“Yes. Tragic thing. Barely had time to enjoy the place,” Scott replied.
Jack turned his attention to Scott who was glancing back at his house and then turned his attention back to Jack.
“Mrs. Ketchum had a stroke there too, didn’t she?”
“Yes,” Scott replied. He was now starting to wonder if Jack was insinuating something about the old Ketchum house.
“And right there,” Jack pointed to the street right behind Scott. “Right there is where Edwina Quartley got run over by a car.”
“What are you getting at, Jack?”
“Don’t you find all that strange?”
“Things happen, Jack. Terrible things, yes but I’m not understanding what this is about.” Scott took a step closer to the truck as he spoke and noticed Jack had a shotgun on the seat, the barrel of which was on Jack’s lap and it pointed towards the driver side door of the truck.
“Do you know who Norah Jenkins is?” Jack asked.
“Was,” Scott replied. He was a bit alarmed that Jack had the shotgun. “She passed away.”
Jack nodded his head slowly. Norah was dead, and now Lily and Patrick were the last of the twins afflicted with the curse. With the twins being so young, he could act and end the curse. There would be no one left to have children, ending the lineage of evil. That had to be why Sparrow had come to him now, after such a long time. This had to be why he had visions of her. She must have known Norah would die. A woman who, even though locked in a psychiatric ward had still managed to have children and pass on the evil to her offspring. Would doing this be enough to stem the evil? He didn’t know for sure. If he knew it would, he would have done it already. Killing children wasn’t something a moral man like Jack could do lightly. With a guarantee of it ending the evil, he could but without knowing, it was a big risk.
“Did you know,” Jack asked. “Did you know that Norah had a twin sister?”
Scott was confused by this. He hadn’t known much about Norah until recently. If she did have a twin, Scott thought it odd that his wife wouldn’t have mentioned it; although she had kept much from him when it came to Norah Jenkins.
“You don’t find it strange that all these horrible things have befallen people all around you ever since you took in Patrick and Lily?” Jack asked.
Scott swallowed his nervousness and tried to get to the point at hand. “What do you want, Jack? Why are you parked out here?”
“My grandmother says it has to be me,” Jack replied as he laid a hand on the shotgun.
Jack must be losing his mind, Scott thought. Jack must be seventy at least, so his grandmother can’t possibly be still alive. Could she?
In that moment, a large crow swooped down and landed on the hood of Jack’s truck, startling both Scott and Jack in the process. Scott took a few steps away from the truck as the crow cawed twice in his direction. He turned and marched back towards his house as the cordless phone on his belt began to ring. Scott answered the call as he got to his walkway and spun to watch Jack.
“Hello?” he said into the phone while being completely distracted by what he was seeing.
Jack clutched the steering wheel with both hands as he convulsed and tensed in his seat. The crow stood on the hood of the truck motionless as it watched the old man in the truck.
“What the f…,” Scott started saying before cutting himself off avoiding the cuss word that he tried so hard not to utter, especially not in front of the kids.
“Hello? Scott? Did you hang up on my dad?” Miriam asked. She knew this was out of character for her good-natured husband.
Jack Whitefeather had been ready to grab his shotgun and end all this, even if he had to kill Scott too. He had felt a sudden sense of urgency and desperation. He would do it and be damned for it, if those were the consequences. He had felt ready to act until the crow landed and startled him. Before Jack could even question why his feathered friend had come to him so abruptly, the bird had pierced his mind once again.
In the vision he saw a ring of fire, though he soon realized that it wasn’t merely a ring, but a pentagram. The pentagram was made of flames, and in its center, he saw a long white bone stuck in the ground, the familiar curved handle covered in intricate carvings. His grandmother’s dagger pointed up to the dark clouds. The burning pentagram was in a small clearing near the edge of a cliff. A place that Jack recognized. He had been there before, on one of his many explorations of the island. He knew the place but why was the crow showing him this?
The crow cawed loudly in his mind and his sight snapped away from the clearing and the burning pentagram. He saw himself sitting in his truck. He was seeing through the eyes of the crow and next to him sat Sparrow Whitefeather, only now she was old again. She sat next to Jack’s physical form but stared at the crow with a fierce intensity that broke Jack out of his involuntary trance.
Jack awoke with a tightness in his chest which he believed to be a heart attack at first. He relaxed his grip on the steering wheel as he breathed deeply, watching as the crow took flight, disappearing from view.
Jack saw Scott standing on his front walkway, watching him while on the phone. Jack didn’t wait to see if Scott was calling the police. Breathing deeply, he felt the pain in his chest subside as he started his truck and drove away.
“Well that was fuckin’ weird,” Scott blurted to Miriam who was still on the other end of the call.
“What’s going on?” Miriam asked. She knew something wasn’t normal just by the sound of her husband’s voice, even through the phone.
“Scott!” he heard Samantha scream from the house. “Scott!”
“I’ll call you back,” Scott said to Miriam as he ended the call. “What?” he asked Samantha as he turned and walked to the front door where she now waited for him.
“Bradley left.”
“What do you mean, left?”
Scott and Samantha went to the back yard where Patrick sat stacking his blocks into a pyramid. Lily was stripping the clothes of a new pair of dolls she had just received, and Gavin was in the process of digging a hole in the sandbox with his favorite toy loader.
“Bradley wasn’t feeling well, so I told him to go lay down. Which he did,” Samantha explained. Scott could see she was in an agitated state which he knew wasn’t normal.
“But just now, he came out again and looked really pale. I asked him what was wrong, but he ignored me, walked right past me like he didn’t even see me.”
“Walked right past you,” Scott repeated while trying to understand where this was going. That wasn’t like Bradley to ignore Samantha. He idolizes her, thought Scott.
“He walked right past me and into the woods,” Samantha added, pointing to the forest behind the house. The Cudmore house was on the outskirt of town which meant its back yard was linked to a large stretch of woodland.
“Into the woods?”
“He walked off in the woods,” Samantha repeated.
“He didn’t mention where the hell he was going?” Scott asked in frustration.
Before Samantha could respond to Scott’s question, a whimpering sound came from the sandbox where the kids played.
“Worms!” Gavin screamed as he broke into sobs, stood up and wet himself.
“You go get Bradley,” Samantha blurted. She was often better at handling Gavin when he was upset. “I’ve got this,” she said referring to the little ones.
“You sure?”
“Go,” Samantha urged. “Something’s wrong with him. Go!”
Samantha scooped up Gavin in her arms and wiped at his tears with the palm of her hand. Patrick had a confused look about him as he tried to understand what was happening around him. Lily was having one of her staring contests with one of the Barbie dolls she had clutched in her grasp. The naked doll still had all its limbs but already had all its hair torn out.
Scott turned a
nd ran into the woods behind his home. He stopped and peered back towards the way he had come. He already couldn’t see his house through the trees even though he had not run very far.
“Bradley?” he shouted hoping for a response that didn’t come.
He ran a short distance more but stopped when he saw a familiar running shoe that he knew belonged to Bradley. Surely, he wouldn’t be going too far after having lost a shoe.
“Bradley!” he shouted louder this time, letting his frustrations out.
A crow quietly landed on a branch and watched as Scott ran past it. The bird cocked its head in curiosity, much like the blind boy often did. The bird took flight and flew through the trees, towards the direction Scott ran until it found what it needed, as if it had already known it would be there.
A single sock on the ground snagged to the bark of a tree root. While in flight, the crow swooped down, picked up the sock and flew away with it. The bird landed again, watching Scott who had stopped to catch his breath. The bird dropped the sock near a beaten path. It pecked at the sock and cawed twice, as if trying to attract attention to itself.
Scott, seeing the bird pecking at the sock, immediately ran to it shooing the bird away and grabbed the sock. It was one that he remembered Patrick folding, not long ago as he and the boy had folded socks together. Seeing what looked like beaten down foliage before him, Scott ran down the makeshift path a way before stopping to call out for the boy once more. In the distance, Scott heard a gunshot.
Gavin clasped onto Samantha with all his strength as his sobs subsided. Samantha stood next to the shaded sandbox, clutching Gavin to her as she watched helplessly as the old man had returned. He carried a shotgun and stood next to the sandbox. He had appeared out of nowhere while she had been busy consoling Gavin, catching her by surprise.
“I have no choice,” Jack said as he reached for Lily’s arm. She scurried away from him in the sandbox before standing up. “Come girl,” he called to Lily as he watched Samantha. He wasn’t pointing the gun at the teenager as he didn’t think he needed to. She already has a bandaged arm, no doubt caused by the same evil that put Edwina Quartley in a coma, he thought. The same evil that put Ben Augustine in a wheelchair and the Ketchum couple in side by side graves.
“What do you want?” Samantha demanded as she struggled with Gavin.
“I have to end the evil,” Jack replied. In his current state he firmly believed that Samantha understood what he referred to. He was now convinced that the entire Cudmore household knew about the evil that plagued the twins. He had convinced himself just now that Samantha knew and was protecting them. Perhaps this is why the evil had only recently harmed her, he thought, looking again at the bandages on her arm.
“Samantha?” Patrick muttered in an inquisitive tone. He dropped the blocks he had been clutching in the sand and got to his feet. The boy cocked his head as he listened intently trying to understand everything going on around him.
“Come here,” Samantha said hoping Patrick would follow instructions and walk to her voice. “Come to me.”
Lily stared at Jack, who was watching Samantha.
Jack saw a dark shadow in the corner of his eye. There was something in the woods. The hairy beast was back as he saw it dart from one tree to the next. In one swift motion, Jack shouldered the shotgun and fired, hitting the side of a tree, sending splinters airborne. Jack glanced at the girl who had dropped to the ground, shielding the other boy with her body. Patrick had his hands cupped over his ears to muffle the sudden explosive noise he had heard. Lily hadn’t budged. She stood still, her eyes fixed on Jack. Jack turned his attention to the woods and saw nothing. He looked at Lily and saw a sly smile on the little girl’s lips. This was her doing; him seeing the beast that had been haunting his dreams since Ryan’s death. It was Lily and not the eyeless boy like he had previously assumed. He had never really been certain until this very moment. She’d removed all doubt from his mind. She is the evil one and not the boy, but will knowing this help, he wondered?
The crow landed on a branch of the large oak tree and cawed loudly, startling everyone. The bird put a stop to Jack’s brief thoughts of shooting the little girl to get her out of his mind. Not now, not like this, he thought.
“Patrick,” Samantha said firmly as she watched Jack with growing nervousness. “Come to me, Patrick.” She held out her hand while still covering Gavin.
Patrick had pulled his hands away from his ears and turned his head, listening to her instructions but ignoring them.
“I think we have to go with him,” Patrick replied. “With the man in the hat.”
“NO!” Samantha blurted. She jumped to her feet; Gavin still clutched tightly to her. The desire to protect them all tearing her apart emotionally. Tears ran down her cheeks as she looked at Jack’s shotgun and wondered if she could somehow wrestle it out of his grasp.
“Yes, come with me,” Jack said. “Come with me.”
Patrick with his arms outstretched, clumsily stepped toward the sound of Jack’s voice. Jack stepped sideways and scooped up the boy who had no eyes with his free arm, as the other held the shotgun.
A sob escaped Samantha as a feeling of helplessness washed over her.
“Come, Lily,” Patrick said to his sister.
“Yes. Come, Lily,” Jack repeated as he watched Samantha struggle to keep from crying as she held Gavin to her body with all her might.
Jack walked backwards for a few steps as Lily, with a doll in hand, followed as Patrick clung to the man who carried him.
“NO! Don’t!” Samantha pleaded. “Please!”
“It’s ok,” Patrick replied. “This is supposed to happen. Like the woman said,” Patrick added.
Samantha stood in confusion, tears pouring down her face. Jack turned around, carrying Patrick as he marched to his truck. He glanced back and saw that Samantha clutched Gavin and cried while Lily followed him like her twin brother had asked. Moments later, Jack drove away with the twins in the truck as Samantha and Gavin cried in each other’s arms.
Scott emerged from the woods, alone, confused, and out of breath. He had planned to keep searching until he found Bradley, but when he heard the gunshot he ran back as fast as he could. As he exited the woods, he spotted Samantha, kneeling in the backyard clutching Gavin while powerful sobs rocked her body. Colin, Peter and Clay were standing around them. They all looked so afraid. Panic rose inside of Scott as he realized not all the kids were there.
“What’s going on?” Scott asked as he looked around, searching the back yard. “Where are the twins?” He spoke fast, needing to know where they were. He knelt on one knee beside Samantha and placed a hand on her back in an attempt to calm her enough so she could tell him where the twins were and why she was crying.
Gavin struggled to both hang on to Samantha while attempting to not be crushed in her grip, looked at Scott as he spoke.
“They went with the bad man with the gun,” Gavin replied as he wiped away tears of his own with the palm of his hand.
“The what?” Scott asked in shock.
“The man with the gun took them with him,” Gavin added. “Took them in his truck.”
“Is this true?” Scott asked but seeing how upset Samantha was, he realized he didn’t actually need an answer. He knew Samantha was crying for a reason and Gavin wouldn’t make something like this up. It was stranger than fiction and while Gavin had a wild imagination, this wasn’t something he could have made up. Gavin had no way of knowing Jack had a gun.
In that moment, Scott heard his cordless phone ring and reached to his belt to find the phone wasn’t there. The phone rang again giving Scott a hint to its location. He glanced around on the third ring and saw it on the ground near the edge of the tree line. He must have dropped it when he ran after Bradley. He scooped it up and answered the call.
“Jack!” he screamed into the phone.
“What?” he heard the voice say in response.
“Jack?” Scott repeated. He had assumed Jack would be calling to demand something. A ransom? Something! What could he possibly want, wondered Scott?
“Scott?” Reverend Masterson said. “Scott, are you okay? What’s going on?”
“I don’t know,” Scott blurted as he watched Samantha getting to her feet while trying to get herself under control. “I have no fuckin’ idea, okay!”
He watched a trembling Samantha climb the back stoop and take Gavin inside.
“Scott, tell me what’s happening,” Reverend Masterson demanded.
“Can you get over here?” Scott asked. “I need your help.”
“I’ll be right there,” Reverend Masterson replied. He knew Scott normally didn’t ask him for anything. “I’m coming right away,” he said as he ended the call without any of the usual formalities.
Scott glanced back at the thick woods behind his house. Bradley is gone, he thought as he looked at the sock, still in his hand. Where the fuck had he gone? And since when did Jack Whitefeather abduct children? A feeling of helplessness washed over Scott as he looked around an empty back yard that was normally full of life. He looked at the sock and remembered he had just asked the righteous Reverend Masterson for help.
“God help me,” he exclaimed, a comment that normally he would have found amusing, since he was an atheist. But in that moment, the comment felt fitting for if there was a God, Scott would need him right now. He would need him desperately.
Chapter 20
What Do We Do Now?
Burke stood next to Jin’s parked SUV on Ocean’s Edge Road. Facing the vehicle, the glare of the sun reflected off the windows. He looked back at his own reflection and that of the trees behind him. He cupped his hands around his face trying to cut the glare in order to get a better look inside the vehicle. The doors were locked. Burke pulled his cell phone and tried calling Jin once more, hoping that perhaps he would hear the cell phone ring amongst the clutter of maps, coolers and various stuff scattered inside the vehicle. Or that perhaps Jin would have found his stupid cell phone by now and would answer his call. Unless Jin is actually ignoring my calls on purpose, he thought.
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