Phantom Eyes

by Scott Tracey

  The woman, though—my aunt—was completely different. Her hair was long and honey brown, and she looked both nervous and excited. When her brother nudged her in the side at my approach, a full smile blossomed on her face, and it made my stomach churn again.

  My footsteps faltered. They’re going to expect too much out of me. I’m just going to disappoint them. I stopped where I was, but I didn’t turn away. It would be easy enough to turn around and run back to the ferry. I doubted they would follow me. The ferry would be docked here for almost half an hour before it made one last trip back to Belle Dam.

  The woman put her hand on her brother’s arm, and even at this distance I could see her squeezing him. Her face was an open book, and I could see the dismay. But they stayed where they were, and I stayed where I was, and there was a stalemate.

  Anxiety flooded through my system, and it was an endless stream of thoughts that started with They’re going to want, or I don’t think I can, or What if they? Each one was crazier than the one before. I knew it was crazy, but I couldn’t stop myself. The panic needed a voice, only there were too many voices in my head already.

  I pulled my phone out of my pocket, and did the only thing I could think. I called Trey.

  He answered immediately. “What’s wrong?”

  I exhaled as I laughed, but I could hear the quaver in my own voice. “I don’t think I can do this.”

  I heard traffic sounds in the background. Trey’s voice was tight. Troubled. “Where are you?”

  “I … took the ferry.” I couldn’t admit to Trey that I was thinking about leaving. “Jason found … my mom had family. He thinks they might be able to help me.” I closed my eyes, swallowed down my shame.

  “The ferry,” Trey mused, which was not the part I thought he’d get stuck on. There were sounds of movement and a low voice in the background, but I couldn’t make anything out. “Okay, Drew’s going to be waiting for you when you get back.”

  “What? Why? Trey, I’m fine.”

  “It’s just for my piece of mind,” Trey said after a long pause. “You shouldn’t be walking around without someone there.”

  “Fine, whatever,” I said. Clearly, overprotective Trey wasn’t going anywhere. “Did you hear the rest of what I said? Jason found my mom’s siblings. They’re here.”

  It was like a switch flipped, and the weird tension was gone. “Are you okay?” Trey asked, his voice dropping down.

  “I don’t know. It’s weird.”

  “Where are you? Are they there?”

  I eyed the distance. “They’re like fifty feet away? Maybe more. I suck at depth perception.”

  Trey made a hmm-ing sound. “Do they look like axe murderers?”

  I barked out a laugh, not expecting that. “I don’t know. How do I know if they’re axe murderers? Is there a dress code?”

  Trey’s tone was dry. “There’s usually an axe.”

  I snorted, cradling the phone against my shoulder. “Don’t make me laugh. This is supposed to be serious. You’re ruining it.”

  “I’m a terrible human being,” he agreed, the phone line crackling.

  “You’re starting to sound a lot like Drew,” I said, looking away from the relatives. “I don’t know anything about them,” I said a moment later, my voice dropping. “What if they’re evil? Jason says they’re not, but he thought Lucien was a cuddly version of a demon.” And then even softer. “What if they hate me?”

  “They won’t hate you. Unless they’re Amish. I’m pretty sure your sarcastic ways would be lost on the Amish.”

  I smiled, but sober thoughts took over far too soon. I couldn’t laugh this conversation off. There was too much attached to it. There was more to this conversation than just a first impression. I’d be leaving everything behind. “What do you think I should do?”

  “I think you should walk fifty more feet and then say ‘Hi, my name’s Braden. I’m only mildly annoying.’”

  This time, I didn’t laugh. “Stop trying to distract me. This is serious.”

  “Well, are you still panicking?”

  I … wasn’t. There were still nerves rushing through my system, but the stifling panic wasn’t part of the equation anymore. I could move my feet, and that meant I had to go. There was only so much time until the ferry left for its return trip back to the city. “I have to go.”

  “Remember, you’re only mildly annoying,” Trey said encouragingly from the other end.

  “I hate you,” I laughed.

  “You really don’t,” Trey said, sounding the most serious he had the entire phone call. “And if they don’t figure out how lucky they are to get to know you, then screw them. We’ll figure something else out.”

  This time my hesitation didn’t have anything to do with my fear. “Trey … ”

  “Go be brilliant,” he said gruffly, ending the call before I could respond.

  I started walking forward again, sliding my phone back into my pocket. Their expressions hadn’t wavered, not since I made the call, but I could see some of the woman’s tension ease when I started approaching again. Maybe I wasn’t the only one who was nervous.

  There was no joyous reunion or anything like that. I approached, and they waited. Even though I took my time and let my nerves run free, they didn’t move. They let me approach them like I was an abused dog they were trying not to spook.

  When I was finally close enough to introduce myself, I opened my mouth but my tongue was frozen. She was younger than I thought she’d be. My mother’s sister was maybe in her thirties, and something about her reminded me of Catherine. It wasn’t just that they were both blond, it was something I couldn’t see. The way they carried themselves, the sharpness in their eyes. Inner steel.

  She might not look like it, but she’s a predator. I could almost picture her taking on hellhounds with nothing more than a couple of knives. It was all there, in the way that she stood, in the way she looked at me and still watched the rest of the parking lot. Even still, I wasn’t scared of her. If anything, it put me at ease.

  “Hi,” I said, looking down at my shoes. “I’m Braden.” I wouldn’t repeat the rest, no matter what Trey said.

  “Rose’s son,” the woman said warmly. “Look at you.”

  “Braden,” the man said in greeting, tucking his hands behind his back. Unlike his sister, he was exactly as old as I expected, in his forties like Jason. His skin was weathered and lined and dark from the sun. He didn’t look like he smiled much. Jason would have liked him.

  “Sorry, I’m off my game,” the woman said with a sigh. “I’m Anna. And this is my brother Patrick,” she said, gesturing to her brother.

  “Hi,” I said again.

  The smile on her face warmed even more. “Hi,” she replied. Tears started to shimmer in her eyes, and when she opened her mouth, the words tangled up. She shook her head, laughed, and looked away. It took her a minute to pull herself together.

  “Jonathan never said a word,” Patrick said, taking the lead from his sister. “You have to understand, it’s a little raw for us. We never knew … we thought that when your mom died, that you … ”

  They believed the story that Jason had spun. That I’d died with her. “He kept in touch with you, though? My uncle?”

  “Yeah,” Anna said, wiping at the corner of her eye. “Not often, but enough to keep in touch. I hadn’t talked to him in almost a year, though.”

  I hunched my shoulders and turned around, facing the ferry. “He … he’s gone. Just a few days ago.” If I didn’t look at them, I could pretend we weren’t talking about this. That it wasn’t real.

  “Yeah, your fa— I mean, I heard,” Anna said. I heard her take a step forward, but that was all. “I’m sorry. He raised you all by himself, huh?”

  I nodded, not trusting myself to speak about that. “So why are you here?” I asked, feeling myself grow colder. “What do you want from me?” I turned to face them, and wished I hadn’t.

  Patrick looked like he’d expected this.
Knowing, and a little condescending. But Anna looked stricken. “You’re our nephew,” she said, as if it was obvious. “You’re in trouble. We want to help.”

  “But why? You won’t set foot in Belle Dam, so obviously you get it. Jason says you can protect me, but neither one of them could protect me when it really mattered. So why do you think you can do so much better? And why would you want to?”

  Anna seemed to realize there were many questions layered in between. Her insight just managed to annoy me. “We can’t do better,” she said gently. “No one’s ever going to be able to do better than John did. But we can help you. We can keep you safe. And we want to. Besides,” she offered a tiny smile, “Patrick’s daughters would love to get to know their cousin.”

  Patrick hadn’t said much in the conversation so far, but he looked up at that, a fierce expression I didn’t see coming. His unease now made a little more sense. He was worried about his family.

  “How much do you know about what happened to her? Jason won’t tell me anything.”

  Patrick gave a sharp look to Anna, and she raised her hands, deferring to him. He cleared his throat, looking at something just past my shoulder. “A few days before you were born, your mother called us in the middle of the night. She was seeing things, and from the sounds of it, she had been for a while. If we’d known, if she’d said anything, maybe we could have done something. But she kept it from us until just before the end.”

  Jason had said the same thing. That my mother had seen things, the way that I’d seen things, as though my power were being channeled by her in fits and spurts.

  “She told us there was a darkness lurking in the town and that we had to swear that we would never set foot in the city ourselves. She was adamant, telling me to swear on the lives of my daughters.” There was a pause, and he looked up at me like he’d just said something significant.

  I didn’t see where he was going with this. “Okay?”

  “Patrick didn’t have any daughters,” Anna said, when Patrick faltered. “He hadn’t even met his wife back then.”

  Okay, that made sense. Well, it didn’t entirely, because even if she’d tapped into my powers, I couldn’t see the future. Only the present and the past. “She knew. And you believed her,” I said.

  Patrick nodded. “I knew my sister. Whatever had happened to her, she was convinced we were in danger. She said that if either of us,” he gestured towards his sister, “even so much as crossed the town line, it would be horrible. So she made us promise never to try.”

  “So you left her there.” Everyone had a story about what had happened to my mother, every version had its own villain. And now there was a new pair being added to the mix. “You abandoned her when she probably needed you most.”

  “The next morning, she laughed the whole thing off,” Anna said. “She tried saying it had just been a nightmare. That everything was fine.”

  “Two days later, she was gone,” Patrick said tightly. “But not you.”

  Anna gave her brother a sharp look. “Is that really necessary?” she demanded in an acid tone.

  “Jason got the kid he wanted,” Patrick fired back, turning to face his sister. Anger and something like cinders started coming off of him in waves, absences and smudges in the air that hurt every time I looked at them. I winced, rubbing at the sudden blood rush clouding my thoughts. “And now that his plan failed, he’s hoping we’ll clean up his mess.”

  I shook my head. “This was a mistake.” I started to back away. Anna might have been on board with taking me away, but Patrick definitely was not. As far as he was concerned, I was just a proxy for his Jason hate.

  “No, Braden,” Anna pleaded, holding out a hand to me. “It’s not—this is just hard.” She fixed her brother with a dark look. “On all of us.”

  “Jason Thorpe is a poisonous serpent and he deserves to have his son ripped from his arms,” Patrick spat, turning away sharply. So that was his stake in all of this.

  “Hey!” I grabbed him by the shoulder and shoved him back around to face me. “He’s my father, and you don’t get to talk about him like that!” I’d earned the right to be pissed at Jason for every little thing, but I was also the only one that probably gave a damn about him. That made it okay. Neither of them could understand the way Belle Dam twisted things. Maybe Jason was responsible for their sister’s death, but I wouldn’t believe he did it intentionally.

  “Thorpe murdered my sister,” he snarled. “Your mother. I get to talk about him however I want. Don’t tell me you actually believe he’s the hero in all this? How long were you in Belle Dam before someone tried to kill you? How many days after that did you get admitted to the hospital?”

  “And where were you when my mom died?” I spat out.

  In hindsight, I deserved it. If anyone had said something like that to me about John, I would have decked them, too. I just didn’t think it would hurt so much.

  The next thing I knew, I was on the ground and Anna was standing between us. I could still feel his fist colliding with my face, the press of each knuckle into my skin. It replayed in my head over and over again.

  Now my head throbbed for real, and the blind spots swirling around Patrick were even more frenetic. It was like snowflakes viewed through a photo negative, speedy black trails flaring around him.

  I picked myself up off the ground and started backing away. Whatever Anna was saying to him had finally started to calm Patrick down, and now that it was over and his temper was fading, I recognized the shame in his expression.

  “Braden, I’m sorry,” he started, “that was completely uncalled for.”

  I shook my head. “It’s fine,” I said, shrugging. “I deserved it.”

  “No you didn’t,” he said. “I’m supposed to be helping you. Not assaulting you.”

  “No, really,” I said, “I’m used to it. I can’t start my day unless someone’s already tried to beat the crap out me.” I ignored the looks on both of their faces: hurt and worried and concerned. “Thanks for this. Meeting me. I mean, it’s nice to know that you’d come all the way here to try and help me out.”

  “Braden … ” Anna said softly, but the resignation in her voice said she already understood.

  I wasn’t going with them. I couldn’t. “I’d like to get to know you … ” I trailed off. Knowing my mom had family made me feel hope. There was more to me than what Belle Dam had given me. “But I have to do this first. I’m sorry.”

  “Braden, don’t do this,” Patrick said. He reached out a hand.

  “If I run now, then everyone else has to pay for my mistakes,” I said. “But I meant what I said. Maybe if I find my way out of this. But right now, I have responsibilities.” Who’d be there for Jason to cook dinners for? Or work to find a cure for Riley? Or referee Drew and Trey?

  It was easy to run from the home I’d grown up in to come to Belle Dam. But running from Belle Dam was harder than I ever would have thought possible. It hadn’t become my home exactly. More like it was a puzzle, and I was the last piece. And once I was fitted into place, the puzzle was complete.

  I couldn’t leave that behind, even if I wanted to.

  fourteen

  The wind picked up again on the way back as the temperature dropped significantly. Another storm was inching its way into the city. The ride back was quiet, leaving me ample time to think about what a moron I was.

  I should have left while I had the chance. Anna and Patrick might not have been perfect, but that was the smart choice. The easy choice. But something had held me back. I wasn’t the kid who ran away from his problems. There were two types of people in the world. People who ran from trouble, and people who ran towards it. Actually, there were three types of people in the world, because someone had to cause the trouble in the first place.

  I definitely wasn’t the first, probably was the second, but almost wished I was the third. “Be the villain,” Matthias had said, before realizing just what that would entail. “So what do you want to do?” Dre
w had asked, snippy and to the point as usual.

  I was already looking for him before the ferry finished docking. Drew had set up a perch on one of the metal railings that lined the pier, and he didn’t seem to care that everything was still soaked through from the rain. In fact, it looked like he’d been caught outside during the worst of it. He looked more scowly than normal, which meant that “bonding with Trey” had gone over more like “advanced trig without a calculator.”

  “I hope you’re not trying to get me home in time for curfew,” I called out as I approached, shoving my hands into my pockets. “And since when do you take orders from Trey, anyway?”

  Drew rolled his eyes and hopped down off the railing. “You got big plans tonight, manpain? Got some epic sulking to do while you stare longingly out a window? Guess again.” He cuffed me on the back of the head, and added, “Also, fuck you. But I got to hang up on Gentry four times before he managed to spit out enough to get me here. I should thank you for that.”

  I rubbed my head and glared. “Dick.”

  “Stop flirting, you’re giving me butterflies,” Drew said absently, awkwardly texting with a phone that looked positively doll-sized in his too-big hands.

  “Is that Trey?” I asked, trying to peer over and catch a glimpse of the screen.

  Drew raised his hand again, only this time it was a fist he waved at me. “Personal space, moron.”

  “You forgot to take your Midol, didn’t you?” I said sympathetically. “Well, too bad, because we don’t have time for stops.” I clapped him on the shoulder and then started walking away before he decided to retaliate. “Come on, we haven’t got all night.”

  “Did someone spike your sippy cup? Because you’re extra sassy tonight,” Drew fired back. Despite the fact that I was walking fast, Drew’s long legs meant he didn’t have to struggle to keep up.