“It’s all connected,” she says. “To King’s Ferry, to my brother. To Lance.”
“I don’t see how,” Graham says. “Your father, I get his connection. And there’s enough crazy going on around here it’s becoming the norm. So the ferry, maybe. But the man in the woods? How is he related?”
“I had my first vision—the first I remember—when I discovered him,” she says. “I thought I was seeing him, when he was alive. But I realized this morning, when you walked into my hospital room, that I was wrong. I didn’t see him. I saw you.”
“What was I doing?”
“You were holding a gun. You fired. And the man you killed, it was Robert Doss.”
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Monday, 3:15 pm
“Robert Doss?”
He didn’t seem surprised. Or disturbed. If her vision came to pass, if Graham killed Robert Doss, it would be because there was no other way. She saw the certainty of it on his face.
“Is he the King’s Ferry Killer?”
“I don’t know.”
“Where are we? When is this going to happen?”
“His cottage,” she said. She remembered the look and feel of his living room.
“When?” Graham pressed.
“My visions don’t come with a date stamped on them.”
“You have to do better than that.”
“I have no control over what I see,” she pointed out.
Frustration thinned his lips. Then he changed direction, “Tell me more about the man in the woods. How did he die?”
“He was shot,” Natalie said. “I think he was left so that I would find him.”
“How would the killer know you were going to hike that trail on that day?”
“I hike Jackman Trail the first day of spring and the last day of summer every year.”
Graham nodded. “Who knows that?”
“My mom. Our neighbors. Some people in town. Guests at the Inn.”
“Great. A needle in a haystack.” He rubbed his eyes.
“Saul Doss,” she said. “Maybe.”
That got his attention. The look in his eyes became intense. “How?”
“He’s been in contact with my mom. I don’t know for how long, but he knew I was going to be on that ferry. He told me so.”
“Has he ever visited? Have you ever seen him in California? At your house?”
“No. Never.”
He thought about that and then changed direction, “Who was the man in the woods?”
“The police don’t know. At least, not the last time I spoke to me.”
“And the murder is unsolved?”
Natalie nodded.
“Maybe it doesn’t matter who he was,” Isaac suggested. “Maybe it’s about how he died.”
“Or how he lived,” Graham said.
“I was starting to remember,” Natalie offered. “Up here. Earlier, before Isaac showed up.”
“A vision or a memory?” Graham asked.
“It was a memory,” she said, “But you need to trust my visions. Soon. Isaac’s life will depend on it.”
She watched the struggle on his face; he wanted to call her a liar but knew better. “What did you see?”
“Steven and Lance, just the backs of their heads. They were walking up here. I must have been following them. And there was someone with us. I feel him behind me, but I’m afraid to look at him.”
“You’re sure you were up here?””
“Yes.” And as she spoke, more details unfolded, more became clear. “They were in trouble. But they weren’t afraid. Not yet.”
She moved deeper into her memory and began to hear their voices. Her brother’s voice. It was sweet and thin and patchy with fear. “Steven said, ‘You’re wrong. We weren’t looking at her.’”
She felt her insides cramp. “And then it’s his voice. He told them to shut up. He knows what he saw. He said, ‘You want to talk to someone, you knock on the door. You don’t look in their bedroom window.’”
“Whose window?” Graham asked.
“Lance spoke up then. ‘We weren’t looking, honest. We wanted to talk to your father.’
“They thought they were going home. They worried about what our parents were going
to say. I see their faces, bunched up with fear.”
“What happened next?”
“We weren’t going the right way. Steven asked about that. We were far into the bluffs by then...it gets patchy. We stop. And he’s everywhere. He hit Steven. I can see him swing, my brother’s face take the blow. Steven fell into the grass and then the killer, he turned on Lance, picked him up and killed him. That’s it,” she says.
Graham’s face was as closed as a fist.
“No,” Graham said. “There’s more. I think maybe you blacked out then. You couldn’t bear to watch and your mind shut down. But not your ears. Do you remember what you heard?”
“No.”
“Try.” He stepped forward and took her hand. She felt his calloused palm, felt anchored to the present and so safe enough to wade deeper into memory.
“Crying. And Steven. He told me to run.” And she caught a glimpse of his face, tear-streaked and crumbling under his fear, but he shouted at her to run. ‘Fast, Natalie! Run!’”
She didn’t. She remembered wanting to. She remembered her blood was so hot with fear it seared her veins. But she didn’t run.
“I couldn’t,” Natalie admitted. “And he didn’t kill me.” She felt the tears on her face, hot and dripping over her chin. “He said to me, ‘You’re a good, girl.’ I think he walked away then. I did, too. I don’t know where I went. I don’t know how I got home.” She didn’t remember Steven again until the next day. She woke up thinking it was a dream, but when she came downstairs, her brother and Lance were still missing and she went out to find them, letting her feet move without telling them what to do. “I knew where they were the whole time. But I didn’t remember what happened to them until now.”
She looked up, connected with Graham’s gaze. Something had changed in his touch. It was no longer charged. She no longer felt drawn to him, but protected by him, like a small child whose hand was swallowed in that of an adult. He recognized the change, too.
“You’re slipping away,” he said.
“I’ve always been that way.”
“Yes.”
“There’s more,” she said. “Alana. She knew, too. She was there with us.” Natalie tried to listen to the sounds behind her tears, behind the boys’ fear: The roll of the ocean, the soft whimpers trailing their footsteps. “She was crying.” And in Natalie’s last conscious moment she’d heard Alana’s scream. It was sharp and anguished and shattered the blue shell of the sky. After that, the darkness was total.
Her words settled into silence. Emotions battled on Graham’s face: sorrow and rage and the slow burn of weariness.
“The father Lance talked about,” Graham finally prompted. “They didn’t say his name? Identify him in anyway?”
Natalie searched back through her memory but came up empty. “They didn’t say. And I don’t think I ever saw the killer’s face. Maybe I was too afraid to look. But it can only be Doss,” she said. “The only adult they could have been looking for was Doss.”
“Hey.”
Isaac broke into their conversation, his voice a current of urgency. Natalie turned to him and noticed the air around him rippled.
“I’m going to transition,” he announced.
Graham surged to his son’s side and took hold of his arm.
“Fight it,” he said. “Isaac, I want you to fight it this time.”
“Where?” Natalie pressed. “Do you know where you’re going?”
Isaac shook his head but held Natalie’s gaze. “But you do,” he said. “You’re ready. You’ll know.”
Isaac closed his eyes. His chin lifted so that his head tipped back. He rolled onto his toes, lifting slightly off the ground, and a stiffness began to seep into his limbs.
> Graham pulled on his arm. “Isaac, no.”
“You can’t keep me here, dad, and you can’t come with me.”
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Monday, 3:30 pm
Isaac arrives at the scene of the murder already inside the house. This has never happened before. He always has time to adjust to his surroundings before he encounters the dying. The cause of death has always transpired before his arrival. This time, he materializes in the living room of a beach cottage. He doesn’t know the house, but he does know the man sitting on the couch, flipping through stations on the TV. Saul Doss.
For a moment, surprise flares in the man’s eyes. Then he shuts the TV off and nods at Isaac.
“I was wondering when this would happen,” he says. “Killed by the monster I created. That’s not uncommon.”
“He isn’t here.” Isaac doesn’t feel the KFK. The air isn’t heavy, doesn’t leave him breathless.
“Not yet,” Doss agrees.
“Then get out,” Isaac says. He looks around the room, hoping to find a gun, a baseball bat. Anything Doss can use as a weapon.
“This is my destiny,” Doss says. “I set it all in motion and my time has come.”
“You’re giving up?”
“I’ve waited for this,” Doss corrects. “Sixteen years. And every time he killed I prayed that he would come for me next.”
“There’s time,” Isaac stresses. “You can save yourself.”
“I did that once,” Doss says. “That’s no way to live. He’s coming. I feel him. I’ve always been able to feel him, you know. Like a part of me is still stuck inside his head.”
“You were given ability,” Isaac says.
“And abused it.”
“That’s why I don’t sense light in you.”
“Am I condemned?” Doss wonders.
“People act in fear all the time,” Isaac reasons. “Why wouldn’t you?”
“I set him free,” Doss admits. “I never intended to. More was expected of me.”
“You stopped believing.”
“Sometimes I doubted my motives; sometimes I acted like God.” His voice lowers to a whisper. “So much power in healing, in watching patients who couldn’t feed themselves they were so damaged, get up and walk into new life.”
The light grows dim. Isaac turns and looks into the corners of the room, through the arch and into the kitchen. No shadow. No Death. Yet.
“How do we stop him?”
“You’ll do it together,” Doss says. “You, your father and Natalie Forrester. She was marked for dead, you know. Now she sees it.” Doss tips his head back, leans into the cushions. “You complement each other. She’ll predict the next victim. You’ll attend the dying. Your father will speak for us after we’re gone. Together, you’ll get the timing right. But it’s too late for me.”
The air becomes a thick fog in Isaac’s throat. He chokes on it, but moves forward and takes Doss’ hand.
“The two boys, the first victims, were Elysians, too. The first I encountered. They were good boys. I found them like I found you. Searching with my mind.”
“I’ve felt you,” Isaac says. He tries to keep the criticism out of his voice but fails.
“I was hoping, if you let me in, I could get a glimpse of him. See the face you weren’t able to see at Shelley Iverson’s.” Doss admits.
“And kill him,” Isaac says.
“I would have,” Doss agrees.
“Does the killer have the same abilities as you or me?”
“No. He’s drawn to but has an aversion to the light. He can find you the same way I can,” Doss warns, “but he can’t get inside. Not unless you let him.”
“Are there others like me? On the island?”
“There are others like you all over the planet,” Doss assures him.
“How do I find them?”
“You don’t.”
“But my uncle Lance and the other boy, Steven Forrester--”
“I brought them together.” Regret fills his voice. “I studied them. They were not as
cautious as you. Not as strong. They were younger and untouched by tragedy. They let me in.” Doss’ breathing takes on an air of awe. “The incredible pureness of their hearts was like nothing else this side of life.”
Isaac doesn’t feel pure. He’s done things he regrets. He’s thought bad thoughts and thinks he’ll always do that.
“They were boys, too,” Doss assures him. “They did and thought things like you. But they were motivated by a pure heart. The same as you, Isaac.”
“I wear that on my face,” Isaac says, because he doesn’t feel Doss inside his head now.
“Doubt is easy to read. It’s the most steadfast of human emotions.”
Outside the windows, the sky darkens. Like it went from mid-afternoon to midnight faster than the second hand sweeps the clock once.
“It’s time,” Doss says. “Don’t watch.” His hand tightens on Isaac’s. “Turn you head, close your eyes. Don’t carry this image of dying with you.”
The door in the kitchen opens. Isaac hears the hinges whine and then the wind and the distant sound of waves washing up on shore enter the house. The killer has arrived. He doesn’t bother to shut the door, but treads the wood planks through the kitchen and into the living room.
The psych report in the case files Isaac accessed from his father’s computer described a killer who moves quietly, undetected. This intrusion is bold. But it feels the same as what Isaac encountered at Ms. Iverson’s and then again at Jeremy Kroeger’s house. It even looks the same.
A black fluid mass levitates above their heads.
The air becomes a force of compression.
Doss’ face opens in surprise then twists into disbelief and then horror.
“I never guessed,” Doss says.
Doss’ face changes, the lines around his eyes growing heavy with sorrow.
“You didn’t want to know.”
“I couldn’t bear it,” Doss agrees.
“You did this to me.”
“Yes,” Doss agrees. “I didn’t mean to. I never would have sacrificed my flesh and blood.”
Laughter erupts from the killer. It’s thin and sharp and feels like a razor blade in Isaac’s ears.
Flesh and blood.
“You were at the hospital that day,” Doss says. “I didn’t know.”
“You got me the job, dad. You wanted me productive. You wanted to keep an eye on me.”
“I wanted to keep you away from your mother,” Doss corrected.
“Too little, too late,” it sneered. “She’s all over me. Always has been. I should have killed her first. But we’re two peas in a pod. And it’s good to have company.”
“You were seventeen.”
“Just a baby,” it says with sarcasm.
“I tried to save you,” Doss said.
“You saved yourself.”
Doss nods. “I did.”
“You let him loose. You should have let him take you.”
“You’re right.”
Isaac hears footsteps approaching through the kitchen and turns his head. His mother. She stops inside the door, her beautiful face open but the features slowly stretching into fear.
What is she doing here?
Run!
His whole body screams the word, but generates no sound. He is here to help the dying let go, not to save them.
Isaac sees a flash of silver. It arcs up over his head and he feels Doss’ hand tighten around his.
Doss shakes his head. “It’s the spirit of evil,” Doss says. “You’re not my son, but what lives in him.”
“I am your son. You created me.”
Isaac looks into Doss’ eyes. The killer is reflected in the pale irises, not the dark shadow of him, but the earthly features. A long forehead, eyes the same non-color as Doss’, fired in rage, the mouth and nose distorted in anger. He watches the knife descend into Doss’ heart.
He hears his mother’s scream. It is
short and catches in her throat. It is full of terror and disbelief.
This is not at all the KFK’s MO. But then this is personal. In your face, debt-collected personal. Isaac remembers his father once said that when it’s family, murder is usually face-to-face.
And then death turns upon him.
Its fluid body whips around, takes the shape of a scythe and tries to curl around Isaac’s throat. It isn’t fast enough.
Isaac doesn’t rely on his own reflexes but on the power that’s at work within him.
You can’t touch me. Isaac thinks the words, careful not to betray himself.
“You’re wrong. You’ll weaken.”
He would have to fear evil, to believe less in the power of good in order to lose it. He thinks maybe that happened to his uncle Lance and Natalie’s brother. Doss said they were younger, not as strong as Isaac. Maybe, in their final moments, fear became all they knew.
The black form shifts, rises as far as the low ceiling of the cottage will allow, then hovers. Isaac waits. When he was in Jeremy’s house, he feared for the baby. He worried evil would take its life. He believed there was a possibility. That’s when evil got close, when Isaac felt its approach in the air that moved through his hair and pressed against his skin. He knows now that evil has its limits.
A shrieking erupts from the black cloud, and it twists in tornado-like frustration.
Isaac’s mother whimpers. She is caught in her fear, unable to think beyond it. Self-preservation, the fight or flight instinct that keeps man and animal alive, doesn’t kick in. She either can’t or won’t move.
Death knows this too. It begins to take the shape of man. Isaac watches a hand appear, gnarled and twisted around the knife still dripping with Doss’ blood.
“Oh, yes. Yes.” It mutters, like it knows it found the only answer. It floats across the room.
“You’re right,” it says. “Fear is my way in. Tell me, Elysian, do you fear for your mother’s life?”
Isaac tries to block the emotion, but feels it crowding his senses. He becomes aware of his body, the accelerated beat of his heart, the shortness of his breath; it burns the edges of his vision and fills his ears with the rattle of bones.
His realizes that his teeth are chattering, and that he’s losing the battle.
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