by Greg Herren
I heard the printer start up again and looked up to see Carson stand up and stretch. He walked over and picked up the pages I’d discarded, plopped down, and started reading. When he finished, he grinned at me. “The girls are going to freak the hell out when they read these.” He held his out to me. “You want to read mine?”
I shook my head. “Logan’s was so similar to mine…you can just tell me about yours.”
His grin got bigger. “My experience was very similar to you two’s. That growing sense of unease that turned into terror—the sounds in the woods, the darkness…and we independently corroborated each other, which makes it more scientific. I have a theory…”
Of course he had a theory. He always had a theory.
“So, what do you think?” I asked, slipping my phone back into the pocket of my cargo shorts.
“The good news is I think we can conclusively say you aren’t going crazy.” His grin got so wide it looked like his head might flip over backward. “We can definitely rule out collective hallucinations, too. That is not what just happened to us out in the woods.” He shuffled the papers a bit, scowling down at them. “I wonder how much longer the girls will be?” He glanced at the clock on the wall. “I hope they didn’t decide to have lunch in town.” He frowned and fidgeted a bit. “I have a theory, but I want to see what the girls found—to kind of confirm what I’m thinking. And that way I only have to explain it once.”
“Great,” I replied, trying to keep my growing irritation out of my voice. Carson was Carson, and nothing was going to change that—ever. He’d always been that way, even when he was a little kid—he couldn’t be rushed, no way. He wouldn’t say or do anything until he was good and ready. It was kind of annoying, to be honest, but I guess I couldn’t blame him for not wanting to have to explain it twice.
And, besides, I was curious as to what the girls might have found at the library.
I got up and walked over to the window. The adults were getting out of the lake with the kayaks. I didn’t know what they had planned for the rest of the day—there’d been talk over breakfast about a trip to a garnet mine on the other side of the mountain—but I was planning on begging off from whatever it was.
The last thing I wanted to do was go exploring a mine.
I’d just sat back down on the couch when Teresa and Rachel burst into the game room, their faces lit up with excitement and something else I couldn’t quite put my finger on. “Where’s Logan?” Teresa demanded, tossing her enormous shoulder bag onto the coffee table before collapsing onto the couch. “You wouldn’t believe what we found at the library!” She looked from me to Carson and back again. “You two look odd, what’s happened? Did we miss something? Did something happen in the woods?”
Rachel rolled her eyes and barked out a sour laugh. “Of course something happened in the woods, Teresa. Why else would Carson look like he’s going to explode and Scotty like he’s had the worst morning ever?” She folded her arms and gave me a smug look. “But wait till we tell you what we found out.” She bridled a little bit, looking very self-satisfied.
“So, what did you guys find out?” I asked, looking from one to the other and back again. “Something that’s got you all excited, I see.”
“You’re not going to believe it when we tell you,” Rachel replied slyly. “If I hadn’t seen it for myself, I wouldn’t have believed it.” She gave me a real smile this time. “But what we found out—we think we’ve solved the entire mystery of Lake Thirteen.“
“In that case, I’m going to go see if I can find Logan,” I said, standing up, smiling back at her. “So we can compare notes. The sooner this is over, the better.”
I checked my phone one last time and walked out of the game room into the big open space of the lodge’s main room. I could hear the laughter of the adults as they came up the lawn with the kayaks, and I hurried out the front door—I didn’t want to run into them yet.
I stood in the parking lot and looked around. I didn’t see him anywhere. I was about to turn around and walk into the kitchen, see if maybe Annie was there or her parents knew where they’d gone…
But somehow, I just knew where they were.
On the other side of the parking lot there was an enormous shed where all the sports equipment was kept. The shed door was open, and I could see the mountain bikes chained up inside.
I walked over to it and around to the back side.
Sure enough, Logan and Annie were standing next to the shed where the equipment was kept, and as I came around the corner of the building they kissed—
—and everything changed.
The shed was still there, but it was different—it was rough-hewn wood, unsanded and unpainted. It was also a lot smaller than it had been, but I knew I was seeing into a different time yet again. I heard a horse whinny inside—of course, back then it would have been used as a stable. A boy and a girl pressed up against the back side of the stable, but it wasn’t Logan and Annie I could see kissing there. I recognized the young man. The girl was wearing a long dress, her hair tied back with a ribbon, and I felt a surge of anger, pure jealousy. She pushed herself away from him and giggled before running away around the other side. I had no idea who she was, but I knew full well who the young man was.
It was Albert, and he was looking at me, his eyes sad.
“You weren’t supposed to see that,” he said, stepping toward me.
That was when I realized he could see me. I wasn’t just observing, like I had all the times before—this time, I was a part of it.
And then it was gone like it had never happened.
I leaned back against the shed, making a loud noise. I wasn’t paying any attention to Logan and Annie, my mind was caught up in what I’d just seen.
I wasn’t Albert. I wasn’t seeing through Albert’s eyes.
Then whose?
I’d kind of known all along—I was getting flashes of memory, whatever the spirit could send to me, as it tried to tell me what had happened in 1907.
Annie pushed Logan away and ran off around the side of the lodge, leaving him standing there staring after her with a stunned look on his face. “Nice going,” he snarled at me. “Haven’t you ever heard of being discreet?”
I shook my head and took a few deep breaths. “The girls are back,” I said after a few moments. His face was flushed, and he was angry. I couldn’t make myself care. It didn’t matter. “Sorry,” I said, “but we need to get back to the game room. You can make out with Annie later.”
“Yeah, I heard them drive up,” he said, still staring off in the direction Annie had run. He gave me a weird look and finally said, “Come on, then. Let’s get this over with.” But as he started to walk away, he stopped and turned back, peering at me. “Something just happened, didn’t it?”
I nodded.
“You want to talk about it? Did you see something?”
“I—I don’t think it’s Albert—”
The adults came around the side of the building with the kayaks, drenched in sweat and looking really happy. “Hey guys,” my dad called. “Once we get cleaned up, we’re going to head into town for lunch, don’t forget, and then we’re going up to the mine to explore.”
I gave them a thumbs-up and followed Logan around the shed to the parking lot. He was looking at me strangely as we walked back through the lodge to the game room. Teresa and Rachel were reading the printouts, frowns on both of their faces. Teresa put the pages back down on the table as we walked in. “Are you serious?” She looked at each of us in turn, with a gulp and a slight shudder. “This really happened out in the woods this morning?”
I didn’t say anything, just plopped down into an easy chair. Logan nodded as he plopped down on the couch next to her. “Any doubts I may have had before, I don’t have anymore.” He ran his hand through his hair. “It was pretty fucking freaky, to be honest. I don’t think I’ve ever been so scared in my life.”
“Are you okay?” Rachel asked me with a slight shiver. “But
I’m not sorry I wasn’t with you guys.” She shivered again, hugging herself. “I suppose all three of you could just be fucking with us, but”—she grinned—“you aren’t smart enough to come up with something this elaborate.”
“I’m not sure whether to be flattered or insulted,” Logan replied, crossing his eyes as he scratched his head.
“Flattered, of course,” Rachel batted her eyes at him with a ridiculous smile on her face. “I would never say anything insulting to you.”
He rolled his eyes. “So what did you girls find out in town?”
“So glad you asked—you guys aren’t going to believe this.” Teresa opened her shoulder bag and pulled out a sheaf of papers. “Like Miss Tyler said yesterday, poor Albert’s murder was one of the biggest things to happen in North Hollow—at least up to that point.” She made a face. “Anyone who thinks the tabloids are bad today—they got nothing on the way real newspapers were back then. The North Hollow Times pretty much tried and convicted Robert Shelby the minute they found Albert’s body.” She glanced over at Rachel, who gave her a slight nod. She passed us each a photocopy without a word.
When I looked down at it, my blood ran cold.
It was a photograph, grainy and that same sepia tone as the ones at the historical society. It looked like—
Me.
And the caption underneath read “Pervert Robert Shelby: Wanted for the Murder of Albert Tyler.”
I swallowed. “Pervert?”
“The paper wouldn’t say exactly what they meant by that, but apparently Shelby had been run out of Boston for ‘perversions’—sometimes they called it ‘crimes against nature’—they found that out after the murder, of course.” Teresa swallowed. “The resemblance is uncanny, isn’t it? And I think we can be pretty sure what they meant by perversions and crimes against nature, can’t we?”
My head was spinning. I couldn’t take my eyes off the sepia-toned image.
Like the one of Albert, it looked enough like me for the two of us to be twins. Yes, the hair was different, and there was a scar on his cheek, but the resemblance…if Albert and Robert stood next to each other, and I with Marc…
“So Albert looked like your boyfriend, and Robert looked like you,” Carson said in the silence. “I guess that kind of explains why Albert’s ghost felt compelled to try to communicate with you.”
“I’m not sure it’s Albert, after all,” I said slowly, unable to take my eyes away from the picture. “We’ve thought so, from the very beginning, because this all started at Albert’s grave, and we hear the voice calling Bertie. But what if it’s Robert’s ghost?”
No one said anything, and when I looked up, they were all staring at me.
“I see Albert,” I went on, my voice quiet and low. “If I was getting flashes of memory from Albert, I wouldn’t see him, would I? I have no proof, of course, other than this”—I tapped the picture with my index finger—“but come on. Robert looks like me, Albert looks like Marc. Marc and I—we’re a couple. According to this, Robert was gay—and the feelings I have—whenever I see Albert I feel the same way I do when I see Marc. I think Robert was in love with Albert—”
“And he killed him?” Teresa’s voice was hushed. “Oh my God, that’s so horrible.”
“You guys said the time I passed out I kept saying not dead, not dead, not dead,” I went on, not willing to stop to think any more about it. I wanted to say it, get it out there. If I was wrong, so be it, but I knew, somehow I knew deep inside I wasn’t. “Maybe it was an accident. Maybe Robert killed him and it was an accident.”
“Not dead,” Carson said, stroking his chin. “Something someone might say if they killed someone by accident—you’re not dead, not dead, you can’t be dead, no you can’t be dead—yeah, that makes sort of sense.”
“And maybe Albert is calling him,” I finished. “Sure, the most common nickname for Robert is Rob or Bob or Bobby—but it could also be Bertie. Ro-bert.”
“Wow.” Rachel got up. “I don’t even know what to say to that, Scotty. It makes sense…but…” She walked over to the computer and sat down. She started typing, her fingers flying over the keyboard. “Teresa and I also came up with a theory. You know, it’s possible we might be completely off-base about all of this, and have been from the very start,” she said, biting her lower lip. “Did it ever occur to you that this might be past-life experiences instead of ghosts?”
Everyone turned to stare at her.
She turned sideways in the chair so she could face us all. “Outside of that first night in the cemetery, what has happened that could be explained as a haunting? I mean, really. Doesn’t it make more sense that Scotty is having flashes of a past life, lived up here?” She smiled triumphantly at us. “And even the cemetery—couldn’t what Scotty experienced in there be explained away as a natural occurrence when the wall in his mind between this life and the past life was breached?”
For once, Carson was at a loss for words. His mouth opened and closed a few times, but no sound came out.
Rachel’s smile was rather self-satisfied. “You’re not the only one in this family with a brain.” She turned back to the computer and clicked a few keys. The printer hummed and started spitting out pages.
I kept staring at the picture in my hands. It might have been a picture of me taken at one of those photo studios they always have in amusement parks, where you can dress in period costumes and they take your picture, processing it so it looks like it was taken in that time. It was possible, I supposed, that it was all taking place in my head.
It was Logan who finally broke the silence by saying, “That doesn’t explain what happened to us in the woods this morning.”
Carson blew out his breath. “Yes, that is very true.” He looked and sounded relieved that Rachel was wrong.
“Collective hallucinations?” Rachel asked, frowning. She let out a sigh.
“No, I don’t think so,” Logan said with a shudder. “If that was a hallucination—no way, man. No offense, girls, it’s a great theory, and I’d be more likely to believe that than the ghost story—if I hadn’t experienced it myself. And Scotty’s mom heard the voice, didn’t she? There’s no way that was a collective hallucination.” He frowned.
They kept talking, but I tuned them out. It wasn’t an intellectual exercise for me anymore. I knew. They’d been in love, I thought as I stared at the picture that could have been a sepia mirror. In love, and a terrible tragedy had happened.
That was the sadness I kept feeling.
But still—even my own theory had an enormous hole in it.
Robert Shelby had run away. He hadn’t died here, the way Albert had. So there was no reason for him to be haunting the mountainside.
But how was I seeing Albert? How was that possible?
I reached for the prints of microfiche the girls had made of the newspapers at the library. I looked over the pages, my heart aching with each horrible article I read about the search for Robert Shelby. It was all the same thing, really—sensationalist reporting of the shocking murder of poor young Albert Tyler. Clearly, the angle the editor of the paper had decided to go for was that Albert was practically a saint in his absolute perfection. Everyone who knew him loved him and was certain he was destined for a great future, his loss was a loss to not just his friends and family but the world and society, blah, blah, blah. I’m sure the Tylers had been thrilled to read such laudatory articles about their youngest son, but I found it hard to believe that anyone was so perfect. I certainly wasn’t, and neither was anyone I knew.
And there was nothing too vile for the reporters to say about Robert Shelby, who was unable to defend himself. They never mentioned what the perversions or what the crimes against nature were that got him run out of Boston—and even mentioned several times that they couldn’t “because it was a family paper”—but they made it very clear that the Bostonians should have killed him rather than settling for chasing him away, leaving him alive to spread his sick perversions to another commun
ity. An editorial even said, “If only the good people of Boston had done their proper duty by their fellow citizens, young Albert’s light would not have been extinguished so young.”
It was pretty clear to me the girls had been right about what exactly the perversion was—he was gay in a time when homosexuality was a mental disorder as well as a crime. He had been lucky to get out of Boston alive—there was a quote from someone high up in the Boston police department: I felt as though we should have taken more action against Mr. Shelby besides ordering him to leave town, as he was clearly unrepentant, almost defiant, about his crimes here in Boston. I was certain he was going to infect another community somewhere, but it wasn’t my decision to make, and he left Boston in the middle of the night to escape any further judgment against him, and I reckoned it was up to God to punish him. My heart breaks for that poor family.
And I knew the next gay man in Boston who had run afoul of the police didn’t escape with his life—not after this happened.
I felt sick to my stomach.
Thank God times have changed—things still need to get better but at least this kind of thing doesn’t happen anymore.
“Robert didn’t kill Albert,” I said. “I just know it.”
“That could explain why both of them are still here, on this plane, unable to cross over to the other side,” Carson replied. “Albert needs for the truth to come out, and Robert needs to have his name cleared.” He frowned. “But Robert got away, didn’t he? If they’d have lynched him, they would have been really proud of killing a monster—they wouldn’t have hidden it, would they?”
“Maybe what we felt in the woods today—maybe that was the real killer,” Logan suggested. He sat on the overstuffed arm of my chair and slapped my thigh with his hand. “But I don’t understand why this is all just happening now, and it hasn’t before.” He flushed a bit. “I asked Annie”—he gave me a sidelong glance, as though to say don’t say a word about what you saw—“and she had no idea, said there’s never been any reports of ghosts or anything.” He blushed even darker. “She kind of thought I was a little crazy for even bringing it up, so I had to change the subject pretty fast.”
