by Derek Milman
There’s someone else at work here. Another party, Jackson had said.
A third party, Leo had agreed.
They’re the ones who killed Benoît. Are they the ones orchestrating this little jaunt to the Adirondacks? Is Shiloh a part of that? Or is he one of the Swans?
Or simply a cute kid from Duke who wants to help me?
Yeah, right. Who just happened to show up here…
I stand with my back against the door, grinding my fists into the sides of my head.
“God! Jesus!” I sputter to myself, stamping my foot.
I don’t know what to do next. I don’t even know how I feel: angry and betrayed, heartbroken. Totally fucking confused. Wondering how much of my life will forever be altered by these events. I pick up the phone. There’s a dial tone now. But I don’t know who to call… what would I tell the police at this point?
A lot, a voice in my head says.
They think you’re behind it all, says another voice. Keep running.
But I can’t run forever. No one can run forever. And now that the phones are working again, Lorna is going to expect my injured family to return. Otherwise she might call the cops. I stuff the Glock in the pocket of my shorts (the pockets are that deep, yes), grab my keys, and walk across the parking lot.
The sun moves behind the clouds as I approach cottage number 7 and knock on the door.
After a moment, Shiloh comes to the door. He’s taken off his seersucker jacket. He rubs his face once, like he was asleep, his eyes a little glassy. He looks surprised at first when he sees me, then breaks into this wide grin. “Aidan!”
He seems genuinely happy (even relieved?) to see me. This throws me off. I was expecting a different reaction—surprise with traces of guilt, resignation about being caught, something even darker and cold-blooded, I don’t know.
“You’re okay. Thank God.” He grabs me and gives me a tight hug, but I wriggle away from him. “Sorry,” he says, looking a little startled by my reaction.
“What are you doing here, Shiloh?”
He looks over my shoulder. “Look, just… come in.”
He holds open the door for me. After a moment’s hesitation, keeping one hand in my pocket, on the gun, I walk inside his room.
I look around his cottage. There’s a single suitcase, still packed, on the floor. The room is drab as hell: frayed orange carpeting, faded flowered wallpaper, two twin-sized beds made up with workmanlike baby-blue cotton blankets. The windows let in only selective rays of dead, dust-particled light.
“What are you doing here?” I repeat my question, a little sharper this time.
“Getting you out of here.”
“You came all the way to the Adirondacks for me?”
Oh, man, how I wish I could believe it.
“I don’t think you realize the danger you’re in right now,” he says.
“Oh, I realize it. People are dead because of me. You and I barely know each other. And you come all this way.”
“Aidan—”
“This,” I say, my voice rising, gesturing to him, and then to the room around us, “doesn’t make sense. Neither does the fact that you were at the Mandarin Oriental, photographing me a day before we actually met.”
Shiloh holds up his hands defensively. “Hold on, now.”
“Don’t deny it. I have photographic proof.”
“Where?”
“My Tumblr. I was taking photos. I saw you.”
“Show me.”
“Show you? Fuck you. I lost all my devices. How am I supposed to show you?”
“You saw me on your Tumblr. You’re sure?”
“I saw you photographing me. Don’t even.”
“Aidan. Why would I be at the Mandarin Oriental photographing you?”
“I don’t know. Because you’re one of them? It never made sense that you just appeared out of nowhere, trying to help me like that. I knew it! No one does that.”
“You’ve been under an enormous amount of stress and strain. Don’t you think it’s possible you saw something that wasn’t accurate? Something you only thought you saw because you’ve been driven to irrational fear and paranoia by shock, by all the insanity that’s transpired over these last few days. It’s understandable—”
“I do not think it’s possible,” I snarl. “I saw your face. YOUR FACE.”
“You can’t for a moment believe in human kindness?”
“Not this again, dude. Seriously, I—”
“That someone would do something to help you because they felt a connection with you?”
“I don’t know you. I don’t know who you are, or who you could be working for… any of that. You’re a stranger… a stranger who sent me here. I know that. You led me into a trap!”
“You’re so sure it was me on your Tumblr, taking photos of you at the Mandarin Oriental, that you’re willing to turn your back on the only friend you might have right now?”
“You’re not my friend. I just said that… I don’t know you.”
But the more he says it, worming into my head with his insistence, looking at me with his trusting eyes, his beautiful mouth turning down into a crumple of melancholia, the more he manages to plant a seed of doubt. It’s a seed of doubt I want very much, because I’d love nothing more than to believe him; that he’s my white knight, my guardian angel.
So I start wondering if it was actually Shiloh I saw in that photo, or if he’s right and my senses were dulled or tricked by everything that’s happened, and I really am in a state of slow-burning shock. That’s entirely possible, I suppose. But I can’t go on and on wondering about it right now because something not good is happening in my chest.
It’s gotten really tight.
“Are you all right?” says Shiloh.
“I’m… having a little trouble breathing,” I say, clenching my fists.
He holds out his hands. “Okay. Just take it easy.”
“I have a heart condition,” I tell him.
“What kind of heart condition?”
“They think it might be enlarged. It’s how my brother died.”
“Your brother died? Oh Aidan, I didn’t know that. I’m so sorry.”
Now, the tightness becomes pain—a pretty sharp pain, emanating from the center of my chest. “Shit.”
“What’s happening?” says Shiloh.
“I may… be having a heart attack. I don’t know.”
“Okay. Calm down. Let me get you a glass of water.”
Shiloh runs into the bathroom. I hear water running. I bend over, grabbing my knees. There’s that coldness again. It freaks me out. So I stand up and open a closet, thinking I’ll just grab a blanket or maybe his seersucker jacket. But when I open the closet it’s empty except for one thing, sitting on the top shelf, which is exactly my height.
A motorcycle helmet with an iridescent visor.
And it’s funny because the first thing I see is my own reflection, once again, fossilized in a silvery sea of electric green. I see the wounded look on my face; probably very similar to the one I gave Tom at the end there. And then I see Shiloh in the reflection, from behind, slowly coming toward me, with something in his hand that doesn’t look like a glass of water.
I whirl around and aim the Glock right at his chest.
He doesn’t expect the gun, not at all. He jumps back.
“I have your phone,” he says, startled, displaying it in his palm.
I left my phone at the Swans’ headquarters. This explains Find My iPhone tracking it to the Adirondacks with me.
“What are you doing with my phone, man?”
“Put the gun down.”
I shake my head. “Nuh-uh.”
“Where did you get the gun?”
“Where did you get my phone?”
“I have your phone because I want to give it back to you. I came up here to help you. Please believe that.”
“You’re a liar.” I feel my face contort into muscular rivulets of spectacular rage. I keep
the gun trained on him even as I begin to shake, and I have to use both hands to keep it steady. My heart is thumping in a way that doesn’t feel right, angry and stuttering. It feels like I’m breathing through a straw that’s getting thinner and thinner.
“Aidan,” he says, “you’re not going to shoot me.”
“How sure are you?” Tears slide out of my eyes.
“Why don’t we trade? You give me the gun. I’ll give you your phone back…”
“How dumb do you think I am?”
“The magazine. I meant just the magazine. We can’t stand here forever in a standoff.”
“I can just shoot you, then.”
“That’s not who you are, Aidan.”
“You don’t know who I am.” I start to laugh. “I don’t even know who I am anymore.” And man, is that true.
There’s a resigned sort of sadness about him that isn’t making sense to me. But I’m too dizzy to think clearly anymore—about him, or anything. My head feels light and strange, as if it may lift off my shoulders and burst like a balloon.
“We should get you help. You don’t look good.”
“Stay back.”
“Please.” He looks desperate, pleading.
I lower the gun, just a little, because everything in my body hurts, throbs, especially my chest and my throat. Shiloh takes this opportunity, quickly steps forward, and takes the gun from me. I’m too weak to stop him. I already feel half dead, disoriented, like nothing really matters anymore anyway.
Shiloh leads me over to one of the beds, his palm against the back of my neck. I lie on my side, gasping for breath, totally paralyzed. I don’t know what’s going to happen next. I’m all out of chapters.
He turns me over, onto my back, puts my phone in my hand, presses my thumb against the screen to unlock it, and dials 911. He puts the phone on speaker. As it rings, and before I hear “911, what’s your emergency?” Shiloh pockets the gun and quickly leaves the room.
The emergency lights flashing through the front windows are a relief. I want to drink those rapidly pulsing reds and blues. I can finally stop running now. Lorna opens the door, keys in her hand, leading the paramedics and a bunch of police officers into the dim cottage. But there are no handcuffs, no guns drawn.
Two police officers lift me off the bed and escort me out.
Given that there are about six hundred police vehicles and a SWAT team in the parking lot and blockading the road surrounding the motel, I’m going to assume they’re not just responding to a seventeen-year-old kid with heart palpitations.
As I’m led into an ambulance, I hear the rat-a-tat of helicopters.
The EMTs have questions about allergies. I have none. So they give me an aspirin to chew and put a nitroglycerin tablet under my tongue. An oxygen mask is pressed over my face. The ambulance speeds off, sirens going weee-wooo-weee-wooo.
Then it’s several hours of seeing only what’s above me: the ceiling of the ambulance, fluorescent lights swishing by as I’m rolled down various hospital hallways, an examination room with monitors, bright lights, bland mint-colored walls.
They take my temperature and my blood pressure. A freezing-cold stethoscope is pressed against me. Electrodes are placed on my chest. I’m hooked up to stuff: an EKG machine. An IV. My blood pressure is taken. There are blood tests, various other imaging tests. I have to answer a lot of questions about what the pain felt like, medications I’m on, allergies (again), and my family history (ugh). Stuff like that.
Eventually a cardiologist comes in and tells me he thinks I’m in shock and I just had a bad panic attack. “From what I’m seeing on the echo,” he says, “your heart isn’t enlarged. That’s what your family cardiologist is going to tell you, anyway. I understand the concerns given your brother’s death, but those EKG tests are frequently inaccurate. There was no indication of myocardial infarction. Your heart is healthy.”
I close my eyes and exhale. That is a relief—a huge one. But because of the shock thing, they want me to rest in the hospital, possibly overnight. And they want to know who to contact. But I don’t want my family involved right now.
I get into it with them about that, sitting up in my hospital bed, wearing one of those revealing thin blue robes, but then a man comes in and tells the nurse he’ll take it from here. He smiles at me, handing me a prescription for anti-anxiety pills from one of the doctors. “I don’t need that,” I tell him, pushing it away.
“Are you sure? You do seem pretty anxious.”
“Who are you?” He’s clearly not a doctor. He’s wearing a blue suit and tie.
“My name is Dan Schwartz. I’m an agent with the FBI.” He drops the prescription in my lap. “You’ll need to fill that here in the hospital.”
“Am I under arrest?”
“Not exactly.”
“What does not exactly mean?”
“It means if we were going to place you under arrest, we would’ve already.”
“I’m not a terrorist.”
“Oh, we know that,” he says.
“I don’t understand.”
But as soon as I say that, I think: Kaboom. Here’s our third party.
He smiles, shoves his hands in his pockets. “You seem kinda pissed.” He looks a little like my eighth-grade science teacher—a slightly-geeky-sort-of-handsome youngish Jewish dude with thick wavy brown hair.
“This was probably the most expensive panic attack of all time,” I tell him. “I feel like an idiot.”
“You didn’t know it was just a panic attack. You’ve had quite a week, Aidan. Don’t beat yourself up. Do me a favor?”
“Are you owed one?”
“Spend the night here. Let them observe you, do their thing. In the morning I’ll come pick you up. We’ll get pancakes. How does that sound?”
“It sounds weird.”
“Pancakes?”
“No. Pancakes sound good. Just the situation itself.”
“Yes, well, you’re not in a world anymore where anything is going to sound less than fully and completely weird.”
“Fair enough.”
“I appreciate your cooperation. Part of your staying here tonight is for your own protection, so…” He leans over me, and whispers right into my ear: “Maybe… maybe… we can get Uncle Sam to pick up the check for the hospital stay. No promises, though.”
“And leave my parents out of it?”
“For now. But we’ll give them a call, at least—let them know you’re safe.”
I narrow my eyes. “Then I’ll see you in the morning, I guess.”
“Good.” Agent Schwartz saunters over to the door. “Oh, by the way”—he half turns back to me, pointing lazily—“where did you get the Glock?”
“At the visitor center… during the attack. A state trooper was killed right in front of me… with a crossbow. I took his weapon.”
He presses his lips together and nods, like he’s impressed. “His name was Damien Coster. He had three kids. Seems like he was a good man.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
“Yeah, we were, too.”
“Do you know where my phone is?”
“One of our guys may have it. It was recovered from the motel room. I’ll get it back to you stat.”
I frown, licking my dry, crinkled lips. “Okay.”
And with that Schwartz slaps on a pair of cheap sunglasses, opens the door, and leaves me to my thoughts, which are many and varied, and mostly too exhausting to unravel right now. So I close my eyes and sleep for a really long time.
I have swampy, fiery dreams. Everything feels heavy and threatening.
My house is on fire. But the flames are cold and listless, and they take their time to burn through everything. There are cloudy funnels of embers and sparks. I keep forgetting what to do, who I’m supposed to save. I wander in dizzying circles.
I go into my brother’s room. Neil is sitting there on the edge of his bed, a PlayStation controller in his lap. But he’s just staring at the TV screen
, motionless, his face glowing with stagnant light. When he sees me he smiles, but it’s a sad smile, through black smoke. The smoke gets denser around him, and when it consumes him, snuffing out his face completely, I know it’s too late.
I walk into another room and find Tom staring out the window. His neck is empurpled with mottled bruises. When he sees me he just shakes his head like he’s disappointed in me. I shout at him to get out, to get out of the house, but he doesn’t move. And then the smoke consumes him, too.
I wander into my own room. It looks like it did years and years ago, when Neil was still alive and I was a little kid. Shiloh is there, sitting at my old Ikea desk, flipping through a Witloff Academy brochure. I yell at him, too, to get out of the house. He throws down the brochure and rushes out with me, grabbing my hand. But in the hallway, suffocated by swirling smoke, I realize he’s not holding my hand anymore. He’s gone.
I know in other rooms I will find my parents, Jackson, Leo, my sister and her kids, and all of them will refuse to follow me out, or get lost trying. And I can’t deal with the pain of that, the loss. So I just keep running, trying to get out of the house, but the smoke is thicker now, inky black and menacing, and it’s flickering inside, like it’s not just smoke but storm clouds, too, bottled-up lightning inside them, uncorking its bolts.
The state trooper, an arrow sticking out of his throat, emerges from the smoke and points me in a direction. I run, but it’s just a dead end, a cobwebby brick wall. So I keep running through an impossibly vast space. I run into Benoît, a bullet hole in the side of his head, blood dripping down his face. He smiles and points me in a different direction, but it’s another dead end, another brick wall. I pound the wall in fury.
And then, in total Dream Logic, deranged Blond Bellhop is drowning me again, but it’s Tom’s pool, not the pool in the Merrick Gables. Then the bellhop morphs into Tom and his face is twisted and murderous, just like the bellhop’s was. But I can’t bring myself to hurt Tom. So I let him drown me, even though his wrists, both of them, start to bleed. Then my vision goes swirly, into darkness.