LITMIR.BIZ

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yellow hoist, used to lift the concrete vaults from the graves. Three muddy vaults sat off in the far corner of the cemetery.

      Only the cawing of crows broke the still cold air. Louis looked up and spotted two of the birds staring down at them from the two sentry pines.

      Phillip walked on ahead and Louis followed, scanning the ground. The grass wasn’t very high, only five or six inches, but Louis didn’t see any headstones or monuments. A yard or two into the cemetery, he spied a plot of freshly disturbed ground where he guessed someone had been dug up and the hole refilled. Then there was another, and a third, before Phillip finally stopped.

      At his feet was an open grave, the bottom puddled with dark water. Phillip knelt at the head of the grave and pushed aside the dead grass. Louis stepped closer.

      A small stone square was pressed into the ground, no larger than six inches by eight inches. Louis squatted to look at the stone. It was well worn, but someone, probably Phillip, had scraped away the moss and mud, and the engraving was easy to read.

      No name. Just a number—1304.

      “What kind of cemetery is this?” Louis asked, looking up at Phillip.

      Phillip rose slowly, his eyes drifting back to the road they had driven in on, and beyond, to a cluster of taller trees. “There’s a hospital over there. This is where they buried their unclaimed dead.”

      Louis looked off in the same direction as Phillip, but he saw nothing. “What kind of hospital?” he asked.

      “A sanitarium.”

      “An insane asylum?”

      “Yes.”

      “Your friend died there?”

      “Yes. At least that’s what I was told.”

      Louis looked back at the stone marker embedded in the grass. “And all these people got were numbers on their graves?”

      “I suppose it started out as some kind of privacy thing, maybe to keep the curiosity seekers from coming in and vandalizing the graves,” Phillip said. “There were a couple of well-known criminals who were sent here back in the fifties and sixties.”

      Louis looked off at the far trees. Something was coming back to him. He stood up, facing Phillip. “This is Hidden Lake, isn’t it?”

      “Yes,” Phillip said. “You know about it?”

      Louis hesitated. He knew. He had heard about Hidden Lake many times, mostly in hushed conversations with other kids. Talk of crazy people screaming behind iron bars, stories of secret operations, torture, and brain removals. No one he knew had ever seen Hidden Lake, but every kid knew what it was like. Hidden Lake was hell, Halloween, and a chamber of horrors all rolled into one. It was where all the really crazy people were kept, where your mother would threaten to send you if you were bad. It was where all the insane killers were locked away.

      A memory came to him suddenly. A serial killer from the late sixties, a man who prowled lovers’ lanes, chopping off heads and eating the eyeballs of teenagers. The killer had been sent here, hadn’t he? Or was that just another story whispered in tents at a summer camp, a story spawned of some boy’s fevered imagination?

      He knew now that none of it was true. He knew, too, that mental illness was something to be treated, not feared. Still, as he tried to imagine Phillip’s friend in a place like Hidden Lake, he couldn’t shake the images that were suddenly crawling out of the locked box of his own childhood nightmares.

      He walked a few feet away and saw another stone marker almost hidden in the grass. “You mentioned that maybe some numbers got mixed up. Were you able to check that?”

      Phillip shook his head. “No one will talk to me. The company in charge of transferring the bodies claims it’s not their problem. And the hospital is being dismantled and there’s only a few people left to clean things up. The records are either lost or just gone.”

      “What about the local police? Have you tried them?”

      Phillip nodded. “They said if the hospital doesn’t feel the need to report this, then it’s not really their business. I get the feeling that all anyone wants to do is level the hospital and forget it ever existed.”

      Louis pulled a small camera from his coat pocket and came back to the open grave. He took a picture of the stone marker, then moved to the nearby marker, brushed aside the grass, and took a photo of that one, too. He did the same with all four surrounding graves, hoping that having the numbers might help verify any errors.

      He looked back to Phillip, who had knelt down by the open grave. He was pulling the dead weeds and grass away from the stone marker.

      “What was her name?” Louis asked.

      Phillip rose slowly and brushed the dirt from his hands. “Claudia. Claudia DeFoe,” he said. He walked slowly away, his hands in his pockets.

      There was a sign on the backhoe: SPERA & SONS EXCAVATIONS. Louis wrote it in his notepad. He looked over toward Phillip, who was standing at the cemetery entrance under the huge pine tree, lighting a cigarette. Phillip was wearing a gray overcoat, which seemed to accentuate his height and thinness, and his chopped gray hair was the same color as the sky. For a moment, he seemed to disappear before Louis’s eyes.

      Louis went over to him. “I think you need to show me this hospital,” he said.

      CHAPTER 4

      They backtracked on U.S. 50 about a half mile. There were no signs for Hidden Lake, but Phillip easily spotted the small side road obscured by a tall stand of trees and slowed the car for the turn in.

      Another iron gate, this one in better repair than the one back at the cemetery. There was a discreet sign on the gate that read HIDDEN LAKE. A uniformed man emerged from the red brick guardhouse as they pulled up. Phillip rolled down his window and the man leaned in to peer at them.

      “What can I do for you?” he asked.

      Phillip glanced at Louis, so Louis leaned across the seat.

      “We wanted to see someone about claiming a deceased patient,” he said.

      “Sorry. We’re closed for the weekend.”

      “We need to talk to someone in charge,” Louis said. “If we come back Monday, who do I see?”

      The guard shrugged. “Not sure. There’s only a skeleton crew and I’m just here to keep folks out. But you can come back Monday and see for yourself.”

      Louis glanced at Phillip. He would have to come back alone Monday; he didn’t want Phillip to have to lie again to Frances. Phillip started to put the car in gear.

      “Wait a second,” Louis said, leaning back over. “Can you tell me where . . .” He pulled the notebook from his jacket pocket. “Spera and Sons Excavations—do you know where it is?”

      The guard had to think for a moment. “Go back up to U.S. 12 and head west. Just past the Mystery Hill, take your first left. Go a half mile and you’ll see ’em.”

      “Thanks.”

      Phillip swung the car back onto the highway. He had been quiet since they left the cemetery. As they drove deeper into the hills, Louis stole a glance at him. Phillip was staring straight ahead out the windshield.

      They passed through a town with a shimmering lake and dark clusters of pines and bare birches. A small wood sign welcomed travelers to Ardmore and underneath it read WHER THEE PAST IS PERFECT.

      A few miles farther, Louis saw a sign for Mystery Hill. As he turned the corner, he saw Phillip twist his neck to look back at the faded yellow building.

      “You want to stop?” Louis asked.

      “No.”

      They saw the sign for Spera & Sons Excavations and Phillip pulled into the gravel parking lot. The compound

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