The Seeker: A Mystery at Walden Pond Read online

  I saw her point, but it didn’t make me feel less betrayed. “You put his interests above me.”

  “I’m sorry you see it that way.” She edged toward a table where a man held up his hand to get her attention. “I’ll bring you some food. We’ll talk when the rush is over.”

  Patrick brought me a glass of dry red wine, chili, crusty bread, and a salad. He served me with a wink and a wicked grin. I ate, focused on my food. When I was finished, I slipped out the door and headed to the cabin. I didn’t want another confrontation with Dorothea, and I couldn’t look at Patrick without a rush of guilt and shame. He was a young man. Too young.

  The snow had only partially covered my and Patrick’s footprints. No new ones were evident, yet when I heard the crackle of a stick deep in the trees, I almost panicked and ran back to the inn. Perhaps this was the Cahill Curse for me, an overactive imagination that would push me to foolish conduct.

  Reaching the cabin, I climbed the steps to the porch. Before I could put the key in the lock, the door inched open.

  I had locked it. I had taken great care to do so. Now it was open, and Patrick had not been here.

  But someone had.

  Sitting in the middle of the floor was a Victorian doll. She wore a red-and-white-striped dress, and her dark brown curls cascaded onto her shoulders beneath a pert hat. Her red lips curved in a smile. Where there should have been two bright eyes that shut whenever she was laid down, two empty sockets glared at me.

  17

  In moments of blind panic, the brain can’t form a single thought. It’s a holdover from prehistoric times. Animals are labeled fight or flight in their response to danger. Humans vacillate between both reactions. Karla attacked, I fought. Now, confronted with a hellish doll that appeared out of nowhere, I fled.

  My feet slipped on a thin layer of ice beneath the snow as I sought traction on the porch. My boots scrabbled on the wood, but I couldn’t find a purchase. Momentum hurled me down the steps headlong into the night. I stumbled several yards before I fell. When I looked back toward the cabin, in the open doorway I could see the silhouette of the doll. She stared out at me with her eyeless sockets. I cried out and tried to get on my feet.

  The blow caught me across the back, sending me sprawling in the snow. “You thought you had me, didn’t you, bitch?” Karla’s furious question came before another hard blow crashed on my shoulders.

  I rolled toward her legs and grabbed her ankle. With all of my strength I bit into her calf. She tried to kick free, but I chomped harder, the iron taste of her blood filling my mouth as I tore through her legging.

  “Let go! Let go!” She hopped on one leg, screaming and swinging the hockey stick she’d whacked me with.

  I clamped down until she squealed in anguish and fell over. She caught me in the mouth with her boot, bursting my lip. I punched her in the gut as hard as I could, hampered by her heavy coat but connecting next with her jaw. That took the fight out of her and I released her and clambered to my feet. My back and shoulder felt like I’d been hit by a train. Blood gushed from my lip. I couldn’t see anything clearly in the darkness, but I heard her sobbing and moaning.

  “You’re insane,” I said, spitting blood into the snow. “I’m calling the cops.” I marched toward the inn. I had a cell phone but there was no reception until I got to the main road.

  Headlights swung down the driveway and came toward me. I stopped, highlighted in the beams. I waved my arms, signaling the driver to halt. When the vehicle drew closer, I saw it was a truck. Joe’s truck. He left the engine running and stepped out.

  “Aine, what’s wrong? What happened to you? You’re bleeding!”

  “Karla attacked me. She’s back there.”

  “Are you hurt?” Joe’s hands captured my cheeks and turned me into the beam of his headlights. “Holy shit. Your face—”

  “I know.” I shook, like I had neurological damage. “She’s insane and dangerous.”

  “Go to the inn and call Chief McKinney. I’ll see about Karla.” He moved past me. In a moment, the darkness absorbed him. I didn’t move. Now that Joe had arrived, I had no desire to call the police. They’d force me to go to the station and fill out reports and complaints and explain how I’d managed to bite Karla’s calf and hopefully break a few ribs. Even though it was self-defense, it would still paint me as a vicious savage, my second episode of physical assault.

  I heard Joe calling Karla’s name and I walked toward his voice. In a moment, he stepped back into the light cast by his vehicle’s high beams.

  “She’s gone.”

  I almost didn’t believe him. “Where?”

  He shook his head. “I put her on a bus to Nebraska last night. I sat with her and made sure she got on. I watched the bus leave, and I saw her in the window. How the hell did she get back here? And why?”

  “She put a doll in my cabin. I was afraid and tried to run to the inn, and she attacked me with a hockey stick.” I panted as I talked. “She tried to kill me.”

  Joe eased me to the passenger side of the truck. In a moment he was turning the vehicle around.

  “Where are we going?”

  “To the hospital. There’s blood all over your face and down your coat. You might be seriously hurt.”

  “I’m okay. My lip is just busted.” It felt huge, and I started to laugh. I tried to smother the giggles, but I couldn’t stop.

  “Aine, you’re hysterical.”

  “I am.” I doubled over with laughter. “I am.”

  Joe stopped the truck. “Get ahold of yourself.”

  I tried, but the laughter seemed to bubble from a deep pressure. Tears ran down my cheeks and I couldn’t catch my breath. The whole time my body shook with mirth.

  Joe pulled me across the seat and into his arms. He cocooned me with his warmth. I laughed until I realized I was crying. While I sobbed against his chest, he stroked my hair.

  “It’s snowing again,” he said once I’d calmed a little.

  I lifted my head to look out the window. Fat, fluffy flakes tickled the windshield.

  “If it keeps up like this, they’ll cancel school tomorrow.”

  He chattered on about the inconsequential in an attempt to help me regain my equilibrium. My anger about the missing child, Mischa, evaporated. My remorse for sleeping with Patrick was still there but I buried it deep. I let Joe comfort me.

  When I was twelve, I’d traveled the half-mile from Granny’s house to the little store that serviced our community. My mission was a package of Baker’s coconut to make a cake. Granny’s birthday was the next day, and coconut was her favorite. I’d saved pennies and nickels to buy the ingredients, and all I lacked was the lacey white coconut, so sweet and moist.

  I made my purchase and was headed home when my cousin, Amon Cahill, met me on the road. Amon had red hair and pink-rimmed eyes, and it was common knowledge that his mother had a real fondness for family members. Granny never allowed me to go swimming at the creek with Amon or any of his relatives. She just said they had a different way of living life and it was best for me to stay clear of them.

  Amon thought I was stuck-up, and he told me so. I tried to walk past him, and he pushed me down. He snatched my bag of groceries and stomped the coconut into the dirt, laughing as I fought and cried.

  After Amon left, I picked the strands of coconut out of the dirt and took it home, wondering if I could wash it somehow. The hopelessness of the situation sent me into a fit of tears, and by the time I got home, I was completely out of control.

  Granny washed my face with a cool cloth and held me against her, stroking my hair until I went to sleep. It was the last time I remembered such a touch.

  Until now.

  “Aine, I’m so sorry.” Joe smoothed my hair and rubbed my back the way a mother would put a baby to sleep. “I thought Karla was gone. I had no idea she’d doubled back here to attack you.”

  I burrowed deeper into the padded nylon of his coat. My body temperature rose, and my breathing stre
tched and relaxed.

  “We have to report this to the police.” He put the truck in gear, but my hand stopped him.

  I sat up. “No. I’m already the talk of the town.”

  He turned the interior light on and examined my face. “I don’t want to be an alarmist, Aine, but we need to at least go to the hospital to get you checked over.”

  “I’m not hurt. She hit me a couple of times with a club, but she missed the vital places.”

  He punched the steering wheel. “You said you bit her. Karla was doing drugs. What if she has an illness? We need to get you checked for Hepatitis C.”

  I hadn’t considered that Karla’s blood might be the ultimate revenge. “It’s too early to test for Hepatitis C or AIDS.”

  He leaned his forehead against the steering wheel. “Everything I touch suffers.”

  He was talking about me, but also the child. “What happened to Mischa?” I asked. Sitting alone in the dark cab of his truck was as good a place as any to have this conversation.

  “I was going to tell you about Mischa tonight. I should have told you sooner.”

  “Yes, you should.” I sighed. “I should have had the choice to say yes or no. You should have told me, and so should Dorothea.”

  “You have every right to be angry.” His left hand tightened on the steering wheel. “I wanted you to know me as a person before I told you. I didn’t want to scare you off, but I see that wasn’t fair to you.” His fingers made tiny sounds of protest, he clutched the wheel so hard. “I tried to call you last night, and again today. To tell you. But I knew I should have told you before we made love. And I was ashamed.”

  I put my palm on his cheek. “There are things I should tell you about me, too.” If I confessed about Patrick now, he might forgive me. He might understand that he’d hurt me and I’d sought any comfort I could find. If I told him.

  He kissed my palm. “Mischa was a third-grade student at Middlesex Elementary, where I taught. She was a bright child, happy. Well-loved by her parents and family. I foresaw a tremendous future for her. She absorbed knowledge.” He paused. “We developed a relationship. Teacher-student, nothing more. I encouraged her to read and learn and ask questions. We played kickball afternoons with the other children in the neighborhood.”

  The strain of his words cracked his voice and he cleared his throat.

  “One October afternoon she left her books at home after school and went back outside. I’d taken several of the kids to Walden Pond the previous Saturday for a nature walk. Mischa had great curiosity about the natural world. Insects fascinated her. She called it a secret world. A couple of the other children asked where she was, but I wasn’t concerned about her absence. I assumed she was tramping around the woods.” He quit talking.

  “But she wasn’t, was she?” I prompted.

  “No. She went into the Walden woods. Footprints led into the trees for a ways. Then they just stopped. No obvious signs of a struggle. But that was it. No trace was ever found. She was gone. A beautiful, bright intelligence was simply gone.”

  “Was she a blonde?” I asked.

  “Yes, long blond curls. Blue eyes. Like a doll.”

  My mouth was suddenly dry. “Did she like dolls?”

  “It was the only childish thing about her. She had Barbies and some other dolls she’d collected.” He rubbed his eyes. “She said she would grow up to design fashion. She liked dressing the dolls in different outfits. Her mother was an exceptional seamstress and made clothes for the dolls.”

  Fear held me in a vise. “How old would Mischa be now?”

  He leaned back in the seat. “I don’t know. Eighteen or nineteen. If she’s alive.”

  “But she isn’t, is she?”

  He grew still. “I don’t think she is, Aine. I’ve never stopped looking for her, but I don’t believe she’s alive. I think someone took her and killed her.”

  “Did she live near here?”

  “There’s a neighborhood not far from Walden Pond. I lived there with my fiancée.”

  “Karla?” I couldn’t believe he’d been engaged to such a trashy person.

  “No, Amanda. She broke the engagement a few months after Mischa disappeared. It was too hard. The accusations, the suspicions. I withdrew from her and everyone.” He fell silent.

  “Why did they think you hurt the child?” I had to ask.

  “She liked me. Nature and biology excited her. She told her mother I was taking her for a nature walk. When she didn’t come home, her parents assumed she was with me. Very quickly it began to sound dirty and awful.”

  “What do you think happened to her?”

  “I can hardly bear to think about it. I believe she was abducted and taken away. I’ve come to conclude she’s dead.”

  My mouth tasted of ashes. “Do you believe the dead can visit us?”

  A long silence stretched between us. “As in ghosts?”

  “Ghosts or spirits or wraiths. Some essence of a person left here that’s visible to the human eye.”

  He twisted my shoulders so he could look at me. “Why do you ask?”

  “I’ve seen a child in the woods. Remember the doll? What if it wasn’t Karla? What if is was … someone else?” My thoughts were too terrible to pursue.

  “No. I don’t believe that. Why would Mischa come to you? That’s crazy, Aine. You’re upset and not thinking clearly.”

  What I was thinking made more sense than a crazy ex-girlfriend leaving Barbies in the snow. “You reacted when I showed you the Barbie.”

  “I did. It shocked me.”

  “Because Mischa had a similar doll.”

  “She did. The photograph they put in the newspaper when they were trying to find her. She was holding that doll. One like it.”

  I didn’t respond. Joe would have to come to the conclusion on his own. As for me, I’d already begun to put the pieces together. What I had to ask myself was why the spirit of a dead girl came to me. What did she want? Spirits, like regular people, always had an agenda.

  My dream of Granny’s visit had been prophetic. At last I’d been given the glimpse of what the Cahill Curse would mean to me. I would communicate with the spirits of departed people. I’d seen them as a child, and Granny had warned me not to speak with them. She’d made me believe it was my imagination. She’d conveyed her fear of them to me, so that I stopped seeing them. But this was my gift.

  The little girl, Mischa, would be my first true encounter.

  18

  Joe couldn’t stay with me. He left me behind in the truck while he removed the doll. He put her in a plastic trash bag and hauled her out.

  “I’m sorry, Aine,” he said. “I’ll take care of Karla once and for all. I’ll find her and make certain she never bothers you again.” He was determined that Karla was behind the dolls—felt she’d been stalking us even before we encountered her in Bayside Bill’s—and he meant to find her and put an end to her mischief. To be honest, I felt more than a little awkward. The tumbled bed told the wicked story between Patrick and me. Joe didn’t linger in the cottage, and I wondered if he knew, if he could tell that intimacy had occurred only hours before.

  When he was gone, I checked my shoulders and back. There were bruises below my shoulder blades and across my right shoulder, but no real damage had been done. I could only hope Karla suffered from the wounds I’d inflicted on her.

  Unable to settle down to work or read, I paced. At last I got out my computer and did some basic research.

  The Concord Journal covered the little girl’s disappearance without sensationalism, a fact I could appreciate even if those involved might not. The story was straightforward and on the front page of the Oct. 30 edition. LOCAL CHILD MISSING. The article matched the details Patrick had given me. Mischa Lobrano had disappeared after school. I studied the school picture of the little blond girl. She could be the child I’d seen in the woods, but I couldn’t be certain. If it was her, had she come to tell me what had happened to her? To warn me? To exact r
evenge?

  I knew that stray spirits were not always benevolent or merely lost.

  Gradually the stories in the paper grew shorter and shorter. Until at last, Mischa dropped from the news. As Joe told me, no trace of the child was ever found. An unnamed “person of interest” had been questioned; no arrests were ever made. Joe’s name was never mentioned. But in a community as small as Concord, his career as a teacher had been destroyed. Yet he had come back here to serve as a ranger at Walden Pond when his mother grew ill and needed him. To me, that spoke of his innocence.

  I poured a glass of wine. When I checked the time, it was after midnight. I was exhausted, but my brain refused to slow down. I took another sleeping pill and prayed for dreamless slumber. Tomorrow, in the daylight, I would search for answers about the little girl I’d seen at Walden Pond. Now, though, I pulled the quilts over my head and sought the escape of sleep.

  My aunt Bonnie had endured dreams foretelling Thoreau’s death. In hindsight, they were clearly prophetic. One in particular came to mind as I drifted in that drugged state of paralysis that preceded sleep. She’d happened on handkerchiefs spotted with blood all around Walden Pond. She’d recounted vivid squares of white, the red, red blood staining the cotton fabric, the way they lay so stark against a tree stump or cluster of leaves. She’d found them in all seasons, from the riot of fall colors to the greens of spring. As she’d walked around Walden Pond in the span of the dream, she’d experienced snow and the kiss of summer sun. The only constant had been the bloodstained handkerchiefs. Bonnie couldn’t have known it, but Thoreau would die of tuberculosis.

  And what of Bonnie? How did she die? I left my questions behind and trod the path at Walden Pond, littered with bloody handkerchiefs, before I stepped into the black void of sleep.

  I awoke in the pink light of a cold dawn. At first I couldn’t be certain what had pulled me from a deep sleep, and then I heard it. A child singing. The song was plaintive, a familiar old English ballad. Voice high and true, the child sang, “Oh Mother, Mother, make my bed. And make it deep and narrow. Sweet William died for me today, I’ll die for him tomorrow.”