Your daughter's your daughter for the rest of your life" Or was it "her life"? Some daughterly element in one's makeup that just kept on going along, even when the mother was gone? Had she felt this way about her own mother? She didn't think so. Her older sisters had assigned themselves caretaker roles early on and there wasn't much left for Ursula to do save visit from time to time—like Arnold and Claire. He was her son. She was proud of him, but it was a good thing she had Pix.
She thought about her conversation with John Eggleston at the clambake. "It's no loss to anyone I know or can imagine" She'd been surprised at the uncharitableness of the remark. She ought to tel Pix about it. The clambake had seemed like a kind of play. Perhaps it was because she knew that at eighty, she wouldn't be at too many more of them. She had tended to regard the day as several acts and many scenes one after another. Addie Bainbridge had been watching, too. Or maybe holding court was a better description. Ursula resolved to invite Addie and Rebecca for tea later in the week, after the Fourth of July festivities.
Give Rebecca a break. Addie was inclined to ride roughshod over her. What could Adelaide's childhood have actual y been like out at the lighthouse? It sounded idyl ic, and reflecting on her own upbringing, one of seven, in a wel -appointed but unavoidably crowded town house on Boston's Beacon Hil , Ursula thought how lovely it would have been not to have so many people to talk to al the time. That was what had always made The Pines so special. You could be alone.
She could stil be alone. Except now she didn't want to be.
Six
A midnight curfew was a definite disadvantage to detective work, Samantha decided as once more she entered the woods behind Maine Sail Camp with Fred and Arlene. Fred had no curfew, of course, and Arlene's was a great deal more elastic than Samantha's own. Whatever Duncan and his friends were up to, Sam was wil ing to bet, things didn't get rol ing until the wee hours.
This time, there were lights flickering in the windows of the cabin, just visible through Duncan's elaborate camouflage.
“Should we try to look through the back window?"
Arlene whispered.
“Let's wait a while and see what they do," Fred suggested. "They may go someplace else. The cabin is pretty smal .”
They retreated behind a row of tamaracks and took turns watching.
“More kids are coming," Samantha reported. True to Fred's prediction, soon a group of about eleven teenagers came out of the cabin and headed straight for the tamaracks. Samantha froze in position after crouching close to the rough trunk, the sharp-needled boughs pricking her bare arms. Why hadn't she thought to wear a sweatshirt? The weather was stil peculiar for Maine, up into the high eighties every day. She'd been shedding clothes, not adding them.
The group passed by without noticing anything.
Samantha, Fred, and Arlene waited a minute before fol owing. Once again, Fred was ful of ideas. "There're only two places where they could be headed, the quaking bog and the old settlement quarry—unless they're planning to dispose of something or someone, which would mean the bog—I'l bet they're on their way to the quarry
“What do you mean?" Samantha had never been to the bog, deterred al these years by reports of mosquitoes as large as robins and giant Venus's-flytraps.
“The suction—you put your foot down wrong and it takes two men to help you twist it and pul yourself out.
People used to junk cars there before Earl came. And there's always talk, especial y on Hal oween, of what may be lying under the surface from years past."
“You know that's al nonsense," Arlene whispered angrily, "except about the cars. That's true. Stop trying to psych us out Fred. I'm nervous enough as it is.”
Samantha had to agree with her and was glad the bog had been eliminated as the probable gathering place for the club.
Fred put out his arm to stop them. "See, they're turn ing left. That leads to the top of the quarry" The flashlights the group ahead of them was carrying did go left, darting like so many fireflies through the dark woods.
Samantha had been to the quarry. It was one of her favorite places—also her mother's and grandmother's.
They picked blackberries there and then, later in the season, tiny tart mountain cranberries that appeared as conserve at the Mil ers' Thanksgiving table.
The view from the top of the quarry was spectacular—
straight out to sea across vast expanses of granite carved in huge blocks, like Brobdingnagian steps. During the day, you had to be careful not to walk into one of the crevasses where the charges had been set to blast the stone. At night, it would be treacherous. Was Duncan's club an elaborate game of chicken?
Fred stopped suddenly and led them up a granite ledge until they were directly above the group below. A fire had been lighted and everyone was drinking beer. Duncan was nowhere to be seen. It looked like any other gathering of kids from Maine to California, eager to put themselves at a distance from adult supervision. A few were smoking.
One of the cigarettes was being passed from person to person—obviously not tobacco.
“So, what's the big deal? They're partying," Arlene said. "Let's go home.”
Samantha wanted to wait until Duncan came, and Fred agreed. It was at least fifteen minutes before they heard the music and saw him leap suddenly into the midst of his friends, dangerously close to the fire. He was wearing a black robe—it looked left over from someone's graduation
—unfastened. They could see that he was stripped to the waist underneath and had covered his body with symbols and lines done in red marker—at least Samantha assumed it was marker. He didn't seem to be oozing blood, but the effect was dramatic and she felt instantly nauseated.
Everyone grew quiet and the words of an old Black Sabbath song fil ed the stil ness from the tape deck he set down.
When the music stopped, Duncan began to chant "We are everybody and everybody is nobody" over and over.
The group picked it up, some laughing a little—maybe because of the beers and the pot. A few of the guys stripped off their shirts and pranced unsteadily around the fire.
Duncan took out a chicken that looked like a roaster from the IGA and made a great show of slitting its throat—
or rather, the place where the throat would have been if the head was stil attached. Blood flowed; he must have stuck a sack of red-colored liquid inside.
“The asshole!" Fred whispered. "He couldn't even get a live chicken.”
Samantha wasn't finding the scene humorous. Duncan's intent was the same as if the chicken had been alive
—or if it had been something other than a chicken. She shuddered and gripped the granite hard with her hand to remind herself that this wasn't a movie. She wondered what would happen next. The kids below her looked so normal.
She stared at one girl in particular: short dark hair, a striped tube top, and cutoffs—a typical teenager on a summer night. Maybe she wore a little too much makeup, especial y the exaggerated black mascara around her eyes. But she wasn't typical. The whole gathering wasn't typical at al , and Samantha began to feel frightened. Duncan had somehow managed to tap into an unhealthy fascination shared by this group, and it was a vein better left unopened—and it might wel have been if he hadn't come here to live.
The kids passed the chicken around. Solemn now, each smeared some of the "blood" on their foreheads. One girl almost broke the mood by declaring she was not going to touch something so gross, but the boy next to her did it for her, loudly declaring she was a wuss. The dark-haired girl fiercely told them to shut up. "You're spoiling it!" There was no question about her own dedication.