Lake Thirteen (8 page)

“Sorry, bro,” Logan playfully punched Carson in the arm. “But I gotta agree with Rache. We are so in over our heads here.”

“I don’t want anyone to say anything to my parents,” I said. They all looked at me. “I don’t. I think I’d know if I had a brain tumor or not, and a brain tumor didn’t make my back cold last night in the cemetery, and it wasn’t a brain tumor that made me walk out into the woods last night, and it wasn’t a brain tumor that made that flag wave in the cemetery, either.” I crossed my arms. “I don’t know how to explain it to you all to make you understand, but I think I’d know if I was losing my mind or if—if I was sick.” I shook my head. “None of this happened before yesterday. How could that be if I was sick? Or going crazy? Wouldn’t I have had symptoms before I got to North Hollow?”

“He has a point,” Teresa replied. “Seriously. Why don’t we do this?” She turned to Carson. “Let’s see what we can find out to maybe prove Carson’s right—or wrong, for that matter. It can’t hurt to do some research about Albert, the Tylers, and this cabin. And Rachel, if you want to you can do some research on brain diseases, see if any of this can be explained as symptoms of some kind of illness—and not just physical.” She looked at me and smiled sadly. “Sorry, Scotty, but we have to consider the other side of it, too. You may be having a breakdown. Maybe somehow
you
caused the voice we all heard—the voice your mother heard, too. And after a few days, if Carson can’t prove any of his theory, then we have to tell the adults. Are we all agreed?” The others nodded.

“It sounds fair.” Carson agreed.

“Don’t I have a say in any of this?” I asked. “I mean, come on, guys, you’re making decisions about me without any input from me? How is that fair?”

Teresa smiled at me, and patted my leg. “Sorry, Scotty, but we have to operate under the assumption that you’re not in your right mind, one way or another.” When no one said anything, she looked at her watch. “I say we get out of here. We’ve made some good progress.” She looked over at the ruined cabin. “And for the record, Carson—I do think you’re right. We just have to cover every base.”

She had a point. She was going to make a good lawyer one day.

We walked back up the trail in silence. I looked back at the cabin, and felt –
sorrow, sadness—
and then it was gone in just a moment.

I knew I wasn’t losing my mind.

The cabin
meant
something.

“You know something,” I said slowly as we reached the fork in the path and started to walk away from the cabin, toward the lodge. “My mom thought someone was out calling their pet last night—we need to ask the Bartletts if anyone on the mountain has a pet named Bertie or something that sounds like that.”

Carson scowled.

“If we’re going to cover every base, we have to rule out that anyone was out calling, don’t we?” I scowled back at him. “And you know, we also have to consider the possibility that this whole thing is all a set up of some sort.” I shrugged. “I mean, someone could be playing an elaborate trick.” I crossed my arms. “I mean, maybe the Bartletts know about your dad’s show about the paranormal. Maybe they want to get their lodge on a national television show. It’s free publicity, isn’t it?”

“Excellent point, Scotty.” Teresa nodded. “People have done crazier things than this to get on television.”

“They don’t strike me as the type, but you’re absolutely right.” Carson was practically dancing in place. “We have to consider everything, and not until everything else is ruled out can we determine that whatever’s happening is supernatural in origin.”

“In that case, we also have to consider the possibility that Scotty’s involved,” Logan pointed out. He grinned at me sheepishly. “If we have to consider everything, we have to, sorry. I mean, I don’t think you’d do something like that, but we have to think about it.”

“Uh huh.” I nodded, my cheeks flaming.
Some vacation—my friends are considering the options that I might be insane, or have a brain tumor, or am involved in some elaborate scam. Great.

No one said another word as we continued walking back through the woods to the lodge. It was getting hotter, and my hair was damp with sweat. Going down the path, too, had been a lot easier than hiking its steady upward slope. By the time we reached the tree line just outside the parking lot, we were all breathing a little harder and soaking with sweat. “Thank God,” Rachel breathed as we made it out of the woods. “I was beginning to think I wasn’t going to make it.” She emptied what was left in her water bottle into her mouth.

As we stood there, the back door to the kitchen opened and Annie Bartlett emerged, carrying a bag of trash out to the big Dumpster out by the shed. “Annie!” Logan shouted and took off running.

Annie’s face lit up as she watched Logan run up to her, and I felt bad for her.
She’s fallen for him already,
I thought sadly.

“I know about the cabin but I don’t know anything about it,” she was saying as we walked up. “When Mom and Dad bought the place, the agent showed it to them, of course, but it’s in such bad shape, and there’s no sewer or power out there, and no road, so they decided to just leave it as it is and not bother with it. The well’s dried up, too.” She shrugged her small shoulders. “I know some kids like to go hang out there and drink, you know, because no one ever goes out there, but I never go out there.” She shuddered. “There’s something about that place I don’t like.”

I noticed that as she spoke Rachel got a smug look on her face and wondered what she was thinking.

“Who’d your parents buy the lodge from, Annie?” This was Teresa, and her voice was friendly.

“Why do you care?”

“Just curious.”

“The people who owned the place before we did retired—they were pretty old.” Annie made a face. “I think they moved to Florida, and Mom and Dad were tired of city life, so here we are.”

“There aren’t any stories about the place being haunted, are there?” This was from Carson.

My mind was already starting to wander. I was sweating, and I was thirsty. I moved away from the group and went into the lodge through the front door. The lodge wasn’t air-conditioned—there were window units in the rooms—and all the windows were open. I could see the lake sparkling in the sun at the end of the long sloping lawn. I walked over to the cooler, retrieved a Coke, and went out onto the porch that ran the length of the building on the lake side. I sat down in a wooden rocking chair and put my feet up on the unfinished railing.

Was I losing my mind? I had to consider the possibility, even if I didn’t believe it was possible nor did I like the very idea. Was I having a breakdown of sorts? I pulled my cell phone out of my pocket. I really missed Marc and wished he was here with me. Was this some kind of weird reaction to the pressures of coming out to everyone, and missing Marc?

When I’d seen the young man in my vision or whatever the hell it was I’d had out in the woods, I’d felt so happy. I knew that feeling quite well—it was the same feeling I had whenever I saw Marc if I hadn’t seen him for a few days, like when his family went away to visit relatives at Thanksgiving or Christmas. It was how I’d feel when I saw him after we got back to Farmington. I—or Albert—had feelings for that guy.

Is that why you didn’t say anything to the others about him looking like Marc? Because you didn’t want to bring up the gay thing?

What Carson had said about that haunting in California—what if I was the first gay kid the right age to stop at Albert’s grave since he was buried? That was a connection between us, a strong enough connection for him to do whatever it was he was doing to me. Maybe that was why I’d felt so emotional at his grave. Maybe that’s why I heard someone calling him last night in the woods.

I sat up, almost spilling my Coke in the process.

Someone was calling him. We’d all heard it, hadn’t we? Even Mom had heard it.

But who?

“There you are,” Teresa said from behind me. The screen door slammed shut behind her, and she sat down in the chair on the other side of the table from me. She popped the top on a Diet Coke and leaned back in her chair. “How are you doing, really, Scotty?”

I shrugged. “I’m fine. Did Annie have anything interesting to say?”

She shook her head. “No, she doesn’t know anything. Carson and Logan went off to talk to her parents. Rachel’s back in the game room looking stuff up on the Internet.” She sighed. “Are you sure, Scotty? You can talk to me, you know.” She reached over and touched my hand. “You’ve been so withdrawn since we got here—what’s going on?”

I looked into her brown eyes and smiled back at her. “Well, this whole Albert ghost thing hasn’t exactly helped, you know.” I took a deep breath. “I was pretty nervous about coming here, seeing everyone again.” I turned to look back at the shimmering surface of the lake. “I mean, no one answered my e-mail.”

“Scotty, I can’t speak for anyone else, but I didn’t answer because I figured it would be easier to talk in person.” She let go of my hand and started rocking in her chair. “You’re still Scotty. Who cares if you like boys or girls?”

“Thanks.” I bit my lower lip and felt tears coming to my eyes. “That means a lot.”

“I mean, I worry about you—there are a lot of assholes in the world.” She went on like I hadn’t spoken at all. She smiled at me. “But you’re a good guy. You’re smart and good looking and funny and you have a great personality. None of that is different. Anyone who wants to judge you for who you’re attracted to is someone not worth knowing, you know? Besides, I always kind of wondered about you.”

“You did not.”

“Oh, yes I did.” She laughed. “Come on, you might have thought you were being sly, but I saw you looking at boys on the beach last summer.”

“There were some hot ones.” I sighed and leaned back in my chair. “Thanks, Teresa, it means a lot.”

“I’m kind of worried about all of this stuff going on, too,” she said, taking another swig of her soda and muffling a belch with her hand. “I know you’re not going crazy, but are you sure you don’t want to go see a doctor?”

I turned and looked at her. “Teresa, I know there’s nothing wrong with me physically. I can’t explain how I know, I just
do.”
I hesitated. “There’s, um, a couple things I didn’t share with everyone about what happened in the woods.”

An eyebrow went up. “I knew you were holding something back. Spill. I won’t tell anyone else unless you want me to.”

I took a deep breath and told her about the dream I had in the car and the guy I saw both times, describing him, in detail, as well as the powerful emotional response I’d had.

She whistled. “You think it was Albert?”

I shook my head. “I don’t. I think Carson’s right. I think I’m somehow getting flashes of his memory.” I rubbed my eyes. “It sounds so fucking crazy! But I think that guy was, I don’t know, important to Albert. He was in love with that guy. The way I felt when I saw him—it’s the way I feel when I see my boyfriend.”

“You have a boyfriend?” Her delight was written all over her face. “You didn’t say anything about a boyfriend!” She leaned in. “Details. Just between us.”

So, I told her about Marc, how we met, how we had to keep everything a secret from his awful father.

“He sounds dreamy.” She closed her eyes. “Do you have a picture of him?”

I pulled out my wallet and showed her his junior class picture.

“Cute,” she commented as I put it back in my pocket. She was about to say something else when the screen door opened and Logan and Carson joined us.

“You’re not going to believe this.” Carson was bouncing up and down on the balls of his feet. “The Tylers used to
own
this place. They actually built the lodge.”

“Wow.” Teresa winked at me. “Interesting!”

“They’re mostly gone,” Logan went on. “But there’s still a Tyler living in North Hollow. And get this—she works at the North Hollow Historical Society.” He held up the car keys. “Anyone up for a trip into town?”

“Cheer up, Rachel,” Logan said as he started the engine, winking at her. “There’s still plenty of time for Scotty to develop the symptoms of a brain tumor.”

“You’re such an asshole,” Rachel said absently, not bothering to even look up from fiddling with her phone. “I never said I wanted him to have a brain tumor. Besides, we all agreed that we had to rule out a medical cause for what’s happening, didn’t we?” She glanced over at me and winked. “But we haven’t ruled out schizophrenia.”

I smothered a grin and winked back at her before crossing my eyes and tipping my head, letting my tongue roll out and hang to the side.

Teresa smacked my leg. “Stop it,” she said, laughing.

I shrugged. “I figured a little laughter couldn’t hurt, could it? I mean, I’m the one who might be going crazy.”

Rachel had spent over an hour on the computer in the lodge’s game room, going from link to link as she searched for any articles on any website, anywhere, that would give a medical cause for what I was experiencing. After Carson and Logan had told us about the Tylers, I’d gone back to my cabin—walking on the road because I didn’t feel comfortable taking the shortcut through the woods by myself—to take another shower. I couldn’t explain it, but I just didn’t feel clean after our walk in the forest. When I’d gotten back, Logan and Carson were teasing Rachel mercilessly about her wish for me to have a brain tumor. Obviously, none of us really believed Rachel wanted that, but joking and teasing was a great way to relieve the tension we were all feeling.

“If you’re going crazy, we all are,” Carson commented from the front seat over the stereo, which was blaring a One Direction song.

“How reassuring—maybe we can all get rooms on the same floor at the mental hospital,” I said, leaning my head against the window glass as Logan started driving the SUV down the mountain. Teresa was sitting between Rachel and me, and she patted my leg as I touched the screen of my cell phone, waking it up. The word
Searching…
appeared in the upper left-hand corner as the little wheel spun slowly. After about a minute,
No Signal
replaced it.

I sighed and shoved it back into my shorts pocket.

At least when we got down to North Hollow, I’d be able to call or text Marc.

I looked back out the window as we headed down the mountain. I hadn’t really been paying a lot of attention when we’d driven up to the lodge the day before, and of course, it had been dark when we’d gone down to the cemetery last night. But it was really beautiful.

There were mountaintops visible in almost every direction I could look, some of them dusted with snow at the very top. Every once in a while, the shoulder of the road was almost nonexistent, and I could see over the guardrail, down the side of the mountain, to a spectacular display of a waterfall throwing up mist that caught the sunlight, making little rainbows. As far as mountains went, these weren’t that tall, really—we usually went skiing for a long weekend in Colorado every February, and those mountains certainly dwarfed those around Lake Thirteen—but that didn’t make them any less beautiful to look at.

“Hey, there’s the parents!” Logan swung the car off the road onto the narrow shoulder and braked. He slammed into park and hopped out. I opened my door and slid down. The guardrail was only a few inches away from where I was standing, and for a brief moment I was looking down an almost sheer drop of about twenty feet or so to where the clear rock-filled stream opened out into a wide pool of clear water. It seemed familiar—

—and everything changed again.

The pavement and guardrail weren’t there anymore, and I was standing way too close to the edge. The road was dirt, not pavement, and the side I was so near was nothing more than a crumbling lip, with cracks and holes where the side had simply fallen away. I involuntarily took a step backward as vertigo made me dizzy. The trees and bushes were thicker than they had been just a moment ago, and above the sound of rushing water I heard a loud splash. Nervously, I took another step closer to the lip and looked over the side just as the young man I’d seen at the cabin surfaced in almost the direct center of the pool. He bobbed for a moment, wiping water out of his eyes. Then he stopped bobbing up and down, and only his torso from about the navel up was above water. He shook his head, the long hair flying from side to side, spraying drops of water in every direction. I could see a pile of clothing on the far side of the pool, right next to the water, and there was a path through the woods. The sun glistened on his broad shoulders as he walked to the far side of the pool, more of him emerging from the water as he got farther away from me, and I caught my breath as I saw enough of him exposed about the water to realize that he was naked—

“Scotty?” Teresa whispered urgently, tugging on my arm. “Are you okay? Did it happen again?”

Startled, I looked down. It was just as it had been when I’d first looked down. There was no one in the pool of water, no pile of clothes on the far shore, no path through the underbrush to the water’s edge. I sighed and turned around. The gray SUV with all three sets of parents was pulled over on the other side of the road. Logan, Carson, and Rachel were standing around the driver’s side door, and I could see my mother in the backseat through the window. I forced a smile on my face and nodded at Teresa. “I’m fine.”

“What did you see?” she asked, not letting go of my arm.

“Nothing,” I lied. “It just changed, that’s all, and was different. I don’t think it meant anything.”

It meant something. You’re getting flashes of memory. But who was that guy? He looked so much like Marc—that has to mean something.

But I didn’t want to say anything about it to her—or to any of the others, for that matter.

I was shaking and I climbed back into the backseat, scooting over to the center to make room for Teresa. She shut the door behind her and took my hand.

“You’re white as a sheet,” she said, placing a hand on my forehead. “No fever, though, that’s a good thing.”

“I thought we already determined that it’s not a brain tumor,” I replied with a weak smile, which made her laugh. I leaned my head back and took some deep breaths.

“What did you see?” she asked again. “Scotty, you have to tell us. We can’t help you if you don’t tell us everything.”

“It was like before,” I closed my eyes, remembering. “The guardrail was gone, the road was dirt instead of pavement—and it made me nervous—the edge was all crumbling away. I heard a splash and looked down at the pool and everything was different. The air was different, like it was spring…” I focused, trying to remember. “Yes, I could smell blooming flowers, and it was warm, the sun was warm but there was a bit of a nip in the air, like, you know, spring. And I saw the guy again—the guy from the cabin, the one I saw earlier, he was getting out of the water and his clothes were all piled up on the shore and he was getting out of the water and he was…” I bit my lip. “Then you snapped me back into the present.”

I heard the other SUV driving away, and a few moments later, everyone was getting back into our vehicle.

Logan started the engine again. “I told them we were going to look around the town and have lunch there,” he said as he buckled his seat belt.

“Great,” Teresa replied. “Scotty had another vision, or whatever it is he’s been having.” She squeezed my hand and winked to let me know my secret about seeing the young man naked was safe with her. “Nothing much, just a vision of the creek and the pool in some past time.”

“That’s so weird.” Carson looked over the seat at us. “Are you sure that’s all you saw? Albert must have wanted you to see it, that’s why he showed it to you. You’re sure that’s it?”

“I don’t know,” I said, sharper than I’d intended. “Sorry.” I shook my head. “This is just so damned frustrating. I don’t know what he wants to tell me.” I pounded my fist on my leg. “I wish he’d just tell me what he wants already!”

“I’m sure he wants to,” Carson said calmly from the front seat. “He would if he could. But he can’t. That’s why we have to see what we can find out, so we can help him as much as we can.”

I didn’t answer, just kept looking out the window. About ten minutes later we passed the turn off to Cemetery Road, and Teresa squeezed my hand again. I got my phone back out just as we reached the bottom of the mountain, where Thirteenth Lake Road dead-ended into the state highway. Across the two lanes of pavement and about three yards of gravel and dirt was the upper Hudson River, at most a quarter mile across and looking choppy, the current moving fast. Little whitecaps occasionally showed up in the gray water, and some people in kayaks were moving across the surface of the river. Logan turned right after letting an eighteen-wheeler thunder past, and I watched as we passed a tire dealership, a gas station, and a sports-equipment rental place that also arranged white-water-rafting tours.

After about a mile, there was a road to the left, following the curve of the river. There was a sign that read North Hollow with an arrow pointing in that direction.
That’s why I don’t remember driving through town on the way here,
I thought as Logan slowed and turned to follow the two-lane road running alongside the river. And as we got farther away from the state highway, we reached the outskirts of the small town, evidenced by a sign announcing the city limits and the population—7640.

There was a pleasant little main street, with a big Walgreens and a Safeway sharing a big parking lot, and any number of small businesses—cafés, a locksmith, an auto mechanic, antique shops, a coffee shop, and an ice cream shop. We had just passed the small town-hall building when Carson said, “There’s the historical society!”

Logan maneuvered the SUV into a parking spot in front of the North Hollow Historical Society building. It was a small building, made of wood and painted white with green shutters. There was a well-kept lawn, a small white picket fence running along the narrow sidewalk, and a big wooden sign painted brown with WELCOME TO THE NORTH HOLLOW HISTORICAL SOCIETY! OPEN MONDAY THRU SATURDAY FROM 12-5.

“What’s our cover story?” Teresa asked after Logan had shut the engine off and we’d all gotten out. “We’re not from around here. Don’t you think Miss Alice Tyler is going to have some questions about why we’re so interested in her family? Unless you plan on telling her that Scotty is communicating with one of her dead ancestors, of course. She won’t think we’re insane or anything.”

“Leave it to me, I’ll do all the talking,” Carson replied with a smug little smile as he opened the gate and stepped aside. “After you.”

I walked up the steps and opened the door. A bell rang as I walked inside. The air was slightly cooler inside than outside. Immediately to my right was a small table with a guestbook sitting open on it. There was a sign asking everyone to please sign in. I hesitated for a moment before stepping over and writing my name and address and the date in the spaces provided. I couldn’t help but notice the last person to sign the book had done so the previous summer—obviously, the historical society wasn’t a big tourist draw. I turned and walked into the main room.

There was a desk to one side facing the front door with a nameplate reading
Alice Tyler
on it. The desktop was completely bare, other than a computer monitor and a keyboard. There was a blue coffee mug with a big orange
S
on it in one corner with pens stuffed into it. A woman I assumed had to be Alice Tyler sat behind the desk, reading what appeared to be the
New York Times.
She looked up and smiled at us. She was in her fifties—maybe her sixties. Her graying dark hair was pulled back into a long braid that went down her back. She was wearing a floral print dress, and had bifocal glasses, which she pushed up the bridge of her nose. Her skin was a little loose and wrinkled, but her brown eyes were round and warm. I heard the door open and the bell ring again as everyone else came inside.

“Hi,” I smiled back at her. “My name is Scotty Thompson and I’m staying—all of us are staying—up at Mohawk Lodge for the week. I was wondering if you could help us?”

“I’ll do what I can,” she replied. Her voice was as warm as her eyes, deep and friendly. “Are you interested in the area history? It’s so nice when young people are interested in history.”

“Great,” Carson enthused. “I’m taking online classes—college prep, trying to get some credits while I’m still in high school—and I’m taking one from UCLA called 20th Century America.” It was amazing how easily the lies rolled off his tongue—I had no idea Carson was such a good liar. “Anyway, I have to write a paper on any topic I want, and I thought it would be interesting to write one about the history of the lodge itself. After all, there’s so much history in this area.” His smile got wider. “And Annie—the girl who works there—suggested I should come here and talk to you, that it was your family that originally built the lodge. Can you help me?”

Her smile grew wider as he spoke, and when he was finished, she leaned back in her chair. “Annie’s right, of course. It’s true that my great-grandfather Benjamin Tyler bought the land and built the lodge over a hundred years ago.”

She started talking, and to his credit, Carson pulled up a chair and started typing notes into his phone as she spoke. Teresa, Logan, and Rachel also pulled up chairs, but I was feeling antsy—I didn’t want to sit down, and even though I was interested in whatever Miss Tyler had to say about the lodge’s history, my mind was wandering. I started walking around, looking at the items hanging on the walls, looking in glass cases at arrowheads and tomahawks and colonial artifacts. I kept walking around—apparently North Hollow’s big claim to fame was that there had been an Indian massacre near the beginning of the French and Indian War. There was even an old book under glass, which was apparently a history of the massacre, published sometime before World War II. Apparently, no other historian had found the area interesting enough to write about, because that was the only book in the entire place.

There was a doorway to another room, and I walked through it into a big room painted yellow. The curtains were open, and it was very light inside. There were more pictures on the walls, and a wooden case pushed up against the far wall. The top was glass, and I walked over to it and felt my blood run cold as I looked inside.