Page 92 of The Haunting of Paynes Hollow
Ben: I’m fine with you telling her everything or telling her nothing
Ben: I’m not worried she’ll run back to Daddy with the whole story
Ben: It really is your call. An outsider view might help us see stuff we’re missing. But if you’re worried about scaring her off, that’s your call, too
I deflate. Fine. He’s not being a jerk. He didn’t abandon me to a hard choice. He left me to make my own decision.
And that decision is…?
I’m not sure. He’s right on both counts. We could use a third party who wasn’t here and can poke holes in our bizarre story. But I’m also reluctant to scare off an ally… and a potential friend.
“We had to call your dad out last night,” I say as I plug in the kettle for tea. “Something happened.”
“You’re both okay?” She sees the answer in my nod and quickly says, “Is it something about your aunt?”
I shake my head. “Yesterday evening, shortly after you left, Ben and I had a run-in with a cyclist trying to camp on the property. Words were exchanged. The guy left—or seemed to. Then we woke up to screams.”
She’s in the middle of calmly adding milk to her coffee and pulls back so fast she sloshes it.
I continue, “Ben came and got me. We headed out. We saw something on the beach to the west. It was the camper. Badly wounded. Lying on the shore. We were running over when something came out of the water and dragged him in.”
She’s still. Utterly still, milk carton in hand, her gaze on mine, searching my face as if awaiting the punch line to a very unfunny joke.
I hold out my phone. “I don’t think you saw this photo.” It’s the blurry one of Gail coming out of the water.
“What the hell?” She recoils, and her gaze flies to mine. “My dad said you got a photo of someone dressed up to look like your aunt, to scare you. That is not…” She swallows. “That does not look like an actor. It looks like your aunt. Except…”
“Dead,” I say. “Drowned. That’s what the figures last night looked like. They hauled the camper out into the lake.”
Josie’s still staring at me, still waiting for the punch line, her expression shuttered with the look of someone who fears she’s being mocked. The little girl hanging out with the older kids who tell her wild stories and then laugh when she believes them.
She finally says, “You told my father that you saw zombies drag a man into the lake and he… what? Is there an investigation? There can’t be. He’d have called me. So what did he do? Does he think you’re pranking him? That Ben’s playing some elaborate hoax?”
“He thinkssomeone’splaying one. On me. That it’s all part of scaring me into forfeiting my inheritance. My cousin or maybe my uncle. They hired the camper and staged the whole thing.”
“Is that possible? Given what you saw?”
My eyes prickle, and it takes me a moment to recognize the sensation. Tears. Not tears of grief or frustration or confusion. Tears of gratitude for that simple question.
Josie doesn’t jump on her father’s interpretation. She doesn’t even pause to consider her own interpretation. She asks me. What did I see?
That tells me where I want to go with this.
“No,” I say. “Same with Ben. Neither of us can fit what we saw into that narrative, as much as it makes sense.”
“But my father wasn’t there. He didn’t see it with his own eyes.”
“Didn’t see it, hear it, smell it, feel it. Ben and I were freaked out, but neither of us looks back and thinks we saw something staged. I would love to believe that. I don’t even know how to wrap my head around anything else. But…”
I swallow and lift the photo again. “This is my aunt. Of course I’d rather believe she staged it herself, out of jealousy. I’d rather discovershe’s alive and betrayed me. But I know what I saw. She’s dead. Someone—something—dragged her into the lake. And now it happened to this camper.”
“Who my dad believes is part of the stunt. An actor.”
“He’s your father, and you two are having some friction. I don’t want to add to that.”
“You’re not. My father is the sheriff. My boss. If he decides no one actually died here, I can’t overrule him. But someone disappeared last night, and that’s going to come out eventually. He’ll need to investigate then.”
Will he?
