Into the Woods E-Book

J. S. Volpe

• Herausgeber: J. S. Volpe
• Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018

Beschreibung

The Anomaly Hunters saga begins here!

When high school seniors Cynthia Crow and Calvin Beckerman set out to investigate the disappearance of Cynthia’s little sister Emily, they aren’t prepared for the surprising twists and turns that await them. They soon find themselves under the tutelage of Robert May, an elderly anomaly investigator who believes that Emily’s disappearance is connected with a string of bizarre and possibly paranormal tragedies stretching back two hundred years. The group’s dogged pursuit of the truth uncovers shocking secrets and terrible crimes, and brings them face-to-face with a mysterious force that will change their lives—and the world—forever.

Leseprobe

Into the Woods

(Anomaly Hunters, Book 1)

By J. S. Volpe

Copyright © 2012 J. S. Volpe

All rights reserved

CONTENTS

Part One:

The First Day of the Rest of Their Lives

1. Calvin Beckerman

2. Cynthia Crow

3.See Emily Play (I)

4.Calvin and Cynthia

5. Anna West and John Coyote

6. Robert May

7. Donovan Crow and Violet O’Donohue

8. Roger Grey

Part Two:

Winding the Clock

9. Echoes (I)

10. Echoes (II)

11. Echoes (III)

12. Blackwater

13. House of Mystery

14. See Emily Play (II)

15. Summit

16. Where Angels Fear to Tread

Part Three:

Confrontations

17. The Intrepid Investigators

18. Wendy Crow

19. Black and White

20. Reconnaissance

21. The Old Witch

22. See Emily Play (III)

23. An Incident on Grace Road

24. Aftermath

Part Four:

The Other Side of the Door

25. See Emily Play (IV)

26. End of the Line

27. The Golden Key

28. Closed Doors

29. House of Secrets

30. Red on Yellow

31. Convergence

32. Full Circle

Epilogue:

Two Endings and Three Beginnings

Part One:

The First Day of the Rest of Their Lives

Chapter 1

Calvin Beckerman

1

Calvin Beckerman’s first hint that his life was about to change forever was the rising wail of sirens as he waited to cross McArthur Road. The sound cut straight through the blare of the song currently playing on his iPod (“Motorway to Roswell” by the Pixies), and with a frown he hit Pause, tore his eyes from the crowd of students filing into May High School across the street, and looked around.

Two police cars were racing toward him down McArthur, their red and blue lights flashing, other cars slowing and pulling aside to let them pass like the Red Sea parting for Moses. In no time the cop cars were blasting past Calvin, the sudden loudening of their sirens making him wince even with the earbuds plugging his ears. The warm, dirty wind of the cars’ passage flattened his jeans against his legs and sent whirls of autumn leaves skittering across the pavement.

He watched the police cars recede into the distance. When they were many blocks away, looking no larger now than Hot Wheels cars, they veered off down a side street.

The light changed. Calvin unpaused his iPod and hurried across McArthur, patting road dust from his jeans and his “Cthulhu for President” T-shirt and his close-cropped blond hair. He wondered what was going on. It wasn’t often you saw cop cars zooming down the somnolent streets of May, Ohio. Part of him hoped something big and exciting and maybe even catastrophic had happened. A giant sinkhole. A pack of rabid gorillas on the loose. The onset of the zombie apocalypse. Anything to liven up this dull little town. He felt as if he had been waiting all his life for something remarkable to happen, but nothing ever did.

Well, no. That wasn’t entirely true. Something pretty remarkable had happened recently: Calvin had found the girl of his dreams—his beautiful redheaded fellow senior, Cynthia Crow.

Calvin and Cynthia had spent most of their lives advancing through the May school system together, but they had never really gotten to know each other until this year when they got paired up as lab partners in Chemistry. He was shocked at how well they got along. Both of them were smart and well-read, with creative, probing minds and wry and often irreverent senses of humor. They seemed to be perfectly in tune on some essential psychological level. While they sat there in lab waiting for chemicals to catalyze, they had the most fascinating and wide-ranging conversations Calvin had ever had with anyone. One day after a debate about the existence of ghosts (he pro, she undecided but leaning toward con) he knew that this was The Girl.

For weeks now, he had been trying to screw up the nerve to ask her out. He had never asked a girl out before, never been on a date, never kissed a girl (well, except for that time he kissed Julie Tanner in first grade, but that was just to make her scream and run away). Simply thinking about asking Cynthia out made his heart palpitate and his palms ooze sweat. But he knew he had to try. She was too awesome to let slip away. He lay awake at night agonizing over the best way to do it. He scoured books and websites for tips and methods and reassurances. He tried to embolden himself with positive self-talk. On some level he understood that all of this nervous preparation was a delaying tactic, but he kept doing it anyway.

But then last night, after reading an online sob story about some guy who lost his dream girl because he waited too long to ask her out, Calvin swore to himself he would pop the question at school today. He didn’t dare wait any longer. And today was Friday, which was perfect: If she said yes, they could schedule a date for sometime over the weekend. If she said no, he had all weekend to lick his wounds and figure out how to face her on Monday.

So today was the day. No question about it. But when? Chemistry would provide the best opportunity since they had time alone to chat during lab. But they shared Sociology right after that, which meant if she turned him down, they would then have to spend a very awkward fifty minutes sitting two seats away from each other, and he wasn’t sure he could deal with that. Maybe it would be best to catch her at the end of school as they were leaving the building…

After stopping at his locker to hang up his backpack and grab the books he needed for his first few classes, Calvin hurried to his homeroom. Cynthia was in the same homeroom, and he was hoping to discuss the latest episode of MythBusters with her before the bell rang.

But when Calvin strode into Mr. Quimby’s homeroom, he found Cynthia’s desk empty. He looked around, thinking she must be talking with someone, but she was nowhere in sight.

Heart sinking, he trudged to his desk, the only other empty desk in the room. The next thirty seconds consisted of him repeatedly swiveling around in his seat to see if she was at her desk yet, seeing that she wasn’t, checking the open doorway in hopes that she was even now coming in, seeing that she wasn’t, then turning back around to face the front of the room, a little glummer than before. Had he psyched himself up for nothing?

When the bell rang, her seat was still empty. Crap. It wasn’t like Cynthia to be late. She must be sick.

He had completely forgotten about the police cars.

2

Calvin was on his way to first-period Trigonometry when a tall, dark figure fell into step beside him. He looked up. It was Brandon Taylor, another fellow senior. Brandon had black-rimmed glasses and a head of thick, dark-brown hair that he had at one time or another gelled into every style imaginable and dyed every color of the rainbow. Like usual, he was dressed all in black, with a black T-shirt, black jeans, black Doc Martens, and a black leather jacket adorned with thin silver chains and a picture of a dancing, top-hatted skeleton on the back. Brandon had painted the skeleton himself. Brandon and Calvin were more than acquaintances, but not quite friends. They hung out together during eighth period study hall and discussed cool bands and horror movies and Brandon’s latest offbeat art projects, but they had never met up outside of school.

“Hey, man,” Brandon said. “Got a minute?”

“Um, sure,” Calvin said. “What’s up?”

Brandon leaned in and said in a low, confidential tone, “Well, you know, I was just wondering if you knew anything about what happened?”

Calvin shook his head. “What happened with what?”

Brandon’s jaw dropped. “Oh, man. I thought you’d know already, what with you being close buds with Cynthia Crow and everything.”

Calvin felt a surge of mixed emotions at this remark. On one level his breast swelled with joy and accomplishment on learning that a third party considered him and Cynthia “close buds.” But this feeling was overshadowed by a jolt of alarm at the implication that whatever had happened involved Cynthia.

“What?” Calvin said. “Is she okay?”

“Yeah. Well, no. Well, sort of. It’s not her; it’s her sister.”

Calvin fished around in his memory for the name of Cynthia’s ten-year-old sister.

“Emily?”

“Yeah. That’s the one.” Brandon leaned in farther and lowered his voice even more until it was barely audible in the noisy hallway. “She disappeared. It sounds like she got abducted or something.”

“What? When?”

“Sometime overnight, I guess. I don’t know all the details. I heard about it from Hailie Furness. She was in the office when they got a call about it, right before homeroom. They’ll probably make an announcement soon…”

Brandon yammered on, but Calvin wasn’t listening. He was remembering his earlier wish that something big and catastrophic would happen. The memory made him squirm with guilt and shame. He hadn’t meant something like this. Not something so awful and real. And especially not involving Cynthia.

He hated to imagine what she must be going through. He pictured her huddled on her bed, her willowy body racked with sobs, her green eyes leaking tears. The image filled him with cold, hard determination to do whatever he could to end her pain. Maybe he could even play amateur sleuth and find Emily himself. He envisioned himself striding toward the Crow house with Emily safe and sound in his arms while Cynthia and her family watched in breathless awe from their front porch.

Which he supposed many people would argue was a ridiculously unlikely outcome. But you never knew what was possible till you tried, right?

Calvin vowed to try.

Chapter 2

Cynthia Crow

Cynthia Crow sat on the living room couch in the Crow house. Officer Bob Thompson of the May Police sat on the footstool in front of her, frowning slightly as he flipped through a small spiral notebook. Cynthia had given a full statement half an hour earlier, but Officer Thompson said he wanted to confirm something with her. Across the living room her brother Donovan sat in an armchair, looking frazzled and lost and much younger than his fifteen years. Stray wisps of his auburn hair stuck up from his sloppily tied ponytail and glowed hazily against the morning light that brightened the picture window behind him. Outside, a uniformed cop walked slowly along the edge of the woods that encircled the lawn, his head down as he scanned the brush for evidence. In the dining room across the hall Cynthia could hear her father Hannibal’s low tones as he spoke to his sister Wendy on the phone. He had called her to make sure she didn’t know anything about Emily’s disappearance. It wasn’t likely; Aunt Wendy lived in Boston. Periodically Cynthia’s mom Brenda cut in to tell Hannibal to ask this or that. Her voice was high and urgent.

“Here it is,” Officer Thompson said. He set the open notebook on his knee. He was a fortyish guy with a brown mustache and a roll of paunch straining against his blue polyester shirt. Shortly after the cops had arrived, Cynthia’s mom had emerged from her state of near-panic long enough to give him a bright, brittle smile and ask him if he had ever stopped eating blue Play-Doh. It turned out Officer Thompson had been in Brenda’s very first batch of students when she started teaching first grade at the May Elementary School thirty years earlier. Thompson had breathed out a small, nervous laugh and said, “Yes, ma’am. I prefer lasagna these days.”

That had been the only light moment of the whole morning. And from the look of things probably the whole day. And who knew how long after that.

“I just want to confirm what clothes she’s got on before we send out the info,” Officer Thompson said. He nodded at the dining room. “Your mom and dad, they’re kind of…unfocused right now, so I figured I’d better double check the information.”

Cynthia raised her eyebrows. “What, you think I’m focused?”

He shrugged. “Well, you seem a little cooler-headed.”

“If you say so.”

“Now, then…” He studied what was on the notepad. “I have her down as wearing a green sweatshirt, blue jeans, white tennis shoes with lightning bolts on the sides, green socks, white underwear, and a lightweight waist-length green nylon jacket. Is that right?”

“Yeah. Well, I think so. I mean, after we discovered she wasn’t there this morning, I noticed that her pajamas were folded up next to the bed, so I figured we should check her regular clothes and see if anything was missing. And those are the clothes not accounted for. So I guess if you want to get technical, we can’t say for sure she’s actually wearing them. They’re just not in her room anymore.”

“Okay.”

There was a thump overhead. Cynthia looked up, stiff, tense. She wondered whether the sound had come from her room or her parents’ room. Not that it ultimately mattered; the cops had said they were going to search the whole house, from attic to cellar, even though the family had already searched it before they reported Emily missing. Cynthia listened, head cocked. Another thump sounded. No, it was Mom and Dad’s room. Had hers already been searched, then?

Officer Thompson noticed her tension and smiled reassuringly. “Don’t worry. They’re careful. They won’t break anything. They’ll put everything back the way they found it.”

“Uh-huh.” It wasn’t the safety of breakables she was concerned about; she was worried that someone would go rooting around on her computer. She hated to be thinking about herself at a time like this, but there was stuff on her computer that would make it clear as day to anyone who looked that she was a lesbian, a fact currently known to no one but herself. If it came down to it, she supposed being forced out of the closet was a small price to pay for finding Emily, but she would really prefer to keep the closet door closed for the moment. She wasn’t ready for her friends and family to find out. Especially not her family, and especially not at a time like this. She wasn’t sure how to ask if the cops would look on her computer, at least not without making it obvious that there was stuff on it she didn’t want anyone to see, which of course would only make the cops want to check it out all the more. “Are they, um, are they looking specifically for Emily, or are they just looking around, or what?”

“They’re just looking,” Officer Thompson said. “Sometimes we don’t know exactly what we’re looking for until we find it.”

“I see.” Actually she didn’t. As answers went, that one was extraordinarily unhelpful.

Thompson started to close his notepad, then saw something written there that made him stop. “Oh, that’s right. One other thing. Your mom gave us a photo of Emily. Something we can use to make fliers and send to news outlets. I just want to make sure—I mean, your mom’s kind of unfocused, like I said, so I just want to be sure this is a good photo. A good likeness.”

He held out a photo. She took it. It was one of the photos Mom had taken during their trip to New England over the summer. It showed Emily in front of the Salem Witch Museum. Her pale face was framed by her long, straight black hair. Her dark-brown eyes were fixed on something slightly above and to the right of the camera. A small smile curved her lips.

“Yeah,” Cynthia said softly, staring at Emily. She couldn’t help wondering if she would ever see Emily’s face again. Her real face, that is. The one that moved and talked and laughed and stuck out her tongue at her brother when he made fun of her inexplicable disdain of fish. Cynthia felt her throat tightening and tears building up behind her eyes, so she thrust the photo back into Officer Thompson’s hands before the sight of her sister’s face could reduce her to a hysterical mess and thereby destroy her mostly bogus aura of cool-headedness. “That’s…yeah, that’s a good picture.”

As Thompson tucked the photo away, the front door opened. Just like every other time the front door had opened this morning, Cynthia and Donovan shot bolt upright and looked out into the main hall, hoping it would be Emily.

And just like every other time this morning, it wasn’t her. Instead it was Officer Ronald Carter, a young cop with blond hair and glasses. Clutched in his left hand was a large brown paper bag containing something heavy enough to make the bag’s bottom sag.

“Where’s the Chief?” Officer Carter called out.

“Right here,” said May Police Chief Joseph Krezchek as he strode out of the dining room. He was a stocky, avuncular fellow with a head of wavy gray hair and a face that was trying hard to maintain a stern, in-command expression rather than the disorientation he was clearly feeling. The May Police rarely faced crimes more serious than stolen bikes and domestic spats.

Behind Chief Krezchek came Hannibal and Brenda Crow. Cynthia thought they looked even worse than when she last saw them twenty minutes ago. Her dad’s eyes were bloodshot and puffy, and his normally neatly combed and parted hair was tousled as if he had just gotten out of bed. Even his mustache looked ruffled. Mom didn’t look any better. Her cheeks shone with tear tracks, and there were small coffee stains on the front of her dress. Cynthia wondered if the gray threads in her mom’s hair had multiplied or if she was simply noticing them more than usual.

“We, uh, we’ve got a development,” Officer Carter said, glancing around. The hesitancy in his voice and the way his eyes kept flicking toward Hannibal and Brenda, as if he weren’t sure he should be talking about this in front of them, made Cynthia shoot to her feet and stride toward the hall. Donovan and Officer Thompson followed. As Cynthia entered the hall, she heard sounds of movement throughout the house—doors opening, floorboards creaking, footsteps thumping. Looking around, she saw cops emerging from doorways and peering over the railing of the balcony that overlooked the hall. Everyone sensed the import surrounding Officer Carter’s appearance.

“What is it?” Krezchek asked.

“We, uh, we found something.” Officer Carter held up the bag. His nervous eyes swept over the Crows again.

“Where?”

“In some bushes at the edge of that round clearing. You know, the one on Mr. May’s property across the river.”

“Let’s see.”

Officer Carter opened the bag. Krezchek peered inside and stiffened.

“Aw, shit,” he said.

Brenda and Hannibal craned their heads to look over his shoulder. Hannibal’s face went white. Brenda gave a little cry and sagged against her husband.

Cynthia edged around Krezchek and looked into the bag.

At the bottom was a small white tennis shoe with a lightning bolt on the side.

Chapter 3

See Emily Play (I)

1

Brenda Crow couldn’t keep standing. The moment she saw the shoe—Emily’s shoe, no question about it; Brenda herself had bought those shoes for Emily at the Payless in West River Mall last year—her legs had gone weak and rubbery, and she knew if she didn’t get herself into a chair immediately, she’d sink right down onto her bottom on the hardwood floor. So as Officer Carter delineated their other findings in the clearing—a circle of burned grass about two feet wide, some dried blood, torn-up turf indicative of a struggle—and as each of these findings made her legs weaker and weaker, she staggered into the dining room and collapsed into one of the five chairs that surrounded the dinner table.

Five chairs. One at either end, for herself and Hannibal. Two on one side for Donovan and Cynthia. And one on the other side for Emily. Brenda had always liked to think of the arrangement as a star. Five points, with Emily—special Emily—as the crown.

But if Emily was gone, there was no crown. There was no star. There were four points. A square. A box. A dull, commonplace thing.

She moaned and covered her face with her hands. Her palms quickly overflowed with tears. Horrid rasping sounds were pouring from her throat but she didn’t know how to stop them.

Hannibal sat down beside her and murmured vague, meaningless phrases of comfort that he clearly didn’t believe himself. Then Donovan and Cynthia appeared, everyone crowding together to comfort her. Or at least everyone from the family: The police had started filing out the front door, speaking in low, inaudible voices. She wanted to follow, to hear what they were saying, but she didn’t have the strength to get up.

“We’ll find her,” Hannibal murmured as his hand robotically stroked her back. “Don’t worry. Everything’ll be fine.”

She nodded. Perhaps he was right. Blood didn’t mean she was dead. She might only be injured. Or the blood might not even be hers…

“It might not be hers,” Brenda exclaimed, rising from her chair so suddenly that Hannibal drew back, startled. She strode toward the cops. “It might not be hers!”

Chief Krezchek froze midway out the door. “Pardon?”

“The blood. It could be…” She wasn’t sure of the right term. “Someone else’s. The perpetrator’s. The person responsible’s. Couldn’t it?”

“Mrs. Crow,” he said, trying to smile consolingly, “it’s far too soon to start hypothesizing about…well, anything. We can’t know anything for sure until we do a proper analysis.”

“How long will that take?” she cried. She envisioned labs full of white-coated scientists peering stolidly through microscopes and making detailed notes with careful, slow-moving hands while somewhere out in the world Emily was hurt, scared, maybe dying. “We don’t have that kind of time!” She realized her voice had risen to a shriek, but she didn’t care.

Hannibal’s hands closed on her shoulders, and in a gentle voice he said, “Brenda, come on. Let them do their job. If we keep getting in the way, it’ll take them that much longer.”

She closed her eyes and heaved a sigh. Sometimes she hated his stuffy rationality, but he was right. Not that rightness or truth could do anything to quiet the tempest of emotions buffeting her soul.

He led her back to the table and sat her down while the cops vanished outside to confer and plan. The house suddenly seemed far too quiet.

Hannibal sat beside her again, this time with her right hand in his and his left arm draped over her shoulders. Donovan and Cynthia sat too. Brenda studied the arrangement, frowning. Everyone was in the wrong seat. Hannibal was in Brenda’s usual chair. Cynthia was in Hannibal’s. Donovan in Cynthia’s. And she herself in Donovan’s. Musical chairs. Only Emily’s chair remained untouched, inviolate. Empty.

Her face crumpled up again. Fresh tears spilled from her eyes. She lowered her head and let the tears drip into her lap while Hannibal caressed her shoulder and squeezed her hand.

A car door slammed outside. An engine roared to life. Tires crunched away down the gravel drive. The faint voices of the cops became fainter as they headed off, presumably into the woods to examine this horrible new evidence.

The woods. Of course. It would have to be the woods.

The woods had always made Brenda uncomfortable. And not just in the usual worried-parent way that foresaw rabid animals and rusty nails and falling branches everywhere. No, this was a deeper, vaguer, more primal discomfort. There was a sense of alienness about the woods, a sense of things not being quite right. Whenever she had to go into them, she found herself remembering the medieval European beliefs about forests being the home of witches and monsters and child-swiping fairies. Of course, back then people were uneducated dunces and the forests were enormous untraveled things that stretched over most of the continent and were full of genuine threats like wolves and bears and disease. So it was no surprise medieval folks felt as they did. It was ludicrous to feel the same way about less than a square mile of woods in modern-day Ohio. And yet…

Fairies.

2

Emily’s obsession with fairies had started when she was five. Brenda had never been able to determine exactly where this interest had come from. She and Hannibal had not yet bought Emily any of the books of fairy tales that now filled two whole shelves in her room. No, the books had followed from the interest, not the other way around. Brenda’s best guess was that since Emily had started nursery school that year, her interest in fairies had been kindled by comments her new schoolmates had made or by stories Miss Rinehart had read to her class.

And yet the first time the subject came up, it had been in connection with the woods.

It had been a sunny Saturday afternoon in September. Brenda was in the kitchen chopping parsnips for that night’s dinner when Emily, who had been out in the back yard hosting yet another gathering of her stuffed animals, came bursting through the back door. Emily’s eyes were bright with delight, and her big, round, baby-fat cheeks were flushed with excitement.

“Mom!” Emily cried. “I saw fairies!”

“What?” Brenda said. She set down the knife with a baffled frown.

“Fairies! There were, like, a bunch of ‘em! They were dancing around some big mushums!”

“Mushrooms.”

Emily rolled her eyes. “Mushrooms. Sorry.”

“And what exactly did these fairies look like?” Brenda expected a description that matched butterflies or fireflies rather than traditional fairies.

Instead Emily said, “They were, like, tiny little people. Little enough to ride a bunny. They had long hair and tiny faces and big colorful wings, and…” She leaned in close and in a gleefully scandalized whisper added, “And they weren’t wearing any clothes.”

“And where exactly did you see these fairies?” Brenda said.

“In the woods.”

“I thought I told you not to go into the woods.”

Emily clucked her tongue and let her shoulders sag and her arms flop limply in a display of unfairly maligned innocence. “I wasn’t in the woods. I was on the edge. The fairies were right inside.”

Brenda stared at her daughter for a moment, then said, “Show me.” She figured she had better make sure there weren’t any nudist hippies camping out somewhere on the property.

Emily led her across the lawn to the edge of the woods due north of the house, then pointed to a bare circle of dirt amid the greenery a couple of feet inside the tree line. The circle was about a foot in diameter and had a cluster of small white mushrooms in the center.

“They were in that circle there, dancing around the, uh, the mushrooms.”

Brenda squatted down to inspect the circle more closely. There were no marks in the dirt, no indications that anything (including Emily) had been physically present within the circle.

“Hmm,” she said. Her knees cracked as she stood up. “How tall were they exactly?”

“This tall.” Emily held her hands about four inches apart.

“I see.” The supposed fairies were probably only some kind of bug after all. Or a product of an overactive imagination, something Emily had proven herself to possess in spades time and time again. “Well, if you see them again, just leave them alone. And don’t go into the woods.”

“I didn’t!”

“I’m just reminding you.” She looked at the circle again, then added, “And don’t eat the mushrooms, either.”

Emily looked appalled at the suggestion. “I would never do that! They’re the fairies’ mushrooms!”

The incident had an amusing sequel a couple of days later. Brenda had been on her way down to the basement to do some laundry when she glanced out the back door and saw Emily crouched at the edge of the woods. Brenda set down the laundry basket and went outside.

“Emily?” she called as she crossed the lawn.

Emily jerked, startled, then looked around and smiled.

“What?”

“What are you doing over there?”

“Nothing.”

When Brenda reached the edge of the woods she found that Emily was arranging a pile of Sun-Maid raisins next to the mushrooms around which the supposed fairies had been supposedly dancing. Already a few ants were scuttling forward to investigate.

“What is this?” Brenda asked.

“It’s for the fairies. I thought they might like ‘em. To eat.”

“I see.” Brenda figured she had better dissuade Emily from handing out free lunches to bugs. “You know, I don’t think fairies eat people food. I think they have a special fairy diet.”

Emily’s eyes went big with excitement. “Ooh! Like spiderwebs and moonbeams and stuff, right?”

“Um, yeah. Something like that.”

“Cool!” She regarded the heap of raisins on the dirt. “Oh, well. I’ll just leave those for the ants. They should like ‘em.”

3

And that had been the start of it. Emily never saw fairies again (or if she did, she never mentioned it to Brenda), but her fascination with them continued unabated to the present day. She stubbornly insisted on their reality. And not just fairies, but all kinds of odd things. Things like magic and monsters. Things Brenda wondered if it wasn’t peculiar for a ten-year-old (almost eleven) to still believe in in this crass modern world of terrorist bombings and reality TV.

Her thoughts were interrupted by a rising jumble of voices outside. It sounded like Chief Krezchek and his men. Were they back already? Brenda glanced at the clock on the wall and was surprised to see that half an hour had passed since the cops departed for the woods.

The front door opened, and Chief Krezchek came in. His expression was somber and rueful.

“I, uh, I came back to tell you folks that after seeing the evidence in the clearing we’re officially labeling this an abduction. We went ahead and notified the FBI field office in Kingwood. They’re sending a team over right now.”

He said something else but Brenda didn’t hear it over the moans that were pouring from her throat.

Chapter 4

Calvin and Cynthia

All day at school Calvin followed the developments in the Emily Crow case with keen interest. For a long time there wasn’t much in the way of hard facts, but early that afternoon the authorities revealed some big news: One of Emily’s friends claimed that Emily had been planning to meet a man in the woods near her house last night, a man who said he could show her fairies in the woods. Emily had talked to this man sometime yesterday, most likely when she was in Indian Hill Park between four and six p.m.

When school let out, Calvin made it home in record time. He tossed his backpack on his bed, grabbed a quick snack, then set out for Oaks Road, where the Crows lived, where the woods were.

His route took him down Potts Road, which passed through downtown May. A crowd filled the plaza outside the May Civic Administration Building. News vans lined the curb. Here and there news crews filmed live reports. The parking lot of the May National Bank, where Calvin’s dad worked as the manager, was crammed with cars, few of which were likely to belong to bank customers. Calvin suspected he knew what his dad would be grousing about during dinner tonight.

Farther down the block Calvin passed Crow Books, the bookstore owned by Cynthia’s dad. Up until a couple of months ago Calvin barely visited the place, preferring to buy his books online where prices were lower. But after his interest in Cynthia had blossomed—and after he learned she sometimes helped out her dad around the store—Calvin found himself visiting the bookstore more often and spending a bigger chunk of his allowance money on books.

Not surprisingly, the store was closed and dark. He wondered how long before it reopened. Hopefully it wouldn’t be too long. Hopefully this would all be resolved soon. Maybe Calvin would even have a hand in resolving it.

South of downtown was Indian Hill Park, where Emily was thought to have talked with her abductor yesterday afternoon. The park consisted of a playground, flower beds crisscrossed with walking paths, a gazebo where local bands held concerts in the summer, a baseball diamond, and a few multifunctional fields. The park’s southern boundary was the woods where the Crows and old Robert May lived.

Calvin took a quick stroll through the park, but there wasn’t much to see. Not even people. At this hour the place was normally packed with romping, screaming children, but parents were keeping their kids at home today and would no doubt do so for many days to come.

No, the real site of interest was the clearing on Mr. May’s property. The police said they had found evidence that Emily had been in the clearing last night, but they weren’t saying what the evidence consisted of. According to the various stories that had been floating around the high school hallways, the evidence was some or all of Emily’s clothes, puddles of blood, the remains of a campfire, a bloody knife, a ransom note, and/or evidence of a UFO landing.

Calvin returned to Potts Road and followed it south along the eastern edge of the woods. Soon he came to the Potts Road Bridge, which spanned the Kanseeka River. Calvin paused midway across the bridge and gazed west down the gap in the woods along which the river ran.

The river came into view half a mile away, where, after having flowed generally northward ever since its origin in Blackwater Swamp, it looped east around the base of Indian Hill, a high, steep mound of shale and clay that marked the northwest corner of the Crow property. From there, the Kanseeka flowed east all the way to Kingwood. Calvin wasn’t entirely sure where it went after that. Probably Lake Erie.

The bridge shook as a trio of news vans crossed it. No doubt they were on their way to the Crow house. Or at least the street outside it; the house itself was set far back in the woods.

As Calvin resumed his journey south down Potts, he kept his eyes on the vans. Indeed, they turned right onto Oaks Road. So did a lot of the other traffic. It must be a real circus down there.

Calvin’s original plan had been to head down Oaks Road to Mr. May’s property, then cut north through the woods to the clearing. But now he changed his mind. He didn’t want to get accosted by reporters and wind up on the ten o’clock news as a concerned neighbor or something. Plus he didn’t want anyone to see him trespassing. He knew he shouldn’t trespass at all, of course, but if he was to have any hope of helping Emily (and Cynthia), he needed to get a look at the clearing.

After glancing around to make sure the traffic had thinned out and no one was looking, he ducked into the woods. The sun vanished behind a thick canopy of red and orange leaves. The sound of the traffic dwindled to a murmur. He made his way west toward the river. The murmur faded to nothing. The only sounds were birds singing and trees rustling softly in the wind and the crack of twigs underfoot.

Before long the tinkle and gurgle of rushing water grew audible up ahead. The ground began to slope gently downhill. The air became slightly clammy. Then the trees and bushes fell away to reveal the river. At this stage in its course, the Kanseeka was slow and shallow, no more than knee-deep anywhere. The water was green and translucent, and small, water-smoothed stones littered the riverbed.

As planned, Calvin had emerged from the trees near Spirit Cave, a tunnel in the sandstone riverbank due north of the Crow house. The cave ended after twenty feet in a wall of jagged, broken rock. Calvin had heard somewhere that the cave used to lead to a maze of subterranean tunnels but that someone had sealed it up to keep anyone from getting lost in there. Calvin preferred to imagine more exciting scenarios: Maybe someone had been hiding treasure or bodies, or plugging up the gateway to a blasphemous underworld filled with Lovecraftian slime-monsters. If he had more time, he would have stopped to try to peer through gaps in the rocks at the back of the cave and listen for faint wavering howls and gibbers from deep below. But he had more important things to do today, so instead he made his way southwest along the river to Spirit Falls, a twelve-foot-high waterfall.

There were three ways to cross to the west side of the Kanseeka in this area: the Old Stone Bridge on Oaks Road (the official way); a line of large stepping stones that had been lain across a narrow spot in the river midway between the Crow and May houses; and here at the waterfall, along an alcove in the rock behind the veil of falling water. The alcove extended all the way across the falls. Its floor was uneven and somewhat slippery, but as long as you were careful it was a convenient and picturesque way to cross the river. It was also the wisest way at the moment. The others entailed getting too close to the Crow house, the cops, and the news crews.

Stooping down to clear the overhang, Calvin made his way across the alcove. The alcove was dim and dank and loud with the echoing hiss of the falls. The spray from the falling water left tiny, chilly droplets on his bare arms.

On the other side he headed straight for the clearing. He was on Robert May’s land now, and for some reason the woods on this side of the river were denser and darker than on the Crow side. Calvin had no idea if this was a naturally occurring phenomenon—maybe due to environmental differences on either side of the river—or if it meant only that the Crows had felled more trees and cleared more brush over the years. Either way, he preferred the May side. It looked older and creepier and cooler.

As Calvin drew closer to the clearing he began to see traces of human activity. Much of the brush was tramped down and broken, and there were areas where the dirt was churned with footprints. At one point he saw a blue latex glove caught in the branches of a bush.

He spotted a flash of something yellow moving amid the trees up ahead where the clearing was. Not the warm, sunny yellow of the autumn leaves, but a garish, artificial man-made shade of yellow. Were people still here?

He slowed down and advanced more cautiously, craning his head this way and that to see around the brush for a better view. He soon discerned black letters on the yellow and realized it was police tape bobbing in the breeze.

He started to relax, but then caught a glimpse of something else moving. Someone else. Amid the foliage he saw what looked like a white T-shirt. Blue jeans. A bit of a bare arm. A skinny arm. A girl.

Then he saw the long, red hair that haunted all his thoughts these days, and his breath caught in his throat. It was Cynthia.

A few more steps forward brought her fully into view. She stood on the edge of the clearing, her back to Calvin, her hands resting lightly on the police tape that was strung at waist level from tree trunk to tree trunk around the perimeter of the clearing. There wasn’t anyone else in sight.

He had been trying to keep quiet, but now he deliberately scuffed his feet on the ground to alert her to his presence.

Cynthia jumped and spun around, her eyes huge with alarm. Then she recognized him and relaxed.

“Calvin,” she said. “What are you doing here?”

“Um…” He wasn’t sure what to say. Now that he was faced with the reality of the situation, with the police tape cordoning off the clearing, with the woods around him bearing the traces of dozens of smart and well-trained law enforcement personnel, with Cynthia’s haggard yet unyielding countenance, all of his amateur-sleuth/young-hero-to-the-rescue fantasies suddenly seemed silly and juvenile. “I, uh…I heard about what happened. I’m sorry. I just thought maybe I could…I don’t know, help somehow or something.” He shrugged. “But I guess there probably isn’t a whole lot I can do that isn’t already being done.”

She studied him with a narrow, assessive gaze for a moment, then said, “I’m not so sure about that.”

“What do you mean?”

She nodded in the direction of the May house.

“What do you know about Robert May?” she said.

“Robert May? Um…I don’t know. I know he’s old. He’s, what, like, ninety-something? Beyond that, not much. I mean, there’re lots of stories about him at school. About him being crazy or a Satanist or…” He stiffened. “Wait, do you think he has something to do with what happened to your sister?”

She opened her mouth to speak, then shut it, then sighed. “I don’t know. It’s just, I’m not sure how much you’ve heard, but they found one of Emily’s shoes here in the clearing this morning. And some blood, too. They still don’t know whose it was. The tests’ll take a while. They also found some of Emily’s shoe-prints in the mud by the riverbank, down by the stepping stones. And then there’s that.” She pointed at the center of the clearing, where there was a circle of burned grass two feet wide.

Calvin had been so preoccupied with Cynthia that he hadn’t noticed the burn till now. He leaned over the police tape for a better look. The grass was blackened all the way down to the soil. Much of it had already crumbled into powder.

“What happened?” he asked. “How did it get burned like that?”

“Nobody knows. At first everyone thought it was a campfire or something, but the guys from the FBI couldn’t find any signs of any combustible materials. No wood, no paper, nothing. They said it looked more like a lightning strike.”

“Lightning? Seriously?” He looked at the sky, then at the circle again. “But there hasn’t been a storm here for a long time. A few weeks, at least.”

“I know! But my real point is, this is all on Robert May’s land.” She held up a hand as if to forestall any objections. “Now, I know in and of itself that doesn’t mean anything. Just because something happened on his property, that’s not proof he had anything to do with it. But there’re also all those stories about him. Bodies in the basement. Ritual sacrifices. Generations of inbreeding and insanity.”

“Do you think all that stuff’s true?”

“Well…I don’t know about all of it. But have you heard the stories about mysterious deliveries to his house late at night?”

“Yeah. Like, trucks delivering coffins or iron maidens or whatever. It always sounded like something out of a cheesy horror story to me.”

“Well, I can tell you for a fact those stories are based on truth. I mean, I didn’t see coffins or anything, but listen: One night about two years ago I was coming back from a get-together at Jess Asher’s, right? It was pretty late. Late enough that I wound up getting grounded, actually. It was probably around one a.m. Anyway, I was heading east down Oaks Road, but sticking to the shadows under the eaves of the woods so no one would see me. And as I was nearing Mr. May’s driveway, I saw an old flatbed truck turn down it, and chained to the bed was this big metal oil drum.”

“An oil drum? What was in it?”

“I have no idea! When I came to the end of his driveway, I paused and looked down it. I couldn’t see anything because of the way the driveway winds through the woods, but I could hear faint clanks and bangs as they unloaded the truck. Then everything went silent, so I started walking on. I had just turned down my own driveway when I heard the truck pull back out. It was coming my way, so I stopped and waited, and when it drove by, the bed was empty. There were two guys in the cab. One was this skinny guy with a beard and sunglasses—”

“At one in the morning?”

“I know! And the other one looked almost like a gorilla with a blue cap and overalls on.”

“That is really weird.”

“Exactly. And let me ask you something else: What the hell does he do? What has he ever done? I mean, I assume he’s pretty rich because of the brewery his family and mine used to own, but what does he do with all his time?”

“I don’t know.”

“Nobody knows. I’ve been living next to him my whole life, and I couldn’t tell you the first thing about him. He hardly ever leaves his house. And the few times I’ve seen him outside it, he’s always acting weird.”

“Like how?”

“Well, sometimes when I was a little girl, I’d be out playing in the woods, and he’d just sort of pop up out of nowhere and start talking to me. Even back then, he looked ancient, all bent and wrinkled and white-haired. The sight of him always scared me. I’d never seen anyone who looked so old. Anyway, he’d come up to me and ask me all these questions about me and my family.”

“Your family? Like what?”

“All kinds of stuff. He’d always start out really innocuous, asking me how I was doing, what school was like, how my parents were. Basic neighbor stuff, right? But then the questions would get more probing and specific. I remember one time he wanted to know about my Aunt Wendy, my dad’s sister, up in Boston. He seemed especially interested in her seizures.”

“Seizures?”

“Yeah, when she was young—way before my time; this was back when she was growing up here—she used to have these, like, epileptic fits or something. I don’t think she’s had one in years. But Mr. May wanted to know if she’d had any more, and if anyone had ever told me much about the ones she did have. And then this other time he wanted to know if I knew anything about my grandma’s death. My dad’s mom, that is. He never seemed interested in my mom’s family. But anyway, you see my point? It’s like he was collecting information on us, like he has a weird fixation on my family.”

“And you think, what, he’s taken his fixation to the next level now?”

Cynthia shrugged. “I don’t know. I just think there’s definitely something not quite kosher going on with that guy, something worth looking into.”

“Yeah, I agree he’s definitely peculiar,” Calvin said. “But like you said yourself, he’s also ancient. Admittedly I’ve only seen him a couple of times, but he looks like he can barely stand up without a cane. Could a little old man like that really snatch up a ten-year-old girl?”

Cynthia rolled her eyes. “That’s pretty much what the cops said.”

“You told them?”

“Yeah, and they just sort of pooh-poohed the whole thing. They gave me that ‘we’ll take that under consideration’ routine, you know? They did send someone over to interview him, but they did that with all the neighbors.” She shook her head. “The thing is, he doesn’t have to be super-healthy or anything. It looks like Emily came out here on her own. All Mr. May would have to do is just hit her on the head with a rock and knock her out. That could account for the blood. Then he’s too weak to carry her, so he drags her off. In the process her shoe comes off but he doesn’t notice.”

Calvin nodded. It was a plausible theory. Except…

“What about the burned grass?”

“I don’t know,” she said. Then a light dawned in her eyes. “Maybe he rigged up some glowing pyrotechnic thingie to look like a fairy light or something. To lure her in.”

“That makes sense, I guess. It seems kind of unnecessarily elaborate, but…”

“It’s better than magical lightning out of a clear sky.”

Calvin nodded. “Very true.” He regarded the burned circle for a moment, then stared off in the direction of the May house.

“You believe me?” she asked.

“I don’t know. I mean, evidence like this can be interpreted all kinds of ways. It’s all too inconclusive. But from what you’ve said, it really does sound like Mr. May merits further investigation. There’s definitely something odd going on over there.”

Her left eyebrow rose. “You wanna help me conduct a little unofficial investigation, then?”

He looked at her in surprise, all his amateur sleuth fantasies surging to the fore again. But this was even better than his fantasies. Now, not only would he be investigating a mystery and hopefully helping Emily, but he would be doing it at Cynthia’s side.

“Count me in,” he said with a firm nod.

Chapter 5

Anna West and John Coyote

Eleven-year-old Anna West rang the doorbell of the small brick house on Papesh Road that was home to John Coyote, her friend and classmate and a fellow BFF of Emily’s. While Anna waited for an answer, she looked over her shoulder and flashed a reassuring smile at her mom Karen, who sat behind the wheel of the silver minivan idling at the curb. Anna felt kind of babyish to have her mom chauffeuring her on a three-block trip she had walked unsupervised a hundred times before. Then again, Anna understood her mom’s—all parents’—concern and sudden overzealous protectiveness in the wake of Emily’s disappearance. And while one part of her cringed at the babyishness of it, another part was thankful. With a possible child-nabbing psycho on the loose, it was better to be safe than sorry.

The front door opened and there stood John’s aunt Colleen Brandt. She was a short, stout woman who always wore dark frumpy cardigans and fluttery ankle-length skirts and whose brown hair was always drawn back in a bun so tight it could have doubled as a drawer pull. Ms. Brandt gave Anna’s mom a smile and a wave. Anna’s mom returned the wave, then drove away.

“Come on inside,” Ms. Brandt said, holding open the door. “It’s terrible what’s happened. How are you holding up?”

“Okay, I guess,” Anna said as she stepped into the vestibule.