Chute's death continued to bother me. It was unfortunate that it had been Daryl who found the body, even if he had acted with the best of intentions. Chute's truck could probably have served as a rough marker for the crime scene but now its integrity had been fatally compromised by Daryl's removal of the body.
Maybe it was nothing, but on a map I marked roughly where Gary Chute's body had been found at Island Pond. Island Pond was about forty miles northeast of Dark Hollow. The only way to reach that area was along a private road, which required a permit for use. If someone had killed Gary Chute, he'd have to have taken that road to get to him, following him into the wilderness. The other possibility was that whoever killed him was in the wilderness already, waiting for him. Or…
Or maybe Chute was unlucky enough to see someone, or something, that he shouldn't have. Maybe whoever killed him didn't go into the wilderness after him, but was coming back out again. And, if that was the case, then the first place that person would arrive at was Dark Hollow.
But that was all speculation. I needed to get my thoughts in order. On a page of my notebook, I noted all that had happened since the night that Billy Purdue had stuck his knife in my cheek. Where there were links, I formed dotted lines between the names. Most of them came back to Billy Purdue, except Ellen Cole's disappearance and the death of Gary Chute.
And in the center of the list was a white space, empty and clean as new-fallen snow. The other names and incidents circled around it, like planets around a sun. I felt the old instinct, the desire to impose some pattern on incidents that I did not yet fully understand, some form of explanation that might begin to lead me to an ultimate truth. When I was a detective in New York, dealing with the deaths of those whom I had not known, with whom I had no direct connection, to whom I had no duty beyond that of the policeman whose task it is to find out what happened and to ensure that someone pays for the crime, I would follow the threads of the investigation as I had laid them out and when they led nowhere, or proved simply to be false assumptions, I would shrug and return to the core to follow another thread. I was prepared to make mistakes in the hope that I would eventually find something that was not an error.
That luxury, the luxury of detachment, was taken away from me when Susan and Jennifer died. Now they all mattered, all of the lost, all of the gone, but Ellen Cole mattered more than most. If she was in trouble, then there was no room for error, no time to make mistakes in the hope that they would lead to some final reckoning. Neither could I forget Rita Ferris and her son, and at the thought of her I looked instinctively over my shoulder and toward the dark rectangle of the window, and I recalled a weight on my shoulder, cold but not unyielding; the touch of a familiar hand.
There was too much happening, too many deaths revolving around the white space at the center of the page. And in that space, I put a question mark, dotted it carefully, then extended the dots down to the bottom of the page.
And there I wrote the name Caleb Kyle.
I should have gone out to eat then. I should have found Angel and Louis and gone to a bar where I could have watched them drink and flirt oddly with each other. I might even have had a drink, just one drink… Women would have gone by, swaying gently as the alcohol took hold of their bodies and minds. Perhaps one of them might have smiled at me, and I might have smiled back and felt the spark that ignites when a beautiful woman focuses her attention on a man. I could have had another drink, then another, and soon I would have forgotten everything and descended into oblivion.
The anniversary was approaching. I was aware of it as a dark cloud on the horizon, moving inexorably to engulf me in memories of loss and pain. I wanted normality, yet it continued to hang beyond my reach. I wasn't even sure why I had gone to Rachel's office, except that I knew that I wanted to be with her even though my feelings for her made me feel sick and guilty, as if I was somehow betraying Susan's memory. With these thoughts, after all that had happened over the past few days, and after allowing my mind to explore the nature of the killings that had occurred in both the recent and distant past, I should not have remained alone.
Tired and so hungry that my appetite had faded entirely away to be replaced by a deeper, gnawing unease, I undressed and showered, then climbed into my bed, pulling the sheets over my head and wondering how long it would take me to fall asleep. Just long enough, it emerged, to get that thought out.
I awoke to a noise, and a faint, unpleasant odor that took me a few moments to identify. It was the smell of rotting vegetation, of leaves and mulch and standing water. I rose from my pillow and wiped the sleep from my eyes, my nose wrinkling as the smell of decay grew stronger. There was a clock radio on the nightstand-the time read 12:33 A.M.-and I checked it in case the alarm might somehow have switched itself on during the night, but the radio was silent. I looked around the room, conscious now of a strangeness to the light, a tinge of unfamiliar color that should not have been present.
There was singing coming from my bathroom.
It was low but sweet, the sound of two voices combining to sing the same song, a song that sounded like a nursery rhyme, the words muffled by the closed bathroom door.
And from beneath the door, a green light seeped, its form rippling across the cheap carpet. I pushed back the covers and stood naked on the floor, but felt no cold, no chill, and began to walk toward the bathroom. As I did so, the smell grew stronger. I could feel it adhering to my skin and hair, as if I were bathing in its source. The singing rose in volume, the words now clear, the same three syllables repeated over and over again in high, girlish tones.
Caleb Kyle, Caleb Kyle
I was almost at the point where the tendrils of light from beneath the door reached their farthest extension. From behind the door came the sound of water softly lapping.
Caleb Kyle, Caleb Kyle
I stood for a second at the periphery of the green light, then placed one bare foot in its pool.
The singing stopped as soon as my foot touched the floor, but the light remained, moving slowly, viscously, across my bare toes. I reached forward and carefully turned the handle of the door. I pulled it open and stepped onto the tiles.
The room was empty. There were only the white surfaces, the neat pile of towels above the toilet, the sink with its low-grade soaps still wrapped, the glasses with their paper covers, the flower-speckled curtain over the bath pulled almost completely across…
The light came from the behind the curtain, a sickly, green glow that shone with only a vestige of the power of its original source, as if it had fought its way through layers and layers of obstacles to offer what little illumination it could. And in the quiet of the room, broken only by the soft lapping of water from behind the curtain, it seemed as if something held its breath. I heard a soft giggle, smothered by a hand, the laugh echoed by another, and the water behind the curtain lapped more loudly.
I reached out a hand, gripped the plastic and began to pull it quickly across. There was some resistance, but I continued to open the curtain until the interior of the bath was completely exposed.
The bath was full of leaves, so full that they reached up to the faucets. They were green and red, brown and yellow, amber and gold. There was aspen and birch, cedar and cherry, maple and basswood, beech and fir, and their shapes twisted and overlapping in a riot of decay.
A shape moved beneath the leaves, and bubbles broke upward. The vegetation shifted and something white began to rise to the surface, a long, slow ascent as if the water was far deeper than it could possibly be. As it neared, it seemed to separate into two figures, their hands held as they rose, their long hair spreading and flowing as they came, their mouths open, their eyes blind.