Forest Ghost (30 page)

‘When lightning travels through your skin, you get badly burned, but people who only get burned are the lucky ones. If lightning goes right through your body and zaps your brain, you can end up cuckoo for the rest of your life.

‘Our forensic people are pretty sure that this is what happened to those scouts. Like, when you think about it, what other explanation could there be?’

As they drove, Jack was looking into the forest on either side to see if he could spot Sparky. Every time he saw sunlight flickering through the trees, he quickly looked twice, just to make sure. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘Would it have made them
all
commit suicide?’

‘Maybe one started it and the rest copied him. Who knows? Maybe if one of the scout leaders did it, the rest of the group followed him because they thought that they were supposed to.’

‘Is there any recorded instance of this happening before?’

‘Our people are looking into that. It seems like some pretty detailed studies into the psychological effects of being struck by lightning have been carried out at Chicago University, and at Finch University, too.’

Now they saw Lake Wolverine sparkling up ahead of them. Undersheriff Porter drove past the scout buildings and the jetty, and circled around the left-hand side of the lake until he reached the clearing where the scouts and their leaders had all been found dead. It was surrounded by metal stakes with yellow tape wound around them: SHERIFF LINE DO NOT CROSS.

They climbed out of the Jeep and ducked under the tape. The forest was very hushed, although the blue jays were calling intermittently and the leaves were whispering, unlike before, when Jack had first gone looking for Sparky. The surface of the lake was glittering, and the boats tied up at the jetty were softly knocking against each other.

‘It’s idyllic here, isn’t it?’ said Sally. ‘At least it would be, if those poor kids hadn’t killed themselves here.’ But Jack kept turning around and around, looking not only for Sparky but for any sign of something white. He looked up. Were those oak leaves whispering because they were being stirred by the wind that was blowing off the lake? Or were they talking to each other, and passing on a warning to the white deer spirit that intruders had arrived in the forest?

An outline of every scout and scout leader’s body had been marked out with white plastic tape and fastened to the ground with skewers. Undersheriff Porter guided them between the outlines and they trod as carefully and as reverently as if the bodies were still here. Beyond the array of outlines, he led them across to a circle of blackened soil about seven feet in diameter. In the center of it, the matted pine needles had been reduced to a fine gray ash, and Jack could see why the sheriff’s deputies had originally thought that it was a campfire.

As Undersheriff Porter had said, though, there was no charred firewood here, and there was none of the usual campfire paraphernalia – no logs arranged around it for the Scouts to sit on, or a barbecue pit rotisserie, or long campfire forks for toasting hot dogs and marshmallows.

‘We checked with the weather people,’ said Undersheriff Porter. ‘The skies were mostly clear over Owasippe that day but they recorded two or three thunder bumpers further up north and so there was every likelihood that this was a lightning strike. In any case, the coroners are going to be carrying out brain scans on all of the deceased to see if there’s any evidence of severe electric shock.’

‘Now we need to find Sparky so that we can tell
him
that,’ said Sally.

Jack walked around the scorched patch of soil. It certainly looked as if there had been a lightning strike here, and he could quite understand that the police were feeling hard-pressed to come up with some kind of rational explanation for what had happened, so that they could say that the case was closed. But three times now he had felt that overwhelming compulsion to commit suicide himself – twice here at Owasippe and once at Kampinos – and it certainly hadn’t been caused by lightning.

‘
Sparks!
’ he shouted. ‘
Sparks, can you hear me?
’

Several blue jays fluttered away in alarm, but otherwise there was no response. Only the trees rustling, and the clanking of the rowboats, like human skulls knocking together.

‘Sparks, if you can hear me, please come on out! We think we know what happened to Malcolm!’

‘Sparky!’ called Sally. ‘This is Sal – Detective Sally Faulkner, from Chicago! Don’t be afraid, Sparky! You’re not in any trouble! We just want to make sure that you’re safe!’

‘Sparky!’ Jack shouted. ‘It’s going to be getting dark pretty soon, and then what are you going to do? You can’t spend all night in the forest!’

They called him a few more times, and then waited, but there was still no reply. The wind was rising, which made the rowboats knock louder and faster, and more erratically, and the water lapped against the shore.

‘What do you think?’ asked Undersheriff Porter. ‘You’re his dad – any ideas what’s going through his mind? I mean, is he afraid of being punished? Or is he doing this because he’s angry with you, for some reason, and he’s trying to punish you? Or is he just being ornery?’

Jack shook his head. ‘None of those. Not really. He believes there’s some kind of spiritual force in the forest, and that’s what caused these kids to kill themselves.’

‘You mean this white thing you were talking about? This thing that makes you panic?’

‘I think there has to be something there, Sheriff. Don’t ask me what it is. But I’m not the only person who thinks they’ve seen it, and I’m not the only person who’s panicked in a forest. It’s a well-known phenomenon, worldwide.’

Undersheriff Porter took off his amber-tinted sunglasses and peered into the trees. After a while he put them back on, and said, ‘Well … no phenomenons that I can see. Not disputing what you say, sir, but I have to believe my own eyes.’

Just as he turned away, there was a sharp, furtive rustling in the bushes, about fifty or sixty feet away from them. Immediately he turned back again.

‘What was that? Did you hear that, Sally? Where did that come from?’

‘Right over there,’ said Sally, pointing directly in front of them. ‘Just beside that pine. Look – there it goes again!’

The bushes that surrounded the foot of the pine tree had started furiously shaking, as if a large animal were running around inside them.

‘Sparky!’ called Jack, and started to walk quickly toward them. ‘Sparky, is that you?’

‘Sir!’ said Undersheriff Porter. ‘
Sir
– you want to wait up for a moment! That could be your son in there but then maybe it’s not! Even the foxes around here can get pretty darn snappy if they think you’re a threat.’

Jack slowed down and then stopped. The bushes stopped shaking and the forest became eerily quiet. Sally and Undersheriff Porter came up to join Jack and the three of them stood listening for over a minute.

‘
Spark-eeee!
’ Sally shrilled.

‘Jesus, Sal, you scared the living crap out of me then!’ said Undersheriff Porter. ‘You don’t want to do that again without giving me notice!’

‘Sorry, Dan.’

They waited and listened a little longer. Undersheriff Porter said, ‘That must have been a raccoon, or something. No way your boy wouldn’t have answered a scream like that. Goddamned
dead
person would’ve answered it.’

‘So what do we do now?’ asked Jack.

‘Not a whole lot we can do, just the three of us. You had a hunch he might be here and maybe he is – but if he
is
here he doesn’t seem too keen to come out and show himself.’

He paused, and then he said, ‘How old did you say he was? Twelve?’

‘Twelve, going on thirteen.’

Undersheriff Porter looked at his wristwatch. ‘Well, he ran off voluntarily. Like, he wasn’t forcibly abducted or nothing like that. And even if he’s suffering from Asperger’s, from what you’ve told me about him he seems to be reasonably capable of taking care of himself. I’m reluctant to put together a search party just yet. By the time we get everybody out here to Owasippe there won’t be too much daylight left. My suggestion is that we give him a little more time to come to his senses. He’s going to be feeling hungry soon, too, and it’s my experience that when the stomach calls, the brain listens.’

‘I’m still sure that there’s something in this forest,’ said Jack. ‘Whatever it is, I’m really not happy about leaving Sparky out here all alone.’

‘I’m not sure we have a whole lot of choice,’ said Undersheriff Porter. ‘If we had a positive sighting of a cougar, for instance, or a bear, that would be a clear and present danger, and that would be different. But with all respect, sir, all you saw was some kind of white thing. How am I going to justify a full-scale night-time search party because of some kind of white thing?’

He had hardly finished speaking, however, when they heard another rustling noise, about a hundred feet deeper into the forest. This was followed by a scampering sound, like a very large rodent. Then twigs breaking, and a thump.

‘What in the name of all that’s holy is
that
?’ Undersheriff Porter cried.

Sally frowned, and said, ‘Dan – I don’t like the sound of that at all.’

‘Sparky!’ Jack shouted. ‘Sparky, is that you? Come on, Sparky, you need to come out now! Like Sally says, you’re not in any trouble!’

The bushes were shaken again, as violently as they had been shaken in the Kampinos Forest. Jack began to feel short of breath, and his heart started to beat more quickly.
Not again
, he thought.
You’re not going to panic again. There are three of us here, and two of us are armed. What can possibly attack us here
?

The bushes seemed to burst apart, with leaves and broken branches flying everywhere. At the same time, the wind started to blow even more strongly, and the trees set up a monotonous chorus of creaking, like a wooden ship at sea, or an old house in which unwelcome visitors were climbing up the stairs.

Off to their right, behind the pines, Jack caught sight of that white flickering thing again. ‘There!’ he shouted, snatching at the sleeve of Undersheriff Porter’s jacket. ‘There it is – look!’

‘The
fuck
?’ said Undersheriff Porter.

‘There!’ Jack insisted. ‘Look, right there!’

Undersheriff Porter unclipped his holster and pulled out his heavy black Sig automatic. Sally reached into her coat and took out her gun, too.

‘For Christ’s sake, don’t start shooting!’ Jack appealed to them, waving his hands. The wind was gusting harder and harder, whipping up a blizzard of pine needles and grit and dry leaves, and he had to shout to make himself heard. ‘Sparky might be there!’

Sally stared at him wide-eyed. Her hair was blowing wildly, as if she were standing in an updraft, and her face was empty of color. She kept opening and closing her mouth but she wasn’t saying anything. She wasn’t even screaming.

Jack felt that chilling paralysis of panic coming on, like having ice-water poured slowly all over him. He wanted to grab hold of Sally’s arm and pull her away from there, but he couldn’t think how to start moving his legs. He could see that she, too, was incapable of running away. She just stood there with her hair flying upward and her gun in her hand, staring at him in utter helplessness.

He turned to Undersheriff Porter and yelled at him, ‘We have to get out of here! Can you hear me! We have to get out! It’s going to tear us apart, if we don’t!’

Undersheriff Porter stared at him in the same way as Sally, his eyes bulging, his face bloodless. He was trying to speak but it was obvious that he was having trouble breathing.

‘
We have to get out of here!
’ Jack repeated, but he wasn’t sure that any words were coming out of his mouth – or, even if they were, that Sally and Undersheriff Porter could hear him. The wind had risen to a deafening, high-pitched whistle, and now the trees were not only groaning but their upper branches were roaring and plunging and showers of debris were falling down on every side.

Jack thought:
If I snatch Sally’s gun out of her hand, I’ll be able to shoot her, and then myself, if Undersheriff Porter doesn’t shoot me first, and if he does he’ll be doing me a favor. I don’t care what happens to him. I just don’t want that thing to get
me.

He managed to take a step toward her, and then another. He was so frightened that he felt numb, as if he had been anesthetized. He could hardly feel his arms and legs, and his face felt like a cardboard mask. Sally was right in front of him, her mouth still opening and closing in slow motion.

‘
I can’t get away!
’ she seemed to be shouting at him, although he may have been reading her lips. ‘
But I don’t
want
to get away!
’

He stretched out his hand to seize her gun, but she wasn’t as near to him as he had thought, and he had to take at least another two steps to reach her. As he was doing so, he heard a loud, blurry bang close behind him, and a sharp shower of something coarse and wet struck the back of his neck. It felt as if somebody had scooped up a handful of shingle from the bottom of a fish tank and had thrown it at him, hard.

He turned slowly around to see Undersheriff Porter standing behind him, but there was nothing left of Undersheriff Porter’s head except for his chin and the right side of his skull. His face had been blown into bright red feathery shreds, more like plumage than flesh. The smoke from the .40-caliber bullet was already whirling away on the wind, but Undersheriff Porter remained standing for another few seconds, his automatic pointing rigidly at the place where his face had been. Then he pitched sideways on to the ground, with one leg still shuddering. He was immediately half-covered by leaves and forest debris, as if the forest hurriedly wanted to hide what had happened here.

Horrified, Jack turned back to Sally – only to see that she, too, had raised her gun. She was pointing it directly into her right ear, and her eyes were already closed in anticipation of squeezing the trigger.

Jack knew how she felt. Better to kill yourself quickly than let the Forest Ghost get you. He thought that she was lovely, and it was so sad for her to die like this. But what she was doing would save her from so much agony. He actually envied her for killing herself first, and the only saving grace was that he could pick up her gun when she had done it and shoot himself, too, and it would all be done with.