The Hollows(45)

He looked at me, his hands on his hips. ‘Are you now?’

‘I’d like to interview a few of the people who lived here back then. Maybe you could give me your email address so I could send you some questions? I also want to write about the dark-tourism angle. It would be great if I could quote you. What you said earlier, about it being good for business.’

He laughed. ‘Get out of here. You want me to get fired?’

‘It could be anonymous.’

He shook his head. ‘Sounds like it would draw even more rubberneckers here. All the way from the UK.’

‘I don’t think that would happen. Besides, like you said, no matter how distasteful you find it, it’s good for business. Good for your job.’

He appeared to think about it. ‘Nah,’ he said. ‘Sorry, man. I don’t want to get involved. Greg was going on about it at our last team meeting. We don’t want this place to be famous because of the murders.’ He paused. ‘I really don’t think we’re going to find this phone. What made her drop it anyway? Did something scare her?’

‘What makes you ask that?’

‘Hey, I’m aware of all the rumours. About Everett Miller still lurking in these woods. All bullshit, of course.’

‘Did you know him?’

I knew exactly what he was going to say. ‘Everyone knew him. He was the town freak.’

‘Nikki said he was all right. That he wasn’t a “freak”.’

‘Really? She . . . Hey, did you hear that?’

‘What?’

‘I thought I heard someone. In the trees.’

He walked quickly towards a spot near the edge of the clearing. I expected someone wearing a sheep or bird mask to step out at any second.

‘Hey,’ Carl called. ‘Is someone there?’

Silence.

‘Come on. Whoever it is, help us. Come out and help us look for this phone.’ He laughed and winked at me.

More silence.

‘I guess I imagined it,’ Carl said.

I was sure I could feel it, though. Someone there, watching us. Listening. But all I could hear was the ringing of those hidden wind chimes.





Chapter 22


Walking back, I couldn’t shake the feeling that someone was following me. I kept hearing noises. Footsteps. But every time I stopped and turned around, there was no one there.

It’s not real, I told myself. It was hardly surprising that my imagination was so overstimulated. It was as if I’d hooked it up to a caffeine drip.

Back at the cabin, Frankie was still asleep. Trying to relax while I waited for her to wake up, I kept coming back to the same question.

Could Everett Miller really have been living around here for twenty years without being found?

I thought about what the children had said about a secret cabin and a ‘him’ who was supposed to live in the woods. Could this secret cabin be real? Was that where the sound of the wind chimes was coming from? And had Everett been living there all along?

As unlikely as it seemed, I let myself run with the idea. I imagined that Everett really had retreated into the woods after the murders and hadn’t fled to Canada. Somewhere in this vast wooded area, between the town and the lake, was a cabin. Everett could have lived there, surviving on wildlife that he trapped. Sneaking out at night when there was no one around, maybe going into town and rifling through the garbage. A hermit. It wouldn’t be the first time it had happened. There had been numerous cases of people, even whole families, who had retreated into the American wilderness, living off the land, hiding from society. In Everett’s case, hiding from what he’d done.

For twenty years, these woods had been almost empty. He would have had them to himself.

And then the construction workers had come. The resort was built. Suddenly, Everett wasn’t alone any more. There were strangers in the woods. Pony treks. Foot traffic between the resort and the town. His lifestyle, his very existence, was threatened. He couldn’t roam around now. He might be spotted. His freedom would be taken away.

What would I do in his shoes? I could think of only three options.

One: cower and hide.

Two: run away. Finally head for the border.

Three: try to make things how they were before.

But how, exactly, would he achieve that?





Chapter 23


A month had gone by since Abigail’s body had left the earth, but Crow felt closer to her than ever. Whenever he came to the woods, she would fall into step beside him. She talked to him. Carried on her teachings. He had a book that she’d given him before she died, and they would talk about it, discussing the history of the Hollows. He re-encountered the words that hadn’t sunk in when she had first used them. Words like ‘animism’. That was the most important one. She helped him understand how the world worked, how humans and nature and animals were connected.

Best of all, she showed him secret paths.

On a day in late May, when the ground was still damp and black flies swarmed in the air, she had taken him deep into the woods, a secret tangle of undergrowth and firs, the trees crowded together so closely that there wasn’t even room for a bird to fly between them. It had rained heavily the week before and the ground squelched underfoot, sucking at his soles as if it were trying to hold him there, prevent him from going deeper. The sky was blue but it was cold here, in this place the sun never reached. He could sense animals watching him, hostile but afraid.