Chapter 25

Tommy found himself walking out the back door of Hayden’s house and down to the lakeside. He was waiting there for him, and Tommy knew his face; he had seen it once before. The man smiled and waved. His dark-brown hair hung loose around his face. He grinned as Tommy walked closer and patiently waited for him to come. When Tommy neared, the man held out his hand and they shook. He was handsome, and his picture did not do him justice.

“Pleased to meet you, Tommy,” he said, his voice soothing and low.

“Likewise, Malcolm.” Tommy looked beyond Hayden’s dead lover into the center of the lake where the water seemed to be boiling. A greenish glow emanated from deep within, and the ground vibrated under his feet.

Malcolm followed his gaze, and the two men stood side by side as they looked out over the water.

“What is that?” Tommy asked.

“The opposite of love is indifference, and hatred is the perversion of love. That—” he pointed out to the green-glowing water “—is hatred.”

“Hatred? I don’t understand.”

Malcolm lowered his hand and turned to face Tommy. “You have to look in the books. The truth is in the books.”

“What books? What do you mean?”

“Please take care of him. Trouble is coming, and it’s getting closer to the surface. Hatred is coming, it is coming unbridled, and it is hungry.”

“Malcolm what…”

Tommy found himself alone. Underneath his feet, the earth seemed to lurch, and he was taken down with it. He fell hard on his side; the gun he had tucked in his jeans bruised his flesh when he met the ground. The water churned and sloshed as the green glow rose to the surface and became brighter, casting the surrounding woods in its light. It wasn’t a comforting illumination; it was cold and foreboding, and for the first time in a long time, Tommy was afraid.

He scuttled backwards on his hands and behind, and gingerly got to his feet. The ground beneath him tried to toss him once more, but he was ready this time, legs wide apart as if he were on a ship traveling on high seas. In the distance, he heard people crying out in fear, and a woman laughing, cold and maniacal.

Not wanting to look at it any longer, he turned from the emerging light and fought the rumbling ground as he made his way quickly back to the house. He stumbled up the stairs, and as he was reaching for the door, he heard Malcolm’s voice once more. “Protect him, it’s coming closer.”

“I will,” Tommy replied, opened the door and…

* * *

Tommy found himself awake, staring at the ceiling, with Hayden asleep in his arms, snoring softly and murmuring the name of the man Tommy had dreamed of.

He inhaled slowly and, trying not to rouse him, rolled over on the couch and deposited Hayden as he got to his feet. His side hurt from where the pistol had dug into his hip. He removed it, made sure the safety was on, and rubbed the spot where he hurt. He made his way down the hallway into the bathroom, blinking from being blinded by the light. It took some time for his eyes to adjusted after he’d flipped the switch.

Raising his shirt revealed a palm-sized bruise forming from where he had fallen on the pistol in his dream. That’s impossible. Yet something inside told him to believe in the impossible. He studied his face in the mirror, the years in combat zones, living that life, had aged him. The years of fighting an ongoing war, having seen people riddled with bullets, had put a cork in his emotions. He’d thought he would never have anything more than his work to keep him company for the rest of his life. The thought of it made him lonely—there were many nights he would find himself at the bottom of a bottle, passed out in his armchair.

The worse part of it all was he secretly burned for more than that. He wanted someone to want him, to need him, and to take care of him. He pondered on his past relationships with women; it wasn’t the sex; that he could take care of without a problem. He enjoyed their company, found them attractive. But now, he longed for something more fraternal, more masculine, and with Hayden, all of that seemed like a wonderful possibility.

While he was in the bathroom, he relieved himself in the toilet and went back to the mirror above the sink. As he washed his hands, he silently vowed to Malcolm that he would risk life and limb to protect the man Malcolm had loved.

* * * * * * * *

It was late, and they both were tired. They had pored over maps and old documents from when Maplewood was first founded. Many of those consisted of documents detailing the mine and its owners. While Paul pored over the paperwork, Michelle took to the internet to discover the types of mines and what minerals were extracted from the earth in this region. Michelle had handed Paul a map of the region from the early 1840s and then another one redone in the mid-1980s; he had them laid out side by side.

He wanted to understand the layout and geographical features of the area and what had changed over the years. Most of all, he wanted to understand how Lake Veronica came into being.

The first thing that caught his eye from the older map was a river that flowed downwards from the mountains towards Massachusetts. Christian River wasn’t very large—slightly wider than a creek—but Paul assumed that during the spring thaws, the melting of the snow would cause the river to run strong. The river ran south of town and continued its trek towards the ocean, but its course had adjusted to feed into the large lake that Maplewood sat upon.

Michelle noticed this, too, as she stood to Paul’s side, tracing the path of the river on the modern map with her finger. “When the mine collapsed, it must have diverted the river down into the sinkhole.”

Paul grunted, perplexed at the idea of this happening. “By all geographical and geological reasoning, this lake should not exist. The earthquake that would have caused something this devastating would have been enormous. Now, earthquakes can happen anywhere at any time, and a lot of them do. Some are so small no one ever feels them, but our seismographs still pick them up. Given that there are no major fault lines in this region, like the one in California, Lake Veronica defies everything I have ever learned.” He sat back and ran a hand through his hair. Staring at the maps before him exasperated.

The journals and diaries they had pored over, the bankruptcy documents from Vermont Mining Company—the small firm that had owned the mine and went belly up after the catastrophe that claimed the lives of most of its workers—all stated that there had been a massive earthquake. Names of the dead were also included in the documents they’d found hidden in an archive in the library. Forty people had perished that night, including the daughter of the town minister, whom the lake was named after.

Michelle, who sympathized with his frustration, sat down next to him and put a hand on his back to comfort him. “Perhaps it wasn’t a quake at all. Perhaps it was an explosion or a series of them that did this. What if a minor tremor aggravated a natural gas pocket? I mean, think about it, mining in today’s world is still dangerous. Walk it back a hundred years or more and it had the potential to be disastrous.”

He looked over at her and smiled. She impressed him repeatedly. Her thought processes were sharp. To be honest, her hypothesis was as sound as anything he could come up with to explain the event. His assistants were driving in tomorrow morning, and they would go out and take a look at the lake. Maybe then, they could get a better idea of what happened here.

“Or, we need to think about another possibility.” She hesitated before continuing. She looked over at the handsome face before her and dreaded sounding like a half-baked superstitious person. But, given the events of the past week or so, and the inability to come up with any sensible explanation of the information provided to them, Michelle was more sensitive to other possibilities. She kept thinking about the dream she’d had.

“What do you mean?” Paul asked.

She exhaled slowly and spoke thoughtfully and purposefully, choosing the right words to present what she had been considering. “What if the event was more…supernatural than anything science could explain?” She winced a bit at the last part of her sentence.

“Supernatural? In what regard?” Paul was curious.

“Well, given the recent incidences of drowning under strange circumstances, maybe it isn’t answerable by scientific means. Instead of reading maps, perhaps we should focus on these journals and consider local legends more than data.”

Paul remembered the trenches near the lake, the deep wells in the ground that suggested Jessica had put up a fight as her vehicle was dragged into the lake. He remembered the police pulling her body out from the back end of the SUV and felt a knot forming in his stomach. It wasn’t that Paul was ready to accept supernatural answers, nor was he given to flights of fancy—he considered himself a very practical man. But like Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s story of Sherlock Holmes pointed out, “When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.”

He moved his hands to his eyes, trying to rub the grainy feeling away. Michelle sighed as she watched him struggle with what she’d said. He was so handsome and kind, so very determined to find answers to something that made a mockery of his profession. She smiled faintly and reached for his hands, prying them away, and held them in her own. She felt a stir deep inside of her in a place that, after Mike died, had grown cold as the fields in February.

“Hey, why don’t we take the journals and go grab some coffee and get something to eat? We’ve been at this for hours,” she suggested.

The warmth of her hands rang up his arms, and he smiled. “Won’t you get in trouble for taking them out?”

She made a dismissive noise and rolled her eyes. “I’ll chance it. Come on.”

So, they did, and on the way, Paul considered her suggestion about the paranormal. Every bit of his education protested against even considering taking the investigation in that direction. How would he test a theory? Where would they start? There was no way to control for anything in a laboratory setting. The whole situation called for speculation, and all they could do, should they pursue this avenue, would be to record their findings and everything that had happened.

As he drove through the quiet streets of Maplewood, watching as home after home passed by, he wondered about the inhabitants of this community—parents tucking their children into bed, checking underneath the bed to assure them that no monsters existed, couples kissing each other goodnight, all of them so absolute in their belief of the physical world around them.

The possibilities of there being something more sinister at work here worried him. Not only that, he worried about ending his own career should he leave his methodical and scientific training to peruse this ghostly venture. Could he risk that? Risk mockery in his own ranks?

He thought of Jessica and the horror she must have endured prior to passing into the realm of the unknown, and silently came up with the answer. He would do everything he could to save the inhabitants of this small town from the secret that had existed under Lake Veronica’s black waters for the past one hundred years.

Michelle sat quietly in her own thoughts, until they pulled into the parking lot of the Maple Leaf. It was ten thirty on a Friday night, and the place would be open for another hour. The parking lot was not as full as it usually was, but she figured with the weather turning sour for the first time in the season, people had decided to huddle down in their houses.

Michelle’s heart sank when she recognized a woman walking out of the restaurant. “Oh, hell,” she whispered.

Paul snapped out of his own thoughts. “What?”

“That woman. Her name is Rose Demeter. She’s the town gossip and mail clerk. By Monday evening, we’ll be having a torrid affair,” she said, disgusted.

Paul followed her gaze as he put his truck in park, next to Michelle’s old beater. Across the lot, an older woman was standing next to her Cadillac watching them as they pulled in. Paul smiled and waved, knowing full and well that the lights in the lot illuminated both him and his passenger clearly and the woman could see in. His wave and smile were not returned; the woman sniffed arrogantly, disapprovingly, and got into her car.

“Sweetheart, isn’t she? “Michelle said, sarcasm dripping from her words.

“I sense you don’t like her very much.”

Michelle grabbed for the journals in her lap and unbuckled her seat belt. “She’s got this control over the whole town. Even the chief of police listens to her. She’s like this hateful matriarch and unofficial leader. All the women who want to prosper or be popular or have any aspirations of being involved in the social life of Maplewood run to her for support.”

Paul was shocked at the tone of Michelle’s voice, though he was also fascinated by this fiery woman, he had to admit. She was something he wasn’t expecting at all, and neither were the feelings.

Michelle continued, “My husband was killed during a routine stop. A teenager who had been drinking slammed into him, pinning him between his vehicle and the one he had pulled over. She had the whole town convinced it was Mike’s fault that he got hit and not the idiot kid’s. The jury ended up finding him not guilty all because that kid is her nephew.”

“Jesus.” Paul exhaled and watched Michelle’s beautiful face struggle to maintain composure. It hurt him to see her fighting, blinking back tears of anger. This woman had come a long way from the darkest day in her life, but she still had her scars.

“The only reason why I still have my job is that the Police Union put pressure on the city council,” she said, finishing her story. Her eyes never left the Cadillac as it started to back up, its rear lights casting them in their red and white glow.

“Michelle, I’m sorry.” Paul leaned over and gave her shoulder a sympathetic pat.

“No reason to be sorry. I believe in karma, and for most people, it works out for them. Karma for this woman, however, when it decides to repay her, will be a real motherfucker.” She opened the passenger side door and got out.

Paul stayed inside for a second, watching the Cadillac slowly drive towards the exit, and saw as Michelle raise her middle finger. Hell, hath no fury, Paul thought, amazed. Breaking into his thoughts, his cell phone rang, and he picked up.

“Paul, it’s me. I’ve been trying to get a hold of you for the past hour. We’ve had another tremor, this one a little stronger. Did anyone feel anything or was there any damage?” his boss asked.

“Nothing that I have noticed. Fax the report to my room.”

“Already done. The group is also on their way and will be there about eight in the morning. I sent them the address of the bed-and-breakfast you’re staying at. I already spoke to the owners. They have the room to house everyone for the duration of your work there.”

“All right. I have to go, Mike, I’ll talk to you later.” Paul hung up his phone. He wondered whose world had been affected by the recent tremor underneath the lake. Who else’s life had been uprooted by whatever was happening in this town. The feelings of foreboding slammed into him as he stepped out into the misty night air and followed Michelle into the restaurant where the glow of light, he hoped, would chase away the dreadful feeling in his heart.

* * * * * * * *

On the other side of town, Audrey yelled at her son who was waking up from his medicine induced stupor. “Tell me you saw that too!” she cried, her son’s medicated eyes wide as he was soaking wet.

“Saw what? God I’m drenched!” he cried, stumbling up out of the bed. “What the hell in going on?”

Just then Daniel came barreling into the bedroom. His eyes were wide, and Audrey could tell that he was excited as he was scared by what had just happened. He was breathing heavy, panting, the color drawn out of his cheeks. He leaned upon the door frame with his arm looking at his wife and his son.

“The footprints go right to the kitchen sink and then they disappear,” he said, his chest heaving. He looked at her and then down at his son and then back at Audrey. They both stared at him.

“Dad when did you get here?” his son asked.

“About an hour or so ago. You and your mother were asleep,” he said. “Well, until she tried to beat me to death in the shower with your baseball bat.”

Jake looked at his mother, disbelief in his eyes.

“It’s not what you think, he came in and took a shower while we were sleeping. Right after you zonked out, I fell asleep in the chair after I saw the first ghost and then…” She was interrupted by her husband.

“Wait, there was one before this?!” Daniel exclaimed. Then all chaos broke loose. The three of them were trying to all speak at once. Daniel was asking questions, as was Jake, and Audrey was trying, in vain, to explain everything to both of them.

“…and that’s when your father hit Jessica with a baseball bat and she exploded,” she finished loudly, hands on her hips. She instantly regretted saying the girl’s name, Jake looked like someone had just punched him in the gut as the realization of the day’s events caught up with him. She watched as the remaining effects of the Xanax pill disintegrated and the color drained from his face. He sat down on the edge of the bed looking like the sole survivor of an airline accident.

“Jessica…” He whispered. He groaned and put his face in his hands. Audrey and Daniel felt their excitement drain and in its place sorrow for their son’s ordeal. Daniel knelt at his feet and wrapped his arms around his son’s body, pulling him close to him and letting him cry out his grief. Audrey sat next to him rubbing his back and holding Daniel’s hands that were clasped behind him. She silently cursed the girl for this.

Daniel momentarily forgot about the ghosts for a while and questioned Jake on his where about the night Jessica died. In grief, Daniel has found that honesty is forthcoming, as his son told his parents everything. Audrey, who may have tried to shelter her son from everything for too long, regardless of the girl’s reputation, it was apparent, that Jake loved her. However misguided and manipulated that love may have been, it did not eliminate the truth of the matter.

“Listen, listen, I know it’s late and you’re not going to want to, but why don’t we head down to the diner and get something to eat. It’ll get your mind off things and give us all a chance to get caught up.” Daniel suggested.

Jake raised his head and nodded, it broke his father’s heart to see his son so miserable. Jake was happy however, that his father was there, that both were there right now. He subconsciously decided to go on autopilot and let them lead him where he needed to go. So, after a few years, a family that had been torn apart from divorce rallied once more around their son. Little did they know, that this tentative accord between the two parents had saved their son’s life.

* * * * * * * *

In the heart of town stood the Maple Leaf Café and inside, on the dreary misty evening, Suzie Campos worked her tables like the pro she was. She had worked there for almost four years now and loved her job. She met all sorts of people, from different walks of life and different areas of the country, as they come through their tiny town on vacation. She loved the people of the town and the quaint atmosphere, unlike a lot of others, who’d packed their bags after high school and left.

She’d lived in other places before. Her dad, an engineer, had dragged the entire family across the country when she was young, but at the age of ten, they’d had settled down here. The mountains and the valleys, the seasons changing, the festivals, and the everyday life of this town suited her, and this was where she had set down roots of her own. She worked six days a week and was able to set money aside for a little apartment. Sure, she had dreams, had taken art classes at the community college and painted in her spare time, but she would never give up her life here to try to peddle them on the streets. Instead, Mrs. Judy, the lady who ran the boutique shop, gave her ample wall space in her store, which brought in quite a bit of money during the tourist season, and with those proceeds, she was able to buy a brand-new car.

She had started at the Maple Leaf when she was sixteen and had gone through some happy times but also some hard times. Her father died of cancer a year ago, and her brother, who she was incredibly close to, had gotten the wanderlust and taken off for Boston to go to school. Now, it was just her and her mother here, but they got on all right.

At the restaurant, the work wasn’t that bad. Joe Konopka, the owner of the place, usually stayed in the back working the grill, and his wife, who had hired Suzie, retired to watch over their three children, leaving Suzie to do the hiring and firing of other wait staff in the place. She loved the Konopkas dearly; Joe and his wife Ruth were like surrogate parents to her.

Yet tonight, everything felt different. For one, the restaurant was empty, quiet, and when Michelle and Paul walked in, Suzie could tell Michelle was in a sour mood. Knowing her friend, she brought over two steaming mugs of hot chocolate—a vice of hers—topped with whipped cream and chocolate syrup. When Michelle saw what she’d done, the dour look melted away and was replaced with the beautiful smile that always found its way to the surface. They’d met when Michelle first moved here and got close after the death of her husband. It was usually the two of them plus Cassandra on Friday nights, the designated girls’ night, raising a little hell, but Cass had called to cancel when Michelle needed a babysitter. Their closeness was also forged in the truth that neither one of them could stand that no-good busybody, Rose Demeter.

Suzie was hoping Michelle would move on from the death of her husband soon. She was lonely and missed Mike a great deal, but it was slim pickings in this town, and Suzie refused to settle. She was secretly pleased—and surprised—to see Michelle with Paul tonight. Even though he was a few years older, he was handsome and seemed well established.

She was thankful for the restaurant’s emptiness when the entire Owen clan walked in. Rumors of Jessica’s death had spread through the town like wildfire, no thanks to ol’ Loose Lips Demeter. The town also knew about Jessica and Jake’s affair—again, thanks to Rose—and had speculated on how it was going to end. But nobody could have imagined this happening.

From what Suzie understood, the town was divided into two camps. The first camp had decided that Jake hadn’t done anything wrong at all—outside of their righteous indignation about the affair part—and it was, in fact, her husband who’d killed her in a fit of rage, and driven the Range Rover into the lake. The other camp—those closest to Rose, of course—decided that Jessica’s poor husband didn’t know a thing about the affair and speculated that Jessica had probably tried to break it off with Jake…who killed her in a fit of rage and drove the vehicle in.

Suzie belonged to neither camp; however, she did the best she could to sway people’s opinion away from Demeter’s for the sake of avoiding another sham trial like the one that got her nephew off a manslaughter charge. Something was wrong; something was going on in Maplewood. Something bad. All last night, she’d had strange dreams about a woman in the lake—horrible nightmares filled with green light and ghostly figures, and a woman laughing as she ran away.

Suzie had known Jessica. The two had gone to high school together and had a way of getting around. They had been friends in the beginning, but Jessica became money hungry, probably because both her parents were dirt poor, and she’d married her husband for his money. She even acquired a little accent to go along with her move from Brandenbury Lane to Woodville Road where her huge house was. It made Suzie’s skin crawl at how nasty someone could become when they thought they had the world on a string. But when the rumors started to fly about her husband’s several affairs—again, thanks to Rose—reality had hit Jessica like a freight train and dropped her down a notch or three. She’d deserved it as far as Suzie figured, but she didn’t deserve what happened to her.

She greeted the Owens at the front of the restaurant with menus and purposefully sat them near Paul and Michelle, knowing should anything happen, those two wouldn’t sit idly by. Jake looked terrible, and his parents, who Suzie could have sworn were divorced, stayed at his side like sentries. They even sat Jake between them in the horseshoe booth. Their eyes were glued to their menus while Jake sort of stared at the table top, his mind a thousand miles away.

“What can I get you folks to drink?” Suzie asked tentatively.

Audrey raised her head and gave her a brief smile. “Diet coke, dear.”

She looked at Daniel, who said, “Coffee, cream, and sugar.”

And then the hardest part of all. “And what about you, sweetie?” she asked Jake.

He raised his head and looked at her. His eyes had dark circles around them, and it broke Suzie’s heart. “Coke, please.”

She walked to the back to place the order, catching Michelle’s eye as she went and, with a slight nod of her head, pointed in the direction of the family.

Michelle nodded and leaned forward, whispering something to Paul, who glanced up once, taking note of the family near him, and nodded gravely. They continued their meal, speaking in hushed tones and reading bits of journal to each other. Suzie returned with the family’s beverages and laid them down on the table.

“Can I give you all a few more minutes or are we ready?” she asked.

“I’m ready, but go first, Audrey,” Daniel said.

She ordered, and then Daniel, and again, last but not least was Jake, who looked up at his mother with a grimace.

“I’m not really hungry, Mom.”

“You need to eat something, sweetheart,” she whispered. Daniel’s face clouded over for a second, and Suzie stepped in.

“How about some soup and crackers? If that sparks an appetite, we can get something else.”

Jake nodded, and Audrey smiled gratefully at Suzie, who took their menus and headed back to the kitchen handing the ticket in to the cook. She was happy that the family had missed Rose Demeter, who had just left with her tribe. Judy usually hung out with her and the other favor-seekers in the group. Judy was so nice and so genuine it boggled Suzie’s mind. Sometimes, when Rose would get out of line, Judy acted as her apologist, and Suzie didn’t understand the relationship.

* * * * * * * *

Paul and Michelle talked quietly over their meals. Their journals sat next to their plates. He was growing tired, and so was Michelle, he could see it in her face. It closing time as they gathered their things and headed out the door. They agreed to read the journals tonight and to contact each other should they find anything of importance. Paul walked Michelle to her car and they made small talk briefly, but she had to go get her kids and he needed to get back to the place where he was staying to look over the fax his boss had sent.

“I’ll talk to you tomorrow,” Michelle said.

“Yes, I’ll call you as soon as the crew gets in.” Paul was pleasantly surprised when she stood on her tiptoes and kissed his cheek.

“Night,” she said softly, and got in her car and left.

He stood there for a second, watching her go, and then walked to his own truck. The feeling of her lips burning against his cheek put a smile on his face the entire way home.

Letting himself in, he was greeted by Mrs. Hatch sitting on a loveseat, wrapped in her bathrobe with her hair up in curlers, crocheting a blanket. She was starting to etch a place in his heart. Whenever he would leave the house, she would wait up for him to make sure he was okay.

“How was your day, Mrs. Hatch? Tell me something good.” He sat down on the couch next to her.

“Well, we got a confirmation call from your friends who will be here in the morning. We went grocery shopping today, and Mr. Hatch paid the bills—we’ll be open another year.” She smiled over her bifocals at him.

“These are difficult times,” Paul said, nodding grimly.

“Oh, we’ve been through it before. You know this house used to belong to a rich couple who lived here for years. They kept the house until their deaths back in the early 1950s. That’s when David and I bought it. It was run down, a lot of work needed to be done, but I had a small amount of money and David worked for the mines for years. I hated that he worked in such a dangerous business, deep beneath the earth, and I would wait up for him to get home, afraid he may never walk through my door again.

“When we had our daughter, we took every penny we had and put it into this place to turn it into the bed-and-breakfast so that David would be able to come up out of those dark holes and enjoy the daylight.” She smiled and hooked another thread into the yellow and blue blanket she was making.

Paul thought about the stories of mine collapses and other catastrophes, and the men who died to bring us the basic necessities of life. As a geologist, he understood the dangers of working underground, but he had never really thought about the people who worked there and the families that waited up for them.

“I’m glad this has been successful for you,” he said, to which Mrs. Hatch nodded and smiled.

“So, Paul, what about you? What’s your story? Do you have someone waiting up for you at night?”

He chuckled once, almost bitterly, but shook his head. “No. I’ve been married to my work for almost twenty years.”

“Bit of a lonely way to go?” she inquired, looking over her glasses.

His mind drifted to Michelle. He had been in love once, at the University of Boston where he studied as an undergraduate. Sarah Fleming was an English major with a wispy presence that he found alluring. He tried dating her, but she always seemed outside of his reach. She ended up moving to California and was now an author of period romance.

“It’s all right, I guess. I mean, I travel a lot, and sometimes I’m gone from home for months on end. Sort of the nature of the job,” he said wistfully.

“Ah, I see. Desperado.” She chuckled.

He laughed at the Eagles reference and even though it flattered him, he didn’t see himself as a drifter. But she was right on one thing: he was lonely. He felt like he’d missed the greatest parts of his life only to watch it drift away from him.

“So how is the research going? Are we going to shake to bits soon?” she asked.

“No, but there is something going on that bothers me. And I think that it isn’t natural at all. I’m worried about the implications of that on my career,” he said bluntly. He felt like someone walking into a minefield with what was going on in Maplewood. Academics weren’t very forgiving, and if something like this got out and spread through the circles he moved in, he would be a laughing stock. He explained as much to the lady sitting across from him while also filling her in on what they had found.

Mrs. Hatch stopped and looked up at him, adjusting her glasses on her face. “There’s a long history of hauntings in this part of the world. I have lived through so much and have witnessed so much of human nature to accept the foolish notion of there not being a life after this one. There are so many examples of things that human beings cannot define in the world—things that are just beyond the scope of our intellect—and they frighten us.

“Human beings react negatively to these things because we seek to understand everything. We categorize and try to fit everything we see into these little boxes to place on a shelf somewhere. It makes us feel safe. And as far as academics jeering you for deciding to look into the nooks and crannies that they themselves fear? It’s a sign of shortsightedness on their part. If something is indeed going on in this place that is sinister in nature, I do feel awfully good knowing that you’re doing something about it.”

At her words, Paul’s heart melted, and he smiled, feeling somewhat relieved. Maybe she was right; maybe the scientific method and peer analysis needed to take a back seat. He was a self-made man, had put enough money away to be comfortable, and perhaps now was the time to challenge his way of thinking.

Mrs. Hatch returned to her crocheting as she spoke. “Lake Veronica has her share of stories told about her, usually to children who misbehave, mind you. One of them is about a curse. You see, according to legend, Veronica was a woman who had fallen deeply in love with a man from Ireland. Her father hated him and hated the idea of his daughter marrying the man. His hatred drove a wedge between the daughter and himself, which was a tragedy in of itself because they had always been close.”

“On the night of her death, Veronica was to meet with the man and run away to be wed. But her father caught them and dragged them back to the church where he threw them into the basement. Her lover died of his injuries, and supposedly, the men who were commissioned to stand guard over the cellar heard her curse her father and the town in which they lived. Her love for the young man had been unnaturally cut short and turned her love into a twisted version of it.

“You see, the opposite of love isn’t hate, it’s indifference. But when love is twisted and made foul, it turns to hate, and hate never creates anything. It usually destroys everything it comes into contact with—including the person who carries in deep within themselves. That is what happened. Her hatred was so profound that it latterly caused the collapse of the town, killing her, along with the forty or so residents who fell into the pit.”

The hairs on Paul’s arms stood straight up as a chill cascaded down his spine. His mouth was agape and, realizing this, he closed it with a snap. He folded his arms on his chest and sat back, listening intently.

“Like I said, Veronica’s father hated Riley—her beloved—because he thought him to be a Catholic. He hated the idea of Riley and his daughter together so much that he ruined his own relationship with her to stop it. His hatred and intolerance started the wheel rolling, for he loved his daughter more than anything. I suppose he hoped she would come to her senses. But love doesn’t work that way. It will not be dictated to even by those who may have the best of intentions. As a result, he lost his daughter and upon realizing that she had been killed, he cast himself into the same pit taking his own life.”

“What a tragedy,” Paul said.

“The greatest of all tragedies that is repeated the world over,” agreed Mrs. Hatch. “If you think about it, love creates things, builds nations, leads men off to war to defend their homes, keeps a simple bed-and-breakfast running… But hate…hate can tear all those things to shreds.

“So, as the story goes, over the years, people have sworn to have seen Veronica walking the shores of her lake, looking for Riley. Others say that if you and your lover are too much intertwined with each other, she will punish you for it, for she is jealous of your affections. The stories were created to keep the teenagers abstaining from any nonsense, if you ask me,” she said, chuckling.

Paul laughed with her, but his mind wandered over the story several times. Chad and Elizabeth had been lovers, so had Jessica and Jake, but he had seen Jake tonight at the café and he was still very much alive, even if just barely—not surprising, given the weight of what the poor guy was going through.

Mrs. Hatch consulted her wrist watch, reminding Paul it was nearly midnight; eight a.m. would be around sooner rather than later. He got up, stretched, and gave Mrs. Hatch a kiss on the cheek before turning in for the night.

She watched him walk away, wondering if she had said too much to influence his work, but then decided it would all proceed would proceed as it should regardless of what she said to him. Things had a way of working themselves out on their own, but still, she hated the lake and always had. Something about it seemed off to her. Perhaps it was only the story that had been told to her as a child, but nevertheless. The waters always seemed too dark, the temperature too cold, and even when the beaches were filled with people in the summertime, it had a way of making you feel very alone if you swam out too far.

She put her crocheting away and checked the door was locked. Pulling her robe closer together, she left the loneliness of her living room for the familiarity of her bedroom and her sleeping husband. She had scared herself with the story her mother had told her when she’d just started to date David.

When she reached the inside of her door, safe and sound, she relaxed and climbed into bed. She placed a kiss on the forehead of the man she had loved most of her life and settled in to sleep, finding it took a little longer tonight than normal. Her dreams were troubled.