Page 29 of The Haunting of Paynes Hollow

Twenty-Three

The trail cams only snap shots when movement is detected. The one by the shed has taken two since Ben set it up. A picture of me entering the shed and one of me leaving. They’re from early this evening, when I went inside and found my wet clothing.

Ben shuts down the phone app, muttering. “I need to get this to my truck, charge it up.”

“It’s at fifty percent.”

“Yeah, and I don’t let it go below that while I need to be monitoring your ankle bracelet. If my phone dies, the app alerts your grandfather’s lawyer that I’m not doing my job. It’d also be an excuse for your uncle and cousin to say you could have left the property.”

“Okay. But the camera, what time did you set it up?”

When Ben doesn’t answer, I look over at him. We’re in the cottage living room, and he’s paused by that book of Great Lake legends.

“This yours?” he says.

“My grandfather’s. I rescued it from the crawl space. I used to read it as a kid.”

He nods, but his gaze seems distant.

“Ben?” I say. “When did you set up the shed cam?”

“That was the first one. I put it up earlier today.”

So whoever put my wet clothing in the shed did it before then. I’d been hoping it would catch some stranger sneaking in with my lake-drenched clothes. But there are only those two shots of me, nothing in my hands.

I peer outside. “It’s getting dark.”

“Yeah, yeah. I’m going. You’re the one who wanted the photos, Samantha.”

“That wasn’t a hint, Benjamin. If I wanted to kick you out, I’d kick you out.”

He snorts. “You absolutely would not.”

“I—”

“If I hadn’t been here, would you have told that camper to leave? Or politely asked him to be gone by morning, despite the fact that someone has been trying to drive you off and may have kidnapped your aunt, and it could be that guy impersonating a camper.”

“Do you think he was a fake?”

“No. I’m making a point. Protect yourself, okay? Ask for cameras. Buy more if you want them. Demand strangers get off your land. Tell me to leave your cottage because it’s past dark.”

“That’s not—”

“And get out your aunt’s gun, for God’s sake. You have it. Use it.”

“On you?”

“Sure. If I attack you in the night, you absolutely should shoot me. You have my permission to do so. Now get some sleep.”

I do sleep. Again, I’m not sure how, and even when I do drift off, my mind lashes me for the insensitivity of falling asleep while my aunt is missing.

I’ve spent the last two days silencing the voice that screams that I’m not doing enough. I should forget this stupid inheritance and take her car and …

What? Check her apartment in case she went home and failed to tell me?

Canvass the residents of Paynes Hollow, who already know she’s missing and have been on the lookout?

Drive up and down the back roads in case she’s lying alongside one?

Forget leaving. I should be out there walking the property every daylight hour, in case she’s lying in a thicket, injured. I should be out on the lake, in case … I don’t know. She washed up alive on a sandbar somewhere?

I know I can’t do more than I have. I know I need to leave this to the authorities, whom I trust. This must be how every person who has a loved one disappear feels. Guilty over not searching twenty-four hours a day. Guilty over sleeping, eating, laughing.

I know someone who did have a loved one vanish. He’s outside in a tent. It’d taken nearly two days for Austin to be found, the same amount of time Gail has been missing. I could talk to Ben, reassure myself that what I feel is normal or get tips on how to deal with it.

Yeah, I could do that … if it were anyone except Ben Vandergriff, who will neither answer my questions nor appreciate me asking.

The only thing I can do is reassure and comfort myself, which works reasonably well …

until I’m asleep. Then I dream that my aunt is half drowned and washed up less than a mile along the beach.

That she went for a walk at night, was hit by a car, and is lying unconscious in a ditch.

That she was kidnapped by Caleb, who forced her to play the drowned dead last night.

That she had been kidnapped by the cyclist-camper, who’d had her in his tent the whole time we were out there arguing with him.

Or that she’d been kidnapped by Ben and is apparently in his tent, thirty feet away.

And each time I find her, it is by accident, me having a fun time at the cottage and stumbling over her as she gasps her last breaths.

Then comes the last segment, where I’m the one who kidnapped her.

Where I’m holding her hostage in the shed, and then I take the hatchet and I step toward her, and she knows what is coming, and she screams a bloodcurdling shriek that has me rocketing out of bed, hands to my ears, vomit in my mouth as I gag.

And yet the screams keep going.

Distant, horrible human screams.

I hover there, sour bile dripping before I slowly wipe it away. And the screams continue.

I’m still asleep. I’d only dreamed that I woke up—

Banging sounds on the front door.

“Sam!” Ben shouts. “Samantha!”

I turn slowly in that direction. The dream lingers, hazy, and I can’t focus. Ben curses and then the front door slaps open.

“Sam!”

Footsteps pound. My bedroom door swings open, and Ben is silhouetted there for a heartbeat before he jumps back.

“Jesus!” he says, retreating fast until he’s out of sight. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—I thought—Someone’s screaming, and I thought…”

He thought it was me. That much penetrates as my brain turns on, but it’s still sluggish, and I can only make out bits of what he’s babbling in the next room. Something about a key. That he still had the cottage key. That he should have returned it to me.

Then, “You heard the scream, right?” he says.

I rub my face and croak, “Yes.”

So it wasn’t a dream. Unless this is.

“Am I dreaming?” I ask.

“What?”

His disembodied hand reaches around the doorway and flicks on the light, fumbling a bit, as if he’s trying to do it without looking into my room.

“I’m decent,” I say.

He edges into the frame. “Are you okay? You seem … You took something. To sleep. Of course you did. Dumb question.”

He’s babbling still, which means he really doesn’t sound like himself.

I shake my head. “I didn’t take anything. Just … having nightmares.” I fold the comforter over the soiled part where I threw up and hope he can’t smell it. “That sound. I thought it was part of my dream.” I blink. “Fox, right? That was a fox screaming?”

“Oh.” He rocks back. “Maybe? Fuck.” He rubs his face. “Okay. Maybe? I guess so? That makes sense, doesn’t it?”

“Was it a fox?”

He doesn’t answer.

I stand up. “Ben?”

“Hell if I know.” He’s awake enough to sound more like himself. “I woke up to it. Thought it was you, and when you didn’t answer the door I remembered I still had the key on my ring.” He pulls the ring from his pocket, finds the cottage key, and yanks it off. “I shouldn’t have this.”

“Ben, I don’t care if you have the key. I don’t care if you came in here to check on me, in case I was the one out there screaming. Good. Great. Thank you. But was that a fox? I remember hearing one as a kid but—”

I press my palms to my eyes. “My aunt is missing. Last seen on this property. We just heard screams. And we’re standing here debating whether it was a fox. Fuck!”

I stride to the door, squeeze past him, and yank on my sneakers.

“Sam…”

I spin. “Yes, it was probably a fox. But I just woke up from a dream where I kept finding my aunt too late because I didn’t look. Well, except for the last one where I was the one holding her captive and about to chop her up with the hatchet, which apparently explained the screaming.”

“What?” His face screws up and then he shakes it off. “Never mind. Okay. You’re right about it probably being a fox. But—”

I’m already out the door. He clatters out after me, but by then, I’m off the porch, staring out at the water.

“Ben?” I say.

“I see that,” he says as he comes up beside me. “Your lights.”

“So I’m not imagining them.”

“No.”

“Unless I’m imagining being awake.”

He ignores that and strides past me. I catch the back of his T-shirt, and he spins, hands flying up. I quickly let go.

“Sorry, sorry,” I say.

“It’s fine.”

“Just…” I chew my lip as I look toward the lights, and I want to tell him to stay here. Wait for me. Don’t go near the water. Let me do it. I’ll be fine.

Does that make sense?

Does any of this make sense?

Maybe I really am losing it.

“I’m getting my phone,” he says. “Come with me.”

I do, and once he has it, he says, “Stay close.”

“You, too.”

A sound between a snort and a gruff laugh, as if to say he’s hardly worried about himself. But he should be. My gut says he should be. My gut also says that I can’t trust him to be. I can trust him to worry about me but not about himself.

That makes no sense.

He doesn’t give a shit about me.

Maybe not, but he gives even less of a shit about himself.

Where the hell did that come from?

“Sam?” he says, squinting at me. “If you took something to help you sleep, just say so. I’d understand.”

I shake my head. “I didn’t. I’m just a little … off-balance. Things are happening and … and—” I blurt the rest before I realize what I’m saying. “I think I might be responsible.”

I have no idea what I expect him to say to that, but he only looks out at the water. “Did you put lights out there?”

“No.”

“Then come on.”