Salvage (26 page)

"The stuff about the sandcastle? It's a helluva lot more complimentary than what she says about me later on," she admitted.

"I haven't gotten that far."

"Where did you leave off?"

"Crouch's visit."

"He visited me, too. The other night."

They both looked toward the journal, then to each other. Neither dared pick it up.

"Do you think he might have come to visit her a second time?" he said. "I mean, could he have been here the night she died?"

Jo let out a heavy breath. "I don't know. Didn't they say she was diving? Had all her gear on?" She shrugged. "I mean, I suppose she could have followed him out there. To the church."

Owen muttered in solemn agreement, wondering if that was what Crouch had wanted him to do the other night.

"What I do know is your sister was right," Jo said, pointing at the journal. "This place is haunted, Owen.
All of it
. And it's not just the church, it's that lake—you have no idea what it did to us. To this
town
. It divided us. It tore us apart. The ones who stayed with the church after the Purification, you and your mother, my parents and me—they
shunned
us, Owen. People literally cross the street when they see me coming,
to this day
. 'There goes Crazy Jo Dunsmuir. Church runs away from her, even her own parents crash their car just to get away from her.'"

"I'm sorry to hear that," he said. "Honestly."

She shrugged it off. "People die," she said, putting on a good poker face, but she couldn't keep the sadness from creeping into her voice.

"That seems to be a common theme around here."

She chuckled morosely. "You know, the first time I saw Father Crouch after the flood, I was fifteen. He was at my parents' funeral, watching from afar. I thought for sure what people had said was true, that the Blessed Trinity had run away and left us behind, that you and your mother left with them. But when I saw him standing in the trees beyond the tombstones, that's when I knew the Blessed Trinity hadn't run away. Because
Father Crouch hadn't aged a day
. He was the exact same man who used to bounce me on his knee, ten years before."

Owen couldn't picture the man having ever bounced anyone on his knee. Then again, he couldn't imagine Everett Crouch having ever lived in a single family home with a wife and a young son. Clearly, his father was full of surprises.

"For ten years I wondered what happened to you," Jo said. "I kept thinking you'd come back, and we'd pick up right where we left off. We'd be best friends again, and no one would make fun of me anymore because they'd have to deal with two of us. But when I saw Crouch standing there, white as chalk, as young as the day we left the Trinity, I knew then you were never coming back to save me. Or if you did, it would just make people think I was even crazier." Her eyes grew large as she looked up at him. "
You'd died with him
, Owen. That's what I believed. And that's when I lost all hope."

Owen smoothed the hair on the back of her head. "I'm here now," he said. She gave him a weak smile, took his hand in hers and tucked it into her lap.

"For a long time I believed I was in love with you," she said, and mocked herself in the voices of her bullies: "'In love with a dead kid, what'll Crazy Jo think of next?' But I was just obsessed with the idea of you. You were my White Knight."

Owen nodded thoughtfully. "Now you're mine," he said, and grinned.

"Ha. I guess that's true, isn't it? Don't get any crazy ideas, Owen. Crazier than all the rest of this, I mean."

The two of them laughed. Their laughter died quickly.

"After the funeral," she said, "I guess I traded you in for another obsession. Pete Jebson taught me how to dive. He's always been a good friend to me. My
only
friend. He believed me when I said you all were dead. He told me he sees them, too. Mostly in his dreams, but once…"

"Once, what?"

"He was the one who found my parents," she said.

Owen took a seat across from her on the couch and watched her intently.

"It was right near his house on the county road where it happened. He was putting in a new mailbox—they still delivered door-to-door back then, now they've got everyone in boxes at the post office. Jeb was hammering his mailbox into the dirt when my parents drove by. They were driving really slow with their windows down, he said, singing 'Old-Time Religion,' you know, the one that goes 'Gimme that—'"

"I know it," he said, sparing her from singing it.

She offered a shy smile of gratitude before continuing. "They were driving really slow, like I said, singing that song at the top of their lungs. Jeb recognized their car long before they passed. It was pretty easy to spot, probably the only Lada left in existence in North America around that time. It was only the two of them singing, but someone was in the backseat, and at first he thought it was me."

"It wasn't you."

Jo shook her head. "No, I wasn't there," she said, looking at her hands.

"It was Crouch."

She agreed silently. "Jeb said if he hadn't had the mailbox there to hold him up he would have fallen over out of pure shock. Sitting there in the backseat was a man he hadn't seen in ten years, who hadn't aged a day, smiling out at Jeb while my parents drove by singing spirituals at the top of their lungs. Only he said, 'In a kind of religious fervor,' which sounds like my parents one-hundred percent, even after we'd left the church.

"They thought they'd gotten away, Owen. But Crouch was just biding his time.
Good things come to those who wait
. Isn't that what the Bible says?"

"I think it's from something else. Like how the thing about give a man a fish he'll eat for a day, teach him to fish he'll eat for a lifetime is usually thought to be from the Bible, but it's actually—" She was looking askance at him. "What?"

"You sure took a lot more from Sunday school than I did."

"Sorry. It's been coming back. Go on."

She eyed him to be sure he was through interrupting. Then, "Jeb heard the tires squeal, and then a loud crash. They were barely going twenty, but he knew it was a pretty steep drop down to the marsh, and it gets deep out there on the county road since they put in the dam. He ran out there in his work boots. They were still singing, he told me, 'Still rejoicing even while they were dying,' he said, while he ran toward the car. Then their voices just stopped."

Jo licked her lips. It seemed like she wouldn't go on, but she gathered herself, and continued. "They'd gone about a kilometer up the road while Jeb stood frozen at the end of his driveway, holding himself up by his mailbox. When he got to where their tires peeled-up on the asphalt, the car had already sunk up to the back doors, half buried in wild rice shoots as tall as him. He climbed down to the ditch, just about slipped all the way down in the soft gravel and twisted up his ankle. When he got one of the back doors open, all this brown water came rushing out. Crouch wasn't there in the backseat anymore. My parents still had their seat belts on. He said they were smiling."

He'd whispered in their ears
, Owen thought.
He'd filled their minds full of his black filth, full of his poison. Maybe he made them think it was their own idea, so they'd go on believing their suicide was righteous until the very end
.

"There's only a handful of us left now," Jo said. "You and me, your mother, Howard Lansall, Mr. Wickman, and Beau Parrish. I don't have proof, Owen, but I believe it in my heart: your father and the Blessed Trinity are down there, under that lake.
In that church
."

"Howard Lansall said the same," Owen said, and told Jo the story Howard had told him. By the time he was through, she had tears standing in her eyes.

"He knew all this time, he knew everything people said about me, and he never told me a thing," she said. The tears fell. She wiped them away angrily.

"Maybe he was afraid you'd tell someone."

"I
told
everyone when my parents died. Nobody believed me then. Why would they believe me now?"

"Because it's getting worse. My sister, and now Howie. This town has lived in the dark for
thirty years
. Now's your chance to show them the light.
Our
chance."

She smiled, sadly hopeful. "But how...?"

"Maybe if—I don't know, if we could prove they're down there, if we could find their remains, and give them a proper Christian burial…" He chuckled. "It sounds so ridiculous out loud. Like something out of a movie."

"But that lake is
haunted
by the Blessed Trinity—you've seen it yourself, Owen. They're much stronger in that lake, but they don't
need
it to hurt us. You saw them somewhere before you came to Chapel Lake, didn't you? Somewhere near water? A puddle in a birdbath, the rainbow from a sprinkler? He
uses the water
, Owen."

"He tried to drown me the night before I came here," Owen said. "If my neighbor hadn't come by at just the right moment with Lori's postcard, I would've drowned in my own bathtub. Everyone would have thought it was suicide, even my mother." He squinted off at the sun streaming in through the kitchen windows, chickadees chirping in the swaying trees. "Who knows? Maybe they would've been right."

Jo put a hand on his knee, nodding in sympathy.

"We have to risk it," he said. "We have to go down there, even if it kills us. People need to know. 'Earth, do not cover my blood,' those were Crouch's last words. 'May my cry never be laid to rest
.
'"

"It sounds like a curse," Jo said, bitterly.

Owen looked at her. "
Isn't
it?"

2

On the far eastern end of the cottage road, which stretched and curved its way around the north side of Chapel Lake, past the trailer park and the dump where Howie Lansall had lost his life, Jo had lived alone in her family home for almost twenty years.

After the car crash, Jo's great aunt had taken custody of her, moving some of her things into the old house, but mostly she had left Jo to herself. She'd found her niece's daughter odd and moody. She'd never understood her niece's love for "that man" (Jo's father), nor their mutual admiration of Crouch and his "death cult." These were Grenada Thériault's own words, repeated by Jo while they drove. In the eyes of Grenada Thériault, sole heir to a small logging fortune, Joelle Dunsmuir was a product of her niece's forbidden love. She had thrown the term "cult baby" around often.

"She didn't want anything to do with me," Jo said, "but the courts forced me on her. In the end, while the government thought she was living in both houses, mostly she just used my house as a place to store all the junk she'd bought from the shopping channel. When the children's aid people came around, which wasn't very often, they'd always call first. It gave Grenada enough time to drive over from Dunsmuir and make herself at home. I remember she always used to bake cookies when they came. Those were the only times she ever did anything nice, but it was all for show. She gave me a small allowance, and I bought my own groceries with it, did small repairs on the house when it needed them, if I could afford them. I got a job at the Masterfeeds store to supplement what she gave me, which wasn't much, even back then. And once I turned eighteen, I was legally my own guardian. The house was finally mine. I kicked that old bag to the curb, and tossed all her shit out on the lawn. "

"Good for you," Owen said, and meant it.

Jo grinned. "You should've seen her face. She was pretty pissed. But I think she was glad she didn't have to deal with me anymore."

"She sounds like a nice lady."

"
So
nice."

Owen pulled up to a stop sign, let a dusty minivan through the intersection of the cottage and trailer park roads. Jo inspected the van as it drove by, and they continued on their way. After a moment, she flicked on the radio on a howling wolf—a promo for the station, a gruff voice announcing it as "
The Wolf… 101.5 FM
." They sang along to Guns N' Roses "Sweet Child O' Mine." The next song was "Dirty Water," an '80s hit by Canadian band Rock and Hyde. Owen turned off the radio.

"I like that song," Jo said, but Owen left it off.

In another five minutes they reached her house. The brown lawn stretched back from the road to a small, neat bungalow surrounded by forest. Off to the right stood an old water well, with crumbling stone sides and a rotted wood roof. Out near the gate a FOR SALE sign stood, with Skip's face smiling from it.

"You're moving?"

"If it ever sells. Seems like the right time, don't you think?"

Owen thought about what to say. After so many years haunted by the past, Jo Dunsmuir had finally decided to put it behind her. He wondered how long the house had been on the market, if his or his sister's arrival had sparked her decision. He said nothing, only opened the door and climbed out. He followed her to the house.

"Sorry about the mess," she said. "I haven't had time to clean."

"I'm sure it's fine."

Jo unlocked the door. It creaked open on a dim cavern of newspapers and file folders, stacked chest-high. Shoes were scattered in the corner behind the door, both men's and women's. He supposed they must have belonged to her parents. The house smelled dank, like a basement.

Jo must have seen his nostrils flare, because she said, "I had a flood. The pipes burst one night while I was sleeping. Filled the whole basement."

"Was that recent?"

"It happens a lot. I've fixed those old pipes so many times…" She shrugged. "I wouldn't be surprised if it was Crouch, trying to mess with my head. Can I get you something to drink?" she asked him, wandering into the house.

"As long as it's not from the sink."

Jo's laughter echoed through the empty house. Passing the living room doorway, Owen saw more of the same: papers of all kinds, men and women's clothing in scattered piles, sad, sagging curtains, ugly beige broadloom, all of it layered with dust. On the coffee table, more pages were spread out. Blue leaflets from the Blessed Trinity Mission emblazoned with the words he'd seen on his first day at Chapel Lake:
WILL YOU BE EMBRACED BY THE ARMS OF THE FATHER?