The Hollows(15)

Before leaving Penance, a little shaken from how my encounter with Nikki had ended, I had managed to get online. I immediately searched for ‘murders Penance 1999’ and found a few news stories that had originally been published in a Portland newspaper and a now-defunct paper that covered Aroostook County. There were photos of the two victims, Eric and Sally, including a photo of her on her wedding day, smiling beside her husband, Neal. It seemed as if the editor of the Aroostook Eagle was trying to make a point, and I detected a whiff of judgement in the way the story was written, as if the teachers had paid the price for their adultery. Cheat and die was the subtext.

Most interesting to me was the reproduction of Everett Miller’s school yearbook photo. I was shocked to learn how young he was: he would have been just seventeen at the time of the murders.

In the yearbook photo he had long black hair and a wispy beard. There was a hint of eyeliner, like he’d been wearing make-up and hadn’t scrubbed it off properly before the picture was taken. He was scowling, his gaze refusing to meet the camera lens. The Portland paper had interviewed several people in Penance who described him as ‘odd’ and ‘a freak’. Of course, more than one person had blamed ‘that Devil’s music he listens to’. Somebody said they’d heard he was a Marilyn Manson fan.

I thought back. The Hollow Falls murders had happened just a couple of months after the Columbine shootings. The perpetrators of that terrible massacre had apparently been part of a group called the ‘Trenchcoat Mafia’, and the media had latched on to the idea that they were fans of Marilyn Manson. I’d written a piece about it at the time. In the summer of 1999, shock rockers like Manson and his fans were taking their turn as scapegoats for everything that was wrong with the world. From what I’d learned, Everett’s tastes were more hardcore than Manson, stuff that was too noisy to ever make it on to MTV, and I could see how the people of Penance would find it easy to believe that the local ‘weirdo’ was guilty – especially when they learned about the Wolfspear music video David had mentioned to me. Later, I found a link to the video on Reddit and it was indeed disturbing, with its scenes of sex and bloody murder in the woods. I could imagine it being shown to a jury to convince them of Everett’s warped tastes and love of violent imagery. It was the kind of thing that could send someone to prison.

Not that there was anything to say he wasn’t guilty. There was forensic evidence, namely Everett’s bandana. On top of that, the moment suspicion had fallen on him, he had run. In fact, as far as I could tell from the reports, no one had seen Miller since a few hours before the murders, at dinner. His mother couldn’t tell if his bed had been slept in because his room was such a mess she rarely went in there. ‘Everett pretty much kept to himself,’ she’d said.

Was he guilty? He certainly seemed to be. I had no hope of finding out where he was now, so that wasn’t going to be the thrust of my article, but I wanted to be able to paint a portrait of him. Nikki had said that everyone around here had known him. Hopefully I would be able to find someone who wasn’t as averse to talking to a journalist as she was.

My focus returned to the object on the grass in front of David and Connie’s cabin. Was it an animal?

Taking my freshly brewed coffee with me, I went out to take a look, still wearing the white towelling robe that had been provided by the resort. I walked barefoot across the lawn and down the path towards the Butlers’ cabin.

It was an animal. From a distance I thought it was a cat, but as I got closer I realised it was a rabbit, a huge one, with white fur that was stained with blood across its belly. Flies were crawling over its face and had settled upon its staring eyes. Its throat was torn or cut open, and more flies had gathered there.

I was glad Frankie was still asleep. If she saw this, she would freak out, particularly since the rabbit looked just like Swifty, Frankie’s pet rabbit, who was back at home, being looked after by her mum. Frankie was besotted with her pet, and her Instagram feed was full of pictures of him. Swifty even had his own Instagram account, which was considerably more popular than mine.

I glanced at our cabin, worried that Frankie might emerge and see this grisly sight. At that moment, David emerged from his cabin. It was still only seven and he was dressed in a T-shirt and boxer shorts, his hair sticking up almost vertically.

‘Tom? What’s going on?’

I pointed to the dead rabbit.

‘Whoa. That’s a big bunny.’

He slowly came down the steps and across the grass, staring at the animal. Then Connie appeared in the doorway, in a robe that matched mine, propping herself up with her stick. Behind her, peering out with eyes like dinner plates, was Ryan.

‘I’ll run up to reception,’ I said. ‘Get someone to come and . . . deal with it.’

David wasn’t listening. ‘What do you think did it? A cat? A fox?’ He stooped and bent closer to the rabbit, examining its throat. ‘That cut looks pretty clean to me.’

I stared at him. ‘What, you think a person did this? With a knife?’

He chuckled and got to his feet. ‘Nah, I’m messing with you. Must have been a fox. Or one of those massive cats they have around here. A Maine Coon.’

I thought about Nikki’s cat, Cujo.

‘We don’t need to bother reception,’ David went on. ‘We can deal with it ourselves.’