Page 72 of The Girl in the Mist

“Thank you for asking me to come out here,” I say. “I’m really interested to know more about your project about yourfather.”

“And if I’m following in his footsteps?” Jacobasks.

“Why don’t we agree to not discuss the current case? Not without your attorney present,” Ioffer.

“That’s certainly how I prefer it. Give me just a second and I’ll be done withthis.”

He gets the door into place and I’m expecting him to open it and let me inside. Instead, he walks down the steps off the porch.

“Where are you going?” Iask.

“It’s where we’re going,” he says. “Come on. I’m going to bring you over to my father’shouse.”

There has never been a single moment in my life when that kind of invitation seemed so potentially deadly. But I walk down off the porch and fall into step beside Jacob as he leads me across the open land. We dip into a cluster of trees and a few yards later step out into another large clearing where a second, far older house sits. Jacob gestures atit.

“There it is. That is my father’s house. For your purposes, you could say that is where Reggie Merriweather lived before confessing to thirteen murders. It was actually his grandparents’ house. And their parents’ house before them. My house was the one his father built and then passed to my father. I grew up there with my mother. Dad came and spent time with us every day, but he would often wander off to this house. Mom used to say that he needed to get away from his own head, but because he couldn’t take it off, he needed to get somewhere he could listen to it without being disrupted. She had no idea what she was actuallycondoning.”

“Are we going to go inside?” Iask.

In the context of the investigation, I should be happy about the prospect of finding the entrance to the place where Miranda was kept, but I’m actually eager to get inside simply because I want to see it. Curiosity has taken over. I want to know why Jacob thought it was important to bring me here.

“If you want to,” hesays.

“Ido.”

“I have to warn you, though. It’s not exactly pleasant in there. It hasn’t been changed since he left. A couple of vandals got in here a while back, but something must have happened because they ran like living hell coming out of this place and I haven’t heard anything about it since. Maybe dear old Papa is in here haunting,” Jacob says with a playful laugh. I don’t share his laughter and Jacob escorts me up the steps. He takes a large, intricate brass key out of his pocket and inserts it into the door handle.

In the next moment, I walk into a time capsule. As worn and comfortable as the other house looked, this one is ancient. Dust blankets every surface. I could absolutely believe everything inside belonged to Jacob’s great-grandparents and generations beyond. He describes the rooms and significance of some of the possessions to me as we roam from room to room.

Jacob talks about growing up here and his happy memories playing with his father. Reginald used to read to him in the huge, green-cushioned rocking chair by the fireplace. They played games and put together puzzles in the parlor. He especially loved when his mother would pack them a picnic and they would go out into the woods or down by the edge of the lake to eat.

I’m almost lulled into the sense that I’m just exploring an old house kept the same as it’s been for generations before we climb the stairs and everything changes.

The bottom floor of the house was for the living. The upper floor is about the dead.

As soon as we get to the landing, an overwhelming shift in energy and feeling comes over me. I can feel something different here. It takes a few seconds to begin to see the chaos. Dark staining on sections of the floor. Framed photographs cluttering the walls, some containing pictures I recognize as victims of the 1964 massacre. Some with pictures of people I don’t recognize. Someempty.

We make our way through a series of bedrooms and Jacob tells me about the research he’s been doing for his book and why he believes his father was responsible for far more than just the camp massacre. Along the path that his own digging into Reginald’s past and his movements through his life has taken Jacob, he’s found several unsolved missing persons and murder cases he’s come to believe were the work of his father.

“Do you know Detective Garrison?” I ask when we get into the one bedroom that actually has a bed in it. “He was a rookie cop when the first massacre happened and was a part of the investigation. He spoke to your father about the murders a couple of days after they happened. Apparently he also encountered him several times and had to ask him to stop going onto the campproperty.”

The other rooms were only filled with chairs and lounges, shelves and tables on which rest the memorabilia of the victims of the camp murders, along with other items I can’t identify. Jacob believes these items belong to other victims, ones Reginald murdered before the incident at Camp Hollow as well as in the few years after. He is convinced his father slowed down after Camp Hollow and was done for a few years before he confessed and was put in prison.

“I remember him,” Jacob says, nodding. “He came around some when I was younger and a few times after my father was put in prison. He tried to convince my mother he had falsely confessed and we needed to find out what reallyhappened.”

“You knew that,” Isay.

“Of course,” he says. “He was worked up every time he came over to talk. Sometimes just upset. Sometimes angry. He couldn’t understand why my mother just wanted to put it behind her. It was so horrifying for her to find any of this out. She didn’t know. I didn’t know. I want to make sure you understand that. Neither of us had any idea what was happening when it was actually happening. We never came over here. It was his space and we respected that. We didn’t realize what he wasdoing.”

“I understand,” I tell him. “That case with Gacy a few years back is more than enough to prove families can seem like they are right in the thick of everything that’s happening and still have no idea. His mother and sister spent a considerable amount of time in the house where the bodies were buried and had no idea. I believe you and your mother didn’t know what washappening.”

This seems like a relief to him. I doubt he’s talked to too many people about any of this. Working on his book has been his form of therapy and he’s preparing to eventually send it out into the world. I’m sure there’s some fear there. He wonders what people are going to think of him and of his mother. It’s hard not to take on some of that guilt and to wonder how people are going to look athim.

I can’t help but be extremely cognizant of the similarities between the two massacres at the camp. Jacob’s fascination with his father’s crimes is evident and it makes Miranda’s description of events make even more sense. I don’t let on that I’m thinking this. I want Jacob to feel at ease talking to me. I want to be able to catch any kind of slip.

“I was never really allowed to be a part of the conversations Garrison had with my mother when he came over, but I overheard them. I could tell how much this meant to him,” Jacob says.

“When I spoke to him about your father, Garrison described him as being reclusive and a little different. He said that he was ‘half-cracked,’ as he put it, as a defense against the possibility that he was responsible. But a mental disorder could be a major contributing factor as to why he would do these things. What do you think?” I ask. “Has your research shown you anything aboutthat?”

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