Forty-eight hours had elapsed since Kyle McCann learned of his punishment. Aside from being banned to the house for two days with no allowance, he was strictly prohibited by both his parents from ever returning to the Bogs or any place within three miles of Ben Murden’s property. Though Kyle found it difficult to concede to such conditions, he agreed to the terms so that the rest of his summer vacation was not wasted in the confines of his bedroom.
By the third morning Kyle had convinced his parents that he was responsible enough to avoid twenty-four hour surveillance. Although his mother didn’t typically compromise her own rules, she hadn’t truly prepared to keep him locked up in his bedroom for the next six weeks before school resumed.
As Linda walked down her driveway to retrieve the morning paper, she felt the humidity accumulating in the air. Another hot day was predicted and the heat had already taken a toll on even those who’d been known to tolerate such summers. People like Linda, who rarely complained about things that couldn’t be changed, felt her own mood deteriorating. Even at this early hour she sensed her blue nightgown sticking to her body.
For the last two weeks, the summer heat wave had monopolized all the headlines in every newspaper in town, but the bold letters printed on today’s front page delivered some far more unsettling news. As Linda’s eyes adjusted to the print, her expression slipped into a deeper frown. The headline read: 4 People Missing in Meadowton.
Linda scanned the story anxiously, wondering what else had occurred that she did not yet know about. As she learned about the disappearances of Sheriff Ackerman and Deputy Briggs, her entire face turned ashen and the perspiration evaporated from her skin. An inexplicable chill coursed through her veins.
Linda barely managed to contain her emotions when she returned to the kitchen of her home. Andrew was already seated at the breakfast table, dressed for work and drinking from a mug of coffee. He immediately recognized the torment working its way into his wife’s demeanor. Before he had the opportunity to comfort her, she unfurled the paper on the table in front of him. It only took a few seconds longer before he understood exactly what was wrong.
“I can’t take anymore of this,” Linda sobbed. She collapsed in the chair beside her husband as if her feet had been kicked out from under her.
Andrew may have shared his wife’s regret, but he also realized that he needed to project an aura that confirmed the safety or their family. He reached for her palm, but she tucked her arm against her body to avoid his touch.
“My god,” Linda quivered, glancing back to the newspaper’s headline with disbelief. “They were just here the other night. I can’t believe this is happening.”
Andrew sighed and offered a reassuring pat on his wife’s shoulder. “Linda,” he said soothingly, “we don’t really know what’s going on yet, so I think it’s best if we don’t jump to any conclusions.”
Linda seemed more insistent as she snapped her fingers and redirected her husband’s eyes to the newspaper. “Did you read the article, Andy?” The hostility was clear in her voice now. “Those officers are gone, just like the teenagers. I know something horrible has happened to them. How could you think otherwise?”
“I don’t want our town to get in a panic over any of this,” Andrew said, knowing that his wife would find fault with his rationalization.
“Will you please stop thinking about this damn town all the time. Isn’t your family a little more important?”
Andrew attempted to pull his wife closer, but she pushed him away as if he was a stranger. “Jesus, Linda,” he grumbled, “don’t you understand that all I think about is you and Kyle? But you must also know that the job market isn’t too kind to the unemployed right now. I’m in a very precarious situation…”
Linda smeared a teardrop from her cheek and decided now was the time to test how much she and their son meant to him. “If I asked you to, Andy, would you give it all up?”
Andrew’s face flushed pink before he said, “You’re asking me to quit my job? Is that fair, Linda?”
“I need to know where I stand.”
“You know I love you and Kyle.”
“But do you love us enough to let it all go? If you suspected in your heart that we would be safer and happier living somewhere else, would you at least try?”
Andrew did not want to sound reluctant when he replied, “Of course I would. Why would you even think otherwise?”
Linda’s voice refused to crack when she responded. “I don’t know how you feel about us anymore, Andy.” She sensed that her voice was becoming too loud, so she whispered the rest of her statement. “I’m lonely, and Kyle is, too. And now with all these odd things happening, I’m beginning to think that none of this is worth it. I’m scared that everything we built together over the years is falling apart.”
Andrew’s tone was clearly deflated when he spoke again. “I’m afraid, too, Linda. We all get that way sometimes, but I always thought you were happy living in Meadowton. We have great memories here.”
“You have the memories, Andy. I, on the other hand, have the burden of worrying about what the future has in store for us. I don’t want to worry any longer. I think that we would be better off if we started over away from this town and all of the horrible stories connected to it.”
The decision to leave Meadowton usually caused Andrew to shield himself behind the security of his job, but he realized that his wife had no intention of supporting his efforts if it meant raising her son in a volatile environment. Of course Andrew was currently in no position to simply walk away from everything without first contemplating the opportunities available to him beyond Meadowton’s county lines.
Andrew stood up from the table with the newspaper in hand. He thought about reaching out for his wife and warming her frigid mood with an embrace, but the present circumstances led him to believe that it would take more than a hug to thaw the iciness from her exterior.
“Well, it’s obvious that we’re going to have to do something,” Andrew thought aloud. “But it’s not practical to think that I can just pack up and leave here tomorrow.”
Linda stifled her sniffling long enough to say, “But you will consider what I’ve asked?”
Andrew paced back over to the table and cupped his hands over his wife’s shoulders. He massaged her gently as he spoke into her ear. “Look, Linda, I’m not ready to make any promises, at least not until I finalize this project I’m working on. If I leave now, it’ll be professional suicide. No one will hire me if I quit with a job half finished. I think we’ll be better prepared to talk about a change in the fall.”
Finally Linda believed she was making some headway with her traditionally stubborn husband. She was more receptive to his touch, but the notion of living in town for even two months longer was difficult to digest.
“I have a feeling that things are going to get a lot worse around here, Andy,” she said sedately. “I didn’t want to say anything, but I’ve been having nightmares about that old man.”
“Come on, Linda,” Andrew countered, “Ben Murden is in no physical condition to overtake two armed police officers. Did you get a look at the size of those men?” Andrew attempted to soften his wife’s dismay with a half-hearted chuckle, but she did not sway in her opinion.
“Four people have disappeared in those woods in the past few days,” she reminded her husband. “Doesn’t that sound a little suspicious to you? Something is definitely happening in those woods, Andy.”
“I’ve already explained to you that Ben Murden is simply not capable of doing the things people have claimed he’s done. There must be some other rational explanation.”
“What if it’s not rational? What if those stories about that peach grove are true? Maybe that land really is haunted by a spirit or something.”
Andrew released a hardier laugh as he walked across the kitchen and grabbed his briefcase from the counter. “Linda,” he sighed with disbelief, “do you even realize how ridiculous you sound?”
“I haven’t heard yo
u come up with an explanation yet.”
“Because I don’t have one, but I’m not about to let my ignorance to the situation persuade me into believing a bunch of silly ghost stories.”
Admittedly, Linda had never questioned the absurdity of those tales before, but her confusion over this matter had only deepened in recent days. Obviously, something had happened to the missing people, and if no reasonable solution presented itself, she wondered when the unreasonable avenue of thought would be touched upon.
“Something has to be done to protect the families in this town. Right now, Andy, I’m prepared to listen to any ideas that might bring us closer to solving these disappearances.”
“At the same time, Linda, we’ve got to keep our heads level. We’ll do our part to make sure that Kyle or none of the other kids in the neighborhood go near those woods again.”
“Are you going to keep an eye on everyone when you’re at work?” Linda questioned, somewhat sardonically. “Sooner or later, those kids are going to find their way back there.”
“Not our son,” Andrew affirmed. “Kyle’s too smart to make the same mistake twice. Besides, he’s already promised us that he wouldn’t go back in those woods under any circumstances.”
Linda smirked at her husband’s optimism, although she questioned the sincerity of his observation. Kyle had not been known to purposely disobey his parents in the past, but he was approaching an age where the practice of keeping secrets became more practical than dealing with the consequences of one’s actions. At least Linda managed to let her thoughts be known on the matter. It was now Andrew’s obligation to consider the magnitude of her words.
Shortly after Andrew departed for work, Kyle walked into he kitchen in relatively high spirits for a boy who spent the last two days under punishment. Apparently he had not forgotten about the deal he struck up with his mother on the previous evening. Robby Taylor was already on his way to the house and the two boys planned to spend the day downtown, far away from the woods encompassing Ben Murden’s property.
Of course the circumstances had changed from the prior evening. The news of the missing officers gave Linda pause, and she briefly contemplated the idea of reneging on her promise to her son. But after lending the matter further thought, she opted to stay true to her word. She had only one stipulation: Kyle was not allowed to take his bike downtown. By driving him and Robby to and from their destination, she could accurately predict that they would be in the same vicinity while she was not present.
Kyle didn’t anticipate that his mother would’ve gone to the trouble of preparing a special breakfast for him today. His mother did, however, set the table with a bowl of cornflakes and glass of apple juice. Along with the food, she put the paper on the table so that Kyle could not avoid noticing the headline when he sat down.
“I’m afraid there’s more bad news today,” Linda told her son as she watched his eyes scan the newspaper. She remained silent for a few minutes as her son perused the article.
Although Kyle was genuinely unnerved by the report, he decided not to reveal his thoughts to his mother. After a long pause, he said glumly, “I guess they’re gonna blame this on that old man, too, huh?”
Linda shrugged her shoulders, but waited for her son to offer his opinion before speaking her mind. Instead of appeasing his mother’s wishes, Kyle poured a cup of milk into his cereal and began eating.
“Don’t you even want to talk about this, Kyle?” she asked, slightly bewildered by the boy’s indifference to the matter.
Kyle glanced nervously at his mother. He wondered if she already knew about the friendship he had developed with Ben Murden in recent days. Not knowing exactly how to respond, he said, “My opinion really doesn’t matter, Mom. You and dad were right. It was a bad idea for me to ever go near that peach grove.”
The boy’s response was precisely what Linda sought to hear, but she still questioned the veracity of his words. Had her son truly abandoned his efforts to disprove Murden’s nefarious reputation? There was no present indication that Kyle had any other committed interest than the consumption or cornflakes. Maybe she could rest easier with the idea that Kyle’s attention span to anything outside of horror movies was as shallow as the leftover milk in the bowl of cereal he had eaten.
After Kyle had swigged his apple juice, he stood up from the table and checked the time on the kitchen’s wall clock. “Robby should be here in about twenty minutes,” he announced. “We’ve decided to go downtown today.”
“Yes, I know,” Linda said. “But if you don’t mind me asking, what do you plan to do?”
Kyle did not hesitate when he answered, “We’re going to the library.”
Naturally, his mother had to give this some deliberation since Kyle hadn’t professed an interest in books in more years than she cared to recall. “Why the sudden interest in the library?” Linda inquired, suspiciously. “I don’t remember you being a big reader, especially during the summertime.”
“Mom,” Kyle chimed with forced agitation, “they got more than books there. They have a whole section of CDs and DVDs, too.”
“Well, I suppose if you want to go, I can drive you and Robby over there about ten, okay?”
If Kyle had any alternative plans in mind he would’ve surely concocted some phony excuse as to why a ride from his mother was more of a burden than a blessing. Linda prepared for such a response from her son, but he seemed overly receptive to his mother’s offer.
“Sounds great, Mom. I was just telling Robby on the phone that it’d probably be too hot to ride our bikes down there. You can pick us up, too, right?”
Linda paused to measure the sincerity of her son’s expression. “Of course,” she said, feeling somewhat guilty for suspecting him of some offense. When she spoke again her tone was more sedate. “Kyle, before you go out today, I need to know that you’re really done with snooping around in those woods. You must realize that we have a real crisis on our hands now.”
“Don’t worry about that anymore,” Kyle assured his mother. “I’m not stupid enough to go around that peach grove again. Trust me, I learned my lesson. I just hope they find those missing people.”
“Me, too,” Linda muttered as her stare shifted back to the newspaper.
Robby arrived on his bike by eight o’clock and he did his best to display the same degree of enthusiasm as Kyle had about a trip to Meadowton’s public library. Of course Robby couldn’t fake it as good as his friend, so Kyle was careful to keep the interaction between him and his mother at a minimum.
Meadowton’s downtown area consisted of a narrow two-lane road that ran for about a quarter of mile. Years ago, before the highways and mega-malls diverted public interest away from town, the shops and eateries along Main Street bustled with business. In the aftermath of an untold number of super-plazas, however, many smaller merchants struggled to keep their businesses afloat. It was not uncommon to see three or four business ventures succumb to stagnancy within months after opening, only to be replaced by upstarts destined for the same untimely fates.
Those in town who had a sense of humor about misfortunate circumstances sometimes jested that Ben Murden was the cause for their businesses pitfalls. Some of the superstitious believed that Murden’s crimes had not only cursed his own property and livelihood, but the entire town as well. Still, while most stores faltered, the public library had been consistently popular in the community for over sixty years. The books were housed in a red brick building that was once a one-room schoolhouse. A tarnished brass bell still hung from the portico over the front entrance. Because the next nearest library was over twenty miles away, many people frequented on a daily basis. Summer was typically a slower period, and only a handful of avid readers bothered to borrow from a donated collection of three thousand works of literature and research materials.
The library opened its doors precisely at ten o’clock. Linda pulled her caravan up in front of the building a few minutes past the opening hour. Despite the morning headli
nes, it didn’t appear as anything unordinary was happening in town today. Those who were out in the midst of their daily routines seemed unaware or strangely detached from the notion that foul play was at hand.
Kyle and Robby hurried out of the vehicle and waited on the curb for Linda to drive away. Before leaving, she entertained the idea of escorting the boys inside the library, but ultimately decided not to be too overbearing. Once she was plainly out of sight, Robby turned towards his friend with a perplexed glare.
“Okay,” Robby huffed, “Are you ready to tell me why you dragged me down here today?”
“I couldn’t tell you on the phone,” Kyle insisted, while waving at his mother as she turned and passed them on the road. “I got a few things to look at, and I needed you to come here with me in order to do it.”
“Why?”
“My mother’s not gonna let me out of the house by myself. Besides, you can learn something from all of this, too.”
Robby pivoted toward the library’s front walkway and grimaced. “You mean we’re actually going inside?”
“In order to find out about the past, you got to do a little research.”
“Why do I have a feeling that you’re here because of that old man?” After Kyle didn’t immediately answer his friend, Robby confirmed his suspicion. “Haven’t you read today’s paper?” Robby huffed. “How many people does that man have to kill before you get the hint?”
“I’ll admit that something is going on in those woods, but I think it has more to do with the past than the present. If I can find out the truth, I might be able to put an end to the curse.”
Robby peered at his friend’s eyes more intensely to see how committed he was to this plight. “You’re really starting to scare me. Is there something I don’t know that’s causing you to act this way?”
“I can’t really explain why I feel the way I do,” Kyle sighed. “I guess the best way to describe it is that I’m hearing a voice inside of my head. It’s telling me not to stop.”
“How long have you been hearing this voice?”
Kyle appeared momentarily dumbfounded by this question, but he previously assumed that the episodes he was experiencing hadn’t been occurring for more than a few days. Since Kyle didn’t willingly respond to his friend, Robby took the initiative and started to walk toward the library’s doors.
“Come on,” Robby called to Kyle. “It’s obvious to me that you’re not gonna put all of this nonsense out of your head until you find out everything there is to know.”
At last Kyle found someone who was impatient enough to assist him in his investigation. Robby secretly hoped that his friend could appease his curiosity by delving into a few historical references rather than embarking on another quest near Murden’s peach grove. At the moment it seemed like the safer alternative, but no one, perhaps not even Kyle himself, fully comprehended where the next bit of information would lead.
Chapter 18