Night Film(143)

Her voice cut out into wild static.

“Hello?”

“… thing was okay. McGrath, you still there?”

“Yes. Hello?”

A clanging screeched across the line and it went dead.

I tried calling her back, but it wouldn’t connect. I waited another minute, in the off chance she’d manage to get through again, but the phone had no service. I zipped it back into my jacket pocket, explaining to Hopper and Nora what she’d just told me.

“What do you mean empty?” asked Nora.

“There were no tenants.”

“But that’s impossible.”

“Is it?”

“No,” said Hopper. “Maybe they were illegal aliens. When we showed up, it was too much attention.”

“But Ashley’s neighbor,” interjected Nora. “Iona. She wasn’t illegal. She had an American accent, and she told us she’d lived there for a year. Why would she take off?”

“To avoid arrest for prostitution.”

Nora was unconvinced. “It doesn’t seem right.”

They fell silent, waiting for me to weigh in. I recognized the moment for what it was, the chance not to go ahead, to reconsider everything, and go back.

The sky had faded from white to gray, the surrounding forest hushed and still. I climbed in and grabbed the paddle.

“We’ll look into it when we get back,” I said.



There wasn’t a stream—only a swamp.

We’d spent the last hour crossing Lows Lake, Hopper and I paddling in silent tandem. Battered by shifting currents and a cold, unrelenting wind, we sailed past deserted islands crowded with pines and a ghost tree growing straight out of the water, its gaunt trunk and scrawny branches raised heavenward like an outcast pleading for his life. Now, having reached the north shore, we were doggedly searching for the hidden rivulet that would take us into The Peak. We were trapped in muddy water barbed with grasses and covered with thick green algae, which broke apart in clumps, then, after we’d edged through, resealed, erasing all signs of our passing.

The wind had dissipated—strange, as it’d been so turbulent minutes ago out on the lake. Dense trees surrounded us, packed like hordes of stranded prisoners. There wasn’t a single bird, not a scuttle through the branches, not a cry—as if everything alive had fled.

“This can’t be right,” said Nora, turning around.

I hadn’t realized, sitting behind her, how worried she’d become.

“Let me see the map.”

She handed it to me along with the compass.

“We should go back,” she blurted, staring into the reeds.

“What?” asked Hopper irritably, turning.

“We can’t get stuck in this in the dark. We can’t sleep here.”

“Who said anything about sleeping here?”

“We’re supposed to be following a stream. Where’s the stream?”

“We’ll give it a little while longer,” I said.

Within minutes, we were stuck on a submerged log. Hopper, without hesitation, clambered out and, standing thigh-deep in the muck, shoved us loose. Climbing back in, his jeans were coated with mud and that strange neon algae, though he didn’t seem to notice or care. He stared resolutely ahead as if in a trance, beating the grasses with his oar. I couldn’t help but imagine he was thinking about Ashley, because out here, the stark emptiness of the wilderness seemed to naturally summon regrets and fear.

Our progress remained slow. The swamp reeked of decay, a smell that seemed to be coming off the algae, which only grew thicker the deeper into this bog we drifted. We had to shove the paddles straight down to wrestle the canoe even an inch past the sludge and yellow reeds rising around us, forming a suffocating corridor.

I checked my watch. It was already after five. It’d be nightfall in less than an hour. Our plan had been to be on The Peak property by now.

Suddenly Nora gasped, clamping a hand over her mouth and pointing at something to her left.

A faded piece of red string had been knotted to one of the reeds, the end dangling in the water. I recognized it immediately. Marlowe had claimed Cordova discovered such strings when he’d first moved to The Peak. They’d led him to the clearing where the townspeople performed their rituals.

“We’re going the right way,” said Hopper.

We pushed on, the swamp suddenly deepening, the mud thinning. A frail but discernible current appeared, seemingly out of nowhere. The only sounds were the laps of the water, the grasses bending around us, whispering against the sides of the boat.

“I can see the fence,” said Hopper.

Sure enough—far ahead, I could make out the dark silhouette of Cordova’s military fence cutting across the stream, marking the southern edge of his property.

When we were twelve feet away, we extended the paddles to the bank. The fence looked like something surrounding a defunct prison, the chain links rusted, the top looped with razor wire. Where the water passed underneath, the wires had been brutally hacked—exactly as Marlowe had described, the ends gnarled and twisted back, leaving a triangular hole about a foot wide.

“See any cameras?” I asked.

Nora, looking through the binoculars, shook her head.

I unzipped my backpack, removed the fluorescent bulb, and climbed out, heading to the fence. Immediately I spotted three wires running horizontally across the distorted chain links. They hung loosely, and on the closest metal fencepost they’d twisted free of the casings.