Ghost Light (39 page)

“When did you see her?” she asked. She had an odd, disembodied feeling, as though she wasn’t really speaking for herself, but someone else was using her voice as their instrument.

“Just a little while ago,” Krissy said, her voice still sounding high and fragile, like fine crystal that was too thin not to shatter soon. “She was… she was sitting in the bedroom, over by the bathroom door.”

Cindy knew there was nothing there except a blank wall with hardly enough room for someone to get by the bed.

“You’re sure it wasn’t just—you know, the moonlight or something?” she asked, though she already knew the answer to that question because the moon was shining in through
her
window, and the door between the bedrooms had been shut tightly.

“No … no, I’m sure it was her,” Krissy replied.

“Did she say or do anything?” Cindy asked. She wasn’t sure if she was humoring the little girl’s imagination or if she actually believed her. She felt Krissy shake her head in the darkness.

“Nope,” she said. “She was just… just sitting there, singing that song she always sings.”

“You mean ‘I See the Moon?’ ”

“Um-hum, and she was… she was brushing her hair. She had her head leaning way forward so her hair was hanging in front of her face, and she was brushing it.”

“I see,” Cindy said, unable to resist the shiver that shook her shoulders.

“And when she wasn’t singing,” Krissy said with a touch of sadness and hushed awe in her voice, “She was… she was crying.”

“Well, look, honey,” Cindy said. “It’s really late, and we should both be asleep.” She leaned forward, kissed Krissy on the cheek, and tucked the blankets up around her face. “Try to get to sleep, okay?”

“Umm… okay.”

“G’night, Squirt” Cindy said.

“Night.”

With that, Cindy rolled over, sinking her head into the soft well of the pillow as she closed her eyes; but her eyes didn’t stay closed for very long. She found herself staring almost without blinking at the pale blue wash of moonlight on the windowsill, and she couldn’t push out of her thoughts the memory of that dream she’d had of a thin, glowing hand, reaching for her out of the darkness, trying to grab her. And all she could think was, what if that sound she’d heard, that pitiful, wailing howl that had echoed across the hollow stillness of the lake, had, in fact, been the mournful, muffled cries of Krissy’s blue lady?

Bow Hunting

I
t was the second week of October, heading into Columbus Day weekend, and the foliage season was in full swing as Alex drove north on Route 302, heading for West Gray. Explosions of bright reds, oranges, and yellow leaves filled the woods on both sides of the road and stood out like smokeless wildfire against the bright, cloudless blue of the sky. There was a chill in the air that Alex found bracing, and that was exactly what he needed to help counteract the hammering hangover he was fighting after all the beer he’d drunk last night. His stomach was churning with sour acid, but a solid breakfast of over-easy eggs, bacon, toast, juice, and plenty of coffee at a local cafe called Pat’s had helped. He was pretty sure that, by noontime, he’d be feeling just fine again.

Fine enough, anyway, so he could start thinking through the rest of what he had planned as a cover story if he encountered anyone who got curious as to why he was snooping around in the woods in the vicinity of Little Sebago Lake over the next few days. He had heard on the radio that the bow and arrow deer hunting season had already started, so before leaving Portland, he had stopped at a sporting goods store and bought a Bear compound hunting bow with a sixty pound pull and fifty percent let-off, a quiver full of broad head tipped, aluminum shaft hunting arrows, and a hunter’s camouflage jacket and hat. He was pissed that he had to spend so much more than he had wanted to, but he was even more pissed about what had happened when he had tried to get a three-day, nonresident’s hunting license. The store owner had refused to sell him one because Alex couldn’t produce a previous year’s hunting license or proof that he had taken a bow hunting safety course. After an attempt at friendly persuasion, Alex realized there was nothing he could do about it and decided he would just have to risk going into the woods without a license and hope to hell he didn’t encounter a game warden.

Besides, if things went well, he should be able to find Richard Toland’s camp by this afternoon. By tomorrow afternoon at the latest, he figured he would have his kids back… after making Cindy pay for all the shit she’d put him through.

Yes-sir-ee, except for not having a valid hunting license, he looked like a full-fledged, out-of-state hunter, ready to brave the Maine woods and come home with at least a six-point buck slung over the roof of his van. The only difference was, his quarry was human!

Route 202 followed a winding course, heading generally east past numerous rundown farm uses and a few antiques stores, but Alex didn’t see any signs for West Gray. He found himself stopped at the traffic light beside the Civil War monument in downtown Gray before he realized that he obviously must have missed the turn for Little Sebago.

Muttering curses under his breath, he pulled up to the self-service gas pumps in the Mobil station across the intersection, got out, and started filling the gas tank. The station had an attached convenience store, and on the paint-chipped wooden bench out front, sat three old men. All of them had gray stubble beards and were wearing flannel shirts, khaki trousers, and mud-crusted work boots. Two out of three of them had faded cloth work hats pulled down low on their brows, shielding their eyes from the glaring sunlight. The hatless man’s bald head shined in the morning sun as if he had just polished and waxed it this morning. Alex thought they looked like they were all in uniform, sitting in front of the store on purpose, just to add a touch of local color to the town for any tourists who might be out looking at the foliage. He couldn’t help but chuckle, painfully aware that he, too, in his own way, was in costume. He finished pumping the gas and walked into the store to pay.

The kid manning the cash register was young, with long, greasy black hair and a bad complexion. He was wearing jeans with frayed holes in the knees and a black t-shirt with a picture of a bleeding skull on the front and the logo of some rock band Alex had never heard of. A cigarette with at least an inch of gray ash hung from the down-turned corner of his mouth. As Alex handed him a twenty dollar bill to pay for the gas, he cleared his throat and said, “I was wondering if you could help me.”

Scowling through the thin haze of cigarette smoke, the young man looked back at Alex, but for several seconds didn’t say anything; then he simply nodded his head slightly to indicate that he was listening.

“I’m—uh, I was looking for a place out on Campbell Shore Road. I was wondering if you knew where that was.”

The young man ran one hand through his hair, tucking it behind his ear, and squinted one eye a though he was trying hard to remember. Finally, he shook his head and said simply, “Nope. I don’t live around here.” Concentrating his attention on the cash register, he rang up the sale, then counted the change back into Alex’s opened hand.

Alex fought back the surge of anger that was boiling up inside him. Right now, he wanted nothing more than to give this little punk something to think about, but he knew that he had to maintain his cool and not do anything that might draw undue attention to himself.

“Well, then,” he said, clearing his throat and using as calm and measured a voice as he could manage, “is there anyone around here who maybe could help me out?”

Again, the young man scowled, his dark eyebrows almost touching above his nose; then, with a quick nod of his head, he indicated the front of the store. “I dunno. Ask those three old farts sitting out front,” he said. With that, he slammed the cash drawer shut, turned away from Alex, and leaned down to crush his cigarette out in the overflowing ashtray beside the counter.

“Yeah, thanks. Thanks a whole bunch,” Alex said as he turned to leave. He shouldered open the door, pausing a moment in the doorway to slip the bills back into his wallet before turning to the three old men.

“Hey, you fellas must live around here, huh?” he said, letting a dopey grin spread across his face.

All three of the old men nodded and looked up at him with not so vague hints of curiosity, if not suspicion, in their expressions. One of them coughed deeply, tumbled something around in his mouth for a moment, and then spit onto the sidewalk. Alex glanced down at the sidewalk and saw the large splotch of accumulated spit that indicated this guy must have seen sitting here since dawn.

“You see,” Alex went on, shifting from one foot to the other and trying his best to look and sound casual, “I’m looking for a place on Little Sebago, on Campbell Shore Road. You happen to know where that is?”

“Little Sebago—? Sure do,” one of the old codgers, the one not wearing a hat, said. He glanced at his buddies and started to laugh, exposing a row of yellowed-stained teeth. Both of his friends were smiling, appreciating his wit. Before Alex could say anything else, he added, “ ’N just who might you be looking for down ’round there, young fella?”

“Uh—well, a friend of mine’s got a camp down on the lake, and I’m just heading up to use it for a few days,” Alex said. “Thought I might get in a day or two of bow hunting before they bring out the heavy artillery.” He hoped it wasn’t too obvious that this kind of direct questioning had caught him off guard.

“ ’N just who might that friend of yours be?” the same old man asked.

His two friends remained silent, but both of them were staring up at Alex with glazed, watery eyes. One of the men, the one who had spit, kept moving his mouth back and forth as though he were about to say something, but Alex realized he was just working up mother gob of spit so he could continue decorating the sidewalk.

“I—uh, I’m looking for the Toland place,” Alex said, loping these guys would simply tell him where it was and be done with it. If the kid at the counter had to deal with these guys day in and day out, no wonder he was so cranky.

“You mean Dick Toland’s place, huh?” the old man asked, his eyebrows rounding up in surprise. “Shit Dick Toland’s been dead for—what? Going on two years now.”

“At least,” said the spitter, and the man without hat nodded and said, “Yes-ah.”

“Yeah, I know that,” Alex said, covering for himself “but you see, my dad and he used to be good friends and years ago I got permission to use his place whenever I want to.”

“S’ that a fact?” the old man said, casting a curious glance at his two companions. Alex thought he could sense some kind of silent communication going on among them, and he was cursing himself for talking to these guys in the first place.

“Why hell,” the old man said. “I didn’t know Dick’s daughter even cared about the place no more.” His remark was punctuated when his buddy finally hawkered up and spit onto the sidewalk again.

“Ay-yuh. From what I hear,” said the man who had just spit, “Louise’s been thinking ’bout sellin’ off the place.”

Alex shrugged as if he could care less, but he didn’t like the way these men were probing so deeply into his business. All he could think was, if Cindy really was out there, it wasn’t such a good idea to ask these three old men about the place. If he found her out there today, he was probably going to have to act fast, whatever he did, and he didn’t like doing that; he’d much prefer to take his time and set things up, make sure everything was in place before he nailed Cindy’s ass.

“I don’t know anything about all that,” Alex said, trying to drop his accent and adopt a good-old-boys tone of voice. “But I do know that my father and me have an open invitation to use the camp whenever we want to, and I—uh, well, when I asked Louise if I could use it during deer season, she said no problem.”

“So why didn’t she give you directions?” the most talkative of the old men asked.

Thinking quickly, Alex said, “Well, she did, but I lost ’em. I know it’s off the road there, Route 202 in West Gray. I just drove up from there, but I’ll be damned if I know which turn it is.”

“Well, sir,” said the old man, scratching his forehead with one hand and pointing toward the intersection :h the other gnarled forefinger. “You head right back down the road the way you come, crossing the Interstate, and go—oh, I’d say it’s ’bout a mile or two before you’ll see a place on your right. Big old gray building with a sign that says West Gray Antiques.”

Biting his lower lip, Alex frowned and shook his id. “No, I didn’t notice anything like that on the way out.”

“Well, when you see it, take a turn there, to the right, I’d say it’s about a mile or so to the next turn—”

“More likely two miles,” one of the other old men piped in.

“Whatever, on your left, you’ll see a big white sign with a whole bunch of camp names on it. That’s Campbell Shore Road. It changes to dirt right there. A little ways down, there’s a fork in the road. Dick’s place ff to the left, I’d say another mile, mile and a half.”

“Less than a mile, I’d reckon,” said the spitter.

“Whatever, you can’t miss it. I think they’ve still got big sign out front that’s cut in the shape of a steamin’ pot of coffee.”

“Nope. Don’t think so,” said the hatless man. “I thought I heard Frankie tore it off by mistake last winter with the town snow plow.”

“Whatever,” the old man said, glaring angrily at his companions for a moment. “The camp’s painted brick with white shutters. Can’t miss it.”

“Well thanks—thanks a lot,” Alex said, backing a few steps away from them. “I think I can remember from there. I appreciate your help.”

“No problem,” the old man said as he touched forefinger to his forehead in mock salute. Spitter coughed into his fist and then spat again onto sidewalk.

Not wanting to get caught up in any more of t
heir
idle chatter, Alex walked away quickly and got b
ack
into his van. It was bad enough, he was thinking, t
hat
anyone in town knew he was around asking about D
ick
Toland’s place, but especially bad that it was th
ese
three old farts who had nothing better to do than
sit
around and gossip all day. As he started up the van, Alex wanted to do was get out to the lake as fast as could and take care of things.

2

Y
ou’re getting zoo nervous… too jumpy… that’s all it is… you’re still feeling too paranoid about everything
, Cindy thought, but late that morning, she was driving west on Route 202 heading back Portland, she couldn’t tear her eyes away from t rearview mirror as she watched the vehicle she had just passed disappear around a bend in the road behind her.

No, there’s no way that could have been the same white van… No way in hell!

She looked at the road ahead as she corrected her steering, then glanced over at Krissy to see if she had noticed the van and reacted to it; but the little girl was sitting perfectly still in the front seat, the seat belt strapped loosely across her chest. Her eyes looked glazed over, almost lifeless as she stared straight ahead at the road. In the rearview mirror, Cindy caught glimpse of Billy, who was slouched in one corner of the back seat, wearing a sour expression on his face as he gazed out the side window.

No
… neither one of them saw or noticed it
, she thought; but as much as she tried to tell herself otherwise, she couldn’t stop thinking that—
by God!
—the van
had
looked
exactly
like the one she’d seen on the street outside their apartment in Portland.

“Are we gonna be staying there tonight?” Billy asked.