by Steven James
“Sure,” he said. “That makes sense.” But he was thinking, And when were you going to tell us that?
“How did it go last night?” she asked.
“Last night?”
“The game.”
“Oh. We won.”
“How’d you play?”
“Alright. I mean, I played okay.”
“Well, then. That’s good.”
Silence stretched across the line.
“You’re sure you’re fine?” she asked.
Just ask her.
“Did your mom have any sisters?”
“What?”
“Did she have any sisters that you maybe just never told me about?”
“No.”
“So, no one named Betty?”
“No.” She almost made it sound like a question and Daniel could tell her curiosity was definitely piqued.
“Mom, what do you know about Jarvis Delacroix?”
“Jarvis Delacroix?”
“He was a lighthouse keeper back in the 1930s. Since Delacroix was your mom’s maiden name I wondered if maybe they were related.”
“Yes, they were.” Her tone was impossible to read. “What is all this in regards to?”
“What do you know about him?”
“There was a Jarvis who was my grandfather’s brother, but no one really talked about him much.”
That’s gotta be him.
So if Jarvis was Grandma’s uncle, that means Betty would have been her cousin.
“And Betty?” he said.
“I don’t know about any Bettys. Why do you ask? What’s going on?”
“My friends and I came across Jarvis’s diary.”
“Where?”
“At a barn that’s near where Grandma used to live.”
“That farm out on County N?”
“Yeah. That’s right. I used to go there sometimes.”
“Yes.”
“You knew?”
“I followed you one day but your grandmother assured us the neighbor wouldn’t mind. So I let you play there. I know it was sometimes hard being in the house with her.”
“Did something happen there at the barn?”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t know, just—anything weird?”
“Not that I know of. One day you just stopped going out on walks when we visited. You were hesitant even to go to her house. But I don’t know why Jarvis’s diary would have been there. A minute ago you were asking about Betty. Who’s Betty?”
“Someone who’s brought up in the diary,” he said, somewhat vaguely.
“Why are you interested in all this?”
“Something’s going on. My blurs. They started again.”
“Oh, Daniel.” It was amazing how much emotion she packed into those two words. “Have you told your father?”
“Not yet.”
“What are the blurs of?”
“That doesn’t matter.”
“You must feel lonely.”
That seemed like a curious thing to say, especially since she was the one who’d left him and his dad alone in the first place.
He switched gears, followed up on the loneliness deal. “Mom, why did you leave?”
He’d asked her this before and, honestly, he expected to get the same response he always got: that this wasn’t the time to talk about it, that they would discuss it later.
Always later.
But tonight, to his surprise, she actually gave him an answer. “I wanted to protect you and your father.”
“Protect us? From what?”
“I never told you how your grandmother died.”
“Sure you did. She had a reaction to some pills she was taking.”
“That was the best way to put it for you when you were younger. I just never corrected things. I guess it was easier to let that explanation stand.”
“You lied to me?”
“No, I just didn’t get into all of the details.”
“So what happened? How did she die?”
A pause. “She took her own life, Daniel.”
“What?”
“Pills. She overdosed on pills.”
“How do you know it wasn’t an accident?”
“She left a note.”
Daniel tried to take all this in. “What did it say?”
“Daniel, I’m not sure we need to—”
“Mom, what did it say?”
“She wrote that she couldn’t stand seeing them anymore.”
“Seeing who?”
“We were never sure. She never told us.”
“So she was seeing things, is that it?”
“We don’t know that.”
“But she could have been, I mean . . .”
“Like I said, we just don’t know.”
“So why didn’t you—Wait a minute. It wasn’t just Grandma, was it?”
“What do you mean?”
“You said you left to protect me and Dad, but you didn’t say what you wanted to protect us from. It was you, wasn’t it? You’ve been seeing things? Or maybe hearing voices? Which is it?”
“This really isn’t the best time to get into all this. It’d be better if we discussed this when I get back to—”
“Mom, I need to know.”
She objected once more, then finally answered, “Yes, Daniel. Sometimes I see things that I can’t explain.”
“Do you sleepwalk?”
“Occasionally. Yes. I do.”
“Did you ever hurt anyone while you were sleepwalking?”
“No.”
“But you were afraid you might.”
She didn’t reply and he took that as a yes.
“So you didn’t leave because you wanted to be with someone else other than Dad?”
“Of course not, no. I was just afraid of the things I was seeing. I tried visiting a psychiatrist a few times but it didn’t help.”
“Dr. Fromke?”
“Yes.”
Daniel tried to process everything. There weren’t that many psychiatrists in the area so if she was seeing one, it made sense that it would be him.
“I want you to come back, Mom.”
“I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
“I don’t mean just from Alaska. I mean come back. Come home.”
“We’ll talk more about this when I get down there, okay? And I need you to tell your father about these new blurs.”
“I’ll do it when I get home. You don’t have to protect anyone, Mom. It’d be better if you were here.”
“I love you, Daniel.”
I love you, he thought, but he wasn’t quite ready to say those words. “I’ll talk to you soon,” he said instead.
And with that, the call came to an end.
After he’d hung up, he joined his friends and summarized some of what his mom had said but he left out the part about her having hallucinations too. “Betty would have been Grandma’s cousin, but my mom didn’t know about her. We need to figure out what’s going on: why my blurs have started again.”
“How are we going to do that?” Kyle asked.
“Is the lighthouse still there?”
Kyle tapped at the screen of his phone. “Yeah. It’s deserted, though. This page says the state has been trying to buy it, to preserve it as a historic landmark, but apparently that’s all still in the works.”
“Perfect. Tomorrow we head up there and take a look around.”
“Are you serious?”
“Absolutely. My first blur led me to that barn. Now the diary we found there is leading us to the lighthouse. The girl in my blur told me that Madeline was waiting.” He held up his phone. “And don’t forget the text I just got tonight. Ma
deline wants me to come by tomorrow.”
“She’s not real, Daniel,” Nicole said uneasily. “You sent that text to yourself.”
“We don’t know that yet, but even if I did, I wouldn’t have sent it for no reason. Remember what I wrote in English class: ‘Lost Cove is the key’? We need to visit Madeline Island and see what lies up there at the lighthouse.”
Sheriff Byers returned to his cruiser and stowed his Maglite on the seat next to him.
As he drove home, he thought about his son’s theory that someone with access to the Department of Natural Resource’s wolf tagging GPS program might be the poacher.
He’d tried contacting Lancaster Bell earlier but hadn’t been able to reach him. Now, he tried again and caught him at home.
Leaving out Daniel’s name, he told Lancaster the theory about the wolf tags and asked if he could draw up a list of people who might have access to the files.
End call.
As he mulled things over, he recalled the missing gun, the .30-06 Browning Automatic Rifle, that the director of the Traybor Institute had reported stolen six weeks ago. It was the right caliber. It might be a stretch, but it could certainly be related.
No leads on that front.
Something to keep in mind, though.
So.
Get home.
Then find out from Daniel everything that happened when he and Nicole found that wolf.
As they tried to put together a plan for tomorrow, Nicole explained that she had church and then family obligations so she couldn’t go along to the lighthouse.
Mia was babysitting her neighbor’s kid all afternoon so she was out too, but Kyle and Daniel decided the two of them would cruise up to Bayfield.
“How are you going to get out to Madeline Island?” Nicole asked.
Sometimes, in really brutal winters, Lake Superior would freeze over, but this winter hadn’t been that harsh yet, and besides, it was probably too early in the season for that anyway.
Daniel glanced at Kyle. “Your uncle Larry? You think he can help us?”
“Well, I mean, he’s always told me I can use his boats, but I never really imagined I’d be asking him to use one in December.”
Mia looked skeptical. “You really think you’ll be able to make it all the way to the island?”
“I’m not sure. There’s probably gonna be some ice on the lake, but it’s at least worth a shot. We might not be able to get all the way to the lighthouse, but maybe seeing it in person will jar something loose in Mr. Ghost-Seeing Guy’s memory.”
“What do you think your mom’ll say?”
“I should be able to convince her.” Kyle looked in Daniel’s direction. “What about your dad?”
“That may take a little work, but I think we should be fine.”
“Alright, then. I’ll call Larry first thing in the morning.”
It was a little after eight and Kyle told them he needed to get home so he could tell his little sister a bedtime story, something he tried to do as often as he could. They agreed to touch base after he’d spoken with Larry tomorrow.
After saying goodnight to everyone, Daniel took the contents of the box with him so he could read through the diaries some more tonight.
As he drove home, he tried to think of how to convince his dad to let him investigate the lighthouse where his great- great-uncle went crazy and killed himself after a girl—who might have existed only in his imagination—burned to death.
When Sheriff Byers pulled into the driveway, he saw Daniel’s car was already there but no lights were on in the house. There wasn’t even a light coming out the window to the basement, where Daniel might have gone to lift weights.
Okay, that was a little strange. There was no way Dan would have headed to bed this early, not on a Saturday night.
Of course it was possible that one of his friends had picked him up, but he didn’t really like depending on them for rides so he tended to be the one shuttling everyone else around.
The sheriff tapped the garage opener, pulled inside, then closed the door behind him.
Entering the kitchen, he tried the lights, but they didn’t come on.
He clicked the switch up and down a couple times.
Still nothing.
Not even the microwave or the oven clocks showed the time.
All black.
A fuse?
Maybe.
But the garage door opener worked.
That might have been on a separate circuit.
Moonlight reflecting off the snow outside made its way through the window above the sink. Though it didn’t provide a whole lot of light, it was enough for him to see the outline of someone standing at the far end of the kitchen.
“Daniel?”
No response.
“Are you alright?”
The figure came toward him and turned on a flashlight, directing the beam in front of him and making it impossible to tell who it was.
Sheriff Byers shielded his eyes and was about to pull out his own flashlight, but realized it was still in his cruiser.
“What’s going on, Dan?”
The person came closer, but said nothing.
Law enforcement instinct told him to reach for his weapon, but his parental instincts stayed his hand.
When the figure was only a few feet away, he tipped the flashlight up, and just as the sheriff saw his face, he also saw the knife in his hand.
But by then it was too late.
The person swiped the blade forward, it slid into the sheriff’s side, and, gasping for breath, he collapsed to the kitchen floor.
PART IV
THE ASYLUM
SUNDAY, DECEMBER 23
CHAPTER
TWENTY-SIX
7:55 A.M.
Daniel remembered only slivers and glimpses of what’d happened the night before and in the hours since.
Earlier, while he was half asleep, he’d asked a nurse why he was here. She’d been quiet at first, but finally told him that he’d hurt someone and that he was here for his own good.
“My own good? Who did I hurt?”
But then her response was lost in the fog of his dreams as he faded out again.
Now, he awoke with a doctor and a detective in the hospital room and they were asking him if he knew why he was here, if he knew what’d happened to his father. They pressed him, but he couldn’t give them the answers they were looking for.
When he tried to sit up, he found that his arms and legs were strapped down to the bed.
One of the men said something about Madeline and the texts and about blood. Daniel tried to get him to explain more, but before he could, the doctor was jabbing a needle into his arm and giving him some sort of medication and he was feeling tired all over again.
Then, all the people were swallowed by the surge of all-consuming colors that swept over him.
And then they were gone.
Daniel dreamt.
Somehow you wake up but you’re still asleep. The world is real and unreal at the same time. You’re in your home and you rise from your bed and take a deep breath.
Awake.
Asleep.
It’s all the same to you.
Your thoughts swirl through you. They flutter and twist before you. You try to grab one but it slips away and stares at you with a wide grin, with yellow-stained teeth sharpened to a point and you know that it is hungry.
You take a step forward. You’re going to catch it.
Your feet move on their own, taking you into the hallway and then toward the kitchen.
And to the sink, where your thoughts hover.
They curl inward, creating a small dark whirlwind that traps the moonlight. Together, they descend and disappear into a point just above the drain that leads to the garbage disposal.
<
br /> You reach out to grab the point of darkness that has swallowed your thoughts, tugged them into itself like a tiny black hole.
It drops into the garbage disposal, so you slide your hand into the drain. You can feel the blades, curved and sharp and patiently waiting for someone to turn them on.
You maneuver your hand farther into the sink’s throat in search of your thoughts, your realizations, your hopes and dreams.
The blades are cool and smooth to the touch.
Cool.
And so, so smooth.
Above the counter, to the side of the sink, there are two switches next to each other—one for the light above the sink, the other for the garbage disposal.
In your dream you reach over to turn on the light.
And flick the switch.
But it’s not the light switch after all.
You hit the wrong one.
In a whir of sound and spinning blades, the garbage disposal is alive and devouring your hand, drawing your wrist in. You hear the harsh grind of crushing bones, feel the wicked pain of tearing flesh, taste the fine spray of blood spurting from the sink.
You cry out in the night and jerk your arm out and stumble backward.
Your arm ends at the wrist in a blunt, ragged stump—shredded flesh hanging in gruesome strands, dripping dark blood onto the floor.
But then, before your eyes, your hand regrows. Four fingers and a thumb emerge from the meaty, raw end of your arm. They slide out, blood-covered, then the back of your hand forms and, as you turn it over, you see your palm appear.
The blood drips off as if it were being washed away by a stream of water.
Your hand has returned, reformed, regrown.
It’s a dream, you know this, you tell yourself this. You know it’s not real, but what is reality anymore? You’re seeing and hearing and feeling things that could not possibly exist. But they do, they do. The real world is bowing to let them in.
The blood from your hand is pooling onto the floor, smearing out in a warm, wet circle.
Your eyes are drawn to that—to the way it glides into the grooved tiles and then eventually trails away in a neat, squared-off network of crimson on the linoleum.