Through the Trees
Chapter 1
About three feet down, my shovel comes into contact with something hard.
I tap twice more, troubled by the shrill metallic clank, almost human in its protest. The ground thrums with an odd tension. My biceps tense, a sudden chill sending a shiver through my bones. I shake it off.
I need that stupid ring.
Using the shovel’s blade, I hack away a knot of fine roots and decomposed vegetation—remains of leaves and pine needles from autumns passed. The layer of soil beneath is an ashy gray, made up of hard-packed clay. One end of a pewter tube sticks out of the earth, barely visible in the failing daylight. By the time I manage to free the cylindrical canister from its grave, night is nearly on me.
The Adirondack Mountains get dark at night.
Truth told, it’s not the dark that scares me so much as the memories. This whole island reeks of poorly healed wounds. Each dirt path is a strip of shiny puckered flesh and every bare rock bed a jagged, obvious scar. The longer I stay here, the more I risk tearing them open again.
I make my way out of the woods, surprised to see thick curls of mist whirling atop the steely-black water. It was a clear fall day when I rowed over, Lake Grace smooth like glass.
Beneath the mist, Grace has angry wrinkles. The temperature seems to drop five degrees a second. Hugging the canister to my chest, I hurry in the direction of my kayak. The esker’s main dock’s been sorely neglected; I accidentally paddled right past when I first rowed up, its splintered brown planks half sunken. The “Camp Pentecost” sign is still stuck to the old jack pine, same place it’s hung for more than thirty years. Except now the dried-out board is near split in half, held up by one rusty nail and prayer, probably.
I decided against docking there. Maybe because I didn’t trust that decrepit dock. Or maybe because of Camp Pentecost lurking in the background, all sharp angles and crooked stone chimneys. Peering through a dense tangle of hobblebushes like some kind of predator. The rutted gravel roadway was never large enough for anything more than a quad bike, but it looks downright savage now, overgrown with blueberry plants and creeping raspberry canes. Sunlight is often in short supply in the mountains, and a thick canopy of firs and hemlocks cast Camp Pentecost in ever present shadows.
It was an easy decision to keep on rowing, way down the esker, until I found a relatively sandy stretch of shore close to the “Hexing Grounds.” That’s what we called it as kids.
Really, it’s just a well-hidden glade tucked away in the woods.
Sticking the canister under one arm, I lower myself far enough to slip into my bright red kayak. The boat and surrounding waters barely register my presence. A few small ripples and I’m settled, ready to row away from this God-forsaken place. The mist, though, is disquieting. Bad conditions for boating. I have the mandatory red and green light attached to the front of my kayak, but who knows how visible I’ll be in such heavy fog.