“What am I supposed to think?” Newton shouted. “You talk me into coming down to the remotest place on planet-frickin’-Earth and then you tell me that Karl Ruger—who had never even been to Pine Deep before—used his last breath to give you a message from someone who’s been dead for thirty years…someone you also think is some kind of monster. What the hell am I supposed to think about that kind of thing?”
“Calm the hell down!” Crow yelled back, amping it up a notch. “And don’t get all paranoid on me. You wanted the whole story, right? Well, this is part of the story, and on that point—this isn’t just a story to me. I believe this stuff. All of it. I know that Griswold was a goddamn monster because I saw his goddamn monster face, all right? He killed my brother, he killed Val’s cousin, he killed Terry Wolfe’s sister, he killed a shitload of other people in this town, and he almost killed me. I know this and you don’t because you weren’t even there. As far as Ruger goes—I faced him down twice and he nearly killed me and my fiancée and our baby and I can’t just forget him or what he said!”
“Baby? What baby?”
That made Crow grind to a halt. He stopped, flushed and flustered and furious. He sputtered for a moment and then, just as loud, he yelled, “Val’s pregnant! You happy? She almost died and that means our baby would have died. You think I’d invent what Ruger said just to impress you?”
“Crow…shut up.” Newton said it quietly and it had the same effect as if he’d have belted Crow across the mouth. “Just dial it down, okay?”
He stood there, hands up palms-outward, facing Crow, who had clamped his mouth shut but was still glaring.
“I didn’t know that about Val.”
“Yeah, well, now you do.”
“Congratulations.”
“What?”
Newton held out his hand. “Congratulations.”
Crow stared at him for a long minute and then took the hand and shook it, looking totally puzzled by the right-angle change of direction.
“Now,” Newton said with a level voice, “look me in the eye, Crow, and tell me that you aren’t completely off your rocker, ’cause I have to admit that this is all a bit hard to take and right now I’m more scared of you than I am of these woods, and that’s saying something.”
“Why the hell are you scared of me?”
“Because you’re acting crazy and you have a gun.”
That made Crow gape; then he turned and walked in as wide a circle as the brush would allow, flapping his arms and shaking his head. He stopped and turned and looked at Newton from a dozen feet away, and he was smiling a great big rueful smile. “Yeah, I guess it sounds pretty crazy at that.”
“It’s a healthy sign to admit it,” Newton said hopefully.
“Oh, bite me.” He came back over. “Look, Newt, here’s the deal, I’ve told you almost everything now. So, am I crazy? No, or at least not in that way. But do I believe this stuff? Then, yeah, I do. I believe Griswold was a monster, I believe Ruger said what he said, and I believe one more thing, and if I tell you I don’t want you to go running off into the woods to escape the crazy man.”
“You could probably outrun me, anyway. Sure, love to hear what else you believe, ’cause as you know we sane people can’t get nearly enough of this stuff.”
“Yeah, cute, but don’t push it,” Crow said with a half-grin. “Okay, I’ve been working on a kind of theory about Griswold and Ruger. This should be right up your alley because I know you’re a big conspiracy-theory nut.”
“Pot calling the kettle black.”
“Whatever. Anyway, I told you Griswold had a crew of cronies back in the day. Vic, my dad, a few others. Ruger would have fit in with that crowd pretty well. Mean, vicious, and probably the same kind of asshole who would have a set of white robes in his closet. So maybe it wasn’t entirely an accident that Ruger happened to break down in this town. Maybe he was heading to Pine Deep.”
“Why?”
“Well, this is the part you’re not going to like.”
“I haven’t really liked any of it so far.”
Crow snorted. “I think maybe somehow Griswold called him here.”
“Yep, you’re right. I don’t like it. Shoot me if you’re going to, but you’re a fruitloop. You’re describing an episode of X-Files. You’re describing a Stephen King novel. This shit happens in stories and it happens in folklore, but this is the real world.”
Crow held his arms out to his side as if embracing the dark forest around them. “Newt, if this isn’t the sort of place where folklore gets its start, then I don’t know what is. We’re in the deep, dark woods near where a monster used to live, which in turn is in the center of a region that has had a reputation for hauntings going back three hundred years. If something like this was going to happen…wouldn’t it be likely to happen someplace like Pine Deep?”
Newton took out his canteen and sipped at it thoughtfully, eyeing Crow.
“I wanted to come down here,” Crow said, “because I need to solve the mystery of what Griswold was, and to prove to myself one way or another if there was a link between him and Ruger.”
Newton nodded slowly, but he said, “Isn’t that a lot to ask of a walk in the woods?”
“Not these woods,” Crow said.
Newton glanced around. Despite the early hour, the light was gray and stained and looked like the glow from a feeble bulb ready to burn out. Shadows seemed to lurk behind every tree, crouch in every hole, hang from the long bare fingers of each branch. The twisted undergrowth was snarled around the base of the towering pines and oaks, and most of the tree trunks bulged with disease. Not one single bird offered even a distant song to diffuse the tension in the air, and the wind played a slow dirge through the trees.
“You have just succeeded,” Newton said without humor, “in scaring the living shit out of me.”
Crow nodded. “Welcome to Dark Hollow.”
(4)
Dr. Saul Weinstock poured three fingers of Glenfiddich into a chunky tumbler, quickly drank down a mouthful, then took another, his eyes widening over the rim of the glass as he drank and the gasses burned his mouth. When he set the glass down he was gasping like someone who had just been hit in the solar plexus, and the glass was nearly empty. He poured more of the Scotch into the glass, but did not take another sip just yet. As he set the bottle down he raised his hands and stared at them, watching their palsied tremble. He could no more have performed surgery with those hands than he could hover in midair. He had been barely able to tie his shoes. Then he wiped his mouth with the back of one of his hands.
His office was brightly lit, and the door was securely locked. The windows were shut and shuttered, and against each pane he’d hung flowers whose scent perfumed the air with a harsh pungency. Weinstock found the air cloying, the smell oppressive, but each morning he replaced the flowers with fresh ones. On his desk, lying next to the tumbler was a gnarled lump of metal that gleamed with an angry potential. Weinstock reached for it, as he had a dozen times since locking himself in for the evening. He curled strong fingers around the butt and picked up the weapon, slipped his index finger into the trigger guard, and exerted gentle pressure on the trigger. The hammer trembled. Weinstock squeezed harder and the hammer eased silently back, poised with intent, and then leapt forward, striking the firing pin with decisive force.
There was an empty, hollow click.
Weinstock sighed and set the gun down. Then he opened his briefcase that lay on the side table. Inside was a crisp paper bag imprinted with the name MARLEY’S METAL SMITHING—WE MAKE BEAUTY THAT LASTS! He opened the bag and removed a small drawstring bag and upended it over the blotter. Twenty-four lumps of smooth metal dropped and bounced and rolled across the green face of the blotter. He stared at them, and drank some more of the Scotch as he watched the way the light played off the copper jackets that enclosed the rounded chunks of purest silver.
Weinstock finished his glass of whiskey, his third in the last hour, and then picked up the pistol again, opened the cylinder, and as he fed the .44 slugs into the chambers, he murmured prayers he had learned as a child, his Hebrew faulty but his prayers in desperate earnest.
(5)
They kept walking through the shadowy forest, and for a while the brush thinned out and left them with a path that was easier to follow. Once in a while they would hear bird-song, but generally the place was quiet. The temperature, though, was rising as if they were nearing a hot spring, and the humidity rose with it. For several minutes they had walked in silence, each digesting their last conversation, but then Newton picked it up as if there had been no break.
“What kind of monster?”
Crow glanced at him. “What?”
“You said Gr—I mean he was some kind of monster. Exactly what did you mean by that? A serial killer? A psychopath?”
“Maybe I shouldn’t have said it,” Crow said primly.
“A little late for that. So…when you say ‘monster’ you mean that he was some kind of real monster? Not that I buy any of that, but I’d like to hear what kind of a monster you think he was.”
“Answer your own question, Newt. The answer is right there in the facts I gave you.”
“What facts? You recognized him as the man who attacked you. Okay. You assume he was the one who killed all the other people, including your brother, Mayor Wolfe’s sister, and Val’s uncle. You assume that Oren Morse killed him because he felt indebted to Henry Guthrie, and because the first victims were fellow gentlemen of the road, to use the old expression. Those aren’t really facts. Mostly they’re suppositions.”
“Okay, get literal on me.” Crow used one hand to vault a fallen oak and then reached out to help Newton over. The path was still clear for about a quarter mile and then looked like it faded into shrubs again. “Let’s look at the circumstantial evidence, then.”