The Chain(68)

There’s nothing Rachel can say.

When they go inside, the house is cold and Pete is trying to fix the woodstove. “How did it go?” he asks.

She shakes her head. Don’t bring it up, she mouths.

A silent dinner. Kylie moves the food around her plate. Rachel’s unable to eat. Pete’s worried sick about both of them.

When Pete and Kylie go to bed, Rachel logs on to her blog. There is a new notification in the comments section. From Anonymous. She scrolls down the screen and reads the comment.

It says, Delete blog now before they see it. Keep eye on personal column of Boston Globe.

She doesn’t need to be told twice. She logs in to Blogger and clicks Delete blog.

Are you sure you wish to erase this blog and all of its contents? Blogger asks her.

She clicks Yes and logs out.





50



Wednesday, 5:00 a.m. Rachel can’t sleep.

She gets up, puts on her comfy red sweater and her robe, and makes some coffee. She sits in the dark living room for a while looking at the lights of the houses on the far side of the tidal basin.

Then she goes outside and waits. She plucks at that loose thread on her sweater. Eli the cat comes to investigate, and after accepting a few strokes, he slips off into the sand and reeds to war with the possums.

A bristle of alertness lights the nerve endings on the nape of her neck. This is an eons-deep response. Humans are both predators and prey.

The insistent pounding of her heart. The talismanic trembling of her limbs.

Today is going to be important.

The curtains are opening on the third act.

The morning sun is low and dim, and the air is cold but not bitingly so.

The smell of the marsh.

The sound of birds.

The yellow of a bicycle headlight on Old Point Road.

Little Paul Weston makes more or less directly for her house. Almost no one now gets home delivery of the Globe. Paul cycles down the lane. She waves from the stoop so as not to freak him out, but he’s spooked anyway.

“Jesus, Mrs. O’Neill! You scared the life out of me,” he says.

“Sorry, Paul. I couldn’t sleep. Thought I’d wait for the paper.”

Instead of throwing the Globe vaguely in the direction of the house he cycles up to her and puts it in her hand.

“Have a nice day,” he says and bikes off.

She goes in, unfolds the paper on the living-room table, and turns on the main light.

She ignores the headlines and goes straight to the personal columns and the small ads. Despite Craigslist and eBay, the Boston Globe still has dozens of small ads every day.

She skims through the obits and love connections and car ads and finally finds what she’s looking for under the heading Miscellaneous: Chains bought and sold: 1-202-965-9970.

She wakes Pete and shows him the ad.

He shakes his head. “I don’t know.”

“We are going to do this,” Rachel insists.

“Why?”

“Because it’s never going to end unless we do something. It’s killing Kylie and it’s out there right now, stalking us, remembering us, and drawing in other families, other moms, other kids.”

“You’re talking like The Chain has a life of its own.”

“That’s exactly what it has. It’s a monster demanding a human sacrifice every few days.”

“I don’t know, Rachel. Sleeping dogs.”

“They’re not sleeping. That’s the issue. I’ll call this number on a burner phone.”

“Maybe I should call. I don’t think anyone at The Chain knows my voice. If it’s a trap, I mean.”

“I’ll disguise my voice. I’ll do my grandmother’s accent.”

Pete gets the bag of burner phones from the closet and they select one at random and go onto the deck so as not to wake Kylie. Pete looks at the clock. It’s only six thirty in the morning. “Too early to call someone?”

“I want to call before Kylie gets up.”

Pete nods. He doesn’t like any of this but it’s Rachel’s show and he just has to go along with it. She dials the number.

A male voice answers immediately: “Hello?”

“I’m callink about ze ad in ze paper,” Rachel replies in an approximation of her grandmother’s Polish accent.

“What about it?” the man asks.

“I’ve been having trouble vith a chain and I vas vondering if you vere having ze same trouble and vhether ve could help each other,” Rachel says.

There is a significant pause on the phone.

“Are you the one who wrote the blog?” he asks in a deep baritone that also has a tinge of a foreign accent to it.

“Yes.”

Another long pause.

“I don’t know if I can trust you. And you should be wary about trusting me. Don’t give out any personal information at all, OK?” he says.

“OK.”

“They could be listening. In fact, they could be you. Or me. Do you understand?”

“Yes.”

“Do you really understand? The danger is real.”

“I know. I’ve seen it up close,” Rachel says, kind of abandoning the accent now.

A few seconds pass. Then: “Since you’re calling yourself Ariadne, you can call me Theseus. Perhaps we shall go into the labyrinth together.”