“I see.”
“Of course, the Pike Hollow residents view the Blakeneys with the most suspicion, living as close to them as they do. There have been reports that others have had some limited success in getting acquainted. But there is no doubt they are an inbred, secretive, and most likely paranoid extended family, whose isolation over so many years has led to a warped view of the outside world.” Jessup hesitated a moment before continuing. “Did any of the Pike Hollow people you spoke to talk of, ah, specifics?”
“Not really. The most they would do was lay the killings at the doorstep of the Blakeneys. The bar owner, Fred, said more than anybody.” Logan pulled out his notebook, consulted it for a moment. “He said they had lived in the woods too long. He said doing that changes a person. He claimed they stole babies for unknown rituals. And he said they had unnatural dealings with the animals of the deep forest—that they had, in his words, tainted blood.”
“Tainted blood,” Jessup murmured. “Jeremy, let me explain something to you. That’s about as far as you’d expect a citizen of Pike Hollow to open up to an outsider like yourself. But what they talk of among themselves is something else again. I know, because I’ve heard some of it.”
“Such as?”
“Well, Fred Bridger was right. A few babies have gone missing over the last several decades. There have been several unexplained deaths in the park over the last forty years, and a disproportionate number of them happened in the Five Ponds vicinity. For a long time now—even though they wouldn’t say it to your face—the inhabitants around those parts think they know exactly what the Blakeneys are…and what kind of changes they’ve experienced.”
Jessup took another sip of coffee. The droning of insects increased.
“Well?” Logan spoke into the silence. “What do the inhabitants think the Blakeneys are?”
“Lycanthropes.” Jessup spoke the word carefully, as if tasting it.
“Lycanthropes?” Logan repeated. “People believe the Blakeney clan to be werewolves? That’s—”
“What? Ridiculous? Coming from an enigmalogist like you?”
“But there’s no clinical evidence to support such a phenomenon. A human being, transforming into a wolf?”
“From what I’ve read, you’ve investigated stranger things than that. And don’t forget, these are people who know the Blakeneys best—who have lived, practically on their doorstep, for generations. They’ve seen things that you and I haven’t.”
Logan glanced at the ranger with fresh surprise. Was it possible Jessup might actually lend credence to such a story?
Jessup, looking over, guessed what Logan was thinking. He smiled again the thoughtful, wistful smile Logan remembered so well.
“Now you know why I asked you to go out to Pike Hollow today—and why you were the only person I could ask. I mean, let’s face it—it’s your job.”
This was true, Logan admitted to himself; as an enigmalogist, he couldn’t discount any possibility. And Jessup knew these woods and these people much better than he did.
“I’m not saying I believe it,” Jessup went on. “I’m not saying that at all. But as a ranger, I can’t just ignore it, either. Rumors don’t just start themselves. And a lot of strange things are hidden away in these six million acres of forest.”
Logan didn’t reply.
“Just give it some thought,” Jessup said after a long silence. “And read those case files.” And with that he drained his coffee cup, set it down again, and gazed out over the moonlit pond.
9
For the next two days, Logan remained cloistered in his cabin at Cloudwater. The days were Indian-summer warm and the nights brisk and clear. He found himself quickly slipping into a routine. He skipped breakfast, instead making himself a pot of coffee that he nursed over the course of the day. Lunch, always excellent, was brought to his cabin around one p.m. He left the cabin only to have dinner in the main lodge, where he became acquainted with the people staying in the cabins closest to his—a conceptual artist and a pianist-composer—and where talk lingered on the subjects of the weather and their individual projects.
Logan had feared it would take him some time to get reimmersed in his monograph, but Cloudwater seemed to exert an almost magical influence: the enforced isolation, and the faintly competitive awareness of all the work being done by others in the cabins around him, sharpened his concentration. By the end of the first day, he had acquainted himself once again with the source material and reread what he’d accomplished so far; by the end of the second, he was actively writing. It was this sense of real progress that, after dinner that second night, allowed him to relax his guard and finally take a look at Jessup’s case files.
The clinical details in the files did not add much to what he already knew about the murders—except for their sheer ferocity, which was obvious from the evidence photos even given the advanced states of decomposition. While the bodies had not been eaten, they had been torn apart with remarkable fury. The corpses were too far gone for the wounds themselves to be analyzed with any accuracy, and it was primarily the brute strength necessary to rend a human body in such a way that caused the ME to presume bear attacks.
The other commonalities he already knew: both victims were backpackers, both had been killed in the vicinity of Desolation Mountain, and both had been killed during full moons.