Page 87 of The Haunting of Paynes Hollow
“Dead,” I say. “Dead and drowned.”
“So you saw people dressed up like zombies, dragging a man into the water to scare you.”
I check in with Ben, only to find him doing the same to me. We exchange a look. Then I answer, slowly, giving Ben room to cut in. “We don’t know what we saw.”
“Well, you sure as hell didn’t see actual zombies,” Smits snaps. He inhales and rubs a hand over his face with a long sigh. “Okay. I know you’re freaked out, Sam. Someone is going to a lot of trouble to scare you.”
“Yeah,” Ben mutters. “Murdering a camper. I’d say that’s a ‘lot of trouble,’ all right.”
Smits shakes his head. “No one was murdered, Mr. Vandergriff. That camper was obviously in on it. They staged this whole thing to frighten Sam. She wakes hearing a scream, runs out and sees that scene play out. That camper made sure you saw him earlier—it wouldn’t work as well if you just saw some random person being dragged off. Instead, it’s an innocent camper you’d spoken to earlier.”
“That’s what you think happened?” Ben says.
“No, I think zombies came out of the water and killed that camper. Get your head out of your ass, Vandergriff. I know Sam is going through a really rough time with her aunt missing, but ifyouthink you saw zombies, then maybe you need to come down to my office for a little test.” He locks gazes with Ben. “For old times’ sake.”
“When we go back to the cottage,” Ben says, his voice even, “I will find a bottle and pee in it for you, Sheriff. I’ve been clean for years. Whatever we saw, we are reporting what appeared to be a murder, and you damn well better take that seriously enough to at least walk the property with us looking for that fellow’s gear.”
Smits turns toward the forest. Am I imagining it or does he blanch?
Don’t go in the forest at night.
“Fine,” Smits says. “We will drive over to the campsite where you saw him. The west field?”
“Yes, but the cyclist left that spot. He must have set up camp somewhere else on the property. There are a few decent places I know of.” Ben pauses for a beat. “Can’t drive to them, though. We’ll need to walk. There’s a path through the forest—”
“We’ll drive to the west field,” Smits says. “There are a few other spots we can see from the road. If you want to keep searching after that, be my guest. But this is the second night in a row I’ve been called out here, and I really need to get some sleep.”
In the west field, Smits finds signs that the camper had been there earlier—peg holes and campfire remains—but the man’s gear is gone. Smits checks a couple more places he can see from the road, and maybe he really does just consider this a wild-goose chase, but it seems clear to me that he really doesn’t want to go in the forest.
An hour later, Ben and I are back in the cottage. Smits is gone, and I’m trying to wrap my head around what just happened.
We saw a man die tonight. Ben and I have zero doubt of that. And yet here we are, in the cottage, the sheriff gone, the investigation apparently over, as if we’d hallucinated everything.
The problem is that I can see Smits’s point. Even Ben can, given the fact that he didn’t push the matter.
On the surface, Smits’s “it was all an act” explanation makes sense. Especially when the alternative is “the drowned dead dragged a man into the lake while a headless horseman watched.”
I’m sitting on the sofa, my knees drawn in. Ben is slumped on the recliner. At least thirty minutes have passed, and neither of us has spoken.
“We did see what we thought we saw, right?” I whisper finally. “There’s no way that was actors.”
“It wasn’t.”
I chew my lip. “We shouldn’t have called him.”
Ben stretches his legs. “Yeah, we should have. The point was that we reported what we saw. I didn’t expect him to believe us. And I sure as hell don’t expect him to solve it.”
“That’s on us,” I say. “To figure out what happened.”
“It is.”
This is where we should start talking. Sharing ideas. Comparing notes. But we only lapse back into silence, both falling into our thoughts as the night envelops us.
I fall asleep on the sofa, and when I wake, Ben is gone. I bolt up, my breath coming fast as I scramble to my feet, imagining him being dragged into the lake—
He’s right on the other side of the window. There’s a chair, but he’s leaning on the railing, staring out at the lake.
I push open the screen door. “Coffee?”
