The Thirteen Bends

by Shannon Reber

  I didn’t know if Ian really believed me or if he was just agreeing because he thought I wanted him to. I didn’t care. All I cared about was finding out the truth.

  I got out of the car and stuck my phone in my jacket pocket, fingering the chunk of amber as I turned toward the road. I could hear Ian and Quinn speaking as they got out of the car. For some reason, a feeling of betrayal passed over me.

  I didn’t understand that. No one had betrayed me recently. Ian was just being Ian and Quinn . . . I didn’t know her well enough to know if her reaction was unusual or not.

  I felt like a stupid, sulky little kid walking off like that. I couldn’t bring myself to care. I didn’t want to deal with either of them right then. I wished I had ignored Erkens’ order not to go alone. If I was alone, things would be easier.

  Ian had parked his car on a road that intersected with Campbells Run, so it would only take us a few minutes to walk to the area where the haunted bends were. I knew Ian and Quinn were behind me but kept my pace fast enough they’d have to run to catch up with me. I just wanted to be alone.

  I slowed when I got out onto the road, my head swimming as my knees wobbled. I didn’t know why. A feeling of foreboding moved over me. The cold of the area was my first sign something was really wrong.

  I lifted my phone and shone the light on the amber, seeing that the stone inside it was a smoky gray with black lines crisscrossing through it. It was enough for me but it wouldn’t be for anyone else. Looked like I had to ignore the dread that filled me and place the crystal right on the murder sight.

  My body jerked in shock as faint screams filled the air around me. It wasn’t the childlike screams that were talked about in the urban legend. It sounded far more like adult shrieks of pain and terror.

  Smoke filled the air around me and flames engulfed me. I could see it but there was no pain. It was like I was being shown a movie.

  Something flickered in front of me and the cold became even more profound. I watched in horror as a woman in a nun’s habit flickered even closer to me, her hands raised like she wanted to grab me. A yelp of terror escaped my lips as the figure flickered again until she was almost on top of me, her face distorted by the flames that had eaten her flesh.

  I laid my hand on the pendant Ian had given me, sure that phantom couldn’t touch me. The nun’s ghost laid her own hand over a silver cross hung around her neck. And then she was gone.

  The flames faded back until the cool, spring air wrapped around me. A metallic smell filled my nostrils right when I bumped into something. I reached out, wrapping my arms around it to keep myself from falling.

  My eye was drawn to the crystal in my hand. The black lines through the smokey grayness of it were even more prominent than they had been before.

  I yelped again when something touched my arm. I whirled, my fists raised as I took the silver knife from my pocket. I almost had a heart attack when I saw it was Ian. His eyes were wide, his skin pale as death.

  I stared at him, unsure why he looked so freaked out. Could he have seen the apparition as well?

  That was when I saw. I stood directly in front of a woman whose body had been impaled . . . on the second bend in the road.

  NINE

  “Drop the weapon, now!” someone shouted.

  I glanced over, seeing a cop standing there, his gun pointed at me. I didn’t understand . . . until the cool wetness of my shirt registered. I was covered in blood and was holding a weapon.

  I stared at the silver knife in my hand, the crystal in my other hand. If I refused to drop those things, the cop would not be happy. My mind was still too filled by what the ghost of the nun had shown me to be able to think very clearly.

  It looked bad. We were at the sight of a second murder and I was holding a weapon. I was in some serious trouble. Refusing to comply would only make things worse, so I dropped the knife and crystal, my hands raised like I had seen people do on TV.

  “She didn’t do anything,” Ian growled when the cop stepped closer to me, freeing his cuffs from the belt at his waist.

  The cop ignored Ian, his eyes fixed on the bloody state of me. “You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in the court of law. You have the right to an attorney. If you can’t afford one, one will be appointed for you by the court. Do you understand your rights?” he asked, fumbling in a way that looked kind of dazed.

  “I understand,” I whispered, horrified by everything that had happened.

  Ian stepped in front of me so the gun was pointed at him instead of me. “I’m telling you, she didn’t do anything. We were just walking and Madison saw the girl’s body.”

  Tears rose in my eyes. We stood in front of the body of a second murdered woman. Two nights. Two bodies. Why had the nun’s ghost shown me the fire? Why hadn’t she tried to impale me as well? Was there a schedule to the kills?

  I was so dazed it took me a minute to register the sound of pain coming from Ian. I blinked, seeing that he’d been thrown to the ground. He lay on his stomach with the cop’s knee in his back, the guy just securing a pair of cuffs around his wrists.

  “No. What are you doing? We didn’t do anything,” I said, reaching out to touch the cop’s arm.

  Quinn pulled me back, shaking her head at me.

  “Maddie, it’s okay. You hear me?” Ian asked from his position on the ground.

  I blinked, looking at the cop again. “There will be eleven more. We have to stop this. We have to.”

  My brain was muddled, far too fogged to realize that I had been thrown to the ground as well, my hands just being locked behind my back by another pair of cuffs. I could still see the flames in my mind. The nun. The silver cross. Why hadn’t she tried to kill me?

  It took me a while but slowly I came back to myself. It had been hard being shown what the nun wanted me to see, far harder than it had been for Emma to show me things. After a few minutes, I was able to register what was around me.

  Concrete block walls. A table. Four chairs. A mirror. That was all.

  I shifted, startled to find that I could barely move at all. It took me another few minutes to grasp the situation completely.

  I was in the police station. My hands were cuffed to the table. I was wearing a big, gray t-shirt that had ‘POLICE’ emblazoned across the front. They had taken my bloodstained shirt into evidence. The Miranda warning had been read to me.

  No way. I’d been arrested. What was going on? How had seeing the nun made me lose so much time?

  My mind showed me more. The girl’s body. The smell of blood. The blackness of the crystal. Tears poured like a waterfall down my cheeks. A second murder. It was horrible.

  The door of that interrogation room opened to reveal the two detectives who had taken Gina’s confession that morning. Wait . . . the light outside the room looked like daylight. A whole day had passed since Gina had been arrested.

  Neither detective looked like they were in a good mood. I couldn’t blame them. A second murder in two days would put anyone in a bad mood. The fact it was on their turf was likely the crux of the issue.

  One of them stepped over, his pudgy face turned down in a sorrowful expression. “Miss Meyer, I am Detective Bartram. This is Detective Roche.”

  I looked at them, waiting to hear whatever they had come to say.

  “Your rights were read to you, weren’t they?” Roche demanded, standing with his legs planted wide, his hands shoved into his pockets.

  I nodded.

  “And you understand them?”

  I nodded.

  “Are you willing to talk to us?”

  I nodded, not sure what else I could do other than talk to them.

  Bartram leaned back in his chair and folded his arms. “How did you know Officer Salis?” he asked, his voice less sharp than Roche’s had been.

  I tipped my head to the side. “I don’t know who that is. If that’s the guy who arrested me, I know him from when he arrested me.”

 
; “Convenient,” Roche spat out, his mouth tight like he tasted something gross. “And of course, you don’t know Kirby Geminus either,” he asked, waving me off before I could answer. “Truly convenient, considering the fact they’re both dead.”

  I gaped at him, my mouth working silently for a few seconds. “The officer . . . Salis?” I asked, glancing at the other guy.

  He inclined his head to tell me I was right on the name.

  “He is the one who arrested me?”

  Bartram slid a photograph across the table toward me.

  My heart started pounding. It was indeed the cop who had arrested me, his shirt covered in blood, his skin gray. He was dead.

  “There was no injury. He just collapsed, died en route to the hospital.”

  “How?” I squeaked, unable to look away from the picture.

  “Why don’t you tell us,” Roche barked, taking a step closer to me.

  “I don’t know what happened to either of them,” I said, shaking my head emphatically. “I don’t believe that Gina killed Tanya. I just wanted to go and check something out. We didn’t even see the girl on the second bend until . . . I ran into her.”

  Bartram slid another picture across the table toward me. “What did you go to check out?”

  I reared back at the sight of the picture. It was the girl I had run into. Blood. A vicious wound in the side of her head.

  Images of what the ghost of the nun showed me floated through my mind. Fire. Screams of pain. But there hadn’t been any blood in that vision at all. She hadn’t felt like a vengeful spirit. She had felt like she was warning me. Of what, though?

  “I don’t understand,” I moaned, trembling as my eyes flicked from one picture to the other. “Why those women? Why the cop? What made her choose them?”

  “Who?”

  “I don’t know who she is.”

  “What do you remember about her?”

  “She was afraid,” I whispered, not even aware that I was speaking aloud.

  I had forgotten where I was. My mind was far too focused on everything I had seen in the last twenty-four hours. The two deaths. The vision from the ghost. Even the discovery of a sister. It all added to my stress and I was not handling it well.

  “Was Kirby Geminus afraid?”

  I blinked. “Who’s that?” I asked, bewildered by everything around me.

  After a few seconds, it came back to me. That was the name of the girl who had died. I had seen her body. I had run into her body.

  “I just wanted to help Gina.”

  Roche stepped forward and slammed his fist on the table, jolting me back to reality. “Is that why you murdered Kirby Geminus and Officer Salis, all to help your friend get away with murdering her girlfriend?” he bawled at me, flecks of spit hitting the table as he slammed his fist into it again. “Salis was a good cop. He was also a husband and a father and you and your friends chose to kill him to get Gina off?”

  I stared at the man, my temper rising up. “Are you kidding me?” I asked, shaking my head decisively. “I met Gina yesterday morning. We spoke for a total of maybe ten minutes. Even if we were best friends, I would never commit murder for her.”

  “But you have killed, haven’t you, Madison?” Roche asked, leaning a hip on the table as he shot me a cold look. “You set it up nicely to make Adrian Ezra appear guilty when it was you the whole time, wasn’t it? You killed Dylan Funar. You probably killed CJ Tucker and Manuel Brumoso too, didn’t you?”

  I stared at the guy, mystified about how he could be so stupid. “No. I didn’t,” I said quietly, sitting back as far as possible in that uncomfortable chair with my hands pinned by the cuffs.

  Bartram leaned forward, his hands folded on the table as he gave me an earnest look. “We need to know the truth about what happened. Help us so we can help you,” he cajoled, clearly having been given the role of ‘good cop’ in their interrogation of me.

  I leaned forward as well, doing my best to tamp down my temper. “I believe Gina is innocent. I believe something happened to her and it somehow made her believe she had killed Tanya. I asked my boyfriend and my sister to go to that spot so I could look around. I wanted to see if there was anything you had missed since you were so willing to accept Gina’s confession.”

  “And you just found the second body when you were wandering around in the middle of the night?”

  “Yes.”

  “The blood that was on Salis was typed on the scene. It was the same type as Kirby Geminus.”

  My jaw almost hit the table. That cop must have been simply out there to keep an eye on the scene. Could he have gone from a good man to one who would copycat a murder from the night before? Why, though?

  Possession? Could the nun have . . . holy blue screen. That was it. Salt was a natural ghost repellent. When the ghost had possessed the body of Gina and the cop, the salt had been drained out of them.

  How was I supposed to explain that to people who believed I was a fraud? How was I supposed to find which of them was possessed before another life was taken? Thirteen bends in the road. Two deaths. I had a lot of work to do.

  I needed to talk to Erkens, see if he knew anything that could help us. It appeared I also needed to find some way out of being charged with murder, several of them, according to what Roche had said. Bad cop really wanted me to think he believed I was a murderer. Did he believe it or was he toying with me?

  I looked at him, certain he really did believe what he said. The problem was, his idea made sense. I needed to think about it from his point of view in order to be able to convince him of my innocence.

  “How did you do it?” Roche gritted out when he saw me looking at him, clearly determined to see me as a killer no matter what.

  I shook my head. I wanted to ask them to uncuff me but there was no way I’d ask them for anything. I had never been comfortable in small spaces. I could handle it if there was the distraction of my phone or laptop. I had neither, so my fuses were on the verge of blowage.

  It went on like that for hours. I couldn’t tell them anything, so they accused me of everything under the sun. It became tedious very fast.

  I was desperate to do some research, to find out how it had all happened. I was used to being able to access whatever information I needed. I was not a fan of incarceration . . . or pre-incarceration.

  I had to wait. I had to plan. I had to find a way to save whoever else would be killed.

  TEN

  I could have danced for joy when Roche finally led me out of the interview room. I kind of wanted to run a few laps around the building. All I was allowed to do was follow the surly man back into another holding area, that one with cells.

  Tears filled my eyes as I saw Ian in one cell, Quinn next to him, and Gina across from her. Everybody looked a little worse for wear. I didn’t even want to imagine what I looked like.

  Ian jumped to his feet and ran to the door of his cell, extending his hands through the bars when he saw me. “Maddie!” he called, his face red as he swayed where he stood.

  Roche guided me to the cell across from Ian’s and, after a hesitation, removed my cuffs. “The team’s back together,” he sneered before he slammed the door of my cell closed and marched away.

  I did my best not to freak out but the inability to get out did not do good things for me. I could feel a panic attack rising inside me. I did not want to give the cops the satisfaction.

  I was sure there would be cameras and probably microphones in that area. I had to get it together. The problem was, my brain wasn’t in the mood.

  I sat down on the floor of that cell, closed my eyes, and counted. It had always worked for me. When I counted, it calmed me down, made it easier for me to focus.

  It took me far longer than usual. I had practically counted to a hundred by the time my breathing had become normal. I hated the fact I had shown that weakness, one even Erkens didn’t know about. There had been nothing I could do, though.

  Slowly, I opened my eyes, not surprised to
see Ian standing in the same position. His eyes were blazing as he looked at me. I knew that look too. If he wasn’t careful, he was going to get himself into even more trouble.

  Quinn had her eyes fixed on me as well. She looked worried, far more than I would have expected.

  Gina was in the cell next to mine. The bars of our cells allowed us to see each other and what I saw did not make my anxiety any less. Gina looked awful.

  The morning before, she had looked like she’d gone on a bender. Right then, she looked like death warmed over.

  Her skin was pasty. Her hair was lank. Even her clothes were disconsolate. Grief had hit her hard.

  “Gina?” I asked, my voice a little weak.

  She didn’t even look at me.

  “It wasn’t you, Gina,” I told her, sure that was what was causing her the unspeakable grief written all over her face.

  “I remember doing it,” she whispered, her voice as lifeless as though she too had died.

  I shifted around and managed to get to my feet, holding onto the bars to steady myself. “Gina, listen to me. You weren’t the one who killed Tanya. You were possessed. I think the nun who killed those girls at St. Perpetua School possessed you and used your body to kill Tanya.” I prayed I was wrong about the microphones in the cells.

  If I wasn’t, they’d be calling in a psych consult any minute. I had to tell Gina that truth, though. She was innocent.

  “But I didn’t see a nun. I saw a guy.”

  I blew out a breath. “I don’t know. I need to do some research. I saw the nun last night, though.”

  Ian let out a gasp. “What do you mean you saw the nun? Did she hurt you? You seemed so out of it last night,” he asked, his eyes scanning me like he expected to find blood pouring from the side of my head.

  “The thing was, nothing happened. The nun showed herself to me, showed me the fire, then disappeared.”

  “She didn’t hurt you?”

  “No. I’m fine, Ian.”

  “Thank God,” he said, shaking his head in wonderment. “We’ll get a call at some point. I’ll call your dad to bail us out and ask him to call my parents. You call Erkens. Maybe we can still save someone.”