“That’s right,” Pete agrees.
“And possibly The Chain, if The Chain has gotten his notebook and begun deciphering it. So what code would he have introduced here that would slow them down but allow me to pass through freely?”
“I don’t know,” Pete says.
Rachel puts the phone down on the table and paces the living room. Rain pounds on the skylight. A foghorn sounds from the Coast Guard ship.
“Something from your philosophy background?” Pete suggests.
“All he knows about me is that I have cancer, I’m a mom, and my team is the New York—shit, I have it!”
She picks up the phone and types in 23.
A message flashes on the screen: That is the correct number. You may start the application after entering your username.
“Twenty-three?” Pete says. “I don’t get it. It’s prime, but twenty isn’t prime.”
“They’re retired Yankees’ numbers. A Bostonian’s not going to know that, but a Yankees fan will,” Rachel says.
The app opens up on a map of the Eastern Seaboard of the United States. The app is simple and user-friendly. There’s a green Begin Trace button and a red End Trace button. The simplicity, however, conceals some pretty clever mathematics and statistical analysis.
“What’s the username?” Pete asks.
Rachel types Rachel.
Username not recognized. Two more login attempts, a message on the screen says.
She types Erik.
Username not recognized. One more login attempt.
She types Ariadne.
A screen full of text appears.
Welcome, Ariadne. This app should work with text messages and with phone communications. The beta version will also work, to some extent, with encrypted communication apps. Version 2 will work with most encrypted message apps. Simply click the red button when you are on the phone and this app will attempt to locate the cell phone tower nearest to the call’s point of origin. The longer you are in communication with your interlocutor, the closer and more accurate the app will be.
She shows the text to Pete.
He reads it, nods. “So if they respond to your Wickr text with Wickr only, it might not work.”
“I guess not.”
“If we weren’t under time pressure, I’d say wait until tomorrow morning. Sunday morning, early, most people are generally at home. Saturday afternoon…”
“It’s now or never. We have to take the gamble.”
“OK, then.”
“Here goes,” Rachel says.
She clicks the Wickr button on her phone and begins typing.
I was thinking about what you said on Thanksgiving. I want to know if there’s a way of getting off The Chain forever. I’m having nightmares. My daughter gets terrible stomach cramps. Can we somehow buy ourselves off The Chain permanently? Thank you.
She shows the message to Pete and sends it to Wickr 2348383hudykdy2.
Ten minutes later, she gets a notification that her interlocutor is sending her a response. She clicks Begin Trace, and Erik’s hunter-killer algorithm powers up immediately.
It is a pleasant surprise to hear from you. It is a little early for Christmas presents, don’t you think? It is with regret that I must inform you that we do not offer the service you require, the message says.
The GPS map on Rachel’s phone lights up, but then nothing happens. The map freezes and the app crashes. She stabs at the screen, but it’s dead.
“It didn’t work,” she says.
“He didn’t think it was going to work with the encrypted apps. He said the phone trace works better.”
“If I say ‘Please call me,’ it will definitely make them suspicious,” Rachel says.
“I don’t know.”
A thought occurs to Rachel. “You know, Erik might be a crazy person. This might have no hope whatsoever of working.”
“MIT doesn’t employ dummies.”
“But he still might be crazy. Maybe the grief has driven him mad?”
“Do you think you can risk another communication without pissing them off?”
“What does it matter? As soon as they find my name in the notebook, they’ll come for us.”
“We don’t know that they’ve got the notebook. He might have hidden it in a safe or something.”
Rachel looks through the windows. “They have it,” she says. “They’re reading it right now. Sooner or later, they’ll put two and two together.”
“My fault. I’m really sorry about that,” Pete says.
“I couldn’t have gotten Kylie back without you, Pete.”
Rachel opens the Wickr app again.
There must be some way of getting off The Chain forever. Something I can do for you or some amount of money I can pay. A way to close things off permanently, so we know that we are safe. Please, for the sake of my little girl, tell me what it is, she types and sends the message.
They have to wait only two minutes for a response. Again it comes through Wickr, not the phone. She fires up the hunter-killer application.
You must be pretty stupid. What was the first thing we told you? It’s not about the money. It’s about The Chain itself. It’s got to keep going forever. Lose one link in The Chain and the whole thing collapses. OK, dummy? Wickr 2348383hudykdy2 replies.
The hunter-killer algorithm searches and recalibrates, and Erik’s GPS locator lights up but once more crashes with no result. Rachel’s phone freezes and she has to turn it off and on again.
“Nothing,” Rachel says.
“Shit!”
“I’ll try one more,” Rachel says.
Please. I’m begging you. For the sake of my family, is there anything I can do to get off The Chain? she types.
She shows it to Pete. “Send it,” he says.
She sends the message. This time there is no quick response.
Five minutes go by.
Ten.
“That’s it, then,” Rachel says.
Her iPhone rings.
She fumbles for it and drops it onto the floor.
It bounces on its edge and the screen cracks.
“Shit!” Rachel screams and grabs the phone and turns on Erik’s app. “Hello?” she says.
It’s the Unknown Caller. The voice, as usual, is disguised.
“There is one thing you can do for us, Rachel. Why don’t you kill yourself, you stupid bitch!” the voice says.
The hunter-killer algorithm flares to life and begins zooming in on an area of Massachusetts north of Boston.
“Please, I—”
“Goodbye, Rachel,” the Unknown Caller says.
Keep her talking, Pete mouths.
“Wait. Don’t go. I know things about you. I’ve found out stuff,” Rachel says.
There’s a pause before the voice asks, “What things?”
Rachel’s mind races. She doesn’t want to be associated with Erik in case they haven’t got the notebook after all. What things about The Chain could she have found out on her own?
“The woman who took my daughter was named Heather. Her husband accidentally told Kylie that her son is named Jared. It shouldn’t be difficult to find a woman named Heather with a son named Jared.”
“What would you do with that information?” the voice asks.
“We could start tracing our way backward to the very beginning of The Chain.”
“That would be signing your own death warrant, Rachel. You’re a very stupid woman, gambling with your life and your daughter’s life like this,” the voice says.
All the while they talk, the app zeros in on a smaller and smaller area of Massachusetts. A diminishing circle whose focus is now somewhere south of Ipswich and north of Boston.
“I don’t want to cause any trouble. I—I just want to feel safe,” Rachel says.
“If you ever contact us again, you’ll be dead by the end of the day,” the voice says. The call is disconnected.
But the app worked. The phone call was made in the Cho
ate Island area in the marshes of Essex County. The cell tower nearest the caller is on Choate Island itself.
Rachel takes a screenshot of the map and shows it to Pete.
“This is it!” he cries.
“Let’s go!” Rachel agrees.
They run outside to the truck.
They speed south along Route 1A through Rowley and Ipswich. In Ipswich they get onto 133, a narrow road through Ipswich’s Great Marsh.
They drive as close as they can to Choate Island but there are no roads onto the boggy island itself, so they’ll have to walk if they’re going to find the cell tower. The fog isn’t so bad down here, but the rain is chilly and coming at them slantwise from the ocean.
They park the pickup and get out. They put on coats and hiking boots. Pete’s armed himself with the rifle, the Glock, the .45, and two flash-bang stun grenades that he thinks might come in handy. Rachel takes her shotgun. She’s shaking. She’s so afraid, she’s finding it hard to breathe.
“Don’t worry, Rach. There’s not going to be any trouble today. This is a scouting mission. We’ll get the info and call the feds.”
They walk along a trail into the swampy terrain near Choate. Despite the rain and the cold, it’s surprisingly insect-ridden. The land on either side of the path is choked and overgrown, dense and claustrophobic. Here and there they get glimpses of the Inn River, thick and sludgy under a layer of brown algae. The Inn is a tributary of the Miskatonic River, which curves through the mire somewhere to the north. The whole marsh seems to be caving inward, leaning toward some hidden center of mass. Something like Spanish moss is hanging from the trees; birds screech in the upper branches, and winter hasn’t had its usual culling effect on the biting flies.
Rachel’s spooked. They’re getting close. She can feel it.
The dreams and song lines and nightmares are leading here.
They have been warned off probing into The Chain, and here she is following The Chain backward along Ariadne’s thread.
But the labyrinth is not going to give up its secrets so easily.
They search the swamps and bogs on Choate for the next three freezing, filthy hours and come up with nothing.
No cell-phone tower.
No cell-phone relay station.
Barely any sign of civilization at all.
They stop at a little clearing and drink from their water bottles and then they start out again. More frustrating hours of this. By dusk, they are utterly soaked and exhausted and bitten raw by bugs. Rachel isn’t sure if they are on Choate Island or back on the mainland or on a different island in a different river system completely. They have crossed a hundred little streams and trails. She’s beat. Chemotherapy patients do not go trekking through bogs in December.
She gasps for air.
She’s dying right here, right now, out in the swamp. Pete can’t know this.
She looks at the threatening sky overhead. Towering gray-black clouds looming over the marshes to the west. “Didn’t the weather forecast say snow?” she says.
“Possibly, yeah. And we definitely do not want to be out here in the snow.”
“If you were going to build a cell-phone tower, where would you put it?” Rachel asks him. “You’re the engineer.”
“On the high ground,” Pete says.
“Is there any high ground?”
“What about that hill over there?” Pete says.
It’s a very little hill, maybe thirty feet above sea level. It’s five hundred yards away through the thicket.
“Why not?”
They are two-thirds of the way up it when they begin to see the outline of the cell-phone tower. It has fallen over, or perhaps it partially sank and tipped into the ground.
They reach the top of the hill, their breathing ragged.
From up here, you can see the whole Inn River system stretching to the west. The sickly green alluvial plain is vast, fetid, and unholy, as if it’s covering up a lost corsair city waiting to be exhumed from its own sewers.
Rachel’s heart sinks.
Erik’s plan had been what, exactly? What did he expect them to do after they found the cell-phone tower closest to where The Chain’s calls had come from?
“Now what?” she asks Pete.
Pete looks at the clouds and checks his watch. It’s five. They’ve been hiking all day. They’re cold and very wet and he doesn’t want Rachel to be in the swamps at night. Not without proper equipment and with a snowstorm coming.
And he has other issues. He messed up this morning with that two-thirds-dose bullshit. His skin is starting to crawl. His eyes are dry. He’s getting the sweats real bad. It hasn’t fully hit yet, but it will.
He needs the fix.
Soon.
“Do you think we should call it a day?” he asks.
Rachel shakes her head. They’re so close. She has to find them before they come back for her. They won’t get another chance at this. It has to be now.
“Call it a day?” Pete asks again.
“And then what?” Rachel asks.
“Go to the feds? Tell them everything. Let them search for the house.”
“We’ll go to jail.”
“The Dunleavys might not cooperate with the cops,” Pete says.
Rachel shakes her head again. “They’ll help us only if they know The Chain is finished.”
Pete nods.
“What’s that over there by the river to the north?” Rachel asks, taking Pete’s binoculars. “Is that a cabin?”
She scans the structure.
It’s about three-quarters of a mile ahead. A big old house with a deck that goes all the way around the outside. And it’s on a direct vector with the cell-phone tower.
“It’s definitely worth a closer look,” Pete says. “But we’re going to have to wade another stream or two. It’s actually over on the mainland, I think.”
They hike through an icy stream that comes up to their thighs and then up through a sparse little wood to within a few hundred yards of the cabin.
It’s a large dwelling built partially on stilts near a river. It’s next to a couple of derelict farm buildings sinking back into the marsh to the east. Several vehicles are parked under the veranda on the north side of the structure.
The hairs on the back of Rachel’s neck are standing up.
Something about this place screams denouement.
“What do you want to do, Rach?” Pete asks.
“Let’s try to go a little closer. If we can get a look at those license plates…”
“We’ll have to crawl. Nice and low to the ground. The cover’s not so dense here; we could be seen,” Pete says.
Rachel shoulders her shotgun on its strap, drinks the last of her water, and follows Pete as they crawl toward the cabin.
The terrain is boggy and damp with brambles, thistles, and beach-plum bushes.
Within thirty seconds they are scratched, cut, bleeding.
Snow begins to fall.
They’re a hundred yards away now.
It’s an ugly property, all angles and ungainly additions from different eras with different timbers. It has been expanded very recently to accommodate what appear to be a couple of extra bedrooms on the upper story.
Pete takes out the binoculars and tries to read the plates on the vehicles under the house, but he can’t quite make them out. “Rachel, you’ve got good eyes, do you want to try?”
She scans the cars. A Mercedes, a couple of pickup trucks, a Toyota.
She sees someone stepping onto the wraparound balcony.
“Kylie! Oh my God!” she screams. She scrambles to her feet and begins running toward the house.
“What the hell?” Pete yells, momentarily stunned.
She has twenty yards on him, but Pete catches her in seven seconds. He tackles her and she goes down just in front of an old tree stump.
“What the hell are you doing?” Pete says, turning her to face him.
She struggles violently to break free of h
is grip. “They’ve got Kylie! They’ve got her! I saw her on the balcony,” Rachel says breathlessly.
Pete looks up over the tree stump toward the balcony. There’s no one there. “You’re mistaken.”
“It was her! I saw her!”
Pete shakes his head. There’s no way they’ve gotten Kylie. She’s with Marty and they’ve been careful.
Rachel is hyperventilating.
“It’s not Kylie,” Pete whispers. “And I can prove it. We put the GPS tracker in her shoes, remember? I can show you exactly where she is, and I promise you it’s not here.”
“Show me on the GPS,” Rachel demands. “I know what I saw.”
Pete opens the GPS app and shows Rachel that Kylie is nowhere near them. “She’s in Boston.”
Rachel looks at the phone. Sure enough, Kylie’s GPS is beeping from downtown Boston, not here. “I was sure that was her,” she says, confused.
“Come on, let’s get back to the cover of those bushes before we’re seen,” Pete says.
65
Innsmouth High. Ginger at her tenth-grade career day.
“So what do you want to do with your life, Margaret?”
“I want to be an FBI agent like my father.”
“This is very laudable, sweetie, but you’ll need to improve some of your grades.”
“Which ones?”
“Your English is great, but your math and science need a little work. Your brother can help you, I’m sure.”
“Yeah, he loves that stuff.”
Oliver helping Ginger with her homework in their grandfather’s big ramshackle house by the Inn River. Screens and ant traps and bugs in the summer. Woodstoves and cold and kerosene heaters in the winter.
Daniel teaching the twins how to hunt in the dark places of the Miskatonic Valley. Daniel teaching the twins how to skin and smoke and preserve the meat.
Daniel telling the kids old cop stories. Old war stories.
Ginger and Oliver work hard and they both get into BU, which makes Daniel proud. Olly studies software engineering. Ginger studies psychology.
Both of them do very well indeed. The only fly in the ointment is the amount of money they have to borrow for student loans. Daniel is not a wealthy man and they have grown up poor.
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