The Northwoods Chronicles (27 page)

“I’m no sissy, Emmiline,” he said. “I’m not
falling for it this time. Come out. Come out wherever you are.” He
hefted the tree branch and tried to feel brave.

But he didn’t, and when something swooped right
next to his ear, he jumped, stumbled and almost fell again. He was
totally unequipped for this.

He sat down. And waited, fear closing in.

Then he heard her, Emmiline, that traitorous
bitch. She was walking down the train tracks. He could hear her
shoes swishing through the weeds. She couldn’t see him, he knew. He
stood, crouched, and stepped off the tracks. Goddamn her. He
thought he’d done the job right the first time, but apparently not.
He wouldn’t fail a second time.

Just as she came up next to him, he swung the
branch with all his strength.

“Mitch?” she said just before he connected.

That wasn’t Emmiline’s voice. But it was too
late. She went down hard, and he didn’t need a medical degree to
know what was running out of her skull as it lay crushed on the
rail.

For a moment he felt a little disoriented. A
little confused. He sat down on the rail next to her body, and put
the tree branch down. Funny how he wasn’t afraid anymore. He had
other things to think about.

He sat there a while, feeling a little bit hung
over, until the night turned cold. He felt sorry about the woman.
Jeez, it wasn’t her fault. He wondered who her money would go to,
but then he put that thought right out of his head. He sat up and
started making his way slowly in the darkness back to her car. He’d
take it back to her place, walk home and chalk this whole
distasteful adventure up to a bad date. Women were trouble, and one
of these days he was going to have to learn that.

Kevin Leppens woke up to
the sound of an engine idling. A car was waiting outside on the
street in front of his house. He heard it because his bedroom
window was wide open; it was July and the night was still to
breathless. He checked the clock, it was two-thirteen in the
morning.

Normally, it was silent as a tomb out there.
Coyotes yipping at each other were about the only sounds that came
this far north in the night. In the winter, the night itself made
crackling noises as the thermometer plunged, and everything
expanded as it froze. Sometimes he imagined he could hear the
aurora borealis as it shimmered overhead, but never had there been
a car idling in front of his house at two-thirteen a.m.

Maybe someone was going to the airport.

He punched his pillow and turned over.

The car continued to idle. And then it quit.

Kevin waited to hear car doors, quiet whispered
conversation, as whoever it was did whatever they did. But nothing.
The car engine stopped and nothing else happened.

Kids. Making out. Having sex in the
backseat.

But he knew that wasn’t right.

First thing, there weren’t any kids in this area
of town. Secondly, he knew it was for him. He’d been expecting
it.

He’d outwait them. He didn’t need to go out
there, and he couldn’t believe they’d come in here.

He pulled the covers up against his neck and
tried to relax. It was comforting, in a way, knowing that they were
finally here for him. He didn’t have to look over his shoulder all
the time anymore. The endgame was in sight; and the next move was
up to him.

He hoped.

They couldn’t take him the way they took the
others; he was too old. But he was on to their game, and they’d
finally come to get him.

Well, he’d see about that. He’d resist. He’d
resist all the way.

Kevin spent the rest of the night listening,
heart pounding. When he got up at dawn, the car was gone. He hadn’t
heard it leave. Perhaps he’d dozed off. Perhaps he’d dreamed it.
Regardless, he got up with a mental list of a dozen things to do;
another set of dead bolts on every door, window locks; he’d even
check with Julia, his landlord, about ordering some wrought-iron
bars for his windows.

As he trundled down the front walk, headed to
Margie’s for coffee and breakfast, he noticed the tire prints in
the dust outside his house. They looked entirely too ordinary. He
hadn’t dreamed it. There wasn’t much traffic on this little spud of
a road on the east side of White Pines Junction where he rented a
little bungalow cottage.

He chose White Pines Junction because it was
remote, and quiet, and he could do whatever he wanted. In the
summer, people took their kids to the park across the street, and
Kevin worked on his computer at the little table in the dining room
where he could hear them laughing. He liked hearing little kids
laugh. But most of town was centered around the lake, and he didn’t
have any use for that.

He’d won the Pepsi sweepstakes merely by being
at the right place at the right time, and by the time he had
collected his enormous check, his bags were already packed. He got
out of Boston and came to this little place, way up in the cold,
remote northwoods. His parents had followed him here from Boston,
or at least they’d tried, but his dad had gone back and left his
mom here by herself. Kevin didn’t really want her around, but she
had proved herself to be self-sufficient and no bother. He just
felt uneasy, as if he had been the cause of their broken marriage,
and as if she were now his responsibility, both financially and
emotionally. He couldn’t imagine a woman living alone all year
around up here, it was such a harsh place. Yet she did it. And so
did other women.

Anyway, the tire marks in the dirt looked pretty
ordinary, but he knew that they were made by a car full of
not-so-ordinary.

Kevin got to the diner, grabbed a morning
newspaper from the counter, and sat down. Margie floated over with
the coffee pot, righted a mug, and gave him a nice morning
smile.

“The usual for you?”

He nodded, and smiled, and within five minutes
he had a bowl of steaming oatmeal with raisins and almonds and
brown sugar. And an orange slice. Perfect.

He had just poured fresh cream around the edges
of his oatmeal when the bells on the door jangled. He gave a
shiver, and then took up a spoonful of steaming oatmeal.

A big presence in plaid cotton sat down across
from him, filling the red vinyl booth with fresh air.

Lloyd Bunnington wiped off his ever-present ball
cap and set it on the seat next to him. He drilled Kevin with pale
blue eyes.

Kevin’s spoon stopped halfway to his mouth. Then
it continued its trip, but Kevin had no time to savor it. “Hey,
Bun,” he said.

“Kevin.” Bun turned to Margie, who hustled up
with the coffee pot. “Two eggs poached, dry toast, please. Mmmm,
that coffee sure smells good.”

“Good morning, Bun,” Margie said as she splashed
fresh coffee into both cups.

“Miss Margie,” he said, but his eyes were fixed
solely upon Kevin.

As soon as she left, Bun said, “Boot up that
computer lately?”

“Every day,” Kevin said, but he knew what Bun
meant. Bun wanted to know when the next child disappearance was
going to be, and Kevin didn’t know. Kevin didn’t want to know. In
fact, after Margie and Jimbo’s boy, Micah, had been taken, Kevin
had predicted the next disappearance, and Pastor Porter’s baby had
been taken, right on time, right on target, right on the precise
goddamned dot. When Kevin heard about the disappearance, he erased
the program, removed its entire existence. He hadn’t even kept a
backup copy. Then Julia Morganstern’s grandson went, and Kevin
didn’t know if he was glad he’d erased it or not. And now—

“It’s coming soon, isn’t it?”

“Couldn’t tell you, Bun,” Kevin said. “Don’t
have that program anymore. There are some things we’re not meant to
know.”

Bun eyed him over the rim of his coffee cup. He
sipped, then set it down, his big old, working-man’s hands moving
restlessly on the tabletop. “I can feel it, Kevin. I felt it, I saw
it,
I was in it
when, you know, when it took”—Bun looked
around to make sure Margie wasn’t listening—“Micah Benson. I know
what it feels like, and I’m feeling it again. The feeling started
yesterday and it’s growing. Some kid’s going to go in the next day
or so, isn’t that true?”

Kevin looked down at his oatmeal.

“Isn’t it?”

Kevin nodded, then he looked up at Bun. “But you
don’t have to worry, because it’s coming for me.”

Bun sat back and regarded Kevin with squinty
suspicion. “You? Why you?”

“Because I know about them. I figured out their
game once, I could do it again. But I won’t. I don’t want to.”

They stared at each other as Margie approached
the table and lay Bun’s breakfast down. “Everything all right
here?” she asked.

“Just fine, ma’am,” Kevin said, and smiled up at
her.

Bun waited until Margie left, then moved his
breakfast out of the way. “Who are they? What are they doing? What
do they want? Where do they take the kids?”

“I don’t know any of that. I don’t want to
know.”

“Well I do, by god. And I want my kin back. My
baby sister and my little boy, to come back and grow up like
regular children. And Micah. And the pastor’s baby, and every one
of those lost children who have been disappearing out of here in
the last hundred years or so.”

“Well, maybe when I get there, I can try to send
them back.” Kevin’s spoon vibrated against the oatmeal bowl. His
hand was trembling. He put the spoon down.

Bun squinted at him again. “You really think
you’re going, don’t you?”

Kevin nodded.

“But what if it ain’t you? What if, while you’re
packing your bags to go, some other kid gets snatched?”

“Nothing I can do about that. It’s not my fault.
I’m not the one taking them.”

Bun pulled his plate back in front of himself
and began to eat, but Kevin had lost his appetite. It was real,
now, he could feel it, too. It was a growing pinprick feeling on
his skin in addition to the dread in his heart when he thought
about that idling car.

He pulled a wad of money from his pocket and
peeled off bills for the tab. “I’ve got to go see my mom,” he
said.

Bun smiled, held out his hand. Kevin shook it,
but when he tried to let it go, Bun held on. “Send me those three
babies back.”

Kevin nodded, the lump that had formed in his
throat keeping him from talking.

“Send ’em all back,” Bun said. “I’ll take ’em
all.”

Kevin kept walking, out the door and into the
bright sunshine.

~~~

“Mom?” Kevin turned the knob and opened the
door, after knocking a couple of times. He shouted into the
over-heated interior of her little house, not a whole lot different
from his little cottage. “Mom? You home?”

Nobody locked their doors in White Pines
Junction, it was one of the little perks of living in a small town.
Kevin went in, where he heard her footsteps upstairs.

“Hi, honey. I’ll be right down. Coffee pot’s
on.”

The new kitchen was a beauty, Kevin had to
admit. Apparently, the remodel had struck the death knell for his
parents’ marriage, but Kevin had seen that coming from many years
away. He was just sorry that his dad had to go back to Boston and
into obscurity. Kevin hadn’t heard from him since.

He poured himself a cup of coffee, added cream
and sugar, and wandered into the little living room to sit in the
big chair and wait for his mom. He didn’t know what he was going to
say to her, didn’t know how to break the news, or even if he was
going to break any news, or if he’d just sit a while and spend some
nice time with her before he left. Maybe he’d write her a note.

A few minutes later, she came down the stairs
looking younger and prettier than Kevin had ever seen her.

“There’s something more than wonderful about
living up here,” Louise Leppens said. “Aren’t we the lucky
ones?”

Kevin raised his eyebrows.

“I won a trip to Rome! I leave on Sunday!”

“Mom, that’s great.”

She was all abuzz with travel arrangements and
tour books and pamphlets and itineraries, and Kevin listened, but
sorrow hung increasingly heavy in his soul and he had a hard time
rising up to her level of enthusiasm. As she talked on and on, he
realized he had some final arrangements to make about his money,
and he better do it soon, because the blanket of dread that
accompanied the electrical charge he could feel increased
exponentially with the passing minutes.

He gave his mother a long, slow hug and stroked
her hair and told her how much he loved her. When she pulled back
from him to question her son’s unusual display of affection, he
found that he couldn’t meet her eyes. He pecked her on her soft
cheek and left, headed to the bank.

Like a dying man, he thought. He ought to be
relishing every moment, every sparkle on the lake, every flutter of
bird wings. Instead, all he could think about was how unfair it all
was. Here he was: young, rich, single and smart, and he had to be
ripped out of his comfortable world into something mysterious and
unforgiving.

But to deny it would be stupid, so he went ahead
and made his list. He jettisoned the idea of bars on the windows
and decided to take a more practical approach of putting his
affairs in order. Bars on the windows would mean nothing. In fact
the idling car engine meant nothing. It was probably just there to
serve notice. Give him time to kiss his mother good-bye. Back up
his hard disk. By the time he was finished with Anthony Brumbach
the banker, Kevin’s hair was beginning to stand on end at the nape
of his neck. He was beginning to hear and smell the crackle of
electricity as well as feel it, and the air began to feel thin and
eerie.

He felt panic rising. He wrapped up his business
at the bank, secure in the knowledge that not only his mother, but
a couple of local charities would be much better off financially in
the event of his death or disappearance. He made it clear to the
banker and his notary that if he disappeared, they only needed to
wait one full year before they disbursed his estate.