She could be that advantage … touch things the creature had recently touched, know where it was going, whom it had chosen as its next victim. She knew then what she had to do. She had to go back.
She had to help Noah stop it.
12
MADELINE sat in her car, coughing black-lined mucus out of her lungs. She rolled down the window and spat, then leaned her head against the headrest. Its familiarity was comforting, like an old friend cradling her head. For a moment she closed her burning eyes and exhaled deeply.
Immediately an image of the creature, half-burned and desperate, clawing at her window snapped her eyes open. Furtively she glanced out all the windows of the car, the sides, the back. The fire was now smoldering out at the far edges of the meadow, and the air was filled with thick, acrid smoke that drifted lazily with the faint breeze.
Though it was partially burned, she put her shirt back on and shivered in the night air.
The full moon, now risen, set the smoke aglow, giving the eerie impression of a gathering of spirits, floating and ethereal, mingling and drifting by each other, intent on taking over the world of the living.
Beyond the meadow rose the impassive granite cliff, disappearing into the darkness. On the other side of the road lay forest, dense and dark. Madeline reached down and closed her hand around the keys in the ignition. The car sprang to life. She pulled out on the road and did a U-turn. She had only driven a few feet when she saw movement in the back of her car.
Slamming on the brakes, she threw open the car door and leapt out, then ran to the back of the car to peer into the backseat and hatchback. The backseat was empty, but she had a tarp in the hatchback, and beneath it lay a large lump.
She staggered back, not sure what to do, and then remembered. It was an extra spare tire. She’d bought one before she drove up to the mountains. Once she’d been stranded on a remote road with a flat tire and a flat spare, and for this trip she’d brought along an extra.
Even still, for several minutes she started at it intently, waiting for it to twitch or breathe. No movement occurred. Gingerly she approached the car and removed her keys from the ignition. Crept around to the back of the car. Inserted the key in the trunk lock. Pressed the button. Raised the hatchback. Again she stared at it for several minutes. When it still didn’t move, she ripped the tarp away. The spare tire lay beneath, along with jumper cables and an oil funnel.
The wind from the open window must have ruffled the tarp. It wouldn’t be the first time she’d imagined things in the back of her car. The way the glass of the hatchback slanted, when streetlights played over it, often gave the illusion of something rushing forward from the backseat.
Madeline lowered the tarp over the tire. Mucus rattled in her lungs, and she coughed for several long minutes until her throat was sore. Leaning over, she spat up long strings of black, ropy phlegm. She wiped her mouth on her burned sleeve and looked around.
All of a sudden the road seemed very empty, the shadows deeper, each tiny sound louder. She glanced off the road into the darkened forest, then back to the asphalt itself, scanning up and down the desolate highway. The only sound was the idling engine, huge and cacophonous in the quiet.
Quickly she tucked the rest of the tarp in, slammed the hatchback, and ran to the driver’s door. Wrenching it open quickly, she gave one last look around the car and got in.
Gripping the wheel, she pressed on the accelerator and flew back onto the road, speeding back toward Lake McDonald and the cabin.
“Noah!” Madeline cried, running to the cabin’s door. She rummaged around in her jeans pocket and found the key, which she’d forgotten to leave behind. Unlocking the door, she thrust it open. It banged against the wall. “Noah!”
A muffled stir brought her into the bedroom. “Madeline?” Noah said sleepily.
She came into the darkened room and felt her way slowly to the bed. Cool cotton sheets touched her hands, and she sat down on the edge of the bed.
Noah sat up and turned on the light. “What’s wrong?” he started. “What in the world happened? Your face!” He brought his hand up, stroked her face and came away with sooty fingers. “And your clothes!”
She looked down. Her clothes were covered in soot and bits of dry grass. Black smudges covered the sheets were she had touched them.
“Did he come back?”
“No, well, yes … but listen. I want to help you. I can help you, tell you where he’s going to be next. Like you said. Anticipate his next move.”
Noah sat up straighter, taking her in, waking up more. “I don’t know what to say … I thought you didn’t want that.”
“That was before.”
“Before what?”
For a moment she was still. “A brush with death.”
“What? Are you all right?”
“I’ve never felt better,” she sighed. “I feel like I finally know what I’m supposed to do, and for once I’m not scared. I see the advantage he has over everyone he’s killed and is going to kill. He can be anyone he wants to be, know what they know. The advantages he has are countless: anonymity, the ability to change forms, to dispose of evidence without a trace. He’s almost unstoppable. Until now. I can figure out where he’s going next, and we can cut him off when he gets there.”
Noah stared at her, mouth open. He blinked several times, unable to speak. Finally he worked his mouth, and sound came out. “Yes.”
Madeline grinned. “Yes.” Her body felt light and filled with energy, exuberant and excited.
“Yes!” he shouted.
“Yes!”
Scrambling to his knees, he grabbed her tightly, wrapping his arms around her and practically crushing the air out of her lungs.
“This is it, Madeline,” he said. “I can feel it. We have the advantage. For once, we will be the hunters. We’ll close in and destroy him, once and for all.”
Noah’s Jeep climbed the pitted dirt road in lurches and jostles, and Madeline had to grip the armrest tightly just to stay in her seat. The road climbed steeply through dense pine forest. Through breaks in the trees, she caught views of the mountains beyond.
They’d started out on the smooth, paved North Fork Road, which ran along outside the western boundary of the park. The North Fork eventually turned to gravel, and soon they turned off onto a small, dirt road with only a fire number for a name.
Last night she’d told Noah of the forest fire and Steve’s death, hoping Noah would tell her that fire could kill the creature. But he had only shaken his head. She wanted to report Steve’s death, but Noah said it would be dangerous to investigating officers while the creature was still in the area, and that she should wait until it moved on. He also suggested she wait to report the four men who had attacked her for the same reason. She guessed he was right but grimly wondered how long this list would get by the time she did indeed return home. If she ever returned home, other than in a closed casket to hide her partially eaten body.
They had phoned in the fire, though, on an anonymous tip, but it had already been spotted, and fire vehicles had been dispatched. The dispatcher told them the fire was under control.
She guessed they’d find Steve was “missing.” She felt really sad about him, blaming herself for getting him involved. Maybe Noah was right that night when they got down off the mountain. Maybe she shouldn’t have involved anyone else.
The road ahead lay in utter disrepair and looked like it was used only twice a year, if even that much. “How much farther?” she asked as she left her seat and almost hit her head on the ceiling and then on the passenger window frame.
The air was still incredibly hot. Stifling heat filled in the cab of the Jeep as they crawled upward, far too slowly for a breeze to really get going. Madeline could feel that the sky wanted to rain and alleviate the heat, and that when it did, a terrific thunderstorm was likely. But for now there were only a few tiny white clouds in the otherwise bright blue sky.
“Another four miles, I think.”
Madeline’s mouth fell open. “Four miles!” Four miles on the highway or a paved street was one thing. But four miles on this road could take—
“The rest of our lives.”
“What?”
“Estimated driving time.”
The truck dived into a pothole again, sending her over Noah’s way. The seat belt cinched painfully against her collarbone. “Why,” she asked, as her voice reverberated with the rough motion, “do … they … make … Jeep … shocks … so … tight?”
“I … don’t … know,” reverberated Noah as they hit a stretch of washboard road that she was convinced had last been traveled by a bulldozer carrying two tons of cement and a brontosaurus with a weight problem. The grooved tracks were so deep that the Jeep seemed ready to bounce them right into an alternate reality.
Madeline looked ahead with fear. Would rifling through the creature’s things would be like when she touched the Sickle Moon Killer’s knife? Would it haunt her for years to come? The images awaiting her could be worse than those. Suddenly she wanted to turn back more than anything in the world.
It was noon by the time they arrived. The forest was absolutely silent. If she strained her ears, Madeline could hear the muffled fall of pine needles dropping to the soft forest bed beneath. Sunlight streamed through the branches to the forest floor below, illuminating wildflowers and small fairylike rings of mushrooms.
She climbed from the Jeep and took in the cabin. It was tiny, couldn’t be more than four rooms. It lay at the end of the long and winding road they’d traveled, and the nearest house they’d passed lay two miles back down the road.
The creature had wanted its privacy.
She hoped Noah was right, that the creature would have no occasion to be here now, no person to devour and digest. No need to build a nest.
“It’s isolated here,” Noah said after he shut the Jeep door.
“Quiet, too.”
Both grew silent as they stood there.
“Too quiet,” she added.
Noah smirked. “Yeah. Too quiet. The kind of quiet that makes you think of crimes being committed in the heart of the city. The kind of city that only comes in one size, big, and one flavor, dangerous.”
“Thank you!” she interjected, cutting him off. “That’s enough Sam Spade for one afternoon.”
“My pleasure. Thank you for tuning in to my one-man radio show.”
“Don’t forget to thank me for tuning in to your planet, too.”
“Uh. I’m hurt. Just because I’m a shape-shifter from another time period doesn’t mean I’m strange or something.”
“Yes, it does. It definitely does.”
“Well, I hope that’s strange in a good way.”
She smiled at him, his handsome face caught in a shaft of soft light. “It is.”
He returned the smile and gestured toward the cabin. Her feet had turned to lead. “Are you sure he won’t be in there?” she asked, her voice tiny. They crept closer. It was a rental cabin. Dusty curtains hung in the windows, and a sign on the door listed rules for staying there: wash your own dishes, take sheets off the bed when you’re done.
Don’t eat the help, she thought grimly.
“Ready to do this?” He watched her expectantly. She hated this part of her gift, when people stared at her as if she were about to pull off some kind of miracle. Because it was a rental cabin, this was going to be harder than usual. Objects that had been touched by numerous people offered a hodgepodge of information, oftentimes making it difficult to separate one person’s thoughts from another’s.
Approaching the door, she once again took in the cabin’s small size. “If he does show up, there’s not much room to hide.”
“I don’t think he will.”
She studied the cabin reluctantly. “Well, let’s do this as quickly as possible.”
“Here goes,” Noah said, trying the doorknob unsuccessfully.
“Did you really think it would be unlocked?” she started, trailing off as Noah smashed the French door pane closest the knob.
“No,” he answered.
Reaching through the hole in the jagged glass, Noah unlocked the door from the inside. Madeline glanced around nervously.
“What is it?” Noah asked.
“I guess I thought the cops could sense a law being broken miles away and would come for us.”
He nodded. “I felt that way myself the first few times.”
She raised her eyebrows as he opened the front door. “The first few times you broke into houses?”
“The first few times I committed crimes.”
She swallowed as he paused in the doorway, waiting for her. “What kinds of crimes have you committed?”
He smiled. “Oh, nothing serious. You know, a little B and E, some minor theft of food and clothes over the years, that kind of thing.”
“Oh.” She wondered if he was leaving anything out. Centuries of pursuing a killer could warp any person’s mind. With an obsession carrying you from year to year, you could very well skew your ideas of where justice ended and madness began.
Noah stepped toward her. “What is it? You look like you’re about to run away.”
She looked into his concerned eyes and felt foolish. “It’s nothing,” she said. “Just my overactive imagination.” Her gut told her Noah was safe. He was a good person, determined to stop this killer. A lot of people wouldn’t be so selfless. It was too easy to roll over and let bad things happen, to not think about others. Most people would have grieved over their lover and then moved on, too scared or too weak to pursue justice when the law failed to deliver. She studied Noah’s face, his old, wise eyes, slight growth of whiskers, sandy blond hair curling about his face.
She reached up and touched his cheek, feeling the warmth of his face on her palm. Slowly she stepped forward, closing the distance between them and pressed her lips to his, breathing in the delicious scent of him. He returned the kiss, wrapping a hand around her back, pulling her even closer. Her mouth longed to drink him deeply, and the tip of her tongue came out, lightly brushing his, an electric sensation passing through her. She pulled away, hunger in her eyes, and watched as he slowly opened his eyes, his mouth still parted and wanting.
They watched each other for a few moments, and then she said, “I guess we have work to do.”
He nodded.
Madeline touched the doorknob as she entered, expecting to get something. But so many people had touched it over the years, it only gave off static: a wash of feelings and emotions of hundreds of people who had rented the cabin in years gone by.
Beyond the front door lay the kitchen, a modest setup including an ancient propane stove that had probably cooked food when Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons first sang on the radio. Next to it stood a genuine icebox, the kind you actually had to put ice into to cool its contents. In the center of the room stood a Formica-topped table, scarred with decades of use, and two cheap aluminum chairs with plastic cushioned seats, cracked and spilling their polyester stuffing.
Madeline moved about the kitchen, touching the chairs, the table, the stove, the icebox. The last she opened, admitting a terrible reek into the room. Wrinkling her nose, she peered inside. Nothing. But decades of use had taken its toll. Too many people had left food in there to go bad, and the lingering stench was a mixture of rancid milk, overripe cheese, and a sharp garlicky smell that threatened to overtake the kitchen. She slammed the icebox door shut and backed away.
Noah, waiting quietly by the front door, asked, “Anything?”
Madeline shook her head. “Just a lot of white noise.”
He raised his eyebrows.
She moved toward him, away from the cloud of stench. “When a lot of people touch something over the years, like these appliances, all I get is white noise: a crazy mixture of the thoughts of everyone who has ever been here. I call it the Bus Seat Effect.”
“Bus seat?”
“Yeah. I first noticed it on a bus. My elementary school us
ed these really old buses that had probably driven kids around since the 1950s. Our school district didn’t have a whole lot of money. Anyway, I noticed one day, bouncing along on my way to school, that I didn’t ever get any specific images when I touched a bus seat. I thought it was weird at the time. I mean, think of all the nervous and terrified kids who had used them for decades. I thought I’d get something—an image of a kid crying over a stolen lunch box, or a vision of a kid getting beaten up during recess by the local bully. But nothing. Eventually I realized that I got no images precisely because there were so many kids who had ridden in those seats before me. It was just too much information, a hiss and static of a thousand lives, each with their separate fears and terrors, struggles and triumphs.”
“The Bus Seat Effect. Got it. Want to try the other rooms?”
“Sure,” she said, feeling mildly sick, and not sure if it was due to nerves or the terrible stench.
Together they made their way through the sitting room, a tiny room sporting an ancient stuffed rocker and a magazine rack complete with wilting copies of Better Homes and Gardens dating back at least to the ’60s.
Madeline touched all the furniture, the magazines, the lamp. Nothing.
In the small bathroom, she touched the sink, bathtub, shower curtain, toilet. No images.
She moved into the last room, a small bedroom with a bed, dresser, and wooden writing desk with a lamp. Noah lingered in the doorway while she ran her fingers gingerly over the dresser’s smooth surface, then the writing desk and lamp. Finally she moved to the bed. It was unmade, recently slept in, the dark green comforter spilling over the bed and onto the floor. The sheets looked new or nearly new; they still had creases in them where they had been folded at the factory. A deep maroon, they weren’t the kind of cheap linens that rental places normally stocked. She reached down gently and brushed her hand over the soft cotton of the sheets. Immediately, powerful images swept over her.
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