Chapter 4
Chapter Four
Ben figured the best thing to do was to go back to the forest while Sidney was at work, so he could gather any additional evidence that the black-clad stranger might have left behind.
No point in keeping his plans from her, and although she looked less than thrilled at being stuck at the pet shop while he went adventuring, she didn’t protest.
“If things weren’t so busy, I might consider closing up for the day,” she told him. “As it is, I don’t think that’s a very good idea. Also, if I get too flaky, people might abandon me for the PetSmart in Eureka.”
He hadn’t thought that was too much of a possibility — from what he’d been able to tell, the people in Silver Hollow did everything they could to shop local and keep their cash in the community — but he only nodded.
“I don’t even know if I’ll find much,” he said.
“The guy we saw on the camera didn’t look like the kind of person who’d be careless about that sort of thing.
But it still feels better to take a look around in daylight before we head out there tonight.
Also, Marjorie Tran said she’d be here around two, so I have to be back in town by then anyway. ”
All this seemed to reassure Sidney that he didn’t plan to abandon her completely, because she’d told him to let her know if Marjorie found anything, and that she’d see him after work.
That was why he packed a lunch in his backpack and headed out to the forest a little after eleven, figuring he’d first go to the clearing where their trail cameras had captured the stranger the night before and see if he could find any clues that might not have shown up on the video footage.
After that, he could take a look at any other likely spots that would give them the best chance of tracking the guy and doing their best to discover exactly what he was up to.
On that Wednesday morning, more people were out on the trail than he’d expected, and Ben had to zig here and zag there to avoid meeting up with any of them.
Although none of the clearings he and Sidney had staked out were precisely a secret, he didn’t see the point in leading anyone to a place he planned to investigate.
Luckily, it seemed as if all the hikers intended to stay on the main trails, and no one was around when he cut away to take the barely visible path that would take him to the first clearing.
He looked from side to side, and although he saw broken-off leaves here and what could have been a footprint in another spot, it sure seemed to Ben that the stranger had taken care to move lightly and not leave much trace of his presence.
Which made sense, if the guy was military or special ops or something of that ilk. Of course, that still didn’t explain why he’d felt compelled to carve Ogham letters into so many of the trees.
When Ben got to the clearing, it appeared relatively undisturbed…as long as you didn’t look too closely.
To his eyes, the carvings were obvious even in the foggy half-light of that July morning.
He went from tree to tree, taking pictures of each carving with his cell phone.
As they’d seen in the oak grove the day before, the marks seemed to correspond with the trees where they were carved, although again, the letter for “pine” had been placed on coast redwoods and sequoias as well as ordinary pine trees.
What exactly was going on here?
At the moment, he didn’t have a clue, but he told himself that was all right.
Sometimes you needed to simply gather evidence and then worry about its implications later on.
After he’d documented everything in this clearing, he moved on to the next one on his list, although that location seemed untouched. Was it the stranger’s next target?
Maybe. On the other hand, the clearing where he’d been working the night before had only half the trees marked. Had he never intended to carve letters into every single tree, or had he only gotten to some of them before he judged it wise to move on?
Either scenario seemed plausible enough. However, since he couldn’t begin to guess at the guy’s motivation, it seemed better to stick to the original plan and see what happened.
He and Sidney would be in the clearing no matter what…and would just have to pray that luck smiled on them.
In the meantime, he sat down on the stump of a long-fallen oak and ate his lunch, then carefully stowed the empty baggie that had held his sandwich in his backpack.
If he hustled, he should be back in town in enough time to meet Marjorie Tran and give her the general lay of the land, and hopefully after that, she’d be able to get some readings around town that might point to the cause of all the anomalies they’d been experiencing there lately.
And if she couldn’t find anything?
Well, he supposed he’d have to tell himself it was yet another mystery to emerge from the forest…one that might never be solved.
Marjorie was around Sidney’s age, but the resemblance stopped there.
The grad student’s straight black hair was cut in a blunt bob that barely reached her chin, and her brown eyes were obscured by a pair of chunky glasses.
And although Ben had to admit that Sidney Lowell’s everyday attire tended to be fairly basic, at least he’d seen her wearing pretty embroidered tops from time to time, mostly when she knew she wouldn’t be doing anything that might mess them up.
Marjorie, on the other hand, seemed like the sort of person who’d been born wearing cargo shorts and a black tank top, an outfit that didn’t seem quite adequate to his adopted hometown’s perpetual clouds and fog.
Well, it was a lot hotter in Davis than it was here in Silver Hollow, so much closer to the northern California coast, and she probably hadn’t stopped to worry about whether her attire would be appropriate to the weather at her destination.
“Do the anomalies seem to be concentrated in any one place?” Marjorie asked after he’d met her in front of the library.
She hadn’t told him where she was staying, but he guessed it was probably the motel at the western edge of town and not Mabel Whitaker’s carefully restored Victorian bed-and-breakfast, which tended to be kind of pricey.
“Not that I’ve been able to tell,” Ben replied.
“But it’s not as if any of us has really been tracking them, either.
To be honest, it wasn’t until I was talking to a friend yesterday and we started comparing notes that we realized something strange seemed to be happening in multiple locations around Silver Hollow. ”
Even as he spoke, he found himself wondering if Sidney Lowell would ever be anything more than a “friend.”
He’d have to worry about that later, though. Right now, he needed to focus on the current weirdness happening around town.
Marjorie nodded and made a few notes on the iPad she was carrying. “Well, let’s take a look at your place first. You’ve definitely experienced oddities there, right?”
“Yes,” he said, glad he could focus on something more concrete than a possible future with the woman who’d been a large part of the reason for him relocating to the small town. “Brownouts, cellular glitches.”
One of Marjorie’s thin eyebrows lifted slightly, rising above her wide-rimmed glasses for a second before disappearing again. “You’re kind of out in the middle of nowhere here,” she said, her tone dry. “Is it really that strange that you might not have the best cell reception?”
Ben had been anticipating that she might ask that question, so he had an answer prepared for her. “We’re kind of isolated,” he admitted. “But there’s a cell tower right off the highway, so in general, we do okay on that front.”
“What about the electrical grid?” she said next. “How old is it?”
“Fairly old,” he replied, knowing there was no point in glossing over Silver Hollow’s somewhat less than adequate infrastructure. “Sounds like it was first put here about a hundred years ago, but obviously, there’ve been improvements made since then.”
She wrote down something else, then said, “What kind of improvements?”
“I don’t know for sure. We’d probably need to check with the city engineer.”
Now Marjorie looked vaguely disapproving, as if she’d been expecting more from a fellow academic. To Ben’s relief, though, she didn’t call him to task for not having that information at his fingertips and instead remarked, “Okay. Let’s go to your house so I can take some readings.”
Glad that the third degree was over — for now, anyway — he led her away from the library and down the street before cutting off onto the smaller lane that would bring them to Nancy Petterson’s property.
He knew she wouldn’t be home, since she worked in Eureka three days a week and telecommuted the other two days, and he could only be relieved about that.
Although there certainly wasn’t anything illegal about asking an expert to assess the electromagnetic happenings in Silver Hollow, Ben preferred to keep the research to himself until he had a chance for Marjorie to verify that there really was something strange going on here.
She had an oversized satchel slung over one shoulder, and he assumed it carried the equipment she needed to take any necessary readings. When they got to the cottage, though, instead of pulling out whatever gizmo she planned to employ, she said, “Can I take a look at the electrical panel?”
Luckily, he knew where that was — hidden out back inside a little wooden box that had been constructed to protect the panel from the elements.
He wasn’t sure what Marjorie would find, since the panel had been updated at the same time all the wiring had been replaced about five years earlier, but he supposed they had to start somewhere.