Ashley blinked.
Fran stood behind him, shaking fingers clenched around a hefty wooden bookend. She dropped it and clapped her hands over her mouth. “Oh my god. Oh my god.”
“Fran…” Ashley trailed off. “I’m…”
“Just go,” Fran said. Her voice shook. “I’ll stay here.”
Ashley nodded. She and Alejo opened the door to a shoddily carpeted staircase. They made their way into the basement and Alejo pulled a ThermoGeist from his back pocket, holding it in front of him. It lit up bright red, just like it had at the cemetery, and his lips curled into a grimace.
Tristan hovered midway down the stairs and turned to face the far wall. He was less, suddenly—only a whisper of the Tristan who had been with them upstairs. Ashley squinted her eyes to see him properly. She thought he looked afraid.
“It was here,” she whispered. “This is where you—”
“Died,” Alejo breathed. He held a hand to his chest. “I’m not a perfect psychic, but this … I feel it here.”
“I do, too,” Ashley said, though she wasn’t sure what it was she felt. It was deep and dark and cold. It sat in her chest like mildew and made it hard to breathe. She tried to see Tristan’s face, but he was more shadow than human. She wasn’t sure if her fear was her own or if it was his. She tasted the tang of it on her tongue. Tristan quivered, too weak to hold his fear inside. It seeped out of him and into Ashley. In this basement, death was all there was.
“Tristan,” Alejo said. He rubbed at his jaw, like he was waiting for the right words to come to him. “I … thank you for bringing us here. I know you’re afraid. But you’re so brave, too.”
Tristan turned to face them. It was hard to tell if he meant to block them from going any further into the basement or if he wanted them to go on without him. His gaze moved from Ashley to Alejo, and she wished the two of them could’ve met when Tristan was alive. She wished that Brandon and Alejo could’ve saved him before he disappeared. She wished they weren’t always working in reverse, trying to understand what was already done.
Finally, Tristan drifted the rest of the way down the stairs and paused. Ashley followed, and the basement opened up around her. It was a basement like any other. A TV was mounted on the wall, faced by a plaid love seat and a plain coffee table. A washer and dryer were pushed against the staircase. On the far wall, the Paris family had a tool bench and an ironing board. It was all normal, except for the cloying dread that wedged its way up Ashley’s throat.
Alejo was right. Death permeated the air here, thick enough to taste.
“I’m so sorry,” Alejo said to her. “You shouldn’t have to—”
“What’s going on down here?”
Ashley spun to face the staircase. Sheriff Paris stood at the top of the stairs. He made his way down, and Ashley understood all at once why Tristan had led her here.
Because now, they were looking at the man who had killed him.
Tristan’s ghost turned to face the staircase again. In an instant, he was reduced to nothing but an outline. He doubled over and collapsed to the floor. In all of his visits, Ashley had never heard Tristan make a sound.
But as Paris reached the bottom of the stairs, Tristan screamed.
37
And Then You Find Your Way
“No.” Alejo backed away from the stairs toward the tool bench. “It’s not you. It can’t … that doesn’t make any sense.”
Ashley could hardly hear over the sound of Tristan’s screams. She watched Paris’s face; this was the same man who had helped with months of searches, who had wept at Tristan’s vigil, who had treated Tristan like a second son. His expression was blank now, distant and unmoved by Alejo’s shock. Between his short crop of blond hair and his sun-kissed skin, he was Snakebite personified. It couldn’t be him.
He arched a brow.
“I’m pretty sure you’re supposed to be in a cell.”
“We were neighbors at the Bates,” Alejo croaked. In the harsh basement light, his face was almost gray. “We hung out every day. You’re the first person I told about … I know you didn’t do this. I know you didn’t hurt those kids.”
Sheriff Paris said nothing.
Ashley was going to be sick.
“We’ve talked since … I would’ve known.”
Tristan’s screams stopped. The ThermoGeist went blank. For the moment, Tristan was gone, leaving Ashley and Alejo alone to face the devil. Maybe this was all he’d wanted them to find—the truth. But now that they’d found it, Ashley wasn’t sure what to do. There was no one to tell. It wasn’t like Paris would let them leave this basement knowing what they knew.
Paris’s stance relaxed. “You didn’t know? I thought for sure you did. How long did you live with it—thirteen years? Maybe you didn’t know it as well as you thought.”
Alejo cupped a hand over his mouth. “They were kids, Frank. They were your son’s friends.”
“Speaking of John,” Paris said, “which one of you knocked him out?”
Ashley met Alejo’s eyes. So Fran had left the house. They really were alone down here. Ashley could only hope Fran was getting help.
“It doesn’t really matter.” Paris eyed the tool bench. “You know I can’t let either of you out of here.”
“It’s not too late,” Alejo said. “The Dark is strong, but you can shut it out. Brandon did.”
“Not too late for what? I killed people, Alejo.” Paris cleared his throat. “Besides, the thing’s gone. It’s just me now. This is who I was always supposed to be.”
Alejo shook his head, eyes wide. “If it’s not with you, where is it?”
“It should be with your daughter now, actually. Said something about coming full circle. I didn’t understand what that meant. It had a real grudge against your family for some reason. I tried to stay out of it.”
Alejo’s exhale was sharp. His fists clenched, but his expression wasn’t angry. It was a sad thing, teetering just on the edge of grief. He’d lost his daughter once, and now he might lose her again and there was nothing he could do about it. It weighed on Ashley, too. If she and Logan had just left Snakebite, none of this would’ve happened. Logan would’ve been safe.
“You helped us look for Tristan,” Ashley said. “Why?”
Paris frowned, and it felt like a knife in Ashley’s stomach. “It’s my job.”
Alejo slowly reached for the phone in his back pocket. “You’re gonna kill us? No one will be left in Snakebite by the time you’re done. You think people won’t find that suspicious?”
“I figure after you two, I’ll hit the road.” Paris rested his hand on the gun holstered at his belt. “John doesn’t know yet, but he’ll understand.”
John Paris was a certain kind of monster, but Ashley doubted he was the type of monster that would understand this. Tristan and Bug had been John’s friends. Until recently, John had been Ashley’s friend, too. When he learned that his father was the one who had killed all of them—when he learned that his father was the reason he was left friendless—it would destroy him. This man was miles beyond the Paris she knew, living in a different world.
He pulled the gun from his belt.
Alejo gasped.
The ThermoGeist clattered against the basement floor, echoing from the walls with a stale clap. The red light along the top of the device clicked to a startling blue, then back to red as coils of black smoke curled through the plastic shell. Alejo gingerly gripped his palm, pressing his thumb against a strip of burned skin beneath his fingers.
“What…?” Ashley started.
Suddenly, the air was heavy as though a layer of sound had dropped away, opening an endless chasm of silence beneath it. Her ears rang with the quiet. Alejo felt it, too—he stumbled back, clutching the railing along the basement stairs for balance. The ThermoGeist on the floor continued to smoke, rattling and popping with sparks. She smelled Tristan, like she always did at first. Gasoline and fresh cut grass and the quiet, indistinct scent of sunlight. T
here was one more thing he had to do before he was gone. He’d been waiting.
Sheriff Paris massaged the place where his jaw met his throat. His brow furrowed in quiet fury. “What is that?”
Ashley tasted electricity on her tongue. The room was charged with screaming grief. Tristan’s rage filled her up until she couldn’t breathe, until she couldn’t see through her own eyes, until she couldn’t remember her own name. She felt hands around her throat, wide-palmed and callused like leather. She saw Paris’s slate-blue eyes staring into hers, felt snow under the ridge of her spine, felt dizzy with the realization that she was going to die.
On the night he had died, Tristan was so alone.
This was the last thing he felt.
Fingers gently closed around Ashley’s wrist. Alejo leaned forward until his eyes were at her level, and his smile was bitter and warm at once. “Come back. These memories are his,” he said. “Don’t follow him.”
Ashley swallowed.
Even if Paris didn’t see what she saw, he felt what she felt. His eyes wildly searched the corners of the basement as though he might spot Tristan in the shadows; as if seeing him would stop him. Ashley wondered if he even understood it was Tristan. He backed against the basement wall, palms pressed to the concrete, but it was too late.
Tristan surfaced in the space between Ashley and Alejo and, for just a moment, he was himself. Between them, shoulders just broad enough to fill the gap, he was so much more than a memory. It was as though he’d been plucked from that last moment in Ashley’s bedroom, alive and well. It was as though, with Ashley and Alejo here, seeing him, he was strong enough to finally become real. He was honey-colored hair and bright blue eyes and dimples at the corners of his mouth.
Ashley’s chest ached because it was like none of this had ever happened. For a moment, Tristan stood next to her and turned back time.
His expression sobered. He moved across the room in a single stride, and then he wasn’t Tristan anymore. He was a blur of white, shifting across the empty space like a small hurricane. He twisted around Sheriff Paris and, just beyond the blur, Ashley saw Paris’s eyes.
Fear.
He knew that this was how he would die.
The static in the air spiked, and Ashley crumpled to her knees with her palms cupped over her ears. Somewhere in the static, there was a scream, low and guttural and deadly.
A body thumped against the floor.
The charge in the air died.
There was only quiet.
“Jesus,” Alejo whispered.
Ashley opened her eyes and saw it. Sheriff Paris’s body was slumped against the basement wall, neck crooked, arms splayed out at his sides. He looked at nothing and his eyes were wide with fear. She didn’t need to check Paris’s pulse to know he was dead. In the last few weeks, she’d seen more than her share of corpses.
Tristan reemerged. His shoulders sagged as he materialized in the frigid basement air. He settled in the middle of the floor like a cold draft of air, and he looked tired.
Alejo’s back pocket buzzed, breaking the silence. Shakily, he pulled out his phone and Ashley recognized the Scripto8G clipped to the back of the case. He tapped the screen, and then his eyes widened. Tentatively, he angled the phone screen toward Ashley. “It’s for you.”
She blinked. The phone screen was stark white with two words in bold black: STILL HERE.
Tristan knelt in front of Ashley. He took her shaking hands in his and his eyes were still his own. Under the gray, misshapen flesh, they were bright blue and full of tears. His skin felt like a cool breeze against her fingertips, but it was enough. He was still here, still with her, still at her side for a little bit longer. Her lips quivered and her breath was ragged. Even now, she was afraid.
Ashley closed her eyes. “Do you have to go now?”
Tristan looked across the length of the basement and his expression twisted in pain. He let go of her hands and drifted to the far wall, lingering beside a boarded-up section of crawl space.
“What’s wrong?”
Alejo put a hand on Ashley’s shoulder. “Something’s keeping him here.”
The smell of mildew burned in her nostrils. Tristan continued to hover near the crawl space. When she squinted, Ashley saw that he was shaking. Between the mismatched boards, she saw the deep blackness inside and her stomach dropped. She closed her eyes.
“The, uh, the crawl space.” Ashley pointed to the boards. She felt numb, head reeling. Dark crept into the corners of her vision. “I think he wants us to open it?”
Alejo nodded. He dragged his palm down the front of his face. “It shouldn’t be you. I … I’ll do it. I’m—”
He pressed his palm to his forehead and sucked in a sharp breath. Beyond the smell of dust and decay, there was something pungent and sweet permeating the air. Alejo moved to the crawl space and Tristan stood beside him. He looked at Ashley as if to make sure she was watching. Alejo grabbed a crowbar from the tool bench. His breath was short, hands fidgeting at his sides.
“You want us to open it?” Alejo asked Tristan.
Alejo’s phone buzzed between Ashley’s palms. The Scripto8G simply read YES. Ashley looked at Alejo and nodded.
“Okay.” Alejo grimaced. “Can you please call the state police?”
Ashley dialed the Oregon State Police while Alejo pried the first plank from the crawl space. The darkness opened up behind the wood, stretching several feet back into the wall. Alejo pressed his foot to the wall and pried away the second board. It fell away, and the contents of the crawl space were visible. A small patch of dirt, flecks of dust and debris swirling in the blackness. She thought she saw something jutting through the stale surface of the dirt, round and rubbery like the toe of a tennis shoe.
Alejo covered his nose and mouth with the collar of his shirt and stifled a cough. “Oh my god. Ashley, don’t look.”
She didn’t need to look to understand what was in the crawl space. Tristan stared at the body, fading in and out of the light. He stared at it, and everything about him folded inward, shrunken down like paper kindling on a fire. There was a piece of Ashley, small and quiet, that had still hoped he was alive. That had still hoped that Tristan was the exception.
He wasn’t the exception, though. He was the first victim.
Ashley could barely see Tristan now through her searing tears, but she felt him approach. She felt him pull her close. It wasn’t like it had been—he was barely here now—but it was something. When she closed her eyes, she could almost feel the trembling beat of his heart. Ashley wrapped her arms around Tristan and pushed her forehead into his shoulder.
“Thank you,” she breathed. “I’m so sorry.”
Tristan’s embrace tightened. She was sure it did. For just a moment, everything was warm. It smelled like diesel fuel and mown grass and eighteen years of memory. The world Tristan had created for them overtook her and they were lying in the bed of her truck, laughing and whispering and staring at the stars. The whole sky was open above them and they were home. Ashley breathed it in one last time, and then it faded away.
She didn’t need to open her eyes to know he was gone.
Tristan Granger was dead, and he was gone.
Interlude
In the beginning, the Dark is only a thought.
It is impossible to say when it begins. It is only a smudge at first, only a spot of ink in the soil, only an idea. It is not a single thing that creates the Dark. If the gold hills and bright skies of Snakebite are hope, the Dark is the opposite. It is hope turned inside out. It is curdled anger, spite like tar, residue that sits on the lake water like a film. When a man kills his brother here, the Dark grows stronger. When a flood washes away graves in Pioneer Cemetery, the Dark nestles into them and makes a home. When, for a moment, all the hate in this town is concentrated in one point—one man grieving a lost daughter—the Dark finds an escape. It has existed in Snakebite as long as memory, but in the man it sees new horizons.
It is the shadows
, the shifting boughs, the deeps of the lake. It has existed here as long as hate has clouded the hearts of Snakebite like black smog.
It is impossible to say when the Dark begins.
But this is where it ends.
The girl is mostly Dark now. It is easy to change her. Beneath layers of cynicism, she aches only for home. For happiness. For someone to love her. The Dark whittles away the light in her: a father with dark eyes full of laughter, a girl with sunlit hair and soft lips, memories of clear water and bright skies and the never-ending road. She remembers the bittersweet melody of a piano that now lies rotted.
The Dark is stronger than it has ever been, and this is what it has waited for. The girl is the sharp knife aimed to kill. In a way, she was always going to be the end.
She is the undoing thing.
Pick up the gun, the Dark breathes into her.
She complies because it is the only thing she can do. She wants only what the Dark wants now. No more convincing. No more groveling, begging idiotic men to listen. The girl’s eyes are closed, heart marching an irregular beat against her ribs. Somewhere inside, she fights it, but she cannot break free. She trembles under the weight of the things the Dark has shown her. The years she forgot. Her memories flutter in the shadows like motes of dust and ash. She recalls what it was like to die once, to be buried, and she understands the world of her nightmares.
“Logan?”
It is the boy on the floor. His voice is weak, and the Dark has half a mind to make the girl kill him. The Dark wraps itself around the girl’s neck. Hit him hard. He will sleep until we are done. It will be better for him.
The girl’s jaw clenches, but she does as she is told. She steps forward and hits the boy hard across the face with the handle of the gun. The boy crumples back against the wall and falls to his side, glasses clattering to the floorboards. She regrets this—it is an emotion that tastes like rot and sorrow—but she does not help him. She cannot.
He will be here soon, the Dark reminds the girl. I can hear him among the trees.
The man’s approaching heartbeat is quick now. It is erratic with fear. He is an animal afraid of a predator, yet he still runs toward it.
The Dead and the Dark Page 27