by Sean Rodman
“Dylan, you think you got this all figured out?” Josh snaps, cutting me off. “You don’t get it. I’m used to it, all right? My dad pulled shit like this on me all the time.” He yanks up one sleeve of his jacket, showing me his arm. There are little white dots—scars. “Cigarette burns. I get Edward, okay? You fight back, it gets worse. So you just…deal with it and move on.”
I just stare at his arm.
“You get it now? It’s nothing new. Nothing I can’t handle. So just shut up and toss me another beer,” says Josh. I reach down beside me, and my fingers close on the cool metal skin of the can. Then I freeze.
Someone is watching us.
At first, I think it’s a weird shadow being thrown from the northern lights, or the fire. But it’s not. I slowly stand up, my eyes fixed on the figure standing in the shadows just on the edge of the clearing.
“Who’s that?” I ask quietly.
“What? Who?” Josh stands up too and tries to follow my gaze. “I don’t see anything.”
But I can see him clearly. My height. Red jacket like mine.
“Is it Edward or Harvey?” says Josh. “It’s got to be one of them. We’re the only ones up here.”
That’s it. Edward. Of course. He probably followed us to the Point, looking to bust us. Creepy psycho. I stand up.
“Hey!” I shout. Maybe it’s the solid buzz I have from the beer, or maybe I’m still reacting to what Josh just told me, but suddenly I’m mad as hell. “Yo, Edward. Get over here!” I start walking away from the circle of firelight and toward the woods. The dark shadow stands there. Staring. Probably laughing at me. “Yeah, you! I’m talking to you!” My voice sounds crazy loud against the stillness of the forest night. I whip my half-empty beer can at him. The guy doesn’t move a muscle. I start running toward him.
And then I’m standing right where he was. And he’s gone.
Josh catches up to me. His breath makes clouds in the cold night air.
“How’d he do that?” I say. I fumble my headlamp from my pocket and click it on. The leaves and dirt are covered in a thin layer of frost. No tracks. No sign that anyone was there.
“You sure you saw someone?” asks Josh.
“I don’t know,” I say. “I don’t know what I saw.”
Chapter Eight
Maybe I should be grateful. It’s a new nightmare this time.
Not the old one with Sammy stumbling toward me in the dark. This time, I’m the one who is underwater. My feet are stuck down in the cold mud and weeds. I’m staring up, watching oily sunlight play across the surface. My chest is empty, and I know I’m going to drown soon. But I’m not panicked. Instead, a kind of weird calm settles over me. Then I hear a hollow knocking sound echo through the water. I look around, trying to find the source of it. Nothing but murky blackness. The banging gets louder. I see someone, just on the edge of my vision. Someone like me, down here on the bottom. In a red jacket. Sammy? No. Maybe—Josh? Again, I don’t think so. I suddenly gasp, lungs filling with cold water. The figure in the red jacket holds out his arms, trying to give me something. It’s small, brown. A book, maybe? The knocking sound gets louder, coming from all around me.
I can’t see. I can’t breathe.
Noise slams me awake. Someone is banging and yelling on the door of the Swamp. I throw off my blankets and yank on some jeans. Josh is fumbling to put his glasses on, still tangled in his sheets. When I open the door, I see Harvey and Edward standing there. Both of them look pissed.
“Get your clothes on,” growls Harvey. “Follow me.” I don’t think I’ve ever seen Harvey look angry like this before. Edward just looks smug. Josh and I pull ourselves together and head outside. We walk behind Harvey, his footsteps visible in the thin frost on the ground. The sun isn’t up over the trees yet—how early is it?
We stop in front of one of the staff cabins, number seven. It’s already sealed up for the winter with big plywood sheets over the windows. Harvey leads us inside and turns on the light. The place has been trashed. Beds are tipped over, sheets ripped up. In one spot, there are big gouges as if someone has jammed a knife into the wall again and again.
“What happened?” I ask Harvey. But Edward answers.
“Don’t pretend to be innocent,” he says. “We know about your party last night.”
“What?” I look at Josh. He’s as confused as I am. “What are you talking about?”
Edward steps forward and holds up a crumpled beer can. From last night. The one I threw at the figure in the shadows.
“You were watching us,” I say flatly.
“Watching you? No, I found this can, and another, out at the Point on my morning walk. It’s my habit to keep an eye on the Point. Such reckless behavior can happen out there.”
“So we had a couple of beers,” says Josh. “We had nothing to do with… this.” He gestures at the wreckage. Edward’s face twists into a grimace.
“Don’t you dare lie to me!” he barks. He steps toward Josh, and for a second I think he’s going to slap him or something. But Harvey quickly puts himself in between the two.
“Edward,” he says. “Give us a second, all right? I’ll take care of this from here on in.” Edward stares at Harvey, breathing hard. Then he spins around and slams out the screen door. Harvey watches him leave, then turns to us.
“Look,” says Harvey, “I know something went on between Edward and you guys yesterday. The guy’s got a mean streak. Right now, it’s worse than usual. I get that. But is this your idea of revenge or something?” He looks from Josh to me, his brow furrowed. “You guys are better than that.”
“We didn’t—” I begin.
“I don’t want hear it. Just get to work. Fix this.”
Two hours later, we’re just finishing cleaning up the cabin. And still trying to figure out how this happened.
“Maybe it was another raccoon?” suggests Josh as he sweeps up some shards of glass near the back of the cabin.
“I don’t know. There’s no food or anything in here. Windows are still sealed up. The door wasn’t broken.” I examine the big marks on the wall. They’re only in one area, deep scratches where a wooden plank of the wall meets the linoleum floor. “And this doesn’t look like claws.”
“But that doesn’t make sense. It’s not you. Not me. Not Harvey,” says Josh. He stuffs more ripped-up sheets into a big green garbage bag.
“Edward?” I say. I feel the gouges in the wood. What the hell made these marks? The plank is popped out a little from the rest of the wall, almost like it’s been pulled loose. Harvey will make us replace that. More work.
“No,” says Josh. “He’s mean, but he’s not crazy.”
Chapter Nine
For the rest of the day, Harvey works Josh and I pretty hard. He’s not his usual self—he keeps checking up on us. Grumbling that we aren’t moving fast enough. I want to try and explain to him that we didn’t cause the damage. Or talk to him about Edward. But I know it will just sound like excuses. And Harvey isn’t big on excuses. So instead I just put my back into the work.
By the time we finish, we’re so wiped that we barely make it through dinner. An hour after that, Josh is snoring away in his bed. I lie there for a long while, staring at the ceiling in the dark. If Tom were here, I’d steal a couple beers from his stash and get to sleep that way. Eventually I give up trying and prop myself up on my bed. I pull out my cell phone, and its green glow dimly illuminates the cabin. There’s no reception up here in the middle of the park. But I can still play games on it. Use Tetris to keep the nightmares away. I think I have the sound turned off until the phone bleeps. Josh snorts, then rolls over to squint at me.
“What time is it, Dylan?” he says, fumbling for his glasses.
“I don’t know. Maybe two?” I answer. “Sorry.”
Josh sits up and pulls his hair back into a ponytail. He doesn’t look pissed off, just confused.
“What are you doing?”
“I dunno.” I shut off the phone. “Can�
�t sleep.”
“After the day we just had? Seriously?” Josh leans over and hits the light switch on the wall. The bare bulb above us flickers as it comes on.
“I have trouble sleeping sometimes. I get these nightmares. So it’s just easier not to close my eyes, you know?” I try to laugh, make a joke of it. But Josh looks concerned. He looks like he’s about to ask some questions. Questions I don’t really want to answer. Then the light suddenly flicks off. The room goes pitch-black.
“What the hell?” I say.
“Shh—hear that?” Josh says.
I listen. A little wind outside, but otherwise completely silent.
“I don’t hear anything.”
“Exactly—the generator stopped.” He’s right. The deep thump of the generator has been a constant background noise at the resort all summer. Josh fumbles for his flashlight, then flicks it on. “Harvey might need some help restarting it. We should go.”
By the time I’m at the door, Josh is still fumbling around with his clothes. “I’ll go ahead,” I say. He nods as he digs for socks under his bed, not looking at me. I hurry down the path toward the generator shack, the collar of my jacket up against the cold. A few snow-flakes drift across my flashlight beam. Soon I come around a corner and see the shack. There’s a blue light moving around inside it.
“Harvey?” I call out as I near the shack.
“Dylan?” Harvey opens the door, accidentally blinding me with his flashlight. “Sorry about that.” He points the flashlight down to the ground, and now I see his worried expression. “What are you doing out here?”
“I came to see if you needed help. Josh is on his way too.” Harvey’s eyebrows lift in surprise.
“Thanks. I appreciate that. But I don’t think there’s much any of us can do.” He walks back into the shack, and I follow. My nose wrinkles against the acrid smell of scorched rubber. “A belt burned out. Snapped. I don’t have any spares, so I’ll have to drive into town in the morning.” We leave the shack, Harvey locking it behind us.
“Get some extra blankets. It’ll be a cold night,” Harvey says. Then he crunches away up the path toward his cabin. I start to head off as well, my flashlight spilling a small pool of light on the ground in front of me. In the pale frost on the ground, I can follow my footprints back toward the Swamp. Wait. I stop and turn around, scanning the area.
Weird. There are my footprints. Then there are Harvey’s, coming from the other direction.
And then, maybe, there’s a third set. Fainter, more filled in with frost and snow. Another set of footprints leading to the shack. Me. Harvey. And who else? I crouch, trying to see where they come from. The snow is coming down faster now. Erasing everything.
“Dylan?” A beam of light spears into the darkness. It’s Josh. I stand quickly and look down. There’s no trace of anything, just a thin layer of snow.
“It’s all over,” I say. “We can go back to bed.” On the way back to the Swamp, I keep my eyes on the ground. But I don’t say anything to Josh.
Chapter Ten
Hours later, it’s still dark outside. Josh and I are eating bowls of cold breakfast cereal in the Swamp when Harvey comes in. He’s got a backpack slung over one shoulder and a gray wool hat tugged down over his wiry brown hair.
“I’m heading into town to get a new belt for the generator. I should be back before dinner. You guys work on the woodpile today. Get all the guest cabins stocked up, all right? Any problems, talk to Edward.” We nod. He looks like he’s going to say something else, but he just shakes his head and leaves. A minute later we hear a distant spray of gravel as the pickup roars up the road.
It’s way colder today than yesterday. But pretty soon Josh and I end up taking off our jackets because we’re sweating so much—this is hard work. Out at the woodpile, we fill two wheelbarrows with logs for the cabin fireplaces and guide them down the winding paths, trying not to tip over. Then we unload the logs in the cabins, stacking them neatly beside the stone fireplaces so that they’re ready for next spring when the guests return.
It’s about midmorning when I see the ravens. The big black birds are always around the place—it’s called Raven’s Lake for a reason. I normally don’t pay any attention to them. But this is different. I drop the handles of my empty wheelbarrow and stare. I can see a big maple through the trees, a couple hundred feet away from the woodpile. It’s a big old tree. Every branch is crowded with ravens, like black leaves on the bare, twisting branches. A swarm of them. And they aren’t acting normal. They’re standing still. All pointed in one direction.
Watching me.
I leave the path and crunch over the leaves toward the maple. I expect the ravens to startle and fly away. But they don’t. Not until I’m right beside a group of ravens on the ground at the base of the tree. They hop back, cawing angrily at me, revealing what they have been pecking at. I catch a glimpse, then turn away, stomach heaving. I steady myself, then look back.
The mess of guts, blood and bone is barely recognizable as a raccoon. A big one. It’s been sliced up, almost turned inside out. Despite what the ravens have done to the body, I can tell that this wasn’t really the work of wild animals. I’ve seen that before up here. This raccoon had clean cuts and incisions, reminding me of the dissections I had to do in high school. Puke rises again in the back my throat as I have a sudden thought—what if this is the raccoon we caught yesterday?
What if this is how Edward “took care” of it? I think of the bundle of knives on his bookshelf.
A sudden gust of wind shatters the flock of ravens above me. They take to the air, wheeling and turning. I stumble back to the path. I can see a hazy curtain of snow above the treetops, coming toward me. The wind keeps rising, and in a moment I’m surrounded by white. A snowstorm? This shouldn’t happen for another month or so. The trees around me creak as the wind picks up speed.
“Josh?” I yell into my walkie-talkie. “Where are you?” I hear a crash way off in the woods. A tree coming down. I look up around me, searching for old branches that might fall. We need to get under cover.
“Josh?” I call again, but there’s only the crackle of static in response. I leave the wheelbarrow behind. My head bent down against the wind, I cut across the grounds toward the main building. I stop when I hear something from the walkie-talkie. I press it against my ear. Static, then some words. Pineview, maybe? I turn and look toward the Pineview cabin, peering through the snow at it. Did Josh say he was in Pineview? I start toward the cabin, but a massive gust of wind forces me to look away and crouch. I hear a ripping sound. Louder than the wind. I look over just in time to see a tree topple. The roots tearing loose from the ground. The branches rushing through the air, gathering speed. Coming down and crushing the top of the Pineview cabin.
Chapter Eleven
I run toward the cabin. The huge fallen pine is cradled on the broken roof. Some of the branches have punched like spears through the windows. I peer through the snow for some sign of Josh. Then I see him running toward me from behind the cabin.
“Are you okay?” I shout over the wind. He leans toward me so I can hear him.
“Fine. I was out on the main path the whole time. I thought you were in Pineview when I saw the tree start to go. That’s why I called you.” Another huge burst of wind makes us both wince. “Let’s get out of here!” We stumble through the snow toward the main hall.
When we get there, it takes some work to open the big door against the wind. Once it’s closed, we both just rest for a second. Wet snow drips from our clothes onto the red carpet.
“I’ve never seen a storm like this,” says Josh.
“You have not spent much time here,” says a voice from behind us. I flinch. It’s Edward, leaning against the frame of the door to his office, arms crossed. “It happens every few years. This is why you are working so hard to protect these buildings. The weather up here is destructive.”
“Yeah, well, we just watched a tree come down on the Pineview cabin,” I sa
y. “It’s still standing, but there’s a lot of damage.”
“I see,” says Edward, straightening up. “Harvey will have to look at it when he returns. Come into my office.”
We follow him inside. Edward turns to sit on the edge of his desk. Shadows flicker on the walls from the candles he has set around the room.
“I can see that you are both unnerved. The storm, the power failure—these are setbacks, to be sure.” He looks so calm, so composed. Has he been hiding out here in his office the whole time? Doesn’t he know what it’s like out there? I look around his office. Maybe he does—the long winter jacket on the back of his door is wet, so he must have been out there recently. And there’s something else. Something else in his office has changed.
“I don’t think we should be out there,” I say. Right away, I know I’ve said the wrong thing. It’s like bait. Edward’s eyes narrow.
“No, Dylan, ‘out there’ is exactly where you need to be,” he says. He moves behind his desk, turning away and examining a candle on his bookshelf. “The weather is no excuse for being lazy. If anything, this storm gives you a reason to work more quickly.” He carefully pulls some wax from the candle, not looking at us. “So back to work. I’ll send Harvey out to look at the cabin when he returns.”
I realize that I’m staring at an empty spot on his bookshelf. That’s what’s different.
The old knife roll. His black-cloth bundle of chef’s knives. It was on the bookshelf last time I was here. It’s gone.
It’s as if there’s a pressure wave building up in my head, and I can’t hold it in anymore. I barely slept last night. All the weird stuff has been slowly cranking up the pressure in my head. And now it’s going to burst out. I know I shouldn’t say anything. That it will just make Edward mad. But the words tumble out of me.
“Edward, I want to leave. Like, right now,” I say, my voice tight and angry. I walk around the desk until I’m standing right in front of him. I realize I’m shaking as I stare into his surprised face. I keep talking, faster and louder. “I think we all need to get out of here. There’s no power, trees might come down on the road—or on the cabins. We could seriously get hurt. Or worse, like that kid who went missing a couple years ago. Right?” Edward looks deadly serious. But I stammer on. “Maybe we should just head into town and meet up with Harvey. Just take the other pickup and drive out. We need to get out.”
