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Cabins in the Mist sequel

-- A tale from Bois Blanc Island --

A.C. Haeffner

Chapter 1:
The Campout

Everyone else had gone to bed. I was thinking about doing the same.

All was quiet.

That’s the way it normally is at 12:30 a.m. on Bois Blanc Island. The only sounds are the lapping waves on the nearby shore, and the occasional bleat of a distant horn – deep and mournful – out on the darkened waters.

Fatigue had not yet gripped me, and so I was debating: read a book or retire for the night and hope for sleep.

But the decision never came.

The adjoining room’s phone – a squat black box affixed to the wall – suddenly cut loose with a ring that sounded magnified in the night’s quiet. I ran to the room and grabbed the receiver before the second ring. I didn’t want the sleeping brood upstairs – my brother and his wife in a side bedroom, and their daughter and grandson in a front bedroom – to be disturbed.

“Hello?” I said, trying to keep my voice low.

“Hey,” said the answering voice, the fashion in which my youngest son – David, in his early 20s – always begins a phone conversation.

“Hey, yourself,” I said, which is usually how I respond. “What’s going on?”

That was a fair question, since he was calling me at an alarming hour on his cell phone – presumably from a campground to which he had traveled hours before, on the far side of the Island on which we were vacationing: Bois Blanc Island in Michigan's Straits of Mackinac. He and his girlfriend Ali Piacente had decided to follow up a successful July 4th campout with this one some five days later. Considering the hour, this call could not be good.

“Something’s outside our tent,” David said.

“Like what?” I answered.

“Like we don’t know. Something’s walking around, kind of shuffling, and it brushed up against the tent. Ali thinks maybe it’s on two legs, but I don’t know. Maybe it’s a rabid animal. If it is, and we make a run for the van, it could get us because I’d have to stop to unlock the doors.”

The van – my van, in point of fact, borrowed by them for this occasion – was parked some thirty feet away from them. It was the only vehicle in the entire stretch of several camping sites on the island’s north shore. Those five nights earlier, the sites had been filled with campers positioned to watch fireworks across the Straits of Mackinac – displays set off and sent up at several distant locales. There had been colorful shows on the state’s Lower Peninsula, a mere handful of miles away on Mackinac Island, and in a half-dozen or so communities in the Upper Peninsula. Those last were mere flickers in the heavens that night, but by David’s account cool enough to stay up and watch in a chilling wind pouring into the campground from the north.

On this night, though – the 9th – the fireworks were a memory, and so was a campground full of companions for David and Ali. The pair were alone now, with nothing but the wind and the dark – and the fear. Something had gotten their attention, and they had been basically frozen into inactivity.

“Could you possibly come out and get us?” he asked.

I did not even weigh the request; simply nodded and answered.

“Sure,” I said, pleased that a grown son could still feel he could turn to his father. But I was worried too that maybe, just maybe, it would take me too long to get out there, for the Island’s twisting dirt roads and speed limit of 25 miles an hour would prohibit a trip of less than, say, 25 minutes. If danger was lurking, then any minutes – let alone 25 – might be too many.

But my concern was muted by my knowledge of the island – by its relative dearth of deadly creatures. The region’s lone brand of rattlesnake, for instance, possesses venom that turns a victim merely ill instead of dead.

From David’s description, though, it didn’t sound like a small creature was bedeviling them. A small creature would likely move more quickly than the one they had heard – unless perhaps it was a skunk.

But the island boasted no skunk population of which I was aware.

As far as large creatures went, there was only one bear I knew of on the Island – a fellow who had reportedly swum ashore not too many seasons back and had, local lore went, been wandering about in search of one of his own without success since. He had no history of bothering campers, though -- nor was he likely to start. I had limited camping experience, but enough to know that bears usually look for easily accessible food – and not of the human variety. The only food that David and Ali had taken was graham crackers, chocolate and marshmallows – ingredients with which to make s’mores.

Anyway, I doubted it was that bear. No, it was more likely the wind playing tricks. Or it might even be some local youths who had tried to get David and Ali to buy cigarettes for them earlier in the day and who – having been repulsed – could be seeking revenge.

But to mount a scare campaign would require four-wheeled vehicles that none of the youths in question possessed, and a brazen resolve to travel narrow dirt roads through the black of the Island’s nighttime woods to reach the north shore, and once there to skulk about without a vocal sound – no whispering, no coughing, no giggling.

No, it wasn’t kids …

It was probably just the wind.

Or … there was one other possibility.

“John Bible,” I heard myself say into the phone.

“What?” said David.

“Oh, nothing,” I answered. “Just thinking aloud. Yeah, I’ll be out in a little while. I’ll rouse Bob” – my brother, since we would be taking his van and I had no idea where the keys were, anyway – “and we’ll get out there as fast as we can. Hang tight.”

“Yeah, don’t worry about that,” said David. “We’re not going anywhere.”

****

I climbed the stairs and, at the top, took a couple of steps toward the entrance to Bob’s bedroom. I wondered how I might wake him without bothering his wife, Gussie, but then decided that the situation was just alarming enough to bypass the niceties.

“Hey, Bob!” I said softly into the darkness, and received no reply. I thought, in fact, that I heard a soft snore, which would be my brother just warming up to some sizable ones. He had climbed the stairs but minutes earlier, and so was just entering sleep.

“Hey, Bob!” I said again, but more sharply, and the snore was replaced by his voice.

“Huh? What?”

I leaned in a few inches and delivered the message softly.

“David just called. They’re spooked out there. Something is walking around, and he’s afraid it might be rabid. Wants us to save him.”

“Huh,” he said again. “Yeah. Okay. Just give me a few.”

“Well … hurry,” I said.

“Yeah,” he said thickly. “Okay.”

****

“What do you think scared them?” Bob asked when he finally descended from his bedroom. He was rubbing away the vestiges of sleep.

“Don’t know,” I said as I brandished a weapon: a foot-long wooden-handled grill brush – one of those steel bristled devices for cleaning grease from the grate of a charcoal grill.

“What do you plan to do with that? Hit a steak?” he said.

I shrugged.

“Maybe it’s a cow out there,” I answered, tongue in cheek.

“And maybe we need something bigger,” he said. Since there were no guns on the premises – a shoreline rental cottage with landlords who wisely kept most pointed objects, not to mention firearms, from the reach of guests – nothing immediately sprang to my mind. I issued a couple of quick chopping maneuvers in the air with the grill brush, and thought it fine.

“This is pretty heavy,” I said.

“Check the shed,” Bob said. “I think there are a couple of shovels out there. Those are heavy, too, and long enough to keep something away if it attacks.”

I pondered the suggestion, grabbed a flashlight and headed for the shed. I found two shovels just inside the door, and returned to the cottage. Bob was lacing up his shoes, and Gussie was nearby, just descended from their bedroom.

“Oops, sorry,” I said, for I had not intended to wake her.

“What are those for?” she asked, motioning to the shovels.

“Protection,” I said. “Weapons. I don’t know. Ask your husband.”

“Oh, god,” she muttered and then added, louder: “Whatever it is out there is going to take one look at you guys and die laughing. Of all the men on the island, you guys get rescue duty.”

She shook her head and laughed softly, enjoying her joke.

“Yeah, whatever,” I said. “Let’s roll, brother.”

I handed him a shovel and headed for the front door, the other shovel in my left hand … and the grill scraper clutched firmly in my right.

****

The drive took as long as expected. The Island in daytime is difficult to traverse quickly, its interior dirt roads bordered closely on either side by forest. The 25 mph speed limit is a generally understandable one -- and certainly high enough for us on our journey that night, although my brother topped thirty on some straight-aways, racing along the bumpy dirt path between walls of trees that looked like shadowed sticks dancing in our headlight beams.

We had seen two deer cross in front of us before we turned inland and reached the canopied route that cut through the woods, and a third was soon visible at the forest’s edge.

“Deer,” I cautioned.

“I got him,” my brother said as he slowed. While deer sometimes have a tendency to bolt in front of a moving vehicle, this one kept its wits and moved slowly away, into the shadowy pines and birch and other trees that co-exist in that section of the Island.

****

The Bible Road – a one-vehicle-wide track that cuts north past the remains of an old farm once run by John and Mildred Bible – is on the best of days a nerve-jangling experience: a straightaway that runs a mile and allows little and often no room for approaching vehicles to get by one another. If a driver encounters traffic, he had best be good at driving in reverse, for at least a little of that will be required – and perhaps a lot.

The thought of trying such a maneuver on a nearly pitch-black night left me shaking my head – and thankful it wasn’t me driving. But the odds were against the presence of another vehicle at that time of night – and the odds won: we saw no vehicles, no deer, nothing but the dark.

When we reached the road’s end, we turned right onto the North Shore Road and edged slowly along its rutted track. The camping sites were on our right. We peered into the driveway entrance of each of the first three without success, but found David and Ali at the fourth. Their -- my -- green van was visible in the dark thanks to its white rooftop carrier. As we turned in we saw the tent and, as our headlights played across it, a light came on within and we could see two heads peering out through a netted window.

Bob parked his van near the other, and I jumped out, brandishing my grill brush, swinging it about as if to give fair warning. Nothing came rushing from the dark, though, and so I slid open the side door of Bob’s van and extracted the two shovels, handing one to my brother and setting the other on the ground nearby. I could still do more damage with my smaller weapon, I thought.

“Hey,” David said through the window.

“Hey,” I answered. “So where’s our visitor?”

“Dunno,” he said. “It’s been quiet for awhile.”

“So what do you think it was?” I asked as he and Ali unzipped the tent opening and scrambled out.

“Something big,” said Ali, looking nervously about. “Can we get out of here?”

“No, we gotta strike the tent,” I said.

“Let’s come back and do that tomorrow,” said David.

“Nah. Tonight’s better,” I said. “I don’t want to have to drive out here in the morning, too.”

David and Ali exchanged a look, shrugged acquiescence, and tackled the chore with a feverish intensity that collapsed the tent and had all of its parts stowed in Bob’s van within a couple of minutes. Then the matter of drivers came up.

“You okay?” I asked David. “If you want, you can drive and I’ll go back with Bob.”

“Yeah, I’m fine,” David said, looking into the surrounding darkness.

I studied him closely in the beams cast by Bob’s headlights, and could see the anxiety manifested in a small tremor in his arms and, I thought, probably his legs. I then looked at Ali – she seemed shaken, too – and decided in an instant.

“Nope,” I said. “I’ll drive you two in our van. You can both sit in the back. Bob can follow us. Okay, Bob?”

He was just placing the shovels back into his van.

“Yep. No problem,” he said.

And so we departed.

****

“Boy, it was really weird,” Ali said as we made our way back along the Bible Road.

“What?” I said.

“Oh … the whole thing,” she said. “There were footsteps … definitely footsteps. Pretty heavy.”

“Scared the hell out of us,” said David. “We just kind of got real quiet. I mean, our hearts were racing. We could hear it out there, whatever it was, moving around.”

“And then it brushed the tent – right up against it,” said Ali.

“What do you think it was?” I said. “You figure that out yet? A bear, maybe?”

“Maybe,” said David.

“No, I don’t think so,” said Ali. “I got the impression it was a two-legged creature. Big … but just two legs.”

“Scared the hell out of us,” said David again.

“Yeah, we didn’t even think to call you for half an hour,” said Ali. “Then it finally dawned on us that we could. Then, after the call, we just lay down and stayed real quiet.”

“Yeah, funny,” said David. “I actually went to sleep.”

“Real funny,” said Ali, and I heard what sounded like a soft punch in David’s side.

“Ouch,” he said. “Well, I couldn’t help it. That’s apparently how I react in a dangerous situation.”

“Yeah, great,” Ali muttered. “He goes to sleep and leaves me alone.”

“I was still there,” said David.

“You were not,” she said. “You were sleeping!”

There was a half-minute of silence before she spoke again.

“He missed it,” she said.

“What?” I asked.

“The lights,” she said. “He slept right through them.”

“What lights?” I asked. “Like flashlights?”

“No, not flashlights. Big bright lights, real round, up high in the trees. They just jumped from one spot up there to another.”

“Maybe flashlights,” I tried again. "Or a hand-held beam of some sort."

She took a deep breath; sighed loudly.

“No,” she said. “Way too bright. And they moved fast; flitted about. You know? It was nothing like I had ever seen.”

“But you were in the tent,” I said. “They couldn’t have been too bright through the fabric.”

“No, that’s how bright they were. They were insanely bright even through the tent.”

I thought about it a moment.

“Oh,” I said.

****

We exited the Bible Road and turned left onto the wider track that would deposit us some twenty minutes later in Pointe aux Pins – the municipality that was home to our rental cottage.

“What was that you said on the phone?” David asked. “Something about a Bible?”

I nodded, but realized he probably couldn’t see the motion in the dark.

“Right,” I said. “John Bible. That’s his farm we just passed back there. Or it used to be.”

“Used to be?” he asked. “What’d he do … sell it?”

“No. He died,” I said. “I wrote about him in Cabins in the Mist.”

“Oh, well, you know,” said David.

I looked in the rearview mirror, trying without success to see his face.

“You didn’t read it,” I said.

“Not yet,” he said. “But I will. I promise.”

“Oh, I want to read it,” said Ali.

I shook my head – I think ruefully. It had always been like this – easier to get non-relatives to read my stories than relatives. Cabins in the Mist was one of four books I had published, and it was unlikely David had read any of them.

“Yeah, okay,” I said to Ali. “I’ll see that you get a copy.”

“So what about this Bible guy?” said David.

“Oh, yeah. Well,” I said, “he lived on the farm for decades; came to the Island after the first World War. Then he died about forty years ago. His widow Mildred continued on at the place for another twenty years – until she died. It’s run-down now; privately owned by somebody who doesn’t live on it. There’s a sturdy new garage, but little else. The old Bible house has fallen in on itself, and the old root cellar and workshop aren’t far behind.”

David digested that bit of history.

“But why did you mention his name?” he asked. “What does he have to do with tonight?”

“Oh,” I said. “I just thought maybe it was him who came calling. Or maybe Mildred. But I think it was more likely him, since you say your visitor was large.”

This was met by silence.

“A ghost,” David said.

“Yeah,” I said. “Just a thought.”

There was a brief silence.

“What makes you say that?” Ali asked. “You think there are ghosts?”

I smiled in the dark.

“Yeah, you could say that,” I said softly.

Chapter 2:
The Cabins

We made it back to the cottage without incident, and each of us retreated to our respective rooms for sleep. Before she retired, I handed Ali a copy of Cabins in the Mist.

“Oh … thanks,” she said. “I’d like to read them all. David said you wrote four. Right?”

“Yeah. Well, three other novels,” I said. "They were a good deal longer than this one."

After Cabins, I had written an historical fantasy novel called The Maiden of Mackinac, and beforehand I had written two books unrelated to Cabins in all but geography. They, like Cabins, were set on Bois Blanc Island, and were subtitled The White Woods Chronicles. The first was a fictional memoir based on my childhood summers on Bois Blanc, and the second served as both sequel and prequel to it, employing key characters from the first book to help create a myth and a mystery set as far back as the 1930s and as recently as current day.

But Cabins was different – for it was all true.

And beyond that, it was pertinent to this night’s occurrence, for it dealt with John Bible and his wife Mildred – along with a long-dead gangster named John Dillinger. In the book, I related how I had crossed through a time-space membrane into a world in which Dillinger – reputed to have hidden in a trio of cabins on Bois Blanc in the 1930s – still existed, along with other Island folk who had passed away. It was a sort of heaven – a reconstituted Bois Blanc complete with old landmarks that had long since disappeared from our world, the victim of age and fire and other natural elements.

My crossover, it turned out, was for several purposes: to test Dillinger in a shooting match; to receive from Bible a thank-you for a kindness given in my childhood; and to reacquaint myself with a figure dear to me in those long-ago days when a summer on the Island seemed at the outset as though it could last forever.

Now, in that setting populated by Dillinger and the Bibles and all the others, summer could indeed do just that.

“I think,” I now told Ali, “that if you read this, you might gain some answers.”

“Answers?”

“About tonight.”

She looked at the book, a puzzled expression on her face.

“Why?” she said.

“It explains about John Bible – what he was, and where he ended up after dying.”

She shook her head.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “But how could it explain such a thing? I grant you it might speculate, but … it’s only a novel, after all. It’s just fiction.”

I smiled at her practicality and shook my head.

“A common misconception,” I said.

She studied me.

“You’re serious,” she said.

I smiled again.

“You meant it,” she added, “about what you said earlier – about how it might have been John Bible’s ghost out there tonight. Right?”

“Well, yeah; maybe. I can’t be sure. But I think I can find out.”

“How?”

I reached out and touched the book.

“Just read it,” I said.

****

And she did, relinquishing sleep for the next couple of hours to devour the story – an account of modest length. She then dozed, awakening at mid-morning. She found me on the front porch, a screened affair that captures the breezes off the Straits of Mackinac and offers equal parts sunlight and shade, depending on where one might choose to sit.

I realized she was there when the book was suddenly held aloft in front of me, above the pages of a newpaper I was reading.

I looked up and shook my head.

“Keep it. It’s yours,” I said.

“Oh,” she said, and drew it back. “Thanks.” Then she sat down on a wicker sofa opposite the chair I had selected for the morning sun. Nothing was said for a couple of minutes as I continued reading. I didn’t feel like starting a conversation, at least not with a “What did you think?” That is often perceived by a reader as an invitation to criticize, and criticism was not what I was seeking. I needed something deeper: an understanding.

Finally she spoke.

“This was … very detailed,” she said.

I looked at her and offered a short nod.

“Very detailed,” she said again.

We sat in silence, looking at one another.

“Not fiction?” she said at last.

I shook my head.

Then she shook hers and stood.

“I’d like to see Dillinger’s Cabins,” she said.

“It won’t do any good to go out there now,” I said.

“Why not?” she said. It came out a challenge.

“You read the book,” I answered. “You tell me.”

She stood in silence, pondering, reaching – and smiled.

“You can only go across at dusk.”

“Right,” I said. “At sunset, when all is quiet – when the world is between day and night. So … unless you just want to see some rundown cabins, we’ll have to wait a few hours.”

She nodded.

“We can do that,” she said. “I’ll go work on Dave.”

And with that she turned and marched inside to enlist my son in the adventure.

****

A note here of explanation:

As with anything symbolic, there are differing interpretations.

That’s how I viewed the incident at the tent – as symbolic.

It could have been some unexplained and unexplainable anomaly, but I didn’t think so. My experience told me it was likely otherwise -- that John Bible was leaving me a calling card.

And – this is where interpretation comes in – I thought he was also putting out the invitation to David and Ali. That’s why he involved them.

A further interpretation: He wanted to see me in a hurry, or else he wouldn’t have frightened them. He would have devised a gentler calling card.

And so …

I needed to take the two young adults to Dillinger’s Cabins.

The three of us were going across.

****

“I can’t believe you never read the book,” Ali said to David. We were on our way out the shore road toward the Firetower Road. The cabins – a trio of broken down structures – were about two miles inland on Firetower, identified by a numeral marker recently posted there by the Island Historical Society. It was designated the 20th stop on a recommended tour of two-dozen Island landmarks.

“I’m not a reader,” said David in response, and he smiled. “I’m a lover.”

I laughed, so unexpected was the answer. I had expected “computer expert” – which he indeed had become.

“Very funny,” said Ali. “But I’m serious. Do you have any idea what’s in that book?”

“Yeah, I've heard Dad talk. Some stuff about a portal … and about a gangster named Dillinger; and I guess about John Bible. But that’s all just fiction. I mean, I was out here with Dad the first time he came, and nothing happened. Right, Dad?”

David had indeed accompanied me a handful of years earlier to the site, and had wandered about its grounds with me, studying the cabin remains and looking for possible artifacts – something that a gangster might have left behind. But of course nothing was likely to turn up, since Dillinger had reportedly died about 70 years earlier and the site had no doubt been picked over by the Island’s historians and by 70 years worth of visitors.

We had concluded our brief stay that long-ago first day with some pictures. I took one of David standing next to the centrally located cabin, which still had walls several logs high. Its two neighbors had just one or two logs each per side, and trees growing where floors had once been. Roofing was a distant memory. Nature was reclaiming the land.

“That’s right,” I said, looking in the mirror at my two passengers. They were seated where they had been the night before, on the trip back from the campground – next to each other on the van’s middle seat. Ali was peering ahead intently now at the road and the woods on our left, but David was looking back at me in the mirror. “You’re absolutely right,” I added. “Nothing happened … until we were leaving. Remember you said the place ‘creeped’ you out?”

“Yeah. Yeah, it did,” said David.

“Well, it didn’t bother me; it entranced me. And I caught a sort of shimmer in the scene as we were leaving, and thought it odd, and worth another look. So I went back a couple of days later – but alone.”

“It’s all in the book,” Ali muttered.

“Which is fiction,” David said, responding. “What is so difficult about that concept? None of whatever is in there actually happened. It’s just a story.”

He turned toward me again; found my eyes looking back in the mirror.

“Right, Dad?” he said.

“Well … not exactly,” I answered.

“I told you,” Ali said softly in a singsong cadence. I was a little surprised that she seemed to have embraced the book as factual; but I’m no expert on the whims of females, and so accepted her acceptance as one of the many mysteries of the gender that must be taken on faith. Or maybe she was just humoring what she thought was a slightly crazy older man.

“Right,” scoffed David.

“Ah, the Firetower Road,” I said, and took a sharp left turn. When the van straightened, I accelerated gently on a straightaway that wouldn’t last long. The road would narrow ahead, twisting its way through the Island’s deep woods. The 25 mph speed limit would soon be too high. The two-mile trip would take about eight minutes. The average speed would be about 15 mph.

****.

Following the publication of Cabins, I had only a couple of opportunities to cross over to visit the land of Dillinger and Bible and the others. With a home in New York state and only occasional visits to the Straits of Mackinac, practicality had ruled over the excitement that each portal experience offered.

In fact, I had had little urge to try again recently. It had become something I wanted to share with someone -- and in fact I had with my late wife Susan, in the year before her death. From then until now there had been no other prospective companions, my sons being infrequent Island visitors.

But on this day, on this vacation, I had David and Ali to accompany me. (My brother, an avowed skeptic, had considered Cabins a bit of silliness, and I had never tried to convince him otherwise. Besides, he hadn't been invited on this journey.)

“Whoa, slow down, you just passed the sign,” Ali said. I braked and stopped, and then backed up the van until I was beside the Historical Society marker, positioned to my left. It simply states “20.” It is small and easily missed in the shadowy world whose presence it announces – and doubly so with the sun’s rays settling below the horizon. By sundown, in fact, there is very little light in the area of the cabins. Consequently, they are extremely difficult to see from the road.

Only one, in fact, stands out on even the brightest of days – brightness being a limited commodity at any time, thanks to the thick canopy of trees that overhang that section of the Firetower Road. I couldn’t help but notice, in fact, that the wet spring the island had experienced had encouraged the vegetation; it was thicker overhead than I remembered, and more dense on the ground, too. New plants had sprung up around the cabins, mixing with the debris of a handful of decayed and fallen trees. The entire scene was greener than before, and darker … and more eerie.

We left the van along the far side of the road, with its flashers blinking. It was unlikely that many other drivers would happen by, but if they did I wanted to give them fair warning that the unusual – a parked vehicle – was partially in their path. There was just barely enough room at that point for a second vehicle to edge by mine.

“Kind of buggy,” David was saying as he and Ali stopped near the centermost cabin; she was studying it.

From that vantage point, one of the companion structures was visible fifty feet to the right. Ali spotted that, and shook her head.

“They’re a mess,” she said. “But this one’s still got some logs to it. The other one, you can barely see the outline. It’s mostly bushes … and a tree. How long ago did you say Dillinger was here? Was it the ’30s?”

“Right,” I said. I had stopped just behind them and was about to stride toward the slope behind the cabins, to a shallow ravine behind. It was there where I had first spotted Dillinger, and it was there where I had met him on my first return trip. I wondered if, in his existence, he was there once again, target shooting. That was his favorite sport, the activity from which he seemed to derive the most satisfaction.

“The first time. It was 1934,” I said. “After his plastic surgery; he was trying to throw the Feds off his trail with a different look. There was too much chance he’d be recognized with the mug he had. So he came up here with some of his men and hid out. Only a few locals actually saw him, I guess; and some insist it never happened. But it did. He stayed a couple of weeks.”

“And now he’s … what … living here for eternity?” David asked.

I smiled. There was a flicker of interest there.

“I guess,” I said. “I don’t really understand the setup. After Dillinger was supposedly killed by the Feds later in ’34 – it wasn’t him, but some poor sap he set up – he traveled around and eventually ended up here again. Took up residence in these cabins. Ownership was in question, but nobody really cared. So he stayed; befriended John Bible, and minded his own business. Some folks knew it was him, but he went by another name, and nobody ever gave him up to the authorities. They wouldn’t; not up here. These folks are independent souls, and not likely to kowtow to someone with a badge.

“Anyway, he died here, and decided – in whatever fashion these things are decided – that he wanted to continue on the same way. And so he resides on the Island yet, and as far as I know always will. Although maybe that’s a broad assumption on my part. Like I said: I don’t really understand how it works. I don’t think you can until you’re part of that society."

David was looking around the grounds as I started my monologue, but by the end of it he was simply staring at me. I couldn’t tell for sure what he was thinking, but I thought I read skepticsim there. He didn't seem to be buying any of this. But Ali was.

“So how do we get across?” she asked.

I turned my attention to her. David would, I hoped, soon learn the truth for himself.

“Well, that’s hard to say,” I told her. “The time is right; the sun’s setting, and all. The first time, it happened not too far in from the road. The second time, I was down in the ravine. When I went across with Susan …”

“What?!!” said David. “Mom went across? She never said anything.”

I shook my head.

“No, she wouldn’t. It kind of upset her. I’ll tell you about it sometime.”

“How about now?” he said.

“No. No time,” I said. “If we’re going across, it’ll be very soon. As I was saying, when I went across with Susan, we were over to the left here a few feet, near the entrance to the center cabin. Here, I’ll show you.”

I strode over to what was left of the structure’s doorway. The frame had long since crumbled, but its base was intact, secure between a couple of logs that still marked the cabin’s perimeter. Ali and David followed me, and we stood at the opening, looking into an open shell that had once been interior. The far corner still was seven logs high – as it had been on my first visit – but there was more natural debris now on the site: fallen branches, primarily, to complement the tree that lay across the three remaining logs of the south wall to the left of the entranceway.

“Right here?” Ali said.

I nodded.

“Right here.”

The change came swiftly, the scene in front of us wavering before gaining solidity. The light was the first thing I noticed – a brightening all around us – but a mere second later came the structural change. The remains of the cabin seemed to build upward as though out of a mist, the walls coming into focus from the ground up, log by log, until the wall we were facing was above our head and the overhang of a roof appeared a couple of feet above us.

“What the hell?” David said.

“Oh, my,” added Ali.

“Seems like a good spot to cross over,” I mused, for the cabin doorway had proved twice now to be a doorway to more than just the ruins of a cabin.

We stood there a moment, looking at the structure, glancing at each other, and in Ali’s case stifling a giggle. David looked a little pale, and I was giddy. This, I thought, is so cool.

The next voice we heard came from none of us. It emanated from inside the cabin. I could see now that the main door was open. A screen door – with sunlight reflecting off it – had obscured that fact. I made a mental note: the screen door was new. I wondered what other improvements had been made.

“Well, don’t just stand there,” the voice said. “Get your asses in here!”

David recoiled at the directive, which had an edge to it; Ali, however, just smiled brightly at me. I nodded to her, and pulled open the screen. I walked through, and Ali followed … tugging a reluctant David along behind her.

Chapter 3:
On the Other Side

Dillinger was seated at the table near the middle of the building’s single room. A sink and stove were in the southwest corner, and a bunk and dresser on the far, north, wall. He was dressed more casually than when I had last seen him, a turtleneck t-shirt replacing the trademark white shirt with which I had come to associate him.

“Mr. Haeffner,” he said, as I entered, and then nodded when Ali and David filed inside behind me. David had to duck a little coming through the entrance; his 6-foot-2 brought him to the top of the door frame. Once inside, he was clear of the ceiling by maybe three inches. Being of average height myself, I had never considered the ceiling a low one until that moment.

“And Miss Piacente,” added Dillinger to Ali, “and her young Mr. Haeffner. Excellent. All here and accounted for.”

Ali had a surprised look on her face: half smile and half confusion.

“I’m sorry,” she said, “but how did you …”

“Know who you are?” said Dillinger. He had dropped the edge from his voice, and was addressing her kindly. “It doesn’t matter, young lady. It only matters that the three of you have answered the call.”

“Call? What call?” said David, and turned to me. “Who is this guy, Dad?”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” I said. “David, and Ali, this is John Dillinger. Mr. Dillinger is generally my host here, at least at the outset of each visit.”

“Dillinger,” said David softly. “You’ve got to be kidding. I don’t believe this …”

The gangster’s loud laugh – a measure of the pleasure he took in unsettling people – suddenly filled the room, and David reacted by taking a step back.

“Of course you don’t,” said Dillinger when he finished laughing. “You don’t believe because you are a skeptic, but also because you fear the unknown. Take last night. It scared the hell out of you, that campground visitor. Yes? Of course it did, and that was because it was an unknown commodity. As this is. But look around you, young fellow. Things are fairly simple, fairly clear. This cabin wasn’t whole to you moments ago, and now it is. And when we go outside you’ll see the other cabins are in equally nice shape. So … obviously you are no longer at the ruins in your world. It’s really not so hard to fathom.”

Dillinger swiveled toward me.

“You’ll like what I’ve done with them,” he said. “The other cabins. New bunks. Plenty of room for visitors, though the hotel in the Pines can house folks, too..”

He turned back to David.

“No, the cabins aren’t like this where you come from, nor for that matter is the Pines. You’ve heard of the hotel there, I’m sure; it burned down years ago, but folks still talk about it in your world; still wish it was there. And the old mansion on the corner, kitty corner from the hotel. That burned, too. You know of these?”

David, seemingly mesmerized by the force of Dillinger’s presence, simply nodded.

“Good,” said Dillinger, “because they exist here. You’ll see them; see how the Island used to be. And you’ll get to meet some folks who used to live on Bois Blanc. They’re here; chose it as their everlasting residence, I guess you could say. Nice folks. Some rich; some not. And one nice thing is, there’s not too many of them, because there’s never been all that many folks on the Island. You want to meet some of them?”

David nodded again. I was trying to read beyond his face, into his feelings, but couldn’t tell if he was fearful, or stunned, or …

“He’s adjusting,” said Dillinger, repositioning himself in his chair. The three of us were still standing, David and Ali on the side of the table opposite our host, and me to their right, at the table’s eastern edge. Dillinger studied David a moment more, then placed his hands on the table, fingers splayed. "Okay," he said. "I could have had you sit. But there really isn’t too much more to say. We can talk while we walk.”

He stood abruptly, shoving the chair back on the plank floor. The resultant screech was startling enough to send me back a step. Our host grinned sheepishly – a crooked smile that I had long thought signaled perpetual mischief.

“Oops,” he said. “Pretty loud. Well … let’s get going.”

And he marched around the far end of the table, past David and Ali, and over to the door.

“Well, come on,” he said. “Don’t just stand there. We have stuff to do.”

“Oh, God,” I said. “Not more shooting.” I had, each time I had visited, been pressured into competing with him in the ravine -- testing which of us was the better shot with a handgun.

Dillinger looked at me, seemingly perplexed. Then he smiled brightly.

“Oh, the target shooting. No, not this time. At least not right now. We have a couple of stops away from here that we have to make.”

“Where?” I asked.

“The first one’s across the Island,” he said.

“John Bible’s place?” I asked.

He nodded, motioned toward the door, swung the screen outward and passed through the opening to the outdoors.

“John Bible’s place,” he said. “Let’s go.”

I willed my feet into motion behind him, and David and Ali followed me. We left the cabin single file, and headed toward the road.

****

“What call did we answer?” David reiterated after we reached the road. We were walking four abreast on it, heading north. The van was nowhere in sight.

“Why, the visit to your campground … the bright light that was dancing around,” said Dillinger. “It was an invitation. It prompted your emergency appeal to your father, who recognized it for what it was.”

David was shaking his head.

“It was Mr. Bible,” said Ali. She was explaining to David, but at the same time the tone in her voice – a trace of uncertainty was there – sought confirmation.

“Exactly,” said Dillinger. “It was old John, a big fellow on two legs, just as you suspected, young lady. He needed to get word out fairly quickly to Mr. Haeffner here, and couldn’t depend as he did before on some unrelated visitor from your world passing the message along. That method we tried before, and it took time, as I recall. Anyway, this worked, because here you are. And while we’re on the subject of visitors …”

He paused, obviously inviting response from me. So I obliged.

“Yes?” I said. “Not getting too many, I hope. I’d hate to think you were deluged.”

“Deluged,” said Dillinger, and in the word I could tell his tone had darkened. “Hardly. Look ... I need you to do something for me."

"For you? I thought it was John Bible who wanted something."

"Oh, he does," said Dillinger. "But I do, too. I need you to write something again. About this place. The traffic -- at least for my purposes -- has dried up."

"Your purposes ..." I said. "You mean ..."

"Shooters," he said. "Nobody's coming across anymore to shoot with me. They did after you first wrote about it, but let's face it, only a limited number of people have read that book of yours, and some of them thought it was fiction."

I had written of my initial crossover experience in a 12,000-word tract titled “Lair of the Gangster.” It described my initial visit to the site of the cabins, and my first meeting with the gangster, as well as detailing his history. And it presented Dillinger’s desire to have visitors against whom he could compete in target shooting in the ravine.

I had printed the story through my computer, and circulated it on the Island in a spiral-bound format. A tourist who read it was emboldened to visit the cabins with friends, and Dillinger let them through. The man, while visiting Dillinger, was asked to transmit a message to me to the effect that John Bible wished to meet me. That, in turn, had set in motion my second – and most personally rewarding – visit to this realm. And like a domino effect, it led to something else: another story that I combined with the first and published in soft-cover format as Cabins in the Mist.

“Yes, well, this crossover stuff does stretch credulity," I said.

"Yeah, I know," said Dillinger. "But this next time, when you write about us again, I want you to advertise it as non-fiction."

"I never said the first one was fiction," I said.

"You didn't say it wasn't," Dillinger answered. "Your promotional literature said it was 'fanciful.' That sounds the same as 'fiction.'"

"I thought 'fanciful' was suitably obscure," I responded. "I was trying to maximize the readership – draw in people who would believe me as well as those who would never believe.”

Dillinger was shaking his head.

“They sell it online as fiction,” he said. “That says it all.”

I thought about debating the point further, but I didn't want to test Dillinger's patience.

“Okay,” I said. “The next one, I'll do better."

"Make them see that I’m here," Dillinger said, "just itching for a little competition. I’ve been doing nothing but target practice for too long; I need some shooting competition. Some fresh blood. But they’re not gonna come if they don’t think they can. So … yeah. Do that. Be more persuasive.”

It was my turn to shake my head; but I did so only mildly, and fleetingly.

“Okay,” I said gently. “Okay."

Dillinger was silent for several paces. David and Ali, I saw now, were watching him closely; had probably found the conversation enlightening. David was devoid now of overt confusion; I figured the adjustment was taking. He would be okay.

“Good,” Dillinger said at last.

*****

Several more paces passed in silence before something occurred to me.

“Hey,” I said. “How come we’re going the long way? It’ll take us hours walking from your place to Bible’s.”

In my previous visits, any time I set foot from one Island point far removed from another, the distance between them would be covered in a seeming instant: I would take one step from, say, the Dillinger Cabins, and a stride later be setting foot onto the Bible property several miles away.

“Oh, yeah; I just wanted to clear the air before you got distracted,” said Dillinger, and without another word, without time for another breath, we were on the Bible Road, at the perimeter of the farm owned by John and Mildred Bible.

I could see now, from this vantage point, something I hadn’t noticed in my previous visit – the one chronicled in my first book: There was a wide path from the road straight ahead to the property’s outbuildings, just as there was in my world. But Dillinger, as he had before, led us into the adjoining woods, onto a path that started near the road.

I hesitated, thinking the direct route might be easier. Dillinger, noticing I was lagging, stopped.

“Snakes,” he said. “And a bunch of bees. You don’t want to deal with them. This is easier. Besides, I never like to let folks know I’m approaching. I prefer the element of surprise.”

I almost laughed at that, but thought better. He was probably serious. But the fact that a reformed gangster – one who had existed now for a long time in a peaceful setting – would still think that way, struck me as humorous. And why he, in an afterlife, would still sidestep snakes and bees was beyond easy understanding.

Old habits, I decided, and followed his lead into the woods.