“Sure.” Tina Henneker was a classmate who’d been driving since March and was unofficially voted by the class as Most Likely To Lose Her Life Texting While Driving. It was unlikely she said anything to Dougie Kozinsky directly, but news traveled a lot of different ways.
“She got stopped at a checkpoint, a couple of days ago.”
Annie laughed. “C’mon, Doug, nobody gets stopped at those. I don’t think the arms on the gates even come down.”
“I’m serious. Ask her yourself. They’re getting ready to close off the town, I’m telling you.”
“I’ll keep my ear to the ground, dude.”
“Look I…” he looked around in case one of the pigeons or trashcan rodents in the nearby Dumpster were feeling curious, then leaned forward and took his voice down to a whisper. “I know you were there. On the base. I saw you.”
“Oh, that, I was just—”
“I don’t wanna know. I’m sure you had reasons. I just want to warn you, you know. Be careful. Whatever you’ve got going on in there… I think they’re hiding a real problem. And I don’t want anything happening to you.”
“Aw, thanks, Doug. That’s sweet. Thanks. Don’t worry, I’ll stay aware. And hey, let me know if you hear anything else.”
DINNER WAS CHICKEN nuggets and fries, two popular frozen delicacies in the Collins household, rendered slightly less edible in Violet’s home by the absence of ketchup or any other species of condiment. It was something they hadn’t considered needing when at the Super, because as far as Annie was concerned every house had ketchup or at least a jar of prepared barbecue sauce or vinegar, or something that would pair effectively with fried things, while Violet didn’t usually eat like this at home and so hadn’t considered it.
Susan didn’t join them. Annie assumed she’d eaten already or had plans to eat later, and until then elected to remain in the house’s study, reading a book by lamplight.
The study was the most impressive part of the house, and Annie resolved to spend more time in it. If her own living room was an unconscious homage to old Hollywood, Violet’s study was a paean to unusual books. Annie spent a lot of time around books as a library volunteer, but Susan and Todd’s collection (Todd was Violet’s nearly-always-absent dad) had stuff she never heard of before. It was like an alternative history Twilight Zone library, covering a lot of less-than-respectable subjects, like cryptozoology and nutso assassination theories. There were also books on since-debunked scientific ideas and books on subjects that would never make it into the public library, like eugenics. It was, in short, a vast collection of wrong things. Annie couldn’t wait to jump in.
After they ate and cleaned up—dishes were done by hand in Annie’s household, so when it turned out that was the standard in Vi’s house as well she was already prepared—and then retired to the guest bedroom, where Annie tried to get used to the idea that she was going to be spending the evening there.
The room was small, but clean. It smelled like an alien room, though, and the sounds were all different, the air blew wrong, and basically this whole thing sucked.
Violet seemed attuned to her friend’s discomfort.
“Maybe we can work something out,” she said. Violet was sitting at the foot of the bed across from Annie at the head. It was a queen-sized mattress, bigger than the twin in Annie’s own room. If this were a hotel and she were there under different circumstances, she’d be pretty happy with the larger bed. “You can sleep over there on weekends or something. I’ll stay over too.”
“You’re the same age as me.”
“Sure. But we’ve been there alone before.”
“Look, I’m probably gonna be pissed at Ed about this for a while, but that doesn’t mean I want him to get in any trouble, either. If he says I need to stay here with you and Susan, I probably have to.”
“Yes, I guess you’re right.”
ANNIE COULDN’T FALL ASLEEP, which was more or less as expected. After Violet left, she talked to Carol on the phone for a half an hour or so. This was a challenge, because only one part of the bedroom got any cell phone reception, and it was a part with no place to sit. It was good to hear her voice though. Annie imagined her mother was at home and Annie was the one on the trip, and that idea made it easier for some reason.
Carol found a channel running Bringing Up Baby and the two of them spent a good amount of time quoting lines to each other. But then her mother had to get some rest, and Annie was left alone in the big strange bed with the wrong noises and smells and breeze.
Sometime around midnight she decided to stop staring at the ceiling and tried staring out the window instead. The window was on one side of the bed, so it was possible to look through it while still retaining the comfort of being in bed, which was nice.
The isolation of the cabin was jarring. Her own bedroom window faced the street, and while their street was essentially empty—she looked out on farmland on the other side, with the nearest neighbors to the left and right on the same side of the road—there was still a paved road there with a line down the middle and an expectation of periodic traffic.
Violet’s place was completely secluded, and until midnight, looking out into the dark woods and listening to alarmingly loud insect and animal sounds, Annie didn’t entirely appreciate what true seclusion really was. This was Stephen King-level isolation. Cujo was surely about to emerge from the brush.
No sooner did she have that very thought when something large moved in the trees on the other side of the clearing in front of the porch. In a mild panic—mild because she was pretty safe where she was—she ran through all the obvious options from wolf to deer, then drifted to less obvious ones, like bear, moose, and (on loan from one of the cryptozoology books in the study) Bigfoot.
Then a man emerged from the trees, and Annie’s heart stopped for a solid five seconds. He stood at the edge of the clearing, this man: motionless, like statue-motionless, like she couldn’t even see him breathing.
The terrifying possibilities regarding who he was and what he was doing there were only beginning to churn through her already-over-imaginative brain when he moved again, two steps, enough for his face to be seen in the moonlight.
It was Todd, Violet’s dad.
Why he was wandering around in the woods at midnight was only one of a hundred questions. Another was, what was he even doing in Sorrow Falls, when as far as Annie knew he traveled for his job? And where was his car?
She turned away from the window and went back to staring at the ceiling again.
“I take it back again, Violet. Your family is really weird,” she said.
12
A FEW GOOD MEN
“It happened like we told you,” the corporal said, with a trace of irritation. This wasn’t the best attitude to have when being questioned by a general, but he looked like he wasn’t working on a lot of sleep. General Morris didn’t seem too put off by it.
“We have your statement,” Morris said. “And you’re not in any kind of trouble here, son. Mr. Somerville just wants to go over it. Nobody’s accusing anybody of anything.”
“Begging your pardon, sir, but that’s just what people say before they start accusing people of things.”
Ed stifled a laugh. He decided he liked Sam Corning, and could understand why Annie spoke well of him.
Sam turned to Ed, but spoke to the general.
“Has Mr. Somerville read our reports, sir?”
They were sitting in Morris’s office, which had a surprisingly understated and temporary feel to it. The table in the center of the room and all the chairs were of the collapsible variety, and the room itself was the interior of one of the temporary-to-permanent trailers the base had. He wasn’t sure if this meant Morris thought this was only a brief assignment for him, or if he just didn’t have any things.