“Robert,” Sam called. “Mr. Secord? Does the number eighty-eight mean anything to you?”
Secord took a few steps toward them, looked over the low shelf at the burned books and shook his head. “She already asked me. I’m as confused as she is. I don’t know how I got here. I don’t remember pulling those books off the shelf or lighting them on fire—or burning my own hand.” He sighed. “I have no idea why I would do any of those things.”
Sam circled the two charred mounds of books, his boots sloshing water around, spreading the puddle outward. “Two eights…”
“Eighty-eight or two eights, it means nothing to me,” she said, giving the puddle a wide berth as she crossed the room to a supply closet. “I really need to mop up.”
“What if it’s not a number?” Sam said. “What if it’s two letters?”
“Letters?” she said. “Oh, you mean—?”
“Two Bs,” Dean said. “An abbreviation? Or somebody’s initials?”
“Of course!” she said, the mop forgotten as she walked back, right through the puddle to the destroyed books. A wistful smile spread across her face, making her appear at least a decade younger. “I’d almost forgotten. Our back-to-back Bs. Ah, but that was so long ago.”
Sam glanced at Dean, who shrugged.
“Back to back?”
“That’s how we wrote our initials,” she said. “Bonnie and Barry.”
“Who’s Barry?” Sam asked.
“Someone I knew years ago,” she said. Her gaze turned toward Robert Secord, who had wandered over, curious about their conversation. “Barry?” she asked, staring at Secord with tears welling in her eyes.
“No offense, lady,” he said, palms raised. “But I’ve never met you before. And I don’t know anyone named Barry.”
“You couldn’t have,” she said, her smile lingering. “You’re too young.”
The EMT, who looked even younger than Secord, with a blond crewcut and a pierced eyebrow, touched the burned man’s shoulder and said, “Need to take you to the hospital to have that burn looked at.”
Secord nodded and left with the ambulance. Bonnie stared after him.
Sam looked at Dean again, confused by Bonnie’s behavior, and walked over to the librarian. “You think he’s Barry?”
“Oh, no, not him,” Bonnie said, glancing up at Sam with a twinkle in her eye. “The shadow.”
“The shadow?”
“It was him,” Bonnie said. “Don’t you see? It had to be him.”
TWENTY-FIVE
“Barry was a runaway,” Bonnie said. “Otherwise, we never would have met.”
From the utility closet, she retrieved a mop and a wheeled metal bucket to clean up the mess left behind by the sprinkler. Sam took the mop from her and began the cleanup process. Dean carried over a large trashcan and dumped the burned books in it, then moved it to the wet shelves, where Bonnie could decide which books to discard. She handed Dean a legal pad to record titles, publishers and authors for her, making a list she would use to purchase replacements for the discarded volumes. While they worked, she told them about Barry.
She met a runaway boy in the summer of 1968. Bonnie was fourteen years old, and Barry was barely sixteen. Soon she realized he’d latched onto—or, more likely, fallen under the influence of—a local commune. Before long, the commune became more of a cult, with an enforced hierarchy of the founder and his leadership council.
“They called themselves the Free Folk of the Fields,” she said, “or, simply, the Fields.”
Barry had been one of maybe a dozen runaways and juvenile delinquents who found an unlikely home in the Fields. Some were good kids who fled abusive homes, or homes where one or both parents were in jail or addicted to drugs. Some of them were rough, repeat and violent offenders. So, some of them needed a safe space to live, while others needed a place to hide rather than a long-term home. But all of them craved structure, sometimes as simple as a place to sleep and regular meals.
But adults established the commune and many other disaffected adults gladly joined the Fields. Though they came from different backgrounds, they shared a profound sense of dissatisfaction. In a way, they were dreamers hoping to build a better way of life, separate from the confines and expectations of traditional society. Many were spiritual but adhered to no established faith.
“Some, I believe, hoped to establish their own religions,” Bonnie said. “But I got the sense, from Barry, that they had a few too many spiritual seekers angling for the top spot.”
“Too many chefs in the church kitchen,” Dean said as he glanced down at the trashcan. A few more waterlogged books and he’d need to grab a second one.
Bonnie nodded. “The Fields had too much internal discord to survive long-term. Back when I was a young girl, it was more of a mystery to me, but from the outside it seemed like a confused mess. I never understood the appeal. I guess I was fortunate to have a stable home environment.”
Sam had mopped up most of the excess water. He wrung the mop out one last time. “How did the commune survive?” he asked. “Economically?”
“Well, Barry always told me the Fields grew and sold soybeans, corn, sorghum and vegetables to feed and support themselves. And that was the common perception in Moyer at the time.”
“But?” Sam asked as he wheeled the sloshing metal bucket to the utility room where he could empty it in the sink.
“But Barry kept some of the unsavory details from me,” she said. “So I wouldn’t worry about his safety. The commune became a victim of its own success, in a way. They couldn’t grow enough food to feed everyone, so they turned to other income sources.”
“Bet I can guess what,” Dean said.
Bonnie nodded. “I began to hear rumors around town,” she said. “They were selling illegal drugs to supplement their income. Everything from marijuana and magic mushrooms to LSD.”
“And the cops didn’t find out?” Sam asked.
“I believe, initially, the spiritual leaders intended for the drugs to stay within the commune, and only for aiding the Free Folk in achieving higher spiritual awareness or altered states of consciousness or… something. Part of their expanding and sometimes contradictory religious ceremonies. They maintained the secret by selling strictly to tourists and out-of-towners.”
“Tourists?” Dean asked.
“Sure,” she replied. “Back then, Moyer was a bit of a tourist destination. In the late Sixties, Lake Delsea was scenic and pristine, a perfect place for renting a cabin, boating and swimming. And the Free Folk took advantage of that. They supplemented their income by roaming through the crowds selling beads and trinkets and tie-dyed shirts. Everyone assumed that was the only way they were generating income, myself included. We didn’t know that along with those open public transactions, they were selling various hallucinogens and some marijuana.”
She walked into the utility closet and returned with some rags. She gave one each to Sam and Dean, kept one for herself, and together they wiped down the wet shelving.
“During peak season, the Free Folk had no trouble keeping their underground economy hidden, there were so many tourists,” she continued. “But in the off-season, everyone still needed to eat, and they had far fewer customers.”
“They began to sell to locals,” Dean guessed.
“A handful, at first,” Bonnie said. “But word gets around, people start to seek them out instead of the other way around, and it becomes hard to discount the rumors.”
“So, drugs were the downfall of the commune?” Sam asked.
“Today, some people say Pangento Chemicals brought jobs at the cost of tourists and that was the reason. Personally, I preferred the tourists. Who knew a few toxic chemical spills could ruin a lake’s reputation?” She chuckled bitterly. “But Pangento came years after the Free Folk were gone. No, toxic leadership was the real reason for the downfall of the Fields.”
“Not sure how Barry figures into this,” Sam said.
Bonnie collected the w
et rags, squeezed out the excess water over the utility room sink and hung them over the edge to dry. “When I first met Barry, he seemed carefree, happy to be away from foster families and a court system that dictated his life and living arrangements. We were both young, kindred spirits but in an opposites-attract way. My mother managed a lakeside souvenir shop and I hung around, sweeping floors, doing odds and ends for her.
“One day, Barry saw me sweeping out front and tried to sell me a bead necklace,” she said, her wistful smile once again on display. “I told him I’d buy it—if he bought something from my mother’s store. He said he had no money and I confessed the same. We laughed together. He offered the necklace as a gift instead, which I accepted. But I promised to buy him something from the store later. He said to save my money. He didn’t need a tourist trinket since he lived in Moyer. When I wondered where—he was awfully cute, and I had never seen him in school—he told me about the Free Folk. Well, that seemed very exotic and adventurous and I was kind of smitten.”
She sighed. Dean sensed her story was about to take a turn.
“As the summer wore on, Barry’s eyes became haunted,” she said. “I suspected something had soured for him in the Fields. Barry insisted nothing illegal was happening. He’d say, ‘Nothing to worry about, my Bonnie Lass.’ That was his nickname for me, because of my last name. He knew it always made me smile. But I started to wonder if he was lying for my peace of mind.”
“You think he knew?” Sam asked. “About the drug business?”
“In hindsight, I think he had his suspicions,” she said. “I’m sure he heard the rumors. But, I’d like to think he wasn’t involved, even if he did know. What seemed to bother him the most during that time was Caleb.”
Dean and Sam each grabbed a handle of the overflowing trashcan and walked it into the utility room. “Caleb?” Dean asked as they followed her to the front desk.
“Caleb was the founder and de facto cult leader,” she said. “By then, the Free Folk had become more cult than commune. Anyway, Caleb started preaching about a doomsday event. He’d been… psychologically scarred by the Cuban Missile Crisis. He believed the world would end in nuclear fire. Literal hell on earth. And that became incorporated into their complex religious beliefs. That righteous men and women would not abide on the Earth. To him, the string of assassinations in the mid- to late Sixties were signs that he needed to prepare the Free Folk for the ‘ascended life’ before doomsday came. He regularly used psychedelic drugs and his hallucinations or ‘visions’ confirmed his fears. On a regular basis, he preached to the Free Folk about these visions and his plans for them. Caleb preached that only by achieving an altered state of consciousness could they ‘ascend’ and save themselves from the doom set to befall mankind.”
Bonnie walked behind the front counter, looked down and straightened some papers and a stapler, her hands trembling slightly, before she looked up at them again. “Barry told me about this. Tried to make a joke about it. But I could tell it troubled him. Our friendship had grown deeper over the course of the summer and he confided in me more often. I begged him to leave the Free Folk several times, but he said he had nowhere to go, no better options. And he believed Caleb was simply using scare tactics to keep the Free Folk in line. Some of the adults had begun to chafe under his authoritarian rule and discussed leaving for good. Those who talked openly about defiance or disobeyed his orders had to spend time in underground detention rooms, symbolic graves, to realign their thinking. And by ‘rooms’ I mean narrow holes dug in the ground lined with plywood, with hinged wooden roofs camouflaged with sod, so outsiders wouldn’t notice them.”
“Symbolic graves?” Sam asked.
“Remember, he believed hell on earth was imminent,” she said. “Those who refused the path to ascension would die with the outsiders. He convinced the Free Folk that realignment time in the detention rooms was beneficial for their troubled members.”
“Sucker born every minute,” Dean said, shaking his head.
“Barry told me once that the Free Folk also used the underground rooms to hide members whenever law enforcement came looking around.”
“Why?” Sam wondered.
“Caleb believed their true number would frighten the town,” she said. “And the town would pressure the police to harass them and chase them out of Moyer.”
“How many were there?” Dean asked.
“The town believed there were twenty, two dozen at most,” she said. “The Free Folk always gave the impression that people passed through, stayed for a while and moved on. That’s why we would see different faces. The reality is that most who came stayed until the end. Barry said once he counted forty to fifty during one religious service. But they had multiple spiritual leaders, and each preached a slightly different gospel, if you want to call it that. And each leader had their own following, though some overlapped. My impression is that Caleb began to discourage individuality, consolidate all the splinter groups and force everyone to follow his own vision.”
“Is that why they disbanded?” Sam asked. “Conflicting ideologies?”
“Oh, no,” Bonnie said. “You don’t understand. They never disbanded.”
“So, what happened?” Dean asked.
“Caleb—or, rather, his irresponsibility—killed them all,” she said, her voice quavering as tears welled in her eyes. “Even my Barry.”
TWENTY-SIX
Somehow Ethan had managed to disentangle himself from his five-year-old sister, ignore the free shadows who continued to float and dart around his home, and scramble across the dining room to search his unconscious father’s pockets. Once Addie discovered Ethan’s plan she not only released him but agreed to stay in the far corner of the room.
To Ethan’s horror, his father had begun to stir, fingers twitching inches from the knife that had stabbed Ethan’s mother. Acutely aware of the streak of blood on the knife, Ethan reached into his father’s back left jean pocket. In hindsight, he should have kicked the knife away, across the room or under the table, maybe hidden it somewhere. But he couldn’t bear the thought of touching it after it had been used to hurt his mother.
In his mind, he imagined the news report resulting from his simple mistake. The newscaster would read the story in a serious voice, “House-flipper Daniel Yates stabbed wife, Susan to death before murdering the couple’s two young children, nine-year-old Ethan and five-year-old Addison. Mr. Yates then abandoned their big, crappy house without a trace to top the FBI’s most-wanted list. He will be remembered in campfire horror stories for years to come. Turning to other news…”
When Ethan glanced up, he saw that Addie had shoved herself along the baseboard to place herself next to their now unconscious mother, still bleeding from the shoulder wound. Before his father regained consciousness, Ethan scurried under the table to join Addie and his mother, clutching his father’s cell phone in his hand. Leaning against the wall, he exhaled the breath he’d been holding for what felt like ten minutes. Then his father moaned—and Ethan held his next breath.
Daniel Yates, rubbed his head, wincing, “Susan? What—What happened? Did I fall?” He hoisted himself into a seated position against the wall, looking around in confusion. His hand brushed the bloody kitchen knife at his side. More confusion as he frowned and picked up the knife, staring at the blood. “What the hell?”
“Dad?” Ethan said, hoping his father had returned to normal. “Why did you hurt—?”
Before he could finish the question, the large shadow man who had loomed over Ethan earlier swooped into the dining room, sailed under the dining room table and crashed into Daniel Yates.
Ethan’s father jerked, his torso rising, jaw thrusting forward then up, as if an electrical charge had surged through him. The boogeyman had poured into him, a darkness that overlapped his father’s head, torso, arms and legs and submerged in an instant, right through clothes and flesh.
If Ethan hadn’t suspected the truth, he might have thought that his father had battled t
he boogeyman and won. But Ethan knew better than to be fooled by what he’d seen. He realized this was how they made his father hurt his mother. They go inside, Ethan thought. They go inside and make us do bad things.
As if Ethan needed confirmation for this theory, his father’s eyes momentarily flashed red, a soft glow indicating his father was no longer in charge of his own body. The shadows couldn’t move things or hurt people—unless they got inside a real body.
Then they could do whatever they wanted.
His father’s hand tightened around the handle of the knife, knuckles turning white with effort. For the moment, the thing occupying his father’s body hadn’t looked at Ethan or his sister.
Maybe it needs a minute or two to take over completely.
Maybe less…
He grabbed his sister’s small hand in his and tugged her. But she resisted, clinging to their mother’s body. Right then, their mother couldn’t protect them. And only Ethan could protect Addie. But they had to hurry.
“C’mon!” he whispered fiercely in her ear. “We have to go!”
“What about Momma?” she whispered back.
“We’ll call for help,” he promised. “Right now, we have to hurry!”
“Okay,” she said, reluctantly releasing their mother’s arm.
Ethan pulled her to her feet and tugged her along, stumbling out of the dining room. As they ran up the steps, he stayed slightly behind her in case she lost her balance. “Go, go, go!”
From behind them, he heard the squeak of a chair sliding across the floor, the creak of the floorboards as his father—his father’s body—climbed to his feet. At the top of the stairs, Addie stopped and turned around. For the first time, she noticed the continuing movement of the shadow people. She squealed in terror as one shot past her on its way down the staircase.
“What are they?”
“Ignore them,” Ethan said. “They can’t hurt us.”
It wasn’t the complete truth, but it wasn’t a lie either.
“Hurry,” he said and led her to his bedroom. Once inside he closed the door as quietly as he could, turned the lock, then pushed his desk in front of the door.
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