Dorcas flipped the "on" switch and began running a brush through her hair as she bombarded it with the stream of hot air. Thank God, I'm not Lydia, she thought. I don't think I could live with myself, doing what I did. I think I'd hate myself so much that I'd . . . well, I'd try to do what she tried to do, slitting her wrists like that. It's all so crazy. It wasn't her fault . . . she was just a kid . . . and Daddy was a grown man. It's his fault, all his fault, Mom's suicide, Karen's breakdown. . . .
Karen's breakdown?
She paused. What on earth am I thinking? Lydia never tried to kill herself. She's too strong for that, too resilient, too self-assured. She sighed. It's the acid. Must be the acid. When I flipped out that time, everything just got all jumbled up in my head, all my memories just got all screwed up. It was after that bad trip that I tried to kill myself, not Lydia. And I don't even know a girl named Karen.
She emitted a grim laugh. "Good point, Mr. Patanjali," she whispered. "What is reality, anyway?"
"Lydia!" Her father's voice attacked her from the doorway. "Where's Sarah?"
Dorcas turned to him, "Daddy, I'm not—"
"I asked you a question, young lady," he said, grabbing her roughly by the arms. "Where is your sister?"
"I . . . I don't—"
"Don't lie to me, Lydia!" he shouted, shaking her. "I sent her out to find you and Dorcas this afternoon, and she never came back. Where is she?"
He shook her harder and she started screaming. "Let go of me. Get away from me!"
"Damn it, Lydia!" he bellowed. "Where's Sarah?"
"I'm not Lydia!" she cried. "I'm Dorcas!"
He released her abruptly and stepped back. He stared at her for a moment and then said more calmly, "Have you seen Sarah?"
"No," she replied, weeping.
"She should have been back hours ago, even if she didn't find you or that sister of yours." He worked his fingers together nervously, thinking hard. "You stay here, right here, do you understand? Don't you leave this house." He turned and walked to the bedroom door, muttering, "I'd better call the police."
It was only then that Dorcas understood the gravity of the situation and the depth of her father's concern. Sarah was missing.
Chapter Seven
November 25, 1968
Alex Brown relished the atmosphere of community, the feeling of belonging, as he stood in the large crowd of neighbors who were milling about in front of the town hall, speaking with each other in hushed tones. He hoped that everything would turn out all right, of course. They all hoped that everything would turn out all right. Sarah Ostlich was a good girl, not the type to run away from home or stay somewhere for even one night, not to say two, without discussing it first with her father. Perhaps she had injured herself and was unable to move. Perhaps she had tripped over a root somewhere in the woods and had knocked herself out. Perhaps she had stepped into a bear trap.
Perhaps she was dead.
No one uttered these words, but they were in the minds of everyone as they waited for Dr. Ostlich and Mike Imhof to speak. Desultory conversations about weather and politics passed the time, and only occasionally did anyone make reference to the reason for the hastily assembled search party. "Last thing we know is that her dad sent her out to try to find her sister. . . ".. Alex heard someone say. "Probably went up toward where them damn hippies live. . . ." another voice commented from another conversation elsewhere in the crowd. Alex smiled grimly when a third voice reached him, saying, "Ought to check out the woods around the Saunders place, if you ask me."
Goddamn bums, he thought.
As if in response to the comments and the thoughts, Clayton and Rebecca Saunders pulled up to the curb near the town hall. She turned off the engine in her blue Camaro and then she and her brother walked quickly toward the crowd.
Rebecca had overheard a conversation about the planned search party while she was in the head shop in Rosendale buying a new hash pipe and some black light posters. When she told her brother about it, he had decided with an uncharacteristic firmness of purpose to take part in the search. He had been less enthusiastic about her insistence on joining him, but Clayton never attempted to play any sort of domineering-older-brother role with Rebecca, and today was no exception to the pattern. Nevertheless, when they reached the crowd, she was a bit relieved to see that she was not the only female who had turned out to join the search.
But commonality of gender or residence meant little to the people of Beckskill as far as Clayton and Rebecca were concerned. They were met with hostile looks and dark mutterings as they made their way through the people and approached Dr. Ostlich. "'Mornin'," Clayton said casually.
Ostlich's eyes were reddened by lack of sleep, and the worry that suffused his face was not dispelled by the antagonism his voice expressed. "What do you think you're doing here?" he demanded.
Clayton chose his words carefully. "Look, Doc," he began slowly, "I know you don't like me and I'm not crazy about you either, but that's not important. Lydia and Dorcas are friends of mine. . . ." He put up his hand to cut off the words he knew Ostlich was about to say. "I know you don't like that either, but that's also beside the point. They're my friends, and they're both worried sick about Sarah. If I can help out somehow, then I want to help."
"They're worried sick, are they?" he said bitterly. "I suppose that's why Dorcas left me a note saying that she was going back down to Long Island with Lydia? They're worried sick and they aren't even here to help?"
"You know what Dorcas is like, how high-strung and skittish she is," Clayton replied. "All the tension and worry are just too much for her. She had to get away, that's all, so Lydia took her to visit her friends on the Island."
"Yes, she's high-strung, but she wasn't high-strung until you started giving her drugs."
This was not true; but Clayton decided simply to counter one falsehood with another. "She never got any drugs from me. 'Cept beer, maybe."
Ostlich looked at him hard. "I have to be honest with you, Saunders. If something has happened to Sarah, you're the first one I'll think of blaming."
Clayton's eyes narrowed angrily. "That's your right, Doc. If you want to start looking for her on my property, you go right ahead. Just take Rebecca with you to kind of keep an eye on things. And once everybody's satisfied that whatever has happened has nothing to do with me or Becky, then we can get down to some serious searching. Okay?"
Ostlich pursed his lips. Maybe the boy is being sincere, he thought. I suppose every man has some element of goodness in him, even if you have to dig very deep. On the other hand, one might have to dig far deeper than this with Saunders. At last he said, "Very well." He did not thank him for his offer of assistance as he turned to Imhof, who was speaking to Rihaczeck. "Let's get things moving."
Imhof walked up to the top step of the town-hall entranceway and called out, "Can everyone quiet down, please? Everyone, please." He waited for a few moments as the conversations ceased and all eyes turned to him, and then he continued. "Let's review the facts here. The last anyone saw of Sarah was when her father sent her out to try to find her sister Dorcas. That was about four in the afternoon, day before yesterday. We know she went to the general store, but beyond that there's nothing."
A hum of voices arose briefly and Clayton's name was mentioned a few times, but he acted as if he had not heard it. Rebecca looked around nervously as Imhof continued, "Now, the state police tell us that forty-eight hours have to pass before they can start a missing-person investigation, and it'll be forty-eight hours about six hours from now, but we don't want to wait another six hours." Nods of agreement came from all sides. "We're going to split up into five search parties. . . ." He paused and leaned down as Ostlich whispered to him. "Six search parties. I stand corrected. Each group leader should see to it that the emergency-supply kits we've assembled are brought along. First aid in case the girl is wounded, a radio to summon help if needed, rope in case logs have to be moved or climbing has to be done, and so forth."
; Rebecca leaned to her brother and whispered, "Why does he have to sound so pessimistic? We don't even know if Sarah got hurt. She may just have like split, you know?"
Clayton laughed humorlessly. "Sarah, run away from home? Are you kidding?"
"Lydia did, remember? Right after her mother died?"
"Lydia had a reason."
Rebecca looked at Ostlich with disgust and whispered, "Maybe Sarah has the same reason. . . ."
"Clayton Saunders has offered to allow us to search his land," Imhof was saying, "so Dave Dolak will lead one group to the fields and Bill McGee will lead the other group to the mountain. Joe Eggers will take the third group down the road to Bennetsville. Norm Brust's group will take Jenkins's orchards, and we of the town council will take two groups to search the forest along the River Road. That's a big stretch of woods, so we'll need two groups to cover it thoroughly. Mrs. Rihaczeck will stay here by the phone. . . ."
The division of the crowd into six groups of roughly equal size was accomplished without much difficulty, and a scant ten minutes after Imhof had given the instructions each group was on its way to its respective destination. Much against her wishes, Rebecca returned to the area around the trailer with one of the search parties. She refused at first to do so, until her brother reminded her quietly that they had left their drug-packed trailer unlocked. More out of a fear of losing the dope than of getting in trouble, Rebecca went back to her home with the two dozen townspeople.
Some three hundred people thus proceeded to spread out over the rural environs of Beckskill in search of the missing girl. Progress was slow, for while the area to be covered was limited and circumscribed, it also consisted largely of forest. This not only slowed down the pace of the searchers, it also gave them cause to stop and examine every fallen log and half-covered gully, just to be certain the girl was not somewhere hidden from sight.
Two hours later, Alex Brown had finished exploring yet another suspiciously high pile of leaves, again discovering no trace of Sarah Ostlich. He was part of the search party assigned to the woods between the River Road and Saunders Mountain, and despite the gravity and potential tragedy of the situation, he was enjoying the community effort. Neighbors, he was thinking as he proceeded to trudge on through the woods with the others. That's what this is all about. Neighbors helping out in time of need, just like you see on the television, in the western movies.
He frowned slightly when his least favorite neighbor called out, "Hey, Alex! Over here. I found something."
He looked to his left, where Clayton Saunders was gazing down at something on the ground. Alex scurried over, and was almost immediately joined by old Johann Schilder and a half-dozen other men who had heard the call. "What?" Alex asked breathlessly.
"Look here," Clayton said, picking up two pieces of broken pottery.
"A broken bottle," Alex said with irritation. "So what?"
"So smell it," he said, handing Alex a shard. "I think there was gas in this or something. Here, Mr. Schilder," he said, handing the second piece to the old man and then picking up two others. "Doesn't it smell like gas?" Schilder sniffed at the shard, and his aged brow furrowed.
Alex tossed the shard away. "What the hell's the matter with you? This isn't important!"
"You see a road through here?" Clayton demanded. "You see someplace somebody would run out of gas and take a bottle of it out of his trunk to fill his tank? You see a motorboat around here anywhere? I mean, isn't it like suspicious?"
"Dis pot shmells like moonshine," Schilder said with certainty.
"What?" Clayton asked.
"Ja, dere vass moonshine in dis, vhite lightnink," Schilder said, nodding. "I know dis shmell anyvhere."
"Moonshine!" Clayton exclaimed. "There are still moonshiners around here? I knew that Vernon Sweet's old man used to make this stuff, but I thought—"
"Nah, ain't been no moonshiners around here for a long time," Schilder interrupted. "But you're right, Eland Shveet vas de last moonshiner I heard about in dis neck of de voods, and he died vhen I vas a young man, maybe fifty, sixty years ago." He looked at Clayton. "How do you know about Eland Shveet?"
"Vernon told me about him," Clayton replied simply.
That seemed to satisfy the old man and he sniffed again at the shard. "Ja, back den, 'round de turn of de century, lotta people made moonshine in dis neck of . . ." He paused and frowned as he looked of in the general direction of the old Sweet house. "Vait a minute, dat's right! Eland Shveet, dat gottverdammte gargoyle's fadder, he made moonshine. Used to bury it in de voods."
Whatever comments Schilder's words might have elicited were cut short by a sudden cry from a few hundred yards away, followed by a scream, and they all dropped the shards and ran in the direction of the sounds. Clayton stepped on three of the larger pieces of broken pottery that were still on the ground as he ran after the others of the search party.
He arrived at the circle of men to see Dr. Ostlich leaning against a tree, clutching his chest and weeping with low, frantic gasps. Clayton did not push his way through the circle, but as people moved about from side to side he caught brief glimpses of Sarah Ostlich's corpse, of the blackening face and the leaf-filled open mouth and the staring eyes and the dessicating flesh that had already provided a feast for the rodents and insects of the forest. He felt his knees beginning to buckle as he saw the body of the dead girl. He leaned back against a tree and muttered, "Shit!" This is like really gross, Clayton thought.
"Sarah," Ostlich wept as his knees gave out and he sank down beside the tree. "Oh God, oh God!"
"Her . . . her, uh . . ." Alex Brown stammered. "Her clothes are . . . it looks like she's been . . ."
"Oh, sweet Jesus," Ostlich moaned, "sweet Jesus . . ."
"De moonshine," Schilder said, his voice shaking as he turned to Alex. "I told you dat simpleton, he used to play vit himself all de time." A chorus of voices demanded that Schilder repeat, explain, enhance. "Dat Vernon dere in de old Shveet house. He vas a pervert, right from de beginning. I remember him as a child, long time ago, playing vit himself in public!"
The words sank into the minds of everyone present, everyone other than Ostlich, who was too deeply in shock to hear them. Common assumptions constructed an identical scenario in each imagination. The twisted mind of that twisted sideshow freak had been twisted even more when he found an old jug of moonshine. He had drunk it, thus raising his perverse, animalistic longings to the level of violent, uncontrollable lust. Sarah Ostlich, innocently searching for her sister, had wandered into the woods, or had been walking along the River Road, or had possibly even gone to the Sweet house, and that drunken monster had attacked her, violated her, murdered her. . . .
Not a word was spoken at first, after the groans of sorrow and disgust had been exhausted; but then, as pair of infuriated, vengeful eyes met pair of infuriated, vengeful eyes and communicated a common thought, the men began to move in the direction of the Sweet house.
Seventy men walked quickly and then began to run through the woods, occasional mutters and expletives of anger rising to furious cries of rage. Alex Brown's eyes were filled with tears of bitterness and anger as he shouted, "That goddamn bastard! That godddamn perverted bastard!"
"Gonna kill that son of a bitch!" Walter Rihaczeck cried.
Frank Bruno was shaking his fist as he ran. "We ain't gonna let no goddamn judge set him loose, by God!"
"We have a rope!" Michael Imhof shouted. "We know what we have to do!"
"String that goddamn freak up by his goddamn neck!"
"And that goddamn heathen with him!"
When Ashvarinda Patanjali was a child in what was then British India, his Hindu village was set upon by Moslem marauders in retaliation for the sacking of a Moslem village by Hindu marauders two days earlier. Now, eighty years later, he could still remember the sound of the frenzied, screaming, hateful voices as they rose softly in the distance and then grew louder and louder until at last they were a deafening cacophony of madness enveloping his l
ittle village.
He had not thought of that childhood experience for over half a century. He thought of it now as he heard the same tones reaching out toward him from the woods surrounding Vernon's house.
He frowned, confused rather than frightened, and rose from his meditation mat to go out onto the porch and see if he could discover the source and cause of the painful cries. He passed Vernon in the sitting room, where the little man was happily playing with an old baseball he had found in the attic, and went to the front door. The screams had become extremely loud, and he heard the sound of feet stomping up the old wooden steps as he turned the doorknob and pulled.
The two actions were virtually simultaneous: he stepped through the portal and was wrenched forward by a half-dozen hands, which grabbed him roughly by the arms and hair and beard. He found himself being lifted from his feet and thrown through the air, to land on his face upon the hard dirt ground.
"Where's that little bastard, you goddamn heathen?" Alex Brown demanded.
"Wh . . ." he stammered, "what . . . what do you want here?"
"You know vhy ve're here!" Schilder bellowed, feeling half his age in his fury. "Dat murdering freak! Vhere iss he?"
"Vernon?" Ashvarinda asked, trying to rise to his feet before a hard kick to his side sent him crashing down again. "What do you mean? Vernon hasn't . . ." And then he paused. Appleby! They must have found out about Appleby, and Florence Jackson and Bernie Sherman. "No . . ." he said quickly, "no . . . you do not understand . . . he did not mean to . . . he could not help himself. . . ."
"It was him!" Alex screamed, almost triumphantly. "The heathen just admitted it! It was that freak that killed the girl!"
The girl? Ashvarinda wondered frantically. Do they mean Florence?
"Vass you Jere?" Old Man Schilder demanded. "Vass you part of dis ting? You tell de true, or by Gott we string you up along vie him!"
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