by Jordan Dane
When Bram gripped my hand, something passed between us.
He held on and stared at me, letting me see a depth of emotion in his glassy eyes, as if we were the only two people in the room. I sensed he wanted me to understand he needed something from me. If I had any doubts about his sincerity for digging into his past, I had my answer.
I lowered my voice, only loud enough for him to hear me.
“I’ll help you. Whatever you need, okay?”
A tear dribbled down his cheek as he nodded. He didn’t wipe it away.
I understood raw emotions. Old wounds were never far from the surface and welled up at the least provocation. I pulled him into a hug and held him. While he accepted the intimacy without holding back, Skye and Jax pretended not to notice.
They’d make fine parents when the time came.
After a hearty breakfast of eggs, bacon and hash browns with warm, homemade bread, Skye and Bram cleaned the kitchen to let Malloy and me talk. I pulled Jax aside as we headed into the living room and kept my voice low.
“We have to talk…in private.”
He nodded and led me outdoors through a pasture gate where we would have space and privacy. Rodeo came with us. We walked the field, both of us comfortable with the silence, until we reached the crest of a hill that looked over a small valley.
“I found Bram’s biological father. His name is Max Whitaker. He has a rap sheet and served time in prison.”
“What did he do?”
“That’s what I thought you should know.” I turned toward Malloy. “His father is a pedophile with a taste for young boys. I don’t know if he ever hurt Bram. He says no, but—”
I didn’t finish.
“If Bram still wants to go through with this and confront what happened that night, other stuff may surface,” I said. “It could devastate him.”
Jax looked miserable.
“I don’t know, Ryker. It’s hard to put myself where he is, you know? I would want to get everything out, to deal with it. Bram may not.” He kicked a rock across the field and his body stiffened. His face grew stern. “Damn it. I want to kill that son of a bitch, even for being close to Bram.”
“We may never know if anything happened, but ignoring Bram’s cry for help might lead to more dissociative episodes. I wanted you to understand so you can talk to him, if you make that choice. It’s up to you and Skye.”
“We’re applying to be foster parents,” Jax said. “We want to be his legal guardians, if he’ll have us. We haven’t told him yet. If we’re not approved, I didn’t want to disappoint him.”
“That would be like saying Ma and Pa on ‘Little House on the Prairie’ are unfit to have kids.” I smiled. “Not gonna happen, Malloy. Bram will be lucky to have you and Skye.”
More silence. Malloy stuffed his hands into his jeans and stared across the valley as the breeze tousled tufts of grass.
“I’ll talk to Skye. She’s better at parenting than I am. We’re better together.”
“You may not need to bring up Whitaker to Bram, at least not yet. We may be worrying over something that never happened, but if it comes up when we stage the crime scene and recreate it for him, you’ll have what you need to get him help. A therapist may not be a bad idea.”
Jax nodded. As he fought his emotions, he didn’t speak. He didn’t need to. We both stared across his land until he was ready to head home.
“Come on, Rodeo,” Malloy called his dog. “Let’s go, boy.”
Before I left the Malloy ranch, Bram asked to speak to me in private. He took me to the front porch where Skye and Jax had a wooden swing and two cushioned chairs and a table. Bram had questions I couldn’t answer. For true closure, he would have to endure the experience of confronting his past at the scene where it all began.
“It’ll take courage, but if you change your mind, that’s okay,” I said. “You’re in control. Say the word and I’ll pull the plug.”
He nodded, but I wasn’t sure he truly heard me. I sat on the porch swing and rocked. Bram leaned against the porch railing and crossed his arms, staring at this boots.
“I want to share something with you,” I said. “I don’t talk about it much. It’s very personal.”
That got Bram’s attention.
“I lost my parents in a car accident when I wasn’t much older than you. I had a chance to stop them from getting in the car, but things happened and…I didn’t. I was very close to both of them, but my mother…was special to me. I understand the strong connection you may have with your mom and how hard this must be for you.”
Fresh tears came and Bram wiped his face.
“What you’re going through has brought all that up for me again,” I said. “It probably needed to happen. When you don’t deal with things, they don’t just go away. They hit you when you don’t expect it and the wounds are fresh, as if they happened yesterday.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”
“It’s okay. I wanted you to appreciate that I’ve got skin in this, too. You won’t be alone. No matter what you decide, whether you’re in or out, I’m in it with you, but you’re running the show. Not me. You understand?”
Bram filled his lungs with fresh air and relaxed his shoulders. He dropped his arms to his sides and looked me square in the eye.
“Yeah.” He smiled. “Thanks.”
Although he hadn’t said the word, I sensed Bram had made up his mind to go through with whatever I had planned. He trusted me and he had Jax and Skye in his corner. Whatever would come, we would work through it together.
He looked more confident than I felt.
***
Five Points
Dallas, Texas
After midnight
Ryker Townsend
I stood on the curb outside the house where Evangeline and two of her children had died. The Five Points neighborhood of Dallas metro, off Park Lane at the intersection of Fair Oaks Avenue and Ridgecrest Road, had once been respectable, but had earned a reputation for crime over the years since Evangeline had lived there.
I’d waited until after dark, to see the crime scene as it had been that night. Only one thing was noticeably missing—the rain. If a house carried the essence of those who had lived within its walls, the condemned clapboard house bore the stain of death and violence. Similar to ravaged and contaminated soil where nothing would ever grow again, the home where Evangeline had died alongside her children would most likely be torn down, never to be inhabited again.
I sensed Bram’s presence, as surely as if he stood beside me. He’d turned into a ghost and left splintered fragments of his soul inside these walls. I pictured his face and how he might react to coming back where his life had changed forever.
Again I had second thoughts on the part I would play.
My sensitivities would compound and magnify his pain within me. It would be like having an open wound with nerve endings exposed, but reenacting the Cross murders wouldn’t be about me or my weaknesses.
It would be about Bram and helping him get through it.
I flipped open the file for the crime scene photos to compare what I would see to the way it had been the night of the murders. I used a small Mag-Lite to see the images.
Darkened windows of broken glass gave breath to the old house, as if it had eyes. The rusted carcass of an old water heater had been left in the front yard. A worn truck tire hung from a frayed rope tied to the limb of an old oak tree. I wondered who had put it there.
Vandals had played a hand in the destruction and spray-painted gang signs across the front. A wooden porch carried a slant and the doorframe had yellow strands of faded crime scene tape flapping in the breeze, but the door hung wide and off its hinges.
I opened the rickety metal gate at the street sidewalk and stepped across the property until I walked onto the porch, testing the floorboards before I put on my full weight. I’d need help from Malloy and his friends from Station 58 to make the house safe enough for what we had planned—and cr
eate the exact conditions that would trigger Bram’s worst memory.
I pulled my weapon and headed inside.
My flashlight cast an eerie glow into the darkness of the house. Rats and roaches scurried from the light as I walked into the front room. Leaves and debris and flattened cardboard boxes were strewn across the wooden floor. Someone had defecated near the fireplace. In the lingering Texas heat, the stench permeated the stale air trapped inside. I covered my nose and mouth with my hand.
When I crept down a hallway toward the bedrooms, I slowed my steps.
Because of my gift, I drank in my perceptions and didn’t question anything. I let my mind wander and left my sensitivities to flourish, without censor. It’s how my gift worked best when I was awake.
When I stepped into the master bedroom, where police had found Evangeline Cross after she’d taken her own life with the gun she’d used on her children, I didn’t need the crime scene photographs to see her. In the pale moonlight leaching through an open window, I saw her body as if I’d been the one to find her five years ago.
Her dead eyes stared at me. No matter where I stood in the room, her head tilted whenever I blinked as if her milky eyes could follow. That’s how my fertile mind worked. The dead didn’t mean to scare me. That would be beneath them. If Evangeline played any part to my haunting, she carried a message she needed me to ‘hear.’
I wish I understood the puzzle she meant me to see. I remained in her house until the pale glimmer of dawn bled through the fractured windows. When I finally closed the murder file, I knew the key I’d been missing would be Bram.
After I grabbed a quick breakfast at a local diner, I called Jax at a more civil hour.
“What’s up, Ryker? You’re up early.”
“I haven’t been to bed yet.” I pulled out my wallet to pay the bill. “I need you and some very discreet friends to help me stage a scene. It’s won’t be easy. Whoever you get, they have to understand the stakes. That’ll be up to you to tell them.”
I explained that any renovation had to be quick and dirty—a façade like a film set in the movies. It only had to look believable at night to a kid who would be easy to trigger. If Malloy mobilized enough fire fighters and other support, the old Cross house would be enough to stir Bram’s memory.
“Whatever you need, I’ll back your play.”
After I told him what I needed, Jax Malloy didn’t question anything. He knew Bram’s future depended on it.
***
Five Points
Three days later
Ryker Townsend
I returned to the house in Five Points three days later.
Malloy and his firemen brothers had worked long hours and had done a great job at shoring up the front of the old clapboard house. Malloy said they made it stable enough with well-placed screws and nails. Cleaning had been the hardest part.
From where I stood on the curb, the exterior had one quick coat of paint, two new windows and the rain gutters had been cleared of debris and bent into shape. The entry door had been repaired and secured to keep out the vandals and drug users until we were done.
Malloy’s crew didn’t have time for a major overhaul, considering my limited days to remain in Dallas, but at night the old house appeared strikingly similar to how Evangeline’s home must’ve looked five years ago. It only had to hold up in the dark, seen through the eyes of a terrified kid who wouldn’t know the difference.
With the new house key, I stepped inside for one more look.
Skye and some of the girlfriends and wives of the other fire fighters had bartered and finagled scant furnishings that replicated some of the crime scene photos of the old house. The main rooms where the violence happened were key. A few lamps, chairs, and beds were placed in crucial spots in the deserted dwelling.
I had the water and electricity turned on for a few days, enough time for Malloy’s people to work. We were as ready as we’d ever be.
All that remained was Bram Cross to come home one last time.
Chapter 9
Five Points
Next day
After midnight
Ryker Townsend
I pulled up to the curb at the stroke of midnight with Bram in the passenger seat next to me. He stared at the house and I sensed his abject fear. His hands rested on his thighs and he clenched his fists tight enough for his knuckles to blanch.
“Stay in the car as long as you need to,” I said with my voice calm and steady. “You’re in control. When you’re ready, the front door is unlocked. Don’t wait for me.”
The kid nodded, but he couldn’t take his eyes off the house where his family had died.
The dark street had busted streetlights and cast the house in a bluish haze from the moon. The shrubs and tree limbs swayed with every gust of wind, making the shadows swell and heave. When Bram reached for the door handle and stepped out of the car, I did the same and kept out of his line of sight. He needed to feel as if he walked through his old house alone. I had to be his shadow, yet be close enough to become his safety net when he needed me.
Bram reached for the metal gate and it creaked open. He shut his eyes and let the sound into his head before he stepped through the fence. When he walked onto the wooden porch, his boots thumped on the boards and he stopped dead still at the entrance, willing himself to grab the doorknob. After wiping his palms on his jeans, he took a deep breath and muttered words I couldn’t hear.
I prayed for his courage as I watched him struggle. I couldn’t imagine the guts it took for Bram to walk into his past on the worst possible night—and fill the shoes of a twelve-year-old boy about to face death.
When he shoved through the door and stepped across the threshold, I heard him gasp as if it physically hurt him to cross over. The minute we were inside, the rain came. It poured through the metal rain gutters, pounded the roof and trickled down window panes, capturing prisms of moonlight in its deluge.
I watched as Bram closed his eyes again, his face half hidden in the gloom.
He didn’t question how the rain hit on cue, courtesy of Jax and his firemen brethren. They had parked a hook and ladder unit behind the house and had their hoses ready to make it rain. Even I sensed the eerie transition from the present to the past.
It jarred me as if I’d stepped into someone else’s nightmare.
The spirits of the dead roamed the house as if they were alive again. Molecules carried weight to thicken the air and made the darkness stir with the remains of what had been. I heard the fragile echo of children’s laughter and their haunting prickled my skin. My gift allowed me to feel more than others and I wondered if Bram sensed what I did. This was his nightmare—his ghosts—not mine.
“Talk to me,” I whispered. “Tell me everything.”
“My little brother Benny and my sister Lily share a room, down this way.” Bram’s voice cracked.
When he pointed toward a hallway, he stepped deeper into the house as he cleaved to his memories.
“Oh, God. They’re laughing. That sound.”
Bram spoke in present tense.
He quickened his steps as if he would open the door and find his younger brother and sister in the room. When he burst through, he stopped as if he’d been punched.
Two small beds were empty. It broke my heart to see them. I couldn’t imagine what Bram felt. Moonlight backlit the iridescence of the rain trailing down the glass—as if God cried, too.
The covers were thrown back and blood spatter stained the linens. Bram bent over and groaned, holding his stomach. The children triggered his waking nightmare.
He ran from the room and through the house, ranting incoherent words as if he were in a trance. Bram wasn’t with me anymore. I could’ve followed him and reacted to everything he did, but I chose to let my gift take over.
I had to see what he did.
After Bram left me alone, I caught movement and heard a light patter near my feet and I looked down. Droplets of blood struck the wooden floor from n
owhere—as if a body had been moved that I couldn’t see. What the hell?
“Momma. What’s happening?” Bram cried out from another room and my throat wedged tight.
I sank deeper into his world.
At the suddenness of Bram’s cry, it felt as if a switch had been flipped. I didn’t see or hear the stage craft of the fake rain. I witnessed the house as it came alive. When Bram called out, I heard his voice as a child of twelve and I saw through his eyes—his memories—as if I’d found a way into his past.
When another bedroom door flew open, I saw Evangeline and I couldn’t take my eyes off her. Alive once again, she wore a pale pink nightgown and she raced from her bedroom, calling her son’s name.
“Bram, where are you?” She shoved through me as if I weren’t there. “No, please. Don’t!”
I felt the powerlessness of her fear and the strength of a mother’s love as she crossed through my body and disappeared into the gloom. Who had she begged to stop?
Behind her came the ghost image of a hulking shadow. The swell of its darkness oozed like ink and from it emerged the frightening head of a snake. The slithering beast tore through flesh to gain its freedom.
I forced my heart to slow down. The giant snake couldn’t be real and yet, before my eyes, it coiled from a bloody chest cavity and slid to the floor to vanish into the dark like something out of a horror movie.
When I heard a gunshot, I cringed and reached for my weapon on instinct, but in my hand I held the same type of revolver to replicate the blast from five years ago. I smelled the acrid and sour stench of gunfire and knew I had pulled the trigger. Instinctively, I had fired the shot at the exact time Bram needed to hear it.
My gift hadn’t betrayed me.
The scent that had triggered Bram’s fugue at Bunny Man Bridge had been the smell of gunfire. The homeless man had it on his clothes after he’d been shot by Josh. By Bram’s reaction, I’d guessed right, but too little, too late.
By the time I got to Bram, he collapsed into my arms in the kitchen. Steeped in darkness, I lowered him to the floor. His body flickered between two realities. His weight became lighter as he transformed into the traumatized twelve-year-old boy, yet changed back to heavier as he clung to the present at seventeen.
