by Jen Blood
Most of the entries continued along those lines, giving me some insight into my father’s life as a child, but providing very few clues as to what had happened to him and his sister that fateful weekend in September of 1970. Until I found this entry, that is:
May 19, 1970
Jeff’s mad at me because I won’t call him J. anymore. I never would have started in the first place if I’d known what it was all about. Sarah told me. We were at her house while her Maman was cooking, and Bonnie and Luke and Sarah took me out to the back of their property—way out in the woods. I told them I didn’t like it out there, and Bonnie says it’s because the woods there are filled with ghosts.
Sarah told me that her great great grandpa (or something) was buried there. She said he’d been tres mal (very bad), and he killed a girl our age. His name was Jason Saucier, and him and these two other boys had a club where they had S_ _ with every girl they could, and whoever did it the most got a hundred dollars.
Then she told me Jeff has the same kind of club.
She said he did it to her, and he and Hank and Creepy Will were all in the club. That’s why Jeff wants to be called J. now—because of Jason Saucier. I called Sarah a damn liar, and I ran all the way home, even though I was supposed to spend the night. Not that it matters. Nobody knows if I’m here or gone, anyway.
I told Jeff what I found out—what Sarah told me. I wanted him to tell me she was lying, that he’d never do that stuff, but he didn’t say anything like that. Instead, he said why pretend he’s something he’s not? It’s better to just be honest. And besides, everybody’s gonna think he’s bad anyway because of Daddy… ‘The sins of the father,’ he said to me. He said he’s been paying for what Daddy did his whole life, and now he might as well have some fun with it.
He said he never hurts those girls, but Luke said Sarah cried after.
I told him if that happened to me, I would cry.
He said nothing like that will ever happen to me, because he’ll keep me safe. No matter what, he said he’ll keep me safe. I told him to go to hell. How many of those girls have brothers who promised them the very same thing?
That’s why I told him I won’t call him J. anymore. I don’t care if I never lay eyes on him again.
I closed the journal and set it down. There it was, in black and white: the key to this whole thing, I was sure. If he hadn’t killed Erin—and I was still ninety-nine percent sure that was the case—then it had to have been Will or Hank. And all of it was tied to this sadistic fucking sex club my father had started as a teenager. I thought of the way Will had looked at me at the bar the other night, and what he’d said: Had a little rite of passage that Saturday night. Come to think of it, she looked a little like you. Had Erin Lincoln been his ‘rite of passage’?
If Hank was in jail, then Will Rainier seemed like the most obvious lunatic out there stalking Diggs and me now.
Except…
I thought of the hooded man from Payson Isle—the one Kat and Diggs both kept telling me to forget. The deaths on Payson Isle and the murders of all these girls over the years couldn’t be coincidence; I already knew he had something to do with my father’s past. Was this it? Diggs had dismissed the idea that the hooded man was trying to frame my father as absurd from the start, but I wasn’t so sure about that. What if that man, that mysterious specter who’d been haunting my dreams since I was a kid, was actually the one who had been kidnapping and killing teenage girls for the past forty years? If my father had known about it, that would be motive enough for the hooded man to burn down the Payson Church in a bid to maintain my father’s silence, wouldn’t it?
But how did my father’s fingerprints end up at the crime scenes of so many of those murders over the years?
I lay my head back against the cool, damp cave wall and closed my eyes. On Payson Isle, my dad used to tuck me in every night. Some of my earliest memories were of being curled up in his arms while he read to me; walking along wooded paths, my hand in his; him singing silly nonsense songs when I was hurt or sad. I’d never felt so safe, so protected, as I had in those early years with him watching over me.
Whether he had committed the murders or not almost didn’t matter; he’d done enough without that. He’d been the one to get his sister killed. The revelations last spring had been hard enough, learning that my father had sent me away when I was nine years old, relegating me to the mainland and a mother who’d never wanted me in the first place. I’d been able to rationalize that, convinced he’d done it for my own good. This, though… He really had been a monster. Hell, maybe he was a monster still.
Diggs stirred on the other side of the cave, mumbling something in his sleep. I thought of what he’d said to me: You don’t think… It’s like you don’t care.
He was right. I didn’t think. I didn’t care. For most of my life, I’d been chasing a ghost—a man who didn’t even exist. A fictional character my father played for the first nine years of my life, but in his off hours who the hell knew what he was doing. Who he really was. Had whatever he’d done as a kid paved the way for what came after? The fire on Payson Isle; the cloaked man who chased me in my dreams; the deaths out on the island last spring. My mother’s attack. What if he really was at the root of all of it?
I was pulled from my thoughts when Diggs sat bolt upright in the sleeping bag. “Sol?” he called, looking around. In the dim light of the cave, I could just make out the look on his face. Sheer terror, his eyes wide.
“I’m here,” I said.
Relief washed over his face. He ran a hand through what was rapidly becoming a rat’s nest of greasy curls.
I went to him, but I couldn’t figure out how to bridge the gap between standing there and actually being there—especially not after everything that had happened. So I just stood there.
“I’m right here,” I said again. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah,” he said. “It was just… I was in the woods. I couldn’t find you.”
“Oh.” I started to tell him it was all right, it had just been a dream, but then I realized that the reality was probably worse than any dream his subconscious could come up with. At least if it was a nightmare, he could wake up. “Well… I’m here.”
“Right,” Diggs said. He still looked a little bleary. “I see that.”
He sat and I stood, that chasm still between us.
“You could go back to sleep,” I finally said. “You weren’t out that long.”
“I’m set,” he said. “We should probably get a move on anyway.”
He started to get up with some difficulty. I resisted the urge to offer any help, knowing he wanted nothing to do with me, and instead shoved my good hand in my pocket while the other just hung there, useless. When he was up, he started to go for his pack at the same time I went to roll the sleeping bag back up, thus managing to block his progress completely. We did an awkward little dance to try and get out of each other’s way.
“Sorry,” I said.
“It’s okay. I’ll go this way.”
We ducked around each other and worked in silence. I’d just packed the sleeping bag and Erin Lincoln’s journal when he returned to my side. He put half a Power Bar in my hand without a word.
“I’m all right. You eat it,” I said.
“I’ve got my half. If we’re both getting out of this, we need to keep up our strength.” No arguments, in other words.
I ate it without further comment, though I will say now that surviving exclusively on Power Bars and warm water isn’t something I would recommend. My stomach was grinding, and there were other issues I’d eventually have to address… I was just hoping we’d be able to leave the confines of the cave before I did.
It wasn’t quite noon; we’d been out here more than twelve hours. Juarez had to be looking for us by now. At least I hoped he was. Even if he’d decided I wasn’t worth the effort after this latest stunt, I was reasonably sure he wouldn’t just let Diggs die.
I finished my half of the Power Bar
and put the wrapper in my bag. Diggs handed me some more warm water to wash it down. I reached for it, but somehow in the process ended up knocking it over rather than grabbing hold of it. Before I could fumble the damn thing upright again, half the contents had spilled.
“Shit! I’m sorry.” I put the cap back on the half-empty bottle and patted ineptly at the wet cave floor.
“Relax—It’s okay,” he said.
“No, it’s not.”
He actually laughed, pulling me up before I went completely apoplectic. “I’m thinking a little water won’t do this place a lot of harm.”
“But I shouldn’t be wasting our supplies,” I insisted. “Like I haven’t caused enough problems, now I’m just dumping your water out willy nilly.”
“We’re fifty yards from a fast-flowing river, Solomon. I’ve got plenty more iodine tabs; we’re not gonna die of thirst out here. I can think of about a dozen other ways we might die… But we’ll be well hydrated when we go.”
I didn’t crack a smile. “It was still stupid, though. I’m sorry.”
“Stop apologizing,” he said. A trace of irritation crept back into his voice. “I don’t want to spend the last days of my life listening to you say you’re sorry.”
That was all it took to push me over the edge. I looked him in the eye. A tear or two escaped and spilled down my cheeks. I could barely breathe. “But I am sorry,” I managed in a choked whisper. Another tear fell.
Diggs brushed it away with his thumb. “I know you are,” he said softly. He pulled me into his arms.
“It’s all right if you want to go,” I said. I pulled back so I could look at him, trying to get hold of myself again. Unsuccessfully, I might add. “I wouldn’t blame you if you just took off—honestly. You really should save yourself. I could even create a diversion and you could run. I’d understand.”
His mouth twitched, a hint of amusement touching his eyes. Which was annoying, considering the fact that I was completely serious. “What kind of diversion did you have in mind?”
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “I thought about a fire, but then I’d end up burning down the whole friggin’ forest. Like my karma isn’t bad enough with a sociopathic father intent on deflowering tweens in the backwoods of Maine, then I’d be responsible for the fiery deaths of millions of woodland creatures.”
“It could take a while to hit nirvana with that kind of cred,” Diggs agreed.
He was kidding, but I chose to ignore that. “He doesn’t want you,” I said. “He’s only after me. I could distract him. You could run.”
“Run where, exactly?”
“I don’t know—go find help. I could keep him busy.”
“Yeah, I imagine rape and torture would probably keep his attention diverted,” he said, his eyes suddenly hard again. “Jesus, Solomon. I’m not leaving you. It’s not going to happen, so just forget it. If you die out here, I’m dying with you.”
“You don’t have to—”
“I know I don’t have to,” he interrupted. “I didn’t have to come with you in the first place; I didn’t have to leave the safety of my desk in Littlehope. I didn’t have to agree to that bogus interview you concocted when you were fifteen just so I’d let you come hang out at the Trib. But I did, and as far as I can tell I’m gonna keep agreeing to shit I probably shouldn’t where you’re concerned.” He studied me intently. “And you’ll keep doing the same for me. Because that’s what we do.”
I lay my head against his chest. He stroked my hair while I listened to his heartbeat. “So, if you’re not leaving me here to die, do you have another plan?” I murmured into his chest. “Because I’m thinking we’re gonna need one.”
I felt his lips brush the top of my head. “As a matter of fact, I do.”
Diggs wanted us to leave the safety of the caves and head for a fire tower about twenty miles northeast of us. I wanted to stick to the caves, with the assumption that if we continued within the network of tunnels, eventually we would find some adventure-seeking spelunkers who could help us get to safety.
“He won’t let us get that far,” Diggs said. His tone changed when he said it, took on an edge we’d managed to avoid for the past hour. The words made something sink like a stone in my gut.
“What do you mean, ‘let us’?
“I mean ‘let us,’” he said. “He’s holding all the cards here. I think he knows every move we’re gonna make before we make it… He might even know where we are right now.”
“And he’s just out there… What? Following us? Watching us right now?”
“Possibly. Yeah.”
The thought chilled me to the bone: the idea that he—whoever he was—was just waiting, biding his time until he decided it was time to make the sky fall. And once he did, there wasn’t a damn thing we could do about it.
“How do we level the playing field?” I asked. “He knows these woods; we don’t. He has weapons; we don’t. He has access to food and water and shelter, presumably.”
“It’s not exactly sporting,” Diggs agreed. He looked around our homey little hovel. “I think the best thing we can do at this point is figure out an easy way out of here and get moving again. I’m gonna go on ahead and check out the tunnels, just to see where we come out. You mind waiting here for a few minutes?”
I minded very much, as a matter of fact. “I thought you said we should stick together.”
“I won’t be gone long. But there’s a limit to how much of this tunneling you’ll be able to do with that wrist. If I go ahead, I can figure out the most efficient way for us to get out of here.”
“What about the opening up top there? Why don’t we just go out that way?”
“I checked it out while you were asleep,” he said, shaking his head. “It’s too high up—there’s no way to reach it. Just trust me, okay? I’ll be gone twenty minutes. If you hear anyone coming, just follow me inside. You’ll have hold of the rope; we won’t get separated.”
I’d never felt so clingy in my life. “Twenty minutes?” I asked.
“At most. I’ll be back before you know it.”
Famous last words.
I watched Diggs disappear into the tunnels a minute later, while I held tight to the other end of his rope like it was my only lifeline. Which it very well may have been. We’d been trying to conserve the power on our phones so that if we ever did come within range of a cell tower again we might be able to make a call, but now I kept mine on and watched the minutes tick by the entire time that Diggs was gone. It was five thirty-two in the evening when Diggs left. There were some kind of cave dwellers—crickets or frogs or something—that had been cheeping incessantly since we got there. Their chatter got louder while Diggs was gone, until it felt like that was the only sound on the planet. Occasionally, I’d tug on the rope just to make sure someone was on the other end; within a second or two, Diggs would return the tug, but the interim until that happened lasted years.
The fourth time I tugged the rope, at five forty-seven, there was no answering tug. A minute passed. Then two.
“Diggs?” I called into the tunnel softly.
No response. I tugged the rope again.
Another thirty seconds passed. The cave dwellers had fallen silent.
And then, deep in the network of tunnels, I heard the shuffle and shimmy of someone moving. I wet my lips, trying to slow my heart. Somewhere so far off it sounded more like imagination than reality, a song bubbled up from the rock. I strained to hear, my ear pressed to the cave wall. My hands were sweating, goose bumps up and down my arms. When I realized what I was hearing, fear moved like an electric shock through my system:
That same low, tuneless whistle we’d heard back at the river.
“Diggs?” I whispered again. I tugged hard enough on the rope that I figured there was no way in hell he couldn’t feel it. The whistling got louder, but the main tunnel Diggs had gone into branched off in three different directions. I couldn’t tell which tunnel the whistling was coming from.
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br /> I knew what Diggs’ answer to the dilemma would be: Run. Save yourself. My feet remained rooted to the spot.
I was just getting ready to go in after him when I felt a hard tug on the other end of the rope. Seconds later, Diggs appeared a few yards into the tunnel, moving fast on his belly. “Get our stuff,” he whispered frantically. “Then run.”
I grabbed his pack and mine, and stuffed the flashlight into my belt. We had three choices of escape in our dismal little cavern: the entrance at the top of the cave that Diggs had already said was too high up, the network of tunnels Diggs was just emerging from—where J. was apparently gaining on him fast—or an almost impossibly narrow fissure in the opposite cave wall.
Diggs made it the final few feet through the tunnel and dove out, pushing me toward the entrance in the cave ceiling he’d told me not half an hour ago was too high for us. I stopped moving with Diggs’ hand at my back and J.’s tuneless whistle ringing in my ears. Diggs almost ran me over. I pointed toward the narrow fissure I’d been hoping to avoid.
“What about that?” I asked. “We could try that way.”
“If we can get up there, then we’re out,” he whispered. “Then if we can block up that entrance, we’ll get some time on him.” Before I could argue, he pushed me toward his intended escape route again. The opening was maybe ten or fifteen feet up, and I could hear J. getting closer. “Put the pack on,” Diggs ordered. “I’m gonna give you a boost up.”
“What about you?”
“Throw me the rope when you’re up there. I’ll climb.” I started to argue, but he cut me off. “Just do it, dammit. I don’t think he knows where we are yet, but it won’t take him long.”
He knelt and I clambered up his back and stood on top of his shoulders. He stood, steadying me with his hands on my calves while I tried to figure out the best way to maneuver.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“Hang on, I’m looking for a way up.”
I searched for a hold at the opening, but only succeeded in sending a cascade of stones down on both of us.