The Suicide Lake (Book of Shadows 2)

by Michael Penning

  “There are always other jobs,” Jonas humphed.

  Seeing the stricken look on his face, Abigail felt low and miserable. Small wonder she seldom wrote and never visited. No matter how hard she tried, somehow it always seemed to come to this. She knew Jonas deserved better, but for some reason, she couldn’t seem to help herself. And why not? Why couldn’t she just be grateful for his years of kindness? Where did this bitterness and resentment come from?

  “What of your classes at St. George’s?” Jonas asked as he dragged a chair from the kitchen table and plucked an apple from a wicker basket.

  “Mr. Tunstall will see to them in my absence,” Abigail replied, relieved at the abrupt change of subject. “I considered it a fair exchange for some recent services I was able to provide.”

  Jonas sighed and took a bite of the apple. “The journey northwest will take you a week at the least. And it’ll be as dangerous as all hell now that President Madison’s declared war on the Brits. Those damned Indians have gone and allied with the wrong side. I’ve heard they’ve been slaughtering Americans up and down Mohawk Valley.”

  “Chauncey Beck has planned a route that will keep us away from the Hudson. It will add a day or two to our travel but we should be well out of harm’s way until we reach Tahawus.”

  Jonas swallowed and wiped a trickle of juice from his beard. “Beck, you say? That old walrus might still know how to steer a coach but he won’t do you much good as an escort if you find yourself in trouble.”

  “I haven’t required an escort for many years,” Abigail returned with a hint of a wry smile playing at her lips.

  Jonas nodded once. “No, I suppose you haven’t.” A moment passed before he spoke again, making no effort to hide his worry. “You will stay out of trouble, won’t you?”

  “Of course.” Abigail crossed the room to stand behind him and lay her hands on his broad shoulders. “I apologize for what I said,” she murmured. “You’ve been nothing but kind to me and all I do is hurt you. I don’t know why I say such things.”

  “I do.” Without looking up, Jonas reached across his chest and gently covered one of Abigail’s hands with his own. “Emily and I have always tried to be a family to you, but we’re not your family. We will forever be a reminder of all you lost long ago. Childhood, love, companionship, children of your own: all taken from you in a single night of blood and horror. You can’t get them back... and you have forever carried that rage around with you.”

  A silence fell between them.

  “Perhaps you are right,” Abigail said at last. Outside, the sounds of her nephews’ laughter floated across the meadow. “Perhaps I will always carry it.”

  Chapter 5

  The weather-beaten sign read Welcome to Tahawus, but Chauncey Beck had never been anywhere less inviting in his life. Driving his small coach ever deeper through a forest so dense and black, even the pale afternoon light seemed afraid to enter, the old coachman shifted his bulk on his bench and shivered as he steered his pair of horses across yet another treacherous log bridge. Below him, a flood of whitewater rushed through a deep chasm riven through the solid bedrock of the mountainside.

  Eight days had passed since Chauncey and Abigail had left Salem. The coachman’s clever route had avoided the usual post and military roads that had become so vulnerable to Native ambushes now that America was at war with Britain. Instead, he had kept east of the Hudson River as they traveled north, sticking to a meandering network of trails leftover from the busier days of the fur trade.

  With each passing day, civilization seemed more and more like a distant memory. They traveled long through the daylight hours and spent the nights at lonesome trading outposts where the beds were hard and the meals meager. For the most part, they passed the miles in silence. Abigail remained inside the coach, studying the strange book that never left her hands. Chauncey had no desire to know what forbidden knowledge lay within its ancient pages and had been glad to settle into the welcome solitude of the box seat on which he had spent most of his adult life.

  Now, with the thick evergreens closing around him and the steep pitches and flanks of the mountains looming like fortresses on all sides, Chauncey’s old bones told him he was getting too old for such adventures. The slivers of sky he glimpsed between the treetops were as gray as dull bayonets. Despite the heavy layers of his shoulder capes, he could feel the mountain air growing colder and more damp the higher they climbed. Not for the first time, Chauncey swore this would be the last time he drove Abigail anywhere. Let her find someone else to take her on her damned ghost-hunts. But even as the idea crossed his mind, he knew he was lying to himself. He would never stop escorting Abigail, not as long as she held the recipe.

  Six years ago, Chauncey’s career as a coachman had been over. Stricken with a crippling arthritis in both hands, he had hardly been able to dress himself, let alone grip the reins of a pair of coach-horses for hours on end. There were days when his knuckles had been so sore and swollen, he had felt like someone had taken a hammer to each of them. His nights at the pub became longer and more frequent as he turned to drink to numb the pain. Coaching was the only livelihood he had ever known, and having just turned sixty-two, he had begun to question how he would survive. The future looked bleak and short.

  And then Abigail Jacobs had appeared at his door.

  Chauncey had recognized her immediately as the spitting image of her mother, whose family he had served so many years before. Abigail had been looking for transportation to some obscure cemetery in southern Maine and she insisted that only Chauncey would do. When she learned of his disability, she returned that same afternoon with some kind of dried tea that smelled as foul as a rancid beaver pelt. But within days of drinking it, the pain had left Chauncey’s hands and he had been working for Abigail ever since.

  There were times when Chauncey wondered if Abigail had bewitched him that day when she had brought him that foul-smelling potion. Sure, she paid him well for his services, doubling and sometimes tripling his usual rate. The only thing she asked in return was his utter silence regarding whatever he might witness in her company. But Chauncey didn’t think he could be swayed by money alone. There had to be more to it than mere coin. Surely no one in his right mind would venture this far into the godforsaken wilderness in the middle of a war, dodging bloodthirsty Natives and risking certain death—or worse—in some haunted forest. No, there had to be something enchanted about that tea. But what? Chauncey couldn’t figure it out. The only thing he knew for certain was that Abigail had bought his undying loyalty with it. As long as she held the recipe, he would follow her to the ends of the earth.

  Soon, another sign came into view: No Trespassing. Property of Witherbee & Rand Logging Co. Chauncey thought it comical that the company found it necessary to warn against intruders this far into the vast, feral wilderness. It was hard to believe anyone could survive out here, let alone a thriving logging camp. With the exception of the two signs he had encountered, it seemed there was nothing here but forest and rock and beasts that had hunted each other since the dawn of time.

  And yet, minutes later, the first traces of the village itself materialized among the trees. Timber shacks and storage sheds gradually gave way to the larger barracks that housed the lumberjacks. More buildings sprung up as the road continued to widen. Before long, Chauncey was rumbling over the muddy pits and ruts of what appeared to be the outpost’s Main Street.

  The size of the village was surprising. This wasn’t the roughshod, backwater logging camp Chauncey had imagined. Running straight for perhaps two hundred yards from end to end, the Main Street was flanked on both sides by a hodgepodge of squat, timber buildings. Another muddy lane bisected the street at its mid-point and provided the village with its only intersection. Ahead, the road ended at a small, whitewashed chapel. Its steeple rose high into the air before a wall of dense forest.

  Feeling the weight of the villagers’ eyes upon him, Chauncey straightened his spine, hauled on the reins, and b
rought the horses to a halt before what the coachman took to be the community mess hall. There, a man in a brown waistcoat stood waiting on the low porch.

  “Mr. Emmons?” Chauncey inquired.

  The man nodded. “At your service.”

  Duncan Emmons was not particularly tall and his wiry frame seemed built for armchairs and reading rooms. His shock of yellow hair—straight and coarse as straw—had grown long and fell down his neck and over his bright blue eyes. Beneath his waistcoat, he wore a thick wool shirt tucked into his gray breeches. A week’s worth of fair-haired stubble lined his angular jaw and cheeks.

  Duncan stood by while Chauncey heaved himself from his bench, descended with a grunt, and opened the coach door for Abigail. Chauncey could have sworn he heard the breath catch in Duncan’s throat at the sight of her—not that the coachman could blame him. Even wrapped in her heavy travel pelisse and with her elegant hair tucked into a modest bonnet, Abigail was a breathtaking sight.

  “Hello, Abigail,” Duncan said with a quaint bow. “Welcome to the Adirondack.”

  Abigail paid no attention to the ankle-deep mud clinging to her leather boots as she wrapped herself tighter in her shawl and cast a glance around. “The Adirondack?”

  “’Tis what the Indians call these mountains.” Duncan motioned to the tall peaks that rose above them on all sides, their summits lost in the low-hanging clouds. “In the Mohican dialect it’s a derogatory term for their hated enemies, the Algonquin. Adirondack means bark-eater. The two tribes have been—” Duncan stopped abruptly when he saw the amused smile playing at Abigail’s lips. “What is it?”

  “Oh, Duncan...” Abigail nearly laughed. “You haven’t changed a bit. Always so eager to enlighten others with your learning.”

  Duncan smiled sheepishly and shrugged as he brushed the straw-like hair from his eyes.

  Chauncey Beck was good at reading people, at recognizing the stories that went unsaid between them. While busying himself with Abigail’s trunks, he kept an eye on the pair as they continued their conversation. There was definitely more to their story than he was privy to. Chauncey just couldn’t figure what it was. Could Abigail and Emmons have once been lovers? He found it hard to believe. What was it, then? The mystery was almost enough to make the coachman wish he would be staying around long enough to find out. Struggling to heave the second of Abigail’s trunks from the roof of the coach, he let out another involuntary grunt.

  “Can I persuade you to stay the night, Mr. Beck?” Duncan offered as he quickly came to Chauncey’s aid and transferred the trunk to the porch of the mess hall. “You’ll have a hard go of it, getting back down to the valley before dark.”

  “Quite sure, Mr. Emmons,” Chauncey replied a little too hastily. He and Abigail had already agreed that he was to return to the tiny outpost of North Hudson where he would wait in relative safety until he returned to retrieve her in ten day’s time. He had no desire to spend any longer in Tahawus than was absolutely necessary.

  “I’m afraid Chauncey would rather take his chances with flesh and blood Indians than spend the night in a town where three men have killed themselves inside of a month,” Abigail chided.

  A sudden change came over Duncan. “Four,” he said in a voice that barely rose above a whisper.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “There have now been four suicides. Just yesterday, another man took his own life.”

  Abigail’s eyes gleamed. “Have you interred his body yet?”

  Duncan shook his head.

  “Excellent. I must examine it immediately.”

  “Right now? Why?”

  “If this is indeed some kind of haunting, ‘tis imperative that we determine the nature of the entity we are dealing with. This man’s body could provide us with some vital clues.”

  “I’m afraid that won’t be possible,” Duncan insisted.

  “Why not?”

  “Because there isn’t enough of him left to examine.”

  Chapter 6

  A pattern of dark stains remained where the dead man’s blood had seeped into the forest floor. Abigail hitched up the hem of her coat, crouched, and pressed two fingers to the earth. She came away with a rusty smudge on her fingertips. “You are absolutely certain this couldn’t have been an accident?”

  “Not a chance,” Duncan replied. “Not Chester Prue.”

  They stood at the edge of a wide gash of freshly cleared forest about a ten-minute walk from the village. A constellation of jagged pine stumps sprouted from the ground like fat, round tusks. Knee-high mounds of wood chips surrounded each stump. The air was thick with the scent of chopped timber and wet pine needles. The afternoon was growing late and a front of angry clouds rolling over the mountain peaks promised both an early twilight and a stormy night.

  “Am I to understand the man just stood here and allowed the tree to fall on him?” Abigail persisted.

  “According to the man Chester was with, that’s precisely what he did,” Duncan replied.

  “He couldn’t have simply made a mistake?”

  Duncan shook his head and motioned to an area about sixty yards away where the land disappeared down a steep hill. “The men fell the trees so that they come down parallel to that ridgeline. Once the logs are bucked and rounded, they’re rolled down the hill to the lake at the bottom of that ravine. They chop the trees in two-man teams, alternating their strikes and angling their blows so that the tree falls in the desired direction.”

  Duncan moved to stand by a massive stump easily three feet in diameter. “Yesterday, Chester was partnered with Augie McMullen. According to Augie, they had this tree about to topple when Chester stopped swinging. Augie figured he needed a rest and kept on with the final blows. When he looked up, Chester was standing directly in the fall line. Augie says Chester just stood there, staring up at this huge pine as it began to tilt toward him.” Duncan shook his head. “Chester had been logging for over ten years; he knew exactly which way the tree would come down. Augie remembers shouting for him to get out of the way. Then his memory becomes somewhat unreliable.”

  “How so?”

  “Augie’s never been the most articulate of men. He has a hard time finding words for what happened next, but he swears he saw Chester look straight at him. He says there was a kind of awful terror in Chester’s face, as if he wanted to move but was somehow being held in place. Then the tree came crashing down on him.”

  Abigail looked up from the massive stump to the empty space in the sky where the tree would have towered. “How much would a tree such as that weigh?”

  “A hundred-foot white pine? At least four-thousand pounds.” Duncan turned his back on the stump and joined Abigail on the periphery of the gruesome pattern of stains. “When they finally got the branches stripped enough to roll the trunk off of him, we found...” Duncan shuddered and swallowed hard. “We tried to move his body, but there wasn’t enough bone left intact to keep it together. We had to use shovels to get Prue’s remains into a crate.”

  “Where are they now?”

  “We’re keeping them in one of the storage sheds until Father Carnes makes a decision on the internment.”

  Abigail understood the situation at once. “If Mr. Prue committed suicide, he would be denied a Christian burial.”

  “Precisely.”

  “Did Prue have a family here with him?”

  “No.” Duncan cocked an eyebrow. “You’re looking for a motive, aren’t you? Well, you can believe that Chester wasn’t some lonely logger who couldn’t cope with the isolation. Something compelled him to kill himself. What else would drive a man to such an end?”

  Abigail chose not to respond as she went to examine the giant tree stump. The circumstances of Chester Prue’s death were certainly strange, but none of this fit the profile of any haunting she had ever seen. She had encountered many spirits over the years, but she had never come across an entity powerful enough to drive a man to suicide. Not to mention the fact that spirits from beyond the Ve
il desired living bodies to possess.

  From the corner of her eye, Abigail spied Duncan biting his lip as he stood watching her. There was something else on his mind. Abigail hoped he wouldn’t take this opportunity to drag up the past; now wasn’t the time.

  “Abigail,” he began, “when Emily’s letter arrived two days ago, I... I didn’t quite know how to feel about you being here. I know it’s been years, but I... I just wanted to tell you that I’m glad that you’ve come. We’ve a lot of frightened people here.”

  Duncan gave her a wan smile and Abigail relaxed, glad to further delay a conversation that was likely inevitable. Gazing at him, Abigail noticed for the first time that Duncan had grown to become quite handsome. He had been barely out of his teens when she last saw him. Now in his late-twenties, he had shed his boyish awkwardness the way a fawn grows into a lean buck. His bright blue eyes still shone with youthful exuberance but his face had lost its pallor. The months he had spent in the wilderness had hardened him and he now bore the weathered glow of the high mountain elements. Abigail thought the rugged look suited him, as if his outward appearance finally reflected the adventurous soul that lay beneath.

  “Duncan, I—” Whatever Abigail was going to say was interrupted by the sharp bark of a dog from somewhere down in the ravine. Seconds later, a large black mutt crested the ridgeline, followed closely by two men.

  “Damn,” Duncan swore under his breath at the sight of them.

  Abigail followed his gaze. “What’s wrong?”

  “I thought I’d have more time to tell you.”

  “Tell me what? Who is that?”

  Duncan’s expression grew anxious as he looked her in the eye. “Abigail, I need you to follow my lead for the moment. No matter how odd it may seem, I need you to play along with whatever I say. Will you do that?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “Who’s the stranger, Emmons?” asked the first man as he drew near. His voice was as deep and cool as a mountain lake. He was a lumberjack; tall and solidly built with hair as dark and thick as a bear hide. The black scruff of a long beard covered his face and his eyes were dark and penetrating. He wore a flannel neckerchief tied loosely around his throat, a woolen shirt rolled up to his elbows, buckskin breeches, and Native-style leggings. A leather bag, hunting knife, and flintlock pistol were fastened to a rawhide belt looped around his trim waist. He carried a heavy timber axe hefted over a broad shoulder and Abigail could make out the gray shapes of woodsman tattoos emblazoned on his thick forearms.