Pete shot him a look. “Well, we sure know what happened to Mr. Hapgood, don’t we?” As they passed the last of the streetlights, the night seemed to close around the car, and Eric unconsciously shrank back into the seat, a movement Pete caught out of the corner of his eye. “Going to chicken out?” he mocked.
“Just drive, okay? We’ll see who chickens out when we get there.”
Pete pressed hard on the accelerator. The car shot forward, but seconds later he had to brake sharply as they came to the mouth of the narrow dirt road that led to a small parking area the Hapgoods had carved out of the woods two generations earlier. Slowing the car to a crawl, Pete negotiated the ruts and potholes in the worn surface until he came to the deserted parking area at the trailhead of the path that led to the waterfall.
Pete shut the engine and headlights off, but as the comforting hum of the engine died away and the silence and darkness of the night closed around them, neither boy spoke nor made a move to leave the car. Eric finally broke the silence. “So what’s your plan?” he asked. “Are we just going to sit here all night?”
Spurred as much by the mocking tone as by the words, Pete Arneson jerked on the handle and pushed his door open. “Maybe you are, but I’m going to take a look around.”
Eric hesitated, then he got out of the car too.
For a moment neither boy could see anything, but as their eyes adjusted to the darkness, the moonlight filtering through the branches provided just enough illumination for them to make out the trail and the trees on either side of it. “You coming?” Pete asked as he started down the trail.
As Pete moved quickly toward the path, Eric just as quickly considered his choices. He could stay by himself in the parking lot, but if he did, he knew that by tomorrow afternoon Pete would tell everyone they knew that he lost his nerve and he’d never live it down. Besides, what if Kelly was out here? What if something actually had happened to her?
What if someone had killed her? And what if that someone was still out here?
The idea of being alone in the silence and the darkness was suddenly more frightening than going with Pete, and Eric hurried after his friend before the other boy vanished completely into the darkness.
They moved quickly along the path, Pete leading the way. They had walked it hundreds of times before, but tonight it seemed longer, and they found themselves pausing every few yards.
Pausing to peer into the darkness around them.
Pausing to listen to the sounds of the night.
But they could see nothing, and all they could hear was the steadily growing roar of the waterfall that lay a quarter of a mile ahead.
A roar that would grow louder and louder, masking every other sound.
Though neither of them spoke, the same thoughts came to both of them:
Pete began moving faster, and Eric matched his pace. The path seemed to grow narrower, the forest denser.
A faint sound stopped Pete dead in his tracks, and Eric almost bumped into him. “What is it?” he whispered, his words sounding louder than they were. “Why are we stopping?”
“Will you shut up?” Pete whispered back. “I thought I heard something!”
A chill passed through Eric, and he scanned the darkness, straining to pierce the night.
But he could see nothing.
They stood still, their bodies as tense as those of animals sensing danger, but all they could hear was the roar of the waterfall, and they slowly relaxed. Pete continued along the path, Eric following, but as the trail opened onto the broad shelf of rock that edged the pool, he stopped again, reaching back to stop Eric as well.
Pete pressed his forefinger to his lips, and as Eric moved closer, Pete pointed toward the waterfall.
At first Eric saw nothing, but then, almost invisible in the darkness, he barely was able to make out a shadowy figure.
Someone was standing on the ledge about forty yards away.
Standing on the ledge, and peering into the pool.
Every instinct in Eric Holmes told him to turn around and slip back into the protective darkness, then run back to the safety of the car. But as he started to back away, Pete Arneson moved through the grove of trees that edged the rocky shelf.
Against his own will, Eric found himself following.
They moved closer, until they were only twenty feet from the figure that was now silhouetted against the cascading waterfall. And then, over the roar of the falls, they heard a voice.
“Kelly? Kelllly…”
It was a voice they both recognized.
Matt Moore.
Pete and Eric looked at each other. Again Eric’s instincts told him to go back to the car, to go back to town, to tell someone what they’d seen — their parents, or even the police. But before he could say anything, Pete spoke up.
“What did you do with her, Matt?” Matt spun around, and Pete glared balefully at him in the darkness. “What did you do with Kelly?”
Matt remained frozen where he was, staring at the two figures that had suddenly materialized out of the darkness. But as Pete took a step toward him, he finally recovered. “I didn’t do anything to her,” he said. “I’m looking for her.”
“You’re lying,” Pete Arneson said. Keeping his eyes on Matt, he gestured to Eric. “Come on. Let’s make him tell us what he did with her.”
Sensing what was about to happen, Matt darted toward the trail that would lead him home. Pete, anticipating him, countered by moving quickly in the same direction and tackling him. Matt grunted as he went sprawling facedown on the rocky shelf, the cheek around his left eye slamming painfully against the granite. In an instant Pete was on top of him, rolling him over, pinning his arms down.
“Where is she?” he screamed, his face contorted with rage as he glowered down at the boy who had been his best friend only a few days ago. “What did you do to her? I swear to God, you tell me what you did with Kelly, or I’ll kill you!”
The look in Pete’s eyes — the cold fury that told him Pete meant what he’d said — galvanized Matt. As adrenaline shot through his system, he jerked his arm free of Pete’s grip, balled his fists and slammed it into the other boy’s face.
Pete bellowed in surprise, then howled in pain as blood spurted from his smashed nose. Instinctively clutching at his face with both hands, he lost his balance, and Matt, both arms free now, pushed him aside and scrambled to his feet. “I didn’t do anything to her,” he shouted down at Pete, who was cowering on his knees as he tried to stanch the flow of blood streaming down his face and chest. “I was just looking for her!”
Leaving Eric Holmes to take care of Pete Arneson, Matt turned and fled into the woods.
* * *
THOUGH THE WINDOW was tightly closed, the chill of the night outside had crept into the room, binding itself around Joan like an icy sheet. But it wasn’t just the cold that gripped her now. She was aching from the remembered pain of that terrible day more than two decades ago when she had sat before this same mirror as her sister wrapped their mother’s fur around her shoulders then stood by and watched as her mother beat her. The memory of the beating, buried for so long, was as fresh now as if it happened yesterday.
Joan gazed into the mirror, her finger tracing the curve of her cheekbone where a tiny scar was still barely visible. A scar whose source had until tonight been buried so deep that she hadn’t wondered about it for years.
“You fell,” Cynthia told her when she was in high school and self-conscious about the scar, though no one else appeared to notice it. “Don’t you remember? You were riding your tricycle, and fell off.”
But that wasn’t true, and now, staring into the mirror, she saw the face of the little girl she’d once been. But it wasn’t the face Cynthia had created, covering her skin with pale makeup and bright rouge.
Now she saw the face her mother had created, saw not only the scar, but the terrible purple bruise that had
