A Summer with the Dead Read online

  The air smelled musty and stale. It reminded her of the dirt floor basement under Elly’s house.

  Overhead, gray clouds floated across the opening at least twelve feet above her. She leaned back against a stone wall, checking for injuries. I’m okay. I’m okay. Nothing broken. “I’m all right,” she said aloud.

  Maya tested the stone floor with one step and then a second. The floor held. The stone walls were curved. This was an old well, a dry one. It could have been full of stagnant water and she could have drowned. She searched her pockets, hoping for a flashlight and knowing she would find none, but she found a small box of wood matches from the River Lodge Café. She lit one. The well was six feet across with spidery roots and pale vines clinging to its walls. There was a black hole straight across from her, down near the floor. At some time in the past, three stones had fallen to the well floor leaving a hole big enough to insert her head and shoulders. She held another match inside the opening but a gust of cold air blew it out. She lit another and reexamined the well’s floor again. The sticks were gray-white and piled up at the base of the wall. The sticks had broken her fall. A round, white stone had rolled to one side and Maya took a second look. It was not a stone. It was a skull, and the pile of brittle sticks surrounding it included a femur, a clavicle and a section of vertebrae. She saw toe bones, with a long arch and a broken heel. Nearby, she spotted the bones of a wrist, hand, and fingers.

  The pile of bones shifted. A rat’s head poked through, its black marble eyes reflecting the match light. Maya stumbled back, crashing against the wall behind her. The rat squealed and dove, its long pointed tail rattling down through a ribcage.

  Maya blew out the match and lit another. The bones had been there a long time. She spotted a second skull. It had a small hole in the temple and a much larger hole on the opposite side. Dread crawled through her. Entrance and exit wounds? An execution?

  “Help!” Maya screamed. She lifted her chin and screamed again. She screamed until she was too hoarse to scream anymore. She coughed and gagged. She fought back tears and lit another match. She protected it from the draft with her hand, knelt and held it inside the opening. It was a low tunnel. Ten feet inside the tunnel was very dark and it looked narrow. If she tried crawling through she might end up trapped there, unable to move forward or back. Buried alive. Maya retreated into the well, jaw quivering.

  In addition to her anxiety and OCD, Maya had a dread of small, enclosed places. Such places made her mouth go dry and her heart pound. There was no way she could crawl into that tunnel. No way. It would be like sticking her head into the jaws of … she imagined the wide gullet of something massive and hungry. She imagined the sound of something gulping, swallowing. There was no guarantee the tunnel led to freedom. She might crawl into an even worse situation. Is there a worse situation?

  Tears streaked Maya’s face and she wiped them away. She heard the scuttling sound of the rat again. She and the rat had made eye contact. She pictured herself dying of thirst four days from now. Was she the rat’s next meal? Would her bones and clothes be used for a new nest?

  Overhead, the sky had grown darker already. A solitary cloud floated by, a cloud with absurd, cheerful, pink edges. Night was near. Total darkness would soon fill the well. Rats were nocturnal, weren’t they? More active at night? More aggressive?

  Maya lit another match, leaned down and peered into the tunnel again. She smelled something familiar in the gusting draft. Along with the smell of damp earth and musty air was the smell of cedar and fir—and pine pitch. The smell was faint, but it was there. The draft meant there was an opening to the outside.

  The rat raised its head from the bones. Its black eyes glistened. Brazen, it twitched its whiskers. Maya crawled into the tunnel, her heart hammering against her ribs. She fought the urge to vomit. Her hair raked against the dirt ceiling as she inched forward on her stomach. Dirt sifted down and she prayed the tunnel held. The draft continued to gust on her face carrying the smell of pitch. She arrived at a Y and lit another match. Left or right? Would the rat follow? One way, she believed would lead to freedom and the other, perhaps a cave-in. She could be buried alive, sucking dirt into her lungs. Never found.

  Maya pictured Benson’s face. What would he say if he saw her there, twelve feet underground, trapped in a tunnel or wild animal’s burrow, forced to choose left or right. Door number one, door number two?

  “Benson,” Maya whispered. “I hate you.” She struggled forward.

  “Stay with me.” The whisper came from behind her. “Don’t go,” it said. It was a scratchy plea, and desperate sounding, as if the speaker had screamed himself hoarse.

  “Hello?” Maya said. “Who’s there?”

  She paused, listening. She heard another scratching sound, like someone crawling through the tunnel behind her. She pictured the rat, a much larger rat than the one in the well. A human size rat.

  “Hello?” she called, louder. The crawling stopped, and then a second later,

  “Wait for me.”

  “Who are you?” Maya shouted.

  Maya waited but heard nothing until the crawling sound started up again. It sounded like the crawler was gaining on her, no more than thirty feet behind now. She pictured the pile of bones, reassembled, the rotten clothing dragging, the skull leading the way, the bone fingers clawing the dirt, straining to grab her ankles, to pull her back. She remembered the creature on her mother’s front porch, and crawled faster.

  Another Y. Cool air puffed against Maya’s face. She turned and crawled into the tunnel to her right. It narrowed and she dug at the walls, scratching at the roots and the earth, shoving handfuls down alongside, kicking, forcing it back with her knees and boots, trying to close off the passageway behind her. She squeezed through and into a space where she could sit up. She lit another match. Something pale caught the flickering glow of the flame through the opening behind her, something round and gray.

  Ahead, the tunnel divided again, this time in three directions. Maya continued straight ahead until she felt the floor of the tunnel sloping downward. The dirt felt muddy and slick. She heard water dripping. The sound echoed. She lit a match but saw only darkness ahead. She flipped a rock into that darkness and almost five seconds later heard it splash.

  Maya scrambled backwards into the three-way intersection. She lit another match and saw a skeletal arm stretched through the opening behind her. She dove into the right side tunnel, panic driving her forward. She lost the rhythm of crawling and fell flat, her chin hitting dirt. Dirt coated her tongue and ground between her teeth. She crawled again, bumping her head on a rock and scraping her knees on another. Roots caught the toes of her boots. She strained, pulled free. Her fingers stung. They were sticky with blood. Maya crawled faster.

  The tunnel curved left and then right. It rose higher. She climbed. She felt a whimper of hope vibrate in her own throat.

  Dizzy and gasping, Maya paused to catch her breath. She felt something tickling her face. She lit another match and discovered white roots trailing down all around her. Only three matches remained.

  She heard the muffled scream of a chainsaw and crawled forward again on stinging knees and hands. She spotted a speck of light up ahead and scrambled forward. She reached the opening. It was too small for her head. Dusky light glowed on the other side, but the hole was a mere crevice between two boulders. She stuck one arm through, waved and shouted. “Help!” She withdrew her arm and peered through the opening. The chainsaw sputtered and died. She saw nothing but tree branches, as if the crevice was on a hillside. She yelled again and heard her own, pathetic, scratchy voice. Her shout wouldn’t carry far.

  A moment later she heard the rev of a truck engine and then gears shifting.

  “Wait, don’t leave me here! Don’t go!”

  She heard the truck drive away, its rumble fading. She slumped against the boulders, tears spilling down her face.

  “Wait for me.” The crawler was close, just around the corner, four or five feet aw
ay. Maya dove ahead and spotted another light, another opening, larger but still not large enough. She clawed at dirt and roots with bleeding fingers. Rocks tumbled outward crashing downward through undergrowth. The crevice widened and she shoved her head and shoulders through the opening, scraping her ribs and hipbones as she squeezed through and landed on grass. She lay gasping on an embankment, tasting outside air and crying unashamed.

  Below were ferns and a white rail fence. Beneath the trees it was already as dark as night. Maya scooted down the bank. She knew this place. She’d seen it before. The fence marked the property line where Mr. Elly claimed to have seen the llamas—this was the Schaff property line.

  Above her, the escape hole was black and gaping and she pictured something squatting inside, concealed by shadows, watching her with its dead eyes.

  Maya crossed a patch of rough ground and leaned against the fence. She was at least a quarter mile from the Fedder Prairie homestead. Her hands wore gloves of dirt and blood. Her knees and elbows burned. She was coated with grit from scalp to toes.

  On the other side of the fence were tire marks in the grass. Eight trees had been cut down and dozens of rounds were piled up and ready for splitting. The smell of a two-cycle motor floated on the air. She had never smelled anything so wonderful. Chainsaw smoke. She draped herself across the top of the fence and sobbed with relief.

  CHAPTER

  THIRTEEN

  AN HOUR LATER MAYA staggered across the driveway and grabbed the doorknob of Elly’s kitchen door.

  “Hey!” The gruff voice came from behind. She turned to find Coty striding toward her across the driveway.

  “Can’t talk now,” Maya said. “I need a bathtub, some soap, and twenty gallons of hot water.”

  “Can’t talk, hell! Where have you been? Elly’s hysterical. You’d better get inside and let her know you’re okay because she was hollering about someone named Benson and threatening to drag a big-ass gun out from under her bed to go hunting.”

  “Oh jeez.” Maya stepped inside.

  Coty followed her into the kitchen. “So, where’ve you been?” he demanded.

  Maya glanced down at her muddy clothing. She heard grit sifting from her hair to the shoulders of her jacket. A clod of dirt rolled from the waistband of her jeans and landed on the kitchen floor. She tasted grit between her teeth. She wanted to strip down right there in the kitchen the way Elly said she used to do, and to toss the filthy things into the basement.

  “You were right,” she said. “There are abandoned wells around here. I found one.”

  “Hell,” Coty said. “Where?”

  “Right next to that old log cabin in the meadow. This should provide me a lifetime of nightmares.” She tried to sound amused but her voice sounded shaky.

  Elly rushed into the kitchen through the pantry hall, reddened eyes glittering with tears. “Baby girl.”

  “I’m sorry, Aunt Elly. I went for a walk and fell in a hole. It took a while to find my way out.”

  “A hole?”

  “An old well,” Coty said.

  “Are you hurt, honey?” Elly asked.

  “Nothing serious. Just dirty, mostly, and a few scrapes and lots of bruises. Some torn fingernails.”

  Exhausted, Maya headed toward the stairs. “Luckily, it was a dry well and not a deep one. Let me clean up and then I’ll tell you about it. We need to phone the sheriff, too. He’ll want to know what I saw down there.”

  “Coty’s been searching for you,” Elly said. “He was gone for hours and when it got dark he came back cussing and swearing. I was just going to phone the sheriff myself.”

  “I’ve got to get out of these clothes.” Maya sniffed her sleeve and grimaced. “Phew.”

  Coty exited the back door without another word.

  “He’s mad at me,” Maya said. “I suppose I was foolish, exploring around that old cabin.”

  “I’ll make you some hot soup,” Elly said. “You’ve been gone a long time, honey.”

  Maya glanced at the clock. It was midnight? She heard a cooking pot slide across a burner as she climbed the stairs, one aching foot in front of the other. She halted on the landing and stared upward. At the top of the stairs swirled the green boy with the tattoos and the facial piercings. He held his hands forward in a pleading gesture. She heard him scream as if from a great distance,

  “Please help me!” He sounded like a wounded animal, his voice rough, hoarse and desperate. He floated back, past the bathroom and then down the hall, vanishing into the closed door at the far end.

  It seemed like an entire day had passed since Maya screamed those same words, her voice growing hoarse in that pitch black well, screaming until she gagged. No one heard her, though. If she’d been injured and unable to crawl, she would still be at the bottom of that old well. She’d seen human bones in the well, in the flickering glow of a single match. One foot bone had a broken heel. From trying to climb out and falling back in? That could have happened to her. It would have, if she hadn’t worked up the nerve to crawl into the small tunnel. She might have tried to climb the well walls and fallen back in, landing wrong, breaking an arm or a leg, or something worse, and months later the rat would have piled her bones with all the others. Its treasure pile. The rat would have gnawed them clean and added her clothing to its nest.

  No one heard me calling for help. Then Maya remembered. Something did hear. Something followed her through that tunnel. Maya entered the bathroom and peeled off her clothes. She turned on the faucet, filling the claw foot tub with hot water and the room with steam. She piled her filthy clothes in front of the door. They were too dirty for the hamper, too dirty to wash. Too dirty to ever, ever, wear again.

  CHAPTER

  FOURTEEN

  “BONES, YOU SAY, MRS. Hammond?”

  “I’ve petitioned to have my maiden name back, Sheriff Wimple. It’s Pederson. Please don’t call me Mrs. Hammond.”

  Sheriff Wimple was the same height as Maya. He was bone thin and she suspected he weighed less than she did, even wearing his jacket and leather boots. He reminded her of Mr. Trippe, her high school science teacher. Mr. Trippe and Sheriff Wimple both had straight brown hair parted on the right side and they both wore wire-rimmed glasses. They could have been brothers.

  “The bones looked like they had been there a long time,” Maya said.

  “How so?”

  “They were in a pile, and all disconnected.”

  “Disconnected?”

  “All connective tissue was gone and the bones were piled up against the base of the wall.”

  “How do you know they were human bones?”

  “I saw a hand and a foot, and two human skulls. Anyone would recognize those.”

  The sheriff shrugged. “Sounds like you’re describing the old Fedder Prairie cabin. You say the well was close to the cabin?”

  “The well was below the porch. I saw a stained glass window in the cabin door. That’s what caught my eye and drew me closer. The door has pulled away from its frame. It leans back, under the corner of the roof. It’s almost covered by wild grass and moss. When I stepped closer, the earth gave way and I dropped into a hole. Luckily, it was only about twelve feet deep and the bottom was covered with leaves and pine needles … and those bones. The pile of bones broke my fall.”

  “How’d you get out?”

  Maya shuddered. “There’s a narrow tunnel in the bottom of the well. I crawled through it and came out beside Karl Schaff’s property, by a white rail fence where someone has cut down trees. It was quite a ways to crawl.”

  “Manmade tunnel, or natural?”

  “I’m not sure. All I had for light were matches. I almost used them up.”

  “I’ll call and have my deputy and a volunteer take a look-see. We’ll need to fill in that well after we recover the bones. We can’t have dangerous holes near a popular hiking path.”

  “Heavens no,” Elly said. “I had no idea there was an old well there.”

  “Quite a ways i
s right, Ms. Pederson,” Sheriff Wimple said. “The Schaff property line is a quarter mile from the Fedder Prairie cabin.” Sheriff Wimple tapped the brim of his hat. “Ladies.” He returned to his car. A moment later he coasted down the driveway, a drizzling rain blurring his brake lights. From the living room Maya watched his car crossing the bridge and climbing the hill to the road. She wanted to go back to the old well with him, to hear him admit the bones were human, but Sheriff Wimple didn’t invite her.

  “For petesake, Sheriff,” Maya grumbled. “I saw the bones with my own eyes.” She returned to the kitchen. He must think I’m stupid.

  “Sheriff Wimple is probably excited to finally have some real investigating to do. I’ve lived here a long time and this is the first time I’ve heard of human bones being found.” Elly entered the kitchen with a wide roll of paper in one hand. She spread it across the table, weighing it down with the blue vase, her teacup and salt and peppershakers. “I found this old map in the closet under the stairs. It shows the property lines and neighboring wells,” she said. “The Fedder Prairie well isn’t shown here, but then, that place was already falling down when Harlan and I bought this farm. I never even thought about a well being there. Maybe I should’ve. Harlan bulldozed over the old outhouse, though. I do remember that. There wasn’t much to it.”

  “If he had bulldozed the cabin he would have destroyed the well under the porch,” Maya said.

  “There’s a lot to be said for hindsight,” Elly said. “Oh, and I found a picture of Harlan.” Elly slipped a black and white photo from her shirt pocket and dropped it on the table. It was small and faded and trimmed with wavy edges the way photos were developed in the forties. Maya leaned closer.

  “That’s him?” Maya pointed to a tall lanky man at the end of a row of five people. “Uncle Harlan?”

  “Oh heavens no,” Elly said. “That’s Frank Zoubek, one of Harlan’s bosses. This is Harlan.” She pointed to a slender man at far end. He was a foot shorter than the other men.