Chapter Thirty-Seven

When dawn came, I bundled you up in a little coat and put the tiniest hat on your head. I wrapped you in a blanket to keep you warm. Then I put you in your car seat, and the two of us drove to the Fair Day resort. The early morning was crisp and cold, the kind of chill you can feel like needles inside your nose. It was below freezing. Out on the lake, a gray film of ice waited to melt with the sun.

I saw the yellow Cadillac in the parking lot, so I knew Ben Malloy was still there. I didn’t know which cabin was his, but I nestled you inside my jacket, and I crunched across the frosty grass from door to door until I found one that had a smell of pipe tobacco wafting from inside. I knocked.

Ben answered the door in sky-blue pajamas. His cherubic face lit up through a cloud of smoke when he saw me. “Deputy Rebecca! This is an unexpected pleasure. And little deputy Shelby with you, too! I’m honored.”

“I’m sorry to come so early, Ben.”

“Oh, I’m typically up at five, so this really isn’t early to me. I still have lots of publicity details to deal with for tomorrow’s broadcast. Are you going to be at the party, by the way?”

“Yes, it looks that way.”

“I hope so. Put Shelby in a costume. An Ursulittle to go along with all the Ursulinas.”

I tried to smile, but I couldn’t. To Ben, this was a big joke, a carnival like Ursulina Days in Mittel County. To me, this was my life falling apart, crumbling down. I could already see the future, and it made me want to rip my heart out. Ben must have noticed the distress on my face, because he unclamped his lips from around his pipe, and his eyebrows knitted together with concern.

“Are you all right, Rebecca?”

I couldn’t tell him. I couldn’t tell anyone.

“I need a favor, Ben.”

“Of course. What is it?”

“You said you had raw footage from seven years ago stored in your mother’s attic. All the film you took during the Ursulina hunt near Sunflower Lake, the parts that didn’t make it into the documentary. Is that true?”

“Yes, absolutely.”

“I need to see it. Can you arrange that?”

Ben shrugged. “Sure, that isn’t a problem. When would you like to do it?”

“Now.”

“Now? You mean today?”

“Yes. This minute. I’d like to go over there right now. I’m sorry, but it’s urgent. Is that possible?”

He looked thoughtful as he drew out his words. “It is.”

“I know this is an imposition. You’re very busy. I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t important.”

“Well, okay then, let’s go. I have an old projector in the attic, so it’s not hard to set up. My mother will keep you supplied with coffee and muffins, too, as long as you don’t mind banana-nut-cat-hair. You do realize, though, that we’re talking about hours of unedited film? If you’re looking for something specific, it may take a while to find. There’s no rhyme or reason to it, no order, no dates, no labels.”

“I understand.”

He sucked on his pipe again. “You’re being very mysterious.”

“Yes, I know. I’m sorry.”

“Are you sure you can’t tell me what’s wrong? You may not believe it, but I can be discreet when necessary. I also have a weakness for pretty young women in trouble. Can I help you?”

My face was dark. “No one can help me.”

For a moment, my remark left him speechless. “Well, give me five minutes to change, and then we’ll be on our way.”

“Thank you, Ben.”

While he changed, I took you down to the lakeshore. I watched the morning glow on the water and listened to the honking of the geese. My breath made little puffs of steam. I held you close to me and kissed your head and your pink cheeks and murmured over and over how much I loved you. I didn’t even realize it until I wiped my face, but I was crying.

Ben was true to his word. Five minutes later, he opened the door with a flourish, dressed in a white turtleneck and plaid sport coat, with pleated tan slacks and penny loafers. He marched across the grass to the resort parking lot and hopped inside the yellow Cadillac. You and I followed him in my car. We drove all the way across Black Wolf County to one of the other small towns tucked among the trees. He parked outside a century-old Victorian house, neatly painted in red and white.

I’d never met Mrs. Malloy. She was tall and heavy and looked a lot like her son, but she was as dour as Ben was cheerful. Her expression didn’t change as he said hello, and her eyes traveled over me with grim disapproval. Even you didn’t lighten her mood, Shelby. However, she poured hot coffee for me, and after I fished out a cat hair, I was glad to have the caffeine.

Ben and I took the stairs to the second floor. Then he led me to what felt like a secret staircase climbing into one of the house’s turrets. The tower had a circular wall and windows looking out in every direction, with a roof that rose to a conical point above us. The wooden floor was dusty, littered by a few dead bugs. Spiderwebs dangled in the shadows. There was nothing much up here but cardboard boxes. Ben seemed to know exactly where to look, and he dug among the boxes and found one in particular, which he carried over to me.

Inside was a Super 8 projector and a stack of more than two dozen silver film canisters. He dragged over another box and propped the projector on top of it and plugged the cord into what seemed to be the only electrical outlet up here. He took the first of the film cans and showed me how to feed it through the machine. Then he retreated to the wall of boxes and located a white screen, which he unfolded and set up. The windows had heavy curtains, and he shut them, leaving the room mostly dark.

“There, you’re good to go,” he told me. “When you’re done with one, you can move on to the next. These are all four-hundred-foot reels, so each one lasts about twenty minutes. Stay as long as you want.”

“Are you heading back to the resort?” I asked.

“No, I’ll stick around for a while. I haven’t been to see Mom in a few days, so I owe her a visit. I can make phone calls while I’m here.”

“Don’t stay on my account.”

“Well, I’ll check on you in a bit, and I’ll let you know if I need to leave.”

“Thank you again, Ben. I really appreciate it.”

“In the end, will you tell me what this is all about?” he asked.

I hesitated and told him what I believed to be the truth. “In the end, you’ll know.”

He frowned as he left, and I heard him descending the stairs with heavy footsteps. I was alone with hours of film. I looked around for a chair and saw one near the back wall, so I pulled it across the floor. It was a recliner that had seen better days, but it was comfortable. I’d brought the old Easter basket with me, so I situated you in the basket beside the chair. You were already asleep, and you didn’t wake up.

I turned on the projector, listening to its clickety-clack as I watched empty white frames click through the screen. Then, with a rush of color, I was back in the past. Seven years of life melted away. I saw the beach near Sunflower Lake, the pines, the flaky birches, the summer light glinting on the water. Dozens of volunteers in shorts, T-shirts, and bathing suits tramped through the woods at the fringe of the beach, wearing orange baseball hats that Ben had produced, which read: URSULINA HUNTER. Some wore backpacks; some carried buckets. Most were in their teens or twenties.

Seven years earlier. More than a quarter of my life.

Ben had operated the camera himself. He turned the camera around, showing his face in close-up. He looked younger, too, less gray hair, a little thinner, but still with the pipe between his lips. He gave the camera a dramatic stare, rattled off the early August date, and announced in crackling sound, “This is Ben Malloy in Black Wolf County. It has been two weeks since the Ursulina committed these horrific murders. This is our third day of searching the woods for any evidence that the beast left behind. Will today be the day that we find proof of the monster’s existence?”

From there, the film passed from one choppy scene to the next. Ben interviewed searchers about the horror stories they’d heard of the Ursulina growing up, and they recited some of the tall tales I remembered from when I was a girl. He asked people if they’d ever seen the Ursulina themselves. No one had, but they told stories of noises and grunts in the darkness, of a friend of a friend of a friend who’d seen a strange beast walking upright, of men who went out to hunt in the forest and were never seen again. A couple of the scenes—five seconds here, ten seconds there—had shown up in the original documentary on television. I remembered them.

Some of the searchers called Ben over to view what they’d found. The camera zoomed in on paw prints (they were bears’), giant scat (bears again), and a bloody scene of bones and fur that looked like a wolf kill. With every find, Ben offered breathless commentary that suggested they were on the brink of tracking down the Ursulina’s lair. He was a showman at heart.

I finished off one reel and switched to another. Then another. I emptied my coffee and went downstairs to get another cup. I tried one of the cat-hair muffins. When you woke up and cried, I changed you. At one point, because I was exhausted, my eyes drifted shut while the film was playing, and I had to rewind and watch it again. The whole morning passed that way, reel after reel. I knew I was looking for a needle in a haystack, without even knowing whether the needle was there at all. And yet I kept going.

Along the way, I spotted a few people I recognized. High school friends. Mine workers. A lot of beer got drunk; a lot of practical jokes got pulled. You could see the Ursulina myth taking on a life of its own the longer the search went on. The stories got more lurid; the claims got wilder and harder to believe.

During what was probably the ninth or tenth reel, I saw myself. It was just for a few seconds. We weren’t far from Norm’s Airstream, because I could see its silver frame through the trees. Ben was interviewing an old man who said his grandfather had told him of seeing the Ursulina come down to the beach under a monster’s moon, while he was in a fishing boat in the middle of the inlet. According to the man’s grandfather, he and the beast had stared at each other for almost an entire minute before the Ursulina turned around and stomped back into the woods and vanished.

In the midst of this story, I passed behind the old man. I didn’t look at the camera, but it was me, with my scraggly black hair and pale face. I was dressed in jeans and a long-sleeved flannel shirt that I’d left untucked. My eyes were glued to the ground as I used a cross-country ski pole to push through the undergrowth and find whatever might be hidden there. I went across the screen from left to right in a few seconds, and then I was gone. I’d been on the search the first day, and I’d come back on the second and third days, too. Like everybody else, I’d found nothing.

Sometime after noon, Ben came upstairs to check on me. He carried a whiff of his pipe smell with him.

“Are you hungry?” he asked. “Mom’s got leftover hotdish in the oven. It’s better on the second day.”

“I’m fine. Thanks.”

“Are you warm enough? I can get you a blanket.”

“No, I’m okay.”

Ben glanced at the screen. This was a nighttime reel, black trees dotted by lanterns, the camera whipping around at every sound. The interviews were conducted in hushed voices.

“You know, if you gave me a clue of what you were looking for, I might be able to help you find it,” Ben told me. “I’ve been through these reels dozens of times over the years. I always think maybe I missed something important. By now, I think I’ve memorized most of them.”

“I appreciate the offer, but I need to do this myself.”

“Well, whatever you say. Anyway, I came up here to say I need to leave. I’m going to drop by the 126 and make sure everything’s ready for the party tomorrow. Are you okay to stay here on your own? Mom will leave you alone.”

“Yes—thanks.”

“Okay then. Bye for now.”

He returned to the doorway, but then he stopped. “Rebecca, you don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to, but I’m still convinced you’ve seen the Ursulina.”

I didn’t answer.

He gave me a curious smile, and then he disappeared again. I stopped the playback, and I went to one of the windows that looked down on the street, and pushed aside the curtain. Not long after, I saw Ben go outside. He went to his Cadillac, but before he opened the door, he glanced up at the turret, as if he knew I’d be watching him. He put his finger to his forehead in a little salute. I put up a hand. No smile, just a wave.

I sat down in the recliner again. You’d begun to get restless, so I picked you up and rocked you in my arms. I turned on the projector again, and I finished the nighttime reel and went on to the next one. The stack of canisters in the box shrank as the day wore on, and I was beginning to believe that I wouldn’t find what I was looking for. I knew it was a shot in the dark anyway.

But with only four reels left, there he was.

I found him at the beginning of a reel from the first day. Ben was giving his introduction about the date and time of the hunt, and a man passed behind him, grinning over Ben’s shoulder. He was there and gone in a blink. If you didn’t look fast, you’d miss it.

Ricky.

I had to rewind the film to make sure what I’d seen. Then I rewound again. And then again. I must have watched that scene two dozen times before I turned off the projector, and each time felt like a lightning bolt searing my brain.

I wanted to see if he was carrying it, and he was.

Of course he was.

Ricky held a leather strap, swinging it as he walked. At the end of the strap was a camera.