Ashley nodded as if Max had shared something she already knew. “It was real,” she said.
Max laughed an uncomfortable, humorless laugh.
“I accept there are mysteries in the world. Was it real? In my mind it was, and what’s more real than that, you know?” He murmured, wishing away the panicky quiver in his stomach. “Why are you guys interested in The Crawford House?”
Ashley pressed her lips into a thin line and then glanced at Sid.
“We think The Crawford House is haunted too,” Ashley said.
“Did you see something out there?” Max asked.
Ashley shook her head. “Just heard some weird stuff.”
Max recognized the lie. Whatever they thought about The Crawford House it went beyond strange noises, but he sensed their unwillingness to open up.
“We’ve got to go,” Ashley said, grabbing Sid by the shirt and tugging him up. “We’ll see you around, Mr. Wolf.”
They walked to Sid’s bike, Ashley climbing on the knobs of the back tire, and rode away.
18
After the ice cream shop, Max’s entire body seemed tense, as if the muscle memory of that long ago night in The Crawford house had as much to say as the mental one.
He needed a long ride to clear his head, and pulled into a gas station on his way out of town to fuel up.
“What’s this country coming to?” The man who stood in front of Max, waiting to pay for gas, demanded. He folded his newspaper with a huff and slapped it on the counter.
The cashier, a petite girl no older than twenty-one widened her eyes.
“Sorry, Miss,” the man said, half turning to Max and gesturing at the paper. “A little girl missing from the woods just down from her street. It’s a crying shame what people are up to. You hear this good,” the man continued, turning back to the cashier and directing his words at her. “Stay away from strangers. STAY AWAY! Don’t ride with ‘em. Don’t even walk up to their car if they're asking directions. My sister’s son disappeared walking to a park not two blocks from his house. Two blocks!”
The girl glanced at Max, and the cautious expression vanished from her face. She flashed him a brilliant smile.
“Oh, I’m careful,” the girl stated, ringing up the man’s newspaper and Styrofoam cup of coffee. “After those girls went missing a few years back, our school did a whole assembly on safety and self-defense.” She poked two pink fingernails in a jab at the men. “Go for the eyes,” she said.
“Good, good. That’s the ticket,” the man agreed.
“A dollar-fifteen please,” she told him.
He set the money on the counter, and as she made change, Max focused on the man.
“Where’d you say that was?”
“Over in Lake City. I grew up there. Back in my day, you could stay out all night playing without a care in the world. Course my ma strapped us if we ever did that, but it wasn’t over no boogeyman. It was because we skipped out on our chores. These days you got weirdos pluckin’ kids out of their own neighborhoods. Men murderin’ women and burning them in the woods. That’s what that lunatic up north was doing. Had some old kiln on his property according to the paper.”
“Yeah, I remember hearing about that guy. What was his name again?”
“Spencer Crow,” the girl piped up. “I heard he was very handsome.” Her eyes lingered on Max as she said the word.
“I’ll take ten in gas on pump four,” he told her.
She rang him up, brushing her fingers over his palm when she handed his change back.
“That’s your bike?” she asked, looking out the window at his motorcycle.
“Yeah, she’s mine.”
“I love motorcycles,” she offered, leaning forward on the counter. Her long dark hair brushed her suddenly more visible cleavage.
The man gave Max a significant look and smiled.
“You should get one,” Max told her. “Not enough women ride bikes.”
He hurried to catch up with the man as he left the gas station.
“I think that young lady was hoping for a date,” the man told him.
“A date is the last thing I need,” Max laughed, though he could almost hear his mother disagreeing with him. “Listen, I’m a teacher at Winterberry Middle School, and the girl who just disappeared was in my class. There have been other kids who have gone missing too.”
“There have?” the man looked surprised. “I haven’t read anything about it, and I get this paper every single day. I read the whole thing too. Even the obituaries. My wife says it’s morbid, but at least once a month, we know someone listed in there. How are we to pay our respects if we don’t even know when someone has passed?”
“Very true,” Max agreed. “Do you know if any other kids have disappeared from your sister’s town?”
The man shook his head. “Not that we’ve heard of, and we’ve been pounding the pavement over there, hanging up fliers and trying to question people ourselves. She’s got a detective on the case now, but they gave her the cold shoulder when she first reported the boy missing.”
He opened his car door but made no move to get inside.
“See, part of the problem is my sister is poorer than a church mouse. She lives in this shabby apartment building full of down-on-their luck families, some of ‘em with five, six kids running the streets all hours of the day and night. But Chris wasn’t that way. He wandered, sure, what kid doesn’t, but he was home for supper every night at six sharp when his mama got home from work. She knew the minute he didn’t show up, something bad had gone on.”
“Do you think she’d be willing to talk to me?” Max asked.
“Oh sure, yes, sir, she would. She’s desperate to get people talking about her son.”
The man wrote his sister’s phone number on the back of his gas station receipt.
“I’ll tell her to expect a call.”
“HELLO?” Max heard the woman’s searching voice on the line, and knew he’d reached the mother of the missing boy. Her voice teemed with hope and fear, the fear slightly outrunning the hope.
“Hi, Ms. Rowe?”
“Yes, this is her.” Her voice rose another octave.
“My name is Max Wolfenstein. I ran into your brother yesterday, and he told me your son is missing.”
The woman paused on the line, and Max wondered if she’d hung up.
“Yes, he mentioned you.”
“I’m a teacher here in Roscommon, and we’ve had several disappearances as well.”
“You have? Of children?”
“Yes. I’m not sure if there’s any connection, but it strikes me as odd. Can you tell me about the day your son disappeared?”
The woman sniffled, and Max stared at his map of northern Michigan, studying the X marks for the hundredth time in search of some similarity his mind was overlooking.
“Chris didn’t come home for dinner. He never missed dinner. It was March 17th, a Thursday. He’s a good boy. He got into trouble now and then. All boys do, I think, but he always made it to dinner.”
“Did he attend school that day?”
“Yes, school let out at two-fifteen, and he rode the bus home. He had plans to meet two other boys from the neighborhood at the basketball court. He never arrived. Somewhere between our apartment and the park, he disappeared.”
“People saw him ride the bus?”
“Yes. The bus driver said he got off the bus at our stop. She didn’t watch him walk into the building, but Nancy Perdy did. She lives in the apartment above us and spotted Chris coming up the sidewalk. He waved to her. She said he looked normal, smiling, kind of in a rush, probably to go play with his friends.”