The Vanishing (30 page)

—and though she kept turning him down, he kept putting on the pressure. ‘‘Pull your pants down and bend over,’’ he told her. ‘‘I’ll do it really fast.’’

‘‘No,’’ she said.

He pulled down his own pants, and she saw his erection. ‘‘Just suck it then.’’

‘‘No!’’ Robin went into the bathroom, closed and locked the door, and stood there looking at herself in the mirror. She was shaking, though she was not quite sure why. She wasn’t afraid of her husband, and while she was angry with him, it was not to such an extent that it would cause such a physical reaction. She held a hand sideways in front of her face, watching it tremble.

What was the matter with her?

It was nothing; it was everything. It was this place, and she wondered why Andrew was so dead set on staying here no matter what. He was not usually so inflexible, particularly when it involved things that were important to her.

But he seemed different on this trip, more tense, more secretive, and she wished she knew how to talk to him and break down those barriers. Since coming clean herself, she’d been feeling extremely vulnerable, and she wished her honesty had been met with a similar openness on his part, but exactly the opposite had occurred. They’d become more wary with each other, more distant, although she knew of no reason why that should be the case.

She wanted this vacation to be over. She just wanted to go back home.

Robin waited in the bathroom a few moments longer, until she’d stopped shaking and could at least pretend that everything was back to normal. Then she unlocked the door and walked out. Andrew was in the kitchen area with his back to her, but his pants were around his knees, and she strode over to where he stood, intending to find out exactly what was going on.

He had masturbated into the sink, and she grimaced as she caught him washing a gob of semen down the drain. He pulled up his pants, embarrassed.

‘‘What is wrong with you?’’ she asked.

‘‘I don’t know,’’ he said. ‘‘I . . .’’ He shook his head. ‘‘I don’t know.’’

Through the open window came the meowing of a cat, and Andrew’s face turned pale. She shivered, too, thinking of that dead cat they’d seen on the trail—

—and its doppelgänger who’d been hanging around the cabins today. She wasn’t sure why Andrew seemed so afraid of the cat’s meow, but he did, and some of that fear transferred to her.

He chose not to talk about it, however, and she chose not to ask him about it, and the two of them pretended he had not done what he’d done in the sink. Sometimes denial worked, and it did in this instance. They retired to the couch, turning on the television.
Lost in America
was on one of the movie channels—a comedy Andrew had raved about but that she’d never seen—and they settled in to watch it, snuggling together as though nothing were the matter and they were home alone.

The film was as funny as Andrew had promised, and at several points they were both laughing out loud, but somewhere in the middle of the movie she became aware that Johnny and Alyssa had not returned. They’d been gone a long time, and Robin glanced over at the clock on the mantel above the fireplace. It had been slightly over an hour since they’d left, and while the slide show on Sierra predators that they’d seen their first night had lasted this long and it was more than possible that tonight’s talk was still going on, she felt nervous. It was dark outside and . . . something . . . didn’t seem right.

Andrew must have sensed it too, or perhaps she communicated it to him through her body language. Either way, he sat up and said, ‘‘Do you think we should check on the kids?’’

‘‘Yes,’’ she replied with an exhaled sigh of relief. She’d thought she was going to have to talk him into it.

‘‘I don’t like the thought of them walking back alone in the dark.’’

‘‘Me neither,’’ Robin said. ‘‘Let’s go.’’

She shut off the TV, he grabbed a flashlight, and they walked over to the lodge. In the meadow, chirping crickets silenced as they approached, though others farther away continued to sing. Above the noises of nature, Robin heard an oddly pitched voice singing something that reminded her of a children’s nursery rhyme or Mother Goose song. She couldn’t quite place it, but the sound of that voice carried on the slight night breeze caused a shiver to run down her spine.

She reached for Andrew’s hand, held it tight.

The lodge was open, its windows well-lit, but inside the building seemed curiously empty. Robin glanced into the big room where the previous presentations had been held and saw no screen set up, no chairs. Andrew walked directly up to the counter, where an older woman in a faded granny dress was reading a paperback romance novel. ‘‘Excuse me,’’ he said. ‘‘Our son and daughter came with friends of theirs to your slide show . . .’’

The woman frowned. ‘‘There was no slide show this evening.’’

Robin’s heart was racing. ‘‘But our son and daughter are here?’’

‘‘No,’’ the woman said slowly, shaking her head. ‘‘I don’t believe anyone’s come in here tonight at all.’’

‘‘Mind if we look around?’’ Andrew asked, but he was already doing so.

‘‘Go right ahead,’’ the woman said.

Robin and Andrew went into the big room, checked the bathrooms and the coat closet, even went upstairs and looked at the balcony, but the lodge was empty.

‘‘Thank you,’’ Andrew said to the woman as the two of them headed out the door. Once out in the night, they looked around at the partially visible lights of the various cabins, arranged in a rough semicircle around the edge of the meadow and between the black silhouetted trees. Crickets were chirping, bats were squeaking, the underbrush was rustling, but wafting through the air, on the breeze, was that tune again, lilting, familiar, childish.

She listened to it for a moment.

Now she recognized the song.

‘‘Andrew!’’ she cried. But he had heard it, too, and it must have set off the same alarm bells in his head that it had in hers, because he was grabbing her hand and rushing toward the parking lot.

They fairly flew over the rough ground, the beam of the flashlight leading the way, and though that horrid cat sat in the center of the parking lot, meowing incessantly, they ignored it. Andrew clicked open the doors with the remote attached to his key, and they got in quickly. ‘‘He’s going to be in so much trouble,’’ Andrew said grimly as he swung the van around and sped out of the parking lot, but there was as much fear in his voice as anger, and Robin said nothing as they headed toward the highway and town.

The fair was crowded. The small pay lot was full, vehicles were parked solidly along both sides of the highway for nearly the entire length of town, and the driveways of the other local businesses were staked with signs that read NO FAIR PARKING and PARKING FOR CUSTOMERS ONLY. Heedless, Andrew pulled into the lot of a dentist’s office, locked the car after they hopped out, and the two of them sped over to Oak Draw’s Summer Fair.

They didn’t know where to start. Throngs of people were milling about, buying fried food and waiting in lines for carnival rides. Johnny and Alyssa could have been anywhere. Holding hands so they wouldn’t get separated, the two of them went up and down the midway, through the crowd, looking for black T-shirts like Johnny’s or red blouses like Alyssa’s, distracted by the sight of every child or teenager who passed by.

‘‘Did they have any money?’’ Robin asked.

‘‘I don’t know,’’ Andrew admitted. ‘‘I don’t think so.’’

She looked around at the rides and attractions, searching for one that Johnny and Alyssa might like to go on. Not the thrill rides. They were both too cautious. Not the merry-go-round. Too babyish. The mirror maze, maybe?

The fun house.

Yes. If they were on a ride, it was that one. As if on cue, she heard music above the noise of the crowd, the talking, screaming, laughing, crying crowd. It was a tape of a calliope over tinny speakers, and it was the song that had brought them here, though there was no voice singing the words.

It was coming from the fun house, and Robin yanked Andrew’s arm, pulling him through the squash of people to the far end of the midway.

The facade of the fun house loomed before them with its gaudy colors and giant mirror-eyed clown head. A lifetime of moviegoing had made the sight seem automatically creepy, but there was something genuinely threatening about it, too, and Robin pointed. ‘‘I think they’re in there.’’

Andrew nodded, not needing an explanation. ‘‘Wait out front here,’’ he said, ‘‘in case they come out or come by. I’ll see if they’re inside.’’

A dwarf sat on a stool in front of the moving stairs that led up to the entrance of the attraction, collecting tickets. ‘‘Did you see a boy and a girl come through here?’’ Andrew began.

‘‘Two tickets.’’

‘‘I think my kids are in there,’’ Andrew explained. ‘‘I just want to—’’

The dwarf held out a small, chubby hand. ‘‘Two tickets.’’

Robin could see the look of exasperation on her husband’s face. ‘‘How much are they?’’ he asked.

‘‘Buy them from the ticket booth.’’ The little man pointed toward the front of the fair.

‘‘I just want to look inside and see if my kids are there,’’ Andrew said. ‘‘I’ll give you two dollars.’’

‘‘Five,’’ the dwarf countered.

Andrew opened his wallet, handed over a five-dollar bill and quickly dashed inside the fun house. Robin waited and watched while he appeared and disappeared at the various windows and open ports in the two-story facade, the maddening music seeming to grow even louder.

The dwarf grinned at her, wiggling his tongue lasciviously.

Moments later, Andrew emerged, shaking his head. He hurried over. ‘‘They’re not there.’’

It seemed hard to breathe. She imagined the two of them kidnapped by some psycho, held in a basement, tied up in the trunk of a car, left for dead in the forest.

Where the hell were they?

She looked over the throngs of standing, walking, jostling people, and suddenly she couldn’t help herself.

She began to cry.

Johnny and Alyssa followed the path to the lodge . . . then walked around the side of the building and took another path that led to town.

It was the path Tony, Dexter and Pam had taken yesterday, and it led to the parking lot of the Tastee Freez. From there, they walked out to the sidewalk and down the street to the fair.

It was wrong of them to have lied to their parents, and Johnny was not even sure why they had done so. Terry and Claire were safely in their cabin watching TV, and he didn’t even know if there
was
a slide show tonight in the lodge or, if so, what it was about. But he’d wanted to go to the fair.

He’d wanted to see Tony, Dexter and Pam again.

Tony, Dexter and Pam
had
invited them to the fair, and when they’d asked, Johnny had made it seem as though meeting there would be no problem. He wanted the other kids to think he and Alyssa were cool, and she’d played along with him. Terry and Claire hadn’t even been invited, and that made him feel even better, even more privileged, even more determined to make sure they went.

There was no sign of Tony, but Dexter and Pam were waiting, as promised, in front of the mirror maze, leaning against a concave looking glass and blocking anyone else from seeing themselves in it. Pam was his age, but Dexter was a year or two older, and he looked around the fair disdainfully. ‘‘This place sucks,’’ he said.

‘‘Yeah,’’ Johnny agreed, trying to be cool. He, too, casually leaned back against a mirror, saying nothing for several moments, pretending to be nonchalant. ‘‘We could go to the Place,’’ he said, as though the idea had just occurred to him.

‘‘I have a better idea,’’ Dexter told them. ‘‘Let’s make fun of old people.’’

Johnny was disappointed but tried not to let it show. The truth was that ever since the town kids had told them about the Place yesterday, it was all he could think about. They’d been playing freeze tag, all of them, in the open area between the cabins and the lodge, and when they’d paused to rest, Dexter had said, ‘‘You know what’s even more fun than this? Going to the Place.’’

‘‘What’s the Place?’’ Johnny finally asked.

Pam chuckled in a sly adult way that made him feel tingly all over. Dexter and Tony grinned. ‘‘It’s something we do around here for fun.’’ Dexter gestured around at the trees and hills and town. ‘‘You may not’ve noticed, but this ain’t exactly the center of the universe. I don’t know where you all are from, but I’m pretty damn sure it’s bigger than this town. You probably got movie theaters and malls, places to go, things to do. Out here . . . well, we can either hang with tourists like you or go to the Place.’’

‘‘What is the Place?’’ Johnny repeated.

‘‘It’s a place. Where grown-ups go. Our parents might even go there, too, but that’s kind of gross to think about.’’

‘‘What is it?’’

Pam chuckled knowingly again.

‘‘We have a secret spot. Where we can watch.’’ Dexter looked up into the sky. ‘‘It can’t be daytime. It has to be dark. Night. And then you wait and usually someone’ll go there. A man and a woman most of the time but sometimes just a man or just a woman. They have to be
naked.
’’

‘‘What happens then?’’

‘‘They have to invite one of
them.
Not invite exactly, but lure them out from the woods, the wilderness, wherever they hide, wherever they live. And if one of
them
does come out, they can do whatever they want.’’