Such thoughts on the relative beauty of the woods vanished when the bridge came into view. It lay across the river like something abandoned, a graceless span of metal and wood. Beyond it, around another curve, were the skeet range and a couple of faculty houses tucked away among the trees, and then the back entrance to Blackburne. I walked out onto the bridge. Leaning against the rail, I looked down at the flat rock a football field away where Porter and I had found Terence’s body. There was no visible mark left on the rock, no bloodstain or other sign that a boy had died there. Still, the place seemed marked, somehow, the air itself haunted by what had happened. But Terence Jarrar was not a ghost wandering the banks of the Shenandoah. His body was in the ground by now, far away. It was sad how little I knew of him. And now I wouldn’t have the chance to know him any more.
Sick with such thoughts, I almost missed the sound. It was low but distinct, the sound of a flat piece of wood striking another. It reverberated through the trees and then faded to nothing, all within a second or so. I looked around, puzzled. There was no one on the bridge, nor on the road in either direction. I glanced one more time downriver, seeing nothing on either bank, and then walked across to the other side of the bridge and looked upstream. That was when I saw, among a stand of poplars on the school side of the river, the heavy outline of the outing cabin. The cabin had a screened-in porch that looked out over the river, and I realized that what I had heard was the slam of a wooden screen door, as if someone had opened it and it had swung back on its spring, shutting with a bang. There was a breeze, but not enough to blow open a screen door. I kept my eyes on the cabin. There was a flicker of movement behind the screen door. Or had it been my imagination?
There was the faintest hint of a path from the bridge to the cabin. No one was nearby as far as I could see, no faculty member walking a dog, no student lurking behind a tree. I walked up the path to the cabin, which was roughly built but looked sound. It was at least sixty years old, with small dusty windows and a steep roof, a few tiles from which lay on the ground under the eaves. I took the steps up to the screen door, one board popping beneath my feet. The door was unlatched, the porch beyond in shadow. I opened the door, which made no sound whatsoever. Part of me was disappointed that it hadn’t made an eerie screech. I smiled at the thought and then froze in the act of stepping through the doorway. On the bare wooden floor of the porch, not two steps ahead of me, lay a thick brass disc. It looked for all the world like a miniature hockey puck. I might have stepped on it had I not happened to glance down. I knelt and picked it up. It was heavier than I would have thought. On the surface was the engraved inscription PLS. Someone’s initials? The disc had a hinge at one end, and I swung the lid open to see the round white face, elegant script letters, and hovering needle of a compass. The needle seemed to work, as far as I could tell. It wasn’t all that surprising to find a compass in a cabin used by the outing club, I reflected. Then again, this compass looked clean, without any dust or leaves covering it to indicate that it had been there for a long time. As if it had been dropped on the porch recently.
I looked across the porch at the door to the cabin. It was painted a shade of green that might have once been bright. About a foot above the doorknob were a steel hasp, firmly bolted into the door, and a staple on the door frame over which the hasp would fit. A padlock hung from the staple, but the hasp was not fitted over the staple—it swung freely from the door.
There were windows to either side of the door, both dark and cobwebby. I couldn’t see anything through either of them. The hairs on the back of my neck stood on end as I reached for the door. I grasped the knob and silently stood there, listening. I heard nothing. Yet I was sure someone was inside. It wasn’t just the unsecured hasp. It was almost a physical perception, like sound or sight, except it wasn’t either of those. I just knew. Knowing didn’t make me feel any more at ease as I opened the door.
It creaked as it swung inside, and I stepped into a large common room with crate furniture—a sofa and three blocky chairs with ancient foam cushions—and an old brick fireplace. The fireplace held a few ancient cigarette butts, but nothing that had been smoked in recent history. There was nowhere to hide in the main room, no space underneath the crate furniture. Two doors sat in the back wall, seeming to lead into separate rooms. The right-hand door was opened inward about a foot.
I stood in the center of the room, weighing the compass in my hand. Was there a door between these two rooms? Or was there a rear entrance? No sound came from behind either door.
“Hey!” I shouted, suddenly, hoping for a reaction. The word rang off the walls. Then, when the sound had dissipated, it was as if the earlier silence had grown denser, withdrawing into itself. Nobody had yelped in panic or stumbled, revealing his hiding place. “I’ve got your compass,” I said. “I just want to talk.” Now I felt like a cop in a bad movie, trying to negotiate with a fugitive. Next I would demand that someone come out with his hands up. A steady silence was my only answer. Swearing, I strode toward the open door on the right, pushed it open, and stepped into the room. Two sets of heavy bunk beds, a window through which milky light hovered, and dust. There was also another door that connected the two back rooms, a fact I became aware of only after someone on the other side of that door shoved it open, hard.
I turned toward the noise, and the door caught me like a well-timed punch to the face. Lights sparked in my vision. I fell backward, grabbing at the door, which seemed impossibly tall. Then something smashed against the back of my head, and the world shut down around me like an electrical cord yanked out of a socket—a brief flicker and then nothing.
I OPENED MY EYES and immediately winced. Pain shot through my left cheek. I sat up on a dusty wooden floor. I was in the room with the bunk beds. The back of my head throbbed where it had hit something. Dazed, I looked at the window. The milky light was still there. I looked at my watch and figured I’d been out for only a couple of minutes, max.
The door. Someone had opened it into my face—on purpose. I got to one knee, ignoring the flares of pain in my head, and then stood, my hand on a bunk bed frame. My cheek stung, and when I touched it, my fingers came away with a drop of blood. Whoever had pole-axed me with the door was gone—I could see through the open doorway that the third room held more bunk beds, no hiding places. It did, however, have a back door. I hurried to it and tried to push it open, but the door stayed firmly closed. My guess was it had its own padlock, this one properly locked on the other side.