Forest Ghost (5 page)

‘These folks think they saw somebody lurking in the woods over yonder.’

‘Not necessarily some
body
,’ Jack corrected him. ‘Some
body
or some
thing
.’

The beefy man had steel-gray eyes like nail-heads and a double chin which bulged over his collar. He held out his hand and said, ‘Undersheriff Dan Porter. And you are?’

‘Jack Wallace. This is my son, Sparky. Well, his real name’s Alexis. This is Mrs Corinne Cusack. Her son Malcolm is one of the victims. We came up here to give some moral support.’

‘And you saw somebody or something in the woods?’

‘That’s right. Only glimpsed it. Something white; or somebody all dressed up in white. And we heard a kind of a wind blowing.’

Undersheriff Porter glanced sideways at Deputy Jeppersen as if to say,
time-wasters
. But all the same he said, ‘OK. You saw something white or somebody all dressed up in white, and you heard a kind of a wind blowing. If that something in white wasn’t a somebody, any ideas what it could have been?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Jack. ‘Maybe a deer, something like that. But it didn’t look like any deer that I’ve ever seen.’

‘And the wind? It’s pretty gusty today, on and off.’

‘Well, yes.’

‘So what were you folks doing in the woods? I presume you’ve already visited the main assembly hall, ma’am, to identify your late son’s remains?’

Corinne nodded, and whispered, ‘Yes. Yes, I have.’

‘I’m very sorry for your loss, ma’am. It’s going to take us some time to establish exactly why they did it, but it seems pretty certain that all of the victims took their own lives.’

‘That’s what we were doing in the woods, sir,’ Sparky piped up. ‘We were looking for the why.’

Deputy Jeppersen leaned close to the undersheriff and muttered, just loud enough for Jack to be able to hear him, ‘The kid has asparagus.’

‘Asperger’s,’ Jack corrected him. ‘It’s a form of autism. It means he has some difficulties with social communication, but he has a very high IQ and he’s very sensitive to the world around him.’

The undersheriff looked around the lake, frowning, as if he had been expecting some miracle to occur, like the Second Coming, but it was running behind schedule. Eventually he turned back to Deputy Jeppersen and said, ‘OK. Since we have the K-9 Unit here we might as well make use of it. Ask Deputy Ridout to bring out Barrett and search the woods where these folks think they saw what they saw. You can take four men with you. We’re almost through with identifying the victims, anyhow.’

To Jack, he said, ‘You won’t mind showing us the location, will you, sir? I’d prefer it if your son and this good lady remained here, though, please.’

‘Sparky?’ asked Jack. ‘Can you stay here with Malcolm’s mom for a while?’

Sparky said, ‘OK. But you should be very careful, Dad. That thing in the woods, it’s really scary.’

Undersheriff Porter said, ‘Don’t you worry, kid. We’ll look after your dad. You can give Barrett a dog-choc when he’s through searching the woods. He’s a really great tracker, believe me.’

After a few minutes, a young deputy arrived from the parking lot with K-9 Barrett, a black-and-tan German Shepherd. K-9 Barrett looked around alertly and intelligently as Undersheriff Porter explained to his handler and four other deputies what he wanted them to do. In fact he looked more alert and intelligent than the humans.

‘I have to confess that I don’t believe there’s anybody in the woods to be found, or if there is, that he or she is in any way connected with this incident,’ said Undersheriff Porter. ‘However, we have a reputation in the Muskegon County Sheriff’s Department for being thorough, and thorough is what we’re going to be. OK, then. This gentleman will show you where to start searching.’

Corinne put her arm around Sparky’s shoulders and led him back to the main buildings, where the rest of the relatives and scout leaders were gathered out on the verandah. The dog-handler said to Jack, ‘I’m Deputy Ridout, sir, and this wonder-dog here is called Barrett. If you want to lead on, please, we’ll follow you. Don’t worry. Once Barrett picks up a scent, he’ll be off like a space shuttle.’

Jack led the deputies back into the trees. The woods were not as silent as they had been before. The rising wind was making the leaves rustle, and there were plenty of birds whistling and whooping, and all of this was punctuated by the crackle of broken twigs beneath their feet and Barrett’s persistent panting. They could even hear a distant airplane passing high overhead.

‘I guess we saw it about here,’ said Jack, when they reached the place where Sparky had been spinning around and around.

Deputy Jeppersen raised his hand and called out, ‘OK, everybody! This is the spot where this gentleman saw something white, maybe an animal, or maybe an individual dressed up in white. Barrett here is going to try to find a trail, if there is one. The rest of you split up and fan out, and look for footprints or any other disturbances.

‘If you do happen to see anything resembling what this gentleman saw, do your best to apprehend it, if you can. Or at least try to find out what it is. Or
who
it is.’

As the rest of the deputies spread out and started combing the woods, Jack and Deputy Jeppersen and the dog-handler started to search the immediate area, moving gradually outward in a clockwise spiral. K-9 Barrett buried his snout into the leaves and the leaf mold and inhaled deeply, but he still didn’t seem to be able to pick up any distinctive scents.

‘This is one hell of a tragedy,’ said Deputy Jeppersen, picking up a thick branch which he could use to poke into some of the layers of leaf mold. ‘You can’t even begin to think how it happened, can you? All of those moms and dads back there – they all keep asking me why, and I just don’t know what to say to them.’

He bent down to pick up something shiny, then dropped it again when he realized that it was only the discarded end of a Pringles tube.

‘There has to be a reason for it,’ he said, ‘even if it’s crazy. Remember that UFO cult, in San Diego? Heaven’s Gate or something like that. They thought that if they committed suicide, they were all going to be taken away by an alien spaceship. More than thirty of them, if my memory serves me. But at least they explained why they were doing it, and they all left farewell messages. These scouts … nothing. Zilch. No explanation whatsoever.’

They circled around a little further, but Jack had the feeling that it had gone now – whatever it was that he had seen flickering white behind the trees and whatever had caused that eerie, blustery wind.

He stopped and looked around and listened, but because of the approaching electric storm the woods were becoming restless, and all he could hear was leaves stirring and birds twittering and the distant rumbling of thunder.

‘I’m sorry,’ he told Deputy Jeppersen. ‘I don’t think we’re going to find anything. There
was
something here, I swear it, or else I wouldn’t have wasted your time. Maybe the dog scared it off.’

At that moment, however, K-9 Barrett barked loudly, and started to tug at his leash. Deputy Ridout said, ‘What is it, Barrett? Come on, boy, what have you picked up there?’

‘Raccoon, probably, knowing that dog,’ said Deputy Jeppersen. But as Barrett pulled Deputy Ridout sharply off to the right, he reluctantly followed. ‘Might as well see what he’s so fired up about. He does occasionally make himself useful, sniffing out narcotics, and lost children, and decomposing hoboes.’

Barrett led them down a slope. It became steeper and steeper with almost every step they took, until they were leaping and bounding from one tree trunk to the next in order to slow themselves down. At last the ground began to level out, but the woods were thick with briars here, which snagged their clothes and scratched at their arms. Jack began to feel that he was caught up in some surrealistic fairy story, fighting his way through an enchanted forest. They battled their way through the briars, however, and found themselves in a dark, shady hollow, surrounded by overhanging oaks.

It was quite cold in this hollow, because it never received any sunlight. In the center of it there was a pool of water, tainted sepia-brown by leaf mold, and utterly stagnant. It was the smell that hit them first. They didn’t need a tracker dog to tell them that they had found dead human bodies.

Barrett scrabbled his way right down to the very edge of the pool, and then waited there, with his front paws together and both ears pricked up, guarding his discovery.

‘Holy shit,’ said Deputy Jeppersen.

Deputy Ridout was standing beside Barrett, his right hand holding his leash, and his left hand clamped over his nose and mouth. The sweet brown stench was appalling, and once he had breathed it in once, Jack felt that he would never be able to get rid of it. He could even
taste
it, as well as smell it.

Standing up to her waist in the middle of the pool was a woman with no head. She was wearing a white sleeveless T-shirt, the front of which was heavily stained with blood and with the green and black juices of putrescence. Her arms hung by her sides, both yellowish and peeling and hugely inflated. The three-inch stump of her neck was like a volcano erupting – not with lava, but with maggots, scores of them, which kept wriggling out of her neck and dropping down into the water. Above her, a cloud of blowflies waited their opportunity to lay even more eggs.

K-9 Barrett made a whining sound in the back of his throat, and Deputy Ridout said, ‘OK, boy. Good boy. Let’s get you out of here.’

He allowed Barrett to pull him out through the overhanging branches, and a few seconds later Jack and Deputy Jeppersen heard a splattering sound as he vomited into the briars.

‘How about you, sir?’ Deputy Jeppersen asked Jack. ‘You can light out of here if you want to, because I’m not sticking around for long, neither. I’m just going to call it in, and that’s it.’

‘I’m OK,’ Jack told him, although ‘OK’ wasn’t really the word for it. He felt unreal, and revolted, but at the same time he felt the need to understand what had happened here. He approached the edge of the pool and looked down into the water. Although it was stained brown, it was transparent, and quite clear, and he could see that the woman’s bare legs were buried deep in the mud and leaves at the bottom of it, right up to her pale mid-thighs. There was something else in the pool, too, which was more difficult to see, because it was deep in the shadows behind her. It looked like a body, curled up into a fetal position; and when he carefully made his way around to the left-hand side of the pool, he saw that it was. A man, it looked like. Naked, white, blotchy and bloated. He had a tattoo of a pawprint on his shoulder, maybe a cougar or a mountain lion.

‘Here,’ said Jack, beckoning to Deputy Jeppersen, who was vainly trying to get an answer on his r/t from his fellow deputies.

‘What is it? I can’t get a goddamn signal for nothing. Listen.’ He held up his mike and all Jack could hear was a thick crackling noise.

He came over and Jack pointed down into the pool. All they could see from this angle was the man’s back, with his head bent forward and his knees folded up.

‘This is so goddamn gross,’ said Deputy Jeppersen. ‘What in the name of Jesus went down here?’

He circled right around to the opposite side of the pool. The sides were very steep and slippery, and he had to clutch at the overhanging trees to stop himself from sliding right in. With one hand tightly gripping one of the branches, he used the stick that he had picked up earlier to prod at the body in the water.

At first the body did nothing but sway slightly. Deputy Jeppersen prodded it even harder, and it started to wallow in the water. He prodded it again and again, and suddenly, filled with gas, it rolled right over. It was a man all right, although his face was so puffed up that Jack doubted if even his mother could have recognized him. His arms flopped apart and out of his grasp floated the woman’s head, as puffed-up as he was, with milky, wide-open eyes. It bobbed to the surface and floated there, staring at Jack as if she were angry with him for having found her far too late.

Jack pushed his way back out of the hollow. The sky was dark now, and it was beginning to rain, heavy spots that pattered into the undergrowth. Deputy Ridout was standing there with Barrett, looking pale and drawn. A few seconds later Deputy Jeppersen came out, too.

‘I got through to Undersheriff Porter,’ he said. ‘They’re sending a forensic team out here right now.’

Lightning cracked, over by Blue Lake. Then it began to rain in earnest, so that after a few minutes the three of them were drenched, and Barrett had to keep shaking himself. None of them wanted to go back into the hollow, however, and seek shelter under the trees. They just stood there with the rain trickling down their faces and soaking their clothes as if they felt that they needed to be cleansed.

B
y the time Jack had trudged back to the main reservation buildings, the rain was hammering down so hard that the gutters over the verandah could no longer cope, and water was cascading down the outside walls. Rainwater was dripping from his nose and every few seconds he was deafened by a multiple barrage of thunder, as if there was a war going on nearby.

He climbed the steps back up to the verandah and went inside. The relatives of the dead scouts and scout leaders were milling around in the hallway, uncertain what to do. They must have been told that another incident had occurred, but not what it was.

He found Sparky and Corinne sitting on chairs in a recess on the left-hand side, underneath a noticeboard of all of Owasippe’s summer activities. Corinne was holding a Styrofoam cup of coffee, but he could see by the skin floating on its surface that she had allowed it to grow cold.

‘What’s happening, Jack?’ she asked him. ‘The cops have been running around like headless chickens. I saw some TV people, too, and they were all going crazy.’

‘You found some more dead people, didn’t you?’ said Sparky, in a high-pitched monotone.

Jack hadn’t wanted to tell Sparky straight out, but there was no point in trying to prevaricate if he had guessed already.