I’ve been thinking about how to tell you of the evolution of Firestone, Cranwell, and Moon. If you have ever found yourself in need of paranormal investigators, you will have heard of us. We’ve spent years and a great deal of effort building a reputation for concrete results in a field rife with charlatans and wannabes. Everything you’ve heard about us is true. We are the big game hunters of the profession, and we bring some unusual talents to the hunt. In my case, you might say I was born for the role.
We were not always so fearless and polished. In fact, we were not always believers, though we all loved a good scary tale. When we started out, Nick and I were starving writers looking for a fun promotional gimmick, and Claudia was just broadening her unorthodox hobby in cryptozoology while working as a veterinarian. The agency was a lark and never claimed to be anything else, but our quirky video investigations of purported hauntings and weird creatures were popular and somewhat lucrative. Then Claudia bought Pepekissimo Lodge outside Davitt’s Grove and the family legend that went with it. So, that’s where I’ll start, in Red John’s Bait & Tackle, where entertainment crossed the threshold into dark reality.
***
“Your husband might want to hear this if he’s doing the driving. Preston’s place ain’t easy to find out there in the woods.”
Red John Kovak dipped two fingers of wintergreen-scented snuff from a dented can before returning it to his back pocket. He nodded and tipped me a wink. I glanced over at Nick, who browsed the brief aisle of canned goods next to the humming ice cream cooler.
“He’s not my husband,” I growled. “I’ve already been out to the lodge. I believe Mr. Egolf lives near it?”
Red John held up his hands in mock surrender. “Sorry, sorry. Don’t stab me with them eyes, honey.” He ran one of the enormous paws through his hair. “Us gingers oughtta be friends.”
He smiled around the wad of tobacco fattening his lip and fumbled a creased envelope from his breast pocket. With a flat carpenter’s pencil from the jam jar beside the cash register, he drew a crude map on the back of it.
“Lookit, once you leave SR6, the road’ll be dirt. It’s rougher than my granny’s washboard in places, so tell your … friend to take it slow.”
I thanked him, watching in fascination as a dark thread of tobacco juice wended its way through the curly, glowing terrain of his beard. Nick slammed the cooler door shut, and Red John and I looked over at him. In the dim dustiness, Nick held aloft two fudgesicles and I gave him a thumbs up. Red John leaned his meaty forearms on the counter. It groaned under his lumberjack weight. He fixed his muddy green gaze on me.
“So, you ain’t married then, huh?”
***
In the parking lot, I leaned against the Jeep and unwrapped my fudgesicle, tossing the wrapper into the back seat. The late summer heat beat a fierce rhythm on my bare shoulders, but the humidity for which Pennsylvania is infamous had departed. The first hint of the coming autumn ghosted on the air.
“What was that about?” Nick nodded toward the screen door of Red John’s Bait & Tackle. He took a bite of his ice cream and gave me a teenager’s grin. “Looked like you made a friend.”
I grimaced and waved the dirty envelope. “He drew us a map.”
I watched the mischief spread from Nick’s smile to his eyes. He waggled his eyebrows and I found myself grinning back. Here was a grown man who wore an X-Files tee shirt and kept a tiny skeleton key in the pocket of his jeans in case he found a secret drawer somewhere. A lovable weirdo, and my best friend. My annoyance with John Kovak wafted away.
“I could be a married woman by sundown. Too bad we have work to do.” I licked the denuded stick of my fudgesicle, savoring the chocolate and damp birch taste of childhood summers. “Let’s go see if we can find the caretaker’s cabin. I want to take a look around the lodge in the daylight, and we still have to set up camp.”
Nick zinged his empty stick into the bag of trash in the backseat with a graceful flick of his wrist. “I’ll drive, you navigate.”
We pulled out of the lot, dipping and bouncing through the unavoidable craters of clay and gravel, and clawed our way onto the crumbling asphalt of SR6. Sunlight fell in hot, green shafts as we drove under the trees, and I watched the village of Davitt’s Grove, population 164, fall away behind us in the side mirror. I smoothed Kovak’s map on my thigh, feeling the oily creases of it.
“We’ll leave the road in about five miles. There’s no sign for Polecat Hollow, but it’s on our right. We’ll have to keep our eyes peeled for a dirt track.”
I looked up from the map at Nick’s deep chuckle. A dimple had appeared under his three-day growth of beard.
“Polecat Hollow? Is this place for real?”
“You’re in hill country now, baby. Wait until tonight. I’ll treat you to dinner at MeeMaw’s. I have to call Claudia from there and let her know we made it to the lodge. There isn’t any cell service for miles.”
Nick glanced over at me, sunlight winking on the wire frame of his aviators.
“MeeMaw? Who’s that?”
I laughed. “Not a who, a what. It’s the local tavern, although that’s pretty generous. It’s a dive bar just outside Davitt’s Grove. Good hamburgers. Zero ambience.”
“Can’t wait,” he growled in mock ecstasy.
The late August air slid over us, laden with the last dusty lushness of the summer. Insects whirred and piped from the weeds. The trees hung exhausted foliage over the road. We drove through the flickering sun shadows until I felt as though we were caught in a zoetrope, the world a whirling drum of light and static images, presenting only the appearance of motion. It was good to disconnect from the recent tumult of my life and to let someone else take the wheel, in a metaphorical sense. I’d been sleeping in Dr. Claudia Moon’s guest room for the past month, unable to write or to be alone in my apartment since my fiancé’s departure with someone else. If not for Claudia’s renovation schemes for old Pepekissimo Lodge on Cold Ripple Lake, and the local campfire tales about the place (tales with a dark family connection that piqued more than my writer’s curiosity), I’d have still been curled around my broken heart.
The Jeep screeched to a halt, the big tires stuttering on the macadam. I jerked back to awareness. The map had slipped down between my seat and the console. I looked over at Nick and offered him a weak smile. He pointed through the bug-spattered windshield.
“I think that’s it. Polecat Hollow.” He peered at me with sharp blue eyes. “You okay?”
“Yes. Sorry. I must have dozed.” I fished the envelope from its resting place and stared at it. “This is it. See the boulder with the graffiti?” I pointed to a mammoth chunk of granite scrawled over with a crude black drawing of a dog-like creature with a wealth of pointy teeth. “Now we go almost two miles back, and we should see a footpath to the cabin. Red John asked me to tell you to take it slow.”
“You got it. Slow and easy.” He put the car in gear and eased us into the woods.
Red John hadn’t exaggerated. Polecat Hollow was a hellish strip of axle-deep ruts, stagnant pools, and jutting limestone goonies. We rolled and bounced along under the heavy tree canopy until we came to a wide spot in the road. There was just enough space for Nick to turn the Jeep, the tires kicking up clots of mud and a sharp verdant smell of crushed fern. At the edge of the crowding trees, half a bowed sheet of rusty corrugated roofing threatened tetanus from its perch atop four mismatched posts. The posts had once been white, but now sported pelts of moss and lichen. A red plastic gas container languished at the back of the lean-to.
Nick killed the engine and stretched. “Christ, my tailbone feels like it’s lodged in my neck. That is a road in only the broadest terms. Can you walk?”
I aimed a punch at his shoulder and slid from the passenger seat. The leafy stratum under my feet squelched and exhaled a mushroomy gust. I bent my back into shape and gestured at the lean-to.
“Well, that’s not the cabin, I hope.”
“No, it looks like it might be some kind of … garage.” He poked his head inside, careful not to bump against a leaning post. “Not big enough for a car. My guess is an ATV. Look at the tracks.”
With our gazes fixed on the forest floor, we spotted the footpath at the same instant. Barely bigger than a deer trail, it snaked off into the shadows, massive stands of laurel shouldering up to it like a buffalo herd. From somewhere nearby came the sound of rushing water, possibly a steep fall.
“It’s pretty gloomy in there,” I said. “You know, Egolf doesn’t have a phone. Obviously. I couldn’t let him know we were coming out today. Do you think he has a gun?”
“Undoubtedly. He’s probably a serial killer.” Nick made a deep courtly bow, sweeping his arm toward the slender path. “After you, my dear.”
I pushed my way through the laurels, Nick thrashing at them behind me. The woods were silent except for our noise, and soon we became stealthy, too. For half a mile, I walked with the certainty that something kept pace with us, hidden by the undergrowth, watching. I kept my thoughts to myself, concentrating on not turning an ankle on the surfing tree roots, and after a while, the feeling subsided. Nerves. Just nerves and an imagination on steroids.
The cabin hove into view at the parting of some laurel branches, and I stopped as though turned to stone. Nick crashed into me, grabbing me by the waist to stop me from stumbling out into the sudden clearing. An old woman sat rocking on the porch, her gaze fixed on the terminus of the footpath, on us.
“Heard you when you pulled up at the shed. Been waiting.”
Nick stepped forward. “Uh, hello there. We’re looking for Mr. Egolf, the lodge caretaker. Claudia Moon sent us. I think she wrote that we’d be coming up this week?”
The woman stared for a long minute. “I’m Maudie Egolf, Preston’s auntie. He ain’t here. Didn’t know just when you was coming.” She rocked forward and stood, a tall raw-boned woman with her snow-and-iron hair in a tight bun. “Best come in and have some coffee.”
She vanished into the dark interior of the shack, leaving the door open.
Nick shook his head. “Oh, I don’t have a good feeling about this.”
“Neither do I.” I plucked at his tee shirt. “Come on. When have you ever turned down coffee?”
Inside, the cabin was dim and musty. Crumbling stacks of newspapers covered every surface. The kitchen counter held a collection of dented coffee cans, some bent and shedding rust. An ancient glass coffee pot sat on a stove burner, burbling like a tar pit. I’d seen the propane tank by the side of the house. There was no electricity or running water. A hand pump rose beside the vast enameled sink. Maudie fished two chipped mugs from the depths of the sink and gave each a rub on her apron. She set them beside the stove and turned to wave a long finger at Nick.
“You can clear a coupla chairs. Just put that stuff over there on the recliner.”
He did as he was told, scooping armloads of newspapers bound in kitchen twine from the vinyl seats of the dinette chairs and depositing them in the sprung lap of a green La-Z-Boy. We sat, shuffling our feet amidst the stacks under the table. From outside came a commotion of chickens, and two black hens rose in heated, flapping debate against the kitchen window. Maudie leaned across the sink to look down on the fracas.
“Goddamn birds,” she muttered savagely, then gave us a wide, toothy smile. “I sell eggs in town. Preston drives me in on his four-wheeler. Them’s my eggs in the cooler at Red John’s. You been there?”
We nodded, Hansel and Gretel bereft of language in the witch’s house.
“I hate chickens. They stink, and they’ve got evil natures.” She whispered this at us as though the birds might hear and take offense. In a normal tone, she said, “Eggs is good business. Everyone wants eggs.”
The coffee pot hissed. Maudie grasped its handle with a corner of her apron and poured the black sludge into the mugs. An intense aroma of burned coffee filled the room. She pivoted and slammed a mug down in front of each of us.
“That’ll put hair on your chest.”
She gave a growling chuckle and poked Nick’s shoulder with her long, yellowed nail. Her gaze slid to me, considering and cool. Her eyes were surprisingly lovely, the green shot through with tawny rays that formed cognac rings around the irises. Sunlight in a forest glade.
“What do you people want over at the lodge?”
Nick took a manly sip from his mug. From his rigid posture and blank expression, I concluded it best to leave mine untasted. I pushed the mug, with its swirling Pythian vapors, from me.
“I’m a friend of Claudia Moon’s. The new lodge owner? She asked us to come out and make some preliminary renovation plans.”
The leaf-shadow eyes remained fixed on me. Maudie didn’t even blink. In the face of that stare, the lie felt as believable as Santa Claus. I coughed and tried again.
“Truthfully, she knew we could use a vacation. It’ll be nice to camp for a while, leave the busy world behind.”
“Well, that’s real nice. It’s a pretty place, with the lake just about at the door. Preston’s took good care of it these last years. You won’t find no weather damage.”
Maudie tipped a stack of newspapers onto the floor with a casual shove. She sat on the emptied chair as though it were a strange notion, her muscles bunched and quivering.
“You got all your camping gear in that Jeep?” she asked. “Gonna need it. Old Pepekissimo ain’t had lodgers in a long time.”
“The Jeep?” Nick found his voice, sharp with suspicion despite the rasp put in it by Maudie’s coffee.
She smiled, a long-jawed display of strong, white points.
“I got good ears, son. Real good ears. Know my engines, too. I heard that rowdy old four-wheel drive coming down the holler. Couldn’t mistake it. You gonna drink that, hon?”
She gestured at my coffee mug and pulled it toward her when I shook my head. She lifted the cup and took a deep swallow. Her eyes fixed on me over the steam.
“You know what Pepekissimo means, young lady? It’s an Indian word, or near to it. A Shawnee word. Means One Who Calls in the Dark.” The green-gold eyes narrowed. “You ever heard that before?”
I cleared my throat. “I might have heard something like that once,” I said. The research file in my backpack spelled it out, in fact. “Do you know how it got its name?”
“Oh, I know some about it, I guess. Some says there’s werewolves around the lodge. Some says they’ve seen them, even. Some nights, there’s sounds all right. Cries and howls no coyote ever made. Maybe you’ll hear it.”
Maudie tossed back another gulp of coffee. Her lean frame seemed to vibrate with some bone-deep resonance, a fierce energy held in abeyance through uncanny stillness.
Nick leaned across the table. “Have you ever seen a werewolf, Maudie?”
Her eyes laughed at us, but her face remained expressionless.
“No, sir, and I don’t care to. The stories ain’t about some man all made up in fur to look like a monster. Ain’t no wolf-man running around under a full moon. It’s an old, old tale come down the line in the blood around these parts. Older than the first white settlers. They say the wolves is part of the land Pepekissimo sits on, and sometimes they take people. Take ‘em without a trace, and no one ever sees them again.”
“You believe the stories?” I wished for the vidcam, or even the mini-recorder. “Do you really think werewolves are to blame for area disappearances?”
“Everything eats,” Maudie said. “This is a wild place, and some things is always hungry. Anyway, I don’t know what’s true, or if there could be more than one of those wolf things. Lotsa hunters around here. Seems they’d have seen them if there was a pack.” She pinned her cool stare on Nick. “Don’t you think so, son? A man with sharp eyes, he’d see a thing like that if it was close about.”
“It seems like he should, Maudie.” He turned to me. “We should probably get going if we’re going to look around before the sun goes down. We still have to set up camp.”
Maudie stood with us. “I’ll tell Preston you’re over there. He’ll stop by in the morning if he can’t get there any earlier. I told him not to go at night, and he don’t no more.”
She lifted a hand toward my hair and inhaled a long breath, as though savoring a scent. Her steady green gaze spoke to me in a language I could almost decipher.
“You got hair like red October. Things like that’ll run in a family, sometimes.”
We clattered over the porch and ducked from under the shade of the wild honeysuckle that overwhelmed it. Nick caught the dangling charm of a wind chime with his shoulder, and the silver sound followed us across the clearing and into the laurels. I turned to express my amazement at finding such a rich source of local folklore, but Nick took my elbow and hustled me along the path, bending to whisper in my ear.
“Just keep going. We can talk when we’re out of this hollow.”
***
Back on SR6, I asked, “Can we talk now?”
Nick gave me a sheepish grin. “Yeah, sorry. That old lady gave me the willies with her ‘I have very good ears, son.’ Damned if I don’t believe her. She nearly poisoned me with that toxic waste she calls coffee, and she seemed quite taken with you.” He laughed, but he looked a little pale under his tan. “You know, the longer I sat there, the more convinced I became that we weren’t going to leave that place. Am I nuts, or what? Didn’t you feel it?”
I twisted in my seat and dragged my backpack from the heap of camping gear. Nick’s assertion jibed with something in the research file. I dug through the papers, maps, and copies of woodcuts until I found it.
“Listen to this. It’s the account of a surveyor named Jacob Rutter. He made camp at Pepekissimo in late summer of 1798 at the behest of Samuel Dobson, a wealthy banker in Philadelphia. Apparently, Dobson had purchased the parcel, complete with Cold Ripple Lake, and wanted Rutter to draw accurate maps. These are entries from Rutter’s journal:
20 August 1798
Much astonished to find a few hardy souls scratching a living from this wilderness. They abide in a rough cabin on the fringe of the lake, and care not for news of the land’s new owner. Mr. Dobson may find he prefers to take his chance with the yellow fever that grips fair Philadelphia rather than bring his family to this inhospitable jungle.”
23 August 1798
My neighbors are strange and make me ill at ease. Evening last, they invited me for supper, and I thought to make some progress in resigning them to the sale of the land. They show no understanding of such legalities, and the women especially maintain such a thing is ridiculous. Their cabin, dark and smoky, grew very close around me as we ate. In a dim corner, by the light of the fire, I saw what I took to be the dressed carcass of a deer stretched from a rafter. The light was so poor, the women so eldritch and the men so silent, that I found myself entertaining the fancy that a man hung there instead. A fear grew upon me that I might never leave, and though I am safe in my camp again, I still feel the oppression of their presence across the lake.
Nick slowed the Jeep for the turn to Cold Ripple Lake and the lodge. “Jesus. What happened to him?”
“It seems there was a big bank robbery in Philadelphia at the end of August of that year. Dobson found himself in financial difficulties and sent word to Rutter to pack in the project. It took weeks for the message to reach Pepekissimo, and the trapper that took it the final stage said he never found Rutter or anyone else. He found the cabin Rutter writes about, but it was empty and charred as though it had caught fire. What remained of the journal was found there.”
We crested the hill and the lake spread out before us, a jewel shining in the bottom of a green bowl. It wore a deep fringe of hemlock, birch, and alder interspersed with massive tumbles of rock, some jutting pier-like into the clear water. Pepekissimo Lodge squatted on the north shore, long and dark, its shaggy big-timbered frame a testament to the arboreal majesty of the early forest. I caught my breath as Nick let his out in a long whistle.
“Would you look at that,” he said. “That is some kind of beautiful. I can see how Claudia fell in love with it. It’s amazing that it hasn’t been bought up and subdivided by some resort home developer.”
It was a fair assessment, and I felt an uneasy wobble in my equanimity regarding both speculative monsters and the murky filaments of family ties. I glanced at Nick, seeing only delight in his expression, and said, “It’s been in the possession of a private conservancy group. They used it as a retreat and research center until about three years ago, when an ecologist disappeared. I’ve got the news clippings in my file. It was the first disappearance in nearly a decade, but it got all the old stories stirred up again. Suddenly nobody felt comfortable at the lodge. The locals who’d been doing the upkeep on the place wouldn’t come near it. The conservancy board dumped it. Claudia really didn’t have any competition for it.”
As we pulled up to the lodge, the encroachment of the wilderness became apparent. Vigorous stands of chicory and Queen Anne’s lace thrust their way through the hard-packed gravel of the parking lot. What had once been lawn behind the lodge had reverted to meadow, and white-tail deer bounded away as we bumped to a halt. We climbed out of the Jeep and stood looking at one another over the hood. With the engine silenced, the quiet of the place achieved profound depth.
The sunlight had become sulky and unreliable. Nick removed his sunglasses.
“Well, what do you think?”
I stood listening and trying to sense the mood of the place. The mineral-rich smell of the lake, vast and clean, lay heavy on the air. Even the sky smelled of water, laden with fat, bruised clouds. A sound like a hoarse whisper raced up the shore of the lake, and I turned to see the fluttering leaves of the birches rolling in the breeze to show their silver bellies. I shivered.
“I think we’re going to get a storm soon. I wish we’d found the caretaker at home. We need to get the gear inside.”
We hauled bedrolls and lanterns, a camp stove and a cooler full of provisions onto the wide porch that ran the length of the lodge and overlooked the lake. Peering in the big, many-paned windows, we could make out little of the dark interior besides a prodigious fireplace constructed of stones worn smooth by the lapping water. The hand-hewn lodge sign stood on end by the door, tall as a totem pole. The locked door was tall and broad enough for a giant. Nick put a tentative shoulder to it but shook his head.
“This must have been built to keep out bears. No way I’m going to budge it.” He looked up as the breeze off the lake grew stronger. The transom above the door quivered with a dry rattle at the touch of the wind. “I think that thing is open,” he said, pointing. “If I boost you up there, do you think you can slide through and unlock the door?”
“I’m willing to try.” I eyed the narrow window. I would fit through it, but it was a long drop on the other side. “Let’s drag those bedrolls over to the door. If I can get the window open, I can drop them in first to give me something to land on.”
We stood the rolls of sleeping bags, blankets, and pillows against the door. We stared at each other for an awkward moment, and Nick laughed.
“Okay, this is just like in the circus. You get on my shoulders, and I’ll steady you so you can stand. Piece of cake.”
“I’ve never been in the circus, and I’m afraid of heights. Other than that, yeah, it’ll be a snap.”
I went to the railing and shook it. Solid. I climbed up onto it, clinging to the scarred tree trunk that acted as a porch post, and stood in a half crouch on the four-inch-wide rail.
Nick presented his back to me. “Just sling a leg over my shoulder. I won’t let you fall.”
“Oh, this is ridiculous,” I muttered, but did as he said.
He gripped my knee and held up his free hand to help steady me as I seated myself on his shoulders. I clutched his hair when he stepped toward the door.
“Ow! Haven’t you ever ridden piggyback before?”
“Not since I was about five. Don’t move so fast.”
At the door, he took a deep breath and said, “You’re going to have to stand up to reach the transom. Just hang onto the doorframe and take your time. I got you.”
I crept up the doorframe, placing one shaky foot, then the other, on his shoulders. I tugged at the transom, and it swung toward me. “It’s open. Pass me one of the bed rolls.”
I propped open the window with the stick lying on the sill and shoved the soft mass through it. The second followed.
“I’m going through now,” I said, and hoisted myself onto my belly on the sill. I wriggled sideways until my feet dropped inside, and I was looking down at Nick’s sweaty face. “Was I heavy?”
“Like a moose. Now get in there and open the door so you can fix my broken neck.”
Laughing, I pushed myself backward until I hung by my fingers from the sill. I looked over my shoulder and saw the heap of bedding on the floor below me.
“Tally-ho,” I whispered, and let go.
I dropped through several feet of dusky air and spinning dust motes, thudding onto the sleeping bags, and rolling to my hands and knees. The lobby of Pepekissimo Lodge echoed with the sound of my landing. I stood, combed my hair out of my eyes, and squinted into the dimness. The rustic bulk of the fireplace climbed the far wall, the chimney soaring into the raftered shadows. The firebox was big enough for a bear’s den and contributed a smoky note to the phantom of lemon oil and the dominant aroma of abandonment. The floor was a smooth slick of flagstone, dark and glossy as eel skin. The madly revolving dust motes clung with devotion to their sunbeams and refused to mar the perfection of the floor, yet in the corners were nests of dry leaves. Near one of those nests lay something curious.
“Hey, are you okay in there?” Nick knocked on the door.
I focused on the immense iron lock. An equally gigantic key on a ring, like that of a jail cell in an old western, hung from a spike beside the door. I took it down and thrust it into the lock, expecting to wrestle with it. It turned with ease, and I swung open the door.
“There’s something weird in here,” I said.
I pointed to the heap of leaves washed up against the chestnut panels of the reception desk. Something like a brown skin lay among them.
Nick strode over to it and prodded it with his toe. “It’s just an old flannel shirt. Pretty ripped up. It’s probably Egolf’s, tore it on a nail or something.”
He bent and picked up the shirt by the collar. It hung in rags from his hand.
“It looks like a tiger clawed it,” I said.
“Or a werewolf?”
“I didn’t say that. But you have to admit that’s more damage than just catching your shirt on a nail would do.”
Nick regarded the shirt in silence. He laid it on the reception desk and arranged it as though it were forensic evidence.
“Maybe you’d better get a picture of this. It can’t hurt.”
I retrieved my camera and took a few shots of the shirt. “There isn’t any blood on it. Maybe he caught it in some machinery.”
“We can ask him tomorrow morning. I’m starving. How about we go get a couple of those burgers you mentioned earlier?”
I looked down at my grimy tank and jeans. “How about I wash up in the lake a little bit first? I look like I crawled through a filthy transom.”
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