Page 33 of The Haunting of Paynes Hollow

Twenty-Six

We’re at the shed. When Ben goes inside, I tense, hesitating. Then I slip in after him. He has his cell-phone light on.

“The clothing is over there,” I say, pointing.

He barely glances that way and only grunts as he walks toward the hole in the foundation.

“I’d like you to check it out,” I say. “Confirm what I saw.”

He makes a noise of obvious annoyance but heads over and lifts my discarded tank top on the end of a spade. “Yep, it’s wet. Yep, it’s been conveniently festooned with lake weed. Can’t confirm it’s yours, but it looks like the sort of thing you wear. Cutoffs and tank tops. Cottage girl circa 1990.”

“Hey!” I say.

“It’s a timeless fashion. Also, those weeds mean it’s a setup.

How the hell are there weeds on your shirt after you walk into the lake—presumably dragging your aunt no further than necessary?

And why are they still there after you’ve removed your clothing?

They could be tangled in your sandals, yes.

Caught on your arm or leg, yes. Still wrapped around your tank-top strap after you remove it? No.”

“So someone’s framing me?”

“Uh, yeah, Samantha. Keep up. My money is on your cousin, who seems to have inherited your grandfather’s asshole genes.”

“But we don’t think Caleb staged the drowned dead and horseman.”

“Just because he didn’t do it all doesn’t mean he didn’t do any.

The drowned dead—as you call them—are not going into your hamper to take out your clothing.

If Caleb keeps going, though, you won’t need to worry about him.

Those dead things really don’t like anyone targeting you.

They’re like zombie guard dogs—” He stops and says, gruffly, “I shouldn’t be flippant. ”

“But you think that’s what they’re doing?”

He doesn’t answer. He heads to that hole and grabs a spade resting against the wall.

“I said I wouldn’t fix this because your grandfather refused to comp me.

That’s half a lie. I was worried about some critter making a nest inside and your grandfather blaming me for the damage.

So I tried finding a way to block the hole as cheaply as I could.

Instead, I discovered why the foundation was crumbling. ”

I wait for him to go on, and then say, “Okay. Am I supposed to guess?”

“No, that was a dramatic pause.”

I roll my eyes. “Fine. Tell me, Ben, why was the foundation crumbling?”

“Because there’s a secret compartment in it.”

“Huh?”

He starts digging in lieu of an answer. It takes a few minutes before he has the spot cleared, maybe six inches below the surface. There’s a box—a metal box—inlaid in the concrete, which has crumbled around it.

“I … don’t understand,” I say.

“Don’t ask me. It’s your messed-up family.” He stops abruptly. “Fuck.”

“In order to collect my multimillion-dollar inheritance, I’m sentenced to a month in the place where my father murdered a child. ‘Messed up’ is the nicest way to describe my family.”

“It’s not that.” He leans on the spade. “Your family has owned this property for hundreds of years.”

“Yep.”

“They built this shed and laid the foundation maybe a hundred years ago.”

“That’s the story. The current shed is newer—my grandfather and my father replaced it before I was born. But the foundation predates both of them.”

“Then so does this compartment and what’s in it.

But it’s still your family. Your history.

I wasn’t thinking about that. I made up my mind to show you and just plowed forward.

I’ve been avoiding it because I didn’t want to seem crazy, when I should have been avoiding it because it’s your family history.

I don’t know if it’s true or not, Sam, but it’s messed up. ”

“I believe we’ve already established that my family is the very definition of messed up.”

I keep my tone light, but there’s a buzzing in my head that says I should stop now, that I don’t want to see what’s in that box.

“Please tell me it’s colonial witchcraft,” I say. “My distant female ancestors breaking free of their Puritan shackles to dance naked around a fire and copulate with the devil.”

When he doesn’t answer, I say, “I’m kidding. Unless that’s what it is, in which case, it’s nonsense. Nothing wrong with a little pagan nature worship—and consensual sex orgies—but witchcraft and devil worship are bullshit, like the Satanic Panic when my parents were teens.”

He wipes the back of his hand over his sweaty brow. “I don’t quite know what it is. Weird and creepy stuff that seemed like silly hocus-pocus fantasies until … until last night.”

I crouch at the hole. The cavity in it was obviously created at the same time as the original foundation.

We’ve been referring to it as concrete, but that’s because neither of us is a builder.

It’s a solid stonework foundation. Concrete?

Mortar? I don’t know. But whatever it is, whoever built it included a cavity to fit that metal box.

In the last decade or so, the material around it has started to crumble, leading to the hole, and the box is no longer firmly fixed in place.

I can slide the whole thing out, which I do.

I set it on the dirt floor of the shed as Ben shines his cell-phone light on it.

The box isn’t much taller or wider than a standard sheet of paper. It’s maybe three inches deep and obviously very old. There’s a keyed lock in one end, but that’s broken and looks as if it has been for years. When I pull on the lock, a drawer slides out. In it is a book wrapped in …

I look up at Ben.

“It was like that when I found it,” he says.

The book is in a freezer bag. A modern plastic freezer bag with a zippered seal.

“So it hasn’t been in here, untouched, for a hundred years,” I say.

“No.”

I unseal the bag and slide out the book. Despite the modern waterproof wrapper, the book is old enough that I’m hesitant to even touch it.

I carefully open the leather cover to see yellowed pages, handwritten like a journal, with ink so faded that Ben needs to give me his phone.

Even then, I can barely read the writing.

It’s cursive, which I didn’t take in school, but I did spend a summer learning for fun.

This isn’t like the cursive I know, though.

It’s closer to calligraphy, and I struggle to make out a few words, only to realize they’re in an older form of English.

Colonial English, with unfamiliar words and spellings. I flip through a few pages, skimming and trying to make sense of what seems incomprehensible. Then I hit a word that stops me cold.

Nekker.

I point at it. “I saw this in the other book, too. Nekker. Nix. Nixie. The drowned dead.”

“Yeah.”

I look up at him. “Yeah?”

He lifts one shoulder. “I saw it in there, too. Until then, I just figured it was made-up nonsense.”

“It’s not. It’s another branch of water-creature mythology. I’ve seen the word before in video games. But this…” I squint down at it. “I can’t make heads or tails of it. Are they reporting what they saw here? In the lake?”

“Bring it inside. You need better lighting and the internet for deciphering. It’s slow going, and I didn’t get far. Just far enough to…” Another one-shouldered shrug. “Far enough to decide it was delusional superstitious nonsense. Until last night.”

I slide the book back into the bag, and we leave the shed.

At the sound of a car, I hand the book wordlessly to Ben, who tucks it into his waistband, his shirt pulled down over it. We head to the drive, expecting to see Sheriff Smits. Instead, Josie is climbing out of her compact car.

She’s facing east, the rising sun obviously hiding our expressions, because she grins and holds up a takeout bag.

“Breakfast from the diner,” she says. “I skipped their coffee. It’s shit, as Ben can confirm. You two are up bright and early. Quiet night, I hope?”

I glance at Ben, who says nothing.

“You … haven’t spoken to your dad this morning?” I say as I walk over.

She stops, her smile fading. “Uh, no. Is something wrong? I … Well, I wasn’t at home last night. Dad and I had a bit of a blowup.”

“Everything okay?”

She shrugs, her expression guarded. “Okay enough. Living under the same roof, Dad and I butt heads. In the offseason, I cottage-sit, but in the summer, I’m stuck back home.

No rental vacancies in my price range. And then they wonder why all the young people move out.

” She trails off. “Well, that was fast. We lost Ben already.”

I glance over my shoulder to see his retreating back.

“Off to do Ben stuff,” I say. “No need to say anything first.”

She rolls her eyes. “Right? Social niceties are really not his thing. Let’s get this breakfast inside, and you can tell me what happened last night.”