by Steven James
“I will.”
Daniel exited the car and watched Malcolm Zacharias drive off toward wherever he would be spending the night.
Just as Kyle had said, he was waiting at the front door and Daniel followed him quietly upstairs to his attic bedroom.
“Let me get this straight,” Kyle said when they got there. “The guy we helped out of that snowbank, he’s the one who got you out of the psych ward?”
“That’s right.”
“He’s on our side?”
“He says he is, but honestly I’m not sure what to think. I just know he helped me escape from that hospital and then brought me here. On the way, he told me what they do at the Traybor Institute.”
“Chronobiology research? Like we were thinking?”
“Yeah. It’s to find ways to make prisoners serve their whole sentences, at least in their minds.”
“Right . . . Okay . . . And . . . I don’t even know what that means.”
Daniel recapped what Mr. Zacharias had told him about Dr. Waxford and his research into making people perceive that they’re spending hundreds of years in prison.
“But how’s that justice?” Kyle asked. “Isn’t that more like, well, torture?”
“I guess they would argue that it’s not right for people to only serve part of their sentences.” On the drive Daniel had taken some time to think about the whole deal. “What kind of justice is there in sentencing people to serve time you know they’ll never serve? Just to make a statement? But to who? And don’t you think it’d be a bigger deterrent if people who were about to commit crimes knew they actually would spend that much time experiencing solitary confinement if they were caught?”
“You sound like you believe in this stuff.”
“I don’t really, I just think . . . Well, I can at least see where they’re coming from.”
“And they’re doing this on prisoners from the Derthick State Penitentiary?”
“Yes.”
“How is that even legal?”
“I have no idea, but either way, Mr. Zacharias thinks the man they transferred from there to the Traybor Institute might have escaped and be the one who attacked my dad.”
“What kind of crime landed him in prison in the first place?”
“Hmm . . . I didn’t ask. I probably should have.”
Kyle located a sleeping bag for Daniel and unrolled it on the floor of his bedroom, then went searching for an extra pillow.
You should’ve found out more from Mr. Zacharias about the prisoner—what he was in for, how dangerous he really is.
From past discussions with his dad, Daniel knew that in missing persons investigations the first twenty-four hours are the most important. After that, the odds are definitely not in your favor—at least not the odds of finding the person unharmed.
But Dad isn’t unharmed anyway—remember? Nicole told you the tests proved it was his blood, that there was a lot of it.
Daniel was forced to just admit it: the odds weren’t good for finding his dad alive.
Kyle returned with a pillow and gave him a T-shirt and a pair of shorts to sleep in. Daniel asked him, “Can you get away today?”
“My mom’s spending the day with Glenn, shopping or something, I don’t know. I’m supposed to watch Michelle while she’s gone.”
“Could Mia babysit for you?”
“No, she’s going to Eau Claire with her family.”
“Oh, that’s right . . . What about Nicole? She’s watched Michelle before.”
“I’d need to clear it with Mom, but yeah, that should be okay. Why? What’s up?”
“The lighthouse. We need to go up there like we were planning to do yesterday. Right now that’s where everything’s pointing. It’s tied in with my dad’s disappearance—I don’t know how, but it is. We need to find him and our best chance is by starting up there.”
“What about the Traybor Institute? You think we should check there first?”
Daniel shook his head. “If the person who attacked Dad did escape from there, then why would he go back? Plus, it didn’t sound like Mr. Zacharias was working with them, so I’m not even sure how we would get in.”
But then he decided that Kyle did have a point. “I guess we could anonymously call the police, maybe give them a tip to check out the institute. I mean, it couldn’t hurt. Where’s your phone?”
Although it was the middle of the night, if there was even a chance that his dad was there, the sooner law enforcement could search the place, the better.
Kyle dug through the stuff on his desk and came up with his cell. “But what if they trace the call? They’ll find you, take you back, maybe arrest you.”
“Download that app that disguises the sender’s number.”
Daniel wasn’t sure it would stop a police dispatcher from tracing a call, but it was worth a shot.
Kyle tapped at his phone’s screen, found the app and installed it. “Your dad’s the sheriff. There’s a good chance they’ll recognize your voice at dispatch. Let me make the call.”
He punched in 911, and as soon as the dispatcher picked up, Kyle said in a low, disguised voice, “The Traybor Institute. I think that’s where Sheriff Byers was taken. Search it for him.”
He hung up before the person on the other end could reply. They waited for a few moments just to make sure dispatch didn’t call back. When the phone remained silent, Kyle asked, “What now?”
“We get some sleep.”
“Okay. First thing in the morning I’ll contact Nicole. I know she had some stuff going on, but if she can change her plans and babysit, then I’ll clear things with my mom so I can go with you up to Madeline Island.”
“They think I hurt my dad, maybe even killed him. You can’t tell her that you’re helping me.”
“I’ll think of something.”
“I didn’t stab him, Kyle.”
“I know.”
“I mean it.”
A slight pause. “I know.”
While he was reviewing the security tapes, Dr. Waxford got a call from the police that they were outside the institute and had an anonymous tip that the missing sheriff might be inside.
“I can guarantee you that no one else is here,” he told him.
“You’re here at the facility now?”
“Yes.”
“Well, we need you to open the gate so we can have a look around.”
He wasn’t excited about the idea, but he was confident they wouldn’t be able to find the research rooms and he didn’t want to arouse their suspicion by arguing with them.
“Alright, I’m coming.”
Who’d given them the tip to look here? His staff? No, that didn’t make sense. Only a handful of people even knew about the true purpose of this place, and none of them would’ve had any good reason to call in the authorities. Then who?
The subject who escaped? Is he doing this to try to get law enforcement poking around?
Possibly.
That might explain things.
Still wondering what’d led them here, Dr. Waxford showed the sheriff’s department deputies around and walked them through the main floor of the building. They studied things carefully but failed to find the elevator. Finally, when they were convinced that nothing suspicious was going on and that the place was clear, they thanked him for his time and left.
But he did not.
He’d committed himself to finding out what had happened with the missing inmate and he was going to stay here as long as it took to make that happen.
After returning to sublevel 3, he put on a pot of coffee, settled down in front of the computer monitors again, and went back to analyzing the footage.
CHAPTER
THIRTY-FOUR
9:30 A.M.
Daniel stood in front of the upstairs bathroom mirror a
t his friend’s house.
On Friday night’s bus ride to Coulee High, he’d looked out the window and noticed a faint reflection caused by the dim lights inside the bus. The image had overlapped with what he could see of the moonlit landscape outside and the two had merged, becoming one in that pane of glass.
Two realities filtering across each other.
Becoming one.
At the time, he’d reassured himself that he knew the difference between what was real and what wasn’t, but since then he’d become less and less sure of that fact.
Despite himself, the wolves in Daniel’s heart snapped at each other.
The protagonist can also be the antagonist.
We all play both roles in our lives.
A person can be his own worst enemy.
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
He stared at his reflection.
It was just a mirror. No way to see through it. No way to see another world.
But as he looked at himself and thought of Betty and the texts and the lighthouse and those words, “Lost Cove is the key,” he saw a wound open up on his neck, an ugly slit about six inches long. It began seeping blood and should have hurt terribly, but he couldn’t feel a thing.
However, when he drew his hand across it and looked at his fingers, there was a smear of blood on them.
Then the pain began.
And not just from the ragged incision, but also from inside it.
Something was moving around in there.
Daniel leaned forward and tilted his head so he could get a closer look at the cut.
As he did, a black worm emerged, thick and writhing and covered with a glaze of fresh blood.
It was the same kind of creature as the ones that’d crawled off the sheet of paper Friday night and burrowed into his arm.
This one started down toward the neckline of the T-shirt he was wearing, but he smacked at it and felt it squish to a juicy death beneath his fingers.
Immediately, half a dozen more came out.
He managed to brush them aside or crush them, but then a stream of others followed, teeming out of the cut, slithering across his neck and sliding down under the shirt. He gasped, ripped it off, and tried to knock them away, but others moved up the side of his head and across his chin toward his mouth.
There were too many.
“No,” he cried as one of them went for his ear.
He snatched at it, but it broke in half and the part that was free wriggled in, disappearing into his ear.
“No!”
A knock at the door. “Daniel? Are you okay?”
Kyle’s words sliced through the blur.
Shattered it. Sent images fleeting into midair.
The worms disappeared.
Daniel blinked.
Then again.
Nothing there.
He eyed himself in the glass. No bloody wound. No dark, squirming worms. Nothing out of the ordinary. The twitching, itchy sensations in his neck had gone away. He felt nothing in his ear canal.
“Daniel?” Kyle repeated.
“Yeah.” He did his best to keep his voice calm. “I’m good.”
“You sure?”
He was inspecting himself in the mirror as he ran his fingers across his healed, unscathed neck. “I’m sure.”
Ever since his blurs had first occurred they’d seemed to be his subconscious’s way of telling him something.
Okay, but what is that supposed to be telling you? A stream of black worms swarming out of your neck? Good luck deciphering that one, Daniel.
Well, he knew this much: the writing from English class that’d come to life and become those worms had been about the lighthouse.
So is this supposed to be your way of telling yourself to hurry up and go out there, or to stay away from the place for good?
He didn’t know, but the weirder things got, the more he started to feel like he was just barely hanging on to the edge of a cliff, not sure how long he could hold on.
And not sure what it would mean for his sanity if he happened to let go.
When Daniel returned to the bedroom, Kyle informed him that Nicole had been able to rearrange her schedule and was set to babysit. “I told my mom I wanted to see you today. She heard you were in that hospital and she told me that it would be fine visiting you as long as Michelle was taken care of.”
“At least you gave her the truth.”
“Enough of it, anyway. She took off to meet with Glenn. Nicole should be here any minute. Oh, and I contacted my uncle—we’re good to go in Bayfield. He’s got a rowboat waiting for us. He said there’s some ice surrounding the island, but he thinks we’ll be able to get close enough to at least get a good look at the lighthouse, even if we can’t actually make it to shore.”
“That might not be enough.”
“It might be all we can do. I doubt the ice will be thick enough to walk across.”
A few minutes later, the ringing doorbell told them that Nicole had arrived.
CHAPTER
THIRTY-FIVE
As soon as she was upstairs in Kyle’s bedroom, she threw her arms around Daniel.
It felt so good to hold her, like an anchor back to what was real. He drew her close and, at least for the moment, stopped thinking of blurs and mental asylums and his missing father.
Here was something good, something right, and he didn’t want to do anything that would make it slip away.
At last she stepped back and asked him breathlessly how he was feeling, how he’d gotten out of the hospital, if he’d heard anything about his dad, and how he’d managed to get back to Beldon.
Kyle went to the living room to watch Michelle while Daniel brought Nicole up to speed.
She listened intently as he told her about Mr. Zacharias and his theory that the man who’d been brought over from the prison had escaped and gone after his dad.
“So,” she said, “this Zacharias guy transported that prisoner to the institute and now he’s working against them? Does that make any sense to you?”
“I’m not sure how it all fits together, but I did get the feeling that he really does want to help me find my dad.”
“He’s going to be okay, right? Your dad, I mean?”
“Don’t worry. We’ll find him.” Daniel wanted to say more, wanted to promise her that his dad was going to be fine, of course he was, but he couldn’t quite bring himself to say it. In truth, he didn’t even know that they were going to find him at all, but he felt like he needed to tell Nicole something, and reassuring her at least a little bit felt like the right thing to do.
“Yeah.” She nodded. “Okay.”
“Kyle and I should probably get going.”
He waited at the top of the stairs behind the banister while Nicole went down to get set with Michelle.
The four-year-old knew Nicole from previous times when she’d babysat for Mrs. Goessel and now she went right up to her, took her hand, and asked if she wanted to see her new stuffed puppy named Penguin.
“Your puppy is named Penguin?”
“Uh-huh,” Michelle said, as if it were the most natural thing in the world. “I named him myself.”
After the two of them were in Michelle’s bedroom and the door was closed, Kyle signaled for Daniel to join him.
“Anything you need before we go?”
The only clothes Daniel had with him were the ones he’d been wearing when he left the hospital. “If we’re going to be out on Lake Superior, I’ll need some warmer clothes.”
As he and Kyle were about to head out the door, Daniel paused.
He hadn’t spoken with his mom since his dad had disappeared and he felt like he should talk with her, fill her in—but when he brought it up, Kyle said, “What if she tells my mom that you called her? Don’t contact her yet. Just l
et it be.”
“If she hasn’t found out yet, she’ll hear soon enough that I broke out of that psych hospital. She’s already got my dad to worry about. I don’t want her to be freaked out when she hears I’m missing too.”
“Dude, she took off. It’s on her, not on you.”
“She’s just at her brother’s house to celebrate Christmas.”
“You know what I mean.”
“She has a right to know what’s going on. She is my mom.”
“Well, she sure hasn’t been acting like it.”
Sharp words. And just a few days ago Daniel might have said them himself, but when he’d spoken with his mom on Saturday she’d told him that she had left in order to protect him and his dad.
She sees things too. She knows what it’s like.
Daniel hadn’t gone into all that with Kyle earlier and he didn’t want to explain everything right now. “I hear what you’re saying, but there’s more going on here. I need to let her know I’m okay.”
At last Kyle gave in.
In order to keep his mom from finding out he was with Kyle, when Daniel put the call through he used the app that disguises the sender’s phone number.
She didn’t pick up. When it went to voicemail, he left a quick message: “Mom, what they’re saying I did to Dad—it’s not true. I didn’t hurt him. I’m okay and I’m going to find him. I promise.”
As he hung up, he realized that in the last five minutes he’d promised two people that he was going to find his dad, and he had no idea how he was going to keep that promise to either one of them.
Sheriff Byers opened his eyes.
He couldn’t see much, but with the light that slipped in beneath the door about twelve feet away he could make out that, apart from the bare metal cot he was lying on, he was in an empty, windowless room.
He tried to sit up, but pain shot through his right side and he ended up dropping back onto the cot again.
Looking down, he saw that his shirt was gone and his side had been bandaged, the place where he’d been stabbed covered with a fresh dressing.