“Wolf River Inn.”
Impulsively she had hugged him and given him a hard, meaningful kiss. “I love you a lot,” she told him, and left before he could respond.
Driving away from his condo, Lindy had had a crazy impulse to turn back and say, Come with me, but she didn’t. This was her problem, and she had to solve it by herself.
The frivolous words from the invitation echoed in her mind like a pronouncement of doom.
Be there or be square.
At last her flight was announced, and Lindy filed through the walkway with rest of the coach passengers and boarded the DC-10. She took her window seat in the smoking section and tried to make herself comfortable. Lindy had quit smoking five years before, but she still felt more comfortable among the smokers, where there would be fewer small children and self-righteous anti-tobacco crusaders.
While the jumbo jet lumbered along in the slow parade to the runway, Lindy flipped through the pocket of the seat back facing her, looking for anything to serve as a distraction. The in-flight magazine was a slick pap of happy-face articles and ads for hotels and car rentals. She shoved it back into the pocket and pulled out the card giving emergency exit locations in case of a forced landing. She had never heard of anyone living through the “forced landing” of a commercial jet. She quickly replaced the card and felt around for something more cheerful. All that remained was the barf bag.
Lindy let the pocket snap shut and dug through her bag for the paperback novel she had brought along. It was one of John D. MacDonald’s early McGees that she couldn’t remember if she’d read or not. When she found herself reading the first paragraph for the third time without comprehension, she clapped the book shut and stared out the window.
It was no use trying not to think about it. The ominous summons to Wolf River and the sinister threat behind it ate at her consciousness like acid. Might as well give up the fight and remember. Remember Wolf River, the terrible Halloween party, and the dreadful year that followed.
Wolf Lake, 1966
The party had finally died as the first streaks of dawn shone over Wolf Lake. There would be a lot of explaining done to a lot of parents, but the Halloween Ball was traditional for Wolf River seniors, and allowances were made. It was the one party of the year when they could stay out all night, as long as they didn’t do anything too scandalous.
Most of them didn’t. There were the expected hangovers and broken romances the next day, but nothing really horrendous had ever happened to anybody. Not until the fateful party of 1966. It was to be the last Halloween Ball.
Lindy had awakened upstairs in the cabin as the last of the cars was driving off. Beside her in the narrow bed Roman Dixon lay on his back, snoring softly. A trickle of saliva ran from the corner of his mouth back across his cheek to the pillow.
Lindy eased herself out of bed, feeling crusty and rank. She found the rented cat costume and pulled it on, feeling like a ridiculous cartoon in the early daylight. She pulled open the door and slipped out of the room.
Downstairs, she went outside, and, shivering in the early chill, she picked her way down to the lake to clean herself. There she peeled off the costume and stepped into the icy water. With her teeth clenched to keep them from chattering, she lowered her body into the lake. She jumped up at once, cramped with the cold, but forced herself back down. She rubbed her body vigorously, especially between her legs, sluicing away the residue of last night’s sex.
Suddenly she straightened. “Oh, Jesus!” With a cry of memory returning, she spun in the water and looked out over the lake. The rowboat still bobbed a hundred yards offshore, where the boys had anchored it. No passenger was visible.
Lindy splashed awkwardly out of the lake, stumbling in her bare feet. She gathered up the ludicrous cat costume, wrapped it around her, and ran for the cabin.
Over Milwaukee, July 1987
ALEC
The shuttle flight from Chicago began to lose altitude over Lake Michigan and to bank inland toward Milwaukee. Alec peered out the window at the tiny boats visible below, dragging the white threads of wake behind them on the blue-green water. He finished the last of his Diet Seven-Up and handed the plastic cup to the flight attendant.
They hadn’t been happy at Laymon and Koontz about his abrupt departure in the middle of a campaign. He concocted a story about the death of a dear aunt, but even he found it hard to accept. This trip could well damage his career, but there was no way Alec could refuse the summons back to Wolf River. After his session with the gypsy hag he had considered writing the whole thing off as nerves, but when his tongue started to swell on him again twice during the week when he needed to be at his most glib, he had to believe something more than his nervous system was at work here.
He had left the office without elaborating on the dead aunt story. Any damage done there would have to be repaired later.
Ugliest of all had been the horrendous vision with Georgia last night. Alec used all his mental discipline to lock away the picture of his mother with his cock in her mouth. But whenever he started to relax, the sensual memory would return, sending him into a fit of shudders. The worst, most horrifying thing about it was how god-awful good it felt. He shivered with self-revulsion as he thought about it.
Alec knew — he could not have said how — but he knew sure as death that all this had something to do with the hideous Halloween party of 1966. Over the years he had congratulated himself more than once for escaping any serious consequences of that awful night. Now he wondered if he really had escaped.
As the plane dropped toward Mitchell Field he let his mind go back there. Back to the lake. Back to the horror.
Wolf Lake, 1966
The pain had been bearable at first, but the image was not. Some powerful maniac was trying to thumb Alec’s eyeballs back into his skull. Then the pain got worse and the image of the maniac faded. Alec tasted dirt. Dirt and pine needles and vomit.
It was dawn. He was lying on the bare ground in the remains of the tacky gorilla suit. Alec was sicker than he had ever been in his life. He groaned. The sound of his own voice expanded the pain in his head. He tried to sit up. His stomach heaved, and he bent forward and retched until the back of his throat was raw, but there was nothing more to come up.
With great effort he slid his ass over until he could sit with his back propped against the trunk of a tree. He smelled himself. He smelled like puke.
“Never again,” he swore through crusted lips. “If I ever take another drink, let God kill me. In fact, let God kill me now.”
He sagged against the tree, waiting for the Almighty to accept the invitation. God ignored him.
Footsteps approached. Running footsteps. From the direction of the lake.
“Jesus, what happened to you?”
Alec squinted his eyes open and jerked with the lancing pain of the early daylight. Lindy Grant stood in front of him more or less wearing the black cat costume of the night before. At another time the sight of Lindy near-naked would have grabbed his full attention, but on this agony morning she might as well have been his grandmother wearing a muumuu.
“I’m sick,” he mumbled.
“You look it.” Lindy wrinkled her pert little nose. “And you stink, too. Come on, get up.”
“Can’t,” he managed.
“Well, you’d better. We’ve got to get Roman.”
“What for?”
“You guys left Frazier out on the lake all night and forgot about him.”
“Oh, shit.” He did not move.
“Come on, Alec. We’ve got to go out there and get him.”
She reached down, grimacing at the touch of his filthy hand, and pulled him to his feet. He tottered for a moment, then found an uncertain balance.
“Where’s Roman?”
“I left him inside,” Lindy said. “Let’s go.”
She skipped off toward the cabin, her bare ass, wet from the lake, twinkling in the early light. Alec McDowell followed miserably, unable to enjoy it.
Milwaukee, July 1987
The tires of the landing gear squeaked as the plane touched down. Alec jerked out of his disagreeable half dream and braced himself for the landing.
U.S. Highway 41 July 1987
ROMAN
The wide highway out of Milwaukee was as fast as a freeway all the way to Appleton. After that, State 45 had been expanded to a multi-lane limited-access road and routed through Clintonville to bypass Wolf River completely. You had to angle off to the northeast on a two-lane road with cracked concrete and no shoulders.
Roman Dixon kept both hands gripped on the wheel of the rented Monte Carlo as he hummed along at a comfortable seventy miles an hour. Some mindless rock band played on the Milwaukee station he had on the radio. It was indistinguishable from the same kind of station in Seattle, except for the unfamiliar merchants named in the commercials.
It didn’t matter to Roman what came over the speaker. All he wanted was noise in the car with him to deaden his worry about what he was going to find when he returned to the town where he was born. For one of the few times in his life Roman would rather have been home with his family than where he was.
He had, in fact, dismissed the idea of coming back after seeing the doctor and getting a clean bill of health. But the message on the prescription blank and a recurrent twinge in his genital area helped him decide to observe the ominous summons.
Stephanie didn’t waste much time pretending to believe his story about going to Chicago on a buying tip. Why should she? He had never before shown much interest in the commercial operations of the stores. Then there was that wild hallucination last night, where for a crazy minute Stephanie had appeared to be some fantastically desirable woman. His momentary burst of ardor had convinced her he was up to some kind of hanky-panky. Roman was pretty sure she had called Van Haaglund after that to find out if there really was a store selling its stock in Chicago.
Well, fuck her, he thought. And fuck his father-in-law, too. Let them believe he was off for some wild orgy with a gang of female bikers if they wanted to. Roman had too many other things to worry about to give a damn what they thought.
The names of the towns he passed through, or bypassed on the new highway, awoke memories. Neenah, Menasha, Hortonville, New London, Bear Creek. From what Roman could see from the highway, they hadn’t changed a lot. Sidewalks mostly empty, except for a few teenagers hanging out. There were the same drugstores and hardware stores. Same theater marquees with different titles lettered in. Same taverns with names like The Come-On Inn or Harve & Wilma’s. The same feed stores and farm machinery dealers with sunburned men out front in jeans and baseball caps. And between the towns lay the same pastureland, with quiet herds of Jerseys or Holsteins, the same clean barns with their phallic silos, the same farmhouses with pickups parked outside. The only differences along the highway were an increase in the number of fast-food places and more billboards.
The first sign he saw with the name on it — WOLF LAKE 11 MILES — took him back with a jolt to that cold, sick morning in the cabin.
Wolf Lake, 1966
Roman had awakened with a start and disoriented feeling of Where the hell am I? In a moment the smell of the raw wooden walls and the lingering odor of female and sex reminded him.
He rolled over in the bed and reached out, but she was gone. Too bad, because he had a splendid hard-on and nothing to do with it.
He lay there for a minute or two, reliving as much as he could remember of the night before. He had finally done it, by God; he had finally screwed Lindy Grant.
His only other previous experience had been the two times last summer with the willing wife of one of his fellow construction workers. He had been grateful at the time for the release of his pent-up horniness, but the woman was loose between the legs and had an unpleasant way of snorting in his ear when she came. Lindy, now that had been something else. God, a virgin. Roman wished he had drunk a little less so he could remember if it had really been as good as he thought it was.
The door creaked open. Lindy stood there, her black hair shiny and wet, holding the cat costume in front of her body. Roman thought he had never seen anything quite so beautiful.
Then an apparition loomed beside her. Gray-faced and red-eyed, Alec McDowell stood uneasily in the doorway, yellow-brown puke in a messy trail down the front of his gorilla suit. The head was missing.
Roman sat up in the bed. “What’s happening?”
“It’s Frazier,” Lindy said. “He’s still out on the lake. We’ve got to go get him.”
Alec belched, swallowed, and shuddered.
“I forgot all about the little creep,” Roman said.
“We all did,” Lindy said. “Let’s go get him. He’ll be half-frozen.”
“Serve him right,” Roman grunted. He climbed out of the bed, holding the bloodstained sheet around his middle. “Anything to eat downstairs?”
At the mention of food Alec turned away and leaned heavily against the doorjamb.
“We can worry about that later,” Lindy said. “We’ve got to get Frazier.”
“Sure thing, chicken. Just give me a chance to pull my pants on.” As he woke up more fully, Roman felt a new sense of power and possession. He had made it with Lindy Grant, and the bloody sheet proved beyond any doubt that he was the first. From here on he would hold the upper hand.
• • •
They got the outboard started and headed away from the dock toward the rowboat gently riding at anchor. No head was visible above the gunwale of the boat.
“Guy’s probably sacked out in the bottom,” Roman said from his position in the stern at the motor.
Neither of the others spoke. Lindy, up in the bow, kept her eyes on the rowboat. Alec had stopped his dry heaves but looked sicker than ever as he slouched in the middle seat.
They drew alongside the rowboat and Roman kicked the motor to idle.
“It’s empty,” Alec muttered.
“I can see that,” Roman snapped. “He must’ve swam to shore.”
“With his hands tied?” Lindy said.
“He told us he couldn’t swim,” Alec added.
“Shut up,” Roman said. “Let me figure this out.”
“What’s that?” Lindy pointed to a disturbance on the surface some ten yards off the bow of the rowboat.
Roman got the outboard in gear and they approached the floating thing. Orange and green and …
“Oh, shit!” Roman said.
Lindy covered her mouth with her hands to stop the scream that wanted to come out.
Alec was leaning over the side trying vainly to puke away his anguish.
Frazier Nunley rolled slowly in the water and looked up at them with dead, empty eyes.
CHAPTER 16
Wolf River, July 1987
LINDY
Twenty years ago the Wolf River Inn had been unquestionably the best place in town. The best hotel, the best restaurant, the best — and only — bar with live entertainment. The Grange and the VFW and the Legion all held their banquets here. Anyone who wanted a “night out” went to the inn.
The exterior was finished in a pseudo Swiss ski resort architectural style. It bothered no one in Wolf River that there wasn’t a skiable mountain within several hundred miles. The interior carried out the Alpine theme with white plaster walls and dark beamed ceilings. There was a walk-in-size fireplace in the lobby and another in the Chalet Room.
Any party that exceeded the size of the host’s home, and was deemed too classy for the Elks Lodge, was held at the inn. Such sexual fooling around as there was in Wolf River took place mostly at the inn. More than one clandestine tryst was rumored to have been consummated in the cozy rooms on the third and fourth floors, the first two being used primarily for tourists and commercial travelers.
Lindy Grant had things on her mind other than the inn’s appearance, but she couldn’t help feeling a little sad about the obvious decay. The outside, which used to get a fresh coat of paint every spring, now sh
owed the scars of hard Wisconsin winters. Inside, the lobby carpet was stained in several places. The furniture had a secondhand look, and the smell of long-dead cigars hung in the corners like cobwebs.
The desk clerk was watching a game show on a small television set behind the reservations counter. He was in his early twenties, with a complexion problem and greased-back hair. When Lindy walked in he turned down the volume of the game show and looked her over with the eye of small-town makeout artist.
“I’d like a room,” she said.
“We’ve got ’em.” He said. “Fourth floor’s the best.”
“That’s fine.”
He slid a registration card over in front of her and leaned across the counter to read upside down as she wrote. “Is that for … one?”
Lindy caught the significant pause. She looked up at him with a cold stare until his eyes shifted away. “That’s right,” she said. “One.”
She finished filling out the card and slid it back across the counter. “You do take Visa?”
“Sure. We’re totally up to date in Wolf River.”
I’ll bet you are, Lindy thought dryly. She looked around the lobby. It was empty except for an old man who sat in a sagging plush armchair by the cold fireplace reading a copy of Playboy.
“Are there any activities planned here at the inn for the class reunion?”
The clerk gave her a blank look. “What class reunion?”
“Wolf River High School. Class of ’67.”
The desk clerk shrugged. “Not that I heard of. Was there supposed to be?”
“I thought so. I guess somebody will contact me.”
The clerk shrugged again, anxious to get back to the game show. He selected a room key with a big tab of hard plastic attached.
“Four-fourteen,” he said. “Has a nice view of Main Street.”
“Can you have someone take my bag up?” she said. “I’d like to walk around town a little.”
“Hey, Jed,” the clerk called.
The old man looked up from Playboy.
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