And so, after dinner that second day, he got into his rented Jeep and left Cloudwater, heading west on Route 3 toward Pike Hollow. As unattractive as the prospect of driving into the deep woods after dark was, Pace had said he’d heard the noises only at night. Besides, Logan had had little enough reason to visit the fire station the first time—he could think of no excuse to show up by daylight a second time and go poking about. He wouldn’t be trespassing, exactly; no doubt the Feverbridges had leased or rented the building from the state. He’d take a look around, satisfy himself that nothing was amiss, and leave. And maybe then he’d be able to get on with his work.
The woods were dark and close enough when driving through during the day; at night, it felt like he was burrowing into an endless, living thicket. He was surrounded by a blackness that was unnerving in its totality. Not a single car passed by heading east; it was as if he were alone on a planet tenanted only by trees. As he drove, he was careful to keep his mind away from Saul Woden and the terrifying, writhing violence he’d sensed within the man. Instead, he tried to think about Pace. He tried to tell himself this was a fool’s errand—he was wasting his time on a young man’s imagination, spooked by the deep woods and the recent murders. And yet his thoughts kept returning to the one question that had been left unasked in his conversation with Pace, the question that was at least in part responsible for prompting this nocturnal enterprise: Why didn’t you report what you’d heard to Laura Feverbridge?
He found the intersection with 3A, passed the turnoffs for Pike Hollow and the Blakeney compound, and then—slowing to a crawl—navigated the forks in the narrow dirt track beyond that left the highway and led still deeper into the woods. This time, to his great relief, he managed to avoid getting lost—the route was still fresh in his memory—and in short order he could make out faint lights through the fretted trunkwork of forest. Immediately, he killed his own headlights, stopped the Jeep, and turned off the engine. He sat for a minute, listening to the ticking of the engine as it cooled. Then he picked up a handheld GPS navigator and lithium-powered flashlight from the passenger’s seat, opened the door, slipped out, and shut the door as quietly as he could behind him.
He stood in the darkness a minute, breathing in the night air. Through the network of branches overhead, a pale moon was just visible behind dark, swollen clouds. There was a rumble of thunder. He was vaguely aware of a sense that something was wrong somehow; of a kind of violation of the natural order of things. But this was something he always sensed out here, beyond Pike Hollow, close to the Five Ponds Wilderness—and the Blakeney residence.
His eight-thousand-candlepower flashlight was exceptionally bright, and he dialed it back to its lowest setting. He aimed it at the ground, switched it on just long enough to establish his bearings and get a sense of the dirt lane ahead of him. He glanced at his watch: ten thirty. And then, with a deep breath, he set forward. In the distance ahead, he could hear the barking and whining of dogs. The night breeze was blowing into his face; it couldn’t be his presence that had disturbed them. He hoped they were not roaming free; if they were, his little nocturnal escapade might end prematurely.
Slowly, as he walked on—using the flashlight now and then to orient himself—the faint lights of the lab became sharper. And then he stepped into the clearing. The collapsed fire tower itself was like a severed black finger stabbing skyward. The main laboratory building was dark, the generator rumbling quietly beyond it. The lights he had been following came, he now saw, from a building on the far side of the parking area; evidently, this was the living quarters. As he watched, a figure moved behind a curtained window.
He hesitated a second, considering how best to proceed. Then he began walking in a semicircle along the edge of the clearing, sticking close to the wall of trees, staying far from the living quarters. He passed the fire tower and the lab, passed a few small outbuildings—dark and, for the most part, shuttered and in disrepair. The moon, fully obscured now by clouds, shed only the faintest of light, and he was forced to use the torch more frequently as he made his way through grass and knee-high saplings.
Five minutes brought him to the far side of the clearing. From here, he could see what looked like a naturalist’s blind—a structure he assumed to be Pace’s “A Pen”; a storage depot; and across the clearing, a large run of chain link that, to his great relief, housed the two dogs. He could just make out their dark figures, running back and forth and whimpering. They were ignoring him entirely, facing away, evidently distracted in the opposite direction.
He paused once again to reconnoiter. Pace had said the lights and noises had come from an old outbuilding deep in the woods, south of the lab. He moved carefully along the southern fringe of trees, then stopped when the moon came out briefly from behind the clouds. The faintest of tracks could be seen here, heading south from the clearing into the forest. The living quarters were now obscured by outbuildings, and he ventured to use the flashlight again, tracing the path as it meandered between the trees. There was no sound save for the whisper of wind in the branches, the distant generator, and the worrying noises of the dogs.
…But wait: was that a faint flickering of light ahead, far into the trees? Wasn’t that a low susurrus of voices: first one speaking, then another?
He began making his way along the narrow path, using the flashlight still more frequently now that he was out of the clearing and in amid the dense woods. There it was again: a low voice, followed by another.
Abruptly, the wind shifted and the whining of the dogs became a sudden, frantic racket: they had caught his scent. Damn. He moved more quickly along the path, hoping to get out of range, but the chorus of loud barking continued for several minutes before eventually dying away. When it did, he paused to listen. Nothing now: no voices, just the faint night sounds of the woods. Had he heard them at all, or was it his—and Pace’s—imagination?
It was utterly dark ahead, no lights whatsoever, and now Logan used his flashlight continuously to guide him along the narrow, twisting trail. Another minute, and a building loomed out of the woods ahead: a long, low, dilapidated structure with a metal roof and perhaps half a dozen windows, all covered by what looked like heavy, rotting burlap. It sat in the middle of a tiny clearing. What the structure’s original purpose might have been—dormitory, mess—or why it was situated out here in the middle of the forest, he couldn’t imagine. What was clear was that it looked dark and untenanted.
He played his light slowly over the structure, from one end to the other. Was this the source of the lights and noises Pace claimed to have heard? It seemed likely: the narrow trail ended here, at the building’s sole door.
Logan hesitated a moment, but there was nothing save the distant whining of the dogs. He approached the door, grasped the old-fashioned handle.
It was unlocked. He depressed the plunger with his thumb, eased the door open, and stepped inside. Then, closing the door behind him, he began a circuit of the interior with his flashlight.
What he saw was a revelation. Instead of the clutter and debris he was expecting—old tables and benches, covered with cobwebs and mice droppings—the ramshackle building contained a small laboratory. It appeared to have been rather hastily assembled but was nevertheless, if anything, even more modern than the one in which Laura Feverbridge and Pace worked. The beam of his torch licked over an autoclave; a centrifuge; two types of compound microscopes; a mass spectrometer; a UV transilluminator; what looked like a capillary gel DNA sequencer; and a host of other instruments Logan did not recognize. A door in the far wall led to another room, within which he could make out a narrow cot. As in the main lab, there were several cages for small animals—mice, moths, caterpillars, salamanders—set on wooden shelving. A very large, drum-shaped lamp with a grilled front lens, of the kind used in photography and film studios, hung from a wheeled stand, and there was other optical equipment scattered about as well. Nevertheless, on the whole the research equipment here seemed more medical in nature than th
at in the primary lab.
Suddenly, Logan froze. The beam of his flashlight stopped, in its transit of the room, on two figures, standing silent and motionless in a corner. One of them was Laura Feverbridge. She was holding a shotgun, and it was pointed at Logan. The other was an elderly man, very tall and gaunt, with a heavy salt-and-pepper beard and a shock of white hair—the man Logan had seen in the photo on the lab table.
Chase Feverbridge. Laura’s father—who had fallen to his death while hiking six months before.
19
For a moment, all three of them stood as if frozen. Then, slowly, Laura Feverbridge lowered the shotgun.
“Would you mind taking that light out of our eyes, Dr. Logan?” she asked.
Logan aimed the light away. There was another rumble of distant thunder outside.
Now Logan understood: the sudden barking of the dogs had alerted the two, and they had turned out the lights in hopes of not being discovered. But that was the only thing he did understand. Nothing else about this situation made any sense.
The elderly man looked at Logan through the indirect glow of the flashlight, his expression a mixture of confusion, surprise, and something else. “You know this man, Laura?” he asked. His voice was deep and resonant, with the faintest touch of an English accent.
“Jeremy Logan. He visited the lab a few days ago.”
“Well, you might as well turn on the lights,” the man continued. “No point chatting in the dark.”
She looked at him questioningly. “Father?”
“Why not? If he’d brought the cavalry with him, they’d be here by now.”
After a moment, Laura Feverbridge reached over and flicked a switch. An overhead light came on, illuminating the lab.
She smiled a little wanly at Logan. “After you left, Kevin told me about the unusual nature of your work. I wondered if our paths might cross again. But I didn’t expect it would be here.”
Logan nodded at the shotgun. “What’s that for?”
“You’re kidding, right? After what happened to Mark?”
“Fair enough. But this is your father—correct?” Logan turned to the man. “You’re Chase Feverbridge?”
The elderly man did not reply for a moment. Then he nodded slowly. His eyes were a piercing blue, and they seemed to see right through Logan. “If you don’t mind,” he said, “I’m going to sit down.” And he walked over to a nearby worktable, took a seat on a lab stool.
Laura hesitated a moment, then seemed to come to a decision. “I guess I’d better explain all this to you,” she said. “In fact, it looks like I don’t have a choice. It’s either that…or shoot you.”
“I’d rather it was the former,” Logan said.
At this, the older man gave a ghost of a smile. “Laura,” he said, “under the circumstances, don’t you think it would be better if I—”
“No, Father. Let me do it.” She drew in a deep, shuddering breath. Then, using the muzzle of the shotgun, she motioned Logan to follow her out of the building.
They emerged into the cool night. Laura closed the door softly behind them as Logan turned off his flashlight. She took a few steps away, toward the edge of the small clearing, and he followed. No sound came from the main camp, and Logan could see no lights through the trees.
There was a sudden spike in the distant whining and yowling of the dogs. “What’s with them?” he asked.
“Toshi and Mischa? I’ve begun keeping them in that run at night—if there is a rogue bear or wolf on the loose, I don’t want them to encounter it. And the truth is they’ve been acting strangely—as if some unfamiliar animal is nearby in the woods. That’s the only reason I can think of for the way they’ve taken up snarling and whimpering after dark.”
She stood in the wash of obscured moonlight, shotgun cradled in her arms, collecting her thoughts. Then she looked straight at Logan, her expression determined, even defiant. “Look. I’ve already told you why we established our lab here. Not only is it an ideal place for our research, but it helped shield my father from the relentless criticism his work had been subjected to. And all that was true. But it wasn’t enough. Even here, the criticism reached us—by Internet and e-mail. My father is a very proud man…but he’s also troubled, vulnerable. Despite his brilliance, he’s always been emotionally fragile. After our arrival, he continued to grow increasingly distraught. ‘Deterioration’ might be a better word. I know you can understand, Dr. Logan, because I imagine you’ve had a taste of it yourself—it’s one thing to face rejection, but quite another to be an object of scorn, even condemnation, from those who should be your peers. And then, he published those last two articles…but he did it prematurely, submitted without my knowledge, promising much in the text but without the necessary scientific underpinnings and relevant data. I guess he was lashing out at his detractors, trying to prove his point. The result was precisely the opposite he’d hoped for—he was subjected to academic ridicule even more severe. It was then that he…tried to kill himself.”
“What?” Logan said. “Here?”
She nodded. “I came into the dormitory just as he was about to hang himself. Another five minutes, and I’d have been too late. As I was cutting the rope, he told me not to bother; he’d just find some other way to take his life.”
She chewed her lip. “I didn’t know what else I could do. I’d brought us to this utterly remote place—and yet even that wasn’t enough. I felt helpless. I went out one day for a walk, down one of Mark’s favorite paths. I needed to get away from the lab, try to think, try to figure out what to do. And that’s when it happened. About two miles from the lab, I came upon a body—a human body. It lay at the bottom of Madder’s Gorge, at the base of the waterfall. It was a man, maybe sixty or seventy….I couldn’t tell for certain, he was too broken up and bloodied. It must have just happened. It was awful.” She shuddered at the memory. “What was clear was that he’d fallen from a height of land overhead. There were rocks strewn around him, and I could see the spot above where the cliff face had given way. I was horrified, about to turn and run for the authorities—but for some reason I didn’t. See, an idea came to me, I don’t know from where. But all of a sudden, I thought that maybe—just maybe—I’d found the answer I was looking for.”
She took another deep breath. “Near the body was a backpack. I rifled through it. It contained what you’d expect—food, cooking equipment, sleeping bag…and a diary. I paged quickly through that diary. It turned out the corpse was that of a survivalist, a nomad. He’d been living off the grid for years. The journal was a sort of confessional; a catalog of his personal convictions, his charges against civilization. This was a man with no relations to speak of, certainly none that he cared for or that cared for him; a man who had unplugged himself from the world, turned his back on everything he’d known, and spent years roaming the North American wilderness, letting whim guide his feet, bedding down where he pleased.”
She fell silent. The silence stretched on so long Logan realized he’d better continue the story for her.
“In short, a man nobody would miss,” he said.
She nodded. “He was about my father’s height, and build, and age. Beyond that, he was…unrecognizable. It was like a gift. A strange and terrible gift. I’d walked out, looking for an answer—and here one lay, literally at my feet. I ran back to the camp. It took some convincing, but eventually my father agreed—especially when I explained that this was the best way, the only way, to free him once and for all. I took my father’s wallet, ran back to the waterfall, and exchanged it for the dead man’s few pitiful papers. I retrieved the backpack and buried it out in the woods behind the lab. I burned the journal. I installed my father here, in this remote outbuilding, where nobody would bother him or discover him. And the next day, I reported to the authorities that he was missing. I knew it wouldn’t be long before somebody found the body—a cop, or a ranger, or Mark on one of his hikes. And that was exactly what happened. Naturally, when they found my father’s w
allet they asked me to identify the mutilated body. I did—at least, I said I did. A week later, they returned his ashes to me. I scattered them around the base of the waterfall. And I duly reported his death to the scientific community. I ordered extra equipment, installed it here myself when no one was looking. I rewired the building to the electrical grid. I came out to see my father, to bring him food, to assist in his work, but only late at night—after Mark and Kevin had gone to bed.”
Suddenly—to Logan’s shock—she reached out and clutched at his sleeve. “Do you see?” she asked in a tense tone. “Right or wrong, six months ago I had realized there was no way, no way, I would be able to save my father. He was as good as dead….It was only a matter of time.”
Laura’s face looked drawn and utterly exhausted. She spoke more softly. “Jeremy, I’m not proud of this situation. But I hurt no one. That wanderer’s death was tragic—but I took it as a sign. Only my father’s ‘death’ would silence the taunting that tormented him so. And this way, he could continue his work in peace. And I can tell you, my father has been more productive—more like his old self—in this last half year than he’s been in a decade. And I believe the world will benefit from his discoveries.”
Suddenly, she looked at him once again with that same determination. “So…now what are you going to do?”
Logan didn’t answer. He’d been so surprised to find Chase Feverbridge alive that this question had not yet occurred to him.