Garden of Darkness

by Anne Frasier

  “This is it,” he whispered, his heart hammering. “What I’ve been searching for.”

  Graham crawled across the floor, stopping a foot from the box. “What is it?”

  No records had been kept of Old Tuonela, and the town’s history was shrouded in mystery and folklore. Tall tales that continuously shifted and changed. Nobody knew what had happened one hundred years ago.

  “A box of secrets.” Evan clutched the leather-bound journal to his chest. They would finally know the truth.

  He collapsed on the floor beside the coffin, reached inside, and picked up another journal, carefully turning the pages.

  They’d been written by a woman named Florence.

  Florence.

  He’d heard someone whisper that name. . . .

  Distantly he knew Graham was talking to him, saying something about leaving. About going to Tuonela and staying with his grandfather. Evan didn’t answer.

  A door slammed. A car started and drove away. . . .

  He was lost in the words.

  The earlier journals documented the arduous journey from the East to settle in what was now called Old Tuonela. At first it seemed simply a story of typical westward movement so prevalent at the time. Richard Manchester and his followers had settled in a beautiful and remote valley in western Wisconsin, where Manchester hoped they could live in isolation and peace without interruption or intrusion from the outside world.

  But the story quickly grew strange as Evan continued to read: The women sleep in one building, men in another. When a woman gives birth, the child is taken and raised in a nursery. My sister, Victoria, was heartbroken for the first several months. And now years have passed. . . .

  Another entry, the tone changed: The children are disappearing! Oh, my God! We fear Victoria’s sweet darling could be next.

  Manchester blamed the deaths on the coyote packs that could be heard howling just beyond the lights of the town.

  The men began keeping nightly vigil. They organized a massive hunt and massacre, dragging dead coyote carcasses to the town square, where they set them on fire. But the human deaths didn’t stop.

  Some people began to suspect Manchester, but it was an unpopular theory. He was their leader. The suspicion created dissent, with a few unpopular thinkers becoming the outcasts—the others.

  Some say he is a vampire. Some say that is why he is never about during the daylight hours, and why he insists upon public worship being held after dusk. I don’t believe in such nonsense. My father was a physician, and I’ve seen diseases of the skin. Manchester has a disease of the skin. He also has a disease of the soul. The man is mad. As soon as the snow melts, my sister and I will leave this wretched place. We will steal away with her sweet daughter, return to Boston, and tell our story to whomever will listen. Victoria says no one will believe us. That we are the ones they will lock up and call mad. I fear she is right. For who in his right mind would believe that a man is drinking blood and devouring his own children?

  There was a large gap of dates. Almost two months, followed by a brief entry: Victoria is missing. Her daughter, Sarah, is missing. He’s killed them. I’m certain of it.

  Weeks later: Manchester knows his life is in danger. I don’t know how he knows, but he does. He told me he’s worried someone will try to kill him. We are hardly ever alone, and guards remain in the room while I’m forced to tolerate his lovemaking. I would write more, I would tell you all about the poison that was put in his drink, but I don’t dare.

  He sleeps with guards in the room. They stand over him. But I will convince him of our need to be alone.

  Another entry: Oh, the death! Some brave souls joined to fight him and all were killed, mostly women and children. All dead. Sweet little lambs. His followers dug a pit, shoved the bodies over the edge like diseased cattle, and covered them with dirt. I know I should grieve, yet I feel nothing. Not even despair.

  Two months passed: I am pregnant. With his child. What will it look like? Will it be evil, like him? Should I drown it as soon as it takes a breath? Yes. His offspring cannot be allowed to live.

  Another month: He is dead.

  I killed him with his own sword while he lay in bed. When the blade pierced his heart, I felt the babe move inside me.

  Many of the people of the town have scattered. The ones who remain buried Manchester in the church graveyard. As instructed, an oak tree was planted over his grave to keep him from rising up.

  We are the survivors. We don’t talk about it. We know we can’t speak of this. We can never speak of this.

  They must go first. Without me. They must leave and never return. I will stay until the baby is born. I will finish my journal and I will kill the child. After that? Will I follow them to the new place? Or remain here? To be close to my poor dead darling sister, Victoria? Someone must keep her company. Someone must stand guard over this dark, evil place to make sure nothing escapes.

  Chapter Twenty-five

  I woke up to silence and realized I’d fallen asleep or passed out. The CD was no longer playing, my nose was cold, and the fire was a pile of moving, shifting embers.

  Ian and Stewart were both asleep in their sleeping bags. Claire’s bag was empty.

  My heart began to thud as I tried to reconstruct the evening. That was hard to do, since I’d been drinking. Claire had gone to the restroom; Ian had put on a CD; then I’d apparently passed out. . . . I didn’t have any memory of crawling into my sleeping bag, but here I was.

  I tried to unzip the bag but couldn’t get the zipper down. I wriggled out, kicking my legs free. I found my tennis shoes, slipped them on, and looked around for the flashlight.

  Claire had it.

  I wanted to wake up Ian and Stewart, but at the same time I knew I was being silly. Claire was probably either throwing up or working. The restroom had electricity and lights. She’d plugged in her laptop earlier. She was probably down there right now typing the voice-over for our camping footage.

  Oh, man. I felt like crap.

  I aimed myself in the direction of the restroom and stumbled through the dark toward the yellow glow put off by the light above the doors. I felt ashamed for getting drunk again, but I also felt too crappy to give it much thought.

  Save it for morning.

  Come morning, I’ll hate myself more.

  I was aware that I had to piss like a racehorse, and was glad to top the little hill and see the rest-room down in a small valley. There were the two doors, and the single light above them.

  So welcoming.

  But the night brought with it a lack of color, washing the image in diluted shades, like a sixties television show. My vision wasn’t that great, since I was still a little drunk, and my eyes seemed to have a haze over them, like a thin layer of Vaseline.

  Unfuck my life.

  When was I going to do that? Wasn’t I supposed to be doing that right now?

  I unbuttoned my pants as I hit the cement sidewalk. I was freezing my ass off, and I remembered Claire had borrowed my coat.

  The restrooms had no doors. Just a turn to the left and a turn to the right.

  “Claire?”

  I took the final corner and recognized the pink-and-green tweed pattern of my coat lying in a pile on the floor under the sink. Just kind of shoved there.

  I felt a strange mixture of anger and fear. Anger at Claire for tossing my coat in the corner, and fear because I knew there was something else going on. But I focused on my anger because that was the easiest thing to do.

  A smell hit me.

  I once walked in on my uncle when he was butchering a deer in the kitchen. If you’ve ever seen an animal butchered, you know that smell. It’s raw and overpowering, like nothing you’ve ever encountered. I think humans are supposed to be repulsed by it.

  That was the day I became a vegetarian. No more bloody carcasses for me.

  Everybody said it wouldn’t last. They were wrong.

  The soles of my shoes stuck to the floor. I didn’t look d
own. I didn’t dare.

  “Claire?” I whispered.

  There were six stalls, all with gray doors.

  I slowly pushed open the first door.

  Empty.

  The next.

  When I hit the third door I felt the hair lift from my scalp. My mouth dropped open. At the same time, bile rose in my throat and I made a loud gagging sound.

  It’s just a deer carcass, I told myself while my eyes stung with fear. Just a skinned deer.

  The blood on the soles of my shoes cemented me to the floor. My eyes stared without blinking even as my mind was already running back to the camp, waking up Ian and Stewart, screaming at them to find the phone.

  I don’t know how long I stood there.

  Seconds.

  Hours.

  It don’t really matter, other than being long enough to forever embed the stench of blood and death in my sinuses, and forever tattoo what was left of Claire to my retinas. It would be there for the rest of my life. No matter where I looked, where I turned, it would be there.

  I ran.

  I wasn’t aware of my feet moving, just the sensation of hurtling over the ground, a roar in my ears as big as the ocean. Somebody was screaming. She wouldn’t stop.

  Screaming my throat raw.

  I flew into the campsite.

  There were the remnants of our night. Beer bot -tles everywhere. Stupid kids. Stupid, stupid kids.

  Ian and Stewart stood near their sleeping bags, hands hanging limply at their sides, both staring at me with terror in their eyes. Ian’s mouth moved.

  What’s wrong? I think he said. But all I could hear was screaming.

  He grabbed me by both arms and gave me a shake, making me look at his face, his eyes. I could see Claire’s skinned body there.

  I turned away.

  The horror followed me.

  It was like watching a silent movie. A silent movie with an orchestra that was playing too loud.

  I couldn’t tell Ian and Stewart; I couldn’t communicate, but I could read them reading me.

  Ian looked from me to the direction I’d come. He said something to Stewart. Stewart shook his head. Ian let go of me and ran for the restroom.

  “No!” I was finally able to shout. “No, Ian!”

  I ran after him. I grabbed him and knocked him down. He tried to push me away.

  I remembered last night and how he’d dipped Claire. He’d always liked her, even though he knew he could never have her.

  Never, never, never.

  “Don’t go,” I sobbed.

  I don’t want him to see what I’ve seen. I don’t want that to be his last memory of Claire. Let it be of her dancing by the fire.

  He’s no longer fighting me.

  He knows. Of course he knows.

  I’m crying, and he joins me. With fingers like claws, he pulls me close. He’s holding me, but he isn’t thinking of me; he’s thinking of Claire.

  Chapter Twenty-six

  A policeman stood at the campground entrance directing traffic. The red light on his squad car turned slowly and soundlessly. When he spotted the coroner van, he motioned Rachel through with his flashlight.

  As the van rolled slowly and awkwardly over the dirt lane buffered by pine needles, she caught glimpses of Lake Tuonela between clusters of trees.

  If you didn’t know it was out there, you might not notice; you might think the reflection was a flash of light from a house or outbuilding.

  Repetition.

  Everything was about repetition. Nature. Seasons. The patterns and arrangements of leaves and flowers.

  Murder.

  Murder would always happen, whether committed by the same person, or new crimes with all new players.

  Sometimes Rachel wasn’t sure she could continue doing this. What about once the baby came? She’d have to hire help so she could leave in the middle of the night. The baby would be crying to be fed, and Rachel would come home smelling like death.

  Lake Tuonela.

  She and her parents used to fish there. Sometimes Evan and his family would come. That was when they were kids, before Evan got sick.

  It had been updated since then with showers and electricity and actual flushing toilets.

  It was easy to find the crime scene. Lights from several police cars lit up the night.

  She pulled to the edge of the lane, shut off the ignition, and slid out of the van, her belly rubbing the steering wheel. She grabbed her evidence kit and walked toward the lights.

  Outside the restroom Alastair Stroud stood talking to a red-haired girl with a Barbie sleeping bag wrapped around her shoulders. The girl’s lips were blue, and she was shaking violently.

  The blue lips and shaking were trauma-induced and had little to do with temperature. Not far away, sitting at a picnic table, were two guys who looked to be in their early twenties.

  They were part of the documentary crew.

  The town was buzzing about them. Rachel had been irritated by the little stunt they’d pulled with the psychic and the television station. On the other hand, Mayor McBride tended to piss people off and step on toes. Plus if he started tourism based on the Pale Immortal, he had to expect to be made fun of.

  “This is Kristin Blackmoore,” Alastair said.

  “She’s with the documentary crew, and she found the body.”

  The girl’s eyes were swollen, her nose red. Her fingers clutched the sleeping bag under her chin while her lips trembled nonstop.

  Rachel wanted to put her arms around her. If her dad had been alive, that was what he would have done. But it wasn’t part of her job to soothe anybody, even though she’d sometimes fallen into that role since returning to Tuonela. Alastair didn’t seem up for the task.

  “Did you hear or see anything?” Rachel asked.

  The girl shook her head.

  “Said she woke up and her friend’s sleeping bag was empty. She came down here and found the body.”

  “You came directly to the restroom?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why here?” Alastair asked. “You didn’t look around your camp first?”

  “I don’t know. I just figured she’d come down here.” The girl frowned. “She was wearing my coat.”

  “What?”

  “She was cold, so she borrowed my coat.”

  Those were the kinds of inane comments people in shock tended to make. But Rachel wondered if it was really as inane as it seemed.

  “I’d better take a look at the body.”

  The girl blanched.

  Rachel stepped forward and grabbed her. “Maybe you should sit down.”

  “I have blood on my shoes,” Kristin said in a vague, breathless voice.

  One of the young men got up from the table, came over, and took her other arm. “Come on,” he coaxed. “Come and sit with me and Ian.”

  “We’re taking them all downtown,” Alastair said. “Interview them separately and see if their stories jibe.”

  They walked toward the restroom. Bloody shoe-prints led out of the women’s room. The tread was from a sneaker, probably Kristin’s. They would need a shoe imprint. “You think one of them may have committed the murder?” Rachel asked.

  “Everybody’s a suspect. She’s almost too upset. The boy is almost too calm.”

  Rachel wasn’t going to argue. She knew that even the most innocent-looking children could be guilty of murder, but these kids didn’t seem likely suspects to her.

  The body was just like the other one: skinned, the carcass curled into a fetal position.

  “Coyotes?” Alastair asked.

  She’d never believed coyotes had killed the last victim. It was just a case of Mayor McBride looking for a way to appease the fears of the town and the tourists.

  “Don’t look so skeptical,” Alastair said. “They might look like scrawny dogs, but I’ve seen a coyote pack devour a calf as it was being born. Ate it before it could hit the ground.”

  “This is a restroom. I find it hard to believe
wild animals would come into a place so saturated with the scent of humans.” She scanned the floor. “No footprints.” The only prints belonged to the same tread that had made the prints on the sidewalk.

  “Maybe she was attacked outside, crawled in here and died. How long can a person live without skin?”

  A horrid theory, but remotely possible.

  Alastair pointed to smears of blood that led inside.

  Dear God. He was right.

  “Looks like the same MO as the girl in the woods,” he said.

  A wave of dizziness washed over her. She stepped outside and pulled in some deep breaths. Alastair followed.

  “I’ll know more after we get the body to the autopsy suite,” she said. “When I do the exam, I’ll try to find any anomalies.”

  “I’m not even sure it’s who we think it is.”

  “It’ll take dental records to make a positive ID.”

  “We can speculate all day, but it probably won’t get us anywhere.” He seemed preoccupied and distracted.

  It had to be tough to have just returned to Tuonela, only to have two horrific deaths occur while you were in charge. He was acting almost as if it were somehow his fault. She didn’t feel he’d been nearly aggressive enough in the first investigation, letting the mayor soften the severity of the case, but it would do no good for Rachel to point that out now.

  “I dread calling the parents.” He looked terrified at the thought. Not cut out for this job. Too old, too softhearted.

  “What about the skin?” Rachel asked.

  A lot of people didn’t know that Alastair had suffered a breakdown when Evan was ill. Rachel’s father had told her about it, and told her not to mention it to anyone. Rachel was afraid that returning to his old job had been a bad idea. He should be golfing in Florida. He should be enjoying life.

  “Officers are searching the area, hoping to find it.”

  “The last one was never found,” she said. “Was information about the body being skinned released to the media?”

  “Yeah, but we deliberately kept it vague.”

  “So would that rule out a copycat?”

  “Not necessarily. Tuonela might have its secrets, but things get out. People talk. Especially when it comes to murder.”