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He regarded the tree. He wasn’t going to even bother getting out of the truck. It was too big to move alone. He’d need a plow, a bigger vehicle. He’d have to get help.
He only knew one person with a truck and a plow big enough to move that tree.
He sat a moment, thinking, listening to the rain beat on the roof of his car, watching it sheet down his windshield.
He thought about going back to May where he’d left her sleeping. How many years had he spent watching people, their lives and dramas unfolding before him? All the while, failing to live his own life.
He was about to turn around when he saw a large form disappear into the trees. Deer.
He kept watching. Where there was one, there were more. Not a breath later, a large buck and a smaller doe passed through the beam of his headlights. They both stopped to stare in his direction, eyes glowing, tawny fur shining in the wet, before bounding out of sight.
He sat, thinking about the people in the house. The pretty yogi. The party girl. The stay-at-home mom. The tech mogul. The computer wonk. The mystery man. All players on his stage. What had they gotten themselves into?
He’d help them. That was his role as their host, wasn’t it? The code he’d established.
The road to Old Bob’s was swamped but he made it up the winding, isolated drive. Lights glowed inside the tiny cabin. Nights like this it was a good thing to be off the grid, making your own power. He saw Old Bob’s truck sitting under the covered garage, plow already attached. He must have anticipated road clearing.
The door swung open and Bob’s big form filled the frame. Bob wasn’t that old, just prematurely gray. And Bracken was pretty sure his name wasn’t Bob. He’d come to town a few years ago, kept to himself. Bracken knew he was a vet; had seen combat in the Middle East. He was a widower, rumor had it. He had the flat stare of a soldier, and the build of a heavyweight fighter, a head of slate hair worn long to his shoulders. He reliably did the work he was hired to do, and barely said a word.
Now Bob stepped out onto the porch holding a rifle.
Bracken climbed out of the driver’s seat and approached; the rain had turned to drizzle.
“Hey, Bob,” he said, climbing the steps.
“Bracken,” he said, lowering the gun to his side. “What brings you out?”
“Power’s out at Overlook,” he said. “I have a tree down and can’t get to my guests.”
“Don’t you have a generator up there?”
“It didn’t kick on. Not sure why.”
Bob frowned. The truth was that no one local liked going up to Overlook. Bracken had trouble with builders, tradesmen, groundskeepers. Even May didn’t like to be there alone, brought someone with her if she could find the help, claiming it was too big to clean alone quickly. But Bob wasn’t the type to spook.
Even though it was ancient history now, a family had been murdered up there. A disturbed man had murdered his family.The Realtor had told him about it—because she had to by law. The property had sat empty for nearly twenty years when he bought the acres for a song. He’d razed the small house that had gone to seed, cleared the building site, and set out to build the house that he’d intended to live in. He wasn’t afraid of ghosts.
Over the years, stories of a woman in white walking through the trees wailing for her children had circulated. In the nineties a group of teenagers said they saw a little girl wading in the creek. They told police that they chased after her but she disappeared. No evidence of a girl was found; no one had been reported missing. But the truth was the body of the Anderson girl had been found far from the house, as though she’d wandered off after she’d been shot and died by the creek.
Bracken had never seen anything of the sort, no woman in white, no wading child. As far as he was concerned dead was dead. And the world was full of terrible tragedies. Was there an inch of ground anywhere untouched by darkness of some kind?
He thought about what the yoga girl had said, about the place feeling unsettled.
It was true that there were more problems at Overlook than he had at his other places—some guests reported strange noises in the night. Raccoons, most likely. The power went out a bit too often, hence the generator. Now the generator, brand-new and recently inspected by Bracken himself, not coming on. There were roof leaks, the occasional plumbing problem. The banal challenges of home ownership. Not haunting.
“Can we wait until the storm passes?” asked Bob, more worried about the weather, Bracken was sure, than afraid to go up to Overlook.
“Seems like there’s a bit of a break now,” Bracken pressed.
Bob looked up at the sky. It was clear enough for a patch of starlight. “Not for long.”
“The guest is offering a big bonus if we can get the road cleared tonight. Seems like there might be something going on up there.”
It was hard to motivate Bob with money. He was a man who needed little. But he regarded Bracken seriously. Finally, he issued a grunt and went inside. When he came back out, he wore a rain poncho with a hood, thick boots.
“I’ll follow you out there,” he said.
“Appreciate it,” said Bracken and headed back to the truck.
