Page 31 of The Haunting of Paynes Hollow

Twenty-Five

Sheriff Smits is on his way, and even without the phone on speaker, I know he’s not happy about it. Ben said we believe a would-be camper was dragged out into the lake, and Smits clearly seems to think this is Ben being an asshole.

Maybe it would have helped if I’d called while Ben was driving headlong through the dark, both of us caught in the wild panic of watching a man die at the hands—and teeth—of the drowned dead.

By the time Ben placed that call, we were both calm.

Too calm? In shock? Or just relieved that we were still alive?

Even now, when I’m sitting in the truck, what happened feels like a nightmare I’ve woken from, feeling unsettled but also detached.

Just a nightmare.

Except it wasn’t, and I don’t think either of us knows how to deal with that.

“Earlier, you said things were happening,” Ben says, “and you thought you might be responsible.”

My stomach clenches, and I look out the truck window.

“Sam?” he says, his voice low. “I’m not asking you to confess anything.

Trust me, I’m the last person you want for your Father Confessor.

But I think you’re really mixed up right now, and after what happened—a man died in front of us—you don’t want to take responsibility in front of a cop.

In fact, I’m going to very, very strongly advise against it. ”

My lips twist in a humorless smile. “Practicing law without a license?”

He snorts. “Don’t need a law degree to know that’s a really bad idea. Tell me what you think you did so I can tell you you’re wrong.”

“What if I’m not?” I say, looking out again.

“Well, then I’ll be the first person to tell you that, too.”

I lean my cheek against the cool window, unable to look his way. “My aunt found the hatchet in the shed, along with my gardening gloves. Both had blood on them.”

“Okay…”

“The animals.”

Silence. “Your aunt thought you carved up those animals?”

I swallow hard. “I didn’t. At least, if I did, I don’t remember it. But what if I wasn’t fully conscious. Sleepwalking. Or in a … a fugue state.”

“While killing small animals, chopping them up, and making creepy serial-killer art with their body parts?”

“They could have already been dead.”

He thumps back into the headrest again and groans.

“Not the point, I know,” I say.

“Have you ever been tempted to do something like that?”

“What?” I recoil. “No.”

“Then why would you, even subconsciously, be doing it?”

I look out the window again and my voice drops. “My father.”

“What about him?”

That has me glancing over, eyes narrowing. “You know what. He murdered your brother. Gail was obviously concerned I could have some of that in me.”

“Uh, isn’t she his sister? Full sister? That means she shares more DNA with a confessed killer than you do.

She also shares whatever fucked-up childhood your grandfather inflicted on them.

She actually thought you did that? I barely know you, and I’m sure you didn’t, just by the way you’re reacting. ”

I blurt, “My wet clothing is in the shed. Right now.”

His face screws up.

“The clothing I wore the night my aunt disappeared,” I say. “I found it tonight in the shed. Drenched in lake water and covered in weeds.”

“And…”

“Gail drowned, Ben,” I snap. “She was pulled into the lake and drowned. I saw the drag marks, and I know what happened. In my gut, I know, and maybe that’s why.”

“Because you dragged your aunt into the lake and drowned her?”

“Yes.”

He sighs, so deeply that I scowl. Do I really believe, in my heart, that I did these things?

No. But for some perverse reason, I don’t want him dismissing the possibility so quickly.

I want to be taken seriously—not about having done it but about being genuinely scared that I might be losing my mind.

“That’s why you wanted to see the camera shots,” he says.

“Yes.”

“Anything in them?”

“No, but that just means my clothing was there before you set up the camera. I don’t remember taking it off, and now it’s in the shed, in the exact spot where the hatchet was, and the hatchet is missing and…” I twist my hands together and mumble, “What if I did it? What if I’ve just . . snapped?”

“Do you want an answer to that? Not my opinion, but proof, one way or the other.”

My scowl turns to a hard glare. “Of course.”

“Maybe there’s a faint chance you did cut up the animals, like you said, in some kind of fugue state.

Buried psychopathy from your father, surfacing under stress.

That must be what your aunt figured. Not that you did it on purpose but that, as you say, you snapped.

I’m not a shrink. Your aunt was one, right? ”

“A social worker.”

“Whatever. The question is, if you killed her, would you want to know that for sure?”

I meet his gaze. “Yes.”

He takes out his phone and unlocks it, flipping through apps.

I twist to face him. “You have other cameras?”

“No, I have exactly the ones I told you about. But I have something else. Your ankle monitor.”

I shake my head. “That won’t help. I didn’t necessarily cross the boundary even if I dragged my aunt into the lake.”

“I never said it only tracked you crossing the boundary.” He taps his phone. “I didn’t want to freak you out by letting you know I can find you wherever you go. I told the lawyer I just wanted to get alerts, but she insisted I have the full app.”

“So it’s a GPS tracker?”

“Yeah. I don’t look at it even when I might wonder where you are. But it doesn’t just track. It records.” He finds what he’s looking for and grunts. “Here’s the history from the first night you were here, when you found the rabbit in the morning.”

I’m not sure what exactly I’m looking at. It’s just squiggles and then a flat line and then more squiggles.

“You seemed to get up just after midnight, but you didn’t leave the cottage. Then you returned to bed until morning. The following night, you got up again, after one. This time it looks like you went out to the lake.”

I shiver as the memory slides back.

“Sam?”

“The first night I heard hoofbeats and saw the lights out the window, but I didn’t leave the cabin.

The second night, I heard hoofbeats again and went down to the lake where I saw…

” Your brother. Austin. Dead. I swallow and instead I say, “I saw one of those drowned people. I ran back to the house, and I told myself I imagined it. That I was sleepwalking or something.”

“Well, you went out for about fifteen minutes.” He zooms in on a map that shows my trail.

“Straight to the water’s edge, walked around a bit, came back inside.

That’s it. In two nights, you made one brief trip outside to the beach.

You were not out killing and chopping up small animals.

” He meets my gaze. “Or finding dead animals and chopping up the bodies.”

“Okay. But what about—”

“Here’s two nights ago, when your aunt disappeared.” He holds up his phone. “You went to your room and didn’t leave until around five, which is exactly the story you gave.” He frowns at the screen and taps something. “This says you were in bed by five at night?”

“That was after my aunt confronted me about the hatchet. I holed up in my room.”

“Then we have an accurate record of three nights when you did not leave the house for long enough to cut up dead animals … or drown your aunt.” He looks at me.

“We saw a man dragged into the lake, Sam. You didn’t do it tonight and, if it happened to your aunt, which I really hope it didn’t, you didn’t do that either.

Those creatures did. So I do not want to hear you blurt to Smits that you might have—” His chin jerks up as lights appear down the road.

“Speak of the devil. Okay, I’m going to turn the truck around and lead him in. ”

When we get out of the vehicles, Ben takes charge.

He tells Smits what happened, starting with the encounter in the field, where the camper agreed to leave.

Then he skips forward to hearing a scream and coming to check on me.

Of course, in this version, it sounds as if the camper only half-heartedly grumbled before leaving and Ben just came to the cottage door and knocked after hearing a scream.

He doesn’t say that specifically—he’s very careful not to lie—but he slants the narrative with the expertise of someone who has dealt with law enforcement before.

Ben is correct to do it like that. The camper is dead, and unless necessary, we are not admitting that the man argued with Ben and pushed me down. Nor do we want to sound as if we were in an absolute panic after the screams, Ben bursting into the cottage to find me.

From there, Ben does mention the lights, confirming that he also witnessed them.

Then we saw a crumpled form on the beach, thought it was Gail and ran toward it, only to see the camper, who seemed badly injured.

There was a figure farther down, at the edge of the woods.

Before we could get a look at it, more figures emerged from the water and dragged the injured man in.

“People came out of the water and hauled him in?” Smits says, his gaze on me, as if I’m the one who will clearly tell him he’s mishearing.

“They were…” I take a deep breath. “They looked like my aunt in that photo. Like they’d drowned.”

Smits looks at Ben. At me. Steps back and rubs his forehead before rocking forward again.

“They looked drowned,” Smits says.

“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.”