The Hollows(10)

I had forgotten what he was talking about.

‘The campfire?’ he prompted.

‘Oh, yes. That would be great. Thanks.’

Inside, I found a note on the table.

Have gone for a walk with Ryan. See you later. Frankie.

I held the sheet of paper, trying to work out how I felt. I had been looking forward to spending time with her. That was the whole point of this trip, after all. I didn’t see her for fifty weeks of the year. It didn’t seem so long ago that she had wanted to spend every possible minute in my company. I had pictured us exploring the resort together, going out on to the lake, signing up for the activities on the sheet Greg had given me. Filling the tank before I had to go back to England and my solo existence there. Instead, she had chosen to go off with some boy . . .

I stopped myself. She was a teenager now. All that mattered was that she was happy. I would still see her plenty, and this was my holiday too. It would be good for me to spend some time alone, and the last thing I wanted to be was clingy.

I put the shopping away and walked around the cabin for a little while. It was too beautiful to stay indoors. I grabbed a bottle of water and headed down to the lake.



I sat at a picnic table by the water’s edge. Close by, families and couples were lining up to hire boats: kayaks and paddleboards and even sailboats. I wasn’t sure how big the lake was but its far shore was hazy, its surface still and blue. In the distance I could see a few people fishing and I remembered the website detailing how the lake contained trout and bass and landlocked salmon. There was the buzz of a motorboat, a water-skier gliding across the water behind it. On the edge of the lake, beneath the shade of pine trees, I could see a yoga class taking place.

‘Man, it’s beautiful, huh?’

It was David. He sat opposite me without asking. Connie was standing over by the little ice cream hut, talking to a couple in their sixties.

‘So, I learned something interesting,’ he said, leaning forward conspiratorially.

‘Oh?’

‘You know I told you how Everett Miller disappeared? And that he never showed up?’

‘Uh-huh.’

‘Well, there have been sightings of him, supposedly. One of the women who works in the kitchen was telling me about it. A few times, people walking in the woods have reported seeing a bearded guy with long hair lurking in the trees, and apparently some of the guys building this place reported all sorts of weird shit going on. Like equipment being moved. Car tyres going flat. Some of them said they were sure they were being watched. And they found food wrappers on the edge of the woods – like, candy bars and shit.’

‘Wait. You think this Miller guy has been living out here in the woods for twenty years?’

He shrugged. ‘Weirder things have happened.’

‘If Everett Miller was guilty, would he really hide out here? Surely he’d have hot-footed it to Canada or somewhere.’ We were only a thirty-minute drive from the border.

David grunted and turned his attention to Connie, who had arrived at his side while we were talking. He nodded towards the couple she’d been speaking to. ‘Who was that?’

‘They’re fans,’ she said. ‘They even asked for my autograph. Said they’d come here after hearing about it on my podcast. Hey, Tom.’

‘Hi.’ I was impressed. She had fans?

‘So, are you ready?’ she asked David.

‘As I’ll ever be.’ He stood. ‘You want to come, Tom?’

‘Where are you going?’

He grinned. ‘We’re going to take a look at where it happened.’





Chapter 5


We pushed our way through the trees, stepping over rocks and treading through tall grass. I wasn’t sure exactly how David knew which way to go – as far as I could see all the trees on the path that led north looked the same – but he was like a sniffer dog who’d picked up a scent. We paused frequently so Connie could keep up, before ducking beneath some low-hanging branches.

‘This is it,’ David said, a little breathlessly, like an explorer who’d just found some long-lost burial chamber. He took a few steps forward and looked around, not speaking. He seemed in awe. Reverential.

There, at the centre of the clearing, just as he’d described, was a large, flat rock, about two and a half metres across. We approached it and David reached out a hand to touch its smooth surface.

‘I can feel them,’ he said after a short while.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Them. The victims. Can’t you feel it? The energy.’

I couldn’t. It was a beautiful day, the sun flickering through the trees. The bloody symbols on the rock had been washed away long ago and it was hard to imagine anything horrific happening here. David and Connie had obviously spent a lot of time immersed in the minutiae of this case, and Connie had, I guessed, described the crime scene in great detail to her podcast listeners. But for me, it was just a rock in a clearing.

‘Eric and Sally weren’t the only victims,’ Connie said.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Jake Robineaux.’

‘The boy who found them?’

‘Yeah. He killed himself a couple of years after his book came out.’ Connie leaned on her stick and looked down at the rock. ‘You can tell by reading his book that he was deeply wounded by what he saw. He loved Sally Fredericks. She was his favourite teacher. Imagine finding her like that. Naked, her face turned blue from where she’d been strangled, her lover beside her with his brains leaking out of his skull.’