by Steven James
Sometimes it can be a pretty big gap.
That’s one thing I’ve been learning this last year, ever since the blurs started.
An ambulance siren echoes off the water, somewhere around the other side of the lake.
I wonder if my dad will be the first one from law enforcement to arrive.
I’m sure that as soon as he hears his son was hit by a truck he’ll break every speed law in the county to get here.
Mom would too, but she’s at a graphic design conference in Madison this week for work. Even though she isn’t supposed to get back until Sunday night, I’m guessing she’ll start the five-hour drive back home right away when she finds out what’s happened.
The ambulance’s siren swells over the other night sounds, but it’s still a few minutes out.
While I wait, I watch the truck driver finish checking this side of the road and move to the other side.
Evidently he hasn’t found anything yet.
Letting my attention drift away from my ankle and shoulder, I consider what he said about me possibly having internal injuries. Gently, I prod at my side to see if there are any broken ribs. I can’t tell for sure, but I’ve got some tender spots.
Finally, his flashlight beam comes bobbing back toward me.
“Anything?”
He shakes his head. “No.”
Well, if there was no boy, then you were seeing things. And that would mean—
The driver arrives by my side and asks me concernedly, “How are you doing?”
“I’m alright.”
But that’s not quite true.
Because I know I saw a boy out here.
I know I did.
The ambulance comes into view.
By now, darkness has nearly devoured the forest.
Because of the logs in the road, the paramedics aren’t able to pull all the way up to me, so I hobble toward them as they hustle my way, rolling a gurney along the road.
As they check my vitals and give me a quick eval, they tell me that my dad was over in Pine Lake—which is on the other side of the county—but that he’ll meet me at the hospital. Then, they load me up, and when they swing the doors shut it’s almost like they’re closing off a time in my life when things were normal again, the way they used to be before last fall, before the blurs began.
But now, it sure looks like they’re back. And if I’m starting to have them again, it almost certainly means that something terrible has happened.
It almost certainly means that someone is dead.
CHAPTER THREE
I still don’t know what caused the blurs to start in the first place, but over time it became clear that whenever I experienced one, whenever reality and fantasy overlapped and merged in such a way that I couldn’t tell them apart, then my subconscious was piecing together clues to a mystery that my conscious mind needed to solve.
But deciphering the blurs isn’t an exact science, and so far it’s also been deeply troubling because nearly all of them have revolved around people who were murdered.
So that’s what I’m thinking here in the emergency room as the doctor inspects me for internal bleeding: that boy in the road. And the blurs. And death and grief and the girls that I saw last fall and in the winter. That first one, reaching out of her casket and clutching at my arm. Then the second one, bursting into flames right before my eyes.
Both were dead when they appeared to me.
And now, I saw a little boy.
“Well,” the doctor says, drawing me back to the moment. “So far so good. I can’t find any sign of internal injuries. You’re one lucky guy.”
“Yeah, I guess so,” I tell her.
While she’s getting ready to take me down the hall for some X-rays, Dad bursts into the room.
“Dan!” He’s out of breath. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah. I am.”
“You were hit by a truck?” He looks from me to the doctor as if she might be able help shed some light on all this.
“Grazed,” I tell him.
“Grazed enough to throw you into a ditch.”
“I’m okay, Dad.”
After the doctor confirms that she hasn’t been able to find anything seriously wrong, Dad goes from being worried to upset. The transformation is almost instantaneous.
I’ve seen it before, both in him and Mom.
Concern first.
Then anger.
Two different sides of love.
Probably every parent goes through it when they find out their kid has gotten hurt from doing something that maybe wasn’t the smartest thing in the world.
“The driver said you ran right out in front of his truck,” Dad says.
“I thought I saw a boy there. I was trying to get him out of the way.”
“Yes. He mentioned that on the phone. He didn’t see anyone.”
“I did. It looked like he was about five years old.”
My dad is quiet.
“It really happened, Dad.”
“Okay.”
It’s strange. I’m both hoping that there wasn’t really a boy, because he would’ve likely been seriously hurt or even killed, but I’m also hoping that there was—because otherwise it means I’m losing touch with reality.
While I’m trying to figure out what else to say, Dad gets a call on his radio. From growing up in a home where I hear dispatch codes all the time, I’m familiar enough with them to recognize that this one is for a drug overdose or attempted suicide.
“I’ll have some deputies search out there one more time,” he says, but I can tell he’s distracted by the call, by the address they announced. I don’t know whose place it is, but it’s in the next town over and for something this serious he’ll probably need to be onsite. “But from what I’ve heard, they already went over the area pretty carefully.”
After talking briefly into his radio, he tells me he has to go, then rests a hand lightly on my uninjured shoulder. “Dan, I can’t tell you how glad I am you’re alright. On the drive over here, I spoke with your mom. She’s on her way back from Madison. I’ll let her know you’re fine, but you should call her yourself.”
“Don’t tell her about the boy.”
He looks like he’s going to object to that.
“I’ll tell her,” I say. “It’ll be better if I do it.”
“Alright.” He turns to the doctor. “Call me the minute you get those X-ray results.”
“I will.”
He gives her his number, speaks with dispatch one more time, and after he leaves, she leads me to the X-ray room.
Our hospital isn’t huge, so the doctor serves double-duty, taking the X-rays herself. While she gets everything ready, I try to figure out how to tell Mom about the blur.
In a way, she knows what this kind of thing is like. She’s had hallucinations too and last year she had such terrifying nightmares that she actually moved out because she was afraid she might hurt me or Dad.
She’s back now, we’re figuring things out as a family, but she’s a natural worrier and I’m not really sure how she’ll react when she hears the news that I’m seeing things again.
Dr. Adrian Waxford was at home completing the prisoner transfer request paperwork when the screen saver on his computer flicked to the picture of his younger brother. The movement caught his eye, momentarily distracting him.
It was a photograph from a quarter century ago. Adrian had scanned it in and used it to remind himself every day why he did what he did.
In the photo, which had been taken when Jacob was thirty, the two of them were standing on a beach holding up the sea bass they’d caught that day. Sunlight danced on the waves behind them. Everything was perfect.
It was the last time Adrian saw his brother alive.
Less than a week later, Jacob had been murdered by a serial killer who was eventually caught and sentenced to four hundred and fifty years in prison for the nine homicides he’d committed.
However, he died after just a few years,
before he’d served even a tiny fraction of his sentence.
So ever since then, Adrian had dedicated himself to justice, to the greater good.
It motivated everything he did.
Those who commit crimes like that deserve to be punished.
And they deserve to serve out their entire sentences—even if that sentence stretches hundreds of years longer than a normal lifespan.
He placed a hand on the screen, touching the image of his brother, remembering that day, all their days together, and how they’d been cut short by a man with no conscience. Then the picture flipped to a landscape shot from when he was lecturing in Scotland last year.
Adrian let his hand linger there for a moment as he thought of how our lives are like that—here for a moment, and then abruptly, without warning, and all too suddenly, they pass away.
Then he went back to his paperwork, but was interrupted a few minutes later when a text came through from his associate Henrik Poehlman: He’s on the move. Can you meet me at the Estoria?
Adrian knew that the kinds of things they would be discussing would best be done in person. And the safest place to do that was at the old Estoria Inn, which now served as their research center.
He replied that he would be there as soon as he could.
Then, thinking of his brother and how this meeting would help honor his memory, he went to get his car keys.
CHAPTER FOUR
The X-rays only take a couple of minutes.
The doctor checks my ribcage as well as my ankle, just to confirm that it’s only sprained and not broken.
She’s reviewing the results in the room across the hall when Kyle and Nicole arrive.
Even though most of my friends are into basketball and football, Kyle’s the one major exception. While it’s true that he did go out for track this spring, organized sports normally aren’t his thing. He’s more into writing lyrics for his band, reading graphic novels, and making up recipes for hot sauces that will burn the taste buds right off your tongue.
Kyle is taller than me and kind of spindly. Tonight he has his surfer-style hair pulled back in a ponytail. He lopes into the room first, but Nicole is right on his heels and hurries to my side before I really get a chance to greet either of them.
“How are you?” she asks worriedly.
I’ve known Nicole since grade school, but only caught on last year that she wanted to be more than just friends—reading girls isn’t exactly my strong suit. We’ve been dating since right around homecoming. Although she’s usually quick with a smile, tonight I can see she’s seriously alarmed by what’s happened.
“I’m alright, Nikki,” I tell her.
“Are you just saying that, or . . . ?”
“No, I’m good. A little banged up, but nothing worse than after a football game.”
“Bro.” Kyle gulps down some of the Dr Pepper he’s holding. “I heard you dislocated your shoulder and then popped it back into place yourself. That is sick.”
“Where’d you hear that?” Then it hits me: The paramedic has a son in our class. “Wait, let me guess—Gavin’s dad.”
“Yup.” He nods. “Told Gavin and he texted me. Word travels fast in a small town. And seriously? You were hit head-on by a logging truck? That’s gonna make for a sweet story.”
Kyle’s a natural taleteller and in his hands this night could easily become a campfire or road trip epic. His stories have a way of taking on a life of their own, though. By the third or fourth telling he might very well be the one who got hurt. And I wouldn’t be surprised if he threw in a few extra broken bones just for good measure.
“What was it like?” he asks. “Was your arm hanging way off to the side, like in that football game last year when—”
“Can we not talk about that part?” Nicole looks a little faint. “Seriously, I don’t need to be thinking about arms hanging out of their sockets.”
“Fair enough.” Then he says to me, “Mia would’ve come over, but she’s watching my little sister. She said you better not die or else she’ll kill you.”
Yeah, that sounds like Mia.
She and Kyle have been on and off for a few months now. Things are kind of in flux and I’m not sure if they’re going to make it in a relationship, but they’re good for each other, so I hope it works out. Besides, the trip to Georgia will be seriously awkward if the two of them aren’t getting along.
“So.” Nicole goes for a chair, slides it close to my bed, and takes a seat. “How’d it happen?”
They know about my blurs, so I go ahead and lay everything out there. “I’m pretty sure I had another blur. This time it was a boy, maybe in kindergarten or so. I don’t know who he was.”
“Did he say anything?”
“No.” I fill them in on what happened. “I need to find out what all this means.”
“Well,” Kyle says somewhat grimly, “then there’s one thing we’re gonna need to do.”
“What’s that?”
He pulls out his phone. “Check the obituaries.”
CHAPTER FIVE
Dr. Waxford wound his way along the road, climbing higher into the Great Smoky Mountains.
He and his team had made great strides in the last couple of years, but the loss of the research facility in northern Wisconsin last December had slowed things down—that is, until they located this old hotel here in this remote part of eastern Tennessee.
Actually, the site was ideal. It was isolated and lay at the end of a one-lane road that had hardly been used in years.
Back in the 1950s when a new highway was built that wrapped around the other side of the mountain, it took the tourists and other businesses with it. The hotel owners went bankrupt and the property went into foreclosure.
Rumored to be haunted, the Estoria Inn had sat empty for decades and was being reclaimed by the forest when Adrian and his team started renovations. Most people, even those in the nearby towns, had forgotten that this place even existed.
And none of them knew what kind of research was happening there now.
Which was probably a good thing.
Fortuitously, the Estoria was also less than an hour drive for the hypnotherapist Adrian sometimes brought up to implant suggestions in the minds of his subjects after they’d been put into a deep trance.
When you pay a hypnotist enough, you can get him to implant any suggestions that you want.
Despair.
Depression.
Loneliness.
They can all be the tools you use in the service of the greater good.
We’re on our phones searching Internet news sites for recent obituaries when the X-ray results come back.
No broken bones.
The ankle is only sprained. The shoulder will recover. It won’t be ideal for the basketball camp, but at least it’s not my shooting arm.
The doctor gives me a sling to keep the shoulder in place, then explains what I already know: It’s going to be very sore for a while and I’ll run the risk of it coming out of its socket again unless I’m careful. “You’ll need to keep your arm in that sling for the next four to six weeks.”
“Okay. Thanks,” I say, but I know that’s not going to happen.
This camp is a huge deal and missing it isn’t an option. At least a dozen Division I coaches will be there recruiting players and it’s my best chance to get the attention I need for a scholarship offer.
Although I’ve had some interest from a few Big Ten football coaches, honestly, I’d rather play college basketball. Way fewer injuries. Less time lifting and more time actually playing. Besides, I don’t really have the size for college football—not to mention my mom worrying about me less, which is a bonus.
While the doctor calls Dad to bring him up to speed and also get permission to give me some pain medication, I touch base with Mom to make sure she knows I’m alright. I decide that it’ll be best to explain about the blur in person, so I don’t bring it up.
Finally, the doctor hands me the meds, alo
ng with a prescription.
On their way to see me at the hospital, Kyle had picked up Nicole from her place, so now we swing by to get my car from the road out by the lake where I left it earlier.
Somehow, the logging company has managed to get the logs far enough to one side to allow cars to get past.
Being here brings everything back again and I can’t tell if it’s just my imagination, but my shoulder seems to throb more as I remember what it was like to get hit by that truck.
My attention shifting from one thing to the next.
That slipstream again.
All those unnoticed slivers of reality curling right past me.
But now, the ones branded with pain are coming to the forefront.
I ride with Nicole, who drives my car so I can rest my shoulder.
Kyle follows us back to my house in his vintage Mustang.
Even though it’s late, we search online again for a little while, but we still can’t find anything about kids who’ve recently died—at least not any that match the age of the boy in the road.
However, that doesn’t necessarily mean he’s still alive.
He might not have died recently. After all, the girl I saw burn up in my blur back in December had actually died in the 1930s.
As it turned out, I’d learned about her story and seen her picture years ago when I was nine. Then, just before Christmas, my mind threaded some clues together and showed me what it might have looked like when the lantern she was standing next to caught fire to her nightgown and ended up taking her life.
I’d forgotten all about her.
When the memory came back, it brought a flood of other grisly images with it because the day I first saw her photo I’d been present when a killer struck, but I’d blocked it out.
They say trauma can do that, that it can rip the fabric between your conscious and your subconscious mind.
My problem is that the rip keeps getting bigger.
My friends get word from their parents that they need to take off and I tell them goodnight.
“See you tomorrow?” Nicole says.