Chapter Twelve

Charles Coombs III claimed the Gulch in 1824 as the Dutch were moving into the northern New York region with mining and timber operations. Coombs was a third-generation heir to a British textile manufacturing empire, but he eschewed his father’s and grandfather’s business to create a great new society, a society of communal living that would allow him to be at one with nature. In effect, he rebelled against his father and family, seeking a new life overseas with a vast amount of wealth at his disposal. He traveled to America, where he became enraptured with the transcendentalist movement, with its focus on the natural world and the perfection of humanity through communing with nature. The presence of and access to Native American tribes and belief systems drove him upstate as he sought out the Iroquois, north of Lake Champlain. He stopped for a period of time in Albany, where he purchased a hotel and created the Society of the New Dawn, drawing a few members at first and then progressively growing as Coombs made trips back and forth into the wilderness, seeking native wisdom and returning with stories, prophesies, and insights he shared with his followers. Although the Society was largely an intellectual endeavor at first, as it grew it began to change. Historians of the United States’ transcendental movement noted that much of Coombs’ teachings did not appear to mirror anything he could have gained from the Iroquois, who, at the time, were consolidating their people – decimated by war and infection brought by European settlers – and looking to abandon New York for the West.

In fact, no one is really sure who Charles Coombs was talking to during his trips into the wilderness. There is brief mention in a fur trader’s journal of an Englishman making numerous attempts to speak with Iroquois leaders and being turned away. At that point, the Native American tribes had grown tired of dealing with European settlers and deeply distrusted them for obvious reasons. Still, Coombs would be gone for months at a time and return to Albany dirty, haggard, half starved and seemingly delirious. But he also came with visions and philosophies, preaching against the rise of industrialism, capitalism and greed. His Society of the New Dawn began to take on religious connotations. He led members in prayerlike rituals that began to grow loud and ferocious, leading to complaints from surrounding city dwellers. Like other groups that sprouted during that time, Coombs and his followers began moving toward a completely open society, one in which families were communal arrangements, marriage was abolished and child-rearing was shared. But his utopian ideals were anchored by something darker. He talked of gods in the wilderness, beings that moved through the trees and haunted the mountains. Supernatural forces that could touch humanity, move the world with an unseen hand. Very few people recorded his teachings; what remains is a compendium of loosely linked, circular ramblings with no apparent underlying mythology. He tried to talk about time but made little sense. He talked about gods, but they were all foreign to any formal religions. The largely Christian population in Albany became concerned.

Following an incident in which Coombs was accused of ‘crimes against morality’, he and his followers were forced to leave Albany or face possible arrest. Coombs took his group, now numbering nearly one hundred and twenty, and fled for the Adirondack Mountains, a place where he said they could commune with the true gods of nature and life. The choice to relocate to the harsh and uncharted Adirondacks was also strange. The native tribes avoided the mountains except for the purposes of war. The harsh terrain made farming difficult and the winters brutal. The Society of the New Dawn traveled as far as they could by train and then wagon and then finally by foot until Coombs finally found the Gulch – a seemingly self-contained area of woodland with a brook flowing through the middle – and declared that this was where they would settle and create their new society.

They lasted only two years. Fur traders at the time – and families seeking out loved ones who had absconded with the Society – described a few ramshackle cabins that would likely not hold up for the winter, a meager attempt at a farm, and strange nightly rituals that involved worshippers gathering to form geometric shapes and chanting in low, deep tones in an effort to ‘commune with the Great Spirit’. Visitors who witnessed the events usually left the commune shaken and disturbed, refusing to return to the area. “What they summoned, I could not begin to say,” wrote Daniel Jansen, a fur trader and woodsman. “Only that it was an abomination to the one true God. Following their ritual, they engaged in unspeakable carnal acts as if possessed by spirits. The whole land is haunted with witches and demons they have called forth. It is not safe. Coombs’ Gulch should be avoided.”

Indeed, it was not safe, as members of the Society of the New Dawn began to die off quickly during the harsh winter. Accidents plagued the community as high-minded intellectual elites attempted to tame the wilderness with few survival skills. Hunger ravaged their ranks. Those who attempted to leave that first winter became lost in the mountains and died quickly of exposure during an unusually bad winter. Suicide became rampant as some, delirious with their beliefs, tried to become one with Coombs’ gods.

But it was over the course of the second year that the children began disappearing into the woods. Infants, toddlers and adolescents began, one by one, to be unaccounted for, seemingly vanished, sometimes in broad daylight, sometimes during the night. Their frenzied parents and community leaders searched the Gulch endlessly and found nothing. Their rituals grew more fevered – violent, at times – as worshippers tried to appease the spirits to bring back their children. Visions of strange worlds and horrific beings became commonplace. The death toll rose.

Following the second year in the Gulch, all communication with the outside world ceased. A Dutch timber company working its way north eventually found the cabins but no signs of life, except for a few journals and remnants of a community. Among the journals was Coombs’ own diary. After reading the last entry, the timber company turned away and left to find other areas. “We see them in the night,” the diary read. “The dead come forth, the children play. Time is nothing to it. Mankind merely a toy. It takes many forms, but none more terrifying than our own.… It was all a great mistake.”

“Jesus, fuck,” Jonathan said. “We can’t do this anymore. This is dumb. We should just leave and risk it.”

“Fuck that,” Michael said.

“This place is bad. This is all bad. It’s like luck or a curse or whatever, but it follows you, and it’s damn sure following us!”

“Shut the fuck up; that doesn’t even make sense.”

The three of them were inside the cabin now, sitting at the table in the small kitchen. Daryl Teague had gone to fetch the police. Now their names would be recorded in some kind of official report, a record of their trip to Coombs’ Gulch a matter of legal proceedings.

“I saw something out there. I know this sounds crazy, but I saw—”

“You saw nothing. This is just an exercise in stress and you’re cracking.”

“Listen. I’m not cracking. I’m not losing it. I’m telling you that we’ve already had enough problems. This is not going the way it should be. There’s some kind of curse following us. Call it whatever you will.”

“There you go. I’ll call it crazy, thank you.”

“Let’s not go off the deep end,” Conner finally said.

Jonathan’s mind was fracturing and spinning like a child’s kaleidoscope. He tried to tell them about Thomas Terrywile, about how other missing children suddenly appeared on hunting cameras in the lost reaches of the world where only avid hunters would venture; the blued image of that little girl, dressed like it was 1972, kicking up her leg in a joyous leap; the Texan whom he spoke with on the phone, who had no reason to lie and little desire for attention. He told them, but it just came out as gibberish, and he couldn’t blame them for not believing – who would?

What he had seen outside, in the forest and mountains, was like looking into a shattered mirror, the world in a thousand different angles and pieces, and yet, somehow, it provided a truer glimpse into reality – the true world. But it wasn’t just the shattered mirror – something that could be perceived as a twist of fate or a spate of bad luck – it was the fact that behind it all he saw a malevolent force, a face dressed like little Thomas Terrywile. It was a pantomime, an exaggerated Halloween costume, a mask worn by something awful to mock them. The eyes were black holes, the teeth like a shark’s mouth implanted into a boy’s face. It was grotesque, an abomination of what is and what should have been.

“It’s getting late. Too late. Maybe you should get some sleep,” Conner said.

Jonathan tried to right himself, to get his mind back, but it felt as though his sanity were spiraling down a drain.

“We need you right. We need your head right,” Conner said.

“You sure your head is right with all this?” Jonathan said. “I don’t think right has anything to do with any of this.”

Jonathan stood up and brushed soot and ash from his clothes. They said he had stumbled backward, tripped over the rocks lining the firepit and fell. They said he was screaming, but he didn’t recall any sound or any voice, just that vortex of darkness taking in the trees and the mountains and the face grinning ear to ear.

Bill sat beside the firepit, staring into the Gulch. They hadn’t moved the body and could barely make out his form or the pastel colors of his plaid shirt in the light from the cabin. But it was impossible not to notice him sitting there. Somehow, he was constantly in sight, whether from the corner of your eye or in the background, just over someone’s shoulder. No matter which way you turned, where you looked, there was dead, dumb Bill sitting on a bench outside in the cold. Daryl Teague had left in his pickup truck, surprisingly distraught for a man who looked more animal than human. There was no cell phone signal to call the police; none of them knew how to get the radio to connect with any receiver beside the one at Bill’s apartment, so Daryl drove off into the night and they were left babysitting a dead man.

Jonathan grabbed a bottle of whiskey from the grocery bag and took a long drink. He slammed the bottle on the table. “Fine. I’m better now. I’ll shut up. You don’t want to listen to it, that’s fine.”

Michael was shaking his head, on the verge of belting him.

“Do you remember what it felt like that night?”

“Shut up. We all remember things differently. It is what it is, and there’s no use remembering it now.”

“Do you remember the night? Do you remember what it’s like out there at night? We’re going to be out there – far out there – with no way to get back here.”

“It’s just the woods,” Michael said.

“It’s not just the woods. It’s heavier. It’s like being at the bottom of the ocean.”

“This is bullshit.”

“There are things that live there, too,” Jonathan said.

“And that’s how you explain the boy out there?” Michael was yelling now. “What did we do, fish him up from the bottom of the ocean?”

“Maybe it wasn’t the bottom,” Jonathan said. “Maybe it was just somewhere else. Or maybe it was both. It doesn’t have to make sense to us.”

“Well, thank God because you’re not making sense to me.”

“Think about it,” Jonathan said. “What is your best explanation for what he was doing out here in the middle of the night? What is your explanation for why no one ever looked for him? If he went missing in 1985, no one would be—”

“Do you have the picture? Do you have the article so we can read it?” Michael asked. Michael stood up, looming over Jonathan now, hand reaching out, asking for Jonathan’s phone. “Can we see all this research you’ve done?”

“There’s no service here.”

“Brilliant.”

“Doesn’t answer my questions.”

“It’s fucking simple – he was a lost kid with shitty parents who didn’t care, that’s it!”

Somehow that seemed infinitely worse, and suddenly, after Michael said it, the whole cabin grew as silent and lifeless as the body of its former owner. They stood face-to-face with each other in a moment of truth they couldn’t comprehend, split between two horrifying possibilities.

The cabin lights began to dim, and they could hear the generator again, sputtering, running low on gas.

“I’ll go take care of it,” Michael said and walked outside to the shed.

“He’ll cool down,” Conner said. “You know how he is.”

Conner sat down beside Jonathan, took the whiskey bottle, unscrewed the cap and took a long pull.

“I hear what you’re saying,” Conner said. “I’ve had similar thoughts. Wondered whether there might be something else going on. It always sounds insane. It has crossed my mind, but there’s another way of looking at all this.”

“And?”

“I know that we all grew apart after your wedding.”

“It wasn’t the wedding.”

“It wasn’t. But I’m sorry that happened. It was just difficult.”

“I know. I was there.”

“I wish we had been there more for Gene.”

“So do I.”

“This incident, this accident, could devastate everyone around us, people we love,” Conner said. “It would ruin Gene’s memory, send us to jail, destroy our reputations. You know all this. It’s not worth it. As much as I feel terrible about this – and I do – it’s a matter of simple calculation. What’s done is done, and no amount of regret, guilt, punishment or embarrassment to our families is going to change that, so we might as well spare them from going through hell.” Conner took a breath from his speech and seemed to collect his thoughts. His eyes changed, no longer the salesman, no longer playing for the crowd, no longer closing a deal. He looked at Jonathan the way he had when they were young.

“It’s our job to go through hell so they don’t have to. That’s what all this is,” Conner said. “Why would it ever be easy? Why would hell make sense? We were damned before the bullet left Gene’s rifle.”

Jonathan took the bottle of whiskey back and tilted it back. He looked at Conner, sitting across from him at the table, Bill’s body floating in the heavy darkness in the background.

“That’s the only honest thing I’ve heard you say in the last ten years,” Jonathan said.

Michael came back inside and sat down, and they passed the bottle back and forth until the ambulance arrived to cart Bill’s body away.