The Hollows(71)

It didn’t matter right now. But I wished David had found his note last night.

I fished out the note I’d received, screwed up and tattered after being in my pocket all night, and handed it to David.

He read it. ‘When did you get this?’ he demanded.

‘Last night.’

‘What, after you got back here?’

‘No. Before.’

I thought his eyes were going to pop out. ‘What the fuck? Before? You mean, while we were searching everywhere, you’d already seen this?’

‘It says not to talk to anyone. An instruction you’ve already ignored by coming here.’

His mouth opened. He looked at the note he’d found on his car. He closed his mouth.

‘Maybe it’s okay,’ I said, looking around. ‘He’s not going to know we’ve spoken to each other, unless—’

Something struck me. Greg was the manager of Hollow Falls. He could easily have bugged this place, couldn’t he? He could be listening to everything we were saying right now.

I gestured for David to follow me outside. He didn’t move until I hissed, ‘Come on.’

I looked around for somewhere safe to talk. Greg couldn’t have this whole place bugged. He couldn’t have bugged the insides of our cars.

David seemed to catch up with my thinking. He unlocked his car, got into the driver’s seat and I got in the other side. Maybe they were watching, but they wouldn’t be able to hear. And maybe I was taking a huge gamble, perhaps we should both be sitting in our cabins doing nothing except waiting – but surely the important thing, from Greg’s perspective, was for us not to go to the authorities. David and I talking to each other wasn’t going to wreck his lunatic plan, whatever it was. He’d just been trying to buy himself time, cautioning us to remain isolated. Time for what, I had no idea.

A horrible thought struck me. Had he already hurt Frankie and Ryan, and wanted more time to get away before we called the police? Oh Jesus, is that what the notes were for? A stalling attempt so he could get on a plane or flee north?

I sucked in a breath and tried not to panic. What I needed to do was fill David in. We had to be operating with the same information.

‘Okay,’ I said. ‘I need you to listen without too many interruptions or questions.’

I told him everything I knew, going back to Ryan’s offending Instagram post, the threatening messages, my conviction that Buddy and Darlene, or maybe Greg himself, had taken Donna’s beta blockers. I told him about Frankie seeing masked figures in the woods the night she and Ryan had argued. I described what Frankie and Ryan had seen yesterday, and how the twins had attacked them with rocks.

‘Then, last night, we saw Buddy and Darlene with Greg. He’s their dad. He must be the person in the crow mask. Then I talked with Nikki—’

‘Hold up. Who’s Nikki?’

‘Someone I thought I could trust. I think she and Greg were involved in the murders of Eric Daniels and Sally Fredericks. It’s—’

‘Greg, the manager? You think he killed Eric and Sally, and now you think he has Ryan and Frankie? Why would you—’

‘I know it sounds mad. But I’m telling you, he’s insane. Nikki told me all about it. He believes that the Hollows are home to the spirit of this woman who befriended them when they were kids. That the Hollows have to be protected from outsiders. Nikki didn’t finish telling me everything, but I think that’s why they killed the teachers. They’d been trying to frighten people away by carrying out all these pranks around the campground but it wasn’t working. So they decided they needed to do something more extreme. A ritual murder. Something that would ensure no one wanted to come and stay here again. No parent would want their kids coming to stay here.’

He stared at me, open-mouthed. He and Connie were supposed to be the experts on the murders. This was blowing his mind. ‘Whoa . . . wait. So Everett Miller didn’t do it?’

‘I don’t know. I think he was involved. Nikki said there were three of them. She was Fox, Greg was Crow, and I assume Everett was Goat.’

‘And now these kids, Buddy and Darlene . . .’

‘They were wearing the Fox and Goat masks. They’re Nikki and Everett’s replacements, it seems. But Nikki’s helping him too, presumably because Greg has told her she needs to do it to protect herself from being found out for her role in the 1999 killings. Her job was to get me out of the way while they took Frankie and Ryan. And this whole thing – the notes and the abduction of our kids – is because I was getting close to the truth. I was going to expose Greg and ruin his plans before he could—’

‘Murder someone else?’ said David, finishing my sentence. ‘Carry out another ritual? Holy shit – our kids! He thinks if he does the same thing again it will have the same outcome. Hollow Falls closing down.’

‘Yeah.’

David faced the windscreen. The trees swayed in the morning breeze.

‘But why would he wait?’ he asked.

I was scared of the words I was about to speak, but forced them out. ‘I think maybe the notes are a stalling tactic, giving him time to get away.’

‘You think they’re already dead?’ He shouted it.

‘I don’t know.’ Realising I was shouting too, I forced myself to lower my voice. ‘Can you think of any other reason why he would wait? It’s not, I don’t know, the anniversary of the original murders today, is it?’