The Suicide Lake (Book of Shadows 2)

by Michael Penning

  Her baby was dead. And soon, Evelyn would be too.

  Listen to your mother, child. When the time comes, it’s gonna split you so wide, nobody’s gonna be able to sew you back up. It’s gonna take you hours to die... and oh, how you’ll suffer, deary. Such unspeakable suffering...

  “Please stop, Mother. Please, please, please...”

  You’ll suffer if you don’t save yourself, child...

  “How?” Evelyn moaned.

  You have to cut it out of you before it’s too late.

  “No!” Evelyn cried, even as she came to realize that she had to do it. Her baby was dead; there was only one way to save herself.

  Cut it out, Evelyn! Save yourself!

  Evelyn closed her eyes and took a deep breath. Rain dripped from her fingertips as she lowered her hand and lifted her sodden chemise.

  In one swift motion, she ran the hacksaw across her belly.

  That’s it! Cut it out! Cut it out! Save yourself!

  Over and over, Evelyn continued to saw at her flesh, barely flinching as the steel teeth dug further and further into her womb. Blood washed down her legs and felt warm and welcome in the cold, cold rain. Evelyn didn’t scream, didn’t cry. There was no pain, only the loving embrace of her mother’s voice.

  Save yourself! Save yourself!

  Chapter 15

  The man’s anguished wails carried across the morning stillness and ripped through the village. Abigail rushed toward their source, the cries growing ever louder as she sped past the cabins and shacks and plunged into the thick forest beyond.

  Dawn had come, gray and dreary as if the previous day’s sunshine had been nothing but an uninvited guest. The overnight drizzle had just come to an end and a heavy mist now dampened Abigail’s coat as she dashed through the woods. Ahead, she could spy the dark shapes of men materializing from the gloom as the echoes of a dog’s furious barking ricocheted off the trees. Seconds later, she arrived at a small hollow where Glenn Colvin and Josiah Benedict were grappling with a giant, distraught lumberjack. Colvin’s dog snarled and nipped at the big man’s kicking feet.

  Dressed only in breeches and a soiled undershirt, the lumberjack’s broad face was twisted with grief as he thrashed and struggled. His long red hair was a bedraggled mess and his thick goatee was scruffy and askew. His steely eyes were bloodshot and streams of tears ran freely across his florid cheeks. Gobs of spittle fell from his lips and flecked his hairy chin as he sobbed and howled incoherently.

  Beyond the struggling men, the motionless form of a body lay concealed beneath a canvas sheet on the forest floor. A wicker basket sat on the ground nearby. The surrounding leaves were soaked with blood, as if they had all fallen from the same crimson tree. Abigail could smell the coppery stink of it hanging thick in the crisp morning air.

  “Leave her be, Heath!” Colvin shouted as he fought to restrain the grief-stricken man. “Give Ned some time to find out what happened!”

  Duncan Emmons hovered on the periphery of the hollow. His expression was grim as he observed a slight man with a bushy moustache and wire spectacles who was crouched beside the inert shape on the ground. The man’s hand shook as he lifted the bloodstained sheet and peered beneath.

  Abigail went to Duncan’s side. “Another suicide?” she whispered.

  Duncan nodded, his breath quavering as he drew it in and let it out. “Evelyn MacIntyre.”

  Abigail couldn’t contain a gasp. “What happened?”

  Duncan inclined his head toward the crazed man still struggling to free himself from Colvin and Josiah. “Heath awoke before sunrise and she was gone. He picked up a trail outside his cabin. It led him here, where he... he found her.”

  The man with the spectacles lowered the canvas sheet and stood up.

  “Ned Fitch,” Duncan explained. “He’s the closest we have to a physician out here. Spent a few years as an infantry medic.”

  Duncan turned as Fitch came toward them. Abigail could see the physician’s pointed face had drained of all color.

  “What happened to her, Ned?” Duncan asked quietly.

  Fitch gave a morose shake of his head and glanced back over his shoulder. “As far as I can tell, she did it to herself.”

  “Did what?”

  Fitch cast a sidelong look at Abigail and hesitated.

  “It’s alright, Ned,” Duncan assured. “This is Abigail Jacobs, the schoolteacher. Ms. Jacobs worked as a nurse in Boston. You can speak freely in front of her.”

  Abigail winced inwardly and hoped this wouldn’t be yet another lie that came back to haunt her.

  “Ned? What did Evelyn do to herself?” Duncan prodded.

  “She... she cut her baby out.”

  Abigail’s stomach filled with ice at the realization of what lay within the basket on the ground.

  There was a sudden shout as Heath MacIntyre managed to break loose from Josiah’s grip. Colvin lunged for him but Heath swung around and caught him with a blow to the jaw that sent the foreman sprawling through the underbrush. With an angry snarl, Timber sprang and clamped his jaws around Heath’s forearm, drawing blood. The lumberjack shook the dog off just as Josiah tackled him to the ground. Heath roared, but in a flash, Josiah’s knife was drawn and pressed to the big man’s throat. And yet, even as the sharp blade pricked Heath’s skin, it seemed as if the weapon wouldn’t stop him. Heath was too wild with grief, too inconsolable to care for his own life.

  “Josiah!” Colvin shouted as he dragged himself to his feet. His bottom lip was split and a trail of blood dribbled through his beard. “Let him go, Josiah.”

  Colvin stood waiting while Josiah lowered the knife from Heath’s throat. The Native’s black eyes narrowed dangerously as the lumberjack picked himself from the dirt.

  “Go to her if you want, Heath,” said Colvin as the big man started toward him. “We’re not going to stop you. But I’m begging you to go home. You’ve seen enough here. You don’t need to see anymore.”

  Heath slowed and drew to a halt within striking distance of Colvin. Abigail felt herself go tense as the massive lumberjack stood towering over the foreman. But then, Heath just seemed to crumble. Sinking slowly to his knees, he hung his head and wept uncontrollably, his broad shoulders quaking with his sobs.

  Colvin laid a hand on Heath’s bulky arm. “You’ve done all you can here, Heath. You can’t do anything more for her. Let us take care of her now. We’ll bring her back to you.”

  Colvin made a motion and Josiah quickly lent a hand in hauling the big man to his feet. For an instant, Colvin glanced in Abigail’s direction and his eyes caught hers. Then he turned and led Heath from the hollow. The sound of the lumberjack’s hoarse moans echoed through the trees and faded away into the distance.

  Duncan exchanged a few more words with Ned Fitch before returning to Abigail’s side. Minutes passed as they stood together in silence, each consumed with thoughts every bit as dark and cheerless as their surroundings. Soon, another man arrived with a long plank that he and Fitch would use as a litter to transport Evelyn’s corpse.

  Duncan was the first to speak. “Tell me honestly, Abby. Have you ever seen anything like this?”

  Abigail didn’t need to think about it. She shook her head.

  “Do you still believe there is nothing paranatural about this?”

  An image flew into Abigail’s mind. She saw Evelyn as she had been just yesterday: bright and joyful in the autumn sunlight; grinning easily and glowing with the bliss of expectant motherhood. What had changed overnight? What could have driven the woman to such a ghastly fate?

  “No,” Abigail replied at last. “You were right, Duncan. Something terrible is going on here. I just don’t know what it is.”

  “I believe I might,” Duncan whispered surreptitiously while the two other men lifted Evelyn’s corpse and conveyed it to the litter. “Meet me at the company office in one hour. I’ve discovered something I think you’ll find extremely interesting.”

  Chapter 16

  Dunc
an Emmons had been fascinated with maps for as long as he could remember. His grandfather had been a prominent sea captain and privateer during the War of Independence. In retirement, the old man had established a quaint museum of natural history in his homeport of Salem. It was there, surrounded by his grandfather’s collected curiosities of the world, that Duncan had experienced his first dreams of adventure. And as a young boy, nothing had symbolized the spirit of adventure more than a map. Nothing else could so clearly delineate the frontiers between the known world and the mysterious; the mundane from the wondrous; safety from peril.

  Now, Abigail sipped a cup of coffee and looked on from across the stuffy confines of the company office as her childhood friend went to his own collection of maps. There were dozens of them, each chart tightly rolled and tucked into a special rack against the back wall. By comparison, the rest of the office was a clutter of Witherbee & Rand’s files and records. The space smelled of musty parchment and book bindings. A pale slant of colorless sunlight through the only window indicated it was not yet midday. They had less than an hour before the company clerk returned from the errand Duncan had sent him on.

  “Here it is,” Duncan said.

  As he turned from the rack to the battered length of the worktable, Abigail was surprised to see he held not a map, but an old company ledger he had apparently hidden within the rack.

  “I’ve been thinking about what you said about vengeful spirits being born of violent deaths,” Duncan said. His eyes shone with excitement as he clutched the ledger. “As it turns out, Jed Hawes wasn’t the first man to die in the northern range.”

  Abigail paused her sip of coffee. “I beg your pardon?”

  “Nearly fifty years ago, a band of Mohawk warriors brought two Black Robes to the hunting grounds of these mountains.”

  “Black Robes? Do you mean Jesuits? Missionaries?”

  Duncan gave an eager nod. “Their names were Edmund and Sebastian Legendre. They were brothers who came to the Mohawk to spread the word of the Christian God. On the third night of their hunt, the warriors brought the brothers to the edge of a lake high in the mountains. There, the Mohawk turned on the missionaries and lashed the brothers to two strong trees.”

  “Why did the Mohawk betray them?”

  Duncan’s tone grew ever more animated as he warmed to the tale. “It was a test of the Christian God. If the brothers could survive seven moons on the shore of that desolate lake, the Mohawk would see it as proof that the white man’s God was as powerful as the missionaries claimed.”

  “What became of them?”

  “Both were dead when the Mohawk returned. But somehow, the younger brother, Sebastian, had freed himself. Only instead of escaping, he had murdered his elder brother before taking his own life.”

  “How?”

  “He had crushed Edmund’s skull with a heavy rock. He then proceeded to skewer both of his own eyes with his crucifix. When the Mohawk examined his tracks and realized what he had done, they saw the land as cursed and never returned.”

  Abigail eyed him skeptically while she considered his story. “How exactly did you happen to come by this information?”

  Duncan grinned, his expression now lit and impassioned. “I had begun to despair that you were right about the suicides until I came upon an obscure reference buried in one of Witherbee & Rand’s earliest prospecting records.” At this, Duncan laid the ledger upon the worktable and flipped it open to a bookmarked page. “It’s all here. Decades ago, a company scout named Tad Seymour recalled the sad fate of a pair of Jesuit missionaries in the company of a band of Mohawk warriors. Don’t you see, Abby? Jed Hawes killed himself on the shore of the very lake where the Legendre brothers died! This is the revelation we’ve been waiting for! Perhaps it is their spirits who are responsible for our suicides!”

  Abigail went quiet as she reviewed the entry in the ledger. Something about Duncan’s account struck her as suspicious. It seemed too neat and tidy—and this case was anything but clean-cut. And yet, Duncan wouldn’t have simply invented it to further his own conviction that the suicides were the result of a haunting. Besides, Abigail could see for herself that all of the details had been carefully recorded and that the ledger itself was authentic. Still, even if the old tale was true, there remained the troubling fact that none of the suicides had displayed any evidence of paranatural influence. If the spirit of either Legendre brother was responsible for driving the victims to take their own lives, how exactly were they doing it? And more importantly, how could they be stopped?

  “This lake,” Abigail said at last. “Show me where it is.”

  Duncan spun to the rack of maps, separated a long roll from the others, and brought it to the worktable, pinning the corners with stones to keep them from curling. “There,” he said, stabbing a finger at a spot.

  Abigail leaned over the table and was struck by how stark this map was. Unlike Duncan’s other works, which were flawless in their precision and meticulously rendered with an exacting attention to detail, this chart bore only some rudimentary indications of landmarks.

  “I’ve yet to personally survey the land that far to the north,” Duncan explained with chagrin. “That’s why Hawes was sent ahead. He was to scout the terrain before I went in to chart it. What you see here is merely a crude approximation based on what Glenn Colvin was able to describe upon his discovery of Hawes’ body. I’m afraid this map isn’t nearly to scale. The cliff where Hawes was found is over ten miles from here, a gruelling journey through tough forest up the sheer side of the Cloudsplitter.”

  Abigail stood up and sipped her coffee. “Perhaps there is something else linking the suicides to each other, something we aren’t seeing.”

  “Such as?”

  Abigail raised her cup again and realized it was empty. “It could be anything,” she said as she went for the pot on the stove. “Even the slightest commonality could be significant, something as seemingly trivial as, say, the water they drank.”

  “We all take our water from the same river.” Duncan traced his finger along a long, meandering line that snaked its way across the entire length of the map from top to bottom, shrinking and widening as it passed through chasms and opened into small lakes along the way.

  Abigail was surprised by the name inscribed on the chart. “The Hudson?”

  Duncan nodded. “From what I’ve been able to discern, this same river eventually flows all the way to New York where it drains into the Atlantic.” He allowed himself a smile; faint, but proud nonetheless. “This discovery has been among my most significant thus far. The headwater of the mighty Hudson must be somewhere up there to the north, among the tallest of the peaks. Eventually, I hope to discover it.”

  Abigail smiled. For his sake, she hoped he did too. “What of the victims’ nationalities?” she asked.

  “Hawes was born American; Beaulieu a Frenchman; Gill was Irish; Prue also American; and Evelyn, Scottish.”

  “Two Americans. There doesn’t seem to be enough commonality there. Religion?”

  “As far as I know, all were Catholic.”

  Abigail looked up. “All?”

  “As is most of the village, Abby. It’s what draws so many immigrants out here; they feel safe among other Catholics. I’m afraid any link between the suicides in that regard cannot even be considered coincidence.”

  Abigail frowned. He was right, she was grasping at straws.

  “There is one commonality between the victims that we haven’t yet considered,” Duncan suggested.

  “What is it?”

  “Colvin and Josiah.”

  “How so?”

  “Thus far, they are the only ones to have had contact with each of the victims’ bodies.”

  Abigail went quiet and sank into a chair as she considered the implications. Could Duncan be on to something? Could either of those two men be linked to the suicides? And if so, how? “What else do you know about those lands to the north?” she asked.

  “Very little. Josia
h calls the area anachaju.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It’s Mohican for empty.”

  This struck Abigail as odd. “Josiah is from the Penobscot tribe. Why would he use the Mohican word?”

  Duncan shrugged. “Who can say what goes on in his head? Josiah doesn’t speak much to anyone but Colvin.”

  Abigail returned her attention to the crude map laid out on the table. “Empty...” she mused.

  “Here there be monsters,” Duncan murmured, quoting the old sailor’s adage for what lay beyond the limits of the known world. His gaze fell upon Abigail’s face and saw the fatigue of her sleepless nights gathered there. “We’re running out of time. We must act quickly; we’ve only seven days until Chauncey returns for you.”

  Abigail sighed wearily as she sat and rested the back of her head against the wall. “We’ve only two days.”

  Duncan’s eyes snapped up. “I beg your pardon?”

  “In two days, a supply wagon will arrive from Witherbee & Rand. When there’s no record of my employment with the company, Glenn Colvin will have even more reason to suspect I’m not what I seem.”

  “We needn’t worry about that, Abby. We can always stall for time until—”

  “There’s something else, Duncan. Something I haven’t told you.”

  A look of apprehension slid over Duncan’s face. “What is it?”

  “The night when I snuck into the shed to examine Prue’s body... somebody saw me.”

  Duncan stared at her in disbelief. “What do you mean by somebody?”

  Abigail told him everything: her certainty that the stranger had been a man; that he had seen her but had let her go; that more than a day had passed and still the man had not revealed himself or exposed her secret.

  When she was finished, there was something about the way Duncan was looking at her—

  a scornful condescension in his glare—that was worse than anything he could have said. A spark of anger began to smolder within her. “I don’t require your protection, Duncan,” she said, her voice low and icy. “I never have.”