don’t have cameras pointed at the houses,” Patrick said.

  Rae and Vivienne whirled. Patrick was leaning against the wall a few feet behind them, typing something into his phone. He glanced up at them and smiled. “Sorry for eavesdropping.”

  “Is everything okay?” Rae’s heart was still beating too fast. Had Doctor Anderson escaped?

  “Everything is fine,” Patrick assured her. “I’m just tying up some loose ends.” He straightened, tucking his phone away and pulling out a small cloth sack about the size of a deck of cards from his inner suit-jacket pocket. “For you, Ms. Matsuoka.” He tossed it to Vivienne, who caught it easily.

  “What’s that?” Rae asked.

  “It’s, um, for my mom,” Vivienne said, unslinging her backpack and tucking the sack away into its mysterious depths. “Thank you,” she told Patrick.

  He nodded.

  “What are you doing at our school, though?” Vivienne asked.

  “I’m here to meet with your charming vice principal.”

  “We have a charming vice principal?” Rae said.

  Vivienne giggled.

  Someone coughed loudly, and Rae turned. Ms. Lockett glared at her, fingers clenched around her clipboard.

  “Whoops,” Vivienne whispered.

  “Shouldn’t you girls be heading to class?” Ms. Lockett said.

  “We were just going,” Vivienne said. “Bye, Patrick,” she called, pulling Rae along with her. Once they were out of earshot, they both burst out laughing.

  “Talk about bad timing.” Rae shook her head. “Ah well. I don’t think she liked me before, and she definitely won’t now.”

  “Don’t worry about it. She doesn’t like anyone.” Vivienne sighed. “Poor Alyssa, having that for a mother. I mean, my mom is scary, don’t get me wrong. But she’s not, like, a rule-obsessed robot.”

  Rae’s smile faded as she thought of Alyssa. “Do you think we should tell her about Jeremy?”

  Vivienne nodded. “We can tell her together. At lunch, okay?”

  “Okay,” Rae said.

  First bell rang, a lingering banshee call that echoed off the walls. Rae and Vivienne picked up their pace, hurrying up the stairs to the seventh and eighth grade hallway.

  “Is Caden in trouble too?” Vivienne asked.

  Rae shrugged.

  “You didn’t talk to him last night?”

  “I couldn’t,” Rae said. “Grounded, remember?” She sighed. “Besides, he was being kind of weird on the way home.”

  “I hate to break it to you, my friend, but he’s kind of a weird guy.” Vivienne stopped at her locker.

  Rae laughed. “Yeah, true.” She moved to her own locker a few feet away, twirled the combination, then popped open the door.

  And froze.

  A note was taped inside. It read, in large green letters: You’re not the only one I’m keeping an eye on.

  The noise in the hall fell away. Rae felt as if she were standing in a tunnel, everything distant and distorted. Her hand shook as she reached up slowly and pulled off the note, flipping it around to reveal another photograph. This one was of her and Alyssa after the cross-country tryouts, sitting in the booth together at Kathy Jones, a fancy little diner tucked away at a gas station.

  Rae tried remembering who else had been around. She pictured the diner, with its gift shop full of knickknacks, things like rubber stamps, New Age books, and funny magnets. There had been a couple of people wandering through, but no one who stuck out in her mind. Past the gift shop, all the seats were set up in giant booths, and the newly formed cross-country team had a section to themselves. No one else was there.

  She looked harder at the picture. She and Alyssa both had half-eaten ice creams on the table in front of them. Alyssa was laughing, probably at something Vivienne had said. Rae was looking away, her face slightly blurry.

  They’d been facing the window, Rae realized. So whoever took this picture must have been creeping around outside.

  The second bell rang.

  “Rae? Earth to Rae.” Vivienne waved a hand in front of her face. “You probably don’t want to get detention on top of grounding, so we’d better book it.”

  Rae nodded but didn’t move. She kept seeing Doctor Anderson the way she’d seen him that night in the woo
ds, his shadow long and twisted, the camera glinting around his neck. Had he been following her after cross-country tryouts?

  But then, how did he get the picture into her school? Into her locker? It didn’t make sense.

  Unless… she’d been wrong about Doctor Anderson, and the Unseeing was someone else. Someone with access to this school.

  “You okay?” Vivienne asked. She leaned in closer. “What’s that? Did someone leave you a note?” She grinned. “Is it a love letter?”

  Rae turned to her. “I—” She stopped as Patrick walked by with Ms. Lockett. He glanced up, his eyes locking on hers briefly. And maybe it was a trick of the bad hallway lighting, or the angle, or something, but in that second, Rae felt like she’d been transported back a year, back to the afternoon when she’d come home to find those men in their nice suits cornering her mom in the kitchen.

  Mrs. Carter? We just have a few questions. About your husband.

  Did he ever discuss work with you? With your children? Do you know where he is? Do you know what he was doing?

  And her mom, frantically answering, again and again, I don’t know. I don’t know anything. The fear in her eyes when she noticed Rae standing there. Go to your room, Rae.…

  Rae shook her head, the memory gone, just like her father. But as Patrick and Ms. Lockett disappeared around the corner, the suspicion remained. Patrick could have been one of those men, with his carefully tailored suit and his emotionless speech. The kind of person who could blend in anywhere, do anything, and then slip away again afterward.

  He hadn’t been surprised to see her and Caden at Doctor Anderson’s house, or Jeremy, either. He definitely had access to this school, and probably to her house, too, if her family was on the Green On! energy plan.

  “Well?” Vivienne asked.

  “It’s nothing,” Rae said, stuffing the picture into her backpack and grabbing her books. Obviously Patrick was friends with Vivienne’s mom if he was bringing stuff for her to school; Rae doubted her friend would believe her without some kind of proof.

  “If you say so,” Vivienne said, eyeing her.

  “Let’s get to homeroom.” Rae closed her locker. She needed to talk to Caden. He had never trusted Patrick.

  But when she got to homeroom, Caden wasn’t there. Rae sat down at her normal desk and waited, drumming anxiously until the announcements ended and the final bell rang. And still he didn’t show up.

  And neither, she realized, did Alyssa.

  You’re not the only one I’m keeping an eye on.

  Dread expanded in Rae’s stomach, that horrible sensation that something terrible was about to happen. And she wouldn’t be able to stop it.

  28. CADEN

  Caden watched from his bedroom window as the bus came and went. Then he sat down at his desk and turned on his laptop, trying not to feel guilty about skipping school for the second day in a row. But he doubted his parents would even notice, and anyhow, this was too important to wait.

  He spent the day researching Green On!, looking for information about Patrick. First he had to wade through the Green On! origin story, how fifty years ago Frank Thompson had been hiking through the Watchful Woods with his dog when he discovered a pond that stank of sulfur and brimstone. The trees nearby, all pines, were discolored and hazy from the steam rising along the edge of the water.

  It was the first geothermal vent discovered in Connecticut, and was unusual enough that soon geologists and other scientists began flocking to the area. From there, it was just a matter of time before someone realized this could be a good business opportunity. An unknown investor donated a large sum of money to build the first Green On! factory specializing in geothermal energy. Eventually, the company expanded into other areas of renewable energy: solar, wind, nuclear, hydro, basically anything that wasn’t fossil-fuel related.

  Caden tried to look up more specifics about the “unknown investor,” but couldn’t find anything concrete. One article quoted an anonymous source who insisted the CIA was funding Green On!, but that same article also claimed there was an abandoned military base nearby, and Caden highly doubted that. He’d have heard of it. Or someone would have.

  He moved on, scrolling through pages and pages of articles about how great Green On! was: the jobs! the salaries! the benefits! And how it revitalized their small town. And then finally, he found what he was looking for:

  GREEN ON! MOVING IN EXCITING DIRECTION, THANKS TO NEW LEADERSHIP FOCUS

  Whispering Pines, CT. Green On! has been on the cutting edge of renewable energy technology for the past thirty years, but recently sources within the company have admitted that they have reached a plateau, thanks in large part to in-fighting amongst the various project heads. “Each department believes their work is the most essential, and that all scientific funding should be focused on their chosen energy field,” an executive administrative assistant stated, asking that she not be directly identified. “Battles have been raging between the wind and solar people, and the nuclear and hydropower. You wouldn’t believe the memos flying back and forth. All-staff meetings are a nightmare.”

  But all of that changed recently with the arrival of one man: Patrick Smith. A former CIA agent working in northern California, Smith moved to Whispering Pines after accepting a position as senior consultant to Green On! in late December. His goal is to advance Green On!’s mission by looking at “alternative” renewable energy sources, devoting most of the company’s resources to E & R (Experimental and Research Department).

  “He’s amazing,” says Phillip Harding, department head of Solar. “I’ve never met anyone so innovative. So daring. So willing to look at options outside the norm.”

  “I still believe the future is nuclear,” claims Audrey Matsuoka, senior project manager of the Nuclear Energy Department. “But I recognize that we have a sadly ignorant population who views nuclear as a scary word. I respect Patrick for the work he is doing to counteract that ignorance, and look forward to working with him to find a viable alternative.”

  “If even Audrey is willing to work with this guy, then he must be good,” an anonymous source stated, in a sentiment that was echoed several times over.

  No one from E & R was willing to discuss their current project, only that they are on the verge of a breakthrough that will forever change the way energy is harnessed in our world.

  Caden stopped reading, his mind whirling. That article told him almost nothing about what Patrick was up to. “Alternative renewable energy sources” and “options outside the norm” were very vague terms. But the fact that Patrick was new to Whispering Pines? That he’d moved here around the same time Aiden vanished? That seemed very coincidental.

  And then there was the feeling Caden got from Patrick, the sense of wrongness. Like he wasn’t fully human.

  Caden glanced at his window again. He’d have to tell Rae. But she might not believe him. She’d been so sure it was Doctor Anderson, and after finding Jeremy there…

  Caden sighed and ran his fingers through his hair, frustrated. He didn’t know what the truth was. He needed more information about the Unseeing. And he knew he wouldn’t be able to find it online.

  He needed to do something extreme. Something desperate, and foolish.

  He needed to talk to his mom.

  * * *

  Caden paused outside his mother’s study. He’d avoided this part of the house ever since the Book of Shadows incident. Even standing here, on the other side of the door, he thought he could hear the echo of Aiden screaming.

  Caden clenched his fists, then made himself relax, and knocked once. He waited a beat, then knocked again. Part of him hoped his mom wouldn’t answer, and he could go back upstairs and—

  The door opened. “Caden,” his mom said. “Come in.” She pulled her door open all the way and stepped aside. Two cushions sat side by side in the middle of her floor.

  Caden stared at them, surprised. “Are you waiting for someone?”

  “I was waiting for you.” She sat
down on a cushion and waited for Caden to settle himself next to her. He automatically sat in the same posture as she did, his legs crossed and hands resting lightly on his knees.

  “How did you know I’d be here?” he asked.

  “Call it mother’s intuition.” She smiled. “Plus I noticed you skipped school this morning.”

  Caden blinked.

  “Don’t give me that look,” she said. “I pay attention.”

  “Not to me you don’t.” Caden didn’t mean to say it, but the words slipped right out.

  She frowned. “What do you mean?”

  He should be quiet, but now that the words had started, he couldn’t stop them, or the tide of anger that carried them forth. “You only ever cared about Aiden. Now that he’s gone, you’ve been acting like I don’t exist. Like you wish we’d switched places.” Caden hadn’t realized he’d felt that way until he said it.

  His mom flinched. “Is that really what you believe?”

  Caden nodded, not trusting his voice.

  “I’m really sorry you feel that way. I never meant…” She took a deep breath. “I’ve been preoccupied, trying to find Aiden. But I love you, Caden, and I’m glad you’re here with me; I wouldn’t trade you for anyone.” She put a hand on his.

  Caden’s eyes burned, and he looked away. He wanted to believe her so much, it hurt. “You’ve always spent more time with him, though,” he said, hating how sulky he sounded. Like a little kid.

  “Aiden… is very different from you. I knew he was experimenting with things beyond his capabilities.” She pressed her lips together, a thin hard line. Only now Caden noticed how they trembled. “You, on the other hand… You’re careful, and sensible, and maybe a little too cautious. So it’s not that I don’t care about you the same as I care about your brother. It’s that I never had to worry about you the same.”