by Greg Herren
“As long as we stay on the path,” Carson said, “I don’t see how we can get lost. But better to be safe than sorry, of course. Let’s get some water and head out.”
“Okay, then.” Carson handed me back my phone. “What are we waiting for?”
Once we’d gotten some bottles of water out of the cooler in the lodge, we headed out across the parking lot and into the woods. Logan walked in front, and Carson walked behind me. I smiled to myself. It was obvious what they were doing—they had me surrounded in case something happened, if I had another vision or whatever it was happened to me when I was in the woods. We took the fork to the right and started heading down the side of the mountain. Once the roof of the ruined cabin came into sight, Logan started walking faster, as though he wanted to get past there as quickly as possible. That was fine with me, but I still glanced over at the wrecked building, the pile of debris on top of the covered well.
But I didn’t feel anything and so kept walking, trying to keep up with Logan and his long legs. Once we were past the clearing and back into the tangle of woods again, I realized I’d been holding my breath. I let it out in a big exhale of relief. We kept having to climb over fallen trees, sometimes pushing aside brush and bushes that had overgrown the path, stepping over tiny little streams of water meandering through the forest. The ground was damp in a lot of places, and even muddy in others. Every so often the sun would break through a hole in the trees overhead, but it was cool in the woods. I was starting to breathe a little harder but wasn’t feeling damp or sweaty.
And then Logan stopped walking. When I caught up to him, I saw we’d reached another fork in the path. There was a weathered old sign pointing to the left with Beaver Pond carved into it. Another underneath it, pointing to the right, said Ski Trail 3.
“I could stand to see some beaver,” Logan joked, only to get a glare from Carson and an eye roll from me.
“Things not working out with Annie?” I couldn’t help myself.
“Week’s not over yet,” he replied, digging his elbow into my ribs. “Plenty of time left for her to understand the magic that’s Logan Stark.”
“Magic?” Carson shook his head. “I don’t know that’s what it should be called.”
“Black magic is magic,” I pointed out, earning a good-natured laugh from Logan and a grin from Carson.
“All right, guys, let’s move out,” Logan said and headed down the path to the left.
We walked on in silence, with me taking pictures from time to time with my phone. If not for the path, you’d never know any humans had ever been through this part of the woods before. Logan got pretty far ahead of Carson and me, partly because he wasn’t taking pictures and partly because he had longer legs and walked faster than we did, but he never quite got out of our sight.
Then he shouted, and we hurried to catch up to him.
We came out of the woods and stood next to him, looking out over a vast expanse of what appeared to be an open field, but it seemed to be overgrown with reeds and tall grasses.
“This doesn’t look like a pond,” Carson frowned.
“They’re having a drought this year,” Logan said. “So the water levels are low. Come on, she said the creek drains out of the pond on the other side.” He started making his way along the lip of a ridge overlooking the meadow. I made my way after him, with Carson behind me, careful when moving branches out of the way to hold them so they didn’t slap back into Carson—tempting though it was. It was beautiful out here, and I took a swig from my Coke as I maneuvered around trees and bushes. In some places, the ground was moist, and every so often I would see a break in the thick reeds where a clear stream was meandering. The sky was blue, with no clouds anywhere to be seen. I kept moving, watching a hawk soaring over the meadow. It seemed like we were walking forever, and it also seemed to me that there had to be a path somewhere away from the bank of this so-called pond that would be easier to traverse—but as we moved around, I could see a cement wall in the distance running from a ridge on the same side of the meadow we were on to another ridge. I pointed it out to Logan.
“Someone built that to manage floods, I guess,” he said. “I imagine when the snows melt up here there’s a lot of runoff.”
And the moment he finished speaking I could see it: all the trees bare of leaves, snow covering the ground, the meadow itself an expansive sheet of gray ice with piles of snow here and there. It made me shiver.
“You okay?” Logan looked at me with an odd expression on his face.
“I’m good,” I said and started walking again.
About ten minutes later, the reeds finally gave way to the surface of the pond. Logan was just standing there, looking out over it. He smiled at us when we caught up to him. “And there’s the water.” He pointed to the cement wall, which was clearly a dam. “My guess is the creek is on the other side of the dam.” He grinned.
“I would have thought Beaver Pond meant a pond formed by a beaver dam,” I said, a little disappointed, but I couldn’t resist adding, “Looks like there’s no beaver for you, Logan.”
“Just my luck,” he replied with a good-natured smile.
“Well, maybe they built the cement dam where a beaver dam used to be,” Carson suggested.
“All right, guys, what are we waiting for?” Logan waved us on. “Let’s go.”
He hurried around the edge, fighting his way past bushes and low-hanging branches while Carson and I tried to keep up. He finally reached the dam, which was high over his head. He walked to the right, heading up the slope with us right behind him. About ten yards from the shoreline, the side of the slope met the top of the cement dam, and he climbed up. The top was about a yard wide, and with a whoop that echoed through the woods, he made his way out to the center.
I climbed up and gave Carson my hand to help him keep his balance as he climbed up on top. I could hear the sound of running water but couldn’t see the actual stream through the trees and because of the way the hill sloped. I followed Logan out to the center and kept looking off to the right. And there it was. The clear running stream that made its way down the side of the mountain to drain into the Hudson River, the place where they’d found Albert’s murdered corpse over a hundred years earlier.
“If I finished this Coke and tossed the bottle in there, it might wind up in New York Harbor,” I observed, taking another drink out of it.
The creek was actually pretty narrow, with mossy stones lining the bank. There was a waterline about five feet higher on the banks. The water flowing through the bottom of the cement dam was pretty clear. I could see the bottom—it was no more than a foot or two deep at most, and schools of minnows were darting around just below the surface. Just like at the cabin, there were some rusted beer cans and other human debris scattered around along the banks, so it was probably a place for kids to come hang out and party.
We climbed down and made our way along the soggy bank. Several times I had to grab onto a branch or something as the bank crumbled beneath my sneakers.
Up ahead I could see where a tree, now covered with moss, had fallen across the creek, and—
—I was running, absolutely terrified, through the woods. He was behind me and he wanted me dead, there was no question about that, he was going to kill me. I had to keep running, I had to keep going, I had to get away. I knew the woods better than he did, that I knew—he never really came down this way, following the creek from the pond down to the river. I knew if I could just make it down to the river—if I could just get there—he wouldn’t be able to do it, he wouldn’t be able to kill me, not in front of everyone in the town, there simply wasn’t any way he could do it. He could scream his insane accusations to everyone but they wouldn’t—they wouldn’t—believe him, and even if they did…
He was dead. A sob rose in my throat but I couldn’t let that stop me, I couldn’t, I had to keep going even though my heart had been ripped right out of my chest. I had to hang on to the hatred, yes, that was what I had to hold on to
, that would keep me going. I couldn’t do anything to stop him, of course, there was nothing I could do to stop him. My poor Bertie, my God, my God, my poor Bertie was dead…
No, no, you can’t think that way focus on the hate you feel, you can’t let him get away with it he would never know, you have to get away, you have to, people have to know what he did no matter why he did it murder is murder and they will hang him and Bertie poor Bertie you have to stay alive, you have to stay alive so you can tell the truth, so you can tell the sheriff what happened back there at the cabin…
And then I stumbled over a root and fell, down into the dirt and the mud right there on the bank of the stream, and as I tried to get up my ankle wouldn’t hold me, my ankle hurt so badly and I knew then I was going to die…
“Right here,” I said, my voice shaking somewhat. I was trembling, and my entire body was cold. “It happened right here, he died right here.”
Carson turned and looked back at me.
And a cloud seemed to come over the sky.
The temperature seemed to drop.
Everything was going dark.
A scream rose in my throat and I fought it down.
“Oh my God,” I heard Logan whisper beside me.
And then I heard it, too—the sound of someone, something, crashing through the woods toward us.
Just like in my dream or vision or whatever it was I just had.
Carson’s face turned completely pale. “Come on—this way! I found the path!”
And I could feel the coldness coming through the woods toward where we were standing, and I could feel the hatred.
Whatever it was, it wanted me. And it wanted me dead.
“Come on!” Logan screamed and grabbed my hand so hard I cried out. He yanked me along behind him so hard my shoulder felt like it almost pulled out of the socket, and ahead of me, I could see Carson running as fast as he possibly could.
And we followed.
The coldness, the evil that was emanating from behind us terrified me more than anything I’d ever felt in my life, it had felt like it was sucking my soul out of my body.
I ran. Logan let go of my hand at some point and took off, passing Carson as we ran on the path as it twisted and turned through the woods away from the pond and the stream. I lost or threw away my Coke at some point but I didn’t care, all I cared about was getting out of the woods, getting as far away from that place as I possibly could.
My breath was coming in stitches, but I could hear Carson’s labored breathing behind me as we kept going.
And, finally, we crashed through the underbrush out onto the mountain road. Logan was already there, bent double, sucking in huge gasps of air.
I tried to catch my breath and realized tears were running down the sides of my face.
“What—what the hell was that?” Logan finally managed to get the words out.
“I—I don’t know.” I said. My leg muscles were tying up from the running, and I paced a bit to keep them from cramping. Carson was still trying to catch his own breath, sweat running down his face, his hair completely wet.
But he was grinning at me.
“Why are you smiling?” I demanded.
“Don’t you see?” He beamed at me, practically bouncing up and down on the balls of his feet with excitement. “This time it wasn’t just you! We all felt it.”
Chapter Eleven
Once we were out of the woods and calming ourselves down, Carson quickly insisted that we not discuss what had just happened. “We can’t taint each other by talking about it,” he insisted. “We have to write down our independent observations and thoughts without talking.”
So we walked back up the mountain road—we’d come out well below my cabin—in utter silence. Once we made it to the lodge, we all took turns at the computer in the game room. Carson had Logan go first, and while he was typing, I pulled out my phone to see if Marc had responded to my last text. There was nothing, so I checked my e-mail too. Nothing interesting, just some stuff from my high school and some of my other friends, nothing that looked important enough to download. When Logan pushed his chair back and the printer started spewing out his pages, Carson said, “Were you thorough?”
Logan rolled his eyes. “I wrote down everything I remember,” he insisted. “Can I go find Annie now?”
Carson made a face and dismissed him. He gestured to the computer. “Your turn.”
I put my phone away and sat down at the computer. It was an ancient Dell, so old that it was still on Windows XP. I sighed and opened a new Word document. I closed my eyes and tried to remember everything and started typing without opening my eyes. I really didn’t want to relive the terror, to be honest, but I knew it was a necessary evil. I typed, my fingers flying over the keyboard, my eyes closed as I tried to remember every moment, every emotion and feeling I’d had. As the document filled with words, my fingers began to tremble a little.
I don’t think I’d ever been so terrified in my life.
And it was an experience I’d be happy to go the rest of my life without having again.
When I finished, I hit the print button and deleted my document. I got up so Carson could have a seat and walked over to the window. I looked out at the lake, shining silver in the afternoon sun. Everything seemed so normal now. It was hard to believe not even an hour before we were running headlong through the woods, terrified for our lives. If this didn’t come to an end soon…no matter what Teresa thought, I didn’t think I could make it to the weekend without losing my mind for real if we didn’t figure out how to stop this by then.
I walked back over to the printer. Carson was scowling at the computer screen and deleted an entire paragraph, starting over again while I got all the pages off the printer tray. I sat down on the L-shaped couch with my back to the window and started reading Logan’s account.
Everything was fine, he’d written. We found Beaver Pond and the little creek running out of it relatively easily. It wasn’t until we started walking along the creek bank to where that newspaper story said they found Albert’s body that things started to feel wrong. If I’m being honest I have to say I don’t know what I was thinking about all of this before today. Scotty doesn’t lie so I have to believe him unless he’s changed into a different person than the Scotty I’ve known all my life but I don’t know if I believe in ghosts or any of the stuff Carson always talks about. So anyway we were walking along the bank and it was sunny and there weren’t any clouds in the sky and the next thing I know it’s getting dark like the sun’s gone away and I felt scared. I don’t know why, I just did, I felt like I wanted to scream and just get the hell out of there as fast as I could go. But then we heard it—there was something in the woods, something we couldn’t see and it was evil, and it wanted to kill all of us. I’ve never been so scared in my life and I hope I’m never that scared ever again and I could see something through the bushes it was black and dark and shapeless but it was there I wasn’t imagining it and then Carson started running and me and Scotty ran right after him and we didn’t stop running until we’d gotten all the way out of the woods and then I felt like I wasn’t scared anymore because we’d gotten away from whatever that was but I don’t want to go back into the woods ever.
Reading Logan’s take–brief as it was—was bad enough; I was glad he hadn’t gone into as much detail as I had. I put the pages down on the coffee table and pulled out my phone again. Nothing still…I started to write another text to him but didn’t really know what to say besides what I’d already said in the text he hadn’t answered. And I wasn’t even sure texting worked here in the game room, with no cell service. I’d hoped maybe he’d send me an e-mail…
Honestly, I was a little worried about Marc.
His dad was kind of a jerk about the phone, but he rarely limited Marc’s time online with his laptop. Marc was always cautious—his dad didn’t seem to be too good with technology, but Marc wasn’t willing to take that chance. He always deleted my e-mails and deleted the o
nes he sent to me from his sent-mail folder, just to be on the safe side. I wished things could be different—I was pretty sure Mrs. Krueger would just want Marc to be happy, no matter what—but Mr. Krueger? I could only imagine how he would react. So we always, always had to be careful.
As long as I lived, I would never forget hearing Mr. Krueger ranting about the perverts and the faggots who were so unnatural and how giving them rights was no different than letting people marry more than one spouse or marry their dog or a horse or have sex with children. Listening to that rant had nauseated me, made me sick to my stomach.
The thought of what he might do if he ever caught Marc and me together…
That was why Marc came over to my house most of the time. We hardly ever went to his house since we got together. We could steal kisses and hugs and talk about the possibility of a future together. Of course, once my parents knew we were in love we had to leave my bedroom door open—which I always thought was silly given we’d been able to keep it closed for almost a year before they knew we were more than friends…but I guess it made them feel better in some way, and they still let him spend the night in the guest room. We obeyed their rules—we’d never had sex, just kissed and messed around a little, nothing serious or anything for them to be worried about—but since they were so cool about us, I didn’t really want to push my luck with them.
Any time they made a rule or laid down the law, all I had to do was remind myself that I was lucky they weren’t like the Kruegers.
I missed him so much—I hated not being able to talk to him whenever I wanted to or walk down the street and see him. We’d spent so much time together all summer—being separated like this was almost like losing a limb. Knowing that he could have been Albert Tyler’s twin brother was seriously disturbing. I didn’t know what that meant or even how it was possible. Maybe one of the Tylers had somehow married into either the Krueger family, or his mother’s—maybe I should ask Miss Tyler at the Historical Society about it. Stranger things than that have happened, and if the Tylers had scattered all over the country the way she said they had…it was possible, wasn’t it?