They Lurk E-Book

Ronald Malfi

• Herausgeber: Titan Books
• Kategorie: Abenteuer, Thriller, Horror
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Seitenzahl: 480

Beschreibung

From the bestselling author of Come with Me, five collected novellas from the master of terror, featuring possession, parasites and something monstrous lurking outside… COME CLOSER… Five terrifying collected horror novellas newly reissued from the "modern-day Algernon Blackwood". Skullbelly A private detective is hired after three teenagers disappear in a forest and uncovers a terrible local secret. The Separation Marcus arrives in Germany to find his friend up-and-coming prizefighter Charlie in a deep depression. But soon Charlie's behavior grows increasingly bizarre. Is he suffering from a nervous breakdown, or are otherworldly forces at work? The Stranger Set a rural Florida parking lot, David returns to his car to find a stranger sat behind the wheel. The doors are locked and there's a gun on the dashboard. And that was when then the insanity started… After the Fade A girl walked into a small Annapolis tavern, collapsed and died. Something had latched itself to the base of her skull. And it didn't arrive alone. Now, the patrons of The Fulcrum are trapped, held prisoner within the tavern's walls by monstrous things, trying to find their way in. Fierce A teenage girl and her mom are in a car accident with another vehicle on a remote country road in the middle of a nightmarish snowstorm, which soon devolves into gruesome madness.

Leseprobe

CONTENTS

Cover

Praise for Ronald Malfi

Also by Ronald Malfi and available from Titan Books

Title Page

Leave us a Review

Copyright

Dedication

Skullbelly

The Separation

The Stranger

After the Fade

Fierce

Author’s Note

Also Available from Titan Books

Praise for Ronald Malfi

“Malfi is a modern-day Algernon Blackwood… I’m gonna be talking about this book for years.”

JOSH MALERMAN

“Come with Me is a story that will carry you, inescapably, into the uncanny, the horrific.”

ANDREW PYPER

“Chimes with rare beauty and page-turning brilliance. I surrendered to it completely.”

RIO YOUERS

“A must-read for fans of Stephen King. So damn good, truly chilling and suspenseful.”

CHRISTOPHER GOLDEN

“Malfi’s masterwork—a haunting, heartbreaking novel about grief and secrets.”

BRIAN KEENE

“I read it in a single day because I had no other choice: it’s that damn good.”

RICHARD CHIZMAR

“Riveting, bloody, and cosmic, this novel will tear you apart in all the best ways.”

PHILIP FRACASSI

“Once this quartet of nightmarish novellas gets pumping, your own ticker is sure to stop.”

CLAY MCLEOD CHAPMAN

“Malfi makes horror feel viscerally real by showing it to us through the eyes of his vividly described characters.”

BOOKLIST

“The well-done cosmic horror and mix of mundane and magical scares make this a standout.”

PUBLISHERS WEEKLY

“Expertly crafted and thoroughly engrossing, Black Mouth is a sure-fire contender for the book of 2022.”

BLOODY FLICKS

Also by Ronald Malfi and available from Titan Books

Come with Me

Black Mouth

Ghostwritten

They Lurk

Also by Ronald Malfi

Bone White

The Night Parade

Little Girls

December Park

The Narrows

Floating Staircase

Cradle Lake

The Ascent

Snow

Shamrock Alley

Passenger

Via Dolorosa

The Nature of Monsters

The Fall of Never

The Space Between

Novellas

Borealis

The Stranger

The Separation

Skullbelly

After the Fade

The Mourning House

A Shrill Keening

Mr. Cables

Collections

We Should Have Left Well

Enough Alone: Short Stories

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They Lurk

Print edition ISBN: 9781803365312

E-book edition ISBN: 9781803365367

Published by Titan Books

A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd.

144 Southwark Street, London SE1 0UP

www.titanbooks.com

First Titan edition: July 2023

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Copyright © 2023 Ronald Malfi. All rights reserved.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

This one’s for Jaime, the Bert to my Ernie

collect yourself

SKULLBELLY

1

Tommy Downing was nineteen years old but possessed the haunted, vacuous eyes of a man very near the end of his life. Considering what the boy must have been through, John Jeffers didn’t think the comparison was that far off.

Sitting there with the boy, of course, was useless—Jeffers would have gotten more info from rereading the police reports and newspaper articles that had come out after the incident—but the Downings had insisted. And the Downings were paying one-fourth of his bill.

Jeffers leaned back in his chair, which was a foldout wooden job beside the boy’s bed that made his ass sore. He was not necessarily a large man, but he was sturdy and there was still muscle beneath the layers of flab he’d unwittingly accumulated following his second divorce last year. Canned soups loaded with preservatives, greasy fast food, and microwave dinners would do that to you. Not that Vicki had been much of a cook, but at least she had made certain he wasn’t filling his face with an overabundance of carbs and saturated fat and that he worked out at least twice a week. Ah, well—she was scrutinizing someone else’s diet now.

“Our biggest concern, aside from Tommy’s health, of course,” Carl Downing spoke up, snapping Jeffers from his daydream, “is that the police have been so quiet. They’ve stopped answering our questions and returning our phone calls. I know they’re busy, but I don’t like all this silence.”

Jeffers nodded. “I understand,” he said in his well-practiced, gruff voice. Had the Downings not been in the bedroom with him, he would have slipped one hand under the sheets and given Tommy a good pinch to see if he could elicit some emotion from the boy. He had to admit, it was damned creepy—blank stare, pale face, body a withered husk that seemed just barely capable of respiration. The Downings had shown him photos of what their son had looked like prior to the trip—just three months ago—and he’d looked like a completely different person. The photos showed a cocky, athletic teen with sandy hair and a confident, almost cavalier, grin. The hardships of the world had not yet come to slap the face of the boy in those pictures…though what remained of that boy now, catatonic in his bedroom beneath his parents’ roof, had been more than just slapped.

Life kicked you square in the grapes, partner, Jeffers thought, repositioning himself in the uncomfortable chair.

“I mean, if there were just some communication,” Downing went on, visibly distraught over the whole situation. “We feel like they’re holding something back from us.”

“They’re probably worried about giving up misinformation,” Jeffers suggested, though he personally believed the police had an altogether different reason for limiting their contact with the Downings, or any of the other families for that matter: namely, that Tommy Downing was a suspect. The boy’s three-month-long dissociative fugue state, while medically confirmed, no doubt left a bad taste in the mouths of the detectives on this case. All too convenient, wasn’t it? After all, how do you interrogate someone on the whereabouts of his three missing friends when the son of a bitch was practically in a waking coma?

Jeffers stood. From the windows at either side of the boy’s bed he could make out the rain-swept skyline of Seattle. Great silvery bands of clouds flossed through the tall buildings. The Space Needle looked conspicuously like the topper on a wedding cake. Jeffers rubbed the side of his nose then picked up the accordion folder he’d previously set down on the nightstand beside the boy’s bed. It contained paperwork on the case, and not just about Tommy Downing, but about the other three kids, too. The missing teenagers. He’d met with all the other parents already.

Downstairs, Jennifer Downing offered him coffee, which he politely declined. She was a meek woman whose constant restlessness hinted at amphetamine usage and she made Jeffers nervous. Suddenly, he wanted nothing more than to be out of that house.

“Have you spoken to the cops down there?” Carl Downing asked as his wife handed him a cup of coffee.

“I’ve left them a couple of messages but no one’s called me back yet.”

Downing’s eyes frowned at him over the coffee mug as he slurped. “See what I’m talking about?” he said after clearing his throat.

“That’s typical,” Jeffers said, switching from one foot to the other. “Cops hear a private investigator’s been hired, they think, ‘Great, here’s some bumbling idiot who wants to take up our time asking questions about things that we’re already looking into.’ I’ve seen it plenty of times before.”

“What’ll you do about it?”

“Drive down there and meet with them in person. Offer any assistance, whatever that might be. Not that they need my assistance, of course, but it’s better to approach it as if I’m there to help them, and not the other way around.”

Downing nodded but his eyes grew distant. Beside him, his wife dropped straight down into one of the kitchen chairs. The lack of expression on her face made Jeffers want to hold a mirror up to her nose.

“When will you leave?” Downing asked after taking another sip of coffee.

Jeffers shrugged. He felt instantly tired. “This afternoon,” he said. “No use wasting time.”

2

Anyway, it was a chance to get out of the city and put some miles on the old Crown Vic. He packed some clothes and a few incidentals, including two extra magazines for his Glock, then grabbed Interstate 5 and headed south out of the city. Fumbling through his tape cassettes that lay scattered about the Crown Vic’s interior, he selected the melancholic Jazz Impressions of New York which, despite the title city, provided the perfect backdrop to the wet and gloomy Seattle afternoon.

By the time he stopped for gas, a bag of sunflower seeds, and a coffee which he overloaded with Splenda, the rain had let up and the sun seemed hungry to make an impression on the remainder of the day before it sank down beyond the coastline. Jeffers found himself in a surprisingly good mood. He attributed this to his departure from the city, which sometimes felt like a noose around his neck. Lately, there had been too many nights spent at McCorley’s, running a thumb along the rim of a glass of whiskey while his cloudy reflection judged him from a wall-mounted mirror that ran the length of the bar. No one could argue that his drinking hadn’t picked up over the past year or so. He did not blame Vicki for the drinking, though—in fact, he thanked her for it. Her hasty departure from his life afforded him good reason to take up the old habit again. A fellow wasn’t an alcoholic if that fellow had reason to drink. Made sense to him, anyway. Besides, to whom did he have to answer now?

“No one,” he said aloud, surprising himself with the sound of his voice. He was back on the road now, the paper cup of hot coffee between his thighs, the lilting sounds of Desmond’s alto sax accented by Morello’s casual snare brushing to keep him company.

Somewhere between Portland and Salem he decided to veer off to the coast, allowing the old Crown Vic to open up along U.S. Route 101. An East Coast transplant—he’d relocated here with his first wife, Cora, back in the early nineties—the majesty of the Pacific Northwest still held power over him. On this day, the Pacific Ocean looked like hammered tin crested with whitecaps, the panorama so grand Jeffers could discern the curvature of the earth. He gunned the Vic’s accelerator and the eight-cylinder behemoth growled and belched black smoke from its exhaust. Jeffers managed to coax the speedometer needle to a steady eighty-five until a police motorcycle was spotted in his rearview. He dropped gears and let the Vic shudder to a light gallop, his eyes glued to the rearview and the tiny helmeted figure on a motorcycle decked out in police lights swerving through the black clouds of the car’s exhaust. Eventually—and thankfully—the cop took an exit, and Jeffers slammed the pedal back down to the floor, chuckling.

This wasn’t the first time he’d driven this particular stretch of highway, though the last time was more than a year or so ago. He’d still been with Vicki and they had gone on some wine-tasting weekend together, something she had read about in a magazine or something. As the sun started to settle down behind the ocean, the water glowing fiery with reds and oranges and all the colors of autumn trees, Jeffers now wondered how he could have miscalculated the length of time it took to drive the coastal road. And he was headed for just outside of Brookings, which was practically California. He kept stopping for coffee to keep himself caffeinated but that only caused him to have to pull over more frequently to urinate.

By early evening, he had grown exhausted and dispassionate about the landscape and aggravated by his uncooperative bladder. He stopped for the night in some nameless town along the coast where his motel room looked out on rocky shores and a lighthouse that jutted from a peninsula like the finger of God.

In his room, he stripped down to his undershirt and boxer shorts, a banquet of fast food spread out on the mildew-smelling bed sheets, and reviewed the papers in his accordion folder.

Tommy Downing’s material was on top, and comprised most of the paperwork. There were the medical reports, evaluations, hospitalizations, home care receipts, the whole nine yards. Very little of this would prove helpful in finding out what had ultimately happened to the boy—and to his missing friends—but Jeffers read it all anyway. When he came across glossy eight-by-ten photographs of Downing’s wounds, he shuddered. Carl Downing had described his son’s wounds to Jeffers but this was the first time he’d seen them for himself. The boy had suffered serrations to the abdomen and upper chest, most likely with some sort of hooked blade (according to the report) that managed to gouge out a significant amount of tissue, and had required a combination of stitches and staples to close the wounds. Thankfully, none of the boy’s major organs had been ruptured.

The medical reports categorized Downing’s condition as displaying “catatonic features,” specifically, the boy’s lack of motor mobility (termed “catalepsy” in the report), unflinching stupor, and a chronic apathetic state. The reason given for his condition was “severe psychological trauma.”

Jeffers flipped to the next series of documents, which contained the official police report out of Coastal Green, Oregon. It opened with Downing’s arrival in town approximately three months ago, dazed and bleeding profusely and unable to speak or comprehend much of anything. He was spotted staggering down one of the logging roads that wound up into the redwood forest by several witnesses, a number of whom eventually approached the boy and provided what assistance they could—namely, they sat him down on the ground and telephoned the police. When the police arrived, Downing was taken immediately to the hospital where his wounds were addressed. His condition back then sounded no different than his current state. The photos taken by police and included with the report showed a very different boy from the one in the pictures the Downings had shown him back in Seattle. Gone was the wry glint in the eyes, the cocky half-grin, the self-confident poise. The boy in the police photos looked like the photographic negative of that other boy. In each photo, the look on Downing’s face betrayed a horror of the likes Jeffers could only imagine.

There were some cursory interviews with the witnesses who’d found Downing and called the police, but they added nothing important. Conspicuously absent were any interviews with the owners of the small motor lodge, The Happy Brier, where the kids had stayed, or interviews with any of the owners of the eateries where they’d had their meals. Jeffers knew about these places because the families had given him access to their kids’ banking information, to include credit card statements and ATM withdrawals. They’d traveled in the Harper girl’s Jeep from Seattle to Coastal Green and stayed two nights at The Happy Brier. They ate at some place called Moe’s and bought some camping supplies from a place called Redwood Outfitters, also in Coastal Green. Some other menial charges appeared as well, though they were of little consequence to Jeffers. The cops were afforded equal opportunity to review these bank statements but, as far as Jeffers knew, they hadn’t done anything beyond telling the families where to mail the documentation.

Odd, Jeffers thought. Especially if they’re considering foul play, very odd.

John Jeffers knew about cops. He was fifty-two, and those were hard-mileage years. A college grad with some promise, he’d wanted to become a police officer instead of working in some stuffy office, so he had. He was five years on the force when a shootout in a convenience store parking lot in Hoboken put him on permanent desk duty, his leg and hip injured and his nerves frazzled. He had a strong desire to get back out on the street but he couldn’t cut the PT anymore. So he quit. Moved down to the Keys where he bummed around and tried his hand at various new careers, to include bartending and playing the trumpet in a mediocre jazz quartet. A chance meeting with a beautiful singer with stars in her eyes named Cora Goodman had him pack up all his shit and follow her out to Los Angeles, and eventually Seattle. Most days, it seemed like he just happened upon a career as a private investigator the way some people will happen upon the same sticky penny at the bottom of a drawer. The notion just kept coming back to him. He already understood the work and he could be his own boss. Twelve years later, it was just what he did, what he had been doing. He had not just grown accustomed to the lifestyle, he had acquiesced to it, surrendered to it, like someone with no arms and legs tossed into the sea—fuck it, you know you’re gonna drown, might as well quit trying to fight it.

Of course, the crazy hours and shitty pay wound up costing him his marriage with Cora and, after that, his relationship with Vicki, too. He blamed himself for the parts he was certain had been his fault but knew, in both instances, that his ex-wives were equally responsible for the collapse of their respective matrimonial unions. Much like Jeffers himself, they had their own paths to follow and, as it turned out, gruff old John Jeffers was just a blip on the radar screen, a momentary indiscretion: a pothole on the boulevard of their lives.

Ha, he thought, smiling to himself as he turned the pages of the police report. That’s grand. I should write that down.

There was a photo of the Harper girl’s Jeep, too—one of those boxy Cherokee numbers with a spangly mauve paintjob that reminded him of young hipster girls’ toenail polish. The Washington license plate said 4EVRHOT and was expired.

The last section of the report spoke of the search efforts to find the three missing hikers. Jeffers read it three times, the frown lines on his face increasing with each subsequent read. Either the report had been a rush-job omitting any details of significance, or the searches themselves hadn’t been very thorough. Nowhere did the report detail how many officers were involved, if locals pitched in, if any law enforcement from Brookings or other surrounding cities joined the party. He knew the parents of Soussant and Holmquist had come down to join the search at one point, but when they arrived in Coastal Green, they were mortified to find that the search consisted of two deputies with a pair of hunting dogs. According to Mr. and Mrs. Soussant, one of the deputies stank horribly of booze.

Jeffers grunted and tossed the report aside. The remaining documentation in the accordion folder had to do with the backgrounds of the other three kids, the ones who never made it out of the forest and back to Coastal Green, as Tommy Downing had.

Megan Harper, seventeen. There was a school yearbook photo of a dark-haired, slender-faced girl with an upturned nose and eyelashes that looked like palm fronds. She’d been Downing’s girlfriend, according to both sets of parents. A high school senior, she was the youngest of the disappeared.

Michael Soussant, nineteen. Ditto, yearbook photo. Square-headed and flat-nosed, he reminded Jeffers of a prizefighter. His eyes looked dim in the photo, though Jeffers supposed they looked pretty much the same in real life, and there was some mention of him playing football in one of the documents, though Jeffers couldn’t remember exactly where and on which document. The kid already had a police record—some destruction of property charge in Tacoma a few years back, though he’d been a minor.

Lastly, Derrick Holmquist, eighteen years old, athletic, sagebrush hair cropped to a bushy buzz-cut in the photos supplied by his parents. He possessed a tanned and handsome face, and one of the pictures showed him struggling to grow facial hair. Dismally, Jeffers wondered if the boy was dead and if he’d ever actually managed a full mustache and beard.

Eyes burning from a lack of sleep, Jeffers finally closed the files and set the paperwork on the rickety-looking nightstand beside his motel room bed. From his wallet he produced an index card on which was scribbled several names and phone numbers relevant to the case. He picked up the telephone and punched in one of the numbers. He did not expect the chief of police to answer, so he wasn’t disappointed when he got the man’s voice mail. He left a message, telling him he was in town, that he represented the four families involved in the missing persons case, and that he would be in town tomorrow morning and would appreciate it if the chief could spare him any time. Then he hung up the phone, took a shower beneath a lukewarm drizzle, and went to bed.

3

From the parking lot of the Coastal Green Police Department, John Jeffers could see the marbled and rugged peaks of the Klamath Mountain Range through a thin veil of morning mist. The stationhouse was small and comprised of modular trailers joined together by little wooden footbridges. A few police cruisers were parked outside and it looked as though someone had sprayed the Oregon state flag, which flapped noisily from a post at the center of the parking lot, with buckshot.

Inside, Jeffers went to the reception desk and told the rotund little woman behind the bulletproof glass that he was here to see Chief Tim Horton. She smiled, revealing teeth that looked like they’d been put to use pulverizing bedrock, and told him to have a seat. There were only two chairs in the whole lobby, so he sat in the empty one beside a frail and ancient old man who, hidden beneath a checkered hunting cap and wraparound cataract glasses, reminded Jeffers of Claude Rains in The Invisible Man.

“They vandalize your car, too?” the old man slurred.

“I’m sorry?”

“Shitpoke teenagers.” Jeffers’s reflection floated in the black lenses of the old man’s glasses. “Keyed up m’ fuckin’ Bronco. Scratches all down the sides.”

Jeffers turned away and faced forward. The old man reeked of mothballs and unwashed flesh.

“I find them kids, I’m gonna string ’em up by their peckers,” continued the old man. “You see if I don’t.”

Jeffers smiled and continued not looking at the man. He was thankful when the receptionist eventually called the old man’s name, Mr. Needles, and Jeffers was finally left alone.

Twenty minutes later, the receptionist called Jeffers’s name and he rose and went to the cutout in the bulletproof glass partition.

“Was Chief Horton expecting you, sir?”

“I’ve left him several voice messages telling him I would be in town,” Jeffers said, “but he never returned my call. I was hoping to catch him in.”

“He’s not,” she said. “He’s out at the moment.”

Jeffers bit his lower lip. You couldn’t have told me this twenty minutes ago, you old bag? “Do you know when you expect him back?”

“Might be this afternoon, might be this evening.”

“Where is he, exactly?”

“Fishing.”

He uttered a meager little laugh. “No kidding?”

The receptionist put one meaty hand on her telephone. “What did you need to see him about? I can put you in touch with one of the officers instead.”

“What about the detective who’s working the missing persons investigation?” He dug his folded index card out from his wallet and scanned the names and numbers. “Detective Lyndon?”

The woman frowned. “Missing persons investigation?”

“Yes. The three teenagers that went missing in the forest three months ago? The kid who came into town with all the blood on his clothes?”

She made a tight O with her mouth, her eyes sliding toward the telephone. She did not pick up the receiver. Instead, she drummed a set of bright blue acrylic nails on the desktop, then said, “Lisa ain’t here either.”

“Lisa?”

“Detective Lyndon.”

“Oh.” He’d been expecting a man. “She go fishing with the chief?”

The placating grimace she gave him expressed her distaste. “Would you prefer to leave a name and phone number?”

“Do you expect Lyndon in anytime soon, or…?”

“Detective Lyndon keeps her own schedule. I don’t know it.”

“Does she have a cell phone?”

“She does, but the reception out here’s spotty at best.”

“Can I have the number, see if I can get through to her?”

“We don’t give out private numbers.”

“I meant her work cell.”

“She don’t have a work cell,” the woman responded, now clearly agitated.

Jeffers fished one of his business cards from the inner pocket of his sports coat. He pushed it through the cut in the glass and set it on the receptionist’s desk. The receptionist stared at it as if it were a dog turd humming with flies.

“Please see that Detective Lyndon gets that when she returns. And if Chief Horton happens to stop by first—”

“I’ll pass it along,” the woman said, sweeping the card from the top of her desk and into an open desk drawer. She then slammed the drawer shut and, Jeffers was certain, had she possessed the ability to do so, would have locked it, too. “Anything else?”

“Yeah. How do I get to The Happy Brier? It’s a motor lodge here in town.”

“I know what it is.” She flicked one acrylic nail toward the wall of her office that faced the parking lot. “Head back out the way you come, make a right on Town Road Twelve—it’ll be your second right, and I guess you passed it coming down here before—and follow that straight out to the coast. The street don’t have a name but you’ll see the sign.”

“Thank you,” he said, breaking out into the biggest kiss-my-ass grin of his life. “And it was a pleasure meeting you.”

He left.

4

Apparently, the proprietor of The Happy Brier was a fan of those ironic nicknames, like calling your fat friend Tiny or the shyster with the missing digits Fingers, for the Brier looked anything but happy. It was a slouching, log cabin-type structure with a tarred roof overgrown with foliage and a circular parking lot of corrugated dirt. It faced the cusp of the great redwood forest, where the trees yawned like skyscrapers and bore trunks the size of upended locomotives. The rear of the cabin looked out across the sound, separated from the water by fifty or so yards of black-pebbled beach. The air smelled strongly of pine resin.

Summer having recently ended, the parking lot was empty. The motor lodge itself looked like set dressing from an old western about a haunted mining town. A wooden sign inscribed with the lodge’s name hung from a pair of chains beneath the awning over the front door. Jeffers had hoped to see an OPEN sign, but there was none in evidence. And unless the proprietor walked back and forth to work, there was no one here.

Nonetheless, he went up to the door and tried the knob. Locked. He drummed knuckles on the hollow-sounding frame then peered through the crescent of dark glass set in the upper section of the door. It was like trying to look through motor oil. Movement off to his left caught his attention and he quickly spun around to see several deer grazing in the grass at the edge of the parking lot, an enormous buck among them. The buck’s rack looked like an oversized bear trap. Its eyes were swampy.

Jeffers went around to the rear of the motor lodge. Here, he could smell diesel fuel and, at the opposite end of the sound, could make out the framework of what he assumed was a logging flume but reminded him of slides at a water park. He walked halfway across the beach, pebbles roughly the size and color of squirrel pellets crunching beneath his boots, and inhaled deeply just as a strong breeze came in off the water and washed through the surrounding trees. The sound was like the buildup of an orchestra, climbing toward crescendo—the building susurration of whispering trees. Sssssss…

“Can I help you?”

The voice startled him and he spun around. A silver-haired man in a flannel shirt and faded dungarees stood beside a missile-shaped oil tank, the weight of a tool belt at his hip causing him to slouch unnaturally. He had welding goggles hanging down around his neck.

“Hi. Is this your place?” Jeffers said, approaching the man with one hand out. He managed what felt like an affable smile though it took some work, as he was still a bit shaken from the man’s voice having startled him.

“It is.” The man nodded succinctly. When Jeffers approached with his hand still out, the man took it reluctantly and seemed glad to be rid of it once the handshake was completed. “Name’s Lee Colson. You lost?”

“No, I’m not, actually. My name is John Jeffers, I’m a private investigator from Seattle. I was hired by the families of those hikers who disappeared in these woods three months ago.”

Colson bobbed his head up and down but he didn’t seem too impressed or interested. “Yeah, I remember that whole thing.”

“There were four teenagers, three boys and a girl, and they stayed two nights at your place here. I was hoping maybe you’d answer some questions for me about them.”

Colson pulled his welding goggles over his head and tossed them in the mud. “Don’t know what it is I could tell you, Mr. Jeffers.”

“Do you remember the kids?”

“Well, now, that was three months ago. I remember the four of them coming in, staying a few nights like you said. We don’t get many vacationers down this way, even in the summer, so it ain’t hard to remember something like them four kids.”

“What do you remember about them?” Jeffers asked.

“Not a whole lot. Didn’t hardly talk to them at all, really. They came in midweek, I think, and got two rooms. I figured they’d want two rooms, what with one of them kissin’ up on the girl and all. A little privacy, is what I’m saying.”

“Sure.”

“If I recall, they were paying night to night, so I guess they didn’t have real fixed plans, you know what I mean? When they didn’t come back, I just assumed they decided to stay somewhere else. Didn’t think nothing of it, is what I’m saying.”

“Did you happen to overhear any arguments between them?”

“Arguments? You mean between the boyfriend and the girlfriend?”

“Or any of the others,” Jeffers said. “Or did they seem like they were all getting along?”

“Seemed fine to me.” Colson wiped grimy hands down the thighs of his dungarees then folded his arm. He had a slight tic at the left corner of his mouth that Jeffers couldn’t pull his eyes from. “Didn’t notice nothing out of the ordinary, is what I’m saying.”

“What about a possible confrontation with someone else, maybe someone from town or someone else staying here at the lodge?”

“Weren’t no one else staying at the lodge that week. Was slow.”

“And you didn’t hear of them getting into something with someone from town? Maybe one of the locals?”

“That sometimes happens, sure,” said Colson, “but I don’t recall anything like that with these kids. Didn’t hear nothing about that, anyway. I only saw them when they were here, though.”

“Did anyone from the police department ever speak to you about this?”

“Why would they?” The old man’s eyes narrowed.

“To get a witness statement, like I’m doing now.”

“Witness to what? I didn’t witness nothing.” He pointed across the beach and beyond the parking lot and the nameless dirt road to the massive redwoods that staked out of the ground and disappeared in the low cloud cover. “Some folks from town saw one of them come down the old logging road, said to have blood on his clothes. Wounds, you know? Course, I don’t know much about that. Cops came, took him to the hospital in Brookings or wherever.”

“So the police never came here to talk to you, or maybe look at lodging records, receipts?”

“No. Never spoke to no cops.”

“How far away is the logging road from here?”

Colson bit at his lower lip and rubbed a bony finger along the side of his nose, leaving behind a streak of grime in the shape of a comet. “A good couple miles. It ain’t in use no more. You’ll see it ’cause they put up a big chain across it so vehicles can’t get through.”

“Who did?”

“Who did what?”

“Who put the chain up?”

Colson shrugged his bony shoulders. That tic worked madly at the corner of his mouth now. “Whoever puts up chains, I guess.”

Jeffers smiled and nodded.

“Say,” said Colson, a small, pink tongue darting between his thin lips, “you look to be in good shape. You want to give me a hand moving some chairs into storage?”

Jeffers made a big deal about checking his wristwatch.

“Help out an old fool,” said Colson.

Jeffers sighed.

5

He had worked up a good sweat moving chairs from the dining area of the lodge to the storage shed out back, the old man working soundlessly right alongside him. He felt severely out of place, his tweed sports coat draped over the counter and the sleeves of his Hugo Boss shirt cuffed to the elbows. His necktie crooked and his hip and leg aching, Jeffers was at least rewarded with a cold beer from a cooler that sat behind the registration desk.

“Got any rooms available?” he asked Colson, who was cranking the cap off his own beer.

Colson growled laughter. “You joking, right? Hell, we got the Queen of England checking in tonight!”

“Well,” Jeffers said, grinning, “if you can spare it, I’d like to get a room for tonight. Possibly for the next few nights.”

“Spare it, hell.” Colson went to a leather-bound ledger at the edge of his registration desk. He opened it and a plume of dust clouded the air. “For helping with them chairs, I’ll cut you the best damn rate you ever seen.”

Jeffers peered down at the ledger. A few lines up from the empty space where Colson was printing Jeffers’s name, Jeffers saw Tommy Downing’s name and signature, along with a room number and the license plate number of Megan Harper’s Jeep—4EVRHOT.

Somehow, darling, I sincerely doubt that. Not anymore, anyway, wherever you are, he thought, though not meanly. It was simply the first thing that popped into his head.

“Can I get that room?” Jeffers said, pointing to Downing’s signature block.

Colson eyed him ruefully…then turned and retrieved a brass key affixed to a plastic fob from the pegboard at his back.

While he finished his beer, he surveyed the wall-mounted trophy fish on the lacquered mahogany shields that surrounded him, watching him with their dead, plastic eyes. Some of the fish were enormous, with mouths like miniature railway tunnels.

“Say a guy wants to go fishing around here,” Jeffers asked Colson. “Where’s the best place to go?”

6

The room was just as he’d expected it to be—tight, unadorned, and haunted by the odors of occupants past. This did not bother him in the least; quite the contrary, he was comfortable with the expected. He’d felt that way ever since the shootout that left him injured and useless, and the two divorces that had blindsided him.

Blindsided is unfair, he counterbalanced, dropping his duffle bag onto the bed then popping the stiff tendons in his back. I just wasn’t paying close enough attention.

He checked his cell phone for any missed calls, but there were none. He called Chief Horton’s line again but, again, got his voice mail. Decidedly, the pep in the faceless chief’s voice was beginning to set Jeffers on edge. He left a message, hit END, then dialed the police station’s main line. He recognized the nasty receptionist’s voice when she answered, and he tried to disguise his own by being overly casual.

“Detective Lyndon, please.”

“Can I ask who’s calling?”

“George Jetson.” Fuck—it was the first name that came to his mind.

“Hang on a minute, Mr. Jetson.”

Static-laden Muzak filtered into his ear. While he waited, he flipped open the case file and returned to the photo of Megan Harper’s Jeep Cherokee. It was parked at an angle beside a band of dirt roadway that, from what Jeffers could tell from the photo, led up a slight, wooded incline. There were ferns in the dirt and the trunks of the redwoods were visible. Harper’s Jeep was the only vehicle in the shot. Looking more closely at the photo, he could not see any other tire tracks in the dirt.

“Mr. Jetson?” the receptionist said, cutting back on the line.

“Yes.”

“I’ll transfer you now,” she said.

Holy fucking bingo.

A click, then another woman’s voice came across the line, equally as stern as the receptionist’s but with a more pleasant, musical quality to it. “Detective Lyndon.”

“Hi, Detective. My name’s John Jeffers, I’m a private investigator looking into the matter of the hikers who went missing three months ago.” He prattled quickly, not wanting her to cut him off. “I’m here in town this afternoon and was hoping you’d have time to meet with me. I understand you’re the detective assigned to this case, and I’d really like to—”

“What’s your name again?”

He swallowed. “John Jeffers. The Downings hired me. As did the Harpers and the—”

“Where are you now, Mr. Jeffers?”

He felt the strange compulsion to lie. In the end, he settled for a happy medium. “I’m in town.” Then he hurried on: “I’m sure you’re incredibly busy, Detective Lyndon, and I won’t take up much of your time. If you could possibly meet with me this afternoon, or later this evening, that would be fantastic.” He’d winced when saying the word “incredibly” because he thought it sounded too condescending. Now, he held his breath and awaited Detective Lyndon’s response.

“Can you find The Lighthouse?”

“Uh…” He remembered the lighthouse outside his motel room window last night, but then quickly amended that that had been where he’d stopped last night, up north along 101, and not here in town. “Is there…?”

“It’s a restaurant,” she clarified, clearly agitated.

“Oh. Yeah, sure, I can find it.”

“Be there at eight.”

“Great. I’ll be the guy with the eternally grateful look on his face.”

“I’ll be the woman with the badge and gun,” Lyndon said, and hung up.

7

Redwood Outfitters was just about as modern as one could hope for in a place as isolated as Coastal Green, Jeffers thought as he pulled the Crown Vic into a parking space outside the shop. It was a two-story stucco façade with plate glass windows behind which outdated, paint-flecked mannequins attempted to assemble a bright blue nylon tent. The shop was located at the center of town, along a strip of smaller boutiques and mom-and-pop dives, to include a family-style restaurant called Moe’s, which had also appeared on the kids’ bank statements. Like the suspiciously absent interview of Lee Colson, the police report included no witness testimony from anyone employed at Redwood Outfitters. Considering this, one hand drumming on the old Vic’s steering wheel while Sketches of Spain blew erratic notes and prolonged sequences on the tape deck, it occurred to Jeffers that the police could have conducted many interviews, in fact, but just failed to turn that information over to the families. He knew the Harpers had gotten a lawyer involved early on, but that didn’t ensure that the paperwork they’d requested and received was all there was.

If the cops are building a case against the Downing kid, they’re gonna want to keep much of that information close to the vest, Jeffers knew. Same goes for why they keep brushing me off, hanging me out to dry. They don’t need me going back and spilling the beans on their investigation.

But still…if old Lee Colson had been truthful, no one had ever spoken to him about the kids staying at his place. No one had bothered taking a statement.

Climbing out of the Vic and slamming the door a little too hard, he wondered if he was being too critical, reading too much into things. Cops out here couldn’t be as worldly as they were back in Hoboken, could they? Should he expect them to run the same leads, cover the same ground? After all, how often did they have something of this magnitude to deal with?

A small bell above the door chimed as he entered. The décor was what he’d expected: camping supplies, outdoor wear, racks of fishing poles set up to look like some sort of booby trap. There were kayaks braced to the walls and taxidermy animal heads behind the front desk. A set of wooden stairs led up to the second floor; Jeffers could see ranks of oars lining one wall up there like soldiers.

From what he could tell, the place was empty of customers, though a few people milled about, straightening displays and restocking various items. A ruddy-faced man with an auburn beard stood behind the front counter perusing a clipboard. He looked up as Jeffers approached.

“Hi. You the owner?”

The man nodded. “Fred Wheeler.”

“Hey, Fred. I’m John Jeffers.” Unlike with Lee Colson, this time he opted for the more formal approach, tucking the accordion folder under one arm and flipping out his P.I. credentials. “I’m down from Seattle, investigating those three kids who went missing up in the hills at the beginning of the summer. You got a couple of minutes to talk?”

Wheeler set the clipboard down. “I guess. You a fed?”

“Private investigator. The families of the kids hired me.”

“Come on back,” Wheeler said, and led him back behind the counter and through a narrow doorway that just about brushed both of Wheeler’s shoulders as he passed through. It was a cramped little office with some maps on the walls and a desk with a computer on it stood at an angle in the center of the room. A coffee machine belched atop an aluminum file cabinet in one corner. Wheeler dropped his considerable bulk behind the desk and motioned toward the empty chair that faced him. “Have a seat. Jeffrey, was it?”

“Jeffers,” he corrected.

“Coffee?”

“No, thanks.”

Wheeler sighed, a sound similar to the release of a steam valve, and reclined in his chair. He laced big meaty hands spangled with reddish hair across his abdomen. “So what’s it you wanted to talk to me about?”

“I’ve reviewed the kids’ bank records and it showed some purchases made here. Camping supplies, that sort of thing. It was just before they set out into the forest. I was wondering if you could remember anything about their visit that day.”

“Yeah, I remember them coming in. Four of ’em, I think. A chick with ’em, too.”

Jeffers produced photos from the accordion folder and splayed them out on Wheeler’s desk like a blackjack dealer.

Wheeler nodded. “Yeah, that looks like ’em. The girl was pretty. Nice body.”

“About what time of day did they come in?”

“Late morning or early afternoon. Something like that.”

“How long did they stay?”

“Quite a while.”

“Yeah?”

“They looked around for a bit. I remember thinking they were just ogling the merchandise, you know? We got all these fancy displays, people sometimes just come in and look around, like it’s a goddamn petting zoo or something.”

Jeffers nodded. “Sure.” He thought Wheeler was being generous calling them “fancy displays.”

“I was surprised when they bought some gear,” Wheeler went on.

“What did they buy?”

“Sleeping bags and a petrol stove. Said they already had a tent, but they didn’t realize how cold it got here at night. They were staying at some place down by the sound—probably Lee Colson’s joint, it’s the only one I know of down there—but they’d decided to do some camping, sort of spur of the moment, I’m guessing. I thought they were gonna go down to the campgrounds, or maybe into one of the parks, not up in those hills.”

“So you had some conversation with them?”

“With one of the fellas, yeah.” He peered down at the photos then tapped the picture of Derrick Holmquist with a thick index finger. “This guy. Hair was longer, though.”

Jeffers nodded, urging him to continue.

“Then the girl come by and asked about the old logging road off Summit Pass. They must have seen it while out driving or hiking or whatever. You know the road?”

“The one with the chain across it?” Jeffers said. “I’ve heard about it.”

“It’s closed now. Has been for years. They don’t do no logging up there no more.”

“Why’s that?”

Almost disinterestedly, Wheeler cocked one shoulder and flashed his tongue out across his upper teeth. “Town’s dried up. Only logging company left moved across the sound or out towards Harbor. There ain’t been real honest-to-God industry here since I was a teenager.”

“Why did she ask about the road?”

“Curiosity, I guess. Wanted to know where it went. ‘Into the hills,’ I told her. Then I showed her on a map. It was…wait a minute…” He turned around in his chair and addressed a large wall map over his head with one hairy paw. “This part here. See? That’s Coastal Green.” He pointed to the southwestern corner of the state. Then he slid his finger up and to the right, into a patch of wilderness designated by a block of green and some cartoonish pine tree icons. “That’s the beginning of the forest that leads into the mountains. You got your pines, your redwoods. There are still some old flumes up there from when the logging companies used to go up that way. The ones that ain’t rotted and felled apart, that is. Ever seen ’em?”

“I haven’t.” But then he remembered seeing what looked like a waterslide-style contraption behind The Happy Brier. Before he could correct himself, Wheeler was back to talking.

“Look like big aqueducts. Know what those are?”

“Yes.”

“They’ve gone to pot now, though. Unsafe. County was supposed to rip ’em all out years ago but they never did. People don’t go up there much anyway, so I guess it don’t really matter.”

“Those kids did,” Jeffers said. “Those kids went up there.”

Wheeler nodded. “I heard. And only one come back.” Wheeler’s chair creaked as he leaned forward and placed one sturdy forearm on the top of the desk. “They say that one kid who come back went crazy and killed the other three when they was up there. That true?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Oh.” He looked disappointed. “Said he had his friends’ blood all over him.”

“Who said?”

“The cops.”

“You spoke with the cops?”

“Sure.”

“When was this? It wasn’t in their official report.”

Wheeler coughed up a dry laugh then eased back into his chair—creeeak. “Official what-now? I was just talking to Jimmy DuPont down at The Oval Tar one night over some beers, that’s all.”

“And Jimmy DuPont is…?”

“He’s a police officer. Ain’t you spoke to the police yet, Mr. Jefferson?”

“I will this evening,” he said. “And it’s still Jeffers.” He collected the photos back up off Wheeler’s desk. “So you guys were just talking while having some beers, you and DuPont. The police never officially interviewed you for the record?”

“What record?”

“The…Mr. Wheeler, the investigation into the missing hikers. What happened to the Downing boy.”

“Don’t know nothing about no Downing boy.”

“The one with the blood on him.”

“Oh.” Wheeler seemed instantly bored. “Didn’t know his name.”

“Do you have tour guides working here?”

“Of course.”

“I’d like to hire someone to take me up into the hills.”

“No, sir. My guides don’t go up into those hills. They don’t mess around in that forest. You want a guide to take you down through the parks, or across the sound, or even push a kayak back and forth along the coast, I can hook you up. But my guides don’t go into those hills.”

“How come?”

“I told you. Dangerous.”

“I think we could be careful enough and avoid those old logging flumes.”

Wheeler grimaced, peered down at his wristwatch. “I got to get back to work, Mr. Jeffers.”

8

He felt foolish and angry, like he was being toyed with. To make matters worse, once he left Redwood Outfitters, having decided to take to the main thoroughfare on foot so he could survey the neighboring shops, he began to feel like someone was following him. Several times he turned around, but saw nothing but his shadow behind him. Thunder rolled around in the low-hanging clouds, a sound that seemed to go on for eternity and never fully dissipated. With the water to one side and the looming redwood forest on the other, Coastal Green was certainly a picturesque place…but with each passing minute, Jeffers grew more and more uneasy.

A neon sign in one smoked window along the cusp of the forest read THE OVAL TAR, which was the bar Wheeler had mentioned just moments ago. Jeffers stopped inside, with no real designs aside from knocking back a glass.

The place was empty, maudlin, forgotten. Had it not been for the bartender, who was a fresh-faced young girl who looked barely old enough to drink let alone work as a bartender, Jeffers would have thought he’d stumbled into an abandoned warehouse. He straddled a barstool and smiled wearily at the girl, setting his folder beside him on the dull and pitted mahogany bar.

“We got no lunch menu,” the girl said coldly.

“It’s okay. I just want a scotch.”

“Is Jameson okay?”

Jeffers shrugged. “In a pinch.”

The girl poured a shot and set it down on the bar in front of him. He downed it then asked for another, only this time in a rocks glass with ice.

“My mother says this stuff cures cancer,” the girl said, pouring his drink.

“Cures a lot of things, where I come from,” Jeffers said.

“Where’s that?”

“Seattle.”

“Just passing through?”

“In a sense. Doing some work.”

“What do you do?”

He waved a hand at her, though not rudely. It made her smile. She was pretty. “Forget what I do now. You know what I used to do?” He brought one hand up before his mouth and fingered invisible keys. “Used to play the trumpet.”

“For real?”

“Yep.”

“Where’d you play?”

“All over.”

“Like, in a band?”

“A quartet. That’s four—”

“Four people, yeah, I know.”

“I know you know. I didn’t mean to insult your intelligence.” He drank.

“Do you still play?”

“No.”

“How come?”

“Sold my trumpet,” he said, but thought, Vicki sold my trumpet.

“Do you still remember how to play?”

He considered this. Even when he still had the trumpet he hadn’t played it. It had sat in a box in the hall closet, buried beneath winter hats and wool scarves. How long had it been since he’d played? Years, of course. It was a good question. “I don’t know,” he said. “I really don’t.”

The girl frowned. “That’s sad.”

Jeffers finished his drink then slid the empty glass over to the girl. “Another, please.”

“Wow.”

“Cures cancer, remember?”

She poured him another drink.

“I guess you live around here?” he said.

“My whole stupid life.”

“You know where Summit Pass is?”

She dropped a glass and it broke. “Shit!”

Jeffers peered over the bar as she went down to pick up the broken pieces. “Did you hurt yourself?”

“Crap. No.”

She dumped the broken bits of glass in the trash behind the bar then wiped her hands on a dishrag.

“You didn’t answer my question,” said Jeffers. “Summit Pass?”

“Southeast part of town, just before the foothills. It’s a dirt road that goes into the hills and down into California.”

“There’s supposed to be some old logging road off it somewhere. Do you know the one I mean?”

She tossed the dishrag over one shoulder then proceeded to stack pint glasses. “Lots of old logging roads back there.”

“I’m looking for one in particular. You remember those kids who went missing at the beginning of summer?”

“Yes.” Her voice had changed, Jeffers noted. She was wary of him now. He could tell.

“I’m looking for the logging road that they found.”

“You knew those kids?”

“I know their parents.”

“They were murdered.”

“Yeah? Says who?”

“Some folks. Said the one who killed them came back down into town covered in blood.”

“Well, that’s true.” Then he added, “About him coming into town covered in blood.”

“But he didn’t kill them?”

Christ, I’m starting to wonder what I believe myself, he thought, quickly shaken by his own indecisiveness.

“I’m trying to find out what happened to them,” was what he eventually said. “Do you know the road I’m talking about?”

Dumbly, she nodded. She wouldn’t look him in the eyes.

Jeffers took a map out of his breast pocket and unfolded it on the bar. He’d bought it back at Redwood Outfitters. “Could you show me where it is on this map?”

“I don’t really know from maps.”

“Or just give me directions.”

“Wouldn’t know from directions, either. I mean, I never paid attention to the street names or anything. It’s what happens when you live in a place your whole life, I guess. You just know where to go when you’re going there, by instinct or something. Couldn’t explain it.”

On the map, Jeffers located a nameless twist of roadway that traversed into the green patch of the forest and down into California. “Is this Summit Pass?”

The girl peered down at the map, her brows furrowed. “Yeah. I mean, I think so.”

“It doesn’t look like there are any roads coming off it until it crosses into California. And what’s that over here? A national park?”

She pointed to each spot on the map as she spoke the names: “Smith River. Redwood National Park. To the east, that’s Klamath.”

“Are the logging roads not listed on the map?”

“Doesn’t look like it.” Then she looked up at him, her face suddenly so close he could see the tiny pores on her nose, the flecks of copper in her green eyes, the delicate white hairs above her upper lip. It looked like she wanted to tell him something. Either that or kiss him. Jeffers was a decent-looking guy, even for someone in their early fifties…but this girl couldn’t have been more than twenty-one.

“What?” he said, his typically gruff voice unaccustomed to whispering but managing it nonetheless. “What is it?”

Then she broke out of her trance and smiled widely at him. Yet her eyes went dull. She straightened her back and whipped the dishrag from her shoulder, tossing it in a nearby steel sink. She grabbed the bottle of Jameson and poured him another drink in a fresh glass.

“This one’s on the house,” she said.

“Why’s that?”

“Looks like you could use it,” she said. “Looks like you have lots of things that need curing.”

Despite the sudden wave of discomfort that swam through him, Jeffers couldn’t help himself: he laughed.

9

The Lighthouse was rustic and dark, but maintained a surprisingly impressive selection of high-end alcohol. The rear of the place opened up to an outdoor deck that overlooked the Pacific Ocean. Despite the chill that had crept into the air, Jeffers requested a table for one out on the deck so he could watch the sun go down. It was seven o’clock and he was an hour early for his meeting with Detective Lyndon, but he wanted to pop in and scope out the joint ahead of time. Besides, by the time he walked back down to Redwood Outfitters to get his car then drove all the way back, he’d be cutting it close.

Popping out his cell phone, he saw that he had enough bars to execute a call. He scrolled through his dialed calls until he found Chief Horton’s office line, then pressed SEND. It took several seconds for the line to connect, filling Jeffers’s ear with a fuzzy ring on the other end of the line. As expected, it went straight to the chief’s voice mail.

“This message is for Chief Horton,” he breathed into the mouthpiece. “You’ve just won the lottery. Ten million bucks. Please