There was silence on the other end of the line, then what sounded like a sob.
“I know you didn’t mean to hurt her, Otis. You don’t look like the kind of man who’d hurt a little girl.”
This time the crying was clearer. I pressed on.
“These other men, the ones who killed Frank Merrick, they’re different from you. You’re not like them, Otis. Don’t let them drag you down to their level. You’re not a killer, Otis. You don’t kill men, and you don’t kill little girls. I can’t see it in you. I just can’t.”
Caswell drew in a ragged breath. “I wouldn’t hurt a child,” he said. “I love children.”
And there was something in the way he said it that made me feel filthy inside and out. It made me want to bathe in acid, then swallow what was left in the bottle to purge my insides.
“I know,” I said, and I had to force the words from my mouth. “I bet you take care of those graves out at Moose River too, don’t you? I’m right, aren’t I?”
“Yes,” he said. “They shouldn’t ought to have done that to little babies. They shouldn’t ought to have killed them.”
I tried not to think about why he thought that they should have been spared, why they should have been allowed to grow into young children. It wouldn’t help, not now.
“Otis, what happened to Lucy Merrick? She was there, wasn’t she, in that house? Then she disappeared. What happened, Otis? Where did she go?”
I heard him sniffing, could see him wiping his nose on his arm.
“It was an accident,” he said. “They brought her here and-”
He stopped. He had never had to put a name to what he did to children before, not to someone who was not like him. This was not the time to make him.
“There’s no need to tell me that, Otis, not yet. Just tell me how it ended.”
He did not reply, and I feared that I had lost him.
“I did bad,” said Caswell, like a child who had soiled itself. “I did bad, and now they’ve come.”
“What?” I didn’t understand. “There are men there now?” I cursed the lack of coverage up here. Maybe I should have gone straight to Angel and Louis, but I remembered Caswell’s sweaty hands on his shotgun. He might have been on the verge of a breakdown, but there was always the risk that he could be willing to take someone with him when he finally fell apart. According to Angel, his cottage had barred windows and a heavy oak door, like the cottage in which Lucy Merrick had been held. Breaking in without being shot at would have been anything from difficult to impossible.
“They’ve been here all along,” Caswell continued, the words slipping from his mouth in near whispers, “least for this past week, maybe more. I don’t recall properly. It feels like they’ve always been here, and I don’t sleep so good now because of them. I see them at night, mostly, out of the corner of my eye. They don’t do nothing. They just stand there, like they’re waiting for something.”
“Who are they, Otis?” But I already knew. They were the Hollow Men.
“Faces in shadow. Old dirty coats. I’ve tried talking to them, asking them what they want, but they don’t answer, and when I try to look straight at them, it’s like they’re not there. I have to make them go away, but I don’t know how.”
“My friends and I will come up there, Otis. We’ll take you somewhere safe. You just hold on.”
“You know,” said Caswell faintly, “I don’t think they’ll let me leave.”
“Are they there because of Lucy, Otis? Is that why they’ve come?”
“Her. The others.”
“But the others didn’t die, Otis. That’s right, isn’t it?”
“We were always careful. We had to be. They were children.”
Something sour bubbled in my throat. I forced it back down.
“Had Lucy been with you before?”
“Not up here. A couple of times someplace else. I wasn’t there. They gave her pot, booze. They liked her. She was different somehow. They made her promise not to tell. They had ways of doing that.”
I thought of Andy Kellog, of how he had sacrificed himself to save another little girl.
They had ways…
“What happened to Lucy, Otis? What went wrong?”
“It was a mistake,” he said. He had grown almost calm, as though he were talking about a minor fender bender, or an error on his taxes. “They left her with me after…after.” He coughed, then went on, again letting what was done to Lucy Merrick, a fourteen-year-old girl who had lost her way, remain unsaid. “They were going to come back the next day, or could be it was a couple of days. I don’t remember. I’m confused now. I just had to look after her. She had a blanket and a mattress. I fed her, and I gave her some toys and some books. But it got real cold all of a sudden, real cold. I was going to bring her up to my place, but I was afraid that she might see something up there, something that would help them to identify me when we let her go. I had a little gasoline generator in the house, so I turned it on for her and she went to sleep.
“I had a mind to check on her every few hours, but I dozed off myself. When I woke up, she was lying on the floor.” He started sobbing again, and it took him almost a minute before he could continue. “I smelled the fumes when I got to the door. I wrapped a cloth around my face, and I still could hardly breathe. She was lying on the floor, and she was all red and purple. She’d been sick on herself. I don’t know how long she’d been dead.
“I swear, the generator had been working fine earlier. Maybe she’d tried to tinker with it. I just don’t know. I didn’t mean for it to happen. Oh God, I didn’t mean for it to happen that way.”
He started to wail. I let him cry for a while, then interrupted him.
“Where did you put her, Otis?”
“I wanted her to rest somewhere nice, near God and the angels. I buried her behind the steeple of the old church. It was the closest I could get to hallowed ground. I couldn’t mark the place or nothing, but she’s there. I sometimes put flowers on the spot in summer. I talk to her. I tell her I’m sorry for what happened.”
“And the private detective? What about Poole?”
“I had nothing to do with that.” He sounded indignant. “He wouldn’t walk away. He kept asking questions. I had to make a call. I buried him in the church too, but away from Lucy. Her place was special.”
“Who killed him?”
“I’ll confess my own sins, but I won’t confess another man’s. It’s not for me to do.”
“Daniel Clay? Was he involved?”
“I never met him,” Otis replied. “I don’t know what happened to him. I just heard the name. You remember now: I didn’t mean for it to happen the way it did. I just wanted her to be warm. I told you: I love children.”
“What was the Project, Otis?”
“The children were the Project,” he replied. “The little children. The others found them and brought them up here. That’s what we called it: the Project. It was our secret.”
“Who were those other men?”
“I can’t tell you. I got nothing more to say to you.”
“Okay, Otis, we’re going to come up there now. We’ll take you somewhere safe.”
But now, as the last minutes of his life slipped slowly by, the barriers that Otis Caswell had erected between himself and the reality of what he had done seemed to fall away.
“Nowhere’s safe,” he said. “I just want it to end.” He drew in a deep breath, stifling another sob. It seemed to give him some strength. “I gotta go now. I gotta let some men in.”
He put the phone down, and the connection was broken. I was on the road five minutes later, and at the spot where the trail to Caswell’s place joined the main road in ten. I flashed my lights where I knew Louis and Angel to be, but there was no sign of them. Farther ahead, the gate was open and the lock busted. I followed the trail to the house. There was a truck parked outside. Louis’s Lexus was beside it. The front door to the house was open, a light shining outside.