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  The downspout and gutter parted with a popping of metal. He hung on to the gutter as it swung an arc to the ground. Water gushed from the downspout over his head and shoulders, and wet leaves clung like cold leeches. Hitting the ground with a squishy thud, he bowled over backward while the gutter splattered into the mud at the foundation. Joshua picked himself up and ran to the front door as firelight flickered out over the surrounding trees.

  The front door was rarely locked; Joshua flung it open and dropped his box inside the entry hall. He pushed open the girls’ door, hoping against his gut feelings that he might find them frightened and cowering, but alive.

  He froze in the doorway, all hopes washed away with the downpour. Had there been blood, he might have been less surprised.

  Instead, what she’d done to them seemed even worse.

  Overhead, the fire raged, and he thought Doris might still be wailing. He blocked it from his mind, realizing that tears were streaming down his cheeks. He’d liked the feeling of young lives depending on him, looking up to him. And with them gone, snuffed out like a pair of matches, he wondered if he’d ever want to risk losing another family, one he’d begun for his very own. He thought he wept for that as much as he did for their deaths. It struck him as being selfish, and he wept even harder.

  Joshua stumbled out to his car. The box was nearly falling apart by now, and he cast it into the passenger seat.

  Just one more thing.

  His feet slipping in wet grass and leaves, he ran around to the rear of the house. Flames lapped out around the upstairs windows, and it wouldn’t be long before the entire house was gutted.

  The strange stone lay waiting for him on a weathered workbench. For whatever reasons, he was sure it held the key to understanding what had happened. He’d sooner leave the box of notes behind than this rock.

  Straining, grunting, he wrapped his arms around the stone and lurched a drunken wobble back to his car. He let the stone thud into the rear floorboard, where it sat wet and dark and dripping, and then he sagged against the car in exhaustion. His clothes clung to his body like a second skin, and he felt chilled to the bone. Even if there had been anything else in the house worth saving, he doubted he had the strength to go after it.

  Joshua wiped rain from his eyes, gazing toward the blazing house. Behind him, the trees watched with indifference. Rain fell among them, and they murmured softly, one to another, in whispered communion. Shielded from sight, the hole the girls had so innocently dug called to him with a voice made faint by time … but a voice growing stronger.

  Then, with his tears falling as freely as the rain, Joshua climbed behind the wheel and drove away as the fire consumed the house.

  His home.

  PART I

  DISCOVERY

  Chapter 1

  It didn’t seem too much to ask for — all we wanted was someplace to call our own. Someplace we could lay claim to during our last summer of innocence. Because once summer was over, no matter how hard we tried, things would never be quite the same again. I felt it as surely as you can feel a summer storm on the way.

  It was graduation night, early June. Fifteen minutes earlier, Phil and Rick and I had shucked our robes, whose billowing gray sleeves had made us look like enormous sick birds, and we headed for the open road with a case of beer. There were a bunch of parties scattered throughout town, classmates ready to kick off the rest of their lives with a hangover to remember the occasion by, and maybe we’d hit one or two later on. But for now it seemed appropriate to get off by ourselves. Maybe figure out where we were headed for the next fifty or sixty years.

  “Where to?” Phil asked. He was our driver, the eternal chauffeur whose limo was a 1970 Plymouth Duster. Even though the finish was a putrid green mottled with blue-gray patches of Bondo, even though tattered foam rubber crept out of the seats’ seams like limp fingers, even though a day of baking in the summer sun left the interior smelling like an old Big Mac box … we loved it just the same. It was our shrine, a magic vehicle that could spirit us from the Real World into one of our own creation, where we had a little more control over things and a better grasp of who and what we were. “Anyplace special you want to go?”

  “Just keep driving,” I said from the passenger seat. “I’ll find someplace for us.”

  “Chris Anderson, trailblazer,” Rick said from the back seat. He was this night’s Keeper of the Beer. “Remember what happened when you tried this last winter? You put us into a snowbank.”

  “Trust me.” I grinned back at him and winked. “I feel lucky tonight.”

  Rick rolled his eyes in mock despair and turned back to his guitar, a Martin twelve-string. He was better than merely good on it; I thought him genuinely great, and it was what had earned him his nickname from us: Twang. He picked along with the song coming over the rear-deck speakers, but I could barely hear him. Phil liked his music LOUD. Still, those Craig Power-Plays came in handy whenever we got stuck with some clown we weren’t too fond of. We simply exiled him to the back seat and drowned him out with Van Halen.

  Phil laughed as I held an unopened can of Coors before me like a divining rod. We’d been driving on Route 37 and were almost six miles north of town. Almost time to leave the beaten path.

  “Here?” Phil said. A country road intersection was coming up, marked with a green reflective sign. The Coors hadn’t flickered. “No, not yet.”

  We rolled on another mile or so, until I extended the can toward my left, bumping Phil’s arm. “It feels something coming up,” I said. “Steady, big fella, steady…”

  Another intersection shone in the headlights, and as we drew near we saw the sign read 1250N. I couldn’t recall having traveled it before, but then habit usually took us east and west out of town, instead of north. How sad. Behavioral ruts at seventeen. Go for it.

  “Turn left! Left!” I cried. “This is it! Go west, young man!”

  Phil cut left, slinging gravel and fishtailing the car. Rick rolled from one side to the other and his guitar rang with a clamorous discord. Phil had barely straightened out the car when a large weathered sign loomed up on the left side of the road. Pleasant Hills, it read in bold earthtones. Choice Lots Now Available! Three Stocked Lakes. Coming Soon — Tennis Courts. At the bottom it listed the realtors you could call if you were interested. From the length of time that sign looked to have been standing there, I didn’t think the phones had been ringing off the hooks.

  “One more time!” I yelled to Phil. The can wavered madly in my hands, and I started emitting high-pitched beeping sounds.

  “You got it, Bwana.” Phil screeched onto an even narrower road leading back south. We quieted down to watch what was coming up.

  The Duster rolled on, and eventually the road took a right curve. So far it was open land, maybe an occasional tree. No houses. We hit a T intersection, and up ahead we could see a lot more trees and moonlight glimmering on water.

  Phil cocked an eyebrow. “Left or right?”

  “Go right.”

  Two left curves took us down a little incline to an asphalt cul-de-sac by a pond. Phil parked, and we got out to stretch.

  “What’d I tell you?” I said with no small amount of pride.

  Twang gave me a bit of applause. “Well done. Must be that Norwegian explorer blood in you.”

  A modern-day Leif Eriksson, that was me. “I hereby claim this land in the name of the State of Intoxication!” I christened it with a fresh beer and took in the night. Awfully mild for June in Southern Illinois. Lower sixties, like a foretaste of fall. And there wasn’t much I liked better than drinking beer under an autumn night sky with my two best friends.

  From what we could see, Pleasant Hills alternated between grassy open space and woodland. From where we’d stopped on the asphalt, a large grove of trees sat maybe thirty yards ahead of us. Overhead, the sky stretched vast and open, showing us a depth of stars as they could never be seen in town.

  “What is this place?” Rick asked, wandering around wi
th his guitar slung over one shoulder. The guitar looked nearly as big as he was. Rick’s credo was that good things come in small packages.

  Phil took a thoughtful sip of beer. “Seems like I remember reading about this a few years ago in the paper. I’d forgotten all about it. It’s some kind of housing subdivision that didn’t go over. They got the road down, but that’s about it.”

  Rick surveyed the land with a critic’s eye. “Chalk up one triumph for Mother Nature.”

  “Nature had nothing to do with it,” Phil said. “Just nobody wanted to build a house out in the middle of nowhere.”

  “Oh, come on. You used to have an imagination. Suppose this is one spot in the world that couldn’t be civilized.”

  Phil rolled his eyes. “Couldn’t be civilized, hell. What do you think we’re parked on? Asphalt doesn’t grow wild, you know.”

  “Yeah, yeah. But they couldn’t take it any farther.” Rick motioned toward the trees before us, the pond on our right. “It’s like the ground and the trees rejected everything else. They let ‘em lay down the road so we could get here, then wouldn’t have anything more. Don’t you see? A little oasis just for us.”

  Phil shook his head and smiled at me. “Listen to Joyce Kilmer here.”

  “And then it waited and sent out vibes to Chris so we could find it.” Rick looked immensely pleased with his theory.

  Phil hopped onto his hood, stretching out his impossibly long legs as he continued to taunt Rick. Twang defended his theory with a passion, and I wandered away, toward the grove. An arbitrary choice.

  As I drew nearer, I could make out individual trees within the grove. The largest one stood near the front, a big oak at least four or five feet thick at the base. It towered overhead, dozens of limbs branching off like powerful arms.

  Vibes, Rick had said. Suddenly that didn’t seem so outlandish.

  Standing before the tree, I had an eerie, creeping rush of what most people would call déjà vu. But that wasn’t quite it. I’d never been here, I knew it, and I didn’t feel like I had. But something sparked deep inside me. Almost as if … the place knew me.

  Welcome, it seemed to be saying. I’ve been waiting a long, long time.

  I stood rooted to the spot, gazing up at that tree, a tree that seemed to rule over the others. And I felt as if something long forgotten were trying to fight its way back up the stream of memory, and the journey was none too easy. Another moment passed and I didn’t even feel as though I were in the twentieth century anymore. The atmosphere seemed younger, more primitive…

  “Chris! Hey, Chris!” Phil calling. “Get your ass back here and be sociable. Pretend you like us or something.”

  And with that, the spell was broken.

  I shook my head and walked back to the car, where Phil and Rick appeared to have settled their differences.

  “We decided that the name Pleasant Hills sucks,” Phil said. “It needs a new name.”

  “I say call it Tri-Lakes,” Rick said. “Three lakes, get it?”

  I nodded, still preoccupied with what I’d been feeling a minute before, as the place had worked its own brand of magic on me.

  “Tri-Lakes,” I mused. “Catchy name.”

  Someplace to call our own. We’d found it, all right. Or maybe it was the other way around.

  Chapter 2

  Phil Markley and Rick Woodward and I happened across each other in seventh grade. We each lived in separate parts of town and so we’d gone to different grade schools, but our hometown of Mt. Vernon had only one junior high. Pure chance brought us together; we sat in the same back corner of homeroom. I remember that first day, how I walked in and took a seat next to them because they looked the least intimidating. Phil was curly-haired and so tall he looked awkward even when sitting down, and he was the only kid in school whose shoe size exceeded his age. Rick was this short, scrawny little guy that I knew would get picked on a lot if he didn’t make his mark fast.

  Phil and Rick and I turned to each other for support and courage against our teacher, a behemoth named Mavis Veach. With Alley Oop arms, a face only slightly more attractive than a bulldog’s, and a neverending supply of floral print dresses, Mavis Veach had been a widow for more than thirty-five years. Rumor had it that her husband had been crushed by a tank in World War II. Rumor also had it that the tank’s name was Mavis. And, quite simply, she scared the piss out of us. Learning through intimidation.

  As seventh grade rolled on, we started hanging out together outside of class as well as in. When it looked like a job transfer for Rick’s dad meant they’d be moving to Virginia, the three of us formulated plans to run away together. Florida would be nice, we reasoned. It never got cold there, and we could live on the beach near a hot dog stand. Luckily, Rick’s dad quit his engineering job and took a teaching position at the junior college nearby. I don’t think I realized how close I’d grown to them until I felt that flood of joy at knowing I wouldn’t have to run away after all — which I never knew if we really would have attempted — leaving behind my parents and little brother, Aaron. It was relief at knowing we could still be normal kids. Together.

  Things did get a little rocky between us in eighth grade. That year Rick took a mistress: the guitar. And a mistress can wedge her seductive way between even the closest of friends.

  Rick had gotten the bug to learn how to play late in seventh grade, and by the time his next birthday came around in September, his folks knew it was more than a passing whim. So they bought him a Yamaha acoustic, a decent guitar to learn on.

  And Rick went at it like a boy possessed. He took lessons from a music teacher at the college where his father taught, and most of his spare time was devoted to practice. He started getting into music theory, and collecting bizarre, eclectic music by bands we’d never heard of.

  All of which did little to further his friendship with normal, no-talent buffoons like Phil and me. There was no common ground to identify with this strange new passion. And we hated the way he’d walk around sucking the fingertips of his left hand, painfully tender since his calluses hadn’t formed yet. Phil and I about wrote him off for good, since we weren’t as important as this hunk of polished wood with six strings, and we suspected that at times he made his parents out to be a lot stricter than they actually were, just so he could have an excuse to stay inside and practice.

  But then our attitude did an abrupt about-face when Rick made his performing debut.

  Each May, our junior high held a talent show. It got us out of class for an hour and was good for a few laughs, some of which were even intentional. Rick was lucky enough to be scheduled last. After an hour of mediocre dance numbers, a horrid violin duet, and not one, but two guys who recited Steve Martin routines, his act could look incredible by comparison alone. Rick walked onstage, nearly dwarfed by his full-size guitar, gave his audience a queasy smile, and blew everybody away with a quick neoclassical solo called “Mood For A Day,” which he’d figured out from one of his old Yes albums. Rick got a standing ovation, and rumor had it that even Mavis Veach smiled.

  Phil and I forgave Rick then and there for any times we may have felt slighted by him. Phil nicknamed him Twang and we were all bosom buddies again. I wish I could say that we forgave him because we realized the degree of commitment it took to harness that much talent. That was part of it, but I’m sure just as much was pure selfishness. We wanted to cash in on as much secondhand glory as we could.

  He added a couple more guitars while we were in high school. A Les Paul electric came along at the end of our freshman year, and a year later he picked up a Martin twelve-string in St. Louis. Rick loved that guitar, treating it like a priceless heirloom. He’d usually insist on bringing it along when we went cruising. But that was okay. By then we knew it could be no other way.

  Besides, I loved to watch him play. Even when Rick was playing hot enough to scorch the hide off a rhino, he rarely grimaced like your typical guitar hero. He always grinned his shy, crooked smile. And I knew that Rick w
as one of the luckiest souls on earth. Even if his guitar playing never made him a dime, he was still way ahead of the rest of us. Because it seemed that so few people have been gifted with something they love so passionately.

  While Rick’s guitar playing had won him lots of friends, and I would do most anything on a dare without caring who thought what, Phil, on the other hand, had little to say to anyone he wasn’t already close to. He’d been told time and again that he had a lousy attitude, that he should be more outgoing, all the stock phrases adults use to show you the error of your ways. But he was happy with who he was.

  One incident sticks out in my mind as best capturing Phil. It was the time Phil rid us of the dreaded Chuck Horton, a guy who had adopted us as friends when we were juniors. And when we were still insecure enough about ourselves to accept him partly out of pity, partly because we hadn’t really gotten to know him, and partly because next to him, we looked even better. Everyone knows a Chuck Horton at some time in life … the perennial loser with no real friends, and the best he can say is that a few people will tolerate him for a while on a good day.

  Chuck was fat, no two ways about it. His face was flabby, too. It looked as if someone had sculpted it from dough, then given it a good smack with his fist. Everyone called him Hurdles because of an incident in junior high on intermural track-and-field day. He’d insisted on running the 220 hurdles event, and nothing could change his mind. The gun went off, and Chuck managed to bowl over his first three hurdles and go tumbling after each spill. He would’ve plowed through a fourth if the race hadn’t ended. From then on, Chuck was doomed to be known as Hurdles. Hurdles Horton.