Full Wolf Moon

6

The next morning, Logan had an early breakfast in the big lodge, then got into his car and left Cloudwater. He now regretted promising Jessup he’d look into the murders; in the chill light of day he was even more convinced there was nothing he could add to the official investigation, and his laptop, books, and notes — placed on the living room worktable of his cabin — silently chastised him for not getting immediately to work. But he was to have dinner with the Jessup family that evening; it seemed best to make a cursory effort — Randall had asked him as a personal favor, after all — which would then allow him to report no success and get on with what he’d come here to finish.

And so he pointed the nose of his car westward, following Route 3 as it threaded its way between the steep flanks of rising mountains and along the shores of rushing streams. It occurred to him as he drove that he had never penetrated this deeply into the park before. It was a forty-mile drive to the hamlet of Pike Hollow, and the farther he went, the more the things he was accustomed to seeing began to fall away. First went the summer camps with the fake Indian names and wooden signboards, invariably situated on the shores of lakes. Next went such tourist attractions as the curio shops offering lynx tails and arrowheads and other backwoods bric-a-brac. Then, even the establishments that catered to the locals began to vanish: gas stations; ATV and snowmobile repair shops; turnouts for private logging roads. Past Sevey he left Route 3 for 3A, a narrow road that plunged still farther westward, into a pine forest so deep the overhanging branches formed a kind of woven tunnel, beneath which a perpetual evening reigned. The air became increasingly humid and moist. This road was in far worse repair, its blacktop so cracked and heaved that sections of it could barely be called paved. Passing cars were infrequent. As the reception bars on his cell phone disappeared one by one, Logan became aware of a vague sense of apprehension: if anything should happen to his Lotus Elan S4, he doubted that there was a mechanic within a hundred miles capable of repairing, let alone finding parts for, the fifty-year-old sports car.

But there was another component to his growing feeling of apprehension — the forest itself. It gave the impression of being almost immeasurably old; he felt that he could pull onto the shoulder at any point, walk off into the trees, and within minutes — if he wasn’t already lost — be where no human being had set foot before. The growing lack of human habitation was somehow unsettling. Logan felt almost like an intruder here: a tiny, insignificant intruder, to be tolerated perhaps but given no comfort or assistance. He recalled the lines of an old English ghost story, set in a remote Canadian wilderness: The bleak splendours of these remote and lonely forests overwhelmed him with the sense of his own littleness. That stern quality of the tangled backwood which can only be described as merciless and terrible, rose out of these far blue woods swimming upon the horizon, and revealed itself. He understood the silent warning. He realized his own utter helplessness.

A sudden bend in the road, and Pike Hollow was upon him: a one-street town leading north off 3A, home to eight hundred inhabitants according to the faded road sign, surrounded on all sides by dark, rising forest as if built into the bowl of an inverted snow globe. Here, at least, there was a small degree of civilization: shops, houses, a diner, their facades all pushed up close against the road as if grasping at a life preserver. His roadster received the occasional curious look as he drove slowly through town. This was no tourist destination, as the decrepitude of many buildings and the obvious lack of affluence made clear. Here and there, narrow lanes led off the main street, inevitably ending in a huddle of sad-looking residences hard up against the encircling forest. He glanced over his shoulder, past the buildings toward the south, to the unbroken wall of trees. A few miles away, he knew, lay the Five Ponds Wilderness. And beyond that, Desolation Lake — and the site of the two murders.

He made a circuit of the town — an undertaking that took up less than ten minutes — and then pulled over to a spot near where he’d first entered and killed the engine, considering how best to proceed. This was a task he’d done many times before — entering an unfamiliar town with the intent of prizing information out of locals who might or might not be eager to talk — and he had developed a number of roles through which to accomplish it. He considered, then rejected, posing as a tourist — a tourist wouldn’t ask the kind of questions he was going to. He also rejected impersonating a potential real estate buyer: it didn’t seem particularly credible, and besides, people would be unlikely to talk about unpleasant subjects to someone who might bring money into the town. In the end he settled on the guise of nature photographer. This not only gave him a believable motive for being so far off the beaten track, but it gave him reason to ask a lot of questions under the pretense of seeking colorful locations to shoot. And a photographer wouldn’t likely be scared off by rumors of evil deeds: in fact, they might arouse his professional curiosity.

He reached into the glove compartment, pulled out a pair of heavy tortoiseshell glasses, and put them on, just on the off chance he might be recognized. Then, getting out of the car, he opened the boot and rummaged among various disguises and props, at last pulling out a suitably faded photographer’s vest and a Nikon SLR with a telephoto lens: the camera wasn’t in working order, but since it was only for effect it had been much cheaper to purchase that way. He shrugged into the vest, slipped the camera strap over one shoulder, and prepared to make his way down the main street.

Pike Hollow had no police force of its own, so Logan had to content himself with speaking to a variety of shop owners. He dropped in first at a barber, where — although he didn’t need one — he got a haircut from a fellow named Sam, who, it seemed, lived only to catch fish with a fly rod on the Ausable River. Next, he visited the town’s sole restaurant, where he had an early lunch, served by a talkative waitress. This was followed by a stop at a dry goods store, where after a lengthy conversation with the proprietor he purchased a pair of socks that he could at least justify to himself, since (the merchant told him) a cold snap was in the forecast.

Each stop provided him with additional information, which he was then able to leverage in future stops to gain still more information. While the townspeople were obviously concerned about the recent backpacker deaths, they did not seem to be particularly shy about discussing them. And the more he learned about the town and the area, and the more he could pass himself off as a knowledgeable visitor, the more people seemed to open up. After each stop, he took out a notebook, made entries on what he had learned, and cross-correlated any common threads.

One thread in particular seemed to crop up in every conversation.

Finally, around half past three, he walked into Fred’s Hideaway, a bar at the far end of town. It was, as he’d hoped, empty save for Fred. Logan ordered a beer, surmising it was the beverage he could nurse the longest while engaging the bartender in conversation. All beers were bottled — there was nothing on tap — nor were there any imported brands. Logan chose a Michelob Light.

After the initial pleasantries were complete, Logan was quick to establish himself — with a variety of observations he’d picked up during his previous conversations — as someone who had at least a passing familiarity with the region and its news. As they spoke, Fred nodded with a pretense of sagacity, every so often stopping to pluck a bar towel off his left shoulder and wipe the worn varnish with it.

“I’m a freelance photographer,” Logan said in response to a question from Fred. “Don’t work for any particular magazine or bureau. Nobody sends me anywhere, or hands me assignments. That means it’s up to me to find the most interesting pictures I can.”

He took a pull from his beer as Fred gave another sagacious nod.

“So I was thinking maybe I could get some shots of the region where these terrible accidents took place,” Logan went on. “You know, the killings of those backpackers.”

“The Wilderness?” Fred asked, disbelief creeping into his voice.

“Yes, that’s it. The Five Ponds Wilderness. It’s pretty close, right?”

“Couldn’t get in there. Least not without a helicopter, or maybe a tank. That’s bad country in there. Nobody goes in except the occasional crazy hiker. And the last two hikers that went in there didn’t come out again.” Fred put a knowing fingertip to the side of his nose.

“No guides?”

Fred shook his head. “You’d be awful hard-pressed to find one — especially after what’s happened.”

“Well, maybe I can just go to, you know, the edge of it. What I’m really looking for is a shot of a bear.” And here Logan leaned in a little conspiratorially. “I mean, if I sold that picture — the killer bear that mauled two backpackers — who’s going to dispute whether I snapped the right bear or not?”

“Wasn’t no bear as killed those youngsters,” Fred said, leaning in a little himself.

Logan feigned surprise. “No bear?”

“Nope.”

“What killed them, then?”

Fred hesitated. “Don’t know as I should say, rightly. Haven’t got any proof. That is, unless you call sixty years of hearing tales, and seeing things with my own eyes, proof.”

Fred was just about the most garrulous of the Pike Hollow residents Logan had spoken with. He also seemed to know more than most. Yet on this one particularly important point he seemed reticent. Logan realized he would have to show his hand just a little. He drained his beer, ordered another, and invited Fred to have one, on him. When it came, he said: “You must be talking about that clan.”

At this, Fred nodded. “The Blakeneys,” he said, popping the cap off a bottle of Budweiser and placing it on the bar in front of him.

This was a darkly hinted nugget that, in one form or another, Logan had picked up from just about everyone he’d talked to: the town’s deep, aiding, and long-standing mistrust of the so-called Blakeney clan.

“Tell me about these Blakeneys,” Logan asked offhandedly. “Everything I’ve heard is just rumor.”

Fred hesitated again.

“I won’t say I heard it from you.”

Fred considered a moment, then shrugged. “Guess there’s nothing wrong with saying what everyone in town knows already. Those Blakeneys have lived in the area since before anyone could remember.”

“Where, exactly?”

Fred pointed southwest, over Logan’s shoulder. “They’ve got a big, rambling old stead on the edge of the Wilderness.”

“What’s it like?”

Fred shrugged. “They don’t care for outsiders, and that’s a fact. Fenced themselves in, keep to themselves, make a living off the land, rarely set foot in town. Don’t know anybody who’s been inside, but from what I hear they’ve got all sorts of ramshackle buildings and things in there.”

Logan pushed his beer bottle to one side, untouched. “Sounds strange, all right. But why would people think they had anything to do with the murders?”

“First, there ain’t many bears around these parts. You find them in the High Peaks region now and again, but they avoid humans. Second, I’ve been hearing strange stories about those Blakeneys ever since I was a kid — stories that make me think them capable of murder… and more.”

“What kind of strange stories?”

Fred took a pull from his beer. “They’ve lived deep in the woods for too long. People do that, you know, and it changes them. But from what I hear tell, that clan was always vicious. That, and… well, there was a rash of missing children around here back in the seventies — oh, it got hushed up, but everybody knows who took ’em — and why.”

Fred was voluble now, but even so Logan didn’t want to ask why aloud. He merely raised his eyebrows inquiringly.

“Rituals. Dark rituals. And I don’t mean black magic — I mean something worse. The way those Blakeneys have dealings with the animals of the deep forest — well, it’s unnatural, people say. Communing with nature that way, becoming part of it. The wrong part. Who knows what’s become of them, or what they do, back up in there?”

“That’s disturbing. But why would they want to kill those backpackers?”

Even though the bar was empty, Fred leaned in still farther. “Mister, I can tell you that in just two words: tainted blood.”