Even though it was only early evening, the cloud cover made everything as dark as midnight. Derry Pond looked like a large oil slick occasionally reflecting the yellow flames of the bonfire that licked a large pile of logs nearby. The shore of the pond was crowded with people, mostly adults who didn’t have to worry about bed times. Grills had been set up to roast pork and beef and chicken. The bonfire cast eerie flickers across the shore, the shadows of people wavering to and fro like dark spirits dancing on the wilting grass. Smoke rose up into the air as a column of whiteness.
The smell of meat, for some reason, made Mel’s stomach rebel. So instead of partaking in the ribs and drumsticks that were being offered by the Harvest Festival volunteers in kiss-the-cook aprons, she took an extra helping of corn on the cob and nibbled the ears like a timid rabbit. She didn’t feel very hungry. Instead, she felt nervous. It was the dark again and even with the knowledge of the skillet in her tote bag, she didn’t feel very confident. Something was going to happen tonight, she was sure of it. The pieces of the puzzle were falling together—but not fast enough for her.
Stuart stood beside her, eating slowly, mostly watching the bonfire but also watching the people around him. He wasn’t so much concerned with strange things leaping out from the darkness in this huge crowd of people. No, he was worried about a certain group of lecherous and drunk bingo ladies. He thought he had spotted a couple of them near the edge of the lake waving about beer bottles.
“If it was any other time or any other place, this would have been fun,” she murmured. “I feel like I’m suffocating here.”
“I know what you mean,” he replied. His gaze was suddenly drawn to a point across the bonfire where he heard some yells and laughter. Someone had set up a long rope for a game of tug-o-war. There were perhaps about ten people on each side and everyone was pulling, straining arm and leg muscles. “Is that another contest? I thought there were only three.”
“That’s what I thought too. But the three for the Horned King competition—those were all for individuals, weren’t they?” said Mel. “That one, I think they just set up. And it looks like a team effort.”
“Right.”
“Are you thinking of joining them?”
He shook his head. “Maybe, as you said, in a different time and place. How about you?”
“What about me?”
“You could do tug-o-war—although maybe in different circumstances. Like in warmer weather. With some mud. And some shorts. Some really short ones.”
In the firelight, he finally saw her smile. “Someone needs to scrub your mind.”
They stood, finishing the free barbeque that the town offered to all the visitors to the Harvest Festival, and watched the contestants of the tug-o-war struggle with the rope. Finally, with one great heave, one side pulled the rope over a line that someone had scratched onto the ground. The opposing side toppled over each other in a groaning heap.
“Ooo! Wasn’t that fun!”
Stuart stiffened, afraid to look at the source of the drunken whine.
Mel looked over at the older woman who had lumbered toward them. It was Petunia Granger, the president of the bingo club. She was holding a bottle and there was a strange loopy smile on her face. Her other hand was grasping the shoulders of a bald man with a graying beard. The man grinned, revealing bad teeth.
“Why don’t you try it?” Petunia slurred. “You’re a big strong boy.” She pinched Stuart on the arm. He winced.
“No thanks.”
“Aw, spoilsport.” She waved her arms dramatically and nearly toppled over if her escort wasn’t there to steady her. “Anyways, maybe I can convince the rest of the girls to have a go at it. I mean, I think there are enough of us here to form a team. Well, Harry, let’s be off to round the rest of them up!” She waved her arm again, nearly smacking Stuart in the face had he not ducked. The president of the bingo club lurched away from them, dragging her companion with her.
“Hello? Hello? Testing, one, two, three…”
Without a word, Stuart took Mel’s plate of barely touched food and discarded their plates into the nearest trash bin. Near the shore of Derry Pond, an amplifier was set up with a wire running off to a portable generator. A section of the shore was lit up with some lights and a small black platform was placed on the ground. A short man wearing a pin-striped suit was holding a microphone and had raised his hand to get everyone’s attention.
“Welcome to the Harvest Festival’s annual awards ceremony!” the mc declared. “And without much further ado, I’d like to announce the winners of the various contests that Gavot has held this week. There are many, many winners and we’ll like to get through them in a timely manner. After all, we’ve got an excellent round of dancing planned coming up. So let’s see…”
“Are there really that many contests at the festival?” Mel whispered to Stuart as the short man fumbled with the microphone and pulled out a piece of paper from his pocket.
“Who knows? Ah, we didn’t actually stay around for the main part of the festival, did we? I suppose if we wanted to, we could get a list from city hall or maybe the community center since they planned out everything.”
As the mc began reading out the first contest, Mel looked around them, feeling a bit antsy. The rest of the people at the bonfire, if one didn’t look closely, were merely other figures around them. In the evening, one couldn’t really tell who was who. But some people were rather distinctive. They were even more distinctive if they were doing something that no one else was doing.
Mel jabbed Stuart by his side to get his attention. “What’s he doing?”
Stuart adjusted his glasses and peered at the direction of her gaze. “Beats me. What do you want to do about it?”
The person in question was a figure dressed completely in black. By his build, they could tell that this was a man. By his hairstyle, they could tell that this was the painter, Laurent de Matheus. After the humiliating blow that Mel had dealt him, she would have figured him to be one of those hurt personalities who would have slunk back to the bed and breakfast to lick his wounds. But perhaps he was made of sterner stuff. The painter was trying to move out of the bonfire light, out into the edges of the Derry Pond field. He was trying to leave without being seen.
There was something about the painter’s strange creeping behavior that struck her curiosity and alarm.
“We’re going to follow him,” she said decisively.
“I was hoping you’d say that,” the reporter told her. “I didn’t want to say it because then you’d tell me it was one of my crazy and insane ideas that would get us in big trouble.”
