He didn't really want to be in the house by himself when it got dark. The first time he had seen the girl it had been in his office, with the sunlight shining outside. But at night it was more difficult for him to believe that it was all in his head, all his imagination.
IT WAS A WORK DAY FOR for most people, so the traffic was light, but the roads weren’t completely deserted. So much for his personal apocalypse. He drove out Old Route 12 but went directly to his destination without stopping. It would be better to start from the beginning, back where it had all begun.
The Wayside Inn was not open for lunch on weekdays. Michael parked at an odd angle in the center of the lot and climbed out of the car. There were no other vehicles there but he went up to the front door anyway. Some invisible tether inside his chest seemed to guide him, as though there was an anchor here, as though he might grab hold of one end of his lifeline and follow it out to the point where his whole world had fallen apart. Michael was an optimist by nature. And still a young man. But not so young and not so optimistic that he believed anything could be that simple. Life did not work that way. If you broke something, you had to fix it. There was no going back and undoing it.
Especially if it was a human thing. A life. A friendship. A trust.
A mind.
So there was no magic to be found here. But perhaps if he could follow that tether back out to the place where it had all gone wrong, if he could retrace the steps he had made that night, he could set his mind and heart at ease. And if he could, then maybe the lost girl, regardless of whether she was a ghost or an obsession, would stop haunting him.
The pavement scuffed under his shoes as he left the Wayside Inn and crossed the lot back to his car. A cold wind eddied down low, and an empty beer can rolled and then tumbled end over end across the tar. Michael paused to watch. The wind hesitated and then gusted several times, teasing the beer can, almost letting it go and then seizing it again, carrying it away.
He glanced once more at the Wayside Inn. In his mind's eye he could see quite clearly the festivities from that night. Jillian, so beautiful in her gown. The glass she had dropped over the banister. Teddy Polito in his Henry VIII costume. And Michael as D'Artagnan. Bowing with a flourish. The feather in that stupid hat.
Escorting Jillian to the car, hoping she wouldn't fall down.
The face of the Wayside Inn was closed, the windows secure, the doors locked, the lights off. The place wasn't dead, though. It was only sleeping.
Back in the car, he turned the key in the ignition and sat a moment while the engine purred. He imagined watching himself load Jillian into the backseat, watching himself back out of the space and then start out of the parking lot. Michael put the car in gear and gave it some gas, picturing his Saturday night self driving off ahead of him. He pulled out of the parking lot of the Wayside Inn, in pursuit of a memory that he hoped would heal him.
In his mind he tried to re-create that night. He could remember Jillian snoring lightly, unconscious on the backseat. Following the same route he had used on Saturday evening, he made his way to Old Route 12 again and started back toward home. More than ever, he could recall with perfect clarity that he had not been drunk when he left the Wayside Inn. At the masquerade, he had had several bottles of Guinness, but Jillian had been the drunk one. He had to look out for her. And he would never have gotten himself drunk when he knew that he had to drive his wife home. No way would he have risked Jillian for another bottle of Guinness.
The tires hummed along the road, now, and Michael's sleepless night was catching up with him. His eyes felt heavy. The chalk white sky had burned away a bit and there was some blue up above. Sunlight gleamed off the hood. He continued to follow his memory.
Here, he thought.
He blinked and glanced out the windows at both sides of the road. There was an antique-looking gas station coming up on the left, one of the first in the state; the owners cultivated its appearance to make it part service station and part tourist attraction. It was a bit of the local color of living in the Merrimack Valley.
Right about here he had become very drowsy, and the feeling of drunkenness had deepened. His head had felt as though it was stuffed with cotton; even now, days later, with the sun shining and the sky turning blue, he could taste the aluminum flavor in the back of his throat. The memory merged with his lack of sleep and Michael reached out to turn up the radio, tuning it to a hard rock station. Something that would thump along in time with the ache that was beginning to pulse in the back of his skull. He opened the window, letting the cold air in, and continued to pursue the echo of his Saturday night.
Old Route 12 wound lazily through the valley on a path that was fascinatingly circuitous. Nobody would approve such a road in modern times. It would be considered ridiculously inefficient. But with the hills rising up on both sides and the thick woods that banked the sides of the road in many places, it was a peaceful route to travel. Even the small strip malls were bordered by forest. There were houses set back in the trees along the road, and numerous streets branched off of Old Route 12 at varying angles, leading into neighborhoods and developments that could have been used to trace the history of housing in Massachusetts for the past half-century.
His eyelids fluttered. “Shit,” Michael whispered, and he sat up straighter. He drove past a convenience store on the left and instantly regretted it. A coffee or even a bottle of Coke would have been welcome at the moment. Anything with caffeine. He let out a long breath and pushed the fingers of his left hand through his hair.
He forced his mind back to Saturday night again, watching the road ahead. There was a signpost: ENTERING JAMESON. The road gently curved to the left, then cut dramatically back in the other direction. It straightened out for a couple of hundred yards. The tires hummed and the engine purred and he nodded to himself as his eyes focused on the turn up ahead. The road turned right again. Straight ahead there were only trees, including a massive oak whose trunk split about ten feet up into a towering wishbone.
Right here. You could have died here, he thought. Could have killed Jilly, too.
The effects of the Guinness and whatever else was in his system had gotten the better of him right here. He had closed his eyes and, for just a few moments, had fallen asleep behind the wheel of the car. Now, six days later, with the sun shining on a cold November afternoon, he slowed and took the turn with both caution and attention.
In his mind's eye, he saw what happened immediately afterward. He had regained control of the car, stopped the tires from skidding, gotten the steering wheel straightened out, and then looked up just in time to see the girl on the side of the road. He was too far over, on the soft shoulder. She was silhouetted in his headlights, big eyes and a halo of blond hair, blue jeans and that peasant blouse.
Too cold. She wasn't dressed for the cold, he thought. Where was her jacket?
But the lost girl had not seemed as though she was cold. When he had gotten her into the car, Jillian still snoozing in the back, Scooter had not seemed cold at all. Just lost. A bit numb. Distant. As the car now rolled on past the place where he had nearly killed the girl, where he had picked her up, he went over his memory of her again. Her house—or at least the place she had guided him to—was quite a walk from Old Route 12. Or it seemed that way. Michael wondered if, as the crow flies, it might have been shorter. She could have stumbled into some woods behind the house and become lost, wandered for a time. Other kids would have been out trick-or-treating, but not Scooter the lost girl. No jacket. And no sense of direction. Even if she was on the younger end of possibility—he figured her for eight, but she might have been as young as six—she still ought to know uphill from downhill.
And the house was uphill. Even as he drove, Michael glanced up the side of the valley on his right, where the trees soaked up the autumn sunlight. Uphill. His memory was vague, but that was one thing he was sure of. The place was at the top of a long, winding road, overlooking the valley.
“Shit.” Michae
l hit the brakes, glancing over his shoulder. A soccer mom in a minivan blasted her horn at him as she swerved to avoid a collision. There were no other cars behind him, and he waited while several cars passed going southwest, then pulled a U-turn.
The grinding music on the radio had given way to an ad for windshield glass replacement. Michael punched the button and the radio clicked off, plunging the car into silence save for the engine and the rapid beat of his own heart in his ears. He backtracked a short way, letting the car roll along the shoulder until he reached the spot that had drawn his attention.
A narrow side street with trees grown up on both sides. There was a pole, but no sign on top of it. It was deceiving. Anyone who did not know better would assume that it was some dead end, or some minor street that looped around to nowhere. But Michael knew better.
“Turn right here.” Scooter had recognized the street, and to his astonishment, he had remembered it, too. Hidden away.
A FedEx truck rumbled past him, shaking the car. When the street was clear, he took a left and went up that road. The sense of familiarity that swept over him was both encouraging and unsettling at the same time. There were houses set back in the woods, but he wasn't paying much attention to them. The next turn was a left. That much he recalled. Perhaps a quarter of a mile up the street, and there it was.
Michael had to stop, engine idling with his foot on the brake, and stare at that left turn. It seemed somehow impossible. His experience on Saturday night had such a dreamlike quality that to find this place while he was awake, while the sun was shining, seemed unreal.
He turned left, the road immediately curving right, turning uphill.
His memory of the rest of the journey was unclear. There was nothing for him to do but explore, and so he began. For more than an hour he drove around the back roads that branched away from that street south of Old Route 12, rising up the side of that hill. There were new developments and others that had been built as far back as the fifties. Down one street, he spotted a house still bedecked with a showcase of Halloween decorations. It sparked his memory. He had passed this way.
Similar clues let him fill in his path. Michael had the copy he had made of the map of the area, and he marked the streets with a green highlighter that had snuck out of the office in his pocket.
An A-frame house. Perhaps not the same one, but he would take that risk. How many of them could there be up here? The style was rare enough that it was worth betting the odds.
His stomach rumbled. Michael realized he was hungry. He let the car roll to a stop in front of the A-frame, and a smile played across his features. Hungry was such a normal thing. He passed several people bicycling, two women power-walking, and an overweight, bearded man smoking a cigarette while he walked his dog. But that was it. No sign of her.
The ghostly girl who had spent the night haunting the corner of his bedroom seemed less real, less tangible, after hours in the car.
Because this feels real. This makes it real. The hidden road was there. The suburban neighborhood with the garish Halloween decorations. The A-frame.
If he searched long enough, he was certain to find that long, curving street that would take him up to the circle at the top of the hill, to that dilapidated, sprawling old house with its shattered lantern and hanging shutters, with its dark-eye windows. The home of the lost girl. Where I belong, she had called it. And what an odd way to say she was home.
But it was not long before his optimism began to bleed and weaken. Michael tried every side street that appeared to lead uphill. Several wound around and did, eventually, make it near what appeared to be the apex of this particular ridge. But none of them led to that house. To her house. As he began the third hour of his search, Michael used the word “fuck” more than he had in a month. With his map out, he marked all of the streets he had traveled, and in time, he found himself at the top of Briarwood Terrace, in a circle that deadended much like the one where Scooter lived, and he was at a loss.
With a sigh he climbed out of the car, killing the engine and pocketing the keys. He pulled the map out and laid it on the hood, bending over to examine it more closely. The wind ruffled the edges of the map. He traced his highlighter over Briarwood Terrace and stared at the names of streets, at the green lines that showed his search.
East, he thought. It's got to be further east. Michael ran one finger over the paper toward the eastern edge of the map. Then he stepped back and glanced around, looking at the trees on the horizon in a full circle. Yes, to the east, the ridge seemed to rise even higher. It was hard to gauge the distance, though, because the blue sky was darkening, the shadows on the treetops growing deeper.
A shiver went through him. Michael glanced around, frowning as he peered into the trees behind the century-old Victorian behind him. Nothing moved in the woods. Most of the leaves had already fallen. Yet he felt the cold, familiar feeling of someone watching.
Nervously he gathered up the map and looked around again. The only way out was to drive back down the way he'd come, so he was nowhere near the street he was looking for. But maybe I'm getting closer, he thought.
As he climbed into the car and started it up, he noticed once again that the sky was a deeper blue than it had been. Nightfall was still a ways off, but much closer than he would have liked. Jillian was expecting him home so they could go out for dinner with Bob Ryan. Michael brought up his right hand and ran his palm over his stubbled chin. He would have to shave before he dressed for dinner.
Time to go home.
It was frustrating to abandon his search, but he did not feel the hours had been wasted. The map showed him where he had searched and where he had not. And he had let his stomach growl emptily for long enough. These were compelling reasons to go home, to come back another day. But in his gut, the real reason was obvious. The woods were casting long shadows on the road now; sometimes the night could be clever, stealing across the valley on cat feet, darkness swallowing day before anyone was prepared. It was that time of year. The night coming earlier with every passing day.
Yes, it was time to go home.
But only for now.
With an entire day gone by without any strange incidents, and with the landmarks he recognized as solid evidence that the previous weekend's events had actually taken place, he was more convinced than ever that he was suffering some obsession. A psychiatrist might be able to help, but finding the house and the girl would go a long way toward erasing that obsession, and setting him free of it.
He would find her. And that house.
Now that he had begun, Michael was not the type to give up. Once or twice as he searched a strange thought had occurred to him, that perhaps the house did not want to be found. Ridiculous, but that was what a couple of hours of sleep could do to him.
No, Michael would find that house. He would find answers.
JILLIAN WATCHED THE WORLD GO by outside the windows of the train. She loved the autumn, even after dark. The houses she could see had warm lights on inside, and she saw many with smoke rising from their chimneys. She could practically smell that wonderful scent of burning wood that made a chilly night so much more pleasant. Sometimes she and Michael liked to make hot cocoa and sit on the front steps of the house on a night like this, smelling the chimney smoke and watching the stars.
A sigh escaped her lips and she pressed them tightly together. She was worried about her Michael. Regardless of the tests the doctor had ordered for him, she was fairly certain there was more to his anxiety and hallucinations than someone slipping him a mickey in his beer. If anyone even actually called it that. A mickey? What was the origin of that phrase?
Her mind was wandering because she let it. Better that than to think about her certainty that Michael needed a shrink. No shame in it, absolutely. But a hallucination was serious business. She was hoping it was a combination of factors. Stress, overwork, and some asshole drugging him might all have combined to do it. Jillian had a dozen little speeches that she ran through her mind, te
lling herself it was really nothing. That it would be taken care of by the doctors. Michael would be all right, mind and body, in no time.
But that was a bullshit placebo for the little burning ember of terror that sparked in her heart at the idea of something truly awful happening to him. She couldn't bear even the thought of it. In all her life no one had ever really understood her, ever seemed to even want to know all of her, never mind being capable of it, except for Michael.
He's going to be fine. A couple of days of sleeping late and working at home were exactly what he needed. Dr. Ufland and Dr. Lee would take care of him, and Jillian would do her best to distract him from thinking about such things.
The truth was, as excited as she was about dinner tonight and about the prospect of running for the council, she had been tempted to cancel. It felt wrong, somehow, to be thinking of herself. But that would only feed Michael's anxiety. And a night out like this might be exactly what he needed.
The train began to slow. Jillian let her gaze focus beyond the windows again, and she could see over the backyard fence that ran behind a row of houses. It always fascinated her, seeing people's lives from that angle. There was laundry out hanging on a line, despite the temperature. One house had piles of raked leaves that had not been picked up and had started to blow around again. Another had an old car up on blocks—a rusty Thunderbird, if she recognized it correctly—and a stretch of earth that had been a garden only a couple of months earlier.
From the train she could see people's backyards, the things that they were hiding from the world behind the faces put on by the fronts of their homes. She tried to picture her own backyard and could not even remember what was back there.
With a hiss and a loud clanking, they slowly crawled into the station. It had been recently renovated; the lampposts on the train platform were elegant, reminiscent of another age. Already there were Christmas decorations hanging from the posts. Wreaths with bows, and holiday lights. The sight gave her a bit of hope in her heart, a reprieve from her worried thoughts.
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