Harvest Moon

by James A. Moore

  “What if I say no?” Was he interested? Yes. He wanted exactly what was being offered to him. He wanted the papers and he wanted the truth that was being offered, but he didn’t know the price yet.

  “Then I don’t have to do a thing. I suspect you’re already in trouble for losing these papers. All I have to do is relax and watch while you go down in flames.” The silhouette shrugged. It was an odd thing to watch, especially from the angle Alan had. “That’s not what I want, but I can live with it. How about you?”

  Alan looked at the shape above him in the tree and thought hard, as if his life might depend on it.

  VII

  While Alan Treacher tried to make what could well have been the most important decision of his life, Craig Gallagher sat in the living room of the Montgomery family and jotted down notes. Kimmie Montgomery was missing, along with five of her friends. So far, this week was not going at all according to his plans for a nice, calm time.

  Linda and Ward Montgomery were worried sick about their youngest girl, and Craig couldn’t blame them. Kimmie was a pretty girl—not beautiful, she missed the mark on that—but she was also a girl with a body that had nothing to do with her age. She was the sort of girl that he knew a lot of men fantasized about. That wasn’t really something he was overly worried about as yet, but it was something he had to consider.

  Right now he was far more worried about what six kids could get themselves into when they left the house and took camping supplies with them. Not tents, thankfully, but blankets and eats and everything else. He had a suspicion they’d be found in a day or so, dirty and cold, and very, very alive. He prayed that was the case, too. A few grounded teens were a much better idea than a few dead ones any day of the week.

  So far he’d received very little useful information about what the kids had been up to. They had allegedly gone to the movies, but it hadn’t taken long to find out that they had never made it there. One phone call to Martin Chalmers at the Regal Cinema confirmed that they had not been there. Beldam Woods was a small town, small enough that it was fairly easy to remember who had come by the cinema the night before. None of the six had shown up there.

  Foul play, while possible, was not the most probable scenario. More likely they’d gotten themselves into trouble with a broken down car or truck and none of them had thought to take their cell phones with them. He knew that at least Heather Partridge had a cell phone, because her aunt and uncle had tried calling it a dozen times. They’d left messages, too. By now the girl was probably terrified about going home. Though when you considered what she’d been through she was pretty well behaved. Heather had been known to get herself into a little trouble with her guardians.

  Just to add to his fun, there was a situation up near the academy. One of the kids who went there had thrown a party the night before, while her parents were out on the town in Utica. Apparently there had been some property damage and now he had to go find out what he could about who might have caused the loss of one plasma screen TV. Something about an indoor football game gone horribly wrong.

  Linda Montgomery looked a lot like her daughter would one day, unforeseen dilemma notwithstanding. She had thick dark hair, hazel eyes, and a body that could turn heads. She was also a nervous wreck. Both she and her husband, Ward, were a few years younger than Craig, but he knew them well enough. They all went to the same church. He put on his best it’ll-probably-turn-out-just-fine smile and nodded. “We’ll get on it as soon as we can, Linda. Don’t you worry, they’re probably just fine.”

  Craig stood up and folded away the small note pad where he’d been scribbling memos to himself. Ward, an armchair quarterback who was slowly going to pot, nodded acknowledgement of the words, his heavy face pulling into a reluctant smile. He looked like he wanted to throw up all over the living room. Instead he just smiled again and shook Craig’s hand. He had a surprisingly strong grip. Linda gave him a quick, nervous hug. She was a hugger. He didn’t think there’d been a time since a month after they met when she didn’t hug him hello or goodbye. He’d have felt it was something special if she didn’t do that with damned near everyone.

  He beat a hasty retreat and walked down to his squad car. The day was still beautiful, but somehow he was having trouble appreciating it. Probably something to do with the increasing number of incidents around town, like a missing person or seven and a violently murdered old librarian who had about as many enemies as a rock has fleas. He didn’t want to be worried about the kids, but with everything else going on in town, he pretty much had to be worried about them.

  Other annoying problems? Well, there was the fact that he had to do rounds of all the Halloween festivities in town. In addition to the haunted hayrides, he had to check out the cinema and make sure the kids didn’t do anything too stupid to the inside of the place. Or too potentially disastrous, like the year Danny Partucci and his buddies were in charge and decided to set off fireworks inside the old building. If it hadn’t been for Patrick Winter hanging around that night, there would have probably been a few deaths involved.

  Halloween wasn’t here yet, but the people in town seemed determined to act like it was and, in some cases, that Halloween was supposed to be another name for Mardi Gras. Nothing heavy had gone down yet, but he could sense it in the air. Something was going to happen before the night was through.

  “Crap,” he muttered under his breath. “It ain’t even halfway through the week and this stuff is starting up.” He drove down the main stretch of Maple Avenue, shooting past the branch that led its winding way down to the covered bridge, completely unaware that he passed within ten feet of the car that had taken all of the kids to the Witch’s Hollow the night before. The mortal remains of the teenagers were nowhere around. They had been moved to another location, the better to prepare them for the night that would change Beldam Woods forever.

  Chapter Four

  I

  The day progressed as days are wont to do. And, at the appropriate time, night came to Beldam Woods. For most of the day the weather had been pleasant, but as the sun set the clouds crept in, scudding across the sky and hiding away the nearly full moon and adding a deep chill to the air.

  That did not stop the people of Beldam Woods from going about their plans. The world is seldom halted by a few clouds, after all. Groups of local kids, a few families, and a rather large collection of out-of-towners were at the Watersford Academy Haunted Hayride. Officially the work was all done by the students. Unofficially, there was a professional group of stuntmen and a small but expensive group of professional makeup artists. The kids got to play clean-up team if they were being punished, and they got to take tickets for the rides. There were half a dozen concession stands as well, and the student body of the academy was given the dubious honor of working the concessions as well. For the most part they had fun. There were exceptions, Erika Carmichael among them.

  The idea was for her to, along with her friends, pick up trash as the different groups left for their encounters with a half-dozen pyrotechnics displays and twelve or so encounters with the monsters along the path. The reality was that Bernard Hughes and two of his buddies were doing all of the work in the hopes of scoring a little quality time from the girls who would, otherwise, never give them the time of day.

  In the meantime Erika, Lauren, and Shannon were off doing their own thing, which in this particular situation meant getting stoned with a few of the townies. Erika was pretty sure the guy doing his best to suck her neck into his mouth was named Barry, but not one hundred percent certain. Barry—or whatever—was a jock, with broad shoulders and a neck as thick as his skull. He was also exactly the right type of guy to help her get even with Headmaster George Burgess.

  She stopped Barry’s hand from going too far up her skirt. He was allowed to play a little but if he wanted the bigger rewards—or even the hope of bigger rewards—he would have to take care of a few matters first. Burgess needed to be taught a lesson or two, even if he didn’t know who was handling th
e instruction.

  “Slow down, stud.” Erika put her hand on his broad chest and pushed until he got the point. “We aren’t going there. Not yet, anyway. I need a favor from you first.” The boy was a solid piece of meat, and unfortunately, that meant between his ears as well. He tried to reach up her skirt a second time, his body pressing into hers, and she had to reach down and grab his balls before he started paying attention to her words. “I said slow down.” Her hand gripped the bulge in his jeans tightly, almost but not quite rough enough to cause pain instead of pleasure.

  His face got ugly, the broad features pinching together and the thick eyebrows drawing toward the center of his skull. “You playing games with me, Erika? ’Cause I’ve heard about you. I don’t like to play games.”

  She eased up on her grip and leaned in closer, nuzzling into his thick neck. Her lips trailed over his skin and her tongue tasted the salt of his sweat. “No, honey, I’m not playing games…I just need you to do me a small favor before we go too far.” Her teeth pulled at his nape, and she felt him tense up with desire. She broke away from nibbling on his neck and looked at him with wide eyes and a pouty set to her mouth. She’d practiced the look in mirrors since she was nine and knew the impact it had on boys and men alike.

  She saw the look on his face change and knew she had him on the halfway to where she needed him for his help. With a smile and a caress across the proper part of his anatomy, she asked her favor. His grin grew as he listened and before it was all said and done, she had him exactly where she wanted him.

  II

  Josh Kinder crept out of his bedroom window at just after eleven PM and met up with Melissa Partridge in the yard between their houses. Per her instructions, he was wearing dark clothes.

  She was dressed similarly, but as far as he was concerned looked around a hundred times better in black. Melissa moved toward him in the dark, with the natural grace that girls always seemed to have. Boys, as far as he was concerned, lumbered. Girls just sort of flowed.

  “Did you bring a flashlight?” Her voice was a whisper, barely audible, but he heard her well enough and nodded, waving the flashlight where it dangled loosely from his wrist. It wasn’t exactly a big flashlight, but it would do. He hoped. They’d agreed to meet earlier, after several hours of fruitless searching for Heather.

  They’d covered a lot of the town and found nothing worth mentioning. Heather and her friends had just vanished.

  The only thing that had gone right was getting to know Melissa a little better. Even distracted with the fate of her sister, he had learned a lot about her. All of the things she said and all of the stuff he learned just made him like her more. Whenever he was around Melissa these days, he had very strong urges to unravel the mysteries of her.

  She’d been very cryptic when they discussed things earlier. He thought she wanted help with finding Heather again, but she hadn’t actually come right out and said it.

  He figured the best way to end the issue was to ask her what she had on her mind, so he did. “What’s up? Why are we meeting?”

  “I wanted your help.” She looked at him, her face almost guilty in the darkness. Like maybe she knew what was on his mind and had been counting on it to get his assistance with whatever she was thinking of doing.

  “Help? With what?”

  Melissa stepped in closer and the scent of her perfume—or maybe it was just shampoo, he had no clue—was distracting. “Heather and her friends still haven’t come back from wherever they went last night. The police have been looking for them, but I don’t think they’re looking in the right places.” Her deep, dark eyes were pools of blackness in the autumn night. He could have looked into them forever.

  “Why not?” There was a very small part of him that didn’t want to talk about her older sister or anything at all. Not really. He just wanted to be with her. But he’d do what he had to. Josh studied her face and saw it. She wasn’t being completely truthful. “You didn’t tell the cops where she is, did you? I mean where she went and where she was supposed to be.”

  His voice held an edge of accusation. He’d spent the whole day with her, looking all over the place and suddenly he was feeling like a complete loser, because all along she’d had him looking in the wrong places, too. She’d led him all over town, and he thought he’d been doing her a favor and she’d been yanking his chain.

  Melissa looked away from him and seemed to find the grass at her feet suddenly very fascinating. “No. She’d be in trouble if I told.”

  “What about where we looked? Did you know she wouldn’t be there?”

  “No, Josh. I was hoping they’d be there, because there was only one other place she said she might go.” Melissa wasn’t looking him in the face. She was feeling guilty, maybe, and that took some of the sting out of wasting a day. Well, that and getting to know her better.

  Now, most of the kids he knew wouldn’t have given a good damn if their older sibling got into trouble. Then again, most of the kids he knew hadn’t had their mom murdered by their dad. Most of the kids he knew, he would have told to go jump in the lake. Then again, Melissa wasn’t like the other kids. He nodded his head, more for himself than for her, but she smiled when she saw the gesture.

  “So where do you think she is?”

  “She was going to the Hollow.”

  There was only one hollow in the area that mattered. He knew it, every kid knew it. “That’s crazy!” His voice was a whisper, but it was an urgent one. He didn’t want anything to do with the Hollow. He’d heard all of the stories, and didn’t like the idea in the least. His voice was a loud whisper, but Melissa flinched anyway. His heart was doing a few belly flops, and he really couldn’t think of a solid reason in the world to risk life and limb going down to the Witch’s Hollow on a night when the moon could barely be seen through the clouds. The air was cold and though he couldn’t be sure, he was halfway to convinced that it was going to rain, and hard.

  But he looked at her face, saw her dark eyes and watched them blink fast, like maybe she was trying to fight back tears. And he knew he was already screwed.

  He sighed and shook his head. “Come on then. Let’s go.”

  She smiled gratefully and thanked him with a whisper. Half a minute later, they were on their way, walking away from the safety of their nice little subdivision of turn of the century homes and towards the woods; a destination neither of them had ever been to before.

  Simple fact of life: the woods are not a good place to be late at night. That fact is easily compounded when your destination is not really all that familiar to you. Nothing looked at all like he’d expected, and they had to backtrack several times as they lost the small path that wound its way through the woods between Beldam Woods and the Hollow. There were good points and bad points to the trip. The worst part, aside from being lost, was the cold. It seemed to sap the heat away and replace it with aches that felt like they planned on staying around for a good long time.

  On the plus side, being lost was a little cooler when you were lost with a cute girl. He looked over at Melissa and asked her what was really going on. “Come on. There’s got to be a reason you think the cops wouldn’t look for your sister out here. What is it?”

  “I didn’t tell them Heather came out here. She was supposed to be going to the movies.”

  He shook his head. “So why are you protecting her?”

  “Because I don’t want her getting into trouble.”

  “But if she’s already in trouble, she might need help.” He was trying to be logical, but it wasn’t working at all the way he’d planned. Melissa looked at him with a dark expression and shook her head.

  “But if she isn’t in any real trouble, if she just got stupid, she doesn’t need any more trouble.” The beam from her light struck a spot where there seemed to be nothing to see save darkness. Josh groaned. He’d forgotten about this particular obstacle. In order to reach the Hollow without use of a car, they had two choices. They could walk a mile or so out of their wa
y, or they could cross over the long metal tube that had earned the nickname “the pipe” before he was born. The pipe was one of those things that, as far as the kids in town were concerned, just was and always had been. The long pipe held electrical cables, maybe, or water, or even raw sewage for all any of them knew. Once upon a time someone had built a narrow footbridge for getting to the Hollow, and someone else, likely a town contractor, had run the pipe next to the bridge. The old wooden bridge wasn’t even a memory for Josh, who had to trust his parents that it had ever been there, but the pipe was a real thing, and it scared the hell out of him to even think about crossing over it.

  Not more than ten inches wide—four across the top before it sloped too dangerously to rest on—and perfectly round and smooth as could be, save for the patches of rust that decorated its seemingly endless length, the pipe was a personal demon that had haunted Josh a hundred times before. It was a challenge that had been laid before him on numerous occasions and one he had never managed to actually complete.

  It wasn’t only that the damned thing was narrow and slippery. Oh no, if that had been all, Josh would have crossed it with ease. It was the damned gully under the pipe that caused the problem. In the daylight you could see the ground some fifteen feet under the miniature valley that waited below the pipe. You could also see the jagged teeth of granite that thrust out of the ground like a hundred stone teeth, ready to cut flesh and break bones. Almost any dare that came his way when he was younger, Josh would have taken, and on many occasions he had stunned everyone with his courage, including himself. But the pipe was where he always failed. The long narrow deathtrap was over fifty feet long, and there was nothing to grab hold of, nothing to balance with for the entire length. And now, in the darkness, well after curfew and far away from where anyone would ever look for them, Melissa wanted him to cross the pipe, risking life and limb to see if her stupid sister had gotten herself hurt in a place that was known to be dangerous.