Night Film

94

“You were gone for three days,” Nora said.

I could only stare back at her, unable to speak.

I’d been lost inside The Peak for three days. How was it possible?

And the fact that all three of us were together now, alive, unhurt, huddled in an isolated booth in the back of a country restaurant called Dixie’s Diner, was also bizarre. The last four hours had transpired in such a haze, I wondered if there was a minute’s delay between what was happening in the world and my brain perceiving it.

Struggling to my feet in that ditch, I’d managed to convince the two teenagers not to call the police but to give me a ride back to the Evening View Motel in Childwold. They seemed rather enthusiastic to oblige, probably due to their suspicion I could very well be the top developing story on the local news, themselves star witnesses. As we drove, they cheerfully informed me they’d been partaking in a cleanup project for their high school, picking up trash along the side of the road, when they’d found me.

“We thought you were dead,” said the boy.

“What day is it?” I managed to ask.

“Saturday,” the girl answered with a shocked glance at the boy.

Saturday? Jesus Christ. We’d broken into The Peak on a Wednesday night.

They’d found me along Mount Arab Road, close to New York Route 3 and Tupper Lake, which I knew from poring over so many maps of the area was about fourteen driving miles to Lows Lake, some twenty miles from The Peak. Had I been running through the wilderness and passed out? Or had someone driven me there, left me like a sack of garbage on the side of the road?

I had no idea. My memories seemed to have been trashed, ripped and crumpled, strewn haphazardly around my head.

When the teenagers asked me what had happened, I managed to put together an excuse about drinking too much the night before during a bachelor party, losing my friends. Yet the longer we drove, my confusion over where I’d just woken up and what in the hell had happened to me quickly slid into paranoia over my present, including these two kids who’d randomly found me. There was something about them that was a little too vivid—from the peace sign scribbled in blue ink on his arm, her bare feet propped up on the glove compartment, toenails painted yellow, the way he turned the radio way up, playing Dylan’s “Tangled Up in Blue.” They looked like brightly painted characters from another Cordova film. The suspicion made my heart begin to pound in alarm as I sat in the backseat, watching the marijuana leaf ornament swinging from the rearview mirror.

I didn’t fully believe that I just might be free of The Peak until we barreled into the Evening View parking lot. I thanked the kids and climbed out, waiting for them to swing back onto the main road, accelerating away, before I walked up to the room, #19.

I did nothing but gaze at the door for a moment, wondering what I was going to find on the other side.

An empty room, untouched since we’d left it? Or was a stranger staying there now, someone who’d claim he’d been there for weeks, no sign of Hopper or Nora? Or would my knock be answered by one of those figures in a black cloak, the nightmare only beginning again?

I knocked. There was a long pause.

And then the door, chained from the inside, opened just a crack — someone peering out. It closed again, the chain slid back, and suddenly Nora was flinging her arms around my neck. Hopper appeared right behind her, silently hastening us inside, taking a suspicious look at the parking lot before closing and locking the door.

The first thing we decided to do was check out of the motel, get into the car, get the hell out of here. Nora was agitated and had, I noticed, terrible scratches down her cheeks. She kept saying, “What happened to you? We thought they got you. We thought—” But Hopper only snapped that we should get out of here now and we could talk when we were away from this place, his terse explanation being that he’d noticed a banged-up maroon Pontiac loitering around the parking lot.

“It has to be them,” he muttered, zipping up his gray hoodie, grabbing his canteen off the bed. “The windows are tinted black. It looks like it’s from the seventies. And it’s missing a headlight.”

As I watched the two of them darting around the room, hastily stuffing clothing and toiletries and snacks into their backpacks, I remembered that I no longer had my own.

Where had I left the bag? Those figures had pulled it off of me.

I stepped dazedly in front of the mirror beside one of the beds and saw I was still wearing Brad Jackson’s herringbone coat. Its extreme heaviness was due to not just the dampness and mud but the pockets—they were stuffed with objects, one of which I noticed, as I pulled it out with a wave of revulsion, I didn’t even recall seeing, much less taking with me.

And then I saw my face. I understood the teenagers’ shock, even Nora’s and Hopper’s worried sideways glances.

I looked crazy. There was no other word to describe it.

I rinsed the smeared mud off in the bathroom, watching the thick sludge spinning down the drain.

We left the motel quickly, Hopper climbing behind the wheel.

They had the Jeep but not the canoe. I meant to ask them about it but was abruptly so tired I couldn’t muster the strength. Hopper drove as if we were being tailed, careening down deserted roads, pines and maples and empty fields spinning past, eyeing the rearview mirror. Nora, in the passenger seat beside him, was subdued, her hands clasped in her lap.

“You see the Pontiac?” she whispered.

He shook his head.

We’d been driving for about three hours when Nora pointed out a white farmhouse perched on the side of the road—Dixie’s Diner, Homemade Food That’s Doggone Good! — the parking lot packed. Only then did I feel I just might return to normal. My right arm was showing signs of life, tingling as if filled with needles. My fingers were moving again, though the palm of my hand, where I’d been holding that compass, was swollen. The horror of The Peak seemed to be drying on me, as if it were black water I’d been swimming through and now it was evaporating from my skin, leaving the faintest film.

The three of us filed into the restaurant and Hopper asked the hostess for the booth in the back.

“What happened to your arms?” Nora blurted out as we made our way to the back.

I didn’t know what she meant. I’d taken off the coat, rolled up my sleeves, and saw now that my arms were covered with a horrific-looking rash. As we slipped into the booth, Nora said, “We’ve been waiting for you for three days.”

“Christ,” said Hopper. “Let him eat.”

We ordered food, and I was able to piece together from their disjointed and strung-out commentary that in the three days I’d been missing, apart from a few searches along the roads around The Peak, they’d been too paranoid and worried about me to leave the motel. They hadn’t left The Peak together. Nora had been the first to make it back, arriving at the room at five in the morning the same night we’d broken in. It wasn’t until after six that evening, Thursday, that Hopper showed up, driving the Jeep.

“I thought I was going to have to go to the police,” said Nora. “I didn’t know what I’d say. ‘We broke illegally into this estate and now my accomplices are being held hostage.’ I got the number of your police friend, Sharon Falcone. She didn’t pick up.”

“Can I interest you guys in any dessert?” the waitress asked, suddenly beside our table.

“I’ll have a slice of apple pie,” I said hoarsely.

“Anyone else?”

Nora and Hopper stared at me in surprise. I was surprised myself. It was the first time I’d managed to speak with a normal voice.

They ordered pie and coffee, and then, after the waitress brought the food, Nora, who’d been so jittery and talkative as she ate, fell silent, touching the scrapes on her cheek as if to check that they were still there. Hopper looked lost in thought. It was obvious then, the two of them weren’t simply upset over my three-day disappearance. They’d each had their own strange experiences up there.

I also noticed uneasily, glancing around, that Dixie’s Diner, so cheery and bustling only minutes ago, had unexpectedly cleared out.

It was just the three of us now and, hunched over the counter, an elderly man in a green-and-black checked flannel shirt, who looked as gnarled and spindly as the walking stick propped beside him. It was as if whispers of what we were about to tell one another, about The Peak, were already suffused in the air here, already drifting out of our mouths, darkening the place, and any innocent soul or carefree person couldn’t help but subconsciously sense that the time had come to leave.

“Let’s start with the canoe,” I said.