“Let's wait a while and see what they do,' Fred suggested. 'They may go someplace else. The cabin is pretty smal .”
They retreated behind a row of tamaracks and took turns watching.
“More kids are coming,' Samantha reported. True to Fred's prediction, soon a group of about eleven teenagers came out of the cabin and headed straight for the tamaracks. Samantha froze in position after crouching close to the rough trunk, the sharp-needled boughs pricking her bare arms. Why hadn't she thought to wear a sweatshirt? The weather was stil peculiar for Maine, up into the high eighties every day. She'd been shedding clothes, not adding them.
The group passed by without noticing anything.
Samantha, Fred, and Arlene waited a minute before fol owing. Once again, Fred was ful of ideas. 'There're only two places where they could be headed, the quaking bog and the old settlement quarry—unless they're planning to dispose of something or someone, which would mean the bog—I'l bet they're on their way to the quarry
“What do you mean?' Samantha had never been to the bog, deterred al these years by reports of mosquitoes as large as robins and giant Venus's-flytraps.
“The suction—you put your foot down wrong and it takes two men to help you twist it and pul yourself out.
People used to junk cars there before Earl came. And there's always talk, especial y on Hal oween, of what may be lying under the surface from years past.'
“You know that's al nonsense,' Arlene whispered angrily, 'except about the cars. That's true. Stop trying to psych us out Fred. I'm nervous enough as it is.”
Samantha had to agree with her and was glad the bog had been eliminated as the probable gathering place for the club.
Fred put out his arm to stop them. 'See, they're turn ing left. That leads to the top of the quarry' The flashlights the group ahead of them was carrying did go left, darting like so many fireflies through the dark woods.
Samantha had been to the quarry. It was one of her favorite places—also her mother's and grandmother's.
They picked blackberries there and then, later in the season, tiny tart mountain cranberries that appeared as conserve at the Mil ers' Thanksgiving table.
The view from the top of the quarry was spectacular—
straight out to sea across vast expanses of granite carved in huge blocks, like Brobdingnagian steps. During the day, you had to be careful not to walk into one of the crevasses where the charges had been set to blast the stone. At night, it would be treacherous. Was Duncan's club an elaborate game of chicken?
Fred stopped suddenly and led them up a granite ledge until they were directly above the group below. A fire had been lighted and everyone was drinking beer. Duncan was nowhere to be seen. It looked like any other gathering of kids from Maine to California, eager to put themselves at a distance from adult supervision. A few were smoking.
One of the cigarettes was being passed from person to person—obviously not tobacco.
“So, what's the big deal? They're partying,' Arlene said. 'Let's go home.”
Samantha wanted to wait until Duncan came, and Fred agreed. It was at least fifteen minutes before they heard the music and saw him leap suddenly into the midst of his friends, dangerously close to the fire. He was wearing a black robe—it looked left over from someone's graduation
—unfastened. They could see that he was stripped to the waist underneath and had covered his body with symbols and lines done in red marker—at least Samantha assumed it was marker. He didn't seem to be oozing blood, but the effect was dramatic and she felt instantly nauseated.
Everyone grew quiet and the words of an old Black Sabbath song fil ed the stil ness from the tape deck he set down.
When the music stopped, Duncan began to chant 'We are everybody and everybody is nobody' over and over.
The group picked it up, some laughing a little—maybe because of the beers and the pot. A few of the guys stripped off their shirts and pranced unsteadily around the fire.
Duncan took out a chicken that looked like a roaster from the IGA and made a great show of slitting its throat—
or rather, the place where the throat would have been if the head was stil attached. Blood flowed; he must have stuck a sack of red-colored liquid inside.
“The asshole!' Fred whispered. 'He couldn't even get a live chicken.”
Samantha wasn't finding the scene humorous. Duncan's intent was the same as if the chicken had been alive
—or if it had been something other than a chicken. She shuddered and gripped the granite hard with her hand to remind herself that this wasn't a movie. She wondered what would happen next. The kids below her looked so normal.
She stared at one girl in particular: short dark hair, a striped tube top, and cutoffs—a typical teenager on a summer night. Maybe she wore a little too much makeup, especial y the exaggerated black mascara around her eyes. But she wasn't typical. The whole gathering wasn't typical at al , and Samantha began to feel frightened. Duncan had somehow managed to tap into an unhealthy fascination shared by this group, and it was a vein better left unopened—and it might wel have been if he hadn't come here to live.
The kids passed the chicken around. Solemn now, each smeared some of the 'blood' on their foreheads. One girl almost broke the mood by declaring she was not going to touch something so gross, but the boy next to her did it for her, loudly declaring she was a wuss. The dark-haired girl fiercely told them to shut up. 'You're spoiling it!' There was no question about her own dedication.
Throughout, Duncan watched intently. If the scene had not been fil ed with such potential y evil symbolism, Samantha began to think, it would have been pathetic.
Duncan was pitiful y thin and his chest concave. Al the kids seemed to have spent more time indoors than out; and if they were robust, they were overly so—tending in one boy's case to obesity.
“Do you know everybody?' Samantha whispered to Arlene.
“Yeah, I'l tel you later. It's what we've been saying—
loser kids. But sometimes it's not their fault, like Karen over there. Her old man beats her pretty badly. Everybody knows it.' It was the girl with the dark hair.
Now Samantha did want to leave and she poked Fred.
They started to back away from the ledge.
“Let the games begin!' Duncan threw off his robe and turned on the music again, louder. He grabbed a beer, chugged it down, threw the empty can high into the air, and stripped off his pants. The beer can clattered down the rock and rol ed off into the darkness.
“We are al and al is in us. Join with the darkness.
Cast off your garments.' He'd definitely been reading more than comics, Samantha thought. His language was getting positively gothic.
“Nobody wants to see your dick, Duncan,' one of the girls said. 'And besides, I'm not al owed to take my clothes off. My mother says so.”
Duncan looked at her with scorn. 'You are not a true sister of blood.'
“I'm not a sister of anybody here. If you're going to get foolish, I'm leaving.”
A few others stirred and Duncan appeared to weigh losing his audience against maintaining his noble position.
He decided to go for the numbers and pul ed his jeans back on. 'Al right. Let's go climbing instead.' This appeared to find more favor. Armed with beers and smokes, they set off, teetering dangerously close to the edge of the quarry precipice.
“Someone's going to get kil ed!' Samantha started forward.
“No, come on. We'l make an anonymous cal to Earl from the CB in my pickup. They're not going to stop because we tel them to,' Fred advised.
