Gravestone (28 page)

63. The Project

It seems like there have been more guests at the Crag’s Inn as the weather has gotten warmer. I asked Iris about it once, but she said the inn is full year-round. I would’ve thought she was making that up, but I’d already realized that Iris was one of the last people in the world who would ever lie.

Today, as I show up driving my mom’s car (and no, I don’t have a license yet, and yes, I probably shouldn’t be driving), I see a group of men standing at the side of the lodge. There are four of them, and they seem to be talking about something serious. They glance at me, then resume their conversation. I get out of my car and wave at them. I receive a couple of nods. One of the guys with longer hair and a goatee is smoking a pipe.

Inside, I find Iris ready as always for whatever my task will be today. It’s been an unusual job, to say the least. Sometimes it’s work outside, cleaning or cutting or trimming or hauling. Then other days it’s something inside, like painting a room or boxing up belongings and bringing them out to the side of the driveway or organizing photos by the date on the back.

That last one was quite the job. It was fascinating to see all those pictures, mostly black-and-white and some of the earliest taken in the ’20s. The photos were all of people, most of them taken around what appeared to be the Crag’s Inn or the mountains. I might have gone through a thousand photos that day, making piles of 1920s and 1930s and so on, sorting them out by the year.

There were pictures of men and women in the woods and around campfires and walking along a dirt road and by the creek. They obviously were taken around here. But I couldn’t find any pictures of the town itself.

I ended up asking Iris about it.

“I guess you’re right,” she said.

She didn’t seem either surprised or curious.

“Who are all these people?”

“Guests.”

They all looked different, from their ages to the color of their skin. It seemed like everybody came to the Crag’s Inn for some reason.

“How do all these people know about this place? I mean—do you do a lot of advertising?”

Iris only smiled.

A little later I asked her why I was organizing these pictures. I could understand showing a montage of guests who had stayed with you, but none of these pictures had labels. They were all nameless strangers—some smiling, some creepy looking, some looking stoic and others looking busy.

“When you have a place as special as this one, it’s important to document it for future generations.”

I didn’t want to insult her with the next question going through my mind. But Iris seemed to pick up on my expression and answered it anyway.

“There are many places in this world that are unique, Chris. That have a truly unusual history. Do you believe that?”

“Sure.”

I just didn’t believe that
this
particular place was that unique or unusual.

“Sometimes it’s not what’s on the outside. It doesn’t have to be spectacular or impressive or ostentatious in order to be remarkable. Sometimes, the smallest of things can be absolutely exceptional. Just this morning I was visited by a swarm of hummingbirds. They surrounded me on the deck outside. It could not have been a more glorious way to wake up and see God’s morning glory.”

I could understand that, but I still couldn’t understand these pictures.

But I still did my job and did it as well as I could.

“Do you want any coffee?” Iris asks me today.

She’s never offered me coffee before, so I say sure, why not. I don’t really like coffee, but I’m learning to try new things. Even if I don’t necessarily want to.

“I needed to make some extra for our guests. Did you see them?”

“Yeah, outside. Talking at the side of the inn.”

“Good,” Iris says, disappearing and then bringing me a cup. “Would you like anything in it?”

“No. I’m not much of a coffee drinker. I’m flexible.”

“You’re making good progress,” she tells me.

Drinking coffee is good progress?

“So are you ready for something different today?”

“Yeah.”

She smiles and sits and urges me to do the same.

There is a formality around Iris that’s grown to be not only interesting but kinda admirable. Most people in this world are rude and loud and obnoxious. Okay, not most people, but a lot of people. People you see on reality shows and in the news. People who seem angry and irritated at life when they wake up. Iris is reserved and well-spoken and always seems so … so dignified.

Maybe she’s royalty from England hiding out in our creepy neck of the woods.

“How good is your composition?”

I stare at Iris and shake my head. “My what?”

“Your writing. Are you a good writer?”

“Not really. Average probably.”

“Then average will do. Go on, sip your coffee; you’ll need the extra caffeine.”

She hands me an old book that I realize is a journal.

“I’d like you to begin a project that might take some time. But you’ve earned my trust, and you’ve shown that you’re ready. I’ve had you do most of the labor that I need done at the moment. But this is the most important thing I could ever ask you to do.”

I open the journal and see cursive handwriting in faded black ink. I try to read a little of it, but can’t.

“Every innkeeper has had a journal and passes it down to the next person. The history of this inn is inside these pages.”

“It’s hard to read.”

“Yes.”

She leaves for a moment. I sip my coffee and wait. She comes back with a laptop.

“This is probably a little more to your liking.”

It’s a MacBook, and by the looks of it, a brand-new MacBook.

“I’m giving this to you, Chris. You will need this as you work on this project.”

I hold the computer in my hand and probably have my mouth halfway open in shock.

Couple hundred bucks a day is one thing, but a MacBook …

“For now, it will stay here while you work on this project,” Iris says. “But you will be able to keep it when you finish.”

“As payment for—”

“No,” she interrupts. “In addition to your wages.”

“This is, uh, quite a lot.”

“There’re no strings attached. It will be yours. But not for some time. Because this is a rather large project. And it’s ultimately why I wanted you to come here and work.”

The way she says
you
makes it seem like she invited me to come here in the first place. Mom was the one who pushed for me to be here. And that seemed random.

“They say that you can do things like load photos on a computer like that. Is that true?”

I nod, then think of the gazillion photos I’ve helped archive. I must have turned white, because Iris laughs.

“No, that’s not what I’m thinking. Not
those
photos.”

“Okay.” I try to suppress a huge sigh of relief.

“The main thing I want you to do is to write a report. You can do that, right?”

“Yeah, I think.”

“I’d like for you to write a history of this place, a kind that is easy to read and would be informative for newcomers. For people like yourself who don’t know about this place and its history and can’t scan messy journals to discover the truth.”

“Where will I get the information?”

“There’s far too much information. And that’s not counting the journals. I will show you. You will work in a room that I have ready for you.”

I nod again.

“I promise there will be other things to do—ways to get exercise and get away from the research and writing. But I believe that you’ll find it interesting. I hope you do, at least.”

“Okay.”

“Are you sure?” she asks.

“Sure about what?”

“Sure about this endeavor?”

I nod.

I’m not sure about anything, not since having moved to Solitary. But it’s work and I can earn a MacBook, so why not? It can’t be that hard or boring, right?

As I say good night to Iris, my headache getting worse as I move, she asks how the project went today.

“I didn’t get anything written. Not yet.”

“That’s okay. There’s a lot to make sense of.”

“Only about a hundred folders with scraps and pieces of stuff.”

I want to say it’s worse than the photo project she gave me.

“There is no deadline, Chris. Take your time.”

“Sure.”

“And one other thing.”

I stand at the doorway as she stares intently at me.

“Take care of yourself. Please.”

She says this as if she knows.

As if she’s aware. Of everything.

64. Afraid of the Dark

I can hear rain falling through the speakers in my room and on the trees outside, and I find I’m having a hard time seeing the difference. I’m waiting, killing time, worrying, listening to The Cure’s
Disintegration,
worrying a little more. It’s Sunday morning and Mom is gone to work and I’m home alone without a car or a life, but I do have a plan. Or I have Poe’s plan. Now I’m waiting for a good time to leave the house and meet her downtown.

It appears I’ll be riding my bike in a downpour.

The plan is to sneak and spy while the pastor speaks and lies. Maybe I should write song lyrics.

A crack of thunder gently shakes the house.

Midnight sits on the bed beside me, oblivious to the sound and the shaking. I remember Brady’s dog back home and how it would go berserk at the faintest hint of thunder. Sometimes it’s better not knowing the things we’re supposed to be afraid of.

Maybe there are families that wake up and have breakfast together and watch television while they get ready for church. They go out and see their friends at New Beginnings and listen to Pastor Marsh preach some inspiring sermon. Or maybe they don’t listen to all of it because they have other things on their minds, like Sunday dinner and starting work on Monday and the rest of the week and the rest of their life. They don’t notice how odd the pastor’s words seem, and they forget how odd the whole town around them happens to be.

Some people do this.

Others get ready to break into the pastor’s house.

What I’ll find, I have no idea.

The clouds appear full and angry as I finally venture outside with a cap and jacket to keep me remotely dry.

I have everything I need.

I think.

“I’ve been waiting for half an hour.”

Obviously she doesn’t notice how wet I am, or doesn’t care, as I sit down in the front seat of her car. The good thing is that the rain coats the windows and keeps us hidden from any outsider’s view.

“I was hoping for the rain to die down.”

Poe is in black jeans and a black T-shirt, appropriate for the day. The only piece of clothing that’s not black is her denim jacket.

“When are you going to get a license?” she asks as she pulls away from the parking spot on the far edge of the street where she told me we’d meet.

“I don’t think my mother is in too big of a rush.”

“Why’s that?”

“Because she probably knows if I had a license I’d get in the car and drive back to Illinois.”

She ignores my comment. “You ready?”

“I think so. Not like I do this every other weekend.”

“I just hope nothing weird happens, like he decides to let someone else preach today and stays home.”

“You’re coming in with me, right?”

“No. I’m going to be outside to let you know if anyone’s coming.”

“So how are you going to do that?”

“Get the bag in the back.”

I open her black leather purse and find two cell phones.

“Take my iPhone. The other one belongs to my mom. So when are you getting a phone?”

“I’m not getting one around here. They’ll put something in it.”

Poe doesn’t laugh. “If I see anybody coming up to the house, I’ll call you.”

“You sure it’ll work?”

“These aren’t walkie talkies. Yeah, it’ll work.”

The rain is coming down harder. As Poe drives, she turns up the music. I don’t recognize the punk band. They might be current or thirty years old.

“You really think this will work?”

She shrugs. “What else can we do? You okay?”

“What do you mean?”

“You look pale.”

“You’re one to talk.”

She laughs. This girl is a lot like Jocelyn—tough. I wonder why I’m always around tough girls.

“The biggest thing is going to be getting into the house,” I tell her. “If there are passageways like the tunnels I told you about—then, who knows.”

“Just use common sense.”

I want to tell her there’s really no common sense in the man with the empty eye sockets that I encountered in the tunnel but decide against it.

“It’s hard knowing where you’re at when you’re underground.”

“Use the compass on the iPhone.”

“Fancy. Do you have an app for discovering the undead?”

She ignores my joke. “Just don’t break it.”

I touch her phone and see the picture on the screen. For a second I feel gutted. It’s a picture of Poe standing between Jocelyn and Rachel. They’re huddled up and smiling and acting like they couldn’t care about tomorrow.

Tomorrow never came.

“I can’t bring myself to change it,” Poe says. “She was really something, wasn’t she?”

I nod.

It’s a nice reminder why we’re here.

This isn’t some silly mystery where we’re trying to solve a puzzle and find out the criminal.

The puzzle doesn’t need solving.

It needs proving.

And that’s why we are—or I am, anyway—about to break the law.

It takes me about twenty minutes to get in sight of the house.

At one point as I’m walking through the dripping woods, Poe opens up her car door and shouts to me to hurry up. That helps a lot. Really encourages me too.

I think I expected a haunted house at the end of some deserted road, but this is quite the opposite. It’s another large log cabin that’s high up on the side of a mountain. There’s no huge valley to see at any side, however. Just a cocoon of trees.

The driveway is paved, with plenty of space for parking. Two wraparound covered porches surround the three-level house. It looks newly built, with ornately carved trim and posts everywhere. It doesn’t look daunting. In fact, it looks very inviting.

I’m pretty sure this is the south side of cabin. Poe has parked down the street, away from view. The driveway and surrounding grounds are very open, and it wouldn’t surprise me if they were watched with cameras.

Maybe someone already knows you’re here.

I’m about a hundred yards away from the house, but so far I don’t see the doorway Heidi Marsh described in her email. Then I stumble over it. My foot hits something hard that’s jutting out of the ground, and I go face-first into the dirt. It’s wet and soft, and I get even muddier as I stand and pat myself off. I turn to see leaves and dirt covering a wooden door. There’s a latch on the side, and though I expect it to be locked, the door opens without a problem.

I look down and see darkness.

The rain continues to pour, the trees providing a little cover but not enough. I can taste water running down my cheek and landing on the edge of my mouth. I take out the big heavy-duty flashlight that I recently bought, a 13.1-inch aluminum LED one that I paid about sixty bucks for. This sucker’s not going to go out if I’m being chased. In fact, it’s long and heavy enough to be used as a nice weapon to beat someone’s face in.

I turn it on and am surprised again at how powerful the beam is. It lights up the entire square hole going down from this doorway. There’s a metal railing on the side, this one a little more clean and visible. This tunnel or passage looks freshly built.

I wipe my forehead and then proceed down the ladder. It takes me a few minutes to reach the bottom. I wonder if this passageway is attached to the ones going out of our house and the little cabin just beyond us.

Does the whole town play games with each other at nighttime?

It heads straight ahead for maybe twenty or thirty yards. I walk for a few minutes and then test Poe’s cell phone.

“You okay?” she asks.

“Just wanted to make sure this works.”

“Of course it works. Where are you?”

“Underground. In a carved-out passageway.”

“What do you see?”

“Dirt. Rock.” I move the beam of the light and study the soft ground I’m walking on. “A footprint.”

“Hurry up. I’m getting creeped out waiting here in the car.”

“You’re
getting creeped out? Why don’t you come down here?”

But she’s gone. I shake my head.

The air is musty down here. I see thick tree roots sticking out from the ceiling and sides of the passageway like random curls on a head. I hope I’m going the right direction, but it’s the only direction there is. I keep darting my beam back behind me. Just making sure. I hate those horror movies where they never bother to check behind them until
Oh no it’s too late!
and they quickly die a grisly death.

Soon the passageway ends in a split. One tunnel leads to my left and continues going forward. The other leads to my right and seems to go back the way I came.

I get the compass on Poe’s phone to see where I’m at and decide to go to the right, which is more north than the other way.

The ground is more rocky and uneven here, and the passageway is smaller. I have to keep bending my head to make sure it doesn’t scrape the dirt and clay above me. The beam of my flashlight bounces off the walls. My breathing seems to echo off these shrinking barriers.

The passage bends a bit, so I can’t see exactly where it’s headed. It just seems like I’ve been walking a lot longer than the hundred yards it should’ve taken to get to the pastor’s house.

I let out a sigh, and then hear the voice.

Are you afraid of the dark, Chris?

It’s not an audible voice. At least I don’t think it is.

I stop and shine the flashlight behind me, around me, in front of me.

Are you afraid of being left alone in a tiny little hole?

That’s not my mind talking. It’s someone else’s voice. It’s his voice, the voice of the pastor.

But of course I’m imagining it.

I keep walking, a little faster now.

What if something happened and nobody knew you were down here and you were left for the animals for the dogs for the maggots?

Again I stop. I shake my head, hoping the thoughts are like dead skin I can simply brush away onto the floor.

Then my flashlight goes out.

I curse and can hear my own voice loud and clear.

Then in the darkness, I hear something else.

The sickening, crawling sound of laughter.

Real laughter, not imagined.