by Chris Raven
On the other hand, if I consider what this woman has told me and everything that has happened to me in recent times, her story fits perfectly. Anne’s book, Joan’s possession, my strange nocturnal visitors, the séance with Peter, the visit of that furious spirit who tried to scare us... No, I can’t follow that thread of thought or I’ll go crazy. I have to try to carry this investigation rationally and leave the paranormal follies to Eloise. My function is to try to unite the factual facts to find a guilty man of flesh and blood and, although there was nothing supernatural in Peter’s death, the fact is that his father is a good suspect.
I’m so abstracted in my thoughts that I don’t notice the huge white car parked in the main road’s gutter, just off the trail. I am about to ride on the bike to return to Swanton when I hear a known voice just four steps away from me:
“Hello, Eric. Would you mind if we talked for a minute?”
I lift my sight from the gravel path to meet the imposing figure of Sheriff Dunning. He’s sitting on his car’s hood, his arms folded in front of his huge chest. His frown is so puckered that his eyebrows almost come together. I approach him, taking the bicycle by the handlebar while trying to show my most innocent smile.
“Good morning, sheriff. Nice to see you.”
“Don’t give me that crap. What the hell are you doing here?”
“Well, it’s a splendid day, so I’ve been taking a ride with the bike to enjoy the views of the lake.”
“Don’t lie to me. A neighbor has called us saying that a young stranger had gone into Mrs. Anderson’s house and had been in there too long.”
I’m amazed at the limits that gossip can achieve. What did that woman think I could be doing with Mrs. Anderson? Do the police in this town really have nothing better to do than to attend such a stupid call?
“Mrs. Anderson has been very kind and invited me to a glass of lemonade. She must have seen that it was very heated...”
“Enough, Eric. You want to spend another night at the station?”
“Accused of what? Drinking lemonade?”
I surprise myself due to my arrogant tone. I’ve always been a shy guy, willing even to be trampled upon not to disturb, but Dunning is starting to make me sick. If he doesn’t want to investigate the death of my friends, he could at least stop annoy. Anyway, it looks like my cockiness hasn’t affected Dunning at all. He stands up and approaches me, leaving just a few inches between our bodies. He is so tall that I have to look up, so I can see his eyes, which makes me feel like a kid trying to face a real man.
“Does the fact that Camille Anderson’s son drowned in the lake have nothing to do with your visit? Could you swear to me that you came here by chance and not because you’re still bent on discovering something about the death of your friends?”
“Mrs. Anderson’s son was accidentally drowned, while my friends were killed. There’s nothing that links both facts. Or do you think so?”
Dunning remains silent, weighing my words. He takes a couple of steps back and sits on the car’s hood again, which leans overdue to his weight. His swollen fingers rummage in the front pocket of the shirt. He takes out a crumpled pack of tobacco and, after extracting one for him, he extends it to me.
“Take one. I know you smoke.”
“How many more things do you know about me?”
“More than you’d like.” Dunning turns on his cigarette and stays silent looking out at the lake, with his eyes squinted to protect them from the reflexes. “Seriously, kid, let it go. If you keep stirring up the shit, you’re not going to get anything else but to be covered up by it.”
“I do not think it is a very appropriate comparison to talk about the unsolved murders of three innocent children.”
Dunning stands up as propelled by a spring and comes towards me like a fighting bull. Looks like I’ve gone too far. His face is red in anger and his countenance is so tense that his eyes can hardly be seen.
“Who do you think you are to talk to me like that, little snot? You think you’re the only one that’s hurting by those deaths? Do you have any idea how many hours I put in that investigation, the number of sleepless nights, the continuous nightmares, the terror of not knowing if there would be new victims without being able to do anything to avoid it? I have spent years investigating these cases and I have not achieved anything. Do you think you’re going to get here, ask four questions and find...”
Dunning’s voice is interrupted by a strong cough attack. The man grabs his chest while his whole body is shaken by the effort. For a moment I’m afraid he’s going to collapse and die in front of me, so I get close to him and I give him several blows in the back to help him. Little by little, the attack is ceasing.
“Thank you, I shouldn’t be so angry. My wife always tells me.”He leans back in the car and pulls a handkerchief out of his back pocket to wipe his mouth and the thick drops of sweat that slip down his forehead.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to upset you, but I don’t understand why you won’t let me investigate. I’m not hurting anyone.”
“It’s not going to do any good. You’re just going to wake up painful memories.”
“Do you really think that someone needs to wake up those memories? Do you think Anne’s family, Bobby or Dave, have stopped thinking about them for a single day? Do you think Mrs. Anderson has forgotten her Peter?”
Dunning denies with his head and puffs, desperate. Then he looks at me for a long time, as if he were evaluating me. I stay very still, without daring to say anything that could spoil it, waiting for his verdict.
“Come on, be honest with me. What did you come here for? You said yourself that the death of the Anderson boy was an accident. What makes you think it has something to do with the death of your friends?”
Now it’s my turn to stay quiet and evaluate him. I don’t know if I can trust him, or how much I can tell him without him thinking I’m crazy, or whether my next words can be rewarded with another night in the dungeon. I seem to discover a glow of genuine interest in his black little eyes. I believe that, although I have not earned his respect, at least I have aroused his curiosity. I leave the bike on the floor and sit on the car’s hood beside him.
“I don’t think Peter is related to my friends, but maybe his father is. Mrs. Anderson has told me that her husband had to be admitted to the psychiatry unit after Peter’s death, that he was talking to an invisible being, promising to kill three children in exchange for his son’s return.
“Three children? Are you sure?”
“That’s what Mrs. Anderson told me. I’m sure you can ask her and review the police report on Peter’s death. The fact is that he ended up leaving the town not to commit a madness and his own wife has confessed to me that she has been fearing that he might have something to do with the deaths of 2001.”
Dunning returns to remain silent, meditating upon my words. Despite the coughing attack a while ago, he takes out a new cigarette, but he’s so absorbed he doesn’t even offer me.
“Does the woman know where he is?”
“She says that some neighbors saw him wandering by Montpelier, but that was many years ago. Do you think you could find him?”
Dunning stands up and begins to walk in front of the car, with his eyes fixed on his feet. After a while, he raises his head, he nods and smiles at me:
You wouldn’t have been a bad cop, kid. I’m going to investigate that information, but in return I want you to promise me that you’re going to stop sticking your nose in what you don’t care about.”
“I can’t promise you that, Sheriff.” I rehearsal again my best good-boy smile. “All this matters to me much more than you imagine.”
Dunning refuses with his head while mumbling something between his teeth. I think I recognize the words “nosy brat,” but I pretend I didn’t hear. He gets in his car and turns on the engine. Before he gets moving, he pulls his head out of the window.
“I will investigate the information you have given me, and I wil
l inform you of what I find.” In his round face, a smile of complicity opens up. “I trust you to do the same.”
“Of course, sheriff. At your command.” I give him a military salutation as a farewell.
He returns to grumbling, he turns the car and goes to Swanton. I stay a few seconds watching as he disappears, without being able to believe everything that has happened. It seems I have Dunning’s permission to keep investigating, so I decide to take advantage of it before he changes his mind.
XI
I’m pedaling back to Eloise’s house when an idea sneaks into my head. What if Peter’s not the only victim we knew nothing about? I’m trying to ignore that thought. With what I know of the story so far, everything is perfect: Peter drowned in an accident, his father went crazy and left the village, but continued to turn to the strange idea that, by killing three children of Swanton, his son would be returned, so he went back to town, killed my friends and vanished again. I just need Dunning to confirm it to have fulfilled my mission and be able to return to my normal life.
It’s a shame that my mind doesn’t stay calm with this idea. How does Joan’s story fit into this perfect and rational explanation? In it, she speaks of a man who was still living in the village and had a living son. And how does the phantom that showed up to us in the séance fit in? I don’t want to think about it. It is much better for my mental health to focus on the facts I have discovered and forget about tales written by possessed lunatics and evil spirits that force people to murder children.
Regardless of how strong these arguments are, I know that I will not be able to ignore these doubts and move on. After all, I don’t know how long it will take Dunning to confirm or disprove my hypothesis and I have nothing else to do until then, so I convince myself that it won’t hurt me to investigate a bit. Also, I have already paid access to the St. Albans Messenger’s file throughout the day for today. When I got to the village by Merchants Row, I continue straight by Grand Avenue and head to the library.
After paying another hour of Internet access, I sit on one of the computers and go back to the newspaper page. I don’t know what’s wrong with me, but I feel nervous. My hands tremble and the hair on my neck is bristling. I have the impression that I will not discover anything good, that it would be better to leave and wait for Dunning’s answer, dedicating my time to walk around the village, to read sitting in a park bench, to fish... However, I know I can’t do it. Something deep in my brain tells me I’m about to find something important. Something dangerous.
I breathe several times, trying to calm down. I notice some eyes stuck in my neck and I turn around at full speed, fearing to meet Anne’s specter, with her mouth sewn, or with Bobby’s floating body, looking at me with his eyes of dead fish, or Dave’s ghost, pointing at me; accuser. There’s no such thing. It’s just the librarian, who looks at me with a worried gesture. I must have taken several minutes paralyzed in front of the computer, as if I had a stroke. I smile to reassure her and open the search page of the newspaper’s historical archive. Without thinking about it, I write the words “child, drowned, Champlain.”
The search brings back many more results than I would like. I’m trying to think it might mean nothing. Many of those deaths can be accidental. I take out some sheets of paper from my backpack and I open the articles, one by one, trying to pay good attention in all the details.
An hour later I managed to eliminate the deaths that, according to all signs, were only accidents. I have also removed from my list the death of four children who drowned together in a boat and two others who died in some floods with their parents. If I’ve decided to listen to Joan’s damn short-story, only the deaths of one child or those who go in groups of three are useful to me. When I finish reviewing all the news, I re-read the list of the names I wrote down:
1930:
Jacob Smith
Sophie Johnson
Ethan Williams
1941:
Rose Davis
1949:
Michael Brown
Olivia Wilson
Emily Moore
1960:
Donna Taylor
1979:
Peter Anderson
2001:
Anne Austen
Robert Miller
David Carter
My hand trembles when writing the last three names, as if it hurt to translate them on paper. I get the impression that in doing so I turn their deaths even more real and, at the same time, I only turn them into pieces of something much bigger and more macabre. What do all these deaths mean? Do I really believe that all of them are related?
I review the deaths of 1930 and 1949. The newspapers at that time also spoke of a serial killer, a terrible predator who took the children and drowned them in the lake. They spoke of an atmosphere of terror and paranoia in Swanton, of the population’s pain and fear, of fruitless investigations... Little by little, the news was becoming more sporadic, until it disappeared into oblivion.
None of this makes any sense. It is impossible that the same murderer has been hunting children from 1930 to 2001. Even if he had begun to assassinate at twenty years old, at the time of the last crimes he would have had ninety. The silhouette of the man I chased through the forest was not that of a decrepit elder.
The other possibility is that in less than a century in a village as small as Swanton, had emerged three different serial killers. There’s no need to have studied behavioral science at Quantico to know that this hypothesis is also impossible.
I only have the third one left. Peter’s words resonate in my mind: “It’s all in the story.” I deny with my head, trying to squeeze my brain to find a more reasonable explanation. I don’t want to believe in an evil spirit that forces self-sacrificing parents to murder other children to save their children’s lives.
I have a terrible headache and I know that, no matter how much I think about this over and over, I will not find an explanation that leaves me satisfied. The best thing will be to discuss all this information with Eloise and reflect on it calmly.
When I’m going to get up from the chair, a new question opens up in my mind. Why those years? If I decide to believe that there is a spirit trying to wipe out Swanton’s children, why not demand sacrifices every year? Why are there sometimes almost twenty years between some crimes and others?
I open Google and write the following search: “Vermont 1930 1941 1949 1960 1979 2001”. I begin to read the results and, between pages devoted to the births and marriages of those years, a list of the governors of Vermont and the historical archives of the state, I find an entrance that makes all the hair of my body get bristled: “Droughts in Vermont.”
I enter the page and what I find are graphics and graphics that represent the rains in the state over the years. I go down the page until I find a graph corresponding to the Missisquoi River’s flows as it passes through Swanton and Lake Champlain’s water volume. There it is. The years I have written down coincide exactly with the years of severe drought, years in which the level of the waters descended clearly.
“Water makes us sleep.”
I’m trying to convince myself that that phrase is just a memory reproduced by my head, but I know it’s not. I heard it by my side, pronounced in my ear. I have even felt the icy caress of the breath of the one who pronounced it. I turn, feeling that my heart is going to come out of my mouth, but beside me there is no one.
I pick up my things with shaky hands. I can’t stay in here for another second. I need light, I need air, I need company... What I have feared so much over the years is happening: I’m going crazy. I begin to see things that do not exist, to hear voices that are not there... I’ve been asking for it by myself. I knew I was not prepared to go back to Swanton and face my past, and yet I have endeavored to become the hero, to wager my delicate sanity in a game I am losing.
I leave the library and collapse on the nearest bench. I inhale hard, but still, I feel like I’m drowning. I’m about to panic. I lean forward, p
utting my head between my knees, while I try to breathe slowly and quietly. Inhale. One, two, three, four. Exhale. One, two, three, four.
Little by little I’m regaining control. I raise my head and see a couple of women with their children by the hand, looking at me with a reproachful face. They must think that I’m drunk or on drugs, but right now I don’t care. As I stand up and contemplate the landscape around me, I feel that the panic invades me again. I look at the blue and clear sky and I try to remember for how long I haven’t seen a storm cloud. I contemplate the yellow grass and the parched and cracked earth, while I remember the headlines of the last few months:
Terrible drought in Vermont.
The drought continues.
Vermont dries up.
I stand up from the bench with a spring; I pick up my bike and pedal as fast as I can to Eloise’s house. We have to do something. It’s going to happen again.
XII
When I got to Eloise’s house, I get in her front yard with the bike and I get off while it is almost still moving. I don’t know why I feel this urge to talk to her. No matter how many supernatural powers she has, I don’t think she’ll be able to make it rain for all this to stop. I don’t care if she can do anything. I need to share all this with her, tell her aloud and that she tells me I’m not going crazy.
There’s someone on the entrance stairs, hidden in the shadows of the porch. At first, I do not recognize him, but, when he goes a couple of steps forward, I see that is Jake. He’s sweaty and disheveled and he’s moving towards me with a hateful look in his eyes and a hammer in his right hand.
