by Keary Taylor
I turn at my family’s grave and look back at the church. The sun has broken out from the clouds and a waterfall of melt off runs from the roof, drenching the deck and ground around.
Inside is a woman. Here, because of her. Here, because of me.
I never anticipated that happening.
My feet are fully soaked by the time I trudge my way back to the church, in through the back door. The scent of cooking food fills the air.
I take my boots off next to the fireplace, getting a change of socks, before going to find Iona in the kitchen.
She’s just finishing making some mush and cutting up an apple from the cellar. She scoops a heaping amount into a cracked bowl and puts some sugar and milk into it. I help her carry everything to the table, and then we sit and I dish it into my mouth, watching her.
The look on her face is slightly nauseated. She just looks at the food for a long minute. But finally, she reaches for the spoon, and puts some in her mouth.
“It’s not getting any easier, is it?” I ask as I watch her.
She chews slowly, and it looks like it takes her a great deal of commitment to swallow. “No.”
With a huge amount of effort, she takes another bite.
“We’ll get this figured out, Iona,” I say. I study her, begging her to look up at me, and finally she does.
I want to add, I promise. But can I really, truly make that promise?
She just nods, and looks back down to her food, taking another bite.
“We will open the gate one more time,” I say, finishing off the last of my breakfast. “We should be able to glean any more information there is left to gather in that time frame. I don’t think we can ask any more of them.”
“Is there a limit to how many times the dead can handle being pulled back through the gate?” She asks it as she holds a spoonful up, watching as it drips back down into the bowl.
“Everyone is a little different,” I explain. “Some can’t handle coming back more than a few times. Other’s can handle it longer the more they are brought back, like my family. But most wear out, eventually. Generally, three to five times and they’re exhausted and in agony.”
She meets my eyes again at that, and I know she’s looking for the story in my eyes.
The one with a poor grieving mother, unable to let go of her eight-year daughter. She made me open the gate over and over. Eight times.
By the end, it was like the poor girl was dying a death all over again.
The mother blamed me, thought that somehow I was harming the child. She’d tried using violence before she finally just broke down in tears and left Roselock for good.
Besides Iona, that was the worst visitor I’ve had to endure.
“We’ll get what answers are left,” I move on. “And then I think we should return to Ander to find answers there.”
Iona chews and swallows, forcefully. “I only have two and a half weeks left on Jack’s lease. I need to start moving all of his things. It will be a good way to go through everything.”
I nod.
This is good. With every day, Iona is coming to accept more and more. She’s opening her eyes. She’s trying.
I clean up when we’re finished eating. Iona follows me as I walk around town, checking on things, making sure nothing is in too bad of disrepair, even though it doesn’t matter, anymore.
She and I place buckets around the inside of the church, catching all the leaks.
And at three in the afternoon, we once more go into the dark room and light the candles.
Sitting across from one another, Iona places her hand in mine. I open the ring in my other, and the gate opens.
“Where is Sharon?” I ask when Simone and Joanne appear.
They both look around, as if she’s hiding.
“It’s getting harder,” Joanne says.
Simone nods. “I think this will be the last time we can come.”
I nod, relaying the information to Iona.
“Do either of you have any idea as to why Jack has done everything he did?” Iona asks, moving us from point A to B with exactness.
Joanne and Simone look at one another. “It has to be some kind of control thing,” Joanne says. “It’s some kind of process.”
“Practice makes perfect,” Simone says. “You were his fourth experiment. But as to the exact reason why… He’s sick and twisted, and the world is better off with him six feet under ground.”
Even though I feel the venom coming from each of them at her words, I still see the hurt in their eyes. The longing and love there.
“What about how?” I ask. “None of you were Jack’s client. Was there ever a time that he was able to…brainwash you?”
All three women shake their heads. “I don’t know when. I never felt like he was analyzing me,” Simone says.
“No,” Joanne says. “It never felt like he was trying to pry into my head.”
“There has to be something that he did,” Iona speaks up. “He got into our heads. Pretty damn deep. I mean, he’s still affecting me now, and he’s dead!”
Something sparks at the back of my brain. A possibility.
“Did any of you get matching tattoos?”
Iona’s eyes instantly dart up to mine, wide. Her hand rises to the spot on her shoulder and chest.
“No,” Simone says. Joanne shakes her head.
“Do you…” Iona begins to ask. “Do you think that has anything to do with it?”
I give a little shake and shrug. “Maybe, maybe not. It’s different, at least.”
“A tattoo,” Simone says. “I don’t know what real kind of power it could possibly have. It’s only ink on your skin.”
Iona massages her tattoo, her eyes glazing over.
“Is there anything else?” I ask, looking back to them. “Anything else at all that might help. Any answers to questions. Any ideas of how to break this?”
The regretful look in each of their eyes is answer before either of them opens their mouths.
“I’m sorry,” Simone says. “I wish there was anything... I wish we had answers.”
“You can figure this out,” Joanne says, a determined look upon her face. “You know now. He’s dead. You two can fix this.”
The tingle and pull grabs at the back of my throat. It’s time.
“Thank you,” Iona says. “For everything. I hope you can rest in peace now.”
“Stay safe,” Simone says quietly. Joanne nods in agreement. Then they’re gone.
Iona lets go of my hand and leans back in her chair. She raises her hands up, lacing her fingers into her hair. Her eyes fix on the ceiling.
“Jack did this.” Her voice is clear. Sure. But she continues to stare up at the ceiling, and I know these words are not met for me. “Jack did this to me. He tried to isolate me. He somehow made me give up my health. My free will.”
She pauses a moment, building her strength again.
“He made three other women kill themselves.” Her voice quivers slightly, but she holds on strong. “He would have done that to me, might still do that to me. Jack. Jack Caraway did this.”
She sits up straight, dropping her hands, and looks at the ring in my hand.
Jolting to her feet, she grabs it, and walks out the door.
I follow her without a word.
The day is wet and soggy, the sun having melted the snow. Through the cemetery she tromps, past the fence. Out into the woods we wander.
She clutches that ring in her hand, determined.
My heart leaps in my chest for a moment as she seems to veer toward the well, but then she takes a left, and cuts down a deer path.
And then, seemingly randomly, she drops to the ground. With her bare hands, she begins digging in the dirt.
Down. Through rocks, past twigs, she digs.
Six or seven inches deep, and then she sits back on her heels and pulls the ring from her pocket.
“I know a lot of bad things happened here,” she says, but I know the wor
ds are not for me. They are for Roselock. “And you’ve punished people for their sins. I don’t know if you can punish Jack, anymore. But can you at least make sure all of this ends with me? Don’t let anyone ever, ever find this ring again.”
She hesitates, just for a few moments, and then drops the white gold with the three diamonds down into the hole.
Over her shoulder, I see it. The ring bounces to rest at the bottom of the hole. And then a moment later, it sinks, slowly, further into the earth. Within a minute, it’s completely gone. Iona replaces the dirt she dug, her lips set in a thin line.
It’s a promise, between Iona—and Roselock.
Jack’s ring will never again be touched by human hands.
“Thank you,” she whispers.
Iona kneels there for half a minute more.
And then she climbs to her feet and turns.
“Let’s go back to Ander,” she says as she walks past me, back toward the church. “I’m ready to rip Jack’s life apart to find my answers.”
Chapter Forty-Eight
IONA
We went back to Ander. I drove Sully and I back to my home, where we found his car had been towed away. But with no need to worry about that until morning, we went to bed.
I told Sully he was to sleep in my bed tonight, and he didn’t question me. That night, I changed into my nightgown and curled up into Sully’s side.
Two nights in a row now that I’d slept peacefully. That’d I’d felt safe.
I didn’t question if I’d wake in the middle of the night and do something dangerous and hurt myself. I clung to his arm the entire night, felt his enormous hand on my knee there as a protecting presence.
In the morning, we made a plan.
I would go to work. Get my life back on track as much as I could. I would eat breakfast, and lunch when it was time for my break at work. And while I was gone, Sully would rent a truck, and begin moving all of Jack’s stuff out. We would go through everything in detail and then take it to the dump.
So that’s exactly what we did the next day.
I went to work. I did my job. I smiled at my boss and thanked him for his understanding while I dealt with my latent upsurge of grief and life drama. I talked to my friends in the office, even though everything in me wanted to sit at my desk and pretend that no one else existed.
And during my lunch break, while I forced myself to eat half a sandwich, I wrote a letter to Raymond Douglas.
I poured out my heart in that letter. Telling him that I was sorry for striking him. I told him that he was right to do what he did. I told him about Sully, about what he could do, without disclosing Sully’s name or location. I told him how I’d spoken to Simone, his sister, through Sully. The answers she’d given me. About the other women.
I thanked Raymond for saving my life.
Tears stained the pages by the time I folded it up, placed it in an envelope, and put it in my work’s outgoing mail. But a heavy stone dropped into my stomach. Because I was giving all the evidence to a man that he was justified in murdering another human, but knew it would never be enough to free him from bars.
So I allowed myself to cry.
And then returned to work.
At five o’clock, I left work, and headed down the road. I walked. Passing all the old familiar places. Down three blocks. I cut behind the building, out the back that butted up to Jack’s office.
Sully carries an office chair from the building to the truck, lifting it as if it weighs nothing. He sets it down inside and pushes his hair out of his eyes.
“Anything interesting yet?” I ask, surveying the scene. There are stacks of boxes toward the front of the truck. Random bits of furniture are stacked up. And looking inside, it’s a mess.
“Not yet,” Sully shakes his head. “I ripped apart the couch that was in his office. Went through every bit of stuffing in it.” He indicates the big black garbage bags on one wall of the truck. “Same with his desk. Only a few files for a few clients, nothing interesting in them. Pens, rubber bands, paperclips.”
I nod. “Jack was a tidy person. If we’re going to find any evidence, it’s going to be hidden well.”
Late into the night, Sully and I go through his office. Combing through his client files takes the longest. We dig through the secretary’s desk. The two of us work until the hour grows dark and late.
Exhausted and feeling slightly disheartened, we close up the truck, lock down the office, and head home.
We repeat the same process the next day.
And I get worried, because we’ve gone through eighty percent of his office, and at least half of his apartment.
On the third day back in Ander, I feel a sense of dread as I walk from work back to Jack’s office. I can’t stand the thought that we may go through all this effort, all this pain and confusion, only to find zero answers.
What if he left absolutely no evidence behind?
The thought twists my stomach. I want to throw up the seven bites of food I’ve consumed today.
“What’s wrong?”
Sully freezes in place when I walk inside, holding a box, rooted on the spot, his eyes fixed on mine.
“Nothing,” I try to recover, wiping at my eyes, even though I’m not crying. “I just…”
Sully sets the box down and walks over to me. He stops, so close in proximity. “Tell me.”
I look up into his face, beneath the long mane. Hidden behind that long beard. To his green eyes.
He stares down at me, every single bit of his attention focused on me.
And now the tears do prick at the backs of my eyes. I bite my lower lip. And I don’t even give them permission to do so, but my hands raise up, both of them coming to Sully’s cheeks, cupping his face.
I chew my lower lip, ashamed to voice the words inside my head. But he just keeps looking down at me, open, accepting. But there’s a spark of flame in those eyes that tells me he’s ready to tear through the gate, to destroy souls if only I tell him what direction to aim the fury.
“I just want answers,” I speak in a whisper. “And I’m afraid. What if we never find any?”
He hesitates, studying me a moment longer. But then he wraps those massive arms around me, and pulls me into his chest.
I take a deep breath there, inhaling his pine and moss scent. And instantly, my heartbeat slows.
“I will get you your answers, Iona,” he says, the words causing his chest to rumble. “One way or another.”
I don’t let him go. I just want to freeze the rest of my existence like this, cradled safely in these arms, away from the rest of the world that now feels alien to me.
He lets me. I don’t know how long we stand like that. A long while.
But eventually, I know we have to move if I’m going to get any answers.
Through the rest of the drawers in the closet we dig. We fill three boxes with random decorations, all of which we carefully scour for anything hidden inside of them.
I realize, as we go through the things in his apartment, that it should have been more apparent how often Jack moved. He really owned very little. Only a week’s worth of clothes. Only four sets of dishes. One small bookshelf of books. And absolutely no clutter.
If we weren’t going through all of his things so thoroughly, we could have packed up and moved all of his belongings out in two hours.
I’ve just finished cleaning out the medicine cabinet, which contained a toothbrush, paste, two bottles of painkillers and an antacid. A brush, and hair gel. And that’s all. I throw it all into a smaller box, and reach for the broom and mop in the tall cabinet on the far wall.
But I lift too high to get it around the toilet.
The handles hit the ceiling fan, and I scream and dart out of the way as the cover crashes to the ground.
Sully is inside in two seconds.
“You alri-”
He doesn’t finish his sentence.
Because both of our eyes rise to the hole.
Where there
should be a box where the fan is installed and operates, there’s just a hole into the ceiling.
And poking over the edge, just barely visible, is my own face.
Sully swears. He crosses the bathroom in one long stride. He stands on the toilet seat and reaches up into the ceiling.
My lip immediately begins trembling, but my fingers curl into a fist.
“No,” I say. “No. No.”
Sully steps down, a handful of papers and pictures. I yank them out of his hands, scattering things all over.
Pictures.
Pictures of me.
Pictures of a blonde.
Pictures of two dark haired women, one light skinned, another dark.
“Funeral programs,” Sully says, looking through the stack of pages and pictures. “Simone. Sharon. Joanne. All three of them are here.”
Now there really are tears in my eyes. Before I can even process the images of me, I’m looking at the images of Jack’s other fiancés.
His other victims.
Joanne, harsh but beautiful looking. Sharon, looking as sweet as I imagined her. And Simone. Absolutely stunning, and I can even pick out a few similar features she has to Raymond.
And there are images of Jack. With these women. They all look so happy. So in love. With all three of them.
With all four of us.
“Simone’s, from two years ago,” Sully says, handing over the funeral programs. And now I really start to cry. Because Simone was only twenty-two when he made her kill herself. “Joanne, from four years ago.” She was twenty-nine. “And Sharon.” Who was only twenty.
Every one of them too young.
Every one of them taking their lives against their will.
“When was this picture taken?” Sully asks, holding up a faded looking photograph.
I take it, my hand trembling.
It’s an image of my father and I, sitting at Terry’s Brew, a pub with fantastic fish and chips. But there’s something sinister about what should be a sweet image of me and the father I lost.
It’s taken from across the bar, the view slightly obscured.