January, 1962
Originally from THE WINTERMAKER
Chapter 28
AFTER WORKING NINETY hours in the week following the New Year’s Eve blizzard, Wesley Thorgard woke up without a single lot, road, or driveway left to plow. Despite being awake, he lingered in bed after his wife Kathy woke for work. He watched her dress, then do her hair, and then her makeup.
“Are you working today?” She asked as she passed him on her way to the dresser for jewelry.
“I’m finally caught up,” he said, followed by a long yawn. “I think I might go fishing.”
“We could meet for lunch,” Kathy offered. “There’s that new cafe on Jefferson Street I’d like to try.”
“I kinda wanted to get out of Wadena,” Thorgard admitted. “It’s not supposed to snow the rest of the week. Maybe tomorrow?”
Kathy looked at him through her mirror. “Where are you going fishing?”
“Not sure. Either Otter Tail or Manitou.”
“If you go to Manitou, be careful.”
“You think some weirdo is going to abduct me?” Thorgard asked and then laughed.
“I’m serious. Two kids are dead and they don’t know who is responsible. Sheryl told me that the guy had an icehouse where he was going to molest the kid before getting rid of the body. Why don’t you go to Otter Tail instead?”
“The guy almost got caught, so there is no way he’d try again at Lake Manitou. If he is local, which I doubt, he’d be lurking around some new hunting grounds. For all we know, he is staking out Perham or Deer Creek looking for some chubby kid to cross his path.”
“That’s not funny.”
“What?”
“If you do go fishing, promise me to keep your eyes out for anything weird. They said on the radio the only way we’re going to catch this guy is if the whole community is vigilant.”
“I promise I’ll be safe,” Thorgard said and squeezed her thigh as she walked past the bed on her way to the kitchen.
Despite his best intentions to sleep for half the day, his reliance on coffee for twenty-hour days caused his head to throb. He crawled out of bed and pulled on his robe, walking barefoot into the kitchen.
The coffee was brewing, and Kathy had a pot of water boiling on the stove. “Hey sweetie, could you make me a submarine sandwich for lunch? With horseradish?”
“I’m going to be late,” she said with a huff.
“Do you really expect Bill to be waiting to check the clock? He won’t show up until nine or ten.”
“I have work to do.”
“Come on, please?”
WHEN WESLEY THORGARD arrived at Lake Manitou, he had a thermos of coffee, a flask of Jack Daniels, and a twelve-inch submarine sandwich wrapped in tinfoil. Instead of following the highway into St. John, he turned off on County Road 12, which like many of the roads in western Hiawatha County, felt more like a tunnel. At the Aldrich road, he turned north toward Chippewa Beach. With his fire-engine red Jeep FC-170, he had little worry about road conditions since he had a five-foot plow blade attached to the front of his truck. During the summer months, he worked road construction, so a side-job of snow-removal kept him from going stir-crazy during the winter months.
Luckily, someone had broken through the parking lot of the campground and opened up the boat launch access to the lake. Having grown up in Hiawatha County, Thorgard did not hesitate to drive onto the ice, although he did so slowly and after confirming a dozen other vehicles were sprinkled across the ice.
A mile from Chippewa Beach, a hump of oak trees and pines by the name of Turtle Island rose out of the ice. Even though the island was actually more of a peninsula when the water was low, the water was deep off the north side of the island, which is where He parked his truck.
Thorgard walked around to the rear of his truck, opened the tailgate, and slid out his blue ice auger. Even though his father had invested in a gas-powered auger, He still used a hand auger, spinning the blades through the two feet of ice in less than a minute. When the auger broke through the ice, a gush of lake water filled the hole and poured out onto the dry surface of the ice. He walked ten yards from the first hole and dug a second hole, this one leaving him winded despite not having reached the age of thirty yet.
He slid the auger back onto the bed of the truck and pulled out his wooden box with his ice fishing supplies. He first found his ice scoop, dipping it into the two holes to clear out the slushy ice created by the auger. Next, he took one of his short ice fishing poles, attached the clip-on weight to the dacron line, and let it drop all the way to the bottom of the lake. He carefully reeled the line up a foot from the bottom, marked the dacron line, and then reeled it up so he could add a minnow.
After five minutes of prep, he returned to his tailgate, which served as a chair. He had a full-sized icehouse in his garage, but he did not mind being out in the open January air. Beneath him, the ice would boom and crack from time to time, but only due to temperature expansion. Two-feet of ice could support almost any vehicle.
While he waited for a school of crappies to pass by his hole, he studied Turtle Island. He understood why it had been given its name, for the island had a distinct hump in the middle where granite outcroppings formed a shell that rose thirty feet from the water level. The island was a few acres in size; it was uninhabited, partly because of its rocky foundation and also because of the rumors of its being haunted, which is partly why Thorgard chose to start fishing off its shore.
Unfortunately, the crappies did not bite during the first hour, and Thorgard grew bored of jigging his minnow.
It took only a minute to reel up both lines, toss them in the truck bed, and start up the engine to find a new place.
Wesley Thorgard chose to drive another three miles across the ice to reach a different island, now called Carousel Island but once known as Deadwood Island. Unlike Turtle Island, which had deep water off its shores, Carousel Island had shallow waters that slowly tapered from its flat slope, perfect for ambushing northern pike. It also allowed him to see the broken roller coaster.
Yellow police tape fluttered in the trees several months after it was used to seal off the scene of the crime. Several “no trespassing” signs had been nailed to a few large trees along the shore.
Thorgard noted that the pillars supporting the roller coaster’s passage over the channel between the island and the shore stood rock solid. In his mind, he pictured a runaway roller coaster car flying through the air and into the lake from broken tracks over the water, part of the innate terror of the ride’s charm, but he saw the broken track in the leafless trees of the island.
After half-an-hour without a bite, curiosity got the better of Thorgard.
His closest neighbor was an orange fishing shack with a smoking chimney about a hundred yards to the west, nearer Turtle Island. Leaving his jigging poles with open bails, he took a stroll.
The snow crunched loudly under his feet as he walked toward the island, but none took notice. Near the shore of the island, the snow drifts grew high, forcing him to walk around to the southern tip of the island, which was shaped like a fat comma. He followed the metal tracks that passed over his head until he stood at the place where the wooden structure had broken, sending riders into the trees to their deaths.
In defiance of the no trespassing signs, Thorgard walked around the snow covered island, finding the dance hall boarded up for the winter, and possibly forever. In his teens and early twenties, he’d frequented the hall, which now was empty and lifeless. In fact, the island felt so lifeless that it rather disappointed him.
At the middle of the island, he could see beyond to the steep shore of Bleeding Rock as well as the very top of the dairy barn where the latest attack had happened.
His curiosity sated, Wesley Thorgard turned to go home.
His red Jeep throbbed with color through the trees, making it the most obvious thing in sight. For the first time all afternoon, he felt cold, and when he returned to the Jeep, he planned to start it up for a few minutes to warm himself.
Halfway between the shore and his truck, he saw the tall stem of his cork disappear from the hole. He sprinted forward, but stumbled awkwardly, sprawling face-first onto the ice. His arms caught his weight before his face struck the ice, leaving him facing his empty hole.
He tried to scramble upright, but his feet slipped.
Looking back in annoyance, he saw that his foot had somehow fallen into an old ice fishing hole. He’d once seen his father injure his hip when his leg fell into the hole and all the way up to his crotch.
Only Thorgard’s foot had vanished into the ice.
He pulled at his leg, and when his boot reappeared, he saw what looked to be a gray hand holding on to it.
The hand pulled back.
In terror, Thorgard jerked harder, kicking and flailing his legs in a mad scramble. As he did so, he felt another cold, gray hand upon his right wrist. With his left hand, he grabbed ahold of the slender fingers that reached up from the ice, trying to pry them away, but this left the full weight of his body upon his left shoulder blade. Two more gray arms emerged from the ice to wrap him in a frosty embrace, pinning him against the ice.
Thorgard tried to scream, but his cheek was pressed against the ice, and he could let out only a pitiful grunt.
The ice, once as hard as concrete, suddenly turned to mush, and the gray hands clinging to his feet pulled his legs into the ice until his flesh felt the needle-sharp cold water of Lake Manitou assaulting it.
His gloved hands tried to claw into the ice, but soon he lost sight of his red Jeep and stared into the cold, gray eyes within the ice itself.