Forest Ghost (33 page)

They had almost reached Lake Wolverine. Jack could see it sparkling through the trees, with a moon reflected in it like a broken dinner plate.

‘I guess you’re right,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry. It’s been such a goddamned trauma, that’s all. It’s good to find somebody who doesn’t think that I’m going crazy.’

‘Either that,’ said the scout leader, as he pulled the Avalanche in beside the SHERIFF LINE KEEP OUT tape. ‘Or somebody who’s just as crazy as you are.’

They made their way into the trees.

It may have been quiet before, but now it seemed as if every bird and animal in the forest was screeching and howling and jabbering. It was like a soundtrack from a jungle movie.

‘Something’s going on,’ said the scout leader, shining his flashlight in between the oaks. ‘You never normally get as much excitement as this, especially when it gets dark. Listen – hear that drumming sound? That’s a grouse, beating its wings together.’

Jack led him to the place where Sally and Undersheriff Porter had shot themselves. He was sure he had exactly the right spot: he remembered the trees and the way the ground had sloped. But there was no trace of either body – not even a dent in the underbrush or a blood spatter to show where they might have been.

‘Well – either this isn’t the location or else they recovered from their injuries and walked off someplace,’ said the scout leader.

‘They blew their heads off,’ Jack told him. ‘There is absolutely no way that anybody could have recovered from that.’

He walked fifty or sixty feet further. There was still no sign of the bodies anywhere.

‘The spirits must have carried them away,’ he suggested.

‘All right, maybe they did,’ said the scout leader. ‘But exactly what for?’

‘Maybe they’re curious about the human body, the way we are about them. Maybe they
are
aliens, and they’ve taken them away to study them.’

‘Well, you could be right. But whatever they’ve done with them, they’re dead. It’s your son we need to find, before he gets the urge to kill himself, too. That’s if he hasn’t done it already.’

‘Thanks,’ said Jack.

‘I’m sorry. Just being realistic.’

The cacophony of birds and animals was still going on, relentlessly. If anything, it was growing louder, and every now and then Jack could make out an agonized howling sound, like somebody grieving. Slowly, he and the scout leader made their way further into the forest, with the scout leader probing the beam of his flashlight from left to right, and back again.

‘Sparks!’ Jack shouted. ‘Sparky – where are you? Can you hear me, Sparks?’

The scout leader took a brass whistle out of his shirt pocket and blew several long blasts. Then he too shouted, ‘Sparky! Where are you, Sparky? You can come on out now, Sparky! Nobody’s going to give you a hard time!’

He blew the whistle again, and called out, ‘If you don’t know where we are, walk toward the sound of my whistle! OK?’

After that, as they walked slowly forward through the forest, he blew his whistle every thirty seconds or so, two short blasts and one long one. Every time he did so, however, the racket of birds and animals in the forest seemed to grow even louder, as if they were furious at being disturbed.

‘Never heard anything like this, ever,’ said the scout leader. ‘Something’s really got them worked up.’

Jack stopped, and shouted out, ‘
Sparks!
Sparky!
’ but still there was nothing but the screeching and flapping and drumming and howling.

The scout leader took out a compass and shone his flashlight on it. ‘I’m taking us side to side, in semi-circular sweeps,’ he said. ‘That’s what we call the half-moon search, or arc search. It’s the classic pattern for underwater searches, especially in swamps and black water, or for anybody lost in the woods, if there’s only a couple of you. Takes time, I have to admit – but if anybody’s deliberately hiding, or unconscious, you have a much better chance of finding them. Besides, the deputies and the rangers should be here pretty soon, and then we can start to do an extended line search.’

Jack shook his head. ‘Jesus, Sparky could be miles away by now. How big is this forest?’

‘Five hundred forty thousand acres, give or take.’

‘Jesus.’

‘We’ll find him, don’t you worry,’ said the scout leader. ‘The deputies will bring at least one tracker dog with them, and that’ll make all the difference, I promise you.’

As if to punctuate his sentence, he blew his whistle again.

The first arc of their search had taken them almost back to the edge of the lake. Before they turned around to start another arc, the scout leader stopped to check his compass again. As he waited for him, Jack glimpsed pale white lights flickering behind the trees, about two hundred feet ahead of them, and slightly to their left. It was only for a few seconds, but he was sure that he had seen some of the illuminated figures which had carried him out of the forest.

‘They’re
there
!’ he told the scout leader, pointing. ‘I saw them, right over there.’

The scout leader frowned into the darkness. ‘You’re sure about that? I don’t see anything.’

‘Sure of it. Looked like more than one of them, too.’

‘Do you feel anything?’ the scout leader asked him. ‘Any sense of panic?’

‘No, none at all. But maybe it’s different now that I know they can’t hurt me.’

‘I don’t know about
can’t
. Just because they didn’t hurt you, that doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re not capable of it. All it means is that they didn’t want to. I still think we need to be careful. Some of the Potawatomi legends say that the spirits could take a man apart as easy as a chicken.’

Jack kept looking in the direction in which he had seen the lights. ‘I’m sure they have Sparky. I can’t say that I understand
how
, exactly, but it’s like he’s been possessed by one of them.’

‘Possessed? You mean like in
The Exorcist
?’

‘Maybe that’s not the right word, but one second he looks like Sparky, the next second he’s turned into one of those white things. Maybe they’re messing with my head, the same way they can make people panic. But I still think they have him, and he’s alive, and I still think we can get him back.’

They were about to set off when they saw jostling headlights approaching from the opposite side of the lake, and heard the whinnying sound of SUVs.

‘Well, they sure didn’t waste any time,’ said the scout leader. He made his way back through the underbrush to the taped-off area where the scouts’ bodies had been found, and Jack followed him. They waited as two white patrol vehicles circled around the end of the lake and parked next to the scout leader’s Avalanche. Seven deputies climbed out and came across to them, the beams from their flashlights criss-crossing as they walked. One of them was the K-9 officer, Deputy Ridout, with his panting German Shepherd Barrett – the same tracker dog who had sniffed out the headless woman in the pool.

A shaven-headed big-bellied deputy with fiery cheeks and gingery eyebrows held out his hand and said, ‘Hi, Ambrose. None of us could believe it when we got your call. Dan Porter, of all people. Most level-headed guy I ever knew.’

‘This gentleman was with them when they shot themselves,’ said the scout leader. ‘Jack, this is Sergeant Jim Truscott. Jim, this is Jack Wallace, father of the missing boy.’

‘You actually saw them commit suicide, right in front of you?’ asked Sergeant Truscott.

‘I had my back turned when Undersheriff Porter shot himself,’ said Jack. ‘There was a bang, right behind me, and when I turned around I saw that he had blown his head off. Then Detective Faulkner shot herself.’

He lifted two fingers, pistol-like, to his ear, to show him how Sally had done it.

‘So you and Undersheriff Porter and this detective were all out looking for your boy?’

‘That’s correct. But then they just panicked. Well, I panicked, too, but I didn’t have a gun.’

‘They
panicked
? They were both law officers. What made them panic?’

The scout leader looked at Jack as if to say,
will you tell him, or shall I?
Jack shrugged, and so the scout leader said, ‘There are some people in the forest who can have that effect on you.’

‘People? What people?’

‘We don’t know for sure who they are.’

Sergeant Truscott didn’t answer at first. He was turning his head around, searching for something. Then he said, ‘Where are their bodies? Dan Porter and this detective woman?’

‘I think they’ve been taken away,’ Jack told him.

‘Taken away? Who by? What in hell’s name is going on here?’

‘Jim,’ said the scout leader, ‘I don’t think we have a whole lot of time. Jack here has reason to believe that these people are going to be leaving momentarily.’

‘Leaving? Where are they going? Do they have vehicles? Who the hell are they?’

‘I think they have my son,’ said Jack. ‘The last time I saw them was about ten minutes ago, in that direction. I think there’s about twenty or thirty of them. Please – we have to get after them.’

‘OK, sir, we’ll get after them,’ said Sergeant Truscott. ‘But who are they? What do they look like? Did they abduct your son for any particular reason? I really need you to fill me in here a little more. I can’t—’

‘Jim,’ the scout leader interrupted him. ‘How long have we known each other? Nearly five years, must be. Can you just trust me on this? Let’s just go after these people. After we catch them,
then
we can talk about the whos and the whats and the whys. For now, let’s just say that they’re a kind of a cult, and they all look kind of shiny.’

‘
Shiny
? What the Sam Hill does that mean?’

‘You’ll see. I promise you. Trust me, Jim, please.’

The rest of the deputies had gathered around them now. Sergeant Truscott hesitated for a moment and then he turned around to them and said, ‘Listen up, men! We’re looking for maybe twenty-plus suspects who may or may not have kidnapped this gentleman’s son. How old is your son, sir? Can you tell us his name, and what he looks like?’

‘He’s twelve, skinny, with blond hair. He goes by the nickname of Sparky.’

‘OK, everybody. we’re looking for Sparky, who’s twelve. The only description of the suspects that we have is that they’re
shiny
– and before you ask, I don’t have a clue what that means, either, but apparently you’ll know them when you see them.’

He turned to Jack. ‘That direction?’ he asked.

Jack nodded. ‘I’ll come with you,’ he said.

‘Sure you can. But stay well behind us, would you, in case there’s any trouble. You, too, Ambrose. Keep well in back.’

The deputies spread out and began to make their way through the trees. Three of them were in uniform, including Sergeant Truscott, but the other four were wearing jeans and casual shirts and jackets. Jack was surprised how young most of them were. Sergeant Truscott and one other deputy looked as if they were in their mid-forties, but the rest of them looked as if they had just finished high school.

There was no reason for them to walk stealthily. The cacophony in the forest was still as loud as it had been before, with birds screeching and whooping and chattering and – somewhere in the distance – that eerie, other-worldly howling.

‘Sure
sounds
like something’s going on here,’ said Sergeant Truscott, falling back a little to join Jack and the scout leader. ‘Last time I heard the forest as noisy as this, the whole goddamned shebang was on fire.’

‘I think the birds and the animals are all feeling anxious that these people are leaving,’ said the scout leader.

‘How’s that, Ambrose? How would they know?’

‘These people have been taking care of them for a long, long time, that’s how.’

‘I don’t understand a word you’re saying to me, Ambrose. You’re talking about these shiny people, right? I mean, have I ever seen them?’

‘No, Jim, you haven’t. Not too many people have.’

‘But if they’ve been here a long, long time, Ambrose, like you say, how can I possibly not have seen them? Muskegon County has a population of only one hundred seventy-one thousand three hundred and two people, and I know almost all of them.’

Just then, Barrett started barking – short, sharp, intermittent barks, followed by a high-pitched howling that sounded almost the same as the howling in the forest.

Deputy Ridout was saying, ‘Barrett! Hush up, will you! Barrett! What’s wrong with you, boy? Barrett! Quit pulling like that! Barrett!’

‘What is it, Eric?’ called Sergeant Truscott. ‘Has he picked up a scent?’

Deputy Ridout had dropped his flashlight, so two of the other officers shone theirs on him. He was struggling hard to keep control of Barrett, who was leaping and twisting and jerking at his leash.

‘Barrett! Sit! I said, sit! I said
sit
!’

But Barrett appeared to be having a seizure. His eyes were bulging and his tongue was hanging out, and he wouldn’t stop throwing himself into the air, almost choking himself on his collar. He dropped on to the ground on his back and rolled himself over, and it was then that Deputy Ridout lost his grip on his leash. Barrett immediately ran off into the darkness, and disappeared.

‘What the hell was all that about?’ said Sergeant Truscott. ‘Looked like he was having an epileptic fit!’

‘I have no idea,’ said Deputy Ridout, panting. ‘He had a medical only last week and he was A-one healthy. He never did anything like that before, ever.’

‘Well, we’ll just have to let him go for now. He’ll probably find his way back to you once he’s calmed down.’

Deputy Ridout could only shake his head in bewilderment. ‘He never did anything like that before, not ever. That dog is the sanest dog I ever handled. That dog is saner than most
people
, for Christ’s sake!’

Suddenly – between the trees up ahead of them – Jack saw a white shape running; and then another, and another. He laid his hand on Sergeant Truscott’s shoulder and pointed and said, ‘
There
– that’s one of them! Can you see it?’

The white shapes vanished almost immediately, but then they reappeared, and another two or three shapes came flitting between the trees. They were only about three hundred feet away, maybe less.