The Vanishing (23 page)

Did the others hear those noises? If so, they didn’t mention it.

He didn’t either.

The weather was cold, as it always was in January around these parts, but that didn’t keep Marshall from checking the millrace each morning to see how much the water had deepened the channel overnight. Mud and gravel inevitably accumulated toward the bottom of the race, and he usually waded in to clear it out.

On the Monday after his return, exactly ten days since he had found Pike’s mutilated body—

—Marshall was inspecting the millrace when something in the debris at the lower end of the watercourse caught his eye. Frowning, he crouched down in the water and sorted through the rocky silt until his fingers found what his eyes had seen. Slowly he stood, holding the rounded shiny nuggets up against the light of the rising sun. His heart was pounding, his pulse racing.

‘‘Gold,’’ he said reverently.

Sixteen

The trail wasn’t steep, but it did wind up the slope at a grade that left them all sweaty and slightly breathless. The kids, of course, complained all the way, but Robin told them it was good exercise. ‘‘Cardio,’’ she said.

‘‘Oh boy,’’ Johnny responded sarcastically.

Yesterday they’d taken a tour of some of the more famous gold rush sites, a bus driving them from Oak Draw to Coloma to Placerville, the knowledgeable guide walking them through Sutter’s Mill and telling stories of the forty-niners that made early California come to life. The kids had enjoyed that outing, but today’s hike was meeting with much less enthusiasm.

‘‘There’s not even a pool when we get back,’’ Johnny said. ‘‘There’s nothing to look forward to.’’

‘‘You can take a cool shower in the cabin, then sit on the porch and contemplate nature,’’ Andrew told him.

‘‘Or read a book,’’ Robin suggested mischievously.

‘‘Great.’’

‘‘Are we going to go to another lecture tonight?’’ Alyssa complained.

Andrew grinned at her, raising his eyebrows villainously. ‘‘You know we are.’’

Both kids groaned loudly.

Andrew laughed. ‘‘How about we get some ice cream after this, then check out our guidebook and see where to go from there?’’

‘‘Better,’’ Johnny admitted.

They continued up the trail. Robin was not sure what the altitude was here, but it was more than she was used to, and the air seemed deprived of oxygen. It was hard to breathe. She’d been hoping for a panoramic view of the countryside once they reached the top of the ridge. Below them, through the trees, they could kind of see the town and a portion of the highway, but otherwise there were only more trees and higher hills. It seemed impossible for a person to get his or her bearings up here, to even know in what direction they were heading, and Robin thought that it would be very easy to get lost.

She wondered where the camp had been. Or where it still was.

The thought made her uneasy.

‘‘Hey, check it out!’’ Johnny said, running ahead. He pointed toward another, smaller, more primitive path branching out from the one they were on now.

‘‘Stay on the marked trail!’’ Robin ordered.

‘‘Mom!’’

Andrew looked down the side path. ‘‘It’s flat here. Let’s go down this way for a while and see where it leads, do a little exploring.’’

‘‘Yeah!’’ Johnny said.

‘‘That’s how people end up on the news,’’ Robin told them. She pretended to read a headline: ‘‘ ‘Novice Hikers Trapped in Canyon.’ ’’

‘‘Ten minutes,’’ Andrew promised. ‘‘Five minutes there, five minutes back. What can happen?’’

‘‘Mountain lions, bears, cliffs . . .’’ she rattled off.

‘‘It’ll be fun.’’

She looked down the narrow, primitive path. It
was
flat, and it seemed to wind through the golden grass and occasional trees toward nothing in particular.

‘‘All right,’’ she said, giving in. ‘‘But five minutes each way. That’s it. And stay together!’’ she called as Johnny sprinted ahead.

‘‘What’s that?’’ Alyssa asked.

Robin’s eyes were still on Johnny, who was reluctantly walking back toward them, and she turned to look where her daughter was pointing. Lying by the side of the trail, beneath the branches of a scraggly bush, was a dead cat. It had obviously been someone’s pet because there was a red collar around its neck, but it was so thin and emaciated that it had to have been living out in the wild for quite some time. Black with white paws and a white head, it must have been a very beautiful animal, but now its matted fur was covered with dirt and leaves, flies scrambled over the ring of dried blood where the cat’s missing tail should have been, and a line of ants marched across the ground into its nostrils and open mouth.

‘‘Don’t look at it,’’ Robin told Alyssa, turning her daughter’s head away.

‘‘Gross!’’ Johnny exclaimed.

‘‘Come on,’’ Andrew said. ‘‘Keep walking.’’

The novelty of the new path wore off very quickly, and even before the five minutes were up, Johnny and Alyssa were dragging their feet and complaining about the sameness of the scenery, suggesting that they turn around and head back. Andrew looked at his watch. ‘‘Two minutes to go!’’ he announced cheerfully.

Robin looked off to the left and saw, between the pine trees, something square and tan. Frowning, she walked forward a few steps until a ponderosa in the foreground was no longer blocking the object. It was, she saw, a small adobe hut with neither doors nor windows.

She knew that hut.

She hadn’t remembered it before, but she recognized it now.

The past came back in a rush.

She, Holly and Maria had been walking up a steep trail—
this trail?
—and the monsters had jumped out, grabbing them, pulling them off the path, whispering in their ears, terrible sounds that made no sense but whose meaning they understood nevertheless. The three of them had been not dragged but carried over the ground to this hut. As now, there’d been no doors or windows, only solid adobe wall. She couldn’t recall what had happened in between—once again there were only those specific memories, disjointed and out of time: chanting nursery rhymes; folding her own clothes, the growing plant, painting Holly’s face with mud, Maria screaming, the smell of flowers, rough hair and slimy skin, laughing, crying, pain, a hole in the ground—but she knew they had somehow ended up inside the hut.

It had been dark.

There’d been bones on the floor.

Once more, her memory failed her, and her next recollection was of the three of them walking back down the trail toward camp, dressed and cleaned up, though still feeling sore and dirty . . . down there.

‘‘Is something wrong?’’ Andrew asked. He was frowning at her, and she saw now that the kids were gathered around as well, worried expressions on their faces.

She tried to smile. ‘‘No, it’s nothing, I’m fine.’’

But this time she was not at all sure that her mind was compensating for the horror of the rape by recasting the rapists as monsters. As insane as it sounded, she thought that maybe their attackers really
had
been monsters. She looked over at the hut, feeling cold.

‘‘Hey, what’s that little house?’’ Johnny said, stepping off the path.

Robin grabbed his arm, yanking him back. ‘‘Stay away from there!’’

‘‘Ow!’’ he cried.

‘‘What’s going on?’’ Andrew said.

‘‘We’re turning around,’’ Robin told him.

‘‘I just wanted to check out that little house, and she went crazy!’’

‘‘That’s weird,’’ Alyssa said. ‘‘There’re no windows.’’

‘‘Maybe they’re on the other side,’’ Andrew suggested.

‘‘We’re going back!’’ Robin yelled.

All three of them looked at her.

‘‘Now!’’ she screamed.

Back at the cabin, she told Andrew everything. She left nothing out, though she could see from the expression on his face that he didn’t believe half of it. He believed the rape, though, and for the moment that was good enough. She had his sympathy and, through that, his allegiance. He’d go along with whatever rules and regulations she imposed on the family this trip, no matter how wacky they might seem.

‘‘Why aren’t the kids back yet?’’ she asked suddenly.

‘‘They’re just over at the lodge.’’

‘‘We told them they could buy postcards. They should’ve been back by now.’’

Andrew put his hands on her shoulders. ‘‘They’ll be okay.’’

‘‘You don’t know that! Haven’t you heard a word I’ve said?’’

‘‘That was twenty years ago,’’ he reassured her. ‘‘I understand why you’re concerned for them, but they’re on the grounds, only a couple of yards away in the gift shop . . .’’

‘‘You don’t understand!’’

‘‘Robin,’’ he said seriously, looking deep into her eyes. ‘‘You’re overreacting because of what happened to you. Eventually, we’re going to have to talk this through, the two of us. But for now we’re on vacation, probably our only trip out here, and for the children’s sake, we should try to make it a fun one.’’

Intellectually, she knew he was right—though she was dreading that ‘‘talk’’ he wanted to have—but she still felt frightened. Not for herself so much but for Johnny and Alyssa. She would have to make a concerted effort to behave as though everything were normal, to not see boogeymen behind every bush. Oak Draw was a mine-field, and as far as she was concerned, there was potential danger in every step. The sooner this vacation ended, the better.

Alyssa ran up the porch steps and into the cabin seconds before Johnny. ‘‘We got the postcards! Did you bring the address book? I don’t know anyone’s address!’’

‘‘Yes I did, honey,’’ Robin said, and her voice was calmer and much more normal than she’d expected it to be.

Johnny saw how close they were standing. ‘‘Gross. You guys aren’t doing any sex stuff, are you?’’

‘‘No,’’ Andrew said, pulling away from her. ‘‘And you watch what you say.’’

‘‘I know what sex is,’’ Alyssa announced.

‘‘That’s fine. But we don’t have to talk about it,’’ Robin said. She turned away. ‘‘I’m thirsty. Anyone else want some iced tea?’’

Andrew barbecued hamburgers for dinner—they’d bought ground beef and buns from the market in town, taken extra condiment packets from the fast-food joint where they’d had lunch—and afterward he and Robin sat out on the porch, watching the kids run around the tall wispy meadow grass that grew in the open space between the cabins and the lodge. The kids had been joined by the children of the guy from Nevada, as well as two boys and a girl from town. All seven children were playing freeze tag, and Andrew smiled down at them as he saw how much fun they were having.

Robin sat next to him, quiet and subdued.

Tomorrow, they were supposed to pan for gold. It was strictly a tourist thing to do. A guy dressed up like a forty-niner would lead them and a group of other vacationers to a selected spot on a local stream, demonstrate a few panning techniques, then let them see what they could turn up. But Robin didn’t want to go. She was afraid to go into the countryside, scared to venture past the boundary of the town.

He understood her apprehension. But he didn’t feel it. And though he told himself that if he had known the details ahead of time they never would have come, he wasn’t sure that was true. Because he almost felt more at home here than he did at home. This land and these communities inspired within him a calmness, a serenity he had not known before. It was something that had translated itself to him through the black-and-white photos in that old Sunset guidebook, something that had grown stronger when he’d started researching the gold country online. But he hadn’t realized until they’d arrived, until they’d moved into the cabin and spent a full day here, just how much he would love Northern California, just how fully in tune with this land he was.

How to explain that to Robin, though, with her traumatic memories of the past?

He wasn’t even going to try.

Andrew reached between their two chairs, grabbed her hand and held it. ‘‘Are you all right?’’ he asked, looking at her.

She nodded, attempting a smile. ‘‘I’m fine,’’ she said.

The kids came in a little while later, when the sun started going down, and the whole family watched an old Godzilla movie before going to bed. Andrew didn’t know whether it was the altitude or the excitement, but they seemed to go to sleep a lot earlier here than they did back home. This was the third night in a row that they were all in bed well before ten.

He fell asleep almost the instant his head hit the pillow and woke up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom, groggily feeling his way out of the bed and across the bedroom to the hall, where the light from the bathroom illuminated his way. He was vaguely aware of a noise outside, and he thought it sounded like a cat, but he didn’t care enough to check.

On his way back to the bedroom a few moments later, he definitely heard a cat’s meow. It was coming from somewhere nearby, but sound was hard to pinpoint at night. Just as a cricket outside the house could sound through an open window as though it was in the room, the cat, too, sounded closer than it probably was.

He pulled aside the curtain and looked out the bedroom window, but saw nothing outside.

It sounded even closer than before. He was surprised it hadn’t awakened Robin, Johnny or Alyssa.

Now the cat was getting annoying. If this didn’t let up, he wouldn’t be able to fall back asleep. He padded out to the living room and looked through the front window. The porch light was on, and by its glow he could see a cat sitting in the middle of the dirt walkway that led to their cabin. He tapped on the glass of the window, making shooing motions with his hands, trying to scare it away, but the animal either didn’t see him or didn’t care.