Return to The Quarry

Chapter Twelve

Grace paused in her storytelling. "I know it's a lot to take in."

In the glow of her phone's flashlight, Laura flipped through the ancient script while listening to the story. A certain block of typewritten text on one of the pages made her gasp.

"Oh my God. I've heard this rhyme before!"

Kaitlyn frowned. "How? I thought that film never got made?"

"No, no! Travis Hackett showed it to me at the jail. When he was trying to explain the whole werewolf thing to me, he had this old parchment thing. That same rhyme was written on it!" She turned it around so that everyone could read it.

Jacob, who leaned in to read, straightened up.

"You're sure about this?"

"Positive. No wonder it sounded so cheesy. It was supposed to be theatrical."

"That could suggest," Nick began, "that the rhyme came to Hackett's Quarry with Deirdre?"

Grace nodded. "I can't think of another explanation."

"The gypsy thing, too," Ryan pointed out. "Remember what Travis said? About the wolf boy being part of the gypsy freak show? His mom was a gypsy fortune teller."

Folding his arms across his chest, Anton looked to Grace. "Those can't be coincidences. We've got to find those journals. It's our only way out of this-"

The sound of glass shattering several yards away interrupted them, and a flash of igniting gasoline flashed brightly in the night from around the corner of the rocky rise. Something burned someplace in the direction of the dock where they had landed.

"Shit!" Max yelled.

Two more Molotov Cocktails sailed from the direction of the mainland, crashing into the elevated walkway that used to lead to the treehouse.

Jacob started in the direction of the steps leading up, crouching as he went as he did in police training. Either the Man in the Hood had made it to the island without them knowing or he managed to somehow reach them with an incendiary device.

As he approached the steps, Emma broke from the group. She reached out and

grabbed Jacob by the arm and yanked him back, a thrill of panic overtaking her.

"Jacob! No!"

As he turned and stepped back toward the group, he was narrowly missed by another bottle, which shattered on the steps with a fiery splash. Burning fuel leapt out in all directions, driving the group further around the corner toward the old lean-to and latrines.

"We've got to get off the island!" cried Laura.

Dylan cast an anxious glance around for anything that could help them. He found nothing. "How? The boat was wrecked!"

Jacob, skulking along the overgrowth that led down to the dock, he cautiously glanced around the corner of a weather-beaten canoe rack. He could see on the shore near the dock they had launched from, the hooded figure was operating a makeshift trebuchet, which was somehow able to loft the bottles high enough to arc over the water and land on the island with frightening accuracy.

Jacob also spotted another boat.

"There's another boat down there!" he barked. "We've got to get it started somehow and get to shore."

"Okay." Kaitlyn said. "Then what's the plan?"

"We need to try to get into a building. The lodge probably has the best vantage point." He hesitated, looking meaningfully around at everyone in turn. "I may have to use lethal force."

Jacob noticed that Laura went pale. Noticeably pale.

"Okay. Get to the lodge," Abi repeated.

Jacob nodded. "Stay down and stay together. Let's go."

Everyone did as they were told. They crept forward and on Jacob's signal, they rushed the steps, breaking into a run as they made it to the boat.

The motor was slower to start and took more of an effort. Emma peered across the lake to the figure, who now was horsing around the trebuchet so that it was turned more toward the dock.

The boat roared to life and they were off. In the dark, they could see a single security lamp burning at the ends of the docks attached to the boathouse. They made a straight course for that.

As they bobbed across the dark surface of the water, something looked off about the movement of the waves, or at least Grace thought it did. It was almost as though a line or rope of some sort was run just under the surface of the water. Before she could say anything, the boat propellers caught in the thing - a chain, like the many others run in a web across the lake - and became bound up. The engine burned out, or stalled out with a black puff of smoke, and was snapped backward so suddenly, that everyone inside was thrown overboard into the tepid black water.

Coughing and badly shaken, everyone broke the surface, some calling out for the others. Max, having found Laura, did a fast headcount. Everyone had surfaced and appeared unharmed.

"Shhhhhhhh!" Jacob hissed. "Quiet!"

Everyone did, allowing the low slapping of the waves against the overturned boat to swallow up the sounds of their breath. They watched as the Man in the Hood vaulted up onto the dock and bounded up the stairs leading back to the burning hotel.

"He's gone!" Laura whispered. "Should we go?"

Jacob nodded. As they each swam in the direction of the dock, Kaitlyn saw a large round thing bobbing at the surface of the water, it's surface studded with spiny protrusions that stuck out in all directions.

"What's that?" she asked as she neared it, her voice unable to hide her apprehension.

Dylan drifted past it. "Oh shit. Covid gets huge around here."

Max neared it and his blood ran cold.

"I-it's a marine mine." he managed.

Everyone stopped swimming. Anton scanned the surface of the water and found it to be dotted with them.

"Okay," Jacob said calmly. Everyone, stay where you are. Obviously don't go near or touch them. Try not to make currents or tug on any of the chains. There's no way to know how sensitive these things are."

As carefully as they could, they began to drift through the water, sliding around the things with the silent slither of a newt over the rocks. Preoccupied with avoiding the awful devices, the group did not realize that they were drifting apart, some far from the boathouse dock.

The shore was in reach. The water felt warmer as it did nearer to the shore. Scanning the coasts, the Man in the Hood was nowhere to be seen. Soon, several of the swimmers could put their feet on the lake floor and they made their way to the shore where an elaborate arbor was built and strings of unlit Edison lights crisscrossed the beams. Panting and shaking from the swim, Kaitlyn looked around and realized that, to her horror, they were two people short. 

 Not everyone had made it to shore.