“Hello. Can I help you?” he asked.
“You’re Jack Walton, right?” Matt knew they were at the correct address and vaguely recognized the man talking to them from Grace’s sketch, but asked anyway.
“That’s right.” Walton’s voice remained hesitant.
“We’d like to talk to you for a moment,” Matt said.
“About what?”
“We think you’re in danger,” Matt said, easing into the reveal. “And we think it has something to do with Josh Williams.”
Walton laughed and stepped closer. “Did Felicia put you up to this?”
“No, she did.” Matt gently nudged Grace’s arm. She took a tenuous step toward Walton, whose face was obscured by the limited light. Even though she had rehearsed what she’d say, Grace faltered as he watched her.
“I had a dream and saw you,” Grace said at last, composing herself. She handed him the sketch. “You were dying.”
A curious look spread over Walton’s face as he examined the sketch. Grace waited anxiously for his reaction. “Well, it does kind of look like me.” He met Grace’s eyes. “How did I die?”
“I don’t know.”
“Then how did you know I was dying?”
“I just did. I’ve had this kind of dream before.” She handed him the sketch of Thomas Wilson. “You knew him, right?”
He looked at the sketch. “Perhaps.” Walton handed back the drawing. “So when am I going to die?”
“If it happens like it did before, soon,” Grace said, her expression dire.
Walton nodded. “What would you like me to do with this information?”
“We think Josh Williams was behind Thomas Wilson’s death. You need to stay away from him,” Matt said, expecting this extra bit of knowledge to visibly impact Walton. It didn’t.
“Well, I don’t know where Josh Williams is, so that should be easy. Thanks for the warning.” Walton walked toward his car.
Grace furrowed her forehead. “Please, you have to listen to us. This has happened before, almost thirty years ago. Another man dreamed of people dying—people related to Stevenson Industries—and they all died. You have a chance to live.”
Walton turned around, a quizzical look on his face. “Really, thirty years? Huh.” This time, Walton did seem to ponder the new information they had given him. “What do you know about what happened thirty years ago?”
She shook her head. “Not much. They weren’t my dreams.”
“Very interesting,” Walton repeated. “But answer me this, young lady—how do you know that you can change the future? Maybe if I listen to you, I’ll do something different, and that is the thing that will lead me to my death.” He frowned. “No, the future is not easy to change. What’s your name, young lady?”
“Grace.”
“And your last name?”
Matt nudged her shoulder. “Don’t tell him.”
“It’s only fair I should know the name of the prophet of my death,” Walton said.
“Murphy,” she replied, despite Matt’s warning.
“Grace Murphy.” Walton smiled and stepped closer to her. He observed her face. “Have you had trouble sleeping lately?”
She took a step backward. “How did you know?”
“Educated guess. Someone who’s having dreams of people dying is probably not resting so well at night.” He pointed at the skin beneath his eyes. “Plus, you have those dark circles. If you’d like, the company I work for does sleep research. I could see if I could get you in a clinical research protocol. Would you like that?”
Grace stared at him, unsure of what to say. Matt placed his hand on her arm.
“Well, think about it. I’d like to help you. You know where to find me. What’s life without a good night’s sleep?” Walton smiled. “Once again, I appreciate your concern.”
As Walton boarded his car and pulled the luxury vehicle into the garage, Grace and Matt got into his Elantra.
“He didn’t believe me, did he?” Grace asked.
“Hard to tell. But whether he does or doesn’t, you tried. Be at peace with that, okay?” He looked her in the eyes until she nodded. “Alright, let’s get you home.”
As the two pulled away, Jack Walton watched from the garage. He pulled out a cell phone and dialed a number. Robert Stevenson answered in a gruff tone.
“Hello, sir. Sorry to bother you so late. I just had the most interesting experience...”
42
Shortly after their visit to Jack Walton, Matt dropped Grace off at her apartment. Once again, he offered to stay with her—in a strictly platonic sense. Actually, he offered twice. Both times, Grace rebuffed him. Even if he was in some sense hitting on her, that didn’t bother her. And maybe the company would have been beneficial to her. But someone occupying the same space as her did not in itself constitute company. She’d spend the night alone, no matter who else was with her.
Once inside, Grace changed into her sleep clothes. But she didn’t go to bed. For a while, she tried watching TV. When nothing captured her attention, she switched to reading. Both activities felt like trying to eat on a full stomach: though she poked and pushed and even consumed some form of entertainment, nothing truly interested her.
That was probably a function of her depression. Seeing Dr. Driscoll had opened her eyes to how foggy and stark her life had become. This listlessness had crept up on her, overtaking her little by little over the last year. She was the proverbial frog in the pot and now the water of her depression was boiling.
Grace continued to read the book she had picked: Anne of Green Gables, one of her favorites. The words ricocheted off of her mind without registering. Perhaps she shouldn’t have picked a book she knew so well. But Grace struggled to find anything else that appealed to her. Reading some sappy romance or happy book felt like eating too much candy. But reading something dark and cynical felt like feeding the beast. Grace set the book down. She couldn’t continue the charade any longer. But setting down Anne of Green Gables meant she had to move to her next charade: sleeping.
12 a.m. Grace pulled the covers over her shoulders. She began on her back, but within fifteen minutes had shifted to her side. Then she tried her stomach. Position didn’t matter—she knew that from the previous nights. No matter how she writhed and contorted herself, sleep eluded her. So she thought of her father. She remembered the photos of him carrying her as a little girl or pushing her on the swing. She wondered if those moments really happened to her or if she had stolen someone else’s memories. Grace closed her eyes and tried to remember her father’s voice. That eluded her too.
1 a.m. Grace got up and paced her apartment. Sleep didn’t usually come until closer to three. She hoped moving would make her more tired. But feeling tired wasn’t the problem; she always felt tired. Objects around her apartment begged to be put back in their proper place. But Grace couldn’t muster the extra energy required for restoring order to her apartment. She stepped over clothes crumpled into heaps on the floor. As she walked, she thought of Matt Harrison. Was he handsome? Yes, he seemed handsome. Tall, sandy hair, lean, a well-defined face—but why didn’t these attributes move her? Was he kind? Even if he possessed ulterior motives, he had been consistently supportive of her. Maybe she should let him in. Even if she couldn’t love him or anyone else at the moment.
2 a.m. Grace lay back in bed. She thought of Jack Walton. He’d asked so few questions of her. Why? The lack of questions suggested skepticism—that questions weren’t necessary because her claims were too outlandish to take seriously. She wondered if his theory about the future was true. Could warning him be the cause that set his death in motion? Could the future change at all? Or was every event, every death preordained by God before the world began? Every subsequent question seemed to cause a shift in her orientation on the bed, but none of these changes brought sleep.
3 a.m. Sleep still felt distant, maybe impossible. She thought of death. Not Thomas Wilson’s death, or Jack Walton’s death, or even her
own death—but just death in general. She wondered what happened when people shed their mortal coil and closed their eyes for the last time. She pondered the existence of hell and heaven or whether people just rotted in the ground, decaying complex machines animated only by oxygen and the circulation of blood with no soul, no spirit that transcended their corporeal being. Death was called sleep. Grace wanted to sleep without dreams. To feel nothingness. Maybe death wasn’t so bad.
4 a.m. Grace’s mind found Thomas Wilson. Did he deserve to die? Did anyone deserve to die? Or did everyone—men, women, children—deserve to die, as they often discussed in her church. For all had sinned and fallen short of God’s glory and the wages of sin was death. And all did die. Maybe deserve didn’t even need to enter into the equation. Why worry about it at all? Her thoughts had become erratic and less coherent.
5 a.m. Grace closed her eyes and lay still. But it was all an act. She wasn’t any closer to sleep than she was three hours ago. In fact, it felt like she had crossed some invisible demarcation—a point of no return. As bad as each night had been, she had always been asleep by five. The black outside had turned a softer gray. The light was poking through, dispelling the futile darkness.
6 a.m. Tears formed in Grace’s eyes. There would be no dreams that night. As much as she hated the dreams and wished they’d vanish forever, no dreams meant no more clues to Jack Walton’s demise. Maybe it was already too late. She fell into despair. Even if everyone died, even if everyone deserved to die, even if death was a merciful release, she mourned the chance to save Jack Walton and the faceless people behind him.
7 a.m. Grace lay on her back, staring at the ceiling. She had watched every minute of the clock tick by. She could bear her thoughts no longer or a world in which she couldn’t sleep. Then she remembered the Vicodin in her medicine cabinet. It was leftover from having her wisdom teeth pulled a few years before. She’d barely touched it, fearing developing an addiction to the pills. She spied her cell phone on the table next to her bed, adjacent to the sketch pad. Matt had told her to text or call if she needed anything.
She weighed both options: reaching out to someone or getting up to take the Vicodin. Both required energy, but which action was worth the investment of that scarce resource?
43
Matt woke up early. Just before nine, he sat in the living room of Patricia Oliver for the second time. His call had seemed to surprise her that morning, particularly since it came at such an early hour. But she seemed to be awake already and willing enough to entertain another round of questions.
“What else did you want to know?” Patricia Oliver asked, sitting in the same mauve recliner she had occupied during the first interview.
Matt cleared his throat. “We spoke to an associate of Dr. Banks. According to him, Banks said his test patients were suffering some concerning side effects. Did George suffer any side effects besides the headaches you mentioned?”
The old woman gripped the armrests and her body stiffened. “I don’t recall any, no.”
“Are you sure? It could’ve been anything.”
Patricia stared at the floor. Some kind of battle played out in her mind.
She stretched out her legs and sighed. “George was always a very mellow, even-tempered man. It was one of the things that got on my nerves over the years. Sometimes, I just wanted a reaction from him. But when he started receiving treatments, his temperament changed. He had these bouts where he got really angry. It was kind of scary. Maybe it was because he was facing death, but I always figured the medication had something to do with it.”
“Did he ever become violent?”
“No, not exactly. Not in a physical kind of way, at least.” She furrowed her eyebrows which deepened the wrinkles on her forehead. “But there was a time when something strange happened. One night, George was watching TV and the cable went out. He started screaming and shouting, cursing at the TV. I tried to calm him down, told him to read a book or a magazine, but he took the book I gave him and threw it across the room. He kept yelling and then a vase broke on the other side of the room. That’s when I left.”
Matt leaned forward. “You mean, the vase fell to the floor?”
“No. It ended up all the way on the opposite side of the room.”
“So he threw it?”
She shook her head. “No. The vase was on the other side of the room from where he was sitting. He never touched it.”
“Maybe he made it unstable when he threw the book?”
She looked askance at him. “Then how would it have ended up across the room?”
“What do you think happened?”
“To this day, I don’t know.”
“Did anything else unusual like that happen?”
“That was the only time. For years, I tried to convince myself that I didn’t remember it right, but I know that I did.” Matt wished he could share in her certainty.
“Mrs. Oliver, did Stevenson Industries threaten you at all?”
“Besides that man telling me I should keep the experimental treatments quiet so I wouldn’t lose George’s life insurance payout, no. But I think they thought I was going to sue them. I would never have done that. George and I knew what we were signing up for. The money from the life insurance was enough.” She grew quiet, lost in thought again. Then she looked at Matt, again.
“I have something for you,” she said, her joints cracking as she stood. “Something I found after you left. It may be nothing, but it might be what you’re looking for.” She shuffled out to the kitchen. Matt followed her.
Oliver picked up a small hardcover book from the telephone shelf and brought it over to her chair. Matt stood behind her as her fingers trembled through the pages. Eventually, she had to wet her index finger to successfully flip to the final page. When she did, they were greeted by five names crafted in a smaller, messier script than her own.
“This isn’t my writing.” She ran her finger over the blue ink, perhaps one of the final things her husband had written.
“Do you know any of these people?” Matt asked, scanning the names.
“Cal Walker, Seattle. Greg Tolliver, St. Paul, Minnesota,” she murmured a few of the names out loud before perusing the final two in silence. “No. The names sound a little familiar. But I only met those men once. Still, I think it might be the people you’re looking for.”
“Can I take a photo of this page? I’d like to find out what happened to them.”
“Yes, of course.”
Matt positioned the phone so the page showed up the clearest. The writing was mostly legible, though reading Oliver’s writing took some doing.
“If you find out, will you let me know?” Patricia asked.
“I will, ma’am. Thanks again for your time.”
As Matt walked out of Oliver’s house, his phone chimed. It was Grace. Didn’t sleep last night. Please help me. Matt hastily composed a response: On my way. Be there soon. After sending the reply, Matt raced to his car. Grace not sleeping was problematic on so many levels. Despite the fact he had no idea how to help her, he sped toward her apartment.
44
Josh Williams woke to the sun streaming through his window. The day before felt like a dream—not the kind where someone died, but the kind that made you disappointed when you woke up. But Josh didn’t have to be disappointed. The previous day truly happened. He really did spend all day with Jessie. They weren’t on the run from a jealous boyfriend or shady corporate henchmen. No, the day finished with them sitting on her parents’ porch, hands clasped together and laughing.
Josh stretched and smiled involuntarily. Never before had he thought such a day was even possible. Josh fixed his gaze on the lamp on the dresser across the room. It steadily rose into the air, tilting a bit from side to side. Now it floated in place, still relatively stable. The phone rang, distracting Josh, which caused the lamp to clang against the dresser and fall to the floor. Josh grabbed the phone, hoping Jessie was calling.
“Hello?”
he said without looking at the number first.
“Hey. So what have you been up to?” Parker asked. “You never hooked up with the girl I sent over.”
Josh sat up in bed and flung his legs over the side. “You told me to do what I wanted. I found something else I wanted to do more.”
“Like what?”
“I met up with Jessie.”
“The girl who got knocked around by her boyfriend?” Parker sounded skeptical.
“Yes.”
“So what, you hooked up?”
“No. We just hung out.”
Parker let out an exasperated sigh.
“What’s so bad about that? You told me to do what I wanted, and I did. And it really has started to make a difference. I’ve been able to move objects at will-”
“Look Josh, Jessie isn’t really what you want. She’s what you think you want. People like us aren’t meant to be in these mainstream, conventional relationships.”
“But why not? I thought you said I could learn to control my powers?” Josh gripped the phone tightly in his hand.
“Yeah, you can. It’s not that we can’t have those kinds of relationships, it’s that we’re better than that. You and I aren’t ordinary. So don’t live an ordinary life.” Parker’s tone continued to escalate.
“But I want to live an ordinary life. I’ve always wanted that.”
“Why? Because ordinary people are so happy? Tied down, watching their life slip away in a sea of monotony? Is that what you want?”
“If it’s with Jessie, then yes. That’s what I want.” Josh’s voice rose, matching Parker’s frustrated tone.
“Don’t be an idiot, Josh. You have to trust me. I don’t want to teach you just to control your power, I want to maximize it. And to do that you need to push yourself. That’s why I wanted you to take out the other wife beater. Every time you do something like that, your power will grow. And if you balance it out with finding releases for your desires, even better.”
Death Prophets Page 19
