The Northwoods Chronicles (2 page)

Which means I was wide-awake when Micah got
taken from me. Right out of my arms.

There have always been lots of theories about
the disappearings, and I suppose I’ve subscribed to them all at one
time or another, but the reality of it shot all those theories to
hell.

One minute he was there, the next instant he was
not, and his quilt, still warm with the scent of him, settled to
the couch with a vacant place inside it. Micah had been
snatched.

I rose up with a roar, which seems odd, as I
knew immediately what had happened and it stole my heart right out
of my chest. I came off that couch and threw open the door and what
I saw stunned me more than the snatching.

More than saw. Felt. Smelled.

The air was an unusual color—sort of a thin blue
in the cool foggy starless night, and there was a dimension to it
that I’d never seen before. It felt hollow. And there was the faint
stench of an electrical crackle.

I heard music, like nursery rhymes, and I heard
laughing. Children’s laughing. But it was a hollow laugh, vacant
like the air.

“Micah,” I called, and they taunted me, “Micah,”
they said in a sing-song voice, “Miii-kaaah.”

And then I thought of my own son and Weesie’s
grief and I whispered, “Henry?” and I heard, or thought I heard, or
imagined I heard, or hoped I heard, “Papa?” And the air thickened
up and the rain began and the strangeness of it all
disappeared.

~~~

The police located Margie and Jimbo, who have
never stopped blaming themselves. I was taken in for questioning,
of course, though I was never a suspect.

And while I was at the station, Kevin Leppens
waltzed in with his laptop under his arm, put it down in front of
Sheriff Withens and said, “Watch this.”

Kevin had charted every disappearance ever
recorded in Vargas County, and right in front of the sheriff’s
eyes, he hit “enter.” The computer ground its gears for a moment,
then spit out a date.

That Friday just passed.

“See?” Kevin said. “Rhythm. They can be
predicted.”

“When’s the next one?” Sheriff Withens said, his
eyes narrowing as if fey little Kevin had just become a
suspect.

“I won’t do that,” Kevin said. “It would ruin
this place. I just wanted you to know, Sheriff, that it isn’t some
body,
it’s some
thing.
It’s natural, like spring.
Like the tides.”

The sheriff looked at me, the only witness to
this exchange, and said, “You keep this under your hat, Bun.”

I knew what he was talkin’ about, because my
first reaction was to throttle that kid, and choke the information
out of him. Others might not have my kind of restraint.

~~~

Margie and Jimbo have stayed in their house.
Their hearts’ve solidified a bit, but they still keep banging away
at that church as if they mean it. They think if they’d went to
church twenty-four hours a day before Micah got took, whoever took
him would’ve opted for some other kid. They could still lose Jason
as he’s not yet twelve, but they stay because of hope. They hope to
get Micah back, though none of the kids have ever come back.
Wouldn’t you think they’d take that boy and be off outta here at
next light?

But they haven’t. And everyone else stays, too.
Life is good in Vargas County. We have a strong tourist-based
economy, harsh winters and magical summers. Nobody wants for much
of anything, except those of us, maybe, who’ve had kin snatched.
But Vargas County offers other things to speculate on besides
fishing, where the kids have gone, and the hope that they’ll come
back.

I’m going to give Kevin Leppens and that
computer of his some time to cool off, and then I think I’ll go try
to persuade some information from him. Gentle persuasion. I don’t
want to cause a riot, I don’t even want the county to know his
secret. We’ve lived with this situation for hundreds of years, and
there ain’t no reason to change it now just because Kevin Leppens
got himself Intel inside.

But maybe I could find out enough just so’s I
could be in the right place at the right time and get to hold my
little Henry in my arms and feel his soft cheek. Just once. Just
for a moment. For Weesie, because I believe that wherever she is,
she’ll know.

Life is good in Vargas County, and everybody has
his or her reason for staying or leaving. I’ve stayed because I’m
old and have nowhere else to go, or so I tell myself. But I think
it’s because there’s no other place anywhere like here, and we feel
privileged to be a part of it in spite of our collective grief over
the kids.

Maybe after reading some of the tales of this
northland, you’ll see the magic and come visit. Maybe you’ll spend
a few tourist dollars, and maybe you’ll put down roots. It’s been
known to happen before.

Pearce Porter took a look around the tackle shop
and wondered where to begin. With poles, he guessed. He needed a
fishing pole if he was going to be in White Pines Junction for the
year.

His life travels told him that locals were
naturally suspicious of outsiders, so he had to become one of them
as quickly as he could. These people, locals and tourists and
seasonal residents all, fished. So if he was to minister to their
souls the way God and his church agreed he was to do, he had to
become one of them.

So he’d start with a fishing pole.

He picked one out of the rack and admired it,
then quickly put it back when he saw the price tag.

“Muskie rod,” someone behind him said, and
Pearce turned to find a barrel-chested, gray-haired man in khakis
and a blue polo shirt. “They’re expensive, but they’re sturdy. You
fishing for muskie?”

Pearce held out his hand and introduced himself,
then admitted he didn’t know what a muskie was.

The man with the big face, twinkly eyes and
glossy teeth picked out a much smaller pole. “Game fish,” he said.
“Predator. Chances are, you’re looking for something more like
panfish,” he said. “Crappie, perch, maybe a small walleye or
two.”

“Fine,” Pearce said as he looked at the price
tag on the smaller pole. That was far more reasonable, especially
since it already had a reel attached.

“Need more?”

“Everything, I’m afraid.”

The man picked up a tackle box, opened it and
started plucking things off their pegs and dropping them into the
box.

The bell on the door dinged, but neither man
looked up.

“And finally,” Doc said, for Pearce had learned
that this gentle, man in his late fifties owned the tackle shop and
went by the name of Doc, “line.” He dropped a spool in. “Got a
fishing license?”

“Nope.”

“Come on, then, we’ll fix you up.”

Pearce followed Doc to the checkout counter,
between the rows of mysterious things hanging on hooks, past the
live wells of minnows and leeches and suckers, to the front of the
store where a giant toothed fish grinned down on them from the wall
overhead.

“My wife, Sadie Katherine, takes people out as a
panfish guide,” Doc said as he copied information from Pearce’s
driver’s license onto the fishing license form. “She can teach you
how to use all that gear to bring dinner home to your family.”

Somebody dropped a whole box of something noisy
in the back of the store. Pearce looked around, but couldn’t see
anyone.

Doc tallied the bill and Pearce pulled out his
wallet. As he did, the front door opened again, and four bearded
men wearing baseball caps came in, laughing with the camaraderie
Pearce hoped to be sharing with them soon. Doc greeted each, then
made change for Pearce.

He wanted to stay to meet the men, his new
neighbors. He wanted to talk and joke, but he didn’t know the
lingo, didn’t know the area, and until he knew what questions to
ask, he felt like too much of an outsider.

He made an appointment to meet up with Sadie
Katherine, and then left, brand-new gear in hand, as the other guys
took his place at the counter, leaning with elbows, hips and
familiarity, and envy gripped Pearce’s heart.

Maybe it was time he insisted on his own church,
settled down in one community and made it home. This was too hard
every couple of years, moving to a whole new culture. Hard on him,
hard on Regina.

He threw his purchases into the trunk then,
unwilling to leave town with the taste of envy in his mouth,
slammed the trunk and eyed the small dress shop across the street.
He could go over and introduce himself as the new pastor, something
he hadn’t been able to do at the tackle shop for some reason,
though Doc gave no indication that he was anything but a fine
Christian man.

White Pines Junction was as pretty a little town
as he’d ever seen, Pearce thought as he looked up and down the
small street. Tidy little storefronts, just like he imagined a
little Bavarian ski resort would look like. Or something. He didn’t
really know. It had a little grocery, the tackle shop, a
real-estate office and a couple of other shops. The diner, at the
end of the block, seemed to anchor the place. Across the street was
the little dress shop, the boat dealer, a gas station, the post
office, and a couple of little shops, with the lake at the other
end of it. All around were tidy little houses with tidy little
yards. He and Regina had been given a nice little parsonage on the
grounds of the church, and it all looked like something out of a
fairy tale.

He started across the street when he heard the
tinkle of the tackle shop bell, but didn’t turn around. He didn’t
want to see those four men pile into one truck together, laughter
on their tongues, tackle shop bags in their hands.

A lovely young woman greeted him in the dress
shop, introducing herself, and when Pearce told her who he was, her
smile slipped a fraction and her hand slid from his handshake. She
looked out to the front window and said, “Is that your wife?”

“No,” Pearce started to say, because he left
Regina at home with her monthly migraine, but sure enough, she was
standing by the car, hands on hips, looking at the dress shop. “Why
yes, I see that it is,” he said. “Has she been in to meet you?”

“Sort of,” the young woman said.

“Well, I’ll be taking over the Sunday services
beginning this Sunday at ten o’clock, and I would be delighted to
see you and your family in church.”

“No family,” the girl said, peering out the
window. “She’s gone now.”

Pearce looked outside and could see no evidence
of his wife. Rats, he thought to himself, it’s starting again.

“Sometimes,” he said, “people get attached to a
pastor and have a difficult time with his replacement, but I hope
you’ll give me a chance.”

“Might as well,” the girl said.

They shook hands again, Pearce reluctant to ask
her name again. Was it Kimberly? He should have remembered it when
she told him the first time.

He left the dress shop feeling like he did a
pretty poor job of salesmanship, and was resentful that selling had
to be part of his job.

Maybe White Pines Junction had a hospital. He
could go there and meet a few people who would then feel obligated
to come on Sunday. He wanted to give a good sermon, and he was
always better in front of a full house.

But there was plenty of time for that. This was
only Tuesday. Now he had to go home, find Regina and nip this
behavior in the bud before it got out of hand like last time. If
she didn’t start acting like a pastor’s wife, he’d never get a
permanent church.

She was home in bed by the time he got there,
telltale redness in her cheeks and perspiration on her forehead,
her yellow dress tossed over the arm of the chair.

“How are you feeling?” he asked.

“I think I better go to the doctor in the
morning,” she said weakly.

So she’d been in the tackle shop and heard his
fishing arrangements with Sadie Katherine.

“I’m going fishing in the morning,” he said, “as
if you didn’t know.”

She turned on her side away from him.

“You have to stop following me, Regina. Already
the folks in town have noticed.”

“I’m not,” she said petulantly.

“I saw you,” he said. “You’re stalking me.”

Her silence made him want to slap her, but of
course he never would. She was sick, and he needed to get her some
help. He sighed. They’d been down that road a few times before,
too.

He stood up and went into the kitchen to fix
dinner, worry heavy in his heart. Regina usually didn’t start this
jealousy thing or whatever it was for a good six to eight months
into a new assignment. He’d put up with it for four to six months
and the church would move them to a fresh location.

But this time. . . . They’d not been here a
whole month yet and already it had started.

A bad omen for certain.

~~~

Pearce got the hang of fishing fast under the
private tutelage of Sadie Katherine, a wily, gray-haired woman with
a peculiar face and a quick smile. They met at five a.m. and had a
full bucket of fish by eight. Pearce learned enough about his gear
to rig it himself and catch his own from then on out, as long as
the ice stayed off the lake.

He caught a glimpse of pink in the forest along
the bank of the lake as Sadie Katherine motored them back to the
dock.

And another flash of pink behind a tree as she
showed him how to clean his catch in the little hut built for
exactly that purpose.

Pearce paid her, thanked her, invited her and
Doc to church on Sunday, then took his catch home.

He was rebagging it for the freezer when Regina
came in, legs scratched and bleeding, twigs in her hair, frost on
the ends of her hair. She’d been crying.

“I saw you kissing her,” she said.

“Don’t be silly.”

“I told her husband.”

“No, you didn’t.”

“Yes, I did and he’s coming to kill you. With a
big gun.”