Upon reaching the designated hillside, the boys dismounted their bikes again, this time setting them beside a patch of ground ivy bordering the trail. The incline in front of them was pitched at nearly a forty-five degree angle. Prickly weeds and perennial grasses flourished at waist-high level in every direction. By the appearance of things, Kyle guessed that no one had attempted to traverse this particular overlook in decades.
“There must be at least a million ticks in here,” Kyle announced, motioning to the underbrush. “Isn’t there another way we can go?”
Robby started to tuck the bottom of his pant legs into his socks. When he finished, he glanced up at Kyle and said, “We could take Adler Lane to the other side of the hill, but that would get us too close to Murden’s shanty.”
“I think that might be safer than trouncing through all this stuff.”
“Trust me, Kyle, this is the best way to go—it’s the smartest way, too.”
Without further discussion, Robby hiked up the hill, using his hands to tug on the ground’s shallow roots for leverage. After adjusting his socks, Kyle followed in his friend’s shadow. Dry leaves and twigs crackled under the weight of their sneakers. Once they neared the hill’s peak, Robby instructed Kyle to crouch down behind a cluster of maple saplings. From their current position, about fifty yards from the first row of peach trees, they clearly observed the diseased land.
Just as Robby had indicated, all of the peach trees on this earth were completely stripped of their emerald leaves and spring flowers. The trees’ crooked branches appeared like flailing arms, grasping blindly for a drink of sunlight or rain that couldn’t cure their blight.
Whether Kyle chose to believe the rumors or not, he could not deny the grove’s perpetual state of decay. Sadness encompassed his thoughts during these seconds, because he felt as though something good and pure had been wasted.
To darken his mood even more thoroughly, Robby stared at him with squinty eyes; a coerced fear now curdled his voice. “I guess you’re ready to believe me now, huh?” Robby said, arrogantly elbowing his friend in the ribcage.
“I always knew the trees were dead,” Kyle offered, trying to spare himself of any further humiliation. “But that doesn’t explain anything. Nobody really knows what happened to those trees.”
Robby quickly became agitated with his friend’s unwillingness to concede. “Everyone around here will tell you the same thing—that grove is cursed and it’s been like that for close to thirty years now.”
“Did you ever think that there could’ve been a logical reason why the trees died? Maybe they got some kind of bugs, like that time when my mom’s weeping cherry tree shriveled up and cracked in two pieces.”
“This is different,” Robby insisted, attempting to pinch his voice to a deeper whisper. “It’s not a coincidence that Murden’s peach trees dried up right after the police found the first body buried in the grove.”
Robby glared at Kyle more fixedly now, trying to jar his selective memory. Kyle of course recalled the incident all too well, but he was almost reluctant to speak of this crime with words. It somehow made the events too real—too utterly cruel—even after all of this time.
“She was just a little girl,” Robby continued with his morbid intonations. “I think she was around our age at the time. Some say that Murden buried her alive, before having his way with her. It was a shame she had to die like that.”
“We don’t know all the details, Robby.”
“Come on, Kyle. That story is as old and widespread as your grandmother’s wrinkles. Check with the sheriff’s office if you don’t believe me. The cops still must have some record of it.”
“Do you know what that girl’s name was?”
Robby shrugged his shoulders and replied, “That really doesn’t matter now, does it?”
Kyle paused in thought before saying, “Something about that story never made any sense to me. I mean, let’s say, for arguments sake, that Murden really murdered that girl and then buried her under his peach trees. Why would he be stupid enough to hide the body on his own property?”
“Who knows? Maybe he panicked and didn’t think that he’d get caught. Hey, I never said that the old man was a rocket scientist, did I?”
“Okay,” Kyle went on, “Why didn’t he go to jail? The sheriff supposedly found the evidence, right? If what you say is fact, then he would’ve been locked up for the rest of his natural life.”
“Yeah,” Robby refuted, “but they didn’t have any hard evidence to link Murden to the girl. He was so careful to not even leave a fingerprint or a piece of hair at the crime scene. They tried to get the old bastard to confess, but he wouldn’t crack. Eventually, they had to let him go.”
“Did anyone ever consider the possibility that he might be innocent?”
Robby directed a grim stare at Kyle and snickered, “People might’ve thought that at one time, but how do you account for all the other missing people who disappeared in those woods over the years? The way I see it, Murden’s the only one who hasn’t gone away.”
“I don’t know much about those stories,” Kyle admitted.
Robby simpered at his friend’s ignorance. Before now he never heard of anyone questioning Murden’s guilt with any seriousness. Because Kyle seemed so oblivious to the truth, Robby decided to make him privilege to some very public information.
“Your folks have kept you out of these woods for a good reason,” Robby reminded his friend. “They know the legend of Murden’s peach grove, and they also know that more kids might vanish for as long as that old man is still lurking around.”
“I still can’t believe that Murden has got a bunch of dead kids buried under those peach trees. Doesn’t it seem a little strange to you that the police never dug up any other bodies?”
“He’s had a lot of time to perfect his craft,” Robby affirmed. “He’s figured out how to hide the corpses so that they’ll never be found.”
Instead of entertaining Robby’s admonitions any longer, Kyle pivoted his eyes back down the hill toward the dirt trail. A lurid thought seemed to sift through his mind as he studied the surrounding woods. “You know what I’m willing to bet, Robby?” Kyle pondered, his eyes flickering with anticipation. He then answered his own question by saying, “I bet nobody ever bothered to ask that old man what really happened.”
“You’ll get no argument from me on that one. I can’t think of anyone whose come closer than a hundred yards of him in the last ten years, except maybe the sheriff.”
Kyle’s next notion was a bold one, but it needed to be uttered. “It wouldn’t be a bad idea for us to go and talk to him sometime…”
Robby sprang to his feet, clutched his friend by his shoulders and yelped, “Have you gone completely bonkers, Kyle McCann? No one talks to Ben Murden, not more than once anyway.”
Kyle jokingly pushed Robby away and jogged down the hill to retrieve his bike. After both boys pulled their bicycles from the ivy patch, they hopped aboard and rode back toward Shade Tree Pond. Half way along the trail, the exhausted pair rested under the camouflage of a willow tree. Though Robby had already erased their previous conversation from his mind, Kyle’s thoughts were still rooted in the controversy.
“I really think we should find out the truth about that old man before he dies,” Kyle suggested.
“Forget it, Kyle. If I thought you were gonna take this thing so seriously, I would’ve never brought it up.”
Kyle wiped the sweat from his brow and raised his eyes to the willow trees’ sagging branches. A young orange-breasted robin was perched on a limb nearby, chirping to its mate.
“It must be lonely living out here in these woods,” Kyle said, directing his eyes away from the bird. “I don’t know how Ben Murden does it. He must be very sad.”
“He’s completely nuts and a killer to boot,” Robby griped. “Now I’m telling you for the last time, Kyle, get that old man out of your mind.”
The robin stopped singing now, and Kyle stood up and brushed the
dust from his jeans. “Okay,” he sighed. “I suppose it was a dumb idea. Let’s get out of here.”
“Now you’re starting to make sense.”
Within moments, they felt energized enough to race through The Bogs aboard their bikes. Robby even managed to pull off a few wheelies along the way. Kyle may have not spoken his intentions aloud at this time, but his thoughts were still focused on the peach trees and the old man who watched over their withered remains.
Chapter 5