by Liliana Hart
A strangled sound of panic echoed down the hall.
Real? Imaginary? Nate didn’t know, but he pushed his feet to move faster. Reaching the main hall, he turned in what seemed to be the direction of the scream.
A low sound rumbled through the hall.
Nate slowed to a walk, and then held his breath, waiting.
There it was again. The groan of ancient plumbing, barely audible.
Nate hadn’t set foot inside the school until today, but when he’d realized the threat the building likely contained, he’d memorized the floor plan. He could picture the pair of bathrooms, half way down the hall. Even in the dimness, he found them in seconds, just in time to hear the flush of a toilet coming from the girls’ room. Trying his best to clear his mind, he pushed the door open.
The darkness inside felt heavy. He groped for the switch on the wall, and miraculously the light turned on. “Rachel?”
A sound came from the last of four stalls, the scramble of rubber soles on tile.
Nate ran for the sound. And ran. And ran. Three stalls stretched to fifty or more. The muscles in his legs ached as if he was sprinting through deep sand.
Clear your mind. Control your emotions.
He reached for the door, his fingers gripping the latch, yanking it open.
Rachel was on her knees in front of the toilet, her body heaving, her head thrust deeply into the swirling bowl.
What the hell?
Nate grabbed her shoulders and pulled her back, lifting her head out of the water.
She plopped back onto her haunches, choking, gagging, shudders seizing her body, water streaming from nose and mouth.
“Rachel.” Nate knelt down and tried to pick her up. “We have to get out of here, before something else—”
She whirled on him, punching, scratching in an unseeing fight to survive.
He pulled her against his chest, pinning her arms to her sides in a bear hug. “Whoa, whoa, whoa.”
She struggled, alternating between coughs and something that sounded like a mix of scream and growl.
“Stop, stop. You’re okay. Listen to me. It’s Nate. Your neighbor, remember? You’re safe. You’re safe.”
“Nate? Nate? How did you—”
“You’re safe now. But we have to get out of here, understand?”
She was still breathing hard, her chest rising and falling. Her wet hair pressed cold against his cheek and dripped onto his shirt. “There were people… girls… grabbing… forcing me down, holding my head under… They were trying to drown me.”
“I know. I know.” She felt delicate in his arms, not weak, but small, and although he didn’t dare let go, he softened his grip just a little, as not to hurt her. “We have to get out. Now.”
“Who were those people? Why were they trying to kill me?”
“There’s no time. I’ll explain later. Can you stand?”
Feeling her nod, he rose to his feet, guiding her up with him. She was unsteady, and he kept his arms around her to prevent her from falling.
“We have to find Josh.”
“Can you walk?”
“Nate? Answer me. Where’s Josh? What happened to Josh?”
“I don’t know where Josh is, Rachel.”
She shook her head, hair swinging like wet whips. “I’m not leaving here without him.”
“You can’t help him now. We can’t help him. We need to get outside.”
“Not without my son.”
“I’ll come back for him. I promise.”
“Come back? We need to find him now.”
Her stubbornness wasn’t helping matters. He had to convince her to cooperate. But how? The full truth would only endanger her, not that she would believe it anyway. But a small slice might be enough to get her out the door until he could come up with a plan to find her son. “Listen, Rachel. There’s something strange going on here.”
“Strange? Are you kidding? People were trying to kill me. And now you want to leave Josh in here?”
“People weren’t trying to kill you.”
“What?”
“When I pulled you out of the toilet, there was no one in here. No one but you.”
Her eyebrows tilted low over her eyes. “Why are you saying this? We need to hurry.”
“I’m not making it up, Rachel. Those people holding you down? They were in your mind. A hallucination. When I arrived, you were alone. You were drowning yourself.”
She shook her head. “That’s impossible.”
“It’s this place. We can’t trust our own senses here. We have to get out. Regroup.”
“But Josh…”
He inched toward the bathroom door. “We’ll talk about it outside.”
“Talk? If this is happening like you say, if we are hallucinating, then Josh is too.”
Nate guided her through the door and into the hall, her muscles tense under his arms, coiled and ready to fight for her son. “We’ll come back for Josh.”
“He needs me.”
“I swore I would protect you, Rachel. You and Josh. Now let me do that.”
“Swore you would…” She stared at him, and he could almost see his words fitting together like a puzzle in her mind. “Swore to… who?”
He shook his head. He couldn’t tell her, not without raising more questions, questions he couldn’t answer. “Please Rachel. We need to get outside.”
“Not without Josh.” She pulled away from him, grasping at one of the wooden shelves lining the wall. Then she froze, her eyes wide.
“What is it?”
“This makes no sense. My son went to this school. It doesn’t have metal lockers like this.”
Nate eyed the wooden shelves lining the hall, not a single metal locker to be found. Exactly what he was afraid of. And he had no way of knowing what might come next. “Altered consciousness. Illusion. Out now.”
“You don’t see the lockers lining—”
He bent at the waist and scooped her up, draping her over one shoulder. Grasping her knees, he ran for the door.
For a moment, Rachel didn’t react. Then she was pounding his back with her fists and kicking her feet. “Let me down!”
He reached the door. Free hand slapping the push bar, he burst outside and kept going across the playground, the cold evening air making the water dripping from Rachel’s hair feel like ice against his back. Reaching the swing set, he lowered her to her feet.
As soon as the soles of her Keds touched the wood chips, she bolted back toward the school.
Nate caught her wrist, grasping hard enough to leave bruises. “I’m sorry, Rachel. But you’re no help to your son, not rushing in blindly. I’ll find him.”
Rachel was breathing hard and fast, her breath fogging in the late afternoon air.
“Slow down. You’re going to pass out.”
“Let me go.”
“Can’t.”
“Can’t or won’t?”
“Won’t. But I can help.”
“How? By leaving Josh in there unprotected?”
“First you need to tell me what you saw in there. You said there were lockers.”
“The halls are lined with metal lockers, you know, the ones with doors. This school doesn’t have those.”
“No, it doesn’t. Did you go to a school that did?”
“What does that matter?”
“Forget it.”
“What’s going on here, Nate?”
“I’m as confused as you are.” He wasn’t, and he hated lying, but prompting her to ask questions he couldn’t answer would only make things worse. Nate had spent the last two years of his life trying to protect her from all of it. He’d owed that to Steven… that and so much more.
And if Nate was honest with himself, his concern for Rachel and her son wasn’t mere duty. In the two years he’d lived next door, he’d come to care more than he wanted to admit. He’d come to wish they were his own. “I’ll find Josh. I promise. But to do that, I need to know you’re safe.”
“Who are you calling?”
“The police.”
Chapter Four
In a small town, everyone knew everyone. Yet Rachel had never met Lake Loyal’s police chief until now.
Blond, businesslike, and more beautiful than Rachel thought was usual for a cop, Chief Valerie Ryker climbed out of her sedan and walked toward the playground where Rachel and Nate waited. She wore a regular police uniform, and Rachel could have easily mistaken her for a patrol officer, except for the fact that her photograph was everywhere.
Not just in this tiny town, but every media outlet in the state. In the country. And as far as Rachel knew, maybe some beyond the U.S. borders as well. After Val Ryker had brought down killer Dixon Hess so dramatically, how could the twenty-four-hour news cycle resist? The upcoming trial was sure to be a media circus.
Now the chief’s sharp blue eyes combed the school, Josh’s bike lying on the playground, Rachel, and Nate, in that order. Rachel couldn’t help wonder what she saw.
“Rachel Meier?” Chief Valerie Ryker said.
Nate stepped forward, extending his hand. “Nate Welks. Thank you for getting here so fast.”
Rachel eyed Nate. When she’d called 911, he hadn’t protested, but she could tell by the way he fidgeted that while he didn’t want her to go back inside, he was itching to do so himself.
The Chief focused on Rachel. “You told our dispatcher that you already looked for your son inside the school?”
“I wasn’t able to search very long.”
“Wasn’t able to?”
“It was dark, and there were some… strange things that happened.”
“Like what?”
Rachel described the unusual behavior of the water fountains.
Chief Ryker narrowed her eyes. “Is that all?”
“You’re going to think I’m crazy.”
“Try me.”
“I heard something in the girl’s bathroom. A sound like the crying of a child. And when I went in to see what was going on, the lights turned off and hands pushed my head into the toilet and flushed.”
“You mean someone gave you a whirly?”
The term sounded so frivolous. The actual experience was anything but. “Yeah. I guess that’s what we used to call it.”
The chief said nothing, just held Rachel’s gaze as if waiting for her to go on.
“I thought I was going to drown, then the hands were gone and a man was pulling me to my feet.”
“A man?”
“Nate.”
Two black-and-white patrol cars filed in behind the chief. A tall blond man and short African-American woman climbed out of their vehicles, and Chief Ryker introduced them as Sergeant Pete Olson and Officer Ginny Jones.
“And how did you come to be in the school, Mr. Welks?” the Chief continued.
This time she didn’t narrow her eyes or lower her voice or do anything that one would normally think of as showing suspicion, but Rachel’s pulse picked up all the same. “Nate didn’t attack me. He saved me, got me out of the school.”
“I see. Mr. Welks?”
“Please call me Nate, Chief. I saw Rachel cross the soccer field, and I thought something was wrong, so I followed. When I found her in the bathroom, there was no one else there.”
The chief said nothing, her expression neutral.
Rachel glanced Nate’s way, hoping he’d pick up her unspoken apology for dragging him into this. Maybe the cops would just chalk her up to being crazy. She didn’t care, as long as they found Josh.
Leaving Rachel and Nate under the watchful eye of Officer Jones, Chief Ryker and Sergeant Olson went into the school. Nearly an hour had passed before they returned… without Josh.
Rachel cupped her hand over her mouth.
“We didn’t find your son, Mrs. Meier.”
“Rachel.”
“Okay. Rachel. But he might be hiding, afraid he’s in trouble with the police. I’d like to do another walk through, but this time have you come with us.”
“You didn’t see anyone else?”
“No. The building appears to be vacant.”
Could her attackers have taken Josh? Or was Nate right, and the whole thing had been a hallucination? And if that was the case, then where was her son?
“Rachel?” The chief prompted.
Rachel stepped forward.
Nate matched her. “Uh, I’ll go too. More eyes couldn’t hurt.”
“I’m sorry, Nate. I’d like you to remain here with Sergeant Olson, so he can take your statement.”
Rachel had seen enough cop shows on TV to realize the chief wanted to question Nate and her separately. She gave Nate an apologetic glance.
“That would be fine, Chief,” Nate said. “As long as you do me two favors.”
“And what would those favors be?”
“The three of you stay together. And don’t let Rachel out of your sight.”
Chief Ryker raised an eyebrow then nodded to her second-in-command. “Ready Rachel?” she asked.
A tremor seized Rachel’s stomach and bled through her limbs. But as nervous as she was about the strange things that had happened in the school, it was nothing compared to the thought of Josh trapped in there alone. “Of course.”
“Ginny, you want to lead the way?” The chief asked.
The cop gave a nod and pushed through the glass doors. Rachel fell in behind her, the chief bringing up the rear. The chief called out Josh’s name, and Rachel followed suit, her voice echoing off the walls.
“Josh? Are you here, honey? You’re not in trouble or anything. We’re just looking for you. Gertie was worried you got lost.”
The sun had slipped in the sky since Rachel had first entered the school, and the only light came from the end-of-hall glass doors and the occasional emergency light deeper inside the building, the light switches again non-functional. The lockers were back to being wooden shelves and coat hooks, the steel variety with doors now nowhere to be seen. They passed under the inspirational placards and passed the water fountains, this time without incident.
“There.” Rachel pointed to Josh’s second grade classroom. “That was his room last year.”
They went inside. Where Rachel remembered the room under Ms. Edwards’s care—festooned with posters, bulletin boards built by Mr. Edwards, and a jelly bean jar promising fun rewards for good behavior—this classroom looked nothing like that. The walls were stripped of personality, the tables and chairs stacked against one wall unused. Something moved under a table, and Rachel gasped.
Officer Jones directed her flashlight to the spot, illuminating the scurry of a mouse. An albino instead of the usual gray field mouse, it reminded Rachel of the rodents in her high school biology class. “An albino. That’s strange.”
“What?” Officer Jones asked.
“The mouse. It was all white. Like the kind they sell in pet shops.”
“Oh, must have missed it.”
Rachel nearly pointed to the creature before stopping herself. Now she was seeing random mice that no one else did? She glanced at the officer. “They’re pretty quick.”
“No one here,” Chief Ryker said.
They moved on down the hall, calling for Josh and sweeping the darkness with their flashlight beams, before coming upon another set of inspirational banners.
ATTITUDE IS EVERYTHING.
TODAY I WILL MAKE MAGIC HAPPEN.
They searched the gym, the lunch room and kitchen, even the bathrooms, although the lights refused to work this time. And although nothing seemed out of the ordinary—no growing halls or steel lockers—a weight bore down on Rachel’s shoulders, increasing with every step.
If her son wasn’t here…
They had just turned a corner when one of the flashlights illuminated another abandoned sign.
> AFTER SCHOOL LIBRARY SIGN UP.
Hadn’t Gertie told her Josh was looking for the faery book? Had the toilet incident washed everything from her mind? “That’s where he’d go. Josh has to be in the library.”
They pulled open the door, and Officer Jones tried the light switch, but like the classrooms and bathrooms during this trip into the school, the room remained dark. Unlike the classrooms, the library looked as it had a few months ago when the school was in use. Tables scattered the open area, chairs arranged around them as if waiting for the children. Books crowded the shelves. Even the tech station appeared untouched, the outdated monitors still in place, all the computers plugged in.
“Josh Meier?” Chief Ryker called. “Are you in here?”
Rachel joined her. “Josh? Come on out, honey. It’s time to go home.”
Shadows danced over book spines then disappeared, chased away by police Maglites.
Rachel held up her cell phone, activating the flashlight app. Her light splashed across the last table in the row. Something glinted.
She made her way to the table. A book splayed open on the surface, tooled leather, the edges of the pages adorned with gold. An elaborate drawing jumped off the page.
Faeries and elves. Leprechauns and trolls. All cavorting among arching flowers and springing leaves. Beautiful. Fanciful. And for a fraction of a second, Rachel saw someone else romping with the fay folk, the grin on his face wider than she’d seen in two years.
Then she blinked her eyes, and Josh was gone.
Chapter Five
When Rachel woke, she was outside the school. Cool wind fanned her cheeks and teased the wisps of her hair. She was lying flat, strapped to a gurney, the red lights of the ambulance swirling red in the dark.
“What happened?”
Chief Ryker leaned over her. “Welcome back.”
“What happened?” she repeated.
“You passed out. Fainted. Except we had a hell of a time reviving you.”
“I fainted?”
“Dead away.”
Rachel turned her head, afraid of the pain the movement might inspire, but she had no headache, no neck ache. In fact, she felt just fine. She’d gone to school with a girl in the high school marching band who had fainted once while standing on the football field in hot weather. Rachel had always thought it was a ploy for sympathy. “People really faint?”
