They frightened him. He sensed they were killers. Like on the television. If they knew they had been seen, they would kill him and bury him out here. He was sure of it. But then Buddy always expected the worst; life had taught him to think that way.
He stood perfectly still, watched them until they were out of sight, and ran back to the storage yard. But he quickly realized he couldn’t tell anyone what he had seen. They wouldn’t believe him. And by God, if he was going to be ridiculed for telling what was only the truth, then he would keep it secret!
Just the same he wished he could tell someone, if not the watchmen at the mill. He thought and thought about it but still could not make sense of those skin divers or whatever they were. In fact, the more he thought about it, the more bizarre it seemed. He was frightened by what he could not understand. He was certain that if he told someone, it could be explained to him. Then he wouldn’t be afraid. But if they laughed…Well, he didn’t understand their laughter either, and that was even more frightening than the mystery men in the woods.
On the far side of Main Street, the cat scampered from the heavy purple shadows and ran east toward Edison’s General Store, startling Buddy out of his reverie. He pressed against the windowpane and watched the cat until it turned the corner. Afraid that it would try to sneak back and climb up to his third-floor rooms, he kept a watch on the place where it had vanished. For the moment he had forgotten the men in the woods because his fear of cats was far greater than his fear of guns and strangers.
PART ONE
Conspiracy
1
Saturday, August 13, 1977
When he drove around the curve, into the small valley, Paul Annendale felt a change come over him. After five hours behind the wheel yesterday and five more today, he was weary and tense — but suddenly his neck stopped aching and his shoulders unknotted. He felt at peace, as if nothing could go wrong in this place, as if he were Hugh Conway in Lost Horizon and had just entered Shangri-La.
Of course, Black River was not Shangri-La, not by any stretch of the imagination. It existed and maintained its population of four hundred solely as an adjunct of the mill. For a company town it was quite clean and attractive. The main street was lined with tall oak and birch trees. The houses were New England colonials, white frame and brick saltboxes. Paul supposed he responded to it so positively because he had no bad memories to associate with it, only good ones; and that could not be said of many places in a man’s life.
“There’s Edison’s store! There’s Edison’s!” Mark Annendale leaned over from the back seat, pointing through the windshield.
Smiling, Paul said, “Thank you, Coonskin Pete, scout of the north.”
Rya was as excited as her brother, for Sam Edison was like a grandfather to them. But she was more dignified than Mark. At eleven she yearned for the womanhood that was still years ahead of her. She sat up straight in her safety harness beside Paul on the front seat. She said, “Mark, sometimes I think you’re five years old instead of nine.”
“Oh, yeah? Well, sometimes I think you’re sixty instead of eleven!”
“Touché,” Paul said.
Mark grinned. Usually, he was no match for his sister. This sort of quick response was not his style.
Paul glanced sideways at Rya and saw that she was blushing. He winked to let her know that he wasn’t laughing at her.
Smiling, sure of herself again, she settled back in her seat. She could have topped Mark’s line with a better one and left him mumbling. But she was capable of generosity, not a particularly common quality in children her age.
The instant the station wagon stopped at the curb, Mark was out on the pavement. He bounded up the three concrete steps, raced across the wide roofed veranda, and disappeared into the store. The screen door slammed shut behind him just as Paul switched off the engine.
Rya was determined not to make a spectacle of herself, as Mark had done. She took her time getting out of the car, stretched and yawned, smoothed the knees of her jeans, straightened the collar of her dark blue blouse, patted her long brown hair, closed the car door, and went up the steps. By the time she reached the porch, however, she too had begun to run.
Edison’s General Store was an entire shopping center in three thousand square feet. There was one room, a hundred feet long and thirty feet wide, with an ancient pegged pine floor. The east end of the store was a grocery. The west end held dry goods and sundries as well as a gleaming, modem drug counter.
As his father had been before him, Sam Edison was the town’s only licensed pharmacist.
In the center of the room, three tables and twelve oak chairs were grouped in front of a wood-burning country stove. Ordinarily, you could find elderly men playing cards at one of those tables, but at the moment the chairs were empty. Edison’s store was not just a grocery and pharmacy; it was also Black River’s community center.
Paul opened the heavy lid on the soda cooler and plucked a bottle of Pepsi from the icy water. He sat down at one of the tables.
Rya and Mark were standing at an old-fashioned glass-fronted candy counter, giggling at one of Sam’s jokes. He gave them sweets and sent them to the paperback and comic book racks to choose presents for themselves; then he came over and sat with his back to the cold stove.
They shook hands across the table.
At a glance, Paul thought, Sam looked hard and mean. He was very solidly built, five eight, one hundred sixty pounds, broad in the chest and shoulders. His short-sleeved shirt revealed powerful forearms and biceps. His face was tanned and creased, and his eyes were like chips of gray slate. Even with his thick white hair and beard, he looked more dangerous than grandfatherly, and he could have passed as a decade younger than his fifty-five years.
But that forbidding exterior was misleading. He was a warm and gentle man, a push-over for children. Most likely, he gave away more candy than he sold. Paul had never seen him angry, had never heard him raise his voice.
“When did you get in town?”
“This is our first stop.”
“You didn’t say in your letter how long you’d be staying this year. Four weeks?”
“Six, I think.”
“Wonderful!” His gray eyes glittered merrily; but in that very craggy face, the expression might have appeared to be malice to anyone who didn’t know him well. “You’re staying the night with us, as planned? You aren’t going up into the mountains today?”
Paul shook his head: no. “Tomorrow will be soon enough. We’ve been on the road since nine this morning. I don’t have strength to pitch camp this afternoon.”
“You’re looking good, though.”
“I’m feeling good now that I’m in Black River.”
“Needed this vacation, did you?”
“God, yes.” Paul drank some of the Pepsi. “I’m sick to death of hypertense poodles and Siamese cats with ring-worms.”
Sam smiled. “I’ve told you a hundred times. Haven’t I? You can’t expect to be an honest veterinarian when you set up shop in the suburbs of Boston. Down there you’re a nurse-maid for neurotic house pets — and their neurotic owners. Get out into the country, Paul.”