She looked under the seat again, along the dash, in the back, the console, the side pockets, everywhere that Brad might have hidden an extra key. Again, her search turned up empty. Again, she regretted not knowing how to hot-wire a car.
She slammed the door shut and started walking away. As she passed the trunk, her heart caught. What if Brad, or what was left of him, was dead and crumpled up inside the trunk? What if his body lay inside, bruised and broken, his blood-spattered remains splashed all over the place?
Stop it, she heard herself demanding. Mustn't think like that.
Laura hesitated, studying the trunk. Clenching her teeth, she quietly decided to leave the trunk alone. She resolved to go back to the house, and tomorrow morning, after a good night’s sleep, she and Bit would get dressed ,and together they'd just walk away from the place—on their knees, if necessary. They'd go into Greeley and try to find help. If necessary, she’d explain to the police exactly what happened.
She swung around, shoulders back, and courageously strutted away from her husband's car and whatever awful cargo might lurk inside the trunk.
She stopped.
This was insane.
She couldn’t just walk away without knowing.
What kind of wife would she be if she just walked away without at least trying to open the trunk somehow so she could know for sure?
Steeling herself, she went back and glared at the trunk as if it were some kind of puzzle she could solve. She had always admired the sleek contours of Brad’s shiny black Mercedes, its metallic sheen and smooth, graceful lines. She knew Brad had paid a fortune for this car. It was his baby, his favorite toy in all the world.
It would be a shame to damage the lock. And, without a key, how was she going to pop the trunk anyway?
She reached down and felt along the bottom of the trunk lid. She ran her fingers all the way down the bumper, searching for some lever, tab or spring or whatever piece of clever German engineering that worked the trunk latch.
Nothing.
Discouraged, she turned away in despair. Before going too far, an idea occurred to her—perhaps the key had fallen on the ground. She went back, dropped to her knees and started picking through each clump of weeds. She fingered through the snowy mud, turned over pinecones and hickory nuts. She worked her way all the way around the car, clawing and pawing the wet, half-frozen ground.
There was no key.
And the only thing she had to show for her efforts were cut fingers and torn gloves and mud-stained jeans.
She stood up and stretched. Her back ached from crawling around on her knees so long. Wiping her hands on her jeans, she realized there was nothing left to do but go back home. She would fix them a nice cup of tea and they’d build a big, cozy fire and she and Bit would sit by the window and watch until the moon came out and rose high over the lake.
⸙
LAURA HAD SPENT more time looking for the keys than she had intended. When she got back to the house, she found Bit sitting outside on the front porch, bunched up in a thick parka and watching her clomp up the driveway.
A light drizzle had started falling. Long shadows crawled up from the forest and curled around the corners of the house.
“Did you find the keys?” Bit asked hopefully. "You sure were gone long enough."
Laura plopped down next to her on the wet steps and shook her head. “No such luck,” she gasped, catching her breath. “How about a hot cup of tea?”
“I don’t think I want anything.”
Laura patted her daughter’s leg. “I know. Neither do I. But a good cup of Earl Gray might lift our spirits, give us a little strength.”
“Why?”
It was a simple question, but simultaneously confusing. “What do you mean?”
“Why do we have to keep up our strength? We’re going to die up here anyway.”
Laura leaned forward and took her daughter’s hands in her own. “Listen to me, sweetheart. I've told you already, we are not going to die. That, I can promise you. We are going to keep going on, fighting, whatever it takes. Someone will come along. They’re bound to. We are not going to give up. Do you understand me?”
Tears formed in the corners of Bit’s big brown eyes. “I want to, Mom. I really do want to believe you. But..."
“Look, let me put it another way," Laura interjected. "Your friends out there…” she started, stretching her finger toward the lake, “…the people in the lake. You told me they’re depending on us to help them, to free their souls, to put an end to their darkness and long torment in the water. Do you want to stop now, just give up trying to help them? If you do, think about it, sweetheart. Their suffering will just go on and on and on until Gabriel blows his horn and the graves open up and the devil comes back to earth.”
Far off in the forest, a hoot owl stirred in the tall branches. Darkness was falling fast, and the woods would soon come alive with the flutter of a thousand wings as the bats and owls and other creatures of the night came out to feed.
Bit shook off her self-pity. She wiped her tear-stained eyes and smiled. “You’re right, Mom. You’re always right.” Perking up, she gave Laura a big smile. “You are so brave, Mom. You’re always fighting, never backing down. I…I hope that when I grow up, I’ll be as strong and brave as you.””
Laura pulled her daughter close against her. “Oh, sweetheart, you’ve made me feel like the Queen of England,” she beamed, struggling to hold back a flood of tears.
As they cuddled on the front steps, neither noticed a gloved hand part the bushes at the far end of the driveway…
Fifty-Nine
"MOM, COME QUICK!” Bit shouted.
Laura heard her daughter calling but didn’t respond. She had just finished putting away the dishes and now stood leaning over the sink taking a breather. The ordeal with the car earlier that evening had left her utterly exhausted.
She stared blankly out the window, watching the moon rise higher above the dark, smoky clouds. She was still standing like that when Bit rounded the corner and stopped.
“Mom?” Bit said softly, hesitantly, as if reluctant to intrude upon her mother’s space.
Laura finally swung her head around and locked eyes with her daughter. “What now?” she asked in a low, monotone voice. It was a voice that seemed as remote and detached from reality as had been the conversation she had had earlier with the old woman on the phone.
Bit scrunched up her shoulders and said, “They’re back.”
⸙
A BONE-JARRING CRASH of thunder rattled the house. Laura glanced back out the kitchen window to see a fast-moving army of thick, black clouds swallow up the tiny sliver of moon.
Rain started to tap gently against the window, then started splashing. Frenzied bolts of lightning clawed down from the sky, scratching craters in the heavy clouds and surging across the great trees of the forest that shook and swayed.
Laura sagged, even as Bit looked on. “Oh, no, not another storm, too,” she lamented.
⸙
BIT PULLED HER ACROSS the living room to the front sliding glass doors. “Look,” she said, pointing down toward the dark, rain-swept beach.
Laura turned and looked, and when she did, her heart almost stopped beating.
Outside, gathered at the water’s edge, stood six solemn figures—a tall, heavy-set man with a full beard, a frail woman with a long, tattered dress that dragged across the sand, two young girls and a couple of teenage boys. She couldn’t see their faces, but the old-fashioned clothes they wore flapped in the wind and draped down to the ground.
"It's them," Bit said.
But Laura knew that even before the words tumbled out of her daughter's mouth.
Bit said: “They're the ones I've been telling you about, the people in the lake.” She pointed to the tallest boy with flaming red hair who stood with his head cocked and staring up at them and said, “That’s Luke, the older brother who I saw the other night. The other boy is Mason. He's the one who helped me do
wn on the rocks and showed me the old coins, Mom. He's also the one who saved me from that awful old bearded man with the axe in the forest.”
Laura continued to stare blankly at the spectral figures, wishing hard they weren't really there, just wind-tossed limbs and debris. She knew they weren’t real, couldn’t possibly be real, yet there they were, all six of them, just like Bit had described, glimmering, translucent shapes that wouldn’t go away.
“Mom,” Bit asked. “We are still going to help them, aren’t we?”
Laura nodded without really thinking, automatically, unable to break her daughter's gaze, a strange numbness having taken control of her senses. Her eyes pivoted toward the dusky figures looming like frozen shadows down on the beach. For the first time, she saw with startling clarity the pained, mournful look clouding their pale, luminous faces. No big deal, she thought, just six ordinary ghosts hovering along the storm-tossed shoreline of a mountain lake in a crackling thunderstorm.
Then, as the rain picked up and the winds began to moan, Laura watched the apparitions slowly start to dissolve, shade by shade. She had never seen a ghost disappear before, and she found herself utterly transfixed as the phantoms grew grainy and dim, gradually fading, until, with a final flicker, they vanished like a candle snuffed out by the wind.
⸙
“WE WON’T FORGET ABOUT them, will we?” Bit asked.
Laura stared across the dining room table at her daughter and smiled. “No sweetheart. As soon as we get back to Atlanta, I’ll contact a lawyer I know who works for the Department of Natural Resources. He’ll know what to do.”
“You promise?”
“I promise. He’ll have to get permission from the federal and state authorities to excavate parts of the lake so they can retrieve the bodies. That might take a while—maybe a year or so—but once we tell everybody what happened to those poor people, it shouldn’t be too difficult.”
“Then what?”
“Then we get a church to bury them in a proper Christian grave. That way they’ll be free. Finally free of the water that has imprisoned them for so terribly long.”
“That’s all Luke said they ever wanted, so their souls can go on to Heaven.”
“Don’t worry, honey. Once this is over, I think they will be at peace in Heaven. The world will know what happened here long ago, about what those terrible men did to them. The dark history of this lake will no longer be a secret.”
That was what Phyllis had been trying to do all along, Laura theorized. The book she was working so hard on, at least the one on local history legends, was aimed at exposing the torrid truth behind the grisly murders that had occurred here more than eight centuries ago.
As she thought about Phyllis’s mauled and mutilated body hanging upside down on the wall in her bedroom back at the cabin, Laura felt a tinge of guilt. Ever since her second visit to Phyllis’s house, where her odd rants about Bit and bizarre mannerisms displayed toward Lord Nelson had left her badly shaken, Laura had begun to quietly spin a mental web of intrigue about the old gal’s true motivations up here all alone on the mountain. Then, after that bizarre encounter on the beach in the middle of a stormy, Laura had grown particularly worried about what dark, sinister secrets the old professor was hiding.
Tragically, Phyllis’s horrible run-in with Paul now convinced Laura how wrong she had been about Phyllis.
Laura suddenly recalled the headlines from the Atlanta Constitution and the news breaks on TV about all those decapitated girls—just like Phyllis.
They had been killed with a knife, had their hearts cut out, then left hanging upside down crucifixion-style— just like Phyllis.
It had been Paul all along. Paul was the Atlanta Butcher!
It all made sense now.
All those trips out of town.
The trip to Denver that never was.
How many poor girls had fallen victim to that bastard’s sharp knife over the years?
She shuddered to think what might have happened to her if she had not had the Beretta when he broke into the house. She had Brad to thank for that.
Poor Brad.
Had he fallen prey to Paul as well?
What other explanation was there?
“Then they’ll be at peace?” Bit asked.
Laura shook her head to clear the tangled thoughts. She looked at Bit and nodded. “Then they will be at peace.”
⸙
LAURA LEANED BACK, watching her daughter nibbling around the corners of her peanut butter and jelly sandwich. “I know I’ve asked you this a dozen times, but will you ever forgive me for bringing you up here?”
“It wasn’t your fault, Mom. Actually, it was nobody’s fault.”
Actually…such a big word for such a small girl.
Laura reached across the table and pushed a strand of her daughter's hair away from her forehead. “Have I ever told you that you are one tough little cookie?”
Bit took a sip of water. “You’re the one who’s tough, Mom,” she replied. A few seconds later she scrunched up her face and asked, “Mom, are you sure it was really Paul who killed Brad?”
Laura took a deep breath and sighed. They had been over this a dozen times. She knew how much Bit had liked Paul, but she hadn’t seen what he had done to poor Phyllis. Nor had she been there when he attacked her with the knife in the kitchen.
“Who else could it have been?" Seeing the look on Bit's face, she added, "You just have to trust me on this one, sweetheart. I did the only thing I knew to do.”
Chapter Sixty
AFTER DINNER, LAURA escorted Bit up to her room and helped her get ready for bed. She fluffed up the pillows and straightened the covers. Then she lit the kerosene heater.
“I see you two looking at me,” she said to Teddy and Anastasia. She had put the pair of dolls on the dresser while she got Bit’s bed ready. “I wasn’t going to forget about you two.” She grabbed the dolls and positioned them on the pillow next to Anastasia.
“I’m going back downstairs to clean up the kitchen,” Laura said to Bit who was in the bathroom brushing her teeth by the light of a flashlight.
⸙
LAURA WALKED PAST the pantry, but not before taking a peek inside to make sure Paul’s body was still there. It was. Relieved, she continued into the living room and lay a fresh log on the fire.
It was late, and all she wanted to do now was crash on the sofa by the fireplace and try to forget about the events of the past few days.
Tomorrow, she had every intention of getting them up early and hiking down the mountain into town.
⸙
BIT LAY IN BED, playing with Teddy and Anastasia and listening to the rain drum softly on the cedar shake roof. The kerosene lantern burned low, casting long, tumbling shadows on the ceiling. "That's a funny one," she said to her playmates as the shadowy smudges wavered and swirled and intermingled to form new patterns. "I think this one looks just like Ichabod Crane," she said. " And that one like a silly rabbit." Another twirling image whirled across the ceiling. “That one looks like you,” she laughed, poking Teddy in the stomach.
Suddenly, she heard a thumping sound coming from outside the glass door. Thinking a limb might had fallen on the deck, she got up to investigate. Her toes felt icy cold on the tile floor as she tip-toed across the room in her socks.
She wasn’t really surprised at what she saw when she opened the blinds and looked out. On the beach down below, dozens of ghostly figures stood silhouetted in the moonlight along the gently-lapping shoreline. They wore an odd mixture of garments, from old-fashioned gowns and suits and ties to shabby overalls and plain dresses. Most of the men wore beards and looked old, as did the women. She spotted several babies in the crowd, mostly clad in white, tapering gowns that trailed down to the sand. Bit shuddered when she noticed that the figures were faceless and seemed to hover, their feet not really touching the ground.
As her apprehension mounted, she noticed something else strange about the crowd of gray phantoms. Inste
ad of gazing up at her serenely as always before, they began to jerk and twitch spasmodically, flailing their arms up and down in some kind of macabre dance. They darted and whizzed about randomly, floating and swaying, as if convulsing to some wild and silent rhythm. Bit recognized the boy called Luke, who cocked his red-maned head at an odd angle and stared up at her with his empty, eyeless face.
Suddenly an angry, black-bearded man clad in overalls sprang from the dark, arms outstretched and banging his fists against the glass door.
Bit fell back, terrified. “Mom!” she shrieked.
Downstairs, Laura heard Bit's voice and raced up to her room. When she saw her daughter crumpled on the floor against the wall, she dropped to her knees and asked, "What is it, sweetheart?"
“Out there,” Bit sobbed, pointing beyond the glass door.
⸙
LAURA RUSHED OVER to the door and looked out. Except for the rubble and wreckage cast up by last night's storm, the beach was empty. "Where?" she asked, craning her head left and right. "I don’t see anything..."
Bit saw the bewildered look on her mother's face. Still trembling, she got to her feet slowly, fearful of the big, bearded man on the other side of the door. When she finally opened her eyes and peered out into the darkness, her mouth fell open: there was nothing there.
Disappointed, she cried out, “But they were there,” she said in a skittering voice. “I saw them—all of them, not just Mason and Luke’s family.”
Laura drew the blinds, then hugged her daughter. “Who was there?” she inquired, fearful of what Bit might say.
“The people from the town. The town out there under the lake.”
The People in the Lake Page 26