She took a small step towards the stream.
“I don’t feel it, and my soul rattles around inside my flesh like a bird in a broken cage. Regardless, it keeps the beast at bay.”
“What does the beast look like?” Amber asked.
“If I had seen him, I wouldn’t be talking to you right now,” Jan said with a small laugh. “A beast like that will eat your eyes.”
Amber stiffened and took a step back from Jan.
“If you’re looking to find out what happened to Samuel and those other men, you’ll want to take that path. Whatever secrets they have left, they don’t belong to this property anymore. They’re back there, somewhere on the other side of that running water.”
Alan looked to Amber and then up to the sky. It was almost noon.
“Do you mind if we go have a look around back there?” Amber asked.
“Amber,” Alan said. “Shouldn’t we wait for the others?”
Jan turned from them and was already walking back towards her house.
“Do what you will,” Jan said. “Just don’t pull too far down that road. It looks solid, but it will turn to mud in a heartbeat if you try to drive on it.”
Alan followed the direction of her finger and saw that there was a dirt road just on the other side of a line of trees. He waited for Jan to move away from them before he went to Amber to discuss.
“I’m not saying we do a full search or anything. I just want to get a sense of what’s back there and maybe we’ll be able to guess what she means by a beast being back there.”
“We know what she means, Amber,” Alan said.
“Okay, sure, but what’s the harm in exploring a little. This will literally be the safest thing you and I have done together since I got here.”
Alan thought about that as he looked towards the creek and then over to the dirt road.
“Standard procedure though. We go back for the lights, weapons, and we send a message. No shortcuts.”
Twenty-One: Amber
Maine was two distinct places, as far as Amber was concerned. When she had lived in her great uncle’s house the year before, the summer had been an endless string of baking heat. After that, fall had been delicious and crisp. She had left before winter smothered everything with white death.
Walking up the path behind Jan’s house, Amber could almost imagine spring taking the land back from winter. The last of the snow wasn’t deep enough to warrant snowshoes. The ground was soggy, but they weren’t really sinking in.
Their path led up to a line of stones that led in roughly a straight line.
“Watch your ankles,” Alan said. “These stone walls have claimed more than a few.”
“These rocks were put here on purpose?” Amber asked. She looked one direction and then the other. “I thought these were just, like, here.”
“When they cleared the land for crops and pasture, they collected all the stones and then put them around the perimeter. They were good enough walls to keep the cows in, I guess.”
“I always thought New England people were supposed to be industrious and tough. Looks like they’re just lazy.”
Alan laughed. They picked their way between the trees on the far side of the wall. The path wasn’t much to speak of. Amber glanced back, wondering if it was really a path at all.
“Well, remember this might have been made a couple hundred years ago. I’m sure it looked neater when they made it.”
Alan swung to the left as the ground got pretty steep straight ahead. They climbed and Amber wondered if they were just wasting time. Tracing back to the origins of the journal was her idea, but she couldn’t stop thinking about the fact that there were other hiding places they should be investigating. At least when they were hunting down those, it felt like they were accomplishing something. Just walking around in the woods behind Jan’s house might not yield a thing.
Alan stopped.
Amber closed her eyes for a moment to see if she felt anything. She didn’t.
When she looked to Alan for an explanation, he was holding a finger to his lips. With his other hand, he pointed. It took her a moment to see. The headstone blended in with the trunk of the tree behind it. After she saw the first one, she saw the other headstones that were hiding amongst the trees. Amber looked down, almost panicking for a moment when she thought that she might be standing on a grave. The image of a hand reaching up from the dirt raced through her head. From what she could tell, they were still outside the perimeter of the cemetery.
Alan crept forward. Amber held her ground.
He crouched in front of the largest stone, which wasn’t very big. The slab couldn’t have been more than a couple inches thick.
“I can’t read it,” he whispered over his shoulder.
“Why are you whispering?” Amber asked.
He stood up.
Amber moved forward carefully, trying to imagine where the bodies were buried and moving around those outlines. They crouched together and Amber brushed some lichen from the face of the rock. Once she saw the shape of the first letter, she was able to see the eroded details better.
“Devoted Wife and Mother,” she read. “It says Prescott down here. Do you think this was SE Prescott’s wife?”
“Then who do the small ones belong to?” Alan asked.
Amber didn’t answer. She was looking at a dark place just beyond a big tree. There were still patches of snow. In one of the clear areas, the leaves and dirt looked black. She stood up and inched closer, leaning on a tree so she could get a better look. Alan came to her side.
“Who does that grave belong to?” Alan whispered.
It wasn’t really a grave, as far as she could tell. There was no stone, and it was nothing more than a patch of forest floor that
