by Jade McCahon
Cole’s face brought us up short. “It’s Raymond,” he mouthed, pointing at the phone. As he talked, we listened to his conversation with growing horror. “You’re at the hospital? What happened?”
Jamie and I exchanged troubled glances.
“Is he okay?” Cole grimaced. “Dude, you’re cutting out. I can’t hear you.”
My heartbeat was an exercise in acrobatics as I listened. Jamie’s fingers closed apprehensively around my wrist.
Finally Cole hung up. “It’s Jon,” he explained, shaking his head. His dark blue eyes were full of concern. “He got hurt somehow. Raymond’s at the hospital with him. I don’t know what happened. I couldn’t hear him and we got cut off.” He shrugged and shoved his phone back into the pocket of his khakis.
“What?” I stammered. Raymond’s brother, Jon, was in the hospital? My bewilderment was at an all-time high now. The lack of sleep, overabundance of stress, and post-caffeine crash were all hindering my ability to process yet another unexpected turn of events. Despite my nagging worry about Jon now, however, I was relieved that Raymond seemed to be fine.
We all stood staring at each other awkwardly for a moment. Looking down the hill, I could see the decrepit old building sulking in the dark, waiting. It was a strange, random realization, but I suddenly knew I couldn’t go any further. Something inside was holding its breath, anticipating the second I would step through those doors. A sense of fear washed over me so forcefully that it pushed me backward. I was certain that if my eyes stayed glued to those jagged spires, those gaping black windows, I would catch a glimpse of some gnarled shape reaching a claw-like hand toward me…
“Ow!” Jamie cried as I backed into her, tramping right on her ankle.
“I can’t go in there.”
“What the – what did you say?” She raised an eyebrow at me. “Are you okay?”
“Fine. Just…tired.” I cleared my throat loudly. “Gotta be at the restaurant pretty soon, you know. We should go.” She opened her mouth to protest but I took her shoulders and shoved her away from the building. “Now.”
“Wait...I’m gonna go up to the hospital to see what’s going on, anyway,” Cole said as he half-jogged after us. “It didn’t sound too serious, but maybe Raymond could use some help.”
“Great,” Jamie pounced, shooting me a look of defiance. Asylum or no asylum…she didn’t care as long as she was following Cole around. That was sort of a relief. At least it kept me out of that building for now. “We can all go together. I’ll drive.”
“No!” I shouted much louder than was necessary. “Not a good idea to take your car still. And…I want to go home.”
Cole smiled a curious half-smile, his eyes going back and forth between us. “Why isn’t it a good idea to take your car?” he asked Jamie.
“Come on,” she answered energetically, grabbing his hand and pulling him toward the parking lot. “We’ll take your car. We’ll fill you in on the way.”
“Okay,” Cole answered agreeably. “I get it. You’re a take-charge kind of girl.”
“That’s right, baby.”
“Works for me.”
They left me standing in the field, my mouth hanging open, lost in my own reverie.
****
Five minutes later as Cole drove toward my house with Jamie hugging her knees in the passenger seat, the past three hours’ events spilled out of us and we started to piece together a very crude, very perplexing puzzle. Ead Sutter became the inevitable core of our discussion for various reasons, but as was always the case with anything Ead was involved in, there could only be suspicion and conjecture.
The mood in the car turned particularly sober as Cole reminded me why he despised Ead so much. Around town, the deputy’s smarmy manner was widely mocked behind his back. Coupled with his daddy’s position of power, it was easy to consider him a joke…to discount the truly dangerous vibes rolling off him in waves. “He used to follow Jenny around constantly,” Cole explained sourly, anger at the edges of his voice. “It really used to creep her out.”
Jamie picked up on what we were talking about immediately. “Your sister is the girl in the posters,” she acknowledged gently, glancing at me with regret. Those posters that were plastered up all over town – that infectious, silly smile identical to Cole’s – how could anyone miss them? “Oh, God. I’m so sorry. She’s been gone for so long. What happened, if you don’t mind me asking?”
The muscles in Cole’s arms tensed as he gripped the steering wheel. “She went to the store to pick up a cake for my mom’s birthday. She never came home. They found her car on the side of the highway with her purse inside…there was no sign of her.” He looked at me in the rearview mirror, his eyes narrowed. “They said she ran away. She never would have done that.”
“It was right around this time of year when she disappeared, wasn’t it?” Jamie asked. I vaguely pondered how often she’d looked at those posters. Maybe the date was just something she’d banked in her memory, floating on a gauzy cloud of town gossip. “In fact…” she trailed off, unwilling to finish the sentence.
“Yeah.” Cole caught onto what Jamie was trying to say, and his eyes widened in surprise. “It was exactly five years ago. As of midnight…” he looked down at his watch, assessing the date. “Yeah. Five years ago today.”
The coincidence touched each of us like the icy fingers of a cold breeze.
Jamie glanced at me, her eyes full of unspoken secrets. I wondered what was going on in her mind. I wondered how much she knew without anyone telling her. She turned back to Cole, her voice unnaturally quiet. “So…you think…Ead…”
Cole nodded, again finishing her half-spoken question. “When she didn’t come back…he was the first person I thought of. The first person we all thought of.”
Jamie sighed. “How awful. They never found any evidence to connect him to her disappearance?”
“Nothing,” Cole answered darkly. “But I’m not sure they even looked. Jon…he tried so hard to connect the dots, but there was nothing.” Raymond’s brother had been dating Jenny when she disappeared. He’d been half-crazed in his pursuit to find her. “Ead’s father being the police commissioner…he’s never had to answer for anything he’s ever done. And my parents got tired of fighting a losing battle, and…that’s when we left this shit hole for good.” He smiled, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “Of course, though, I had to come back to see the ball drop on the looney bin.”
“Of course.” Jamie grinned at him.
“What can I say, I’m a nostalgic guy.”
Jamie turned around in the seat. “Do you think it could have been Ead who chased us?” she asked. The passage of time had numbed us to the terror of the whole ordeal.
I shrugged, but the thought did give me some pause. At the same time, I was almost too tired to care. We’d told Cole about the chase, but kept the part about Bonita to ourselves. It would be embarrassing enough to have to tell Raymond we were spying on her, let alone anyone else. Jamie had known without words what I was thinking, of course, and had kept her mouth shut too… just like a good little stray.
We pulled over at the Gas N’ Go, and I groaned as its bright lights invaded the car. I really didn’t want to be back here again. Technically, though, history wasn’t repeating itself: this was the West Side station, meaning it was on the west side of town, the twin of the building I’d first seen Emmett in tonight. “You coming in?” Cole asked me as he hopped out.
“No way,” I grumbled.
“Need anything?” Jamie asked.
“Definitely not.”
She nodded, skipping cheerfully inside after Cole. “Jeez,” I muttered under my breath. “Play a little hard to get.”
A noise sounded in my pocket…my phone battery was going dead. I’d have to remember to charge it at home. Perfect – another thing that would keep me from collapsing into bed immediately. That was just what I needed.
My eyes scanned the parking lot worriedly. I was still a bit paranoid a
bout Ead. If he had been the one chasing us, had he done it just to mess with me? I thought of our non-exchange after my questioning, deciding that was too farfetched. He was probably just ten kinds of crazy and didn’t hesitate to use it on whoever was in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Apparently I was a hit with the Sutter boys tonight.
Huddling in the backseat, my teeth chattering, I cursed myself for forgetting my jacket yet again in Jamie’s car. The same cold breeze that blew through me when we were all talking about Jenny traced an icy path up my back. I reached over to roll up my window and saw that it was already closed. They all were.
There was a sudden static, an electric crackle in the air, as if someone had just turned on a TV. The entire atmosphere changed almost immediately, like invisible shadows coating everything even remotely within reach. I looked left, right, pulling my legs up to my chest. There was the distinct feeling that someone was watching me here in this car, their eyes boring into my face.
I could hear my own breathing, quiet and steady. In. Out. In. Out.
The hair on the back of my neck stood at attention, my skin prickling with fear.
My heartbeat thudded. Quick. Consistent.
Someone was watching me. I sensed it the way I had sensed Ead’s disgusting gaze in the hallway at the police station. There were eyes staring right at me.
Eyes that were not so far away.
There was a whoosh of cold air near my ear, an exhalation from an unseen mouth. I swallowed a scream, unable to deny the feeling that someone was here. In this car. Sitting right next to me.
Someone I could not see.
The Gas N’ Go’s sliding doors parted just then, and Jamie and Cole came out, giggling at each other and carrying armfuls of convenience store acquisitions. The presence I’d felt immediately dissipated, either into the night or back into my imagination. Jamie climbed into the passenger seat, and when she turned to look at me, her eyes widened. “Are you okay?” she asked me. “You look like –”
“Don’t say it,” I interrupted. Like you’ve seen a ghost. “Just please. Get me home. I need sleep.”
Cole got in and started the car. Jamie handed me a paper sack. We left the bright lights of the Gas N’ Go, easing back out onto the dark streets.
I peered into the bag. “What’s this?” Inside was a pack of donuts, a soda, and a small square object in sturdy plastic. “Great, more caffeine,” I mumbled sarcastically, pushing aside the soda and tearing open the donuts with the sudden realization that I was famished.
Nothing like an encounter with the paranormal to get the stomach going.
Though my heart was still convulsing erratically, it was easy to tell myself the whole thing had been a product of my overworked mind. Obviously I was a fatigued, stressed-out mess. As giggling erupted in the front seat and the banter of my two friends restored a somewhat fractured normalcy to the car, I began to shake off my irrational fear. Digging further into the sack, I pulled out the tiny square package and saw that it was a cell phone battery.
“Thought you might need that,” Jamie called back to me without turning around. I said nothing. What was there to say? She had bought a spare cell phone battery in a gas station. Could she have heard the little noise my phone made when it was dying? Studied my phone to know exactly which battery it took? It was so ridiculous, I couldn’t even ask. I tossed the package back into the sack in resignation, too tired to unravel any more mysteries tonight.
A long moment passed, the dark streets swishing by in silence. “That whole story you told me about Emmett is crazy,” Cole piped up suddenly, his eyes meeting mine in the rearview mirror. “That kid is strange, I’ve always thought so.”
My pulse quickened almost imperceptibly at the mention of Emmett’s name. “You think he’s strange?” I teased, forcing a laugh. “That’s rich.”
“What?” Cole chuckled. “I do think it’s possible he went off the deep end. I mean, look at his insane family. He’s way too quiet. He’s like one of those people that just tools along and then all of the sudden…snap.”
“Oh, come on,” Jamie protested, shoving him playfully in the arm.
“No, I’m serious. He’s that guy that just one day goes up on a roof and starts picking people off with a sniper rifle, and everyone is shocked about it.”
“Shut up,” I giggled, but I was grateful that my face was hidden in the black shadows crisscrossing the backseat. Because deep down, in that sinking pit in the center of my stomach, I was still afraid it was true…that Cole was right.
“What?” Cole teased. “I didn’t really think he was your type, Sara.”
Jamie laughed. “Leave her alone,” she said.
My face flushed, and again I was thankful for the dark. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.” I rolled my eyes.
“You know, I kind of did think you two were secretly in love with each other in school.”
“That is a boldface lie, and you know it,” I accused, giving him a slap on the shoulder. I snatched a cookie out of his hand just as he was about to take a bite from it.
“So…let me get this straight,” Jamie said, turning halfway in the seat. “Raymond’s older brother Jon and your older sister Jenny were together,” she said to Cole, “and your brother Tommy and Bonita Taylor?” she asked me.
“That was after Bonita and everyone else,” I interjected cattily, mid-chew.
“Burn,” Cole commented.
“And Tommy and Jon were best friends, and Jenny and Bonita were best friends,” Jamie continued.
“Yes.”
“And now it’s…Bonita and…Raymond?”
“What?!” Cole exclaimed. His eyes were wide in the rearview mirror.
I shrugged. “Seems that way.” I was downplaying it. It was absolutely that way.
“He didn’t tell me that,” Cole complained.
“He didn’t tell me either,” I pointed out.
“It has been a while since we’ve hung out. I don’t think she’s his type, though.” He pondered. “Come to think of it, I don’t really know what girl is. Well, besides you, I mean.”
I blinked, shaking my head at him. “What does that even mean?” I asked, flicking him in the back of the head.
Jamie frowned deeply. “This is why everyone in a small town has the same STDs.”
“What?!” Cole and I both stared at her, laughing.
“That sort of makes me glad it’s over with us,” I joked, but there was nothing funny about the pain behind those words. It was impossible to hide that I missed Raymond. Now that my safe haven was gone – my tall, dark, built-like-a-linebacker safe haven – I was being ran down by crazed cops and chased by guys with knives.
Well, technically just one guy with a knife, and I still wasn’t sure how to process that.
So much for putting away the mysteries for the night.
Emmett Sutter really was a mystery to me. Despite struggling against it, my thoughts kept drifting back to him. Ridiculous, Cole saying what he’d said about him and me. Wasn’t it? Honestly, I was more bothered by the realization that I wasn’t the only one afraid Emmett had suddenly stepped off the edge. But why? Besides the earlier near-miss and the obvious danger to the rest of society, what difference did it make to me?
What was it about Emmett that made me cling to that shred of hope that he wasn’t a latecomer to lunacy? So he was gorgeous under those tangles of dark-reddish hair. He was also practically anti-social. I wasn’t sure how he made it through high school, drifting in and out of the hallways in silence. He was like a ghost. He spent his days reading and painting and otherwise being introverted while I spent mine being the center of my boyfriend’s attention. The sunlight of Raymond’s personality barely kept me from slipping into the dark after Tommy died.
I recalled then things I had fought all night to avoid remembering...Emmett’s round olive eyes, that rust-colored hair always hanging down to his chin, how self-conscious I felt under his gaze. He was shy, but those gr
een eyes always found me, at times even seemed to search me out from across the room. And my skin prickled, my blood pounded in my veins, my breath caught in my throat, just because he was looking at me. I would walk by his table in the library and my train of thought would derail. These memories I’d denied for the last four hours shook me. I thought of how he always walked with his head lowered, sleeves pulled down over his hands, dressed in the layered wardrobe of a person who was perpetually cold. How the one time I’d seen him laugh, the moment stuck in my mind because of the way my knees had gone weak; I'd never forget such a heart-stopping smile, the deep dimples on either side of his mouth, longing to know what had made a person usually so reticent so momentarily happy.
How even in school I shoved these feelings to the back of my mind…I had a boyfriend, and he was funny and friendly and charismatic and popular, and I had loved him and then he’d dumped me. Such a sick, twisted life I lived…such a screwed up night to bring it all to light. I swallowed hard to force the tears back down past the massive lump in my throat.
It was a strangely lengthy drive across town to my house. As I lapsed into silence again, Jamie and Cole laughing quietly up front, I gradually and regrettably lost the battle with my consciousness.
Almost immediately the dream began. This time I knew it was just that – a dream – but that didn’t make it any less frightening. The phone in the kitchen at home rang in the middle of the night and I raced down the stairs to get it, sure the noise would awaken my parents.
I snatched up the receiver. “Hello?” There was nothing but obscenely loud breathing on the other end. “Who's playing phone perv again?” I asked with a sigh, glancing down at the caller ID. The display read “Joey”. Where had I heard that name before?
“Who is this?” I shouted, forgetting about my sleeping parents, gasping when the person at the other end finally began to speak.
