HEX (21 page)

“That we're sure of?” Pete asked. “Wow, that's going way, way back. Good heavens, I doubt anyone who was there to see it is still alive. In '32, when that nasty business happened with those workers they executed from the old tree farm, none of us had even been born yet. But Katherine didn't have anything to do with that. People have always stirred up trouble, and that's something that'll never change—it comes in waves. Of course, there's the story of the six Point officers who came back from Berlin in '45 and were said to have been found hanged from a tree near the witch's pool, right here in these woods, but that's a tall tale. Old William Rothfuss, who's senile and waiting to die in Roseburgh, used to claim that the official story—that they died at the front—was a cover-up, and that he was one of the men who had taken them down. But he'd only tell you that after a few shots of bourbon at the Quiet Man, and the story that the witch's pool is still there is total bull. I can show you the place where it used to be, where they dumped her body, but the whole area was reforested when the logging industry hit the Black Rock Forest in the nineteenth century. The pool is long gone.”

“Never believe an alcoholic,” Grim said, “except if he's paying.”

“Of course, the number of suicides is unusually high in these parts. Always has been. That's mostly due to social isolation, depression, and ongoing pressure. You know, like in Japan, where people work so hard that at some point something just snaps inside them. This is the same thing. I think the fact that Katherine follows her same old pattern every day is the only reason the situation here is livable. It's been so long since things got out of hand. Back in '67, I had just turned twenty, and you, Robert … when were you born?”

“August 17, 1955, the night Hurricane Diane hit the Hudson Valley and flooded it,” said Grim. “They say the river puked me out.”

“I wouldn't be surprised, you old shipwreck. But see, even you were just a kid. She's so damn stable, Steve—that's been our salvation. The ones who sewed her eyes shut, God knows how, did us a huge favor.”

Pete stood still for a moment with his hands on his hips and looked around. The vegetation had become denser; trees were blocking out the daylight, and scrambling over the stumps and moldering trunks was tiring.

Grim took over and said, “The last time she really departed from her pattern—or so we suspect—was in 1887, when Eliza Hoffman disappeared into the woods. No one knew what had led her to do it, but the public outrage that followed made The Point decide to establish HEX.”

“What happened, exactly?” Steve asked, familiar only with the gist of the story.

“Eliza Hoffman was the daughter of a prominent New York family that had only recently moved to Black Spring,” Pete said. “I heard this story from my gramps, who heard it from his father before him. He was the owner of one of the old bleacheries that had prospered in Black Spring back in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries thanks to the clean spring water coming down from the hills. But by 1887, bleaching had become a dying trade: after they passed strict environmental laws and dry cleaners and Laundromats started to pop up in the cities, it pretty much forced the traditional bleacheries out of the region. Business wasn't exactly booming for old VanderMeer, is all I'm saying. Anyway, one day the Hoffmans lost sight of their little girl while they were out in the woods. She was never seen again. Poor kid wasn't even eight years old. They called in searchers with tracker dogs and they dredged Popolopen Lake, but no luck.”

“So they put it down to kidnapping,” Steve assumed.

“That's right. But the people in Black Spring knew better. For three days, the water in Philosopher's Creek turned a deep blood red and countless dead ermines floated to the surface, after collectively drowning themselves for no apparent reason. The water was undrinkable for days. My gramps had to shut down the bleachery for a week, which didn't do the business any good. But the weird thing was that the blood didn't come from the ermines, because they had all drowned. My gramps said that it seemed as if the earth itself was bleeding.”

Steve wasn't sure whether he believed that. Not for the first time, he noticed that even if accepting
one
supernatural reality came relatively easy, it didn't mean that a second one would follow … because he simply lacked the willingness to believe. “It doesn't sound like Katherine,” he finally said.

“That's the odd thing about it. No one knew why it had happened. Or where the little kid was.”

“But … ermines?”

“We still have some of them in formaldehyde,” Robert Grim said. “They saved a few when they burned the carcasses. You can come and look at them sometime if you like, although they're nothing special. Just old, dead animal.”

“And nothing like it ever happened again?”

“Nope,” Pete said. “And it would have been swept under the carpet if it weren't for the facts that Hoffman had previously been a prominent judge in New York and that the case had stirred quite a bit of interest. An article appeared in the
New York Times
with the suggestive title ‘Is Mount Misery Haunted?' As far as I know, that's the only time any of the major media reported on what's going on here. They even tried to link the case to, and I quote, ‘the folklore concerning the disappearances in Black Rock Forest of 1713 and 1665, which were said to have something to do with a witch.' When The Point got wind of that, they decided to act.”

“And so HEX was born,” Steve said.

“Exactly. And that was pretty easy by that time, since Black Spring had been self-governing since 1871. Before that it was part of the municipality of Highland Mills, and the town council met in Black Spring. It was a tough one for the mayor, having that double agenda. Every week councilmen would arrive from Highland Mills, Central Valley, and Harriman, unaware of the situation. But Katherine doesn't adapt to administrative shuffling. The curse is only on us. The Point granted autonomy to Black Spring and founded HEX under terms of confidentiality, to enable us to fend for ourselves. They supervise the ins and outs and channel money to us, but otherwise they don't want to get their fingers burned. And who can blame them? They're scared shitless.”

Steve waded through a pile of fallen leaves. “That word will get out?”

“That something like this is even possible, and that they can't send in the army to deal with it.”

“Oh, Jesus,” Pete said. He had come to such a sudden stop that Steven almost bumped into him.

There was a bit more light here. To the right of the game trail they had been following, three slender, dead trees broke through the thinning November canopy. They may have been silver birches, but the trunks were so old and weathered that it was difficult to tell. They swayed in the wind, groaning gently, their bare branches as jagged as black, crystallized lightning against the steel gray sky. Pete looked up, and now Steve saw what he was looking at: Hanging at least fifty feet up, almost at the top, was Fletcher.

The border collie hung with his head and forelegs caught in a forked branch, the fur on his upper body bunched up because of his hanging weight. He was in no way mutilated, not even visibly disfigured, and the fact that he was unblemished imparted a sinister quality to the cadaver, as if it might open its eyes at any moment and start barking. But you didn't have to get up close and make a diagnosis to know that would never happen. Fletcher's eyes were half open and glassy, and his tongue drooped out of his mouth, pale and desiccated. Despite the late season, the ants had found him first.

“Is that Fletcher?” Grim asked, although he already knew the answer.

“Yeah, that's him all right,” Steve sighed. How was he supposed to tell them about this at home? Fletcher was part of the family. They had all been crazy about the damn dog—not just Jocelyn and himself, but the boys, too. It all seemed so pointless. Pete patted him on the back, a simple gesture that, at such a moment of emotional dismay, was as moving to Steve as it was encouraging.

“This isn't the work of some animal torturer,” Grim said. “No man would climb up so high in a tree and risk his own life to hang a dog.”

No one said a word. They were only about five minutes from the trails, yet an imposing silence seemed to have descended on the forest.

“Is there the slightest possibility that your dog could have climbed up there himself and slipped?”

Steve grimaced. “No way. Dogs aren't climbers. And just look … look at the tree. There's something very wrong here. You see it, too, don't you?”

It was true, and they all knew it. Something was terribly wrong with what they were seeing, something about the atmosphere of this place. It was
dead
—that's what was wrong. As a doctor, he knew he should be approaching this in a scientific way, but he felt incapable. The sudden presence of the three skeleton trees in the middle of the windswept wilderness did not seem accidental, nor did the way they were grouped together, or the fact that Fletcher had chosen this particular place to die. There were small mountain ashes growing around, but they did nothing to dispel the sense of hidden darkness encompassing the dead trees, as if something from last night was still clinging to them. Even the air here was still, cold, and unchanging. All at once, Steve was certain that Fletcher had met a
bad
end, that there had been nothing good or peaceful about his death.

Maybe it would have been different if we had walked past that fairy ring with our eyes closed,
he thought.
Maybe Fletcher wouldn't have died.

It was a stupid thought, it was bullshit, it was the kind of superstitious madness that he didn't want to submit to … but it was also true.

Later I stopped believing in witches, so I did it as a balancing exercise.

“I don't like this at all, Robert,” Pete said.

“Call me crazy,” Grim said, “but doesn't it sorta look like the dog jumped down from the top of the tree by his own doing? That he somehow managed to hoist himself all the way up … and then hanged himself?”

A coldness descended on Steve, a chill of such elementary intensity that it pressed down on his chest and made it hard to breathe. In his mind's eye, he suddenly saw Fletcher with big, frightened eyes, clambering up the withered tree trunk, lured by a crooked, whispering female form. In a druidic symmetry, dangling from the two other dead trees by lengths of Manila rope were the bodies of both of his sons, Matt and Tyler. Their eyes were open and stared at him accusatorily with cloudy, ivory-colored corneas that made him think of the toadstools in the fairy ring, the ring he'd broken.…

With a jerk he turned away, his hands on his knees. He squeezed his eyes closed until he felt dizzy. When he opened them again he saw spots, but at least they obliterated the grotesque image from his mind.

“You okay?” Pete asked. Grim was already on the phone. Steve didn't like the expression on his face. There wasn't a trace of his usual lively cynicism.

“To be honest, not really,” he said. “I want to get the fuck out of here.”

“Let's go back down,” Pete said. “Rey Darrel's Rush Painting has a ladder that must be tall enough to get him down. That poor critter deserves a decent burial.”

*   *   *

BY THE TIME
Steve came out of the woods for the second time, now with Fletcher's lifeless body wrapped up in a blanket (he didn't have the heart to put him in a garbage bag), his head had cleared and he could consider the situation more soberly. The charged atmosphere, the strange agelessness he had felt up there, now seemed like something from a dream. Instead, a much more worldly thought occurred to him: that there were moments that stuck with you your whole life, and they almost always had to do with life and death. This was such a moment: Steve stumbling through the gate of the backyard, the bundle in his arms, aching and sore from the deadweight, the other three members of his family coming out to meet him in tears. It was a moment that would have a deep impact on all of them for the rest of their lives, and it was never to be forgotten. Indeed, it was to be cherished … for the confrontation it presented meant acceptance, and that was a first step toward the day when the pain would stop and warm memories would begin.

They held a makeshift funeral near the flower bed where honeysuckle grew in the summer, behind the horse pen where their property bordered on Philosopher's Deep. Fletcher had always liked it there, Jocelyn said. The vet had dropped by earlier in the day. Grim had wanted to have an autopsy performed, but Steve had appealed to him to leave the dog with the family. Grim had given in. According to the vet it was an open-and-shut case, and the worn patches on his coat told the story: Fletcher's hanging weight had closed off his windpipe and the dog had choked to death. Nothing more to make of it. But Jocelyn told Steve afterward that when she led the man to the kitchen to wash his hands, she saw him make the sign of the horns … the gesture to ward off the evil eye.

Finally, the moment came when the family was alone, and they used that time to mourn. They lowered Fletcher, wrapped in his blanket, into the newly dug hole and folded the blanket over him. They reminisced. Matt and Jocelyn cried and held each other. Tyler stood beside them, his face shocked and preoccupied, and he didn't say much. He kept looking around, as if to reassure himself that he was still there. Steve was worried about him. Tyler's way of dealing with setbacks was to withdraw into himself, but he usually also showed a certain down-to-earthness that was not at all in evidence now.

They threw flowers into the grave, then damp earth. Steve was reminded of something he had said to the Delarosas about children playing funeral prior to the smallpox epidemic of 1654:
The children dug holes outside the walls of the settlement and carried fruit crates out to put in their graves, walking in procession. Their parents thought they were possessed, and the game was seen as a bad omen.