CHAPTER 11
“Aren’t you ready to give up on this yet?” Vonnie asked as she watched Taylor prepare their dorm room for another soul-walking experiment. This was the third one today.
“La la la, not listening!” Her friend was nothing if not stubborn.
Vonnie threw herself into her desk chair, wondering where her reasonable, rational self had gone. The old Vonnie would have gotten outta here hours ago. Yes, she had decided it was easier to go along rather than argue about it the first time. No matter what she said, Taylor had intended to do it, and Vonnie had preferred to be on hand in case things went south.
It hadn’t worked. Big surprise. After an hour of candles, gross-smelling incense, stroking a gold necklace that had belonged to Jenny, and then closing her eyes and counting backward from one-hundred while lying on her bed, her roommate had gone exactly nowhere.
Not giving up—spouting the old try, try again credo—Taylor went back to her books, had visited message boards on weird websites, determined to figure out what she’d done wrong. Certain she had nailed it, she’d insisted on going for it again after class this afternoon.
Same result.
Well, actually, although she hadn’t admitted it, Vonnie had been unsure at one point. During that second attempt, Taylor’s deep, even breaths had stopped for a few seconds. For the briefest instant, the idea that her friend really had gone somewhere flashed through Vonnie’s mind. Then Taylor gasped, returned to her audible backward counting. And failure. Vonnie had forced herself to forget that one weird moment, and made a mental note to suggest Taylor talk to her doctor to see if she suffered from sleep apnea.
Efforts number one and two were a bust. Now, late Monday night, Taylor was determined to give it one last shot. And Vonnie was determined to resist.
“Come on, Tay, this has taken up most of our day. I really have to study.”
“So study. It’s not like I’m going to make any noise.”
“Like I’ll be able to focus when you’re there trying to push your soul out of your body.”
“It’s not my body pushing,” Taylor said as she put fresh, fragrant flowers in a vase. “It’s my spirit climbing.”
“Same difference.”
“No, it’s not.” Taylor lit the gross-smelling incense that probably had everyone on the hall thinking they were smoking pot. She smoothed her white dress and straightened the flower wreath in her hair—she’d made a daisy chain out of dandelions picked from the quad. Then she glanced at her feet to make sure they were still coated with dirt.
“You are going to ruin those sheets,” Vonnie grumbled. “I’m not doing your laundry.”
“Soil will ground me. It’s a reminder that I am of the earth, and to the earth I must return.”
Vonnie rolled her eyes, certain her roomie was quoting something she’d read online.
Taylor didn’t notice. “I missed that last time, which was probably why my body couldn’t release my soul. It was too risky.”
“Stopped it from climbing up the ladder, huh?”
“Something like that.”
“Uh huh.” Picking up the remote, Vonnie flicked on the TV, needing a distraction.
Taylor plucked the device away. “Wait until I’m gone. I need to concentrate.”
“You’re not going anywhere.”
Tossing the remote onto a chair, Taylor said, “Please, Von. One try. The last one.”
“You promise?”
After only a tiny hesitation, Taylor nodded.
Vonnie frowned. “You’re not going to claim you meant it was the last time tonight?”
“That’s a good idea, but no, I’m serious. If this doesn’t work, that’s it. I’ll call it quits.”
It wasn’t great, but Vonnie knew it was the biggest concession she would get. Taylor was determined to do this. When Taylor was determined to do something, she would eventually do it.
“Fine,” she snapped. “But hurry up with it, would you? I do need to study. So do you.”
Taylor stuck out her hand to seal the deal. Vonnie took it. In a moment of deep connection, they both gripped tight and held on for a long time. Although she still felt this was a waste of time, a hint of fear clutched at Vonnie’s heart. She was more nervous this time than she had been before. Possibly because Taylor was calmer than she had been before.
“Wish me luck?” Taylor finally asked when she let go.
Vonnie forced herself to smile. “Good luck trying to get me not to laugh at you again.”
There was no more talking. Taylor finished her ritual and climbed the ladder to her mattress. She’d insisted they re-bunk the beds, and was on the top. To give her soul a shorter trip? Who knew.
She rang a tiny silver bell three times. With a last, hopeful nod, Taylor lay down, crossed her arms over her chest in a pose that was way too much like a body in a grave, and started to count. “One hundred. Ninety-nine.”
Vonnie sat at her desk, opening a textbook and staring at a page. She couldn’t concentrate—of course she couldn’t, with Taylor doing her countdown to nothing again. So she went over to her own bed, grabbed her phone and opened a game. That didn’t distract her either.
Staring up at the bottom of the top mattress, she waited as the numbers went lower and lower, and Taylor’s voice grew softer and softer. That hadn’t happened earlier, as far as she recalled. The breathing had been slow and steady—except for that breathless moment—but Taylor’s voice had remained firm and rhythmic both times before.
Softer. The word ten was barely a whisper.
Vonnie slipped out of her bed and stepped up onto its edge to peek at the one above. Taylor’s face was smooth, her body utterly relaxed. She looked almost boneless. Almost…dead.
“Damn,” she whispered, completely spooked. “You did it.” Not the soul-climbing part, but Tay had, it appeared, managed to hypnotize herself into a deep trance. Vonnie could hardly believe it, and wished she’d gotten Taylor to teach her how to offer hypnotic suggestions. It would be really nice if her roommate weren’t such a slob.
One.
She saw the word on her friend’s lips, but didn’t hear a thing except her own raging heart, and Taylor’s regular, low and easy breaths.
Then they stopped.
“Oh, shit.” She waited. “Come on, big gasp, baby.”
There was no response. Vonnie started a count of her own, watching Taylor’s face, wondering, mentally urging her to breathe. After twenty silent seconds, she started to panic.
Climbing onto her own mattress and standing on tiptoe, she stretched up over Taylor’s prone form and put her hand just above her lips. When she felt the tiniest puff of air, followed by several more, she almost cried in relief. Tay was breathing, just very gently. Soft and shallow inhalations seemed to be all she needed to maintain the strange state she was in.
Still worried, Vonnie put two fingers against her neck and felt a slow, steady pulse.
“Tay?” she whispered, but got no response. Her roommate really was under.
Relieved Taylor still had a beating heart, Vonnie climbed down. Grabbing her phone, she set the timer to a countdown. She hadn’t believed this would work, but she’d agreed that if it did, she would wake Taylor up after she’d been “gone” for thirty minutes. To do that, she had to ring a bell three times, as Taylor had before she started her countdown.
Twenty-nine minutes. Then twenty-eight. Twenty-seven. She shoved some cookies into her mouth and tapped her toe.
Twenty-one. Twenty. She paced the room. She grabbed a bottle of water from their little fridge and gulped it all down, trying to wet her suddenly dry mouth.
Seventeen. Sixteen. Vonnie sat at her desk. Stood right back up. Sat on her bed and picked up her phone. Put it back down. She grabbed some of Taylor’s clothes off her chest of drawers and folded them before realizing they were dirty.
Ten. Nine. Picking up the bell, Vonnie fought her urge to ring it now. The tension had increased to an unbearable level. She clutched it tightly, rocking back and forth on her bed, not wanting to consider what she would do if the chimes didn’t do what they were supposed to.
What if Taylor didn’t wake up? What if she had to call the Kirbys, who’d already lost so much, and tell them Taylor had been messing around with something she didn’t understand and was now in a coma? “God, I can’t believe I helped her do this.”
Four. They were dabbling in something they knew nothing about. Psychiatrists with years of training did hypnosis. Not college girls with some library books and good web-searching skills.
Three. Vonnie’s teeth began to chatter, tension controlling her body. She watched the timer on her phone hit one minute, and continue to count down. Her heart beat in time with each flashing second.
One. She mouthed the word in silence, just as Taylor had thirty minutes ago.
The phone beeped. Her time was up.
Vonnie pushed herself to her feet and said a silent prayer. Turning toward Taylor’s bed, she lifted the bell high and flicked her wrist once, creating a soft, pretty peal. Swallowing hard, she flicked again. “Third time pays for all,” she whispered, and jingled one last time.
Half of her expected Taylor to gasp and jerk upright immediately.
Her other, darker half suspected Taylor would never wake up again.
Holding her breath, she watched for any change—the flicker of an eye beneath a lid, the tremble of a hand. Nothing happened. Absolutely nothing. Taylor continued to breathe in those tiny, shallow puffs. Her face remained cold and still, her body utterly motionless.
“Come on, girl, snap out of it!”
But she didn’t, and a wave of worry flooded Vonnie. She darted to the end of the bunk and climbed the ladder, crawling across the bed to kneel beside her best friend.
“Taylor,” she said, keeping her voice soft so she didn’t shock her friend out of whatever spell she was in. When she got no response, she spoke a little louder. “Wake up, it’s been thirty minutes.” She forced a nervous laugh. “Wake up now. You know you’re dying to gloat about how wrong I was.” Grabbing a limp, pale arm, she gently shook. “Snap out of it. I want to hear everything. Did it work? Did you find Jenny?”
Vonnie didn’t believe that, of course. She was just trying to reach Taylor on a deep, subconscious level, and hoped mentioning her lost twin would do it. But it didn’t.
Her concern turning into real fear, Vonnie’s efforts grew more desperate. She grabbed both of Taylor’s arms and tried to pull her up. It was like pulling a bag of cement. Dead weight. She yelled in Taylor’s ear. She pinched the fleshy spot between her toes, careful not to brush off any of the stupid “earth”, which obviously wasn’t doing its damn job.
She might as well have been trying to awaken a coma patient. Taylor was as out of it as Sleeping Beauty—beautiful yes, but a cursed princess who breathed but never moved.
“Oh, my God, what are we gonna do?” she groaned.
Vonnie hadn’t been this scared since they’d escaped from that psycho’s basement a year and a half ago. She’d also never been as terrified of losing someone she loved, someone who was as close to a sister as she would ever have.
“Please, Tay, please come back,” she whispered again and again as time ticked by.
She sat on the bed for twenty minutes. Taylor’s body never moved, not when Vonnie tickled under her nose with a feather from the pillow, not when Vonnie screamed in her face.
“Enough,” she finally mumbled, knowing she was in over her head. She needed help.
Calling 911 was her first thought, but if Taylor were taken away by ambulance, the hospital would call her parents. The Kirbys would be hysterical with fear.
There was one other option she could try before reaching that last resort.
Scrambling over the side, she hopped to the floor. Taylor had left her phone on her desk, and she raced over and grabbed it. Hoping her friend had added the psychiatrist’s name to her contacts list, she scrolled down, searching for Isaac’s sister, Kate Lincoln.
“Yes!” Jabbing the call button, Vonnie whispered, “Please pick up. Please pick up.”
Her wish wasn’t granted. Instead, after five rings, a woman’s smooth voice apologized for not answering and asked if she would like to leave a message.
“This is Vonnie Jackson. Taylor’s friend. Taylor Kirby, I mean. We met a couple of weeks ago?” Babbling. Get it together. “I need your help. Taylor’s trying to find your brother, and she did something crazy. I can’t wake her up. Please, please call me when you get this!”
By the time she disconnected, Vonnie was in tears. Big fat droplets rolled down her face and fell to the floor. She felt more helpless than she had that last night in Mark Young’s dungeon, when Taylor had gone for help, leaving Vonnie alone to fight with their captor.
Striding back to the bed, she climbed up and straddled Taylor’s body. She grabbed her shoulders and shook hard. “You wake up now, damn it! Do you hear me, Taylor Kirby?” She sobbed. “You can’t bail on me, now. Not when you made me love you like you’re my twin.”
Beneath her hands, she felt the faintest movement, as though Taylor’s shoulders had shrugged. She leapt up and to the side, staring into Tay’s face.
The brow twitched. The head moved on the pillow. The lashes began to flutter.
She grabbed a still-limp hand and squeezed tight. “Come on, girl, wake up now.”
The hand squeezed back. The grip was light and weak, but it was deliberate. Taylor was telling her she was coming back, that she would be all right.
“Oh, thank you lord Jesus!” Vonnie bent and kissed her forehead, brushing Taylor’s dark hair back. Seeing the withering daisy-chain crown, she plucked it off and tossed it to the floor. She never wanted to lay eyes any of the soul-walking accoutrements again as long as she lived.
Taylor moaned and moved restlessly.
“Come on, Tay. You get back here now so I can tell you off for scaring me so bad.”
Taylor rustled again, and color returned to her cheeks. Her skin felt warmer to the touch. Her lips parted, and she drew a deep, slow breath, and then another one. Finally—finally—her lashes fluttered again, and she opened her eyes.
“I’m going to murder you,” Vonnie said, even as she burst into big, ugly sobs.
“Shh…shh.”
“Don’t you shh me. You scared me to death. You’ve been ‘gone’ for almost an hour.” Vonnie picked up the bell and threw it across the room. “This thing does not work.”
Taylor smiled up at her, a gentle, tender look on her face, which was very unlike her. Vonnie suspected she was still coming out of whatever dream state she had been in.
“Hi, Vonnie. It’s so good to see you.”
Vonnie brushed tears from her face. “Hi yourself, you butthead.”
Soft laughter followed. Taylor normally would have snapped back a sassy retort, but she was still in a strange mood. Slowly sitting up, she lifted her hands and stared at her own fingers. She turned them, studying front and back, then curled and straightened them. It was as if she couldn’t remember how they worked.
“Are you okay?”
Not responding, Taylor began to look around the room. She stared at the closet, at the movie posters above her dresser, and the classical art ones over Vonnie’s. A smile pulled at her mouth when she saw the framed picture of her little sisters, and she bit her lip and sniffed when she saw the one of her parents.
“I’m back. I’m really back,” she whispered. “It worked.”
Vonnie swallowed, not sure she wanted her friend to continue. She could walk out of the room right now and make herself believe forever that Taylor had simply gone into a deep hypnosis, a dream state, and nothing else had happened. She hadn’t changed. How could someone change from one hour of deep sleep?
She couldn’t make herself leave, though. Because something had happened. Something was still happening. Taylor had climbed up onto that bed the same bossy, sassy girl she’d always been. She’d awakened…different.
Taylor breathed deeply again, several times. Closing her eyes, she whispered, “Gardenias. My favorite.”
“Tulips are your favorite,” Vonnie said, edging away a little. “You didn’t get them today because you said you needed a stronger scent.”
Ignoring her, Taylor went on. “Do you have any Strawberry ice cream? I’ve missed ice cream so much. And pizza!”
They had pizza just about every other night of the week. The dining hall downstairs served tons of flavors of ice cream. Rocky Road was Taylor’s favorite. Not Strawberry.
She scooted a little farther, until her back hit the side rail of the bunk. “Are you okay?”
“I’ve never been better.” Taylor smiled and reached out to touch Vonnie’s cheek. “You look beautiful and happy. I’m so glad you’re all right.”
Completely freaked out by the touch, the tone, and the words, Vonnie launched herself over the rail. She landed on one foot and one knee, which cracked sharply.
“Oh, no, are you hurt?” Taylor peered down at her, like a kid looking over a balcony.
“What is wrong with you?” Vonnie asked, rubbing her knee as she got up on shaky legs.
“Not one thing.” The smile looked slightly more like Taylor. More happy, less…dreamy. “I’m great. God, it’s so nice to be here.”
“Bullshit. I know you, Taylor Kirby. This is not you.”
Her friend merely laughed and watched her with twinkling eyes. She looked as though she had a secret and was daring Vonnie to guess it.
A suspicion blossomed in Vonnie’s mind. A ridiculous suspicion. She shook her head, trying to force it away.
Taylor noticed. “Let yourself think about it. You know it’s true.”
“No.” Vonnie spun around. “No, no, no.”
She heard Taylor climb down the ladder. Her filmy white dress swished as she walked across the floor to stand behind her. A hand landed on Vonnie’s shoulder. “Yes.”
Vonnie’s rational, reasonable mind was breaking, splitting in half. Her world was orderly, explanatory, scientifically proven. What she was thinking…what Taylor was implying….
“I’m so sorry I wasn’t there that night, Vonnie.”
She spun around, not sure where Taylor was going. “What are you talking about?”
“If it had been me, if she and I hadn’t switched places, I would have insisted on driving you home.”
“I don’t understand.”
“At the honors assembly. The night he took you. I should have been there for you. I was stupid, wanting to meet a boy, getting her to take my place so I could sneak away.”
The words hit her dead center, like a punch. All the air was sucked out of the room, and Vonnie felt like she was looking at one of those spinning wheels with the curving lines, going around and around, making her dizzy, making her queasy. “What are you saying?”
“You know what I’m saying.”
Vonnie feared she did. It was impossible. It was insane. It was beyond all rationality and rules of science and the natural order. But somehow, from the minute those eyes had opened and the brunette had said hello, Vonnie knew—she knew—she was not talking to Taylor Kirby.
She was talking to Taylor’s sister. Her twin. The dead one.
“Jenny?”
“Yes, it’s me.”
Vonnie stumbled back in shock and disbelief. The other girl grabbed her arm to steady her. They stared at each other for a long moment, and then a tender smile appeared again.
That loving, emotional expression did not belong on Taylor’s exuberant face. It had always belonged on her sweet-natured sister’s.
This was really happening.
“Ho-ly shit,” Vonnie mumbled. “This really is a Lois Duncan book.”
Jenny laughed. “Come on, Vonnie, let’s go get pizza and ice cream and catch up. I’ve been gone a long time, and I only have an hour.”
“What happens in an hour?” she muttered, wondering if she and not Taylor were lying on that bunk, lost in some weird, surreal dream.
“Then Taylor gets her body back.” She shrugged. “See? Not a Lois Duncan book at all. I’m not a body thief. She just…lent it to me.”
Vonnie must have been hit on the head. The top bunk had collapsed and she was in a coma, herself. It was the only sane explanation.
“See, I was dying for some ice cream.” Jenny bit her lip. “Sorry, bad wording.”
“Uh huh. Right. Ice cream.”
The other girl—Taylor, her best friend? Jenny, her best friend’s dead sister? A figment of Vonnie’s imagination? The product of a coma-induced dream?—laced her hand in Vonnie’s.
“It’ll all be okay, I promise.”
Vonnie wanted to believe that. Honestly, though, considering someone had inserted TNT in the logical part of her brain and lit a fuse, she didn’t know if she would ever be okay again.
Funny, though, as she walked with a happy, curious girl to the dining hall, Vonnie realized something about herself: She wanted to believe.
She wanted poor, lost Jenny Kirby to have her ice cream.
Kate begged Derek to call the police, but he resisted. Without concrete proof, they wouldn’t be able to explain how they knew a teacher had been murdered here.
And there was no body.
Derek had seen Sam Andrews die, but his remains had been moved after he’d been killed. The brush was smashed down in a person-wide line that disappeared into the swamp. He’d obviously been dragged away. There was blood on the ground, a lot of it, but Derek insisted that blood alone wasn’t enough.
“Look, they don’t even have a detective on the tiny force in the closest town. They might come out here, see this, and call it a gator attack on another animal.” He rubbed his eyes. “Savannah-Chatham? Sure. They’d do a thorough investigation. But it’s not their jurisdiction.”
“There has to be something else we can do.”
“There is. You can wait here while I check inside that building. After that, I’ll get you back to your car, you will get in it, and drive home.”
Not without him she wouldn’t. Considering his words had sounded like orders, she didn’t say that, but she had no intention of leaving him alone in this place tonight, with a murderer on the loose and a horror show waiting for Derek around every corner.
Obviously not noticing her obstinate expression, he bent to touch the thick, dark fluid spread in pools and puddles around a hollowed spot in the brush. “As I thought. It’s not congealed. This didn’t happen very long ago.”
God. They might have missed this murder by minutes.
“That means what I can do is follow that trail, find the remains.” His jaw tightened into a boulder. “And hopefully run into the bastard who killed that poor man.”
Dropping her voice lower, she gestured toward the building several yards ahead of them. “How do you know the murderer didn’t come back here after he moved him?”
He shook his head. “He’s a goddamn coward, preying on boys and English teachers. If he had been heading back this way, he would have heard us coming and taken off.”
She grabbed his arm. “You can’t know that. Let’s just call your friend Olivia’s husband. He’s a detective, right? And he knows what you can do? He’ll believe you.”
He covered her hand with his and squeezed lightly. “Liv’s in the hospital, remember?”
She pulled away, feeling foolish for forgetting. She tried to focus, to pull her brain back into working order. Her thoughts were jumbled and disjointed. Of course, heart-attack-inducing terror could do that to a person. Standing a few feet from where a brutal crime had just been committed was absolutely terrifying.
Taking a calming breath, Kate searched for another solution. She would do anything to keep Derek from going through another experience like the last one. Even if there was no physical danger, the mental one could be devastating.
She did not want him entering that building, whether the killer was in there or not. For Derek, it could be walking into a slaughterhouse. If the perpetrator had murdered a teacher in building 13, why wouldn’t he have done the same with the missing boys? How could Derek survive seeing something like that?
God, she hated picturing the crime he had only briefly described. She also hated that he’d felt compelled to watch. That he believed he’d been responsible.
Only the monster who’d done it had been responsible. No one else.
Now that she knew what had been done to that poor teacher, whose only crime was actually caring about his students, she was even more anxious for whoever was responsible to be caught. But not if it meant Derek put himself at risk by going into that shack alone.
She lifted a hand to her brow and swayed on her feet. He was at her side in an instant.
“Are you all right?”
“A little dizzy.” Although she said it hoping he would insist on taking her out to the road right now—and stay there, safe and sound—Kate wasn’t lying. She had gone through medical school; she’d seen corpses, she’d touched blood. Still, that human-shaped, hollowed-out place surrounded by gore was the closest she had ever come to a murder victim. Seeing ugly proof of what he had endured, her heart broke for Mr. Andrews. “Maybe you should take me to my car.”
Derek took both her arms in his hands and held her steady. The grip was not hard, but showed he was very serious. “Kate, I know what you’re trying to do, and I appreciate it. I will take you back there soon. I just need five minutes to go inside that building and make absolutely certain the sonofabitch didn’t double back and dump Mr. Andrews’ body there.”
She hadn’t considered that.
“If he did, we’ll go right away. I’ll call Gabe and ask him to send somebody he trusts up here. Then we’ll contact the local police and wait for them together. Deal?”
She couldn’t fault his logic. If he found what he was looking for, Derek could stay in her car with her until the cavalry arrived. It meant he would not try to leave her there, order her to go home, and then come back into this green hell alone in search of a brutally stabbed body and the person who’d wielded the knife.
“Deal,” she said, knowing he would hate her condition. “But I’m coming in with you.”
He dropped his hands. “Absolutely not.”
“I’m a doctor, Derek. I’ve seen bodies before.” She licked her lips. “They use this building to punish the boys, so there can’t be remains in there all the time. At the very most, it would be Mr. Andrews. Maybe there’s a chance he could be saved, and I might be able to do that.”
“He can’t.”
“You’re sure? Because of your vision? You don’t see anyone until they’re totally dead?”
He hesitated before answering, and then admitted, “It happened once. I saw Li…I saw someone who’d drowned, and had been resuscitated after she’d technically died. But that is not the case here. There’s no way Andrews could have survived this much blood loss.”
She glanced down, gauged the splashes, and conceded the point. “I’m still coming. You already noticed I have good eyesight.”
He blew out a slow breath, his glower probably frightening to little children, but it didn’t intimidate her.
“We can stand here and argue about it, or we can just get this over with.” She crossed her arms in front of her chest. “You’re not going alone. The sooner we get it done, the sooner we’ll get out of here.”
He saw the resolution on her face and muttered, “Damn.” And that was that.
Lifting the flashlight, Derek shone it on the narrow path that led back to the ugly building to which they were headed. Building 13.
“Have your phone handy?”
The phone. She last remembered having it in her hand, but patted her pockets, front and back, anyway. “I think I dropped it.” It must have been when she’d seen Derek fall to his knees and had run to help him.
“Shit.”
“It’s okay—I’ll stay close to you.”
“Don’t step away,” he insisted.
She moved in behind him, their bodies almost touching as they walked step by step toward the place they’d both heard so much about. They avoided the droplets of blood he pointed out with the beam of light.
From the outside, the place looked strange, but not entirely terrifying. Just another old structure the swamp had reclaimed from its human builders. It had probably once been a maintenance building, or perhaps a groundskeeper’s cottage. Now it was just a giant box of green. Moss, marsh fern, and what might be poison ivy had crept over every inch of the old grey stone. It made the place looked like a house in Hobbiton…the one the Hobbits used to butcher their meat.
The path widened as they drew closer. It looked like it was kept cut back…probably to make it easier to force tormented boys inside. While the old carriage house had not retained a piece of wood, there was still a door here. A thick, heavy one that looked as wide as a headboard and as thick as a wall. It was open a few inches.
Derek waved the flashlight. Its beam caught and reflected off an unlocked, heavy-duty deadbolt fastened to the exterior wall. “Try not to touch anything.”
She nodded, her stomach churning at the sight of that shiny, new lock. It looked strong enough to resist the desperate pounding of any terrified teenager.
Derek looked over his shoulder. “You okay?”
“I’m fine.”
“Why don’t you wait out here?”
“Please, let’s just get it over with.”
The oppressive weight of the hot night pressed down on her like a shroud. The humidity was brutal, the air so thick it was like trying to suck breaths through cheesecloth. Sweat beaded on her forehead and dripped down her face. She’d lost her hat, and her hair had come loose of its braid. It hung in lank, sticky strips down her back.
Nothing was worse, however, than the knowledge that they’d finally found the place she had heard about from Isaac all those months ago. The place where he’d been dumped and abandoned overnight.
“You sure you won’t change your mind?” Derek asked.
She shook her head, breathing through her mouth, not wanting to inhale the air wafting from inside that place. Its own history made it reek of fear and darkness.
Derek reached into a deep pocket and drew out his small, holstered handgun. “Let me look first,” he whispered as he freed it and held it down to his side.
Stepping in cautiously, he jerked the flashlight around to shine its beam all over the interior.
That he did not immediately jump back and pull her to safety told her there was no one lurking within.
That he did not immediately tell her they could go to the car and wait for the police told her there was no body, either.
One thing his posture did tell her. When he flinched, going ramrod straight, she knew he was seeing something that had taken place before they got here.
He shoved the flashlight away, stepped back and to the side of the path into the bramble, and pulled her with him.
She suddenly understood what he was seeing. “Andrews?”
He answered with a sharp nod, looking straight ahead, his jaw rigid and his whole body as hard as the stone that had been used to build this place.
“He was killed in there?”
“No, but that’s where the attack started. He just came out and staggered past us. Whoever killed him caught up with him not far from here.”
Good lord. The ghost—imprint, reminder, rerun, VHS recording, whatever you wanted to call it—of a murdered man had just gone by them, invisible to her, but shown in ghastly detail to him. If he hadn’t moved so quickly, might it have gone right through him? She couldn’t stand the thought.
“It’s clear now,” he said, re-holstering his weapon. “Sixty seconds. No more.”
Derek reached for her hand. She suspected he wanted to look inside and get back out before Andrews’ murder started its replay.
He stepped through the doorway, and she went in after him. As soon as she was out from under the misty, humid sky, she wanted to be back outside. She’d seen nothing more than a rusty old hospital bed topped by a filthy, moldy mattress, when vomit rose up into her throat.
The interior was one large room, broken tiles embedded in dirt beneath their feet. It crunched with every step. The vines that had enfolded the exterior had not made it in here, or had been cut out when the owners of this so-called school had decorated their perfect time-out corner.
Isaac had told her there were pictures…and yes, there were. She recognized some of them; they were famous images of old, barbaric mental treatments, straight out of textbooks and off the Internet. Someone had actually printed them out and taped them up in here, like kids setting up a haunted house to scare their friends.
This was a staged dungeon, conceived and laid out for one reason: to terrify boys who got out of line. There was a set, and props, only the poor students never realized they were the actors.
Some of the props, she saw, were very authentic. Such as the tools used long ago to restrain, discipline, or lobotomize patients. A filthy straight jacket hung from a peg on the wall, and metal restraint cuffs were chained to the foot of the bed. Jesus.
“You okay?” Derek whispered, turning to look at her.
“No. Are you?”
“Not really.” He moved the beam around the room again, shining it into crevices and banishing shadows. “What’s that?”
She didn’t see anything, but followed as he went to a corner and crouched, running his fingertips down the wall. He mumbled something under his breath, and she realized he was reading graffiti that had been scratched into the stone.
“J. B. Richards. Frank Carter. Burn in hell. I hate you all. Somebody kill Fenton please. Johnny. Connor G. I want to go home. Isaac….” He looked up at her, falling silent.
Kate knelt beside him on the filthy floor. Lifting her hand until her fingers were right beside Derek’s, she rubbed them over the line where he’d stopped.
Isaac Lincoln.
She stared at her brother’s name, imagining the time he’d spent in this awful, tainted place. Grief she’d successfully kept buried for months rose up her body, sticking in her throat. All the unvoiced whispers that she’d kept deep inside her—that he wasn’t really gone, that a miracle would occur, that she would get him back—evaporated in the gloom.
“Oh, God,” she whispered, her voice breaking.
Her certainty over all these months had concealed the truth. Kate had convinced the world she knew what she was talking about when she claimed Isaac was dead. But she’d never entirely managed to convince herself. Not until right now.
His name was carved in that wall. He had been left here in fear overnight for some imagined infraction. This school truly was as evil as she thought.
Her brother really had died.
A sob finally freed itself from her mouth…from her soul. Tears she had thought had ended months ago poured from her eyes. And Derek, sweet, gruff, tender Derek, picked her up in his arms again and carried her outside. He strode past the brutal, bloody crime scene, the bench, and the hedge, to the narrow path. She wept with every step.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, realizing she was probably soaking his shirt.
“Shh, it’s all right. Cry honey. Let yourself feel it. It’s the only way you will ever be able to let him go.”
“I thought I had,” she mumbled against his neck.
“I know. You’re so strong. So damned capable. But there are just some losses that you can’t will away. Some pains that are always there.”
If anyone knew, it was this man. She thought back to the story he’d told her about the first time he’d seen one of his visions. No matter how she grieved for Isaac, no matter how much she wanted to know how, when, and where he’d died, she would never—ever—want to see it, as Derek had witnessed the murders of his parents. That would take strength she had never even realized a human being was capable of.
He continued to hold her in the darkness, not far from scenes of unimaginable horror, protecting her and letting her know she was all right. Her tears slowly dried, although the ache in her chest remained. Finally, she sniffed and raised her head to look at him.
“You’re always carrying me,” she mumbled.
“And I always will if you need me to.” He leaned in and kissed her, bringing her focus to him, not to the all-around-them.
Once he saw her tears were gone, he lowered her to the ground. Kate felt…not better, exactly, but at least cried-out for now.
“You’re going to leave me at the car and search, aren’t you?” she asked, knowing it was true.
“Yes.”
“Please don’t. Don’t go alone.”
“Kate, we talked about this. I have to…”
His words died and he froze. His cocked head and intense stare said he was straining to discover something. To hear something.
She heard it too.
Singing. Strange, eerie singing.
Oh where have you been, Billy boy, Billy boy? Oh where have you been, charming Billy?
Kate grabbed Derek’s arm, feeling his stone-hard tension. She didn’t doubt he recognized the voice, too. It was the same strange, off-tune lilt they had followed for so long in these woods their first night here.
It grew louder, the echoes hitting the mist and the canopy, surrounding them. She had no idea where the singer was. She only knew one thing.
He was headed right for them.