The stench grew stronger: fetid, sour, goatish. There was a crackling in the brush near the side of the road. And then he heard that sound again. It was husky and ravenous: ravenous for blood and the rending of flesh.
Suddenly, a hundred things seemed to happen at once. Sam abruptly found his feet again and dashed around the front of the car, literally diving inside as a loud crashing burst from the nearby bracken; at the last possible moment he reached back and pulled the door closed, punching the lock as he did so; his flashlight, falling to the floor of the passenger seat, rolled backward and he saw something outside the window that, temporarily, drove all rational thought from his mind. Neighing in terror and dismay, he cringed back, windmilling with his legs, while the thing outside beat on his car with unimaginable fury. And then the light seemed to grow in intensity; the roaring sound suddenly mingled with another; his car shook once again under the violent assault—and then Sam slumped over the center column of the Civic, fainting, as merciful oblivion overtook him.
25
It took Logan longer than expected to reach Pike Hollow. Unlike on his earlier sorties, this time there was some traffic on the road—a ramshackle old truck with wood-framed sides, apparently hauling a variety of mechanical trash—and it seemed incapable of going faster than thirty miles an hour. Logan was unable to pass on the dark, twisty roads. To his relief, it continued down the main highway at the junction with 3A, and—turning onto the secondary road—he was able to make up some time. Even so it was almost nine as he neared the hamlet.
But just as he approached the turnoff for Pike Hollow, he noticed—ahead, around the bend in the road—a riot of flashing red and blue lights. Curious, he continued past the turnoff and drove around a few curves in the road.
A remarkable sight confronted him. On the shoulder some two hundred yards ahead of the third bend were no less than three state police cars and two ambulances, all with their lights whipping frantically. Dark figures could be seen moving beyond the vehicles, and powerful torches flashed over the blackness of the forest wall.
Feeling a sudden, deep misgiving, Logan immediately pulled off the road and killed both his engine and headlights. He sat there for a moment, observing the scene. He could hear a fugue of muttered conversations, with one particularly strident, anguished voice erupting occasionally over the drone before relapsing into silence. As he watched, Logan saw the oversized form of Krenshaw lumber in front of one pair of headlights before disappearing into the darkness again.
Even from this distance, he felt a terrible foreboding wash over him. Nevertheless he eased his way out of the Jeep, closed the door, and began approaching—stealthily, keeping to the shoulder, staying out of sight of the troopers, especially Krenshaw. As he drew closer, he could see two additional vehicles. One was an official park ranger truck. It looked like Jessup’s. The driver’s door was open. Directly in front of it was a beat-up old foreign sedan. “Beat-up” was an understatement: even from his vantage point, Logan could see the car was a wreck: huge dents in the roof, hood, and side panels; star-shaped impact marks in the windshield. A man was sitting on the far side of the hood, clothes askew, slumped forward, surrounded by several state troopers with notebooks and recorders in hand.
The sense of foreboding grew stronger.
He was now close to the emergency vehicles, and he could see a knot of EMTs bending over what looked like a shredded jumble of clothing and raw meat. Another step forward—and suddenly, as an official moved out of a spotlight, the scene resolved itself with terrifying clarity. He saw the unmistakable ranger’s hat, some distance away, its usual olive green now dark and matted with gore. What had seemed like a disordered heap of bloody clothing was, in fact, a body—a body torn almost beyond resemblance to humanity. Logan made out a ranger’s shoulder patch among the shredded remains. And then—to his dismay and horror—he saw, at one end of the jumble, the head of his friend Randall Jessup. It was dreadfully lacerated and misshapen…but it was nevertheless unmistakable. The eyes were open, and in the scene-of-crime lights they seemed to be staring directly at him.
“Hey!” Logan was shocked out of his paralysis by a shout. He looked over to see Krenshaw, who had spotted him and was quickly coming over. “This is a crime scene,” he snapped. Despite an awful daze that threatened to overwhelm him, Logan could see that Krenshaw looked more than usually angry. More than that: the man seemed uncharacteristically anxious.
“Get back,” he said roughly as he stepped up to Logan, preparing to bodily push him away. But Logan just stood there, head now turned away from the grisly sight yet somehow unable to move.
He heard Krenshaw sigh, then mutter a curse. The trooper let his arms drop to his sides. “Yes,” he said after a moment. “It’s Jessup.”
“What happened?” Logan heard himself ask.
Krenshaw paused before replying. “All right. This one time, I’ll tell you what we know—because you were a friend of his, went to school together. Otherwise you’d get fuck-all from me. It seems he was heading east, to Pike Hollow. He stopped here when he saw an assault in progress on the occupant of that Civic.”
“What kind of an assault?” Logan asked woodenly.
“That’s what we’re trying to find out. The victim isn’t being too helpful, as you can hear for yourself.” As if on cue, the man sitting on the edge of the hood began to gesticulate wildly, his hands waving about as if to ward off something terrible. He uttered a brief, shrieking scream.
Despite his grief, horror, and growing feeling of numbness, Logan forced himself to ask another question—knowing it would probably be his only chance to do so. “Saul Woden?”
“According to my men, the guy never left his house this evening. On the other hand, there was plenty of noise coming out of the Blakeney compound.”
“What kind of noise?”
“I don’t know. My first man here on the scene couldn’t describe it all that well. Strange shit. A howling, he said—but not like any howling he’d heard before. Crashing sounds.” Krenshaw, who himself had developed something of a thousand-yard stare, now drew himself up. “And now you’ll have to leave, Dr. Logan. Don’t force me to have you escorted from the scene.”
After a moment, Logan nodded. Krenshaw began to walk away. A trooper came up to him and Krenshaw immediately began demanding the badge number of the trooper who’d left his vehicle outside the Blakeney residence so he could go into Pike Hollow for a bite of dinner. Next, they began discussing whether there was a back entrance to the Blakeney compound and, if so, how they could access it. Just as he was turning away, Logan heard the man sitting on the hood of the Civic raise his voice again. Looking back, he saw that the man had risen to his feet and was being restrained by two state troopers. With fresh surprise, he recognized the man as Sam the barber, who had given him a haircut on his first visit to Pike Hollow.
“I don’t know what it was!” he was saying, his voice growing louder and ragged. “Stop asking me! Why do you keep asking me? It was like a man, but larger, hairy, and it ran along the ground like a dog, or a wolf maybe. It had red eyes and a terrible…no, you can’t make me say it! It was wrecking the car, trying to beat in the window to get at me…and then the ranger pulled up and got out of his truck, but it moved so fast it was on top of him before he could pull out his gun, and then it wouldn’t stop, it wouldn’t stop, and…God, my God, no, NO…!”
And as Logan made his way back to the Jeep on stiff legs that weren’t his own, the screaming started up again—and this time it did not stop.
26
That night, Logan slept very little, shock and grief forcing him to toss restlessly. Again and again he replayed in his mind the horrible images he’d witnessed on the shoulder of the highway. It seemed almost impossible to believe. Randall Jessup, gone—killed by the very thing he had been hunting; the very thing, apparently, he had approached Logan about on his first night at Cloudwater.
Finally, feeling the need to divert his mind with something else, he g
ot up and, sitting down at his laptop, managed to put the final touches on his monograph on medieval heresy.
It was exactly eight o’clock in the morning when he completed the last sentence.
Even given the dismal circumstances, it seemed that some sort of ceremonial event, no matter how small, was necessary to mark the occasion. And so, while Cloudwater always laid on a lavish breakfast, he decided to drive into Ray Brook and the one pastry shop in the area he’d found that served passable croissants. After that, he would stop by the Jessup house to pay his respects to Suzanne. It was true he didn’t know her well—he had met her only twice—but he was clearly Jessup’s oldest friend in the region, and it seemed the right thing to do.
Ninety minutes later, leaving the pastry shop and heading for Saranac Lake, he passed the low building that housed Region 5 of the New York State Forest Rangers HQ—the place he’d heard Krenshaw’s briefing on the details of Artowsky’s death. It looked far different from the first time he’d seen it: now it appeared to be mobilizing for D-Day. Several Hummers, ATVs, and what looked like some kind of semi-military vehicle in camouflage were parked outside, and both rangers and state police were moving back and forth with antlike industry. Among them, Logan spotted the tall, powerfully built man Jessup had introduced to him as Jack Cornhill, the supervisor of Zone C. Logan guided his jeep into the parking lot and stopped beside the man.
Cornhill stared at him for a moment before recognition dawned. When it did, the guarded expression on his face morphed to a weary sadness. “You’re Randall’s friend, right?” he asked.
Logan nodded.
“Terrible thing.” Cornhill shook his head. “That’s an awful way for anybody to go, but a man like Randall…” His voice died away for a moment. “Nice wife, too. Really smart. And those sweet kids…” He shook his head again.
Logan indicated the cluster of vehicles and the activity that surrounded them. “What’s with all the muscle?”
“Well, with this fourth murder—that of a law officer, too—Krenshaw is through with half measures.”
“In other words, he’s going to raid the Blakeney compound.”
Cornhill hesitated a moment, then nodded. “That’s right. He’s going to raid it—and hard.”
“When?”
Cornhill shrugged. “Day after tomorrow, maybe. Next day at the latest. Depends on how long it takes Krenshaw to get organized.” He pointed at the vehicles. “As you can see, he doesn’t waste time. He’s calling in troops from as far away as Glens Falls.”
Logan thanked the ranger, said good-bye, and continued on his way to the Jessup residence.
—
He paused outside the driveway of the neat, small, freshly painted house. It looked just the same as before: he could almost imagine Jessup, mentally communing with Emerson and the other transcendentalists as he nailed the clapboards and laid the shingles with his own hands. It seemed hard to imagine that the man who had built this house, who had fathered the family that lived within, was gone. But gone he was—death had visited this tidy home with a vengeance.
Two vehicles he did not recognize were in the driveway. One was an official New York State Forest Ranger truck that was just pulling out as he arrived. The other was a light-colored sedan. He waited in the Jeep for about fifteen minutes, not wishing to disturb whoever was inside with Suzanne, mentally composing what comforting words he could offer. And then the front door opened and a middle-aged woman emerged. She embraced a figure within—it was too dark to make out any features—and then walked to the sedan, dabbing at her eyes with a tissue as she did so.
Logan waited for the woman to drive away. He waited another five minutes to let Jessup’s family have a little time for themselves. He realized he was stalling: this was the last thing he wanted to do. Heaving a sigh, he started the engine and drove up to the house.
Suzanne Jessup answered the door. No one else appeared to be home. Her honey-colored hair was askew; her eyes were puffy and red-rimmed. For a moment, she just looked at him blankly. And then her face crumpled. “Oh, Jeremy,” she said, and threw her arms around him.
“I’m so sorry,” he murmured as he led her inside. She let him steer her toward a sofa, let him sit her down, as if she had no will of her own. She began to weep: deep, violent, racking sobs that—as he continued to embrace her—shook them both.
“He was my best friend,” she said. “My soul mate in everything. Everything. How could this happen?”
Logan decided the best response was simply to hold her; to let her speak. He certainly was not about to tell her he’d seen how Jessup had died.
“The kids are away,” she sobbed. “Vacationing with my parents in Pound Ridge. How am I going to tell them their father is dead?”
“It’s unfair,” he replied. “Horribly unfair. Nobody should have to do such a thing—ever. When are they due back?”
She released her hold on him, sat back. “Tomorrow. My father is driving them up.”
“Then I think you need to tell them tonight. They need to start to grieve, and the journey home might be the best time for that to begin. You don’t want them to arrive expecting to see him.”
She pulled a tissue from a box on a nearby table. “You’re right. But Jeremy, they adored him so….” And with this she started weeping again.
“And they always will. That will never change. Randall was a wonderful friend to me. I know he was a wonderful father and husband. That’s a legacy your kids—and you as well—can always cherish. Children are stronger than we give them credit for, you know….In some ways, they’re stronger than we are.”
Suzanne sniffed, nodded.
The doorbell rang. “That must be Betty Cornhill,” Suzanne said, dabbing at her eyes with a tissue. “She said she’d stop by around now.”
This, Logan assumed, was Jack Cornhill’s wife. “I’ll be on my way,” he said. “I just wanted to stop by and let you know how sorry—”
“No,” Suzanne interrupted. “No—stay, please. I want to hear your stories about Randall: how you met, how you became friends, what he was like at college. I need to hear more, learn something about him I didn’t know before—does that make any sense?”
Logan nodded. It made perfect sense.
“His office is right down the hall.” Suzanne stood up, still dabbing at her eyes and leading the way. “You can wait in there.”
“Very well.” Logan let himself be ushered into a small, neat office-cum-den. He heard Suzanne’s retreating steps; heard the front door open; heard a susurrus of female voices, followed by renewed weeping.
27
Logan looked around the room. Its contents brought the memory of his old friend back to him with a fresh pang of grief. The shelves, on which books about forestry and wildlife management sat cheek by jowl with philosophical treatises. The tidy desk, with its computer and small neat piles of papers. The bust of Thoreau that Jessup had kept near at hand ever since his senior year in college. Several framed photographs, carefully arranged on the walls: a young Jessup, wearing a backpack, tanned and smiling, in some exotic eastern location. A much more mature Jessup, straddling the roof beam of this very house, one victorious hand holding up a hammer, apparently just having finished construction. Jessup the family man, posing with Suzanne and the kids in front of what looked like Mirror Lake, the buildings of Lake Placid rising up behind.
His eyes wandered absently across the top of the desk. They stopped when they reached Jessup’s battered leather-bound notebook, lying beside the computer. This was surprising: Logan had never known Jessup to go anywhere without that notebook peeping out of his breast pocket.
Only one voice could be heard now in the living room: low and consoling. Logan stared at the notebook. What had Jessup’s last words been to him, over the phone, when he’d asked for the meeting in the Pike Hollow bar? Jeremy, I don’t know how to tell you this—how to ask you this. Do you remember our conversation of two nights ago? When I told you that I was looking into something—
and I’d say more if I learned anything specific? Well, I have. And we should talk.
He reached out, let his fingertips brush the cover of the journal. Then he picked it up. He felt a tinge of voyeurism—but also intense curiosity. Suzanne wanted to hear stories about her dead husband’s past; Logan wanted to know what had been occupying the ranger’s thoughts in the present.
He began paging through the journal. It was not the typical law officer’s log: jotted facts and dry observations were interspersed with quotes from Jessup’s favorite thinkers—on an early page, Logan came across G. K. Chesterton’s observation, “The one created thing which we cannot look at is the one thing in the light of which we look at everything.” As Logan continued to leaf through the notebook, the entries became increasingly focused on the recent killings: the condition of the bodies, where they were found, summaries of official briefings. There was also, he noticed, an entry describing Logan’s own aborted attempt to visit the Blakeney compound, and what he’d reported about his initial visit to Pike Hollow. But then, on the last page, the carefully penned, methodically entered notes gave way to a series of fragments and questions:
C. Feverbridge—died April 16. Direction of final research
Jeremy and Laura Feverbridge—? Not hearing whole story!
Lunar effect??
Albright: F. & Blakeneys
He closed the journal and put it down. What these fragments meant, exactly, Logan did not know—but it appeared that Jessup had been focusing on him, and on the Feverbridges, almost as much as on the degenerate Blakeneys. He wasn’t sure, but it seemed that his explanations of why he’d been visiting the old fire station had not completely satisfied his old friend.