The Seeker: A Mystery at Walden Pond

by R. B. Chesterton

  “And nothing to exonerate him, either. Now his ex-girlfriend is beaten to death in the park he patrols.” She dared me to look away. “Either you’re very brave or very stupid.”

  “Neither, actually. I don’t believe Joe harmed the child. He couldn’t have. And he didn’t hurt Karla Steele. Her drug-infested lifestyle caused her death.”

  “How many woman have expressed similar sentiments after the man in their life did something horrid? It’s almost a cliché.”

  “You shouldn’t malign a man without proof.” She had gotten under my skin.

  “Have you ever lost someone you loved, someone more important to you than life itself?” Her expression softened.

  “I’ve lost a lot, Mrs. West. Plenty. But I don’t accuse innocent people of taking the things I’ve lost.”

  “You’re young. You have no clue how people can deceive you.”

  I wondered if she was talking about the Lobranos or herself. “Tell me about Mischa,” I said. “From all accounts, she was a perfect child.”

  “Ask Joe Sinclair. He was the last one to see her alive.”

  “That’s not true. Besides, there’s nothing to indicate she’s dead.”

  “And nothing to show she’s alive.” She tilted her head, as if reforming her opinion of me. “You’re not quite the bookworm Dorothea paints you. I predict you’re going to surprise all of us. Yes, I believe you’ll make us all sit up and take notice.” She saw someone over my shoulder. “Excuse me, Miss Cahill.”

  She brushed past me and met another couple with a hearty laugh and a scathing glance over her shoulder.

  “Bitch,” I said loudly enough for several people to turn and stare at me.

  Joe had fled the party, and I went outside to find him. He couldn’t allow fools to run him away. The night was chilly, and I walked through the parking lot to search for his truck. It sat where he’d parked it, but there was no sign of Joe. Cold and concern hit me at the same time. Where had he gone? More importantly, was he alone? Had Mischa used the guise of a child to lure him deeper into the woods?

  Laughter and music floated out of the inn, but I heard only the thud of my heart. I had to find Joe. Hoping against hope, I went to the highway to see if he’d walked that way. Because I didn’t want to think he’d gone to the cabin. Not there, where he was bait for Mischa.

  When he wasn’t at the main road, I accepted my fate. I would have to go to the cabin and search for him. But first I would get my jacket and make excuses to Dorothea.

  Happy partygoers jammed the inn, and I slid between them, searching for Dorothea’s round face. She found me and tapped my shoulder. “Have you seen Patrick?”

  The possibilities almost made me stagger. “No. I’m looking for Joe.”

  “Behind you. At the bar. If you see Patrick, tell him to find me in the kitchen. I need him. That boy can disappear on a dime.”

  “I’ll do it.”

  Dorothea was swept away in a surge of the crowd that also brought Joe to me. He held two glasses of red wine. “Sorry for the delay. I had to step outside and pretend to smoke a cigarette. That woman would have gladly put a stake through my heart.”

  “Mrs. West is a snot. Don’t worry about her.”

  “She’s a neighbor of the Lobranos. I should have warned you. I’m sure she was only too eager to tell you what a bastard I am and how you’ll wake up with your throat slit or some such.”

  “She’s a privileged bitch.” There was no point repeating her hurtful words. “I suspect she doesn’t really like anyone except those with a similar bank account.”

  Joe leaned over and kissed my cheek. “You always say the right thing, Aine. Thank you.”

  I clinked my glass against his. “Drink up. The evening is young.”

  As I lifted my glass, I saw Patrick. He stood in the kitchen doorway searching the room. When he saw me, he started forward, then stopped as if he were in pain. Fear of what he might have in mind made me move toward him. I didn’t want a confrontation between Joe and my former lover in the middle of Dorothea’s Christmas bash.

  “Are you okay?” Joe asked.

  “No. Excuse me for a moment.”

  I went to Patrick. When I was only a couple of feet away, he stared at me as if he’d never seen me. “What’s wrong?” I asked him.

  He trembled as large drops of sweat traced down his cheek and dripped onto his dress shirt. “I don’t feel well.” His jaw tightened and he could barely speak. “I’m sick.”

  “I’ll get Dorothea.” I rushed past him and into the kitchen. Several helpers labored over the hot ovens, but there was no sign of Dorothea. I went along the back hallway to the suite of offices. She often did her books at night after the inn closed. I tapped on the door but no one answered.

  I turned to leave and smacked into Patrick. He’d followed me and stood like a hulk in the hall. “You need to go home,” I said. “You’re sick.”

  “Dorothea needs me tonight. This is a big event for her.”

  A gong sounded. The entertainment was about to begin. I had to get to my seat or risk disrupting the play. “Patrick, you need to lie down and rest. You’re muscles are jerking.” His breathing came shallow and fast.

  “Can I go to your cabin and wait for you?”

  I closed my eyes and sighed. “No. Joe can take you home.”

  “I took care of you when you were sick.”

  “Yes, you did. But it isn’t appropriate for me to nurse a nineteen-year-old boy in my cabin when he has a mother and a home.”

  He staggered. When I caught him, he was hot and clammy. “You’re very sick, Patrick.” How had he gone from a healthy young man to someone who looked as if he might keel over in such a short time? “What happened to you?”

  “I fell in love with you.”

  Before I could respond, he slumped to the floor.

  33

  After clearing the guests out of the inn, I joined Dorothea and Joe in the small back bedroom where Patrick thrashed and moaned while we waited for paramedics and an ambulance. Joe had carried him into the spare room and stretched him out on the narrow single bed.

  Joe and Dorothea worked frantically to loosen his clothes and check for any bites or wounds while I fetched cold water and towels in an effort to give him some relief. His eyes rolled wildly as he fought. Every few minutes, he would bolt upward and try to free himself of Joe’s grip as he cried out in pain. He complained of backaches and an inability to breathe, and at times his jaw seemed to lock in place.

  He rambled, but most of what he said was incomprehensible. To Joe’s repeated questions of what happened, Patrick’s answers had no meaning. At least not to me.

  At one point, he stilled. His eyes opened and he looked directly at Dorothea as if he recognized her. “Don’t let me die,” Patrick said weakly. “I’m afraid. She gave me something. She poisoned me.”

  “Who did?” Dorothea asked.

  “She did. She wants me dead.”

  Muscle spasms set in. “Oh, god! Oh, god. I’m dying. The pain—” He contorted as if his limbs were rigid. I stepped away, terrified at what I witnessed.

  Patrick’s beautiful body bent backwards until his head drew close to his feet. He screamed in agony. I cowered in a corner, my hands over my ears, unable to successfully block the sounds of his anguish or do anything to help him.

  “What happened to him?” Joe demanded. “What could he have gotten into? Poison? Pesticides? Can you think of anything?”

  “No,” Dorothea said. “I don’t know. He was fine an hour ago. He disappeared for a little while, but he came right back. I thought he was talking with a guest.”

  “She did it.” Patrick gasped the words. “I saw her. In the woods.”

  I pushed forward. “Who did you see?” I tried to take his hand but his arm was inflexible. “Who did you see, Patrick?”

  His eyes rolled up in his head, his body spasmed, and then he fell back, unconscious. The only sound in the room was Joe’s ragged breathing and Do
rothea’s soft whimpers.

  The paramedics arrived and started fluids and oxygen. An ambulance waited to transport him to Boston General, but the EMTs wanted to stabilize him. They feared he would convulse in the ambulance and they wanted fluids and monitors in place.

  Joe, Dorothea, and I were shuffled into the hallway. “Aine, would you call Patrick’s parents?” Dorothea asked.

  “Me?” I didn’t want to. How did one tell parents their child might die?

  “Please. I can’t do it. I can’t. Patrick has worked for me for over five years. He’d come after school even before he could drive. I love him like my own child.”

  Joe put a reassuring hand on my back. “Just tell them to get here as quickly as they can. But hurry, Aine. They may not have much time.”

  At first Mr. and Mrs. Leahy couldn’t accept the seriousness of their son’s condition. He’d been fine when he’d left home for work only five hours before. Nothing too awful could happen in such a short time. They said they were on the way, and when I urged them to hurry, they finally understood.

  I returned to stand vigil outside the room with my friends. Through the open door, I could see the two paramedics hovering over Patrick’s too-still body. Their expressions made me want to cry.

  “What could have happened to him?” Dorothea used the cuff of her holiday blouse to wipe her tears. “He was teasing me this afternoon. He was in good spirits and though he was a little preoccupied, he wasn’t sick.”

  “I don’t know,” I answered automatically. He said that she’d given him something. What had he meant? Was he delusional, or had someone made Patrick ill? My thoughts were like cockroaches, scurrying for dark corners. In the back of my mind, the suspicion that Mischa was the source of his illness took root and blossomed. She’d entered him—possessed him. She’d taken control of his body and his mind. Was this horror the result? What had she done to him?

  A commotion in the room riveted my attention.

  “We’re losing him!” a paramedic said.

  Dorothea gripped my hand, squeezing the bones so harshly I almost cried out. We stood unmoving, holding our breath, as the medics got out the cardiac paddles and tried to shock his heart into beating.

  After three attempts, they grew still.

  “No!” Dorothea hurled herself into the room and put her hands on Patrick’s face. “No! Bring him back! Do something!”

  The paramedics mumbled and turned away. Joe went to Dorothea and pulled her back from the body. “Come on,” he said gently. “This won’t help him. He’s gone.”

  “No!” Dorothea turned to me, her face a mask of anguish. “Make him—” she broke off and sobbed.

  I’d never felt so useless. I stood, clenching and unclenching my hands, unable to find a rational action to take. It was impossible. A young man who’d been vital and alive was dead. It was too much to process.

  Patrick’s parents arrived in a rush of questions that turned to wails. I moved back, giving them room.

  Dorothea and Joe spoke with them and tried to calm them. The inn had become a place I wanted to escape, but there was no going back to my cabin. Things needed to be done. My past was littered with the work of the dead. Food preparation, cleaning, putting away reminders—the soft work of women to ease the loss of a beloved.

  When Granny Siobhan had died, I returned to Kentucky. I entered the house I’d grown up in to find a clutch of crows had taken over the kitchen and downstairs. Everywhere I looked, old women dressed in black stood sentinel, their faces drawn in long lines of sorrow. As they cleaned the kitchen, prepared the front room for the wake, and washed the body, they rustled in their black. It was a sound I’d always associate with death.

  The thing I remembered most was that they never spoke. The ritual of death was well known. Each woman played her part, whether it was cooking or dusting or braiding Granny’s long, gray hair. There was no discussion what she’d wear in her coffin. Her best black dress. The pattern would not vary as long as that generation of Cahills lived.

  I slowly inched away from the bedroom and went to the inn’s kitchen. I didn’t know the role I was meant to play. The hired help stood motionless, unsure of the next move. They looked to me as if I might have answers. Mountains of food ready to be served covered the cook tops and counters.

  “Put it all away,” I said, finding something I could do for Dorothea, and for Patrick. “Refrigerate what you can. Take the rest to the homeless shelters. No one will be eating here tonight.”

  My command freed them from the spell of dread that held them immobilized. Eager for action, they took up the chores.

  In the dining rooms I blew out the candles, aware yet again of the still beauty of the night outside the windows of the inn. The silvered woods and the starry night held a different reality than the one inside.

  Cries of despair rang out from the back room, and I worked to ignore them. Joe was better equipped to comfort Dorothea and Patrick’s family than I. My value culminated in tending to the details no one else remembered. Food put away, candles blown out, fire banked and ashes swept up, china and crystal returned to shelves, Christmas decorations pulled down and taken outside. I would leave no memory of this night for Dorothea to wake to.

  Shock anesthetized my brain, but random questions floated to the surface. What had happened to Patrick? How had Mischa done this to him? In taking control of him, had she stripped his ability to function? Or was it something else she’d used? Food, drugs, allergic reaction—what was the source of his death?

  The possibilities deviled me, but focusing on the medical mystery forestalled grief. Patrick dead wasn’t a reality I could accept. At times, I deceived myself. The doctors would fix him. Somehow. Any minute I would hear relief from the back room. Dorothea, still crying, would come out to tell me he’d been revived. He was too young. Surely there was something to be done.

  As time passed and only silence came from the back, I knew my fantasies had no substance. So I set the inn to order. When the caterers had everything packed, I made a list of the food sent to the homeless and helped them stack it in a van.

  I’d forgotten how cold it was outside, but the arctic chill broke the malaise holding me emotionless. When the caterers drove away, I yielded. Standing in the bitter cold, I cried for Patrick, for Dorothea, and for myself.

  The wind cut under the skirt of my dress, freezing my legs in the thin stockings and dress shoes. My wrap was inside the inn, but I didn’t care. I wanted to go to my cabin. I couldn’t go back inside the inn. I couldn’t make myself do it. I didn’t trust myself to maintain control of my emotions.

  Before I really thought it out, I started running. At first I ran to get away from the inn, to defy the cold, to gain the solitude of my little cabin. I needed a place where I could cry without fear of being overheard. Icy tears ran down my cheeks, but I brushed them away and picked up my pace. Running was hard in the little leather heels. The path, though illuminated by the clear sky, was uneven and difficult. Several times I almost twisted an ankle.

  The sense that someone was watching me grew with each passing minute. At first I tried to convince myself it was only wild imagination. I knew better, though. Deny it all I wanted, I had the Cahill gift. I could sense the spirits of dead people.

  Then I heard her. She was in the woods.

  “Aine!” a childish voice called to me.

  A small, quick creature darted through the trees to my right.

  My heart rate tripled. I was more terrified than I’d ever been and only halfway to the cabin. I’d been a fool. She’d waited until I was between both places of safety. Now I was alone.

  “Aine, come and play with me. I know, let’s play a game.” She wheedled like a child, but I knew better.

  “Leave me alone.” My voice was weak. I sounded old and feeble. “Go away!” I shouted.

  “Aine, what about Hide and Seek?”

  I didn’t answer. I slowed to a walk. Each step took me closer to the cabin. The locked door was no ba
rrier to her if she really wanted in. But it was all I had, and if I could get there, I’d figure a way to fight her. Bonnie’s journals would tell me.

  “How’s Patrick?” The question came from the darkness to my right. She kept pace with me, yet she never made a sound. She slipped through the dense woods without a single limb cracking. “Poor boy. He was a little green around the gills the last time I saw him. Did you break his heart? Did you kill him?”

  The words drifted to me on the wind. It struck me that I’d never seen her walk. For some reason that terrified me more than anything. In all the times I’d communicated with her, she’d just appeared. I’d turn around and she’d be there.

  I followed the thin ribbon of the winding trail, swallowing my fear and trying to force my legs to take measured, even steps. The night was clear, and the stars were bright in the swath of sky between the trees. I rounded a corner and saw a light.

  The cabin was closer than I thought! The rush of hope was almost debilitating. I lumbered into a run. My shoes rubbed blisters on my feet, but I pushed myself to move faster. To run for the light and the cabin. Maybe she would let me go.

  “Aine, I’m still with you.”

  A tree root snared my foot and I fell. When I hit the dirt I bit my tongue and busted my lip. My beautiful dress tore apart. Pain bloomed, but I gained my knees and crawled. I would not lie in the dirt and wait for her to hurt me.

  I didn’t hear her, but when I looked up, she stood inches away. Her red jacket was zipped snug around her. Blond hair hung down her chest. In the moonlight, the hair looked silver. Her eyes were shaded by the folds of the hood.

  “What did you do to Patrick?” I pushed myself up on my knees and spat blood. The red glob landed by her foot. My dress gaped open from breast to crotch. I tried to gather it up to cover myself, but my hands shook from the cold.

  “What did you do to Patrick?” she asked.

  “Not a damn thing!” Outrage at her accusation made me struggle to one knee. If I could gain my feet, I meant to charge her. She might not be human, but she wasn’t smoke or fog. She appeared to have substance, and if I could I would harm her.