by Mark Lukens
She looked away as tears spilled out of her eyes.
“Carol,” Victor begged, really concerned now. “Just tell me. You know you can trust me with anything in the world.”
Carol nodded and pulled her hands out of Victor’s hands so she could wipe at her tears.
“What is it? Did Ryan threaten you?” Victor stared at her with fierce eyes.
Carol shook her head no and glanced away, making sure no one else was near them – but the sidewalks were still empty.
“No matter what it is,” Victor said, “I’ll try to help in any way I can.”
Carol looked at Victor and she smiled – it was a real smile this time, not her usual razor-thin slash. She appreciated his help. And maybe he could help her.
“I … I just feel like I’m going crazy sometimes,” she finally whispered.
Victor hugged Carol and she let him hold her for a minute, and then she pulled away.
“I know,” he told her. “We all feel like that sometimes.”
“No, I don’t think you’ve ever felt like this, like I do right now.”
Carol turned and started walking back the way they had come, back to her house.
“What do you mean?” Victor said as he fell in step beside her.
“Do you believe they can ever come back?” she asked him. “Do you believe that they can be brought back somehow?”
“Who?” Victor asked.
“The dead,” she answered.
Victor stopped and stared at Carol. “Carol,” he said in a low tone, “what are you talking about?”
She stopped and stared at him. “I’ve done something terrible. I want to show you something in the den.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
1.
Ryan and Amber were back in his car, speeding down Winter Road through the woods.
“Calm down,” Amber told Ryan as he took a curve in the road so quickly that the tires squealed in protest.
Ryan kept his hands gripped on the steering wheel, his eyes on the road; the front bumper of the Impala seemed to be eating up the pavement.
“Ryan, what you’re saying doesn’t make any sense. It can’t be real.”
He kept on driving.
“Slow down before you wreck the car!” she shouted.
Ryan eased up on the gas pedal and breathed out a long breath. He felt a shudder run through his body.
Amber sighed; she felt a little better now that they were back down under fifty miles an hour and not taking hairpin curves at forty. If another vehicle had been coming around the curve at the same time … she didn’t want to think about that.
“There’s no other explanation,” Ryan finally said. “I’ve seen it in my dreams, and now I’ve seen it in reality.”
“You can’t be Cutter,” she told him. “He died ten years ago. He killed himself.”
“Maybe Cutter’s inside of me somehow,” he told her. “I can’t remember anything before a few days ago.”
“You think you’re possessed?” Amber asked. “That stuff’s not real. That’s just Hollywood bullshit. You don’t remember anything about your past, that’s all. Maybe you saw something in your past about this killer and it’s stuck in your mind somewhere, and now you’re making up a past that you never lived.”
Ryan wished he could believe that, but this was too real for him. “I want to find out Cutter’s real name. See what his face looks like.”
“Okay, go to my house. I’ll look it up on my computer.”
“Is Gary going to be a problem?” he asked, but he didn’t really care. He’d walk right through Gary right now if he had to.
“No. Gary is always gone most of the day on Sunday. He plays paintball with some of his friends.”
Ryan nodded, and he wondered for a moment what kind of friends a person like Gary could have, but he didn’t say anything.
“We’ll look everything up, and then you’ll see,” Amber told him, still trying to calm him down.
Ryan glanced down at his instrument panel – the gas gauge was low, almost empty. “Shit. I need to get some gas. Soon.”
“Just turn left at the end of this road. I know where we can get some gas.”
2.
Lita walked down the aisle of a drug store. She carried a copy of the photograph of Ryan in her jacket pocket. Mr. Murdock was back in the motel room – the nicest one they could find, and she and Jake had split up to canvass the area, asking people if they’d seen Ryan.
Ryan was in this town for some reason. He had told the clerk at the Starlight Motel that he needed to be in Edrington. Somebody here had to know where he was and what he was doing?
Or he could’ve left town already. But it didn’t matter – Mr. Murdock wasn’t going to stop looking for him no matter where he went.
She walked up to an old man who held two different varieties of cough medicines in his hands. He coughed into his sleeve as he looked at one of them, squinting through his glasses as he tried to read the back of the package.
Lita tucked her sunglasses into her jacket pocket and she faked a big smile to seem more approachable.
“Sir,” she said to the old man.
He nearly jumped when she spoke, but he didn’t drop the boxes of cough medicine.
“Could I bother you for just a moment?” she asked in a sickly-sweet voice.
He studied her for a moment, and then he broke into a big smile. “Sure,” he told her as he put the two boxes of cough medicine back on the shelf.
Lita kept on smiling; she could practically see the old man melting in front of her. She pulled out the photo of Ryan from inside her jacket pocket and handed it to him.
“I’m trying to find this man. I heard he came up here to Edrington. Is there any chance you’ve seen him? Or maybe you heard of someone new moving into town recently? Maybe renting a room or something?”
Jake and Lita had already covered the two motels and the one Mom-and-Pop Bed and Breakfast that existed in this small town, but Ryan hadn’t stayed at any of them. He hadn’t registered under a fake name, either. Jake and Lita had made sure that the hotel workers they talked to understood the consequences of lying to them.
So that meant he must be staying with a friend or someone that he knew.
Or he left town already, just passed right on through Edrington.
The old man took the photograph and studied it for a long moment. Then he shook his head no and handed it back to her. “I haven’t seen him. Sorry, my dear.”
“That’s okay,” she said. She was about to ask him another question, but something across the street caught her attention.
She looked out through the plate glass windows of the drug store at the gas station across the street. A silver Chevy Impala had just pulled up to one of the gas pumps and parked.
And then Ryan hopped out of the car and ran to the gas station building.
“I’m sorry, I can’t -” the old man began.
“Never mind,” Lita interrupted him, and her voice had suddenly become cold and her sweet smile had turned sinister. She brushed past the old man, almost pushing him out of the way. “I think I just found him.”
3.
Ryan ran into the gas station store to pay for the gas. He pulled a hundred dollar bill out of his pocket and threw it down on the counter. “Give me fifty on that car out there.”
“Sure thing,” the attendant said. He opened his register and he seemed to be taking his sweet time to find change for the hundred dollars.
Ryan shifted his weight back and forth from each foot, growing impatient; he was just about to make this young man’s day and tell him to keep the fucking change, but then the kid turned around with the bills in his hand. He counted them out slowly for Ryan who thanked him and then hurried back to his car to fill it up.
Lita walked out of the drug store. She crossed the street and walked across the gas station parking lot towards the back of Ryan’s car. He was back at his car now and beginning to fill it up with gas.
“Ryan!” Lita sho
uted.
Ryan looked over at where the voice had come from. A woman had just called his name.
And then he saw her. She looked like she was in her late twenties with short blonde hair. She had a pretty face, but it was lean and chiseled; there was a dangerous look about her. She wore dark clothing that hugged the curves of her body and she wore shiny black boots that came up to her knees.
She walked towards him like she knew him.
But he didn’t know her.
“Yeah?” he said and then glanced back at the digital numbers on the gas pump. He had only pumped in twenty dollars’ worth of gas so far.
“You need to come with me, Ryan,” she said. She was about to reach inside her jacket pocket for her gun, but then Amber got out of the passenger side of the car.
“Go with you?” Ryan asked. “Who the hell are you?”
Lita glanced at Amber and she took her hand back out from inside her jacket. She looked back at Ryan. “You know who I am.”
Amber looked at Ryan, but his eyes were on this blond woman.
Lita glanced at Amber again, and then out of the corner of her eye she saw the young gas station attendant come out of the building. He stood there watching them. She looked across the street from where she had come, and she saw the old man she had spoken to earlier standing in front of the drugstore, just watching her.
What the hell was this, some kind of big event for them in this town?
Lita looked back at Ryan. “Let’s stop playing games, Ryan. You know what we want.”
Ryan put the nozzle back into the gas pump even though he hadn’t pumped the whole fifty dollars’ worth into his gas tank – he didn’t know who this lady was, but he had seen the butt of her pistol when she had started to reach inside her jacket, and he knew it was time to leave. He screwed the lid back on the gas tank of his car and closed the flap.
He knew what she wanted now – the money from the duffel bag.
But he smiled at her. “Sorry. I really don’t know who you are.”
Lita took another step towards Ryan – there was something about him that was strange, she thought. And then it hit her, she just realized what it was. It couldn’t be, she thought, but it was true.
“Come on, let’s go,” Ryan said to Amber.
Amber could read his expression – something was wrong here. She got into the car as Ryan sat down in the driver’s seat.
“You can’t keep running, Ryan!” Lita shouted at him. “He’s going to find you! Just give him what he wants!”
Lita watched the car drive away – she couldn’t do anything about it right now. She pulled her cell phone out and dialed a number. She waited for Jake to pick up.
“What’s up?” Jake said in her ear.
“Come pick me up,” she said into the phone. “I just spotted him.”
“What the fuck? Why isn’t he with you right now?”
“I couldn’t do anything. I’m at a gas station with half the town watching me. Just get over here at …” she read the two street signs at the intersection, “… Ninth and Elm Street.”
4.
Ryan drove fast down the streets as he headed towards Amber’s house.
Amber watched him as he drove. “Who was that?” she asked.
“I don’t know.”
Amber kept her eyes on him.
Ryan glanced at her. “I swear. If I know her from my past, then I don’t remember it.”
“She knew who you were. She wanted something from you. She wanted you to give her something.”
“I wish I knew.”
He isn’t telling me everything, Amber thought suddenly. He had told her about his lost memory, his belief that he needed to be in this town, and that Carol had something to do with his past. He had told her about the tortured man in his dreams who kept trying to take him back to the shack in the woods, the same shack where some of Cutter’s mutilated bodies were found, and where Cutter was found, dead by his own hand. But there were other things he was leaving out, she was sure of it now.
Amber was sure that Ryan knew what that woman at the gas station wanted from him, but he wasn’t going to tell her.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
1.
Carol and Victor entered her house. She led him through the living room, down the hall, and into the den that used to be her husband’s study – the same room that she’d found the small key hidden down at the bottom of a jar, the key that just happened to fit the small gold padlocks on Ryan’s suitcase, the key that Walter told her she already had in her house, somewhere close to her heart, somewhere that made her think of her dead husband.
They entered the den and Carol closed and locked the door. She didn’t really think anyone would try to come in while they were in here, Tom and Victor both knew that this was her private space, even more private than her bedroom.
Victor eyed Carol a little suspiciously after she had locked the door.
“So, what’s going on?” Victor said, and she could hear the slight tremor in his voice. He was nervous, but not just nervous about what he might find in here, Carol thought. She thought he might be concerned about her state of mind, about her sanity.
She nodded down at the huge rug that took up most of the wooden floor in the middle of the den. All of the walls around the room were filled up with various pieces of furniture: an ancient leather chair and small couch that didn’t match, an antique desk with a roll top, several bookcases overflowing with books, an old dresser with wooden wheels and a yellowing mirror, and a few small tables with old globes on top of them that definitely did not portray the modern world anymore.
“Help me roll up this rug,” she told Victor.
“It’s under there?” he asked, and she definitely could hear the tremor in his voice now. His eyes bulged as he stared at her.
“Yes,” she snapped at him as she bent over to grab one corner of the rug. “I can do it by myself if you don’t want to help,” she said. And she could, but the pain in her back from twisting it earlier was beginning to really flare up now.
“No, let me help,” he grumbled.
They rolled back the heavy rug together.
After they had rolled the rug back, Victor took a step back and stared down at the wooden floor. Carol had opened the blinds a little to let some light into the room, but not enough so that someone could see inside. She had also turned on the small lamp on top of the desk. It was plenty of light for Victor to see the pentagram painted on the wooden floor with white paint. The pentagram was huge, big enough for someone (Carol) to kneel inside of completely. There were strange symbols painted inside the circle at each point of the five-pointed star. And there were strange symbols on the outside of the circle at each point of the star. And next to these strange symbols outside of the circle were what looked like slight scorch marks in the wood, like something had burned there. Candles, Victor thought. But then he thought it looked more like something had actually been burned on the wood floor itself – like a clipping of hair perhaps, or a piece of cloth.
“What is this?” Victor finally asked and looked at Carol. “What are you doing?”
Carol shook her head, she looked as miserable as she had when they’d been walking on the sidewalk earlier. “I don’t know,” she said. “I didn’t even think it was going to work.” She hesitated, took a breath and let it out slowly. She stared at him. “But it did. It worked, and I brought him back here. And he’s with us now.”
Victor took a step back – a step away from Carol, away from the gigantic pentagram painted on the floor with its squiggly symbols and scorch marks, away from all of this. “I … I don’t believe in this kind of stuff,” he told her.
“You believe in God,” Carol challenged.
“Yes, of course I do,” Victor nearly spat the words out.
“Then why not the devil? Why not demons and hell? They’re all in the Bible, the Word of God. You can’t believe in the parts of the Bible that you want to, you have to believe in all of it or none of it.�
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“I believe in God, and that’s it,” Victor growled. But he glanced back down at the floor. “But this … pentagrams on the floor, summoning the dead. That isn’t real. The dead stay dead, and that’s it.”
Victor’s voice had risen; he was getting louder with each word that he spoke.
Carol glanced at the locked door of the den, and then she looked back at Victor.
She spoke to him in a low and calm voice. “It’s real, and they are coming soon.”
“Carol …”
“You need to take Tom and leave. Go somewhere for the night. It’s not going to be safe here.”
“Carol, what are you talking about? I’m really beginning to worry about you.”
Carol sighed and she pulled the small key she’d found in this very room, hidden at the bottom of a ceramic jar with a bunch of other odds and ends – it was lucky she hadn’t thrown it out over the years.
But the key would’ve found its way back into my house somehow, her mind whispered in a voice that didn’t even sound like her own anymore.
She showed Victor the small key. “I can prove it to you,” she told him.
2.
Ryan parked in the street in front of Amber’s house. And sure enough, like she said, Gary’s black pickup truck wasn’t there. She said that she didn’t know when he would be back, but Ryan didn’t care anymore. He could feel that rage building inside of him.
A murderous rage, he thought. Maybe the same rage Cutter felt when he tortured his victims, when he drained the life out of them.
He would never hurt Amber, he told himself. He believed he might love her.
Where had that thought come from? Why would he even question himself about hurting Amber?
He could feel his mind splitting into two parts – part rational, part crazy and unpredictable. He felt like he might be running out of time, like the sense of urgency he’d felt since he’d been in this town was even more critical now. He knew that the blond woman from the gas station, and whoever else was with her, was after him and the money. And they would find him soon.