Page 93 of The Haunting of Paynes Hollow
That feels disloyal, as if I’m accusing Craig Smits of something. I’m not. I have no doubt that when relatives come looking for that cyclist, Smits will investigate. But will he believe we told the truth that the guy was dragged into the lake? Or will he stick to his own interpretation and find a way to fit that?
I remember those memories that resurfaced a few days ago. The ones about people that disappeared and everyone shrugged it off.
Not our problem.
It happens.
Can’t prove they disappeared here anyway.
“Sam?” Josie says. “You’re thinking something.”
I choose my words with care. “You’re right. Eventually someone will report that cyclist missing.”
She nods. “Whichever department it’s reported to will ask all regional law-enforcement agencies whether they saw him. It could take a while, so you’ll need to make sure my dad takes down all the particulars. He’s not necessarily going to hear next month that a guy went missing and think of the camper you reported seeing dragged into the lake.”
“Because it happens. People go missing. It’s cottage country. It’s not the middle of the Alaskan wilderness, but people are passing through all summer, biking, hiking, camping. Sometimes they’re reported missing.”
I expect a quick and easy reply. Yes, people disappear. Instead, she wraps her hands around her coffee cup.
“Josie?”
“People do go missing,” she says slowly. “Like you said, it’s cottage country. Lots of people pass through, many doing sports with a risk factor. But some people think too many who’ve vanished had connections to Paynes Hollow. That what they have in common is that they were known to be here, specifically.”
“The Bermuda Triangle of Upstate New York,” I murmur.
Her head jerks up. “You heard that podcast episode?”
“My grandfather sent it to me a few weeks before he died. Apropos of nothing in particular. He did that sometimes. He’d send things that, in his mind, exonerated my father. Once it was an article on a serial killer operating in Syracuse around the same time. Once it was some weird junk-science piece on chemical-induced psychopathy from factories along the Great Lakes. I read enough of this podcast to get the gist. People have disappeared in the region, all linked to Paynes Hollow. As if that’s how Austin Vandergriff died, and my father was, I don’t know, just burying a boy he found dead from mysterious causes.”
“Except it’s true. Not about Austin, of course. But I talked to the woman who did the podcast while she was researching it last year.” She pauses. “Don’t tell my dad. Please.”
“I wouldn’t.”
“I didn’t give her anything. I didn’tknowanything. But we talked, and I got curious. So I went digging on my own. She had a point. Over the years, more than half of the people who disappeared within a hundred-mile radius had some connection to Paynes Hollow.”
“Like what?”
She shrugs. “Passing through, mostly. This was often their last known stop. They popped into the general store for supplies or someone in town reported speaking to them. Most were traveling solo, though there were a few couples and in those cases, they both vanished.”
“How many are we talking?”
“Maybe three dozen. That seems like a lot, but they’re scattered over a century or more. On that kind of timeline, it doesn’t seem so strange, especially when they were just passing through, which makes it difficult to say they disappearedhere.Sure, maybe they were last seenshopping locally, but that only means they had enough supplies that they could have been in Ohio or Vermont when they disappeared.”
She leans forward and continues, “When you’re talking a hundred years, a serial killer is out of the question. That’s why I never mentioned it to my dad. It’d need to be, like, a father and son and grandson. A killer family. I sure wasn’t takingthattheory to my dad.”
A killer family.
I think of that book tucked into Ben’s waistband. What exactly is in there? Something he wasn’t sure I should read.
“So what are you thinking now?” I say as neutrally as I can.
“I have no idea,” Josie says. “Except that you and Ben watched lake zombies drag a guy into the water, presumably killing him. A lone camper. And if my father didn’t take the particulars from you and he gets a report weeks from now of some random camper disappearing somewhere in the upstate area, he’d never think to connect the two. Maybe you found the answer.”
“The drowned dead.”
Her cheeks flush. “I should be glad Ben wandered off before this conversation or he really would think I’m a little kid, blaming zombies for missing people.”
“He wouldn’t,” I say. “That’s what we’re already working through. We just hadn’t extrapolated into anything larger. What can you tell me about these stories? I could listen to the whole podcast, but I’d rather hear it from you.”
