Cradle Lake by Ronald Malfi Read Free Book Online Page A

about. Just the standard neighborhood patrol.”
    â€œThe sheriff does his own patrolling?”
    Hank shrugged. “We’re a small town. There’s only him and two deputies.”
    â€œThey don’t recruit you all for that sort of thing? Citizens on patrol and neighborhood watch and whatever else?”
    Hank raised his eyebrows and examined his beer can. His expression relayed that he had never given it much consideration before. “Landry likes to keep pretty hands-on. One of those perfectionist types.”
    â€œI hate those,” Alan commented, only half-joking.
    â€œGuess you can’t shake your own upbringing,” Hank said. “Can’t take the boy out of the city, that kind of thing.”
    Now it was Alan’s turn to shrug and look overly casual. “Where I come from, a cop car slides past your house, you close your windows and hope the stray bullets don’t come through the drywall.”
    â€œWas it really that bad?” There was genuine fascination on Hank’s boyish face. “Like, shoot-outs in the streets and things like that? The stuff they show on those
CSI
programs?”
    It hadn’t really been that bad growing up in the city, but Alan deliberately hesitated before he answered, hoping the moment of empty silence would fill Hank’s head with all sorts of images of urban violence and moral decay.
    â€œI guess it’s just gonna take me a while to get used to things around here,” he confessed. “Even the air smells funny.”
    â€œFunny?”
    â€œClean. Like, I’ve never smelled fresh air before.”
    Hank didn’t so much laugh as make a nasally
gah
sound way back in his throat.
    â€œThe trees, the fields, the mountains,” Alan went on. “It’s like a Bob Ross painting set to a Louis Armstrong soundtrack.”
    Hank leaned forward and, with one bronzed thumb, wiped a smear off one of the plastic baseball globes. “It’s the untouched land. The fresh air coming down off* the mountains.”
    â€œYeah.” Alan let this sink in. “Speaking of the land, there’s a path cutting through the trees at the back of my yard.” Since he’d followed the path to the clearing on that first night, he found himself waking up in bed at random hours every night for the past week, just thinking about it. As if he’d been dreaming about it—dreaming of
something
—but was powerless to remember anything about it as he came awake. “You know the one I’m talking about?”
    â€œYeah,” Hank said. “I think so.”
    â€œThere are these white stones along the path. A dozen or so, maybe more. They each have different symbols carved into them.”
    Hank turned away from the mantelpiece and leaned back against a bookcase, folding and unfolding his arms. His thumb made irritating popping sounds on the beer can.
    â€œI guess I was just curious what they were.”
    â€œThe stones?”
    â€œThe stones and the symbols, too. You’ve seen them, right?”
    â€œI don’t know,” Hank said. “I’m not sure.”
    â€œYou don’t know if you’ve seen them?” He hadn’t meant for his words to come out so combative, but once again Hank didn’t seem to notice.
    â€œNo,” Hank said. “I mean, I don’t know who put them there. Probably kids. Anyway, what’s the big deal?”
    â€œThey seemed so precise, so deliberate. I didn’t get the impression that kids carved those symbols,” Alan said. One was a triangle, one was two circles attached by a horizontal line, and another resembled the crenellated tower of a medieval castle. For a moment he thought about mentioning the strange birds, too, but realized there was no way to bring them up without sounding paranoid.
    â€œDid you follow the path?”
    â€œI did, yeah. It led to a small lake in a clearing. No bigger than a large pond,