I Will Come for You

by Phillips, Suzanne

  “No.”

  “For Isaac.”

  Colors. Black and red. Red blooming into an intense orange. Fire. Graham wants to shut his eyes. Feels them burn. Smells the sweat of living flesh. Then images. Death. Dying. Victims dart through Graham’s mind. Hunted. He recognizes none of them. He knows the terror reflected in the eyes of men, women and children. Fear. It’s universal. The images keep coming, spinning through the darkness, bright flashes of color that crystallize into the misshapen faces of the dying. He wants out. He wants out of his own mind and begins clawing at the seams, looking for escape.

  “You can’t run,” Doss says. “They’re waiting for you. On the bluffs.”

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Monday, 2:45 pm

  “Are you OK?”

  Natalie opened her eyes. Her vision continued beyond the parameters of her mind. Lance Marquette stood in front of her, older, unblemished. A living, breathing boy. Only she knew better now. This was Isaac Marquette, Graham’s son. Lance’s nephew, had he lived long enough. The resemblance was startling, down to the curious arch of his eyebrows and his freckled nose.

  “Hi Natalie.”

  He held a hand out to her. Natalie stared at it and wondered what form of comfort the boy was offering. Doss had said that Isaac was like the others, like Steven and Lance. But what did transcenders do? If Natalie was the before and Graham the after, that made Isaac the during. Was this the moment, then, that she would die? Half way from torment to peace, knowing she had witnessed the murder of her brother but not yet knowing who had done it?

  The boy dropped his hand and looked at the wooden cross.

  “This is where my uncle Lance died,” he said. “It happened a long time ago. Did you know my uncle?”

  She nodded. “You look a lot like him,” Natalie said. She got to her feet and looked down at the boy.

  “I know. I don’t look like my father at all and only a little like my mom. Sometimes it works like that, genetics.” His smile was off-center and too full of maturity. “I think it bothers my father, that I look so much like my uncle. It makes him remember...” He nodded at the cross and his eyes grew somber. “You must have been a little kid.”

  “I was eight when they died.”

  “Steven was your brother.”

  “Yes.”

  Isaac drew closer and pushed his hand into hers.

  A golden light flared around them and Natalie felt a surge of pure energy rush the blood through her veins. Power. A sense of well-being and ability. Direction. All of that flowed into her consciousness. She could do what she came to do and he was going to help her. This boy.

  “Wow,” he said.

  “Yeah.”

  Natalie looked down at him. “How did you know my name?”

  “It came to me. I think I’ve been looking for you.”

  “Does that happen often?”

  He hesitated. She saw it in the slow shrug of his shoulders, in the way his gaze flickered and moved back to the wooden marker rising out of the ground beside them.

  “It’s all right.” She hadn’t seen her own death, but so many things pointed to it.

  “Only when I’m looking for the dying,” he confirmed.

  “And you’ve been looking for me.”

  “But this is different. When I’m called to the dying, I leave time and place behind. But I’m here. I’m in this moment.”

  Light seemed to radiate from him, like the aura of a splitting atom, so that it was hard to look at him fully.

  “I came to the island to find my brother’s killer,” she admitted. “That’s what I thought. But I think there’s something more.”

  “Something bigger,” Isaac agreed.

  “Do you know what it is?”

  “We’ll find out together.”

  And will we die together, Natalie wondered, like her brother and his uncle?

  “My brother and your uncle were good friends,” Natalie said. “They played up here. Pirates mostly. Sometimes I played on the sand below and the wind carried their voices to me, full of secrets.” She lifted her face to the sun, breathed in the crisp, salty-sweet air. “I’m remembering more about that now.”

  “You were with them when they were killed.”

  “Or close by.”

  “You were with them,” Isaac insisted.

  “Yes.”

  “You saw it, before it happened.” he said. “That’s your gift.”

  “I see things,” she agreed. “But I don’t remember knowing. . .back then.”

  She’d stood among them, but was unable to see, as though she was struck blind by

  fear. She’d heard voices, her brother’s and Lance’s, and an angrier, fully-charged voice that pained her ears. She didn’t remember words but tones; in the boys’ she’d felt their trembling, their paralysis; in the killer’s his intent.

  “You’ll remember,” Isaac said. He pushed his hands into the back pockets of his jeans and regarded her with solemn eyes. “This kind of thing happens slowly. I think it’s the only way our minds can handle it.”

  “What kind of things have you seen?”

  “I don’t see. Not really,” Isaac admitted. “I help people die. But when I’m doing it, I know things. Their names, names of the people they’ll miss. Sometimes I’ll see their memories, but not always.”

  The wind flowed through his shirt, made the material ripple against his thin chest. He was small for his age, had high cheekbones and a strong chin, and eyes deeper than the ocean they stood over.

  “Can you see my memories, Isaac?”

  He shook his head. “Not yet.”

  “There have been two murders this week,” she continued. “Were you there?”

  He nodded.

  “Did the victims speak to you?”

  “Both of them. They were scared.”

  “Did they tell you anything about the man who murdered them?”

  “No. People don’t spend the last seconds of their lives thinking about justice.”

  “No, I don’t think I would, either.”

  “Justice is for the living,” Isaac clarified.

  “For those who have lost,” Natalie agreed.

  “Exactly.” He paused and then approached her, his voice stronger, confident. “The dying want peace,” he said. “Isn’t that what you came here for?”

  “Yes.” And what did that mean? Was she dying? Was she already dead?

  “You’re in-between,” Isaac said, his words similar to those Michael had spoken to her.

  In-between.

  Neither past nor present. Stuck in the moment. Murder had a way of doing that. Of stopping all the life around it.

  “We’re going to stop him,” Isaac said. “Maybe that will set you free.”

  “Maybe.”

  Isaac tugged on her hand and she looked down at him.

  “We need my father’s help,” Isaac said, “and he’s not exactly open to the idea of supernatural gifts.”

  “Does he know about yours?”

  “Yeah. He just found out. He’s still in the denial, there’s-got-to-be-some-way-to-fix-this stage.”

  Natalie nodded in sympathy. “It took me a long time to believe in my gift. Today is the first full day I haven’t fought it.”

  “Why are adults so closed?”

  “We let fear control us,” she said. “Do you have a plan? A way to find the killer?”

  Isaac shrugged. “I came here looking for him,” he explained. He told her about encountering the evil at the scene of the last murder, how he hadn’t been able to look fully upon him and so only had a feel for who they were looking for. “I have no idea what he looks like. But I think we’re close.”

  “Why?”

  “The air is thicker here,” Isaac said. “That’s the first thing I notice.”

  “It’s not because he’s been here before?”

  “No. This is new.” He shrugged. “I feel the heaviness of his intent not the aftermath.”

  “Does
he know who you are, Isaac?”

  “He can’t see me. When I transcend, only the dying see me.”

  “Transcend,” Natalie repeated. “My brother and Lance were able to do that.”

  Isaac nodded. “I knew there were others.”

  If only the dying see transcenders, then how had the killer found Steven and Lance?

  “They weren’t in their gift,” Isaac said. “They couldn’t have been.”

  “You picked up on my thoughts again,” Natalie pointed out.

  He nodded. “I think we’re getting closer. I’m sorry.”

  But Natalie wasn’t. A calm had settled over her. She saw the world clearer, and in it the circular pattern of life.

  “That’s one of the first things I discovered,” Isaac agreed. “We never cease to be.” He returned to her earlier thought, “Your brother and my uncle, I don’t think they were transcending when they were killed.”

  “Because when you’re doing it you’re safe?”

  He nodded. “Good does prevail over evil.”

  “But it was the King’s Ferry Killer?”

  “Yes. I know the feel of him.”

  “Will he kill me, too?”

  “I don’t know. You’re the one who sees into the future.”

  “Not everything,” she said. “I can’t just call up images. They unfold on their own.”

  “But you’ve seen him,” Isaac pointed out. “You know his voice.”

  “It was a long time ago.” It was Saul Doss, or his son. Or maybe Alana. She was a part of their lives almost every day of that summer, unbalanced and often at the mercy of the wind. Was it her voice she’d heard coming from the truck? “And I don’t know for sure. Not yet.”

  “You can’t hide,” Isaac admonished.

  “You know his voice, too.”

  He nodded. “I remember more how the voice made me feel than what it actually sounded like.”

  “That makes sense,” Natalie said. “That’s about what I remember, too. It’s probably better for us that way. Instinct is more reliable than memory. We’ll go with that.”

  “That’s what my father says, too. A person’s memory is full of perception and is self-regulated.”

  “He’s the chief of police.”

  “Yeah.”

  “That must suck for you.” That, and the fact that his mother was unstable. She remembered Alana’s words about looking at the ends of things. She’d included her inability to raise her son. Natalie felt her sadness now.

  “Sometimes. Most of the time.”

  “I knew your mom, too,” Natalie said.

  “I know. She was different then. Healthier, but not a hundred percent. I’ve never known her,” he finished.

  “I’m sorry,” Natalie offered.

  “What was she like happy?” he wanted to know.

  Natalie looked for a memory she could share. “She had a beautiful smile. It touched every part of her face.” On the occasions she was happy. “She liked us. Liked kids. She sat on the floor and played games with us. Sometimes for hours. When she read to us, she was the character. She gave them accents and made up some of the dialogue. She helped the boys make swords and willingly walked the plank.” Natalie smiled, remembering. “She was fun.”

  “Thank you. My father doesn’t like talking about the past, especially about my mom. And there’s no one else, really, who can do that.”

  No one who remembers more of Alana’s calm than her craziness.

  “You walk a fine line between order and chaos.”

  “I’m pretty good at it.”

  “But it took practice.”

  He nodded. “A lot. My father couldn’t do it.”

  “It’s something you have to learn young,” Natalie agreed. “Like becoming Houdini. Learning to disappear.”

  “You can do that?”

  “I think I started the day Steven died. It was easy. Before that, no matter what I did, I couldn’t get my father to notice me.”

  “He ignored you?”

  “He reared me. Don’t ever get that confused with raised or nurtured or loved.”

  “What’s the difference?”

  “My father was a social psychologist. He applied all he knew about raising kids to me and my brother, and no heart.”

  He pushed his hand back into hers. When she looked down at him he shrugged.

  “Compassion,” Natalie said. “That’s your true gift, isn’t it?”

  “I was chosen for it.”

  Most people could fill a thimble with their concern for others.

  “I don’t think that prowling murder scenes is going to lead us to the killer,” Natalie said.

  “Do you have a better idea?”

  She nodded and looked over Isaac’s head to where the cliffs ended abruptly and the wind

  stirred up white caps in the water. Doss’ cottage was perched on the beach, several hundred yards west of where they stood. In Natalie’s mind, all roads led back to him. It was where it started. It was where it would end.

  “Follow me.”

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Monday, 2:55 pm

  Graham finds Isaac exactly where Doss said he would be, on the bluffs overlooking Deep Bay. He is standing beside Natalie Forrester. The wind lifts her wheat colored hair, ripples through her clothing, makes the movement of her arms seem fluid. She places a hand on his son’s head, through his hair, and smiles. What he remembers best about Lance and his summer friends is this, exactly. They seemed made of the sun and sea and wind. They were happy kids, whose feet never seemed to touch the ground. They were up at sunrise, took the day by storm, and their only limitation was darkness descending.

  When it came, it was profound. It never lifted. A pall was cast over the island that day and like a heavy fog, Graham moved through it not knowing what lay beyond.

  Graham stops the cruiser on the side of the road, cuts the engine and slides out of the SUV. He thinks about the things Doss showed him and wonders about Natalie’s role in the capture of the King’s Ferry Killer. She, like Graham, is more than a survivor. She witnessed the murder of her brother; Graham suspected this all along and Doss confirmed it. But Doss made it clear that there was something more developing, that the three of them—Graham, Isaac and Natalie—would come together to defeat the killer. And that it can be done no other way.

  Graham no longer doubts Doss.

  The things Doss showed him. Dark, crouching images of victims, some already wounded and begging for salvation, others running, hiding, discovered by the killer. Graham watched it all from the eyes of the predator. He sensed the killer’s hunger, his corporeal need for the kill. It made him sick. He wanted to vomit, wanted to pry himself loose from Doss’ hold, wanted to cry out with every slash of the killer’s knife.

  Doss showed him only what he had--murders committed prior to the KFK’s emergence in King’s Ferry. Graham didn’t recognize the victims. He didn’t know time or place. It could be as Doss believes--the victims Graham shared space with for a few agonizing moments were from decades or even centuries past.

  Graham slips under the fence, ignoring the ordinance posted sign, and heads toward his son and Natalie Forrester. The trinity will be complete, Doss said. Graham doesn’t expect to feel the earth shake, the winds to stir up dark and shrieking with lost souls. He does expect an adjustment in the axis of the earth.

  He’s been at the scene of his brother’s murder before. He never comes as a cop. The air is different here, thick enough he has to choke it down. He isn’t able to think beyond the moments his brother knew were his last. Had he cried? Had he mourned the world that gave him so much pleasure? A kid so full of life, Graham thought it could be no other way.

  Doss showed him it’s possible to enter a man’s mind. To know his intention, his deeds. Graham knows now that evil can travel as simply as the opening of a door.

  Isaac showed him that time and place are open to interpretation. That neither are constant. That it’s possible to move in and ou
t of each with grace.

  Graham now lives in a world where really anything is possible.

  He is twenty yards out when Natalie feels his advance and turns.

  A play of light makes her glow from the inside out. For a moment she is more sunshine than physical matter.

  Isaac turns, notices Graham, and smiles.

  It must be where they’re standing, Graham thinks, the way the light hits exactly at this spot, because Isaac, too, is radiant. His body is soft at the edges and blends into the landscape.

  “Isaac.”

  “Dad.” Isaac steps toward him. “We’ve been waiting for you.”

  “I know.” He places a hand on his son’s shoulder, absorbs his warmth and allows himself a moment of gratitude. Then he finds Natalie over Isaac’s head and says, “This isn’t an easy place for us to stand.”

  “No,” she agrees.

  Her gaze is steady and he can almost feel her eyes peeling through the layers that cover his deepest thoughts.

  “Have you remembered more?” he asks.

  “I was here,” she admits. “With them, but not. . .” her voice fades. “I remember a voice, and I think I’ve heard it before, in different circumstances, but no faces yet. No names.” Natalie pauses, seems to search within, then says, “I want to remember more.”

  “It will come,” Isaac says.

  “Before he kills again,” she says. “It needs to be before.”

  Isaac nods and insists, “You’ll see it.”

  “I didn’t see the other victims.”

  “You weren’t in King’s Ferry.” And then Isaac reminds her, “You saw Steven and Lance.”

  Her visions. She told him she sees the dying. Only the dying. And he thought, hoped, it was a result of losing Steven. Now he needs her gift, will rely on its direction. He ignores the discomfort it brings and asks the questions that need to be asked, “How much warning will we get?”

  “Sometimes only minutes.”

  “That’s all we’ll need,” Isaac says.

  “When did this start?” Graham asks. “When did you start to see?”

  Natalie tells him about the man she stumbled upon in the woods, about her father who appeared before her in ghost form, about the ferry that may have sunk with help not at all of the natural world.