“It’s a ghost town. On the edge of the Quabbin Reservoir. One of the villages that were flooded during the thirties.”
If Kyser was an amateur naturalist spending a good deal of time flitting around the woods of Kingsfield, he had to be aware of Rexford. It was the first time during their interview Jason was sure he was being lied to. Lied to in spirit if not in letter.
Kyser frowned at Jason. He cracked his knuckles twice in quick succession.
“Dr. Kyser?” Jason prodded.
Kyser seemed to snap out of whatever preoccupied him. “Excuse me a moment,” he said. “I believe my lunch is burning.” He turned and left the room.
Boxner, staring up at the rows of grimacing, contorted jack-o’-lanterns, softly whistled the theme to the Twilight Zone.
“Shut up,” Jason muttered.
“Are you afraid the Assyrian demons will hear me?”
Kyser’s footsteps faded away. Jason took a closer look at the some of the books on the shelves. Art books…medical books…Russian Folk Belief; The Encyclopedia of Spirits: the Ultimate Guide to the Magic of Fairies, Genies, Demons, Ghosts, Gods, and Goddesses; The Mermaid and the Minotaur…Principles of Deformity Correction… Disability, Deformity, and Disease in the Grimms’ Fairy Tales…
“Look at this.” Boxner lifted one of the elongated jack-o’-lanterns. “Look at the hole in the bottom. You could wear this. It’s like a-a—”
“Headdress,” Jason said.
From the rear of the house he heard a car’s engine roar into life.
“Oh, hell no.”
Boxner looked at him in surprise and then belatedly registered the engine sound too. “Shit!” He set the jack-o’-lantern on the floor, following Jason as he dived out of the room.
They ran through the house, feet pounding the wooden floorboards until they reached the kitchen.
White cupboards, quartz counters, and stainless-steel appliances. Nothing strange. Nothing sinister. Aside from the fact that no one was in there.
Nothing sat on the stove. There was no aroma of cooking food, let alone burning food.
The unlatched back screen banged gently in the summer breeze. The black Porsche parked behind the house was gone. Dust seemed to sparkle golden in the sunlight as it drifted down on the wide, empty dirt road.
“I don’t know what spooked him,” Jason said. He was standing in front of Kyser’s house, speaking to Kennedy on his cell phone. Overhead, silver-edged clouds rolled and tumbled playfully through the wide blue sk
y. “I will say, I think Kyser’s a very weird dude. Even so, nothing happened in the course of that interview that should have made him bolt.”
“You and Boxner were together the entire time?”
“Yes.”
“Nothing was said to Kyser out of your hearing?”
“No.”
“Hm.”
Jason had already recounted the entire interview with Kyser in detail, and it continued not to make any sense to him. “His answers were plausible. I can’t say that I had a sense that he was lying about anything except maybe knowing of Rexford’s existence. And why he would lie about that, or why the question would panic him into flight, I don’t know. Rexford’s existence isn’t a secret. Nor is it illegal to explore the village, despite all those No Trespassing signs. I feel like something’s not right here, but I can’t…”
Kennedy finished, “Put your finger on anything that gives us legal grounds to pursue Kyser any further.”
“Correct. It’s not against the law to carve art objects that were later misappropriated and used in homicides. It’s not against the law to refuse to speak to the police. It’s not against the law to drive off like a bat out of hell.”
“All right. Thanks for the update.”
“Should we…I don’t know. You’ll want to see these jack-o’-lanterns though. I’m not sure if they’re supposed to be ornamental or ceremonial, but they’re pretty unsettling. As was the lecture on Assyrian demons. Anyway, I took a bunch of photos with my phone. Boxner and I had a look around, but we couldn’t find anything that would justify an official search of the property.”