Katherine looked over her shoulder back at the tree behind which she had just been squatting. She felt nervousness, almost as if she was being watched. She turned quickly and scanned the woods.
Ridiculous, she thought. There is nobody out there watching me. But now she felt exposed. She had been squatting right there, peeing by the side of the road where anybody could see her. She looked out over the water again. To the west, the sky was turning pink and high fleecy orange clouds scudded above the horizon. Overhead, the sky was a deep purple. In the woods behind her a drawn out trill began that rose steadily to a high pitch and sustained itself for a full 30 seconds. It was a toad. She knew the sound having heard it in Hudson Richardson’s backyard in Amherst recently. One of the first sounds associated with spring in this part of New England, Hudson had said. Now, in summer, not as common a sound.
Katherine turned her back on the water and began walking up the road leaving the reservoir behind. She strolled forward with a steady, brisk pace. It was getting dark. No point hanging about a big, lonesome reservoir after the sun went down.
* * *
Chapter 49
Katherine walked 50 yards or so up the dirt road winding through tall pines and gnarled oaks when she felt it again—the flicker of nervousness, the sensation of being watched. She turned quickly and glanced down the road. There was nothing, just the flat waters of the reservoir turning a pale gray in the twilight.
It was so quiet here.
But this was absurd. She was not the nervous type and certainly not afraid of the woods in the dark. Katherine shrugged and turned and began walking again, but this time at a faster pace.
She was less than a mile from the access gate where she had parked. The Quabbin access road she was now on was a good, hard-packed dirt surface. Off to her right, another cruder road sliced off into the woods. A logging road.
Logging contractors periodically worked in parts of Quabbin. The water district engineers were constantly striving for a better water yield from the reservoir. Trees sucked up water. Too many trees per square mile meant less water flowing into the reservoir. The chief Quabbin forester had another reason for cutting some of the trees, according to an article Katherine had read recently in the local newspaper. The forester wanted to return parts of the Quabbin reservation to the broad fields that had once dominated this landscape.
The Swift River Valley had been an area of small farms, open fields, and rolling hills before the reservoir inundated the land. The buildings in the four towns vanished first--torn down or moved away to make way for the reservoir. Bulldozers sculpted great areas into muddy fields leaving only cellar holes where homes once stood. Next came the state work crews tramping through the denuded countryside planting stands of red pine. That had turned out to be a mistake. Red pine was not native to the area and it created a dark, unproductive forest with little plant or animal life flourishing under its canopy. The forester was now trying to correct the mistakes of the past and free parts of Quabbin from the tall, scrawny red pines, by cutting them and returning the areas to fields.
Katherine looked up the logging road where several tall pines, recently cut, lay in tangles. Already the area they had occupied had opened up. The white and red petals of painted trilliums carpeted the edge of the woods while wild blackberry bushes spread their brambles across the new field. The last of the evening sun streaked the pine-needle matted earth with dusky bronze rays. A low guttural sound came from the field—peent, peent, peent. Katherine listened. It was the sound of a woodcock about to take off on its mating flight. She had heard a similar sound in Amherst last week, and Hudson Richardson had come outside, beer in hand, and identified the sound. She paused and watched the field. Again, she heard the woodcock. It was a bit late in the season for the woodcock’s mating ritual, Hudson had said, but it had been a tough spring, and things were behind schedule.
Katherine listened for several minutes. With a final series of calls, the woodcock burst into the air, its chunky dark body climbing high into the darkening sky, and then when it was just out of sight, it stopped its ascent and began its spectacular return to earth. Katherine could hear it before she saw it—a series of whistles and chirps created by the rush of wind in the bird’s feathers. And then the woodcock appeared plunging rapidly toward the earth, twisting and rolling and looping through the twilight sky in its strange, frenetic courting flight. Katherine watched as the bird performed a last series of spiral turns and then pulled up just short of a crash landing on the ground. The woodcock settled somewhere into the damp earth of the field and Katherine turned back to the road and began walking.
She walked quickly now and glanced only occasionally into the nearby woods. A chorus of toads had just begun. Katherine looked up the road. At a spot perhaps 40 yards in front of her and to the right of the road stood five old gnarled maple trees. In the deepening purple twilight their crooked and knobby branches threw fantastical shadows across the road.
Katherine continued walking up the road with her eyes on the trees. She had read that the early farmers of New England always planted five sugar maple trees in front of their homes. The five sugar maples supplied enough maple sugar for a typical family for one year, besides providing needed shade for the front yard. Supposedly, if you wanted to find the location of old houses in the valley a good method was to hunt for the telltale cluster of five maples. Usually, a cellar hole indicating a former building would be nearby.
And then she felt it again. The sensation.
She was perhaps 25 yards from the clump of maple trees when the terrible certainty that she was being watched floated over her like a gust of cold dank wind.
Katherine stopped and looked toward the maple trees. They were very old trees—probably planted when this valley was first settled 250 years ago. Once tall and straight, they were now bent and deformed with thick, knobby branches askew. Katherine stared hard at the maples. Somebody was watching her from behind those trees.
Her mouth went dry and her upper body clammy and wet. A feeling of vertigo momentarily overcame her when she tried to walk forward and she stumbled in the road but regained her balance. She paused again, drew three deep breaths, and tried to think.
If there is somebody behind those trees, I can’t let him know I’m afraid, she thought. She moved her head slightly to the right and then left, assessing her situation. There was no point turning back. The reservoir was behind her and cut off escape in that direction. She could dash off the road and plunge into the tangled brush and tall trees nearby and perhaps try to find her way out of the woods and to her car. But that wasn’t such a good idea either. If somebody were lying in wait behind the clump of maples, he could follow her into the woods. And then she would be at a disadvantage—scrambling about in dense woods with night falling, trying to elude a pursuer who probably knew the area better than she. There was really only one choice. Guts it out. Walk right by that clump of trees as if nobody were there. If the watcher did jump out at her, she could at least run up the road toward her car. And fight like mad if he caught her.
Katherine took a deep breath and forced herself to begin walking up the road. When she was 10 yards from the clump of maples, she stopped again. The sensation that somebody was watching her was overwhelming. She bent down and picked up a grapefruit-sized stone that lay on the side of the road, but immediately felt more afraid. The rock wouldn’t be much of a weapon. Slowly she moved back to the center of the road, keeping her eyes focused on the maple trees. Perhaps the silent watcher was just some harmless peeping tom who had glimpsed her earlier peeing by the side of the road.
“Hey you, whoever you are, listen,” she said, trying to sound tough and calm, but hearing her voice come out tinny and tremulous. “I know you’re in there. I want you to cut the bullshit and come out.” Her words echoed slightly in the silence. But nothing moved. Katherine took four or five more steps up the road and stopped again. She tried to peer into the shadows behind the trees, but she saw nothing. The branches
waved slightly and threw contorted shadows across the road as a cool breeze swept off the reservoir. But there was silence.
“Cut this game, creep,” Katherine said, trying to put a snarl into her voice. “Do you hear me?”
Her words sounded increasingly bizarre to her in the silence, like a scared and lost 10-year-old child pretending to be a big tough teenager. A toad trilled in the woods behind the maples but otherwise there was no sound.
* * *
Chapter 50
The Grandfather Red story was an inspiration. He knew the parts of the story that were in the local history books--everybody did, but there was so much more. It was a great thrill to actually wander the Quabbin woods and feel the past reenacted. This was the stuff that was not in the history books. This was the story that he alone was privileged to know because the entity had chosen him. Oh, sure. There were undoubtedly others chosen by the entity for assignments in others places. And maybe there were lots of other entities out there. But here in the Swift River Valley with the great Quabbin Reservoir covering a lost landscape, he was the entity’s go to guy. He was important.
He had left the floor of the Quabbin Valley and started back up to Enfield Lookout when he felt the entity’s presence—the familiar tugging at his senses that meant the entity was guiding him. He moved briskly now, climbing back to the main path and then up the winding road to the parking lot where he had left his pickup truck near the lookout tower.
The sky was turning orange to the west and big purple shadows sprawled across the road like hastily drawn stick figures on course white paper. A Quabbin park patrolman was parked near his truck and looking it over. He knew why. The reservation closed at dusk and the patrolman was wondering where the owner of the truck might be. He called and waved, indicating that he was about to leave, and the patrolman waved back and drove off.
Down on the floor of the valley near Enfield center he had felt the entity’s presence almost as a physical possibility—as if the entity were about to burst out of the dark woods in the person of old Elijah Durman. But that feeling had faded. It was not yet time for the entity’s final manifestation. He had come to realize though that somewhere in the fast approaching future the entity needed him. Needed him as a sort of enabler—someone to bring together the various elements required for the entity’s return to earth. He had known this almost from the moment the entity assigned him the task with the coffin. This was big stuff, an assignment worthy of him.
He drove without haste from Quabbin Reservation—down from the tower parking lot and past the Enfield Lookout and then around a rotary that funneled vehicles west past the great earthen Winsor Dam that impounded the waters of the reservoir, and then out past the Visitor’s Center and the main gate and back onto Route 9 near Belton center. He drove carefully and with no destination in mind. The entity would guide him.
In five minutes time he was at the traffic light near Belton center. He swung right, not his usual direction and drove west on Route 202, a two-lane highway that ran along the edges of the great reservoir for some 10 miles. The sky was now a dark purple with high white clouds that had turned gray around the edges. An orange band of sunset spread west over the Quabbin woods. The reservoir was to his right now, but out of sight behind a curtain of red pine and tall red oak that stretched for a mile or so between the road and the water. Up ahead were several Quabbin gates. Gate 8, in particular, was familiar to him. It was right off the highway and provided easy access to the waters of the reservoir.
And then he felt a jolt, a possession of his body as if he had been struck hard in the chest, followed by certainty that he must reverse directions and return to the Enfield Road gate in Belton. The entity was with him.
He felt good. He was finally being included. Included in something so much bigger and more important than all the sad little friendships he had been excluded from his entire life. All the bullying in college had just been a carryover from the treatment he received in high school and before.
He had never fit in.
Never.
His father, old and alcoholic and bitter; and his mother, fat and detached—they had been no help. Useless, really. He had spent his life spinning like a top with no direction--spinning like a top until it wobbles and crashes. That is until the entity came into his life and filled him with visions and purpose.
The first time he had killed somebody—that would be the hitchhiker in Vermont--he had realized how easy it was to be one of the people who control things. You just had to pull the curtain aside and step into a room where others dared not go. And then you controlled things—like who might happen to die that day just because they crossed your path. He now controlled things. Of course, only as an agent for the entity, but that was plenty good enough.
Looking back, he could see his life in perspective. He had been an outsider, a loser, an outcast all his life. He had never dated a woman; never been invited to birthday party; never had a favorite teacher; never been kissed, even by his parents. He had never mattered to anybody. But now he mattered. His presence, his coming and going—that now mattered. He had the power.
People had died because they happened to encounter him. The waitress at the phone booth outside the restaurant--she’d be alive today if he had chosen a different route to cruise that evening.
He had turned to the right as he left a small town on the banks of the Connecticut River that evening, but before making that turn; he had rolled to a stop and pondered briefly driving straight ahead and crossing the bridge that spanned the river. Somebody else, but not the waitress at the phone booth, might have died that night had he not taken that right turn but instead driven over the bridge. That was just the way it was. His movements now mattered.
Tonight, he drove toward Belton and swung left at the traffic light. The Enfield Road gate was just down the road.
The entity needed him there. Now.
* * *
Chapter 51
Katherine paused on Old Enfield Road staring ahead at the cluster of ancient maple trees. “Screw you then. I’m using this road,” she said in a loud voice.
She stepped forward toward the maple trees from which she felt the presence watching her, careful to keep to the center of the road. It was getting dark fast. I’m not going to let some creep hiding behind a tree scare me, she said to herself.
Katherine took a dozen steps, her heart thumping, and came even with the five maple trees. She forced herself to stop and face them. She wanted badly to run, but that would show her fear. Her whole body was quivering and her mouth was dry and felt like it had been coated with glue. Best to face this down though.
Katherine took another deep breath. The high-pitched trill of a toad was the only sound from the darkening woods. She looked up quickly at the sky. Some of the orange fleece clouds that had floated serenely in the west 15 minutes ago had turned purple around the edges while others were now inkblots in the sky. Night was near. She stared intently into the clump of trees, trying to distinguish a human form behind those wobbly branches and shadowy trunks. She stood this way for a full minute. There was no movement and no sound from the clump of maples.
Katherine turned and started to walk again, past the maples and up the road, listening intently for the sound of footsteps behind her. She would run for it if somebody came out from behind those trees. She quickened her pace and then looked back. The stand of old maples was now 20 yards behind her, still throwing shadows on the road. The woods were now almost dark, but motionless. Nobody had sprung out from behind the old maple trees. The road down to the reservoir was empty and singularly non-threatening. Katherine shook her head. Maybe she had just given in to some sort of primordial fear of night in the woods. Certainly there was nothing to be afraid of back there. She walked on, but turned her head often to check behind her.
She had walked another 300 yards up the road when again she felt eyes watching her. This time it was pervasive. Katherine stopped. She looked carefully into the woods on her right and th
en her left. Someone was watching her, but now she couldn’t figure from where. Her car was a little over a half-mile away. The road curved into a long, gentle uphill slope in front of her and then, several hundred yards beyond that, ended in a dirt turnoff connected to the public road.
Katherine turned and began resolutely walking up the road again. By now the woods were dark and the last light of the day was ebbing in the western sky in a slash of purple and orange.
She turned suddenly. Right behind her in a stand of tall red pines she saw something. Katherine gripped her rock and threw it into the trees where it ricocheted off several trees and fell to the ground with a thump. She stared at the trees. When she had turned quickly, she had seen a face amongst those pine branches. But there was nothing there now.
* * *
Chapter 52
Katherine stood in the road. Deep purple ribbons of clouds banded the western sky. Get a grip on yourself, she thought. Don’t get carried away. There’s nobody here except you.
She turned and began walking as fast as she could. The feeling of being watched was all consuming, pressing in from the dark woods, filling the space behind her on the empty road, etching the shadows with dread. She swung her head from right to left and glanced behind her as she walked. And then she saw it again. Over to her right, behind a tall clump of what looked like blueberry bushes, a face. It appeared for only the briefest instant and then vanished. Katherine bent quickly, found a rock, and was about to throw it in the direction of the bush when she stopped. Something had just occurred to her. “Oh, no,” she heard herself saying out loud. “No way can this be it.”
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