Buried Truth

by Caleb Whitaker

  Chapter 17: Intuition of a Mad Man

   

  My eyes shoot open just before I hit the ground in my nightmare. From head to toe, my skin swamped in sweat meets the open air, and my body pumped with adrenaline makes everything feel undeniably awkward. My limbs feel light and agile, while my mind feels like it is floating through space. The temperature of the room cooks my oiled skin like meat in an old furnace.

  I stumble out of bed, falling to the floor with nothing to cushion my fall. My knee bangs against the rough wood floor, but I barely feel it. My flesh burns against the wood, as I crawl on the floor, no better than a rodent. Trying to push myself back up onto my feet, I let out an audible moan.

  Without meaning to, I slam the bathroom door. I turn on the water and splash the cool water onto my face. What was that? I begin to hack and gag as my chest tightens at the thought of my parents. I cup some water in my hands and drink it. The water relaxes my throat as my legs fall out from under me, flopping to the bathroom floor with my limbs flailed wide.

  My hands press harshly against my temple, while my back rests against the bathtub. Unwanted tears mix with the water and sweat as the tears flow from my eyes. Was that a memory or a nightmare? Whatever it was, it didn’t make any sense. It felt so real, but it couldn’t possibly be real. I saw myself; I looked right into my eyes.

  There is a knock on the door that draws my attention. Ryleigh asks something that I don’t really hear. I yell back at her to go away while claiming that I’m fine at the same time.

  After a few more minutes of tearful agony, I use my hands to propel myself up off the floor. I find myself staring into the mirror at my bloodshot eyes. There are bags forming under my eyes and wrinkles forming above them. My stomach begins to knot as a feeling of impending doom sets its grip on me. The feeling takes the form of an irrational voice within me telling me to leave.

  I reach out for the bathroom door in a wild panic. The door opens letting me stumble out of the bathroom and into the bedroom. I find Ryleigh standing in front of the bed—her eyes squinting with a look of scared confusion. I run over to my clothes and throw them urgently back into the duffle bag. “Something ain’t right! We got to leave, now!”

  She walks over to me as I hurriedly corral anything I can get my hands on, “Ryan, what’s going on?”

  “I had a nightmare. I was there…”

  She backs away from me as I grab the food and drink off the floor. “Wh…What did you see?” she asks in a frightened voice.

  I stop gathering things and look her in the eyes as mine begin to water. “I saw them die! Someone killed them!”

  I fight the tears while I return to gathering our stuff, “We have to leave, something isn’t right.”

  “You saw my ex?”

  “No! I saw myself… I saw myself!”

  She backs away from me and moves across the room to the door. I finish grabbing our stuff and walk closer to her. “It had to be a nightmare. It doesn’t make any sense. It couldn’t be a memory.”

  “What are you doing, Ryan.”

  I look down and notice my hands are pushing down on her shoulders. I let my arms relax, and the pressure bearing down on her shoulders relaxes as well. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to do that. We need to get out of here. I got a bad feeling.”

  I move past her to the door with some of our bags in my hands. I swing the door open to find the dimly lit hallway empty. The bags drop from my fingertips as I attempt to regain control of my rampant emotions. I have to help her. She doesn’t understand.

  I look back at her. She is standing in between the bathroom and bedroom with her back towards me. She appears lost in thought, like there is something plaguing her mind that she can’t quite get a handle on, in this frantic moment. I know what she is trying to do, because I myself am lost. “Ryleigh we need to go. I don’t know how to explain it, but we need to go. You coming?”

  She stares into the bedroom without answering. Her posture remains rigid as a motionless statue. Finally, she walks over to the bed as I stand by the door waiting for her. She turns and with a stony face replies, “Yes, I’m coming.”

  She grabs the remaining bags and walks out the door ahead of me as I stare back into the room. I think back, imagining everything we brought into the hotel. We can’t afford to leave anything we need. My eyes settle on the television, and the bottle of nearly empty scotch beside it. I take a step inward, away from the door. Instead of continuing inward towards the Scotch, I step right back outside the door. I stare in at the glass bottle as the door slowly comes to a close. I don’t need it.

  I turn so that I’m facing the stairs. My feet feel heavy, but I force myself to chase after Ryleigh as the paintings hanging in the hallway scream after me. I catch up to her on the spiral staircase as we make our way down to the lobby.

  The lobby is empty as we pass through it. I place the room key on the receptionist’s desk. Before I turn away from the desk, a portion of the receptionist’s computer catches my eye. There is a photo of Ryleigh and me. I glance around the room to make sure nobody is watching me. I take a closer look at the computer. What I find is an email containing our pictures and the warrant for our arrests.

  I hurriedly begin walking out of the lobby to the porch of the hotel. I open the door to find the heat of the day has given way to a warm night. The darkness throws me for a few seconds. I must have slept a little longer than I thought.

  There is little natural light out because the moon and stars are covered with a blanket of clouds. The darkness makes the anticipation of walking to the car quite dramatic. I focus on Ryleigh as she turns a corner, disappearing into the darkness.

  There are no streetlights to brighten the surroundings, so in my mind, I picture her ex hiding in wait behind every shadow. Every car is an undercover police vehicle and every sound is from a demon after my guilty soul. My own footsteps send chills down my back, every breath registering as my last.

  We find the car with relative ease despite the darkness. I throw our stuff in the back seat and take the keys from Ryleigh. I turn the car lights on as I prepare to pull out of the parking lot. In front of the car, stands a man in a hooded mask with a black tattoo slithering down his arm. He stares back at me with his dark beady eyes. I’m about to scream, but then he’s gone, leaving only a small tree where he once stood.

  My hand presses against the gear shift as the car moves in reverse. We travel along the hotel’s entrance driveway as Ryleigh places her shaking hand against mine. We turn out onto the highway and start traveling back into Burkeville. We need to get back into Everton. The only way back is to travel into Burkeville the same way we did when we were searching for the hotel.

  “Does your ex happen to have a black tattoo running down one of his arms?”

  Her arm lifts towards her neckline, mildly shaking as she answers, “Yes, Yes, he does… Is that who we are running from?”

  “No, but I think I saw him this morning.”

  The traffic is actually dense as we make our way towards the center of town. I nervously clutch the steering wheel as we follow behind a large pick-up truck. Ryleigh’s hand tightens around mine as the disturbing lights appear in the distance. The cars ahead of us pull over to the shoulder of the highway as the lights and siren’s approach.

  Time slows as my foot presses the brake, and my hand turns the car towards the shoulder. Ryleigh squeezes my hand even tighter as my free hand makes its way nervously to my hair. My entire body goes limp as the thought of being caught rolls throughout my head like a pinball. My veins fill with adrenaline as the first police car passes us as we sit on the shoulder of the road.

  The lights flash brightly through our windows as more and more police vehicles pass us. We are going to get caught. This is it! My eyes close as more blinking lights roll by us. My ears fill with the echoing thunder made by the sirens. I don’t even realize Ryleigh is talking to me until she punches me in the shoulder. I open my eyes to the sight of the cars in front of me
pulling off the shoulder and back onto the road.

  I follow the other cars back onto the road and continue driving as I look in the rear view mirror at the hoard of police vehicles traveling to the hotel. “That was close.”

  She says, “Good call on leaving the hotel. How did you know?”

  “I didn’t know. I just had a gut feeling.”

  We sit in silence as the city of Burkeville comes and goes without further incidence. I turn down a few old county roads that will eventually lead into Everton. “We can go to the cabin tonight, but I need to make a stop first.”

  “Are you sure? We just barely got away. We need to get off the roads and fast.”

  I think it’s over. “I know, but we also have to figure out what this is all about. It can’t be only about jealous rage, there’s got to be more to it.”

  “Where do you need to stop?”

  “My dad’s office.”

  I have to find out more about what he wanted to tell me. Since I can’t remember, I’m going to have to take a chance. Alice said she found something with dad’s shorthand that referred to Gate’s Fortune. If he had something pertaining to it at his office, I need to find it. Maybe he has a second copy of the file he showed me in his study there as well.

  It shouldn’t be that big of a risk since the police dismissed the break in. Was the person that broke in trying to steal the same thing I’m looking for? Only my family can decipher my dad’s short hand. He was always paranoid of someone trying to steal his confidential notes. The person who broke in would have no idea what he was looking at. He could have easily been looking at what he was trying to steal and never realized it!

  I press down on the gas as we travel through the darkness of the highway. I might be able to get ahead of this thing for once. I look over at Ryleigh who looks even more tired and exhausted than early in the day. The clock reads a little after ten o’clock. This whole day has seemed to drag on, but now that I have a legit lead, it seems to be flying by. The heat and exhaustion of the day are but distant memories. I feel alive and in control. But for how long?

  It isn’t long before we move out of the deserted country farmland and start to see the city of Everton growing closer and closer. We pass the city limit sign as my anxieties begin to grow. A turn down a back street that will run up a couple streets behind my dad’s law office. The road is empty and only the occasional head light from the main highway impedes the darkness as we travel.

  I pull the car under a tree and in between two buildings at the entrance to an alleyway. I turn to Ryleigh as my palms begin to sweat. “Stay here. Call me if anything catches your eye.”

  “Alright, be careful.”

  We embrace for a moment, but the awkward attempt at goodbye becomes apathetic by the time I get out of the car. Heading away into the darkness, I walk down the alleyway until I come across the next road. I survey my surroundings, checking every direction before walking across the street. Luckily, my dad’s law office is tucked away in the middle portion of a street that runs directly behind the main highway in Everton. It’s close enough to the main highway that it has always deterred anyone from wrongful action, until the recent break-in. But it is far enough away from the casual passerby that it should be safe enough for me to sneak in without any trouble.

  I duck under a tree branch as a car drives down the street. Instead of walking down the street out in the open, I walk down a gravel path behind the set of buildings that run parallel to the street. The buildings around my dad’s office are mainly residential, which means I must be careful not to let anyone inside the homes spot me. Someone prowling around outside of a home at night after the supposed worst murder scandal in Everton’s long history would land that person in jail easily.

  Through the dim lighting, the dark façade of my dad’s office comes into view. The office is a regular residential home that we have remodeled into an office. I never really liked coming with my dad to work growing up because it was always scary to me. A defense attorney, even in little Everton, doesn’t normally draw the most cheerful clientele. Most of my dad’s clients were actually very much the opposite, not that they were all bad people, just a little screwed up by their twisted passions. After all, I was one of them.

  I stare at the office thinking back over the several times I found myself running to the building, running for help when I screwed up. I carefully walk up to the back office door, hoping nobody sees me creeping in the night like a thief. A dog barks somewhere in the distance which causes me to pause. While shaking, I type the code into the electronic lock and twist the door handle. The door opens as the familiar smell of lemon lozenges greets me at the back entrance.

  I stare into the dark office as I pull out the flashlight from my pocket. Here goes nothing. Maybe some truth will finally come out. I think about Ryleigh before I walk in. I hope she is fine. I hope this isn’t a wasteful risk and a waste of time. I gently shut the door as I enter into the office of darkness. “Let’s see what you have hidden dad.”