Three Truths and a Lie

by Brent Hartinger

  Liam nodded, but at that point, I wasn’t sure I even wanted to know the truth.

  14

  When Liam and I rounded the corner back to the front of the cabin, Mia was stringing something throughout the yard.

  “What’s going on?” I asked.

  “Oh, hey,” she said. “Look what we found.” She held up a roll of fishing line. She’d already wound the line all around the area in front of the cabin: out to the water pump, over to the car, even all the way to the closest trees of the rain forest. It was all about a foot off the ground, and looked a little like a big flat spider’s web.

  “But what . . .”

  She tugged on one of the lines. Something rattled—metal pots?—in a clump of ferns near the front door. “It’s Galen’s alarm system. Anyone trips over the line, and we know he’s out here. Pretty clever, huh?”

  I looked around the yard, at how the line crisscrossed everywhere. It was fishing line, designed to be invisible to fish, but it wasn’t really invisible, not out of the water and not in the daylight. The lines were like tiny blue lasers.

  “What do you think?” Mia asked us.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I can see it all.”

  “It’ll work better in the dark.”

  • • •

  When Mia pushed open the front door, Galen said, “Stop! Wait! Go slow.”

  He was standing just inside the door, duct-taping three empty tin cans to the back of the door itself.

  “What’s this?” I asked as Liam, Mia, and I squeezed our way past him. I could smell his sweat and, annoyingly, it smelled good.

  “The cans are full of nails,” Galen said. “If anyone opens the door, they’ll rattle.” He tested the setup a few times, opening and closing the door. Sure enough, the nails rattled at least a little, no matter how carefully he tried to open the door.

  I stared at Galen, who was totally immersed in his contraption. He almost looked happy to be working on such a clear puzzle to be solved. But this was no game. It was our warning against a crazy person who was trying to scare the hell out of us, or worse. Did Galen look the way he did because that’s the way he was, or was it because the crazy person was him and he knew he didn’t have anything to worry about? I thought about all the things that had happened: the outhouse, the fire, the car, the satellite phone. Had Galen had the opportunity to slip away and do all those things unnoticed? I hadn’t been paying attention to him, so I didn’t know.

  “Whaddaya think?” Galen said.

  “I guess it’ll work,” I said.

  “So a nail walks into a bar and says to the bartender, ‘I really need to get hammered!’” Galen said.

  Clearly he was perking back up, becoming his usual mellow self, but I wondered how even he could make jokes at a time like this.

  Before anyone could respond, Liam said, “There’s no more firewood.”

  “We’ll have to burn the coffee table,” Galen said. “And the chairs and tables if it comes to that.”

  Galen had collected a bunch of stuff on the dinner table: a hammer and more nails, a wad of rubber bands, at least ten old-fashioned mousetraps, wire and string, a faded box of rat poison, aluminum foil, and even that box of blue-tipped matches from the fireplace mantle.

  “This is all the stuff we have?” I said.

  He looked over. “All the stuff that seemed like it might help us.”

  I looked back at the nails on the table, and remembered what Galen had said about how someone had punctured our gas tank with either a screwdriver or a nail. But if he’d done it, why would he have told us what he did it with?

  “I was thinking,” Galen said, “that we could put mousetraps outside under the windows, and inside on the windowsills too. They make a lot of noise when they go off. And once they’re set, they go off even if you barely touch ’em.”

  “We’re probably going to be here for at least eight more hours,” Mia said. “What we really need is a gun.”

  A gun? The word was like a hiccup in time. For some reason, just the sound of it seemed to change things. Fishing line alarms and mousetraps were one thing, but what were we going to do with a gun? Shoot someone?

  “A gun is exactly what we need,” Galen said. He looked at Mia. “Your parents don’t keep one here, do they?”

  She shook her head. “They don’t even keep sharp knives in the kitchen.”

  “They say a dull knife is actually more dangerous than a sharp one,” I said.

  “Not if you’re using it as a weapon,” Galen said matter-of-factly.

  “Wait a minute,” Mia said. “My parents don’t keep a gun in our cabin, but maybe the Brummits do.”

  We all stared at her. Time hiccupped again. Or maybe it was more than a hiccup. Somehow I knew that what Mia had just said had somehow altered the course of our weekend. For better or for worse, whatever happened from now on was going to be different than if she’d never said those words.

  Given that we were talking about a gun, it was probably for the worse.

  “Really?” Galen said. “You think they might have a gun?” Of course he was excited.

  “Well, I can’t be sure,” Mia said. “But they are hunters.”

  Unlike Mia’s parents, they keep their cabin locked up, I thought. Maybe that meant they had something worth locking.

  “Wait,” Liam said. “We’re worried about being harassed by the Brummits, so we’re going to go break into their cabin and steal their gun?”

  “Why not?” Galen said. “They’re not there. Or at least they weren’t yesterday. If they’re back there now, then we can have this out with them once and for all. And if they’re not, we can see if they have any weapons we can use. I bet it never occurred to them we’d do that.”

  “Hold on,” Liam said. “This is crazy. We can’t go all the way over there again just because they might have a gun. And we can’t break into their cabin! If they’re mad now, think how pissed they’d be then.”

  “They’re already pissed,” Mia said. “Look at all the things they’ve done. And if we do find a gun, maybe we can finally fight back.”

  “None of us even knows how to use a gun,” I said.

  “I do,” Galen said, which also figured. “Besides, it’s not just a gun we might find over there. Maybe they have a satellite phone or something else we could use.”

  “Still,” Liam said, “we’re finally getting the cabin protected. Now we’re going to leave it again?”

  Galen looked at Mia. “He’s got a point about that. Someone should probably stay here. Why don’t you and I go to the Brummits?”

  “But that’s crazy!” Liam said. “There’s someone out there! You don’t know what they’re capable of!” He was twitching again, but not out of anger. Now it was fear. I’m not sure I’d ever seen his eyes open so wide.

  But I was confused. Liam didn’t think there was someone out there, the Brummits or anyone. He thought Galen was behind the pranks.

  He’s worried about Mia, I realized. He thought Galen was going to do something to her if the two of them went off alone.

  “I think our splitting up is a really bad idea,” I said. If Liam supported me, the least I could do was support him.

  “We’ll be fine,” Galen said in his usual don’t-question-me way.

  “Mia, please!” Liam said. “I really don’t think this is a good idea.”

  “Liam,” Mia said, “you’re worrying too much. It’ll be fine.”

  “Then let’s all go!” Liam said.

  “No, no,” Galen said. “You had a really good point. We’re finally getting our alarm system set up. I don’t want those assholes coming in and disabling everything, or setting some trap for us. Mia and I’ll run over and see if there’s a gun or a phone. If there is, our problems are pretty much solved. If there’s not, we’ll come back and finish what we started here. Either way, we’ll be back in fifteen minutes, tops.”

  “But—”

  “Liam, relax,” Mia said. “Nothing’s g
oing to happen.”

  • • •

  After they left, Liam paced frantically back and forth across the cabin. Galen had suggested that we get started with the mousetraps, but the two of us didn’t have the slightest clue how to set a mousetrap. Besides, Liam was way too distracted.

  “How long has it been?” he asked.

  “About two minutes,” I said.

  “I can’t believe this! That was obviously all an excuse for him to get Mia alone.”

  “But it was Mia’s idea.”

  Liam stared at me like I was an idiot. “He wanted her to suggest it. That’s why he suggested this stupid alarm system in the first place. He’s manipulating us. Her.”

  Was this true? Was anyone really that smart?

  “I think we should follow them,” he said.

  “But Galen said to stay here,” I said.

  He gave me a look like a boxer’s punch. “Really? We should listen to the guy who’s been jerking us around all weekend? The guy I’m worried is going to hurt my best friend?”

  So this was what it came down to: did I ultimately believe Liam or not? Was Galen really the guy behind everything that had happened this weekend or was it someone else?

  At this point, I was seventy percent sure Liam was right, that Galen was behind it, so I said, “Okay, let’s go.”

  We put our socks and shoes back on. Outside, we listened for a moment, but didn’t hear anything. Mia and Galen were gone, but they’d left fresh tracks in the moss and mud. We followed them to the dirt road, then down toward the cabin at the other end of the lake. Only then did it occur to me that we should’ve brought some kind of weapon—the poker from the fireplace or a knife from the kitchen, even a dull one. But it seemed too late now so I didn’t say anything.

  As usual, the trees dripped. We quickly came to the bog again, where the road got even muddier. Galen and Mia’s footprints disappeared. They must have started walking on the grassy bulge in the middle of the road.

  Over in the lake, something splashed. Loudly.

  “What was that?” Liam whispered.

  “An animal?” I said.

  We’d been hearing birds and fish splashing in the lake all weekend, but this sounded like something else, something bigger. Maybe it was an elk or a moose. As Liam and I stared over at the water, we saw something we hadn’t seen the day before: a narrow trail that meandered toward the lake. It skirted the edges of the swamp, avoiding any actual pools.

  I knew Liam was thinking that Mia and Galen might have taken this trail, that maybe they were the ones who’d made the splash. There were no footprints here either, but the trail was mostly rotten leaves so maybe there wouldn’t be any footprints.

  “Should we check it out?” I said.

  “I guess,” he said.

  I led the way down the trail. It was only a few yards before the lake came more into sight. I couldn’t see what had made the splash—there was still too much undergrowth—but I did see faint ripples rolling out from shore.

  I pushed onward, working my way through the alders. Part of me wondered if this was even a trail at all, or just random patches of bare ground. So far things on Moon Lake had a way of never being exactly what they seemed.

  Before I knew it, I found myself in the middle of a thick patch of devil’s walkingstick.

  “Rob!” Liam whispered behind me. “I heard something!”

  I turned back toward him. He’d been lucky enough to stop outside the patch of thorns.

  “Over by the cabin!” He stared at me, eyes wide again.

  “Well, let’s go,” I said.

  But as I started back toward the main road, my sleeve caught in the thorns. The more I struggled, the more caught up I became. Water still dripped down from above, getting all over my glasses. It was hard to make out anything through the droplets on my lenses, but I did see Liam disappearing through the undergrowth.

  “Liam!” I said, but he didn’t stop.

  I finally got myself free of that one plant, but I still wasn’t out of the briar. I inched forward, carefully pushing the thorny stalks away from me so they wouldn’t catch on my clothes. But the plants were thick and interconnected, and the more I pushed, the more other branches reached out to snag me. It was weird how much easier it had been to get into this situation than it was to get out again.

  Eventually I was free, but by then Liam was long gone.

  I hurried back to the main road. Once there, I turned right, toward the Brummits’ cabin. Liam hadn’t left any footprints in the mud either.

  Someone gasped. It sounded perfectly clear, though I was still too far from the cabin to see anything. Mia had said animals could make surprisingly humanlike sounds. Is that what this was?

  I ran down the road, careful to avoid slipping into the mud.

  “Help!” Liam called. “Help!”

  My blood flash-froze. These weren’t animal sounds! For an instant, even the trees seemed to stop their dripping. Time hadn’t just slowed, it had stopped completely.

  Then I ran forward even faster than before. Now I didn’t care about the mud.

  The land rose up, and the cabin came into sight. But I didn’t see anyone around, not Liam, and not Galen or Mia. The deflated inflatable stuck in the crook of the tree caught my eye—pink and yellow, but old and covered in grime.

  Mia screamed.

  I followed the sound of her scream to the far side of the cabin, near the outhouse. Mia and Liam both stood there, frozen, staring down. Time had stopped again.

  Galen lay on the ground in front of them. He was stretched out, facedown on his stomach.

  Like he was dead.

  15

  Why did I think Galen was dead? It was something about the position of his body. It wasn’t that he’d fallen forward. It was more like he’d collapsed where he stood, and then toppled forward. Galen had the body of a natural athlete, but now his leg was bent and his arms were twisted helplessly at his sides, like he hadn’t even tried to catch himself.

  Galen can’t be dead, I thought. Can he?

  I ran toward them. Halfway there I saw the wound on Galen’s head. It was on the left side in back, about the size of a quarter, dark, almost black. His hair was matted like it was wet, but with blood, not water.

  Liam crouched down next to the gawky heap of Galen’s body, examining it, hands out, but not daring to touch it.

  “What happened?” I said. I could barely get the words out.

  “I don’t know, I don’t know!” Mia said, panicking. “Do something!”

  I squatted down next to Liam, but I couldn’t bring myself to touch the body either. This was beyond any first aid I’d ever been taught. Even so, I forced myself to roll him over.

  He was so limp. It wasn’t like the bodies of dead people on television, clearly just actors pretending. I’d never seen anything like this before.

  His eyes were open, but they weren’t looking anywhere. They might as well have been marbles. His mouth was open too, but there was something wrong with his tongue. It already looked swollen.

  “Is he okay?” Mia said. “Is he going to be okay?”

  I didn’t know how to answer. I also didn’t know what to do. Should we bandage his head, to try to stop the bleeding? Liam was already stripping off his sweatshirt and pressing it against the wound in the back of Galen’s head.

  I knew how to do mouth-to-mouth. Should I do it? Galen wasn’t breathing, that much was obvious.

  I pushed his tongue down, deeper into his mouth. His tongue felt weird, stiff, but it was definitely still warm. So I tipped his head, plugged his nose, and started blowing into him.

  Galen’s body didn’t just look limp, it felt limp. The skin itself, his lips against mine, everything sagged. He was like a balloon I couldn’t fill up. He didn’t feel anything like the dummy I’d learned mouth-to-mouth on, except that neither one felt like it was alive.

  I stopped blowing and felt his neck for a pulse. When he’d been on his stomach, the blood fr
om his head wound had dripped down around the front of his neck, so I could feel it, sticky and already cold. I didn’t feel anything beating under all that blood.

  “Is he okay?” Mia said. “Is he going to be okay?”

  I didn’t answer. Instead, I started doing CPR. Galen was wearing a jacket, which I opened, and a T-shirt, which I yanked up. I measured and positioned the heels of my palms, like they’d taught us in first aid. His chest looked so different than when we’d gone skinny-dipping. His skin was still gold, but now the luster was gone.

  I started pushing. “One and two and three and four,” I counted out loud.

  Immediately call for help. This was something else I remembered from first aid. The most important part of CPR was to immediately have someone call nine-one-one or go for help. That was the whole point of first aid—to try to keep the person alive until real medical help arrived.

  But there was no way to call nine-one-one from here. There was no way to call anyone for help. Even by car, we were over an hour from the nearest road, and our car was out of gas.

  How long should I keep doing CPR? In first aid, they said to keep doing it until help arrives, as long as it takes. Because if they’re still not breathing, if their heart isn’t pumping, and you stop, then the person really will die.

  Except that Galen was already dead. I wasn’t qualified to say that, but I still knew it to be true. I could tell just by touch. This thing that had happened here was no mere prank.

  I stopped and sat back on my heels.

  “What are you doing?” Mia said. “Don’t stop! Don’t fucking stop!”

  I looked up at her, but I didn’t say anything. There was nothing I could say.

  “No,” she said. Dry heaves rose up from her gut. “No!”

  Liam stood and put his arms around her, comforting her. She let herself be comforted, which surprised me a little. The water in the trees dripped down from above. In books, they always say stuff like this feels like some kind of baptism, but the truth was it felt more like we were being pissed on.

  “What happened here?” I said. Had Mia killed Galen? Liam had been worried that Galen might do something bad to Mia. Had he been right, but she’d fought him off and killed him in the process?