The morning dawned, humid and overcast. The heat pressed down on the yard, house, and surrounding buildings, which had all but prepared themselves for a snap of cold and the first true taste of fall.
Lance awoke and blinked at the ceiling of the gazebo. His sleep had been restless, and at one point felt something touching his foot through the sleeping bag. After kicking out, he heard the storage box slide away on the floor, and then fell back into a dream where the water of Superior had crept closer to the door of the gazebo.
His skin felt damp and feverish, and he shrugged out of the sleeping bag and sat up. The fire had died in the early-morning hours, and now only a few coals remained. Lance grabbed his stiffened boxers from the nearby chair and slid them on.
As he buttoned his jeans and reached for his shirt, he noticed that one of the ledgers had fallen out of the box and was open. Two or three pages were sticking straight up from the binding like tongues. Gingerly, he reached down and picked the book up, and was about to close it when he noticed which page it had opened to. The last entries for Gerald lined the far edge of the page. ANN. Absent, no notice.
Something connected in Lance’s mind with an electrical snap.
His fingers scratched at the prior pages, their yellowed faces fanning the humid air across his own. He stopped and stared at an entry marked six months earlier, almost at the front of the book. Alex Stralin had been etched in the name column. Lance followed the line over to the notes, and there it was.
ANN.
Just as Gerald’s entries, Alex’s lasted for about a week and then were terminated. Lance flipped a few pages to verify that he hadn’t been added again later in the year and confirmed that his name did not rest anywhere else in the book. Lance flipped further forward and found yet another name—Jason Howard—that also bore the same code.
Lance fell to the floor beside the box and began to pull book after book from within. The names kept appearing: Ronald Oakland, Marshall Fencer, Alan Westling, Michael East. Always the same letters there.
The first ledger marked June 13, 1955 slipped from Lance’s fingertips and fell back into the empty box. The other registers sat in a disordered pile beside the box. Lance stared out of the window at the gray waters that barely moved in the heat of the day. He had counted fifty-two names in all. Fifty-two names, including Gerald Rhinelander’s. Gerald’s name had been the last marked with the acronym and his car had been the closest to shore in the line of vehicles sunk beneath the water. Lance’s mind reeled. The connection to his grandfather’s company was undeniable. He knew if he were to swim back down to where the cars sat and brought the license numbers back with him, they would undoubtedly be registered to the names in the books before him.
Lance stood and stepped out of the gazebo, into the full humidity of the day. The sun hung somewhere behind the congealed mass of clouds above, fueling the heat that permeated every surface in sight. He stood looking at the house on the rise above him, which was silhouetted against the leaden sky. He felt the need to return to the room; it pulled at him from behind the door like a compass needle pointing to true north. He had missed something there, something crucial to understanding the mystery that had partially revealed itself.
The thought of returning to the room began to crush him in a tightening band of fear. He felt his chest constricting, robbing him of oxygen, while his palms began to sweat. He was ten years old again, looking out of his childhood home to see if his mother’s car had returned or, at the very least, if his father’s truck was absent. He was opening the door to their bedroom and his eyes were falling on his father’s disfigured back. He was being struck, over and over, a cold hand gripping his arm hard enough to crush the bones beneath the skin.