Donn's Hill

by Caryn Larrinaga

  When I reached the kitchen, I paused in the doorway, taking in the scene. Kit, Yuri, and Mark sat around the table, chatting over cups of Graham’s jet fuel. Morning sunlight poured through the mullioned windows at the back of the house. I pulled out my cell phone and took a photo; it would make a great promotional shot.

  “Mac, good. You’re right on time.” Yuri waved me over to the table, and I picked up a coffee mug on the way. I took a seat next to Mark, and Striker jumped up into my lap.

  Mark shot me a warm smile and nudged me with his elbow. “How’s it going?”

  I pulled over a box of doughnuts, selected a chocolate one, and took a huge bite. “Couldn’t be better,” I said around a mouth full of frosting.

  Mark scrunched up his freckled face. “Gross.”

  “All right class, settle down.” Yuri cleared his throat and straightened his glasses. “I want to give you some background before we head out. We’re doing an overnight shoot at a cabin that’s halfway between Donn’s Hill and Moyard, on the shore of Lake Anam.”

  “The make-out cabin?” Mark blurted.

  We all turned to look at him. A red tint spread up his face from his collar, making his skin nearly the same color as his hair.

  “Well, that’s what we called it in high school,” he stammered. “It’s not like… I never…” His ears were on fire.

  Yuri continued to stare at Mark for a moment, as though waiting to see if he would say anything else to incriminate himself. When Mark remained silent, Yuri shook his head and continued.

  “The cabin has a colorful history. It used to belong to a man named Kenneth Franklin, who was the son of a lumber magnate. He built the place and used it as a vacation home until he passed away several decades ago. It passed on to his sister in Chicago, who’s now elderly and doesn’t appear to have any use for it. It seems the forest will just reclaim the place until the day she passes on, and then the house will go to one of her heirs.” He paused, and a look of frustration flashed across his round face. “It was actually difficult for us to obtain permission to film there. The old woman didn’t even remember she owned the place. Our producer had to dig up some legal documents and work with her lawyers to get everything set up. Of course, if we hadn’t bothered to get permission, you can be sure she or one of her lawyers would have remembered her ownership just fine and taken us to court.”

  Kit snorted. “I bet.”

  “Since the cabin has fallen into disrepair, it’s become a popular party spot for teenagers, as Mark can probably tell you.” Yuri gave him a significant look, and Mark’s color deepened again. “It also gained some notoriety due to the string of deaths that occurred in the woods around the cabin in the eighties. Some teens drowned in the lake, a hunter fell from a tree, and a camper accidentally strangled himself with his hammock—to name a few. Each was ruled ‘death by misadventure,’ but there are some stories floating around that the cabin is haunted by a vengeful spirit who causes people to have fatal accidents.”

  “I remember hearing about that,” said Kit. “People say they’ve seen the ghosts of the kids who died out there, especially if they’re in the cabin past midnight. The belief is if you see a ghost, you’re next. So kids dare each other to stay there all night. But if they run home to Mommy, they get made fun of mercilessly.”

  “Did you do it?” I asked.

  Kit shook her head. “I’ve been hunting ghosts with Dad since before I could drive. I don’t screw around with that stuff.” She turned to her father. “Since when are a bunch of drunken teenagers credible witnesses to a haunting?”

  “Since one of them took this video with his cell phone.”

  Yuri pulled out his phone, and we scooted our chairs closer together to huddle around it. He tapped the play button, and two teenage girls appeared on the screen. They were sitting on a log, the dark trunks of oaks visible behind them. The girls were giggling as several voices off camera chanted, “Chug! Chug! Chug!”

  “Classy,” Kit muttered beside me.

  The girls raised a can of beer to their lips and started drinking. Foam ran from the corners of their mouths, dripping onto their halter tops. Male voices cheered them on. The girl on the right finished first and raised her arms in victory above her head.

  Behind her, something emerged from the darkness. Its edges were blurred, and it almost looked like smoke from the campfire… until it smiled.

  Yuri paused the video on that chilling image. “This was taken eight months ago. I got a hold of it through a friend at the sheriff’s department. The girl on the right died later that night after she climbed on top of the cabin and fell off the roof.” He looked each of us in the eye. “If the reports are to be believed, then this might be the face of the most aggressively sinister entity we’ve ever investigated.”

  “Can I ask a stupid question?” I stared around the table at the team. “Why in the crap do we want to go there, then?”

  Yuri cracked a small smile and tilted his head to the side. “For proof.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  Now this is what a haunted house should look like.

  I stood in front of the dilapidated log cabin, holding a case of equipment in each hand. From the front, it looked as if it had a face: two large windows for eyes and a door for a mouth. Its roof was sagging, and there was a large hole where the shingles drooped inward. Most of the windowpanes were broken, if not missing entirely. Ancient oaks towered above the squat building. It looked exactly like the sort of place I’d seen in a dozen scary movies when I’d screamed, “Don’t go in there, you idiot! That’s where the ax murderer lives!”

  Kit nudged me with one of the cases she was carrying. “Ready for this?”

  I shivered, remembering the grinning, smoky face in the video. The front door suddenly seemed like the mouth of a hungry bear, hanging open and waiting for its next meal to stumble into its jaws. The fear in my stomach slowly gnawed away at the enthusiasm I’d woken up with that morning. I wished I’d brought Striker with me, but I was terrified she’d run off into the woods and get eaten by a wild dog, so I left her at home.

  “Ready as I’ll ever be.” I smiled at Kit. “I’m not sure what I want to find in there. A big part of me hopes there’s nothing but a bunch of broken beer bottles.”

  Yuri came over and handed me a clipboard. “This is going to be a little different than what we did at the library,” he said. “We’ll need to cover a lot more ground. Why don’t you start the sweep in the house then move on to the surrounding woods?”

  “What, alone?” My knees turned to jelly.

  Yuri smiled. “Don’t worry, I’ll never send you anywhere dangerous. Mark will be shooting some B-roll out here while Kit and I set up the equipment inside, so you won’t be alone. And I don’t want you going deep into the woods at all, so stay near the edges of the cabin.”

  I tucked the clipboard under my arm and nodded. Taking a deep breath, I followed Kit into the house.

  It was a simple cabin with an open layout that was probably really pleasant in its heyday. But decades of parties and hasty exits had left piles of garbage everywhere, and the hole in the roof granted access to snow and rain. It smelled of mildew—like clothing that’s been left in the washing machine for a few days. Everything from the wide pine floorboards to the rustic log walls was covered in graffiti.

  Wanting to get through the sweep as quickly as possible, I pulled out my EMF meter and turned it on. Even in broad daylight, the cabin gave me the creeps. I couldn’t imagine hanging out in here for a party, and I was dreading having to spend the night for the main part of the investigation. Maybe Yuri would let me help get everything set up, and then I could sleep in the van.

  The light from the hole in the roof stretched a few feet into the hallway at the back of the cabin, illuminating more spray-painted obscenities on the walls, and then the gloom of the building’s interior took over. Although I was reluctant to leave the bright light and venture into the bedrooms at the back, I steeled myself, swit
ched on my flashlight, and moved down the hallway.

  I turned the handle on the door to the first bedroom, which opened with a pronounced creak. I almost laughed. This place felt like a spook alley, down to the sound effects. The room was bare except for a few crushed beer cans and empty red plastic cups. I walked inside, keeping an eye on the EMF meter. The needle was rising. I took a step toward the shuttered window, and the needle dropped to 0.5. When I moved toward the closet, the needle jumped up to 1.8.

  There must be something electronic in that closet. As I pulled open the closet door to check for an outlet, the putrid stench of rotting flesh blasted my face. I gagged, dropped the EMF meter, and ran back into the living room.

  “What’s wrong?” Kit’s eyes were wide with alarm.

  I swallowed several times and shook myself like a dog trying to dry off. “There’s something dead back there. An animal, I think. It smells awful.”

  Kit moved down the hall, the floor protesting as she walked on the old boards. “This first bedroom?” she called out.

  “Yeah, the one on the left.”

  She came back into the living room, shaking her head. “I don’t smell anything.”

  “What?” The foul, sweet odor of something decomposing still lingered in my nostrils. How could she not smell it? It was so strong I could practically taste it.

  As soon as I thought about it having a taste, bile rose up my throat, and I ran outside and vomited in the bushes. After my retching subsided, I leaned against a tree and wiped my mouth with the back of my hand. I took several long, deep breaths, and soon the crisp air of the forest cleared my nasal passages. I rested my head against the rough bark of the trunk, turning my face toward the sun. It felt good to let the heat sink into my skin, and I was reluctant to leave it and go back inside that stinking house.

  I heard the crunch of footsteps and turned to see Mark walking toward me. His freckled face was full of concern. He handed me a bottle of water.

  “Are you okay?”

  “I’ll be fine.” I took a swig of water, swished it around in my mouth, and spat into the bushes. The bitter taste of vomit faded a little bit. I grabbed Mark’s arm and pulled him away from the bushes and the stench of my breakfast. “Thanks for the water.”

  “I always come prepared.” He smiled, then looked over my shoulder and frowned.

  “What is it?” Tensing, I glanced behind me, expecting to see a bear or some other menace lumbering out of the woods, but there was nothing.

  “Did you choose that tree on purpose?” he asked.

  What a weird question. “Why?”

  “Well, it just so happens that this is the exact tree where a camper got all twisted up in his hammock and strangled himself to death.”

  I screeched and backed toward the cabin. “Are you serious?”

  He nodded. “So I’m curious. Did you feel drawn to that tree, or was it just a coincidence?”

  “I honestly don’t know.” I stared back at the tree for a moment, imagining that I could see rope marks in the gray-brown bark. With a shudder, I patted Mark on the shoulder. “Thanks again for the water. I’m heading back inside.”

  Kit looked up from her work as I stepped back into the kitchen. “Are you all right?”

  “Yeah, sorry. I don’t know what that was all about, but I’ll be fine.”

  She shrugged. “Could be food poisoning or something. Graham’s coffee, maybe.”

  After taking two big, deep breaths outside the bedroom door, I ducked into the room to retrieve my meter. No smell assaulted me. I cautiously approached the closet. I’d left the door hanging slightly ajar and pulled it open with a jerk. The closet was empty.

  Any explanation for the phantom stench eluded me. I shook my head and clicked the EMF meter back on, completing the initial sweep of the cabin without further incident or EMF spikes. All the rooms were empty except for the litter from teenagers who came here to party. The only smells I encountered were mildew from the rotting cabin and a damp, earthy scent from the woods outside. I should’ve been grateful that the stench was gone, but it puzzled me.

  I moved on to the cabin’s exterior. A light breeze rustled the leaves of the oak trees, and a tiny, chittering squirrel dashed in front of me as I walked around to the side of the cabin. The smells and sounds of the woods reminded me of camping trips with my dad, where we’d split our time between hiking, reading, and fishing. I smiled as a wave of nostalgia washed over me, momentarily replacing the fear in my belly.

  On one side of the cabin, a large fire pit had been dug into the ground. Long thick logs had been laid around it in a circle. Despite the warmth of the day, I felt a chill as I realized this was where the video with the ghostly face had been shot. My happy memories vanished, and I looked past the circle into the dense stand of trees that edged the property, half expecting to see a menacing face grinning back at me. There was nothing. I glanced back at the cabin, where the top of the chimney sat fourteen feet above the packed dirt surrounding the building. What would it feel like to fall from the roof? Did that girl have any time to think before she hit the ground?

  I shivered. Don’t dwell on it, Mac. Just do your job and move on.

  At the edge of the property, a wooden dock jutted into the still waters of Lake Anam, and the oaks gave way to clusters of scraggly pine trees. Long grass grew up from the lake bottom along the edges of the shore, and a beaver dam was barely visible on the far side of the water. It looked pleasant and peaceful, like the kind of place you could sit all day fishing and not be one bit disappointed if you didn’t catch anything. I walked out to the end of the dock and leaned over the rippling water. Clusters of leaves floated on the surface as several slender white fish glided between the reeds.

  When I turned around to head back up the dock, the view struck me as being incredibly familiar. I studied the sagging cabin and the tall oaks surrounding it and realized where I’d seen it before. It was in the background of the photograph with my mother on the dock. On this dock. She’d been sitting exactly where I was standing, her long legs dangling in the water. She looked about my age in that picture. Was it possible she was my exact same age, in this exact same place, with the same exact sun beating down on her? Yuri had said the cabin had the same reputation for wild parties back then. Had she come here in her youth to test her courage with Gabrielle and Rosanna?

  I wished I could ask her all these questions and so many more. But despite my inability to do so, I suddenly felt very close to her. I felt as though, somehow, without getting the benefit of being raised by her through the most turbulent years of my life, I’d turned out so much like her. And as Gabrielle had said, I looked almost exactly like her. I turned back to the lake and sat down on the dock, hanging my legs over the side. They didn’t touch the water; the winter before must have been dry. I leaned forward, wanting to check out my reflection and see how much I looked like my mom, sitting in the same spot where she’d sat so many years before.

  A bloated face stared up at me through the water. It had black, hollow holes for eyes, but that didn’t stop them from looking straight at me as the body floated out from beneath the dock. The dead man’s puffy skin was chalky white, and his long dark hair floated around his face, like petals around a melting flower. The smell that assaulted me was even worse than the stink in the cabin; it was the stench of a lake bottom mixed with rotting garbage.

  I pushed back from the dock’s edge, scraping my hands and knees on the rough wood as I scrambled away from the body in the water. I managed to find my feet and ran toward the cabin, dry heaving when I reached it.

  Despite the condition of the corpse, I knew that face. It had been burned in my mind since the first night in my new apartment.

  It was the man from my bathroom mirror.

  Chapter Eighteen

  The Astral Bean was packed that night. Word of the dead body in the lake had quickly spread through town, thanks to the mysterious but effective method of communication that all small communities employ.
Half the town had congregated in the coffee shop to swap the latest rumors and gossip. Voices reverberated off the walls, and the room was sweltering from the glut of bodies, all drinking coffee and oozing heat.

  I was exhausted from hours of being interviewed by a Driscoll County sheriff’s deputy. The process hadn’t fazed the other Soul Searchers—apparently it wasn’t the first time they had called the police during the course of an investigation—and Mark had even kept his camera rolling as much as the deputies would allow so they could use the footage in a future episode. But I felt drained. All I wanted was a nice iced chai to help me cool down and erase the image of that rotting body from my mind. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw those eyeless sockets staring up at me.

  I slipped through the middle of some older ladies who were standing near the door. They were all clutching coffee mugs and speaking in stage whispers as though they wanted to be sure somebody around would hear them and want to join the conversation.

  “Another body,” one of them clucked. “I bet it was another of those rowdy kids from Moyard, rest their souls.”

  “No, no,” said another. “I heard from my grandson—he’s a paramedic, you know—that it was a man’s body, not a teenager.”

  The chalky-white face in the lake loomed in my vision, but I focused on the menu board until the gruesome image faded. I pushed my way through the rest of the crowd until I reached the counter. Brian looked frazzled; his beard stuck out in odd directions and his tattooed arms gleamed with sweat. A young blonde girl who couldn’t be older than twelve was racing back and forth behind him, dumping out espresso filters and filling coffee mugs.

  “Iced chai to go, please,” I told him.

  “It’ll be a while,” he warned. “We’re pretty overwhelmed.”

  I hid my disappointment that I couldn’t grab my drink and flee. “That’s okay.”

  A voice behind me called my name. I glanced over my shoulder and spotted Phillip, Primrose House’s resident flirt, sitting at a tiny table in the corner. He was waving his arms and motioning for me to join him. I groaned; I wasn’t in the mood for his flowery speech and waggling eyebrows, but it was too late. He’d seen me notice him, and it would be rude to leave without saying hello. I battled my way through the crowd, feeling like I was in a mosh pit. When I finally reached his table, my legs betrayed me, and I collapsed into the empty chair across from him.