“They’re fine, Sara,” John said. “Look at me.”
She looked into John’s eyes and felt like she could be lost there. She never wanted to stop looking. She felt Alex tug on her arm. She was still holding tightly to his hand.
Reluctantly, Sara looked down. Alex was eying her strangely.
“Mommy? I don’t think that’s who you think it is,” he said.
She turned to look back at John, who smiled broadly. He casually put a hand on Alex’s head and ruffled his hair.
“That’s my boy,” he said. “Always making jokes. Come on, Sara. We’ve got to go. The shade is coming. Do you want him to take Alex away?”
Before Sara could answer, John broke away and started heading down the fire escape.
“John, wait!” she said.
“No time, Sara,” he responded. “We’ve got to go. Hurry!”
She looked behind her to see that the entire building had now caught fire. She could abruptly feel the heat again. Without thinking, she leaned down.
“Get on my back,” she told Alex. “I’ll carry you down.”
He climbed on to her back, reminding her of the days when she used to give him piggy-back rides.
“Hold on tight,” she said and began climbing down the fire escape.
When she reached the bottom, she saw John already running away from the burning building, fleeing into the woods behind Soren’s apartment.
“Mommy, no,” Alex whispered in her ear. “He’s not daddy. He’s a bad man.”
But Sara didn’t hear him. John was leaving her again and she would be damned if she’d let him go.
She set Alex down and pulled him along behind her as they ran into the woods.
Chapter Eleven
Ken sat back in his chair and looked at Soren.
“You really believe that there’s someone else involved?” he asked.
Soren nodded his head.
“Strode might be acting alone, but I don’t think so,” Soren said. “Can you at least entertain the notion for a minute? If I’m right, we need to get a bead on the guy quickly before he makes a move against Alex.”
Ken looked like he wanted to keep arguing, but he stopped himself.
“Okay,” he said finally.
“Good,” Soren said, and pointed to the laptop. “Pull up anyone who recently moved into the area from Oregon. There can’t be that many.”
Ken arched an eyebrow at him.
“Doesn’t exactly work like that,” he said. “I don’t work for the NSA. Best we’ve got are DMV records.”
But Ken sat up and leaned over the computer, beginning to pull up some information.
Soren wanted to get up and pace again, but stayed seated. His theory made sense, but it was incomplete. If Strode had been killed by someone who was kidnapping kids, why didn’t the shade go directly after him? He was a psychic, after all.
Then again, Strode may have just had precognitive abilities. He might have been able to see visions of a man grabbing those kids without knowing who he was. How he was able to find Alastair and Alex to try and save them was unclear, but there was a lot Soren didn’t understand about psychic phenomena. He knew even less about shades.
He did know that psychics often had the same weakness, the inability to see their own future. That would explain why Strode didn’t know he was going to get shot in bed. Soren remembered a woman he’d heard of a few years back that appeared to have some genuine psychic talent. She’d called herself “Madame Zora,” and knew a ton about what was happening in Loudoun County. Ultimately, however, she didn’t know enough to foretell that someone would walk into her shop one day and slit her throat.
“Here’s a crazy idea,” Ken said, still hunched over the computer. “If you’re right about Strode being a victim, is there any way of reaching out to him? It’s possible he knows something that could help us identify the real perp.”
Soren noticed that the more Ken talked, the more he seemed to be coming around to his theory. Soren shook his head.
“You can summon shades,” he said, “but it’s incredibly dangerous. He’s liable to see it as an assault and react accordingly.”
“He’d kill us.”
“That’s the most likely outcome, yeah.”
Ken looked thoughtful for a moment and then started typing on the laptop again. Soren leaned over to see that he was looking at traffic violations. He appeared to be searching for anyone pulled over in Virginia who had an Oregon driver’s license. For the first time, Soren was happy Ken was helping him. Without access to the police files, Soren would never have been able to identify the shade. He’d still be stuck.
Soren shivered involuntarily. He knew the heat was on in his apartment, but for some reason he felt cold.
“Bingo,” Ken said.
Soren looked at the screen.
“We’re in luck,” Ken said. “There aren’t that many matches. Only three.”
But when Ken pulled them up, Soren was disappointed. One was for a woman pulled over in Virginia Beach, roughly 200 miles from Arlington. Another was for a teenager speeding south of Petersburg on I-95, likely on his way to Florida with his college buddies. Only the third was close by, but disappointingly, it was also for a woman.
Of course, Soren was just assuming that the person kidnapping children was a man. He supposed he shouldn’t be so sure of that, but he knew the odds favored it being a man.
“Well, she lives in the right place,” Ken said.
“She married?” Soren asked.
Ken shrugged.
“Again, this isn’t a police state,” he said. “She got pulled over for running a stop sign. We didn’t grill her on her family history.”
“Try searching her name on social media,” Soren said.
Ken looked her up on Facebook. While there were several people with the same name, none matched the photo from her license or were in the right location.
Soren looked again at where she was pulled over. He reached past Ken and pulled up a local map on the Internet, finding the address of where the incident had occurred.
There was a school nearby. Soren looked at the time of the ticket, noticing it was 8:56 a.m. The woman had almost certainly gotten the ticket while trying to rush her kid to school on time.
If she had a kid, that probably meant she had a husband. Even if she didn’t, Soren wanted to talk to the woman and anyone else she lived with. He pulled up her home address in the DMV record and pointed at it.
“Can we go here now?” Soren said. “Maybe it’s a dead end, but it’s a solid lead. We could question the woman.”
“First of all, we won’t do any questioning,” Ken said. “We’re not in a buddy cop movie. You’ll be lucky if I bring you along. And more importantly, we need probable cause to start banging on people’s doors in the middle of the night — and we don’t have it. All we know for sure is that this woman used to live in Oregon. That’s not exactly a crime — or enough for a warrant.”
“I’m beginning to wish we did live in a police state,” Soren said.
“Sometimes we feel the same way,” Ken replied.
Soren stood up.
“I’ve got another idea,” he said. “That’s Glebe Elementary. I’m pretty sure that’s where Alex goes. Let’s wake up Sara and see if she’s ever heard of this woman or her kids. That might give you something more concrete to go on.”
“Let her sleep,” Ken said.
“Trust me, she’d want to be awake for this,” Soren said. “She only went to bed to stay with Alex.”
“If you say so,” Ken said.
Soren walked through his kitchen and to his bedroom door. He opened it slowly, trying to be careful not to wake up Alex.
As he did so, he felt a draft of cold air. The window along the far wall was standing wide open. Soren looked to the bed, worried he would find Alex missing. But it was even worse than that.
He ran back to the dining room.
“Call the cavalry,” Soren said. “A
lex and Sara are gone.”
Chapter Twelve
The shade chased Alex and Sara through the woods. When she looked behind her, she could see his pale hand reaching out to grab Alex.
She struggled to pull her son away in time, still running with his hand grasped in hers. The two of them were exhausted after sprinting for what felt like miles.
John was gone. He’d disappeared into the woods ahead. Soon after, the shade had returned. If Sara tried to run in any direction but forward, the creature was there with his arms outstretched, trying to take Alex away forever. If she slowed, he would appear behind her, just at her heels. When she started running again, he disappeared.
The shade was hounding her, driving her through the woods in a panic. They had no choice but to keep fleeing.
“Mom, no,” Alex whimpered. “We’ve got to stop.”
But she couldn’t. If she stopped, Alex would be taken. She’d had dreams like this long ago, when he was just a baby. In them, a shadowy force was always pursuing her, attempting to wrest her child from her arms. She’d woken dripping in sweat, anxiously going to Alex’s room to make sure he was okay.
Think this through, Sara, a voice in her mind said. This isn’t what it seems to be.
She slowed and the shade once again appeared out of the forest, reaching for Alex. This time, however, Alex tried to pull away from her, toward the creature.
“Alex, no!” she shouted.
She yanked him back just in time, as the shade’s hands grabbed the air where Alex had been standing. When she tried to run, however, her son dug in his heels. He was actively fighting against her.
“No, mom!” he yelled.
The shade took another step forward, and she could see his mouth turn into a wide grin. He looked far more savage than he had when she’d seen him before. His eyes were no longer silver, but dark pools of inky black. She could see rows of sharp teeth in his mouth that were stained with blood. He had already been terrifying, but now he was something out of a nightmare.
You’re almost there, Sara, the voice said. Think it through. Listen to Alex.
Sara moved to grab Alex and pick him up. But when her arms closed around him, he pushed her away.
“No!” he yelled.
The shade was on top of them, but the creature hesitated. He hovered around Alex, looking as if he were about to grab him, but he stayed just out of reach.
“He’s not real, mom,” Alex said. “He can’t hurt us.”
Every instinct in her body told her Alex was wrong. Looking at the shade’s hands, she saw his fingers had transformed into sharp claws. They hovered inches away from Alex’s face and yet the boy didn’t looked scared.
“This isn’t the shade,” Alex said. “He can’t touch me.”
The shade snarled at Alex, showing its teeth again. Its black eyes looked up at Sara. It barely resembled what she’d seen at the playground. Now it just looked like a…
That’s it, Sara, the voice said.
Before she could complete her thought, the shade — or the monster it had become — vanished. She looked around them, but it was nowhere to be seen. She crouched defensively, waiting for it to reappear. Instead, she heard a familiar voice calling to her.
“Sara!” John said.
He walked out of the forest in front of them.
“Come on!” he yelled. “I’ve found a safe place just ahead.”
Sara immediately began walking toward him. Or she would have, except for Alex, who again wouldn’t budge.
“No!” he yelled. “He’s not daddy!”
John turned to look at Alex.
“Shut up, you little shit,” he said. “I’m talking to your mother.”
The words jarred Sara. She stopped trying to walk towards John and looked at him in shock.
“What did you say?” she asked.
“Come on, Sara,” John said, his tone returning to normal. “We can be together as a family. All of us. Just like you always wanted.”
But the spell had been broken. Instead of moving towards John, she pulled Alex toward her.
“Who are you?” she asked.
“I’m your fiancé,” he replied. “I’m the guy you got killed. It’s your fault, Sara. You know that, right? You’re the reason I died.”
Sara closed her eyes. This was another dream she’d had before, the one in which John returned to recriminate her. The realization hit her strongly. This was a dream; of course it was.
The man chasing her from the shadows, John returning to haunt her, even the room in flames — they were all nightmares she’d had in the past. This wasn’t real.
She opened her eyes to find John standing in front of her.
“I shouldn’t have lost my temper, should I?” he said, still smiling. “It’s a flaw, I have to admit. It’s just that your son is a real pain in the ass. Any other kid would have bought the show hook, line and sinker. He should be the one telling you to hurry. But I don’t think Alex believed any of it. Did you, you little shithead?”
“Fuck you,” Sara said, and she heard Alex gasp quietly beside her. “Get away from my son.”
John looked at her with disgust in his eyes.
“This was the easy way,” he said. “Now it’s going to be harder, and a lot more painful.”
John suddenly lashed out at her, punching her in the face. It sent her reeling back.
“You can’t hurt me,” she said. “It’s just a dream.”
But it did hurt. She lifted her hand to her face and felt blood on it. John was smiling at her.
“It’s just a dream,” he said in a high-pitched mocking tone. “You’re an idiot.”
He changed form in front of her, becoming the half shade-half nightmare creature he’d been before. She saw its rows of teeth as it opened its mouth.
“I’m going to tear you apart,” it said in a dark, terrible voice. It took a step toward her.
“You have to wake up, mom,” Alex said. “It’s the only way.”
“How?” Sara asked.
She forced herself to look away from the monster and stare at her son. He looked at her sadly, and for a moment seemed far older than his years.
“You have to let me go,” he said.
Before she could stop him, Alex wrenched himself free of the grip she still had on his left hand.
The world around her collapsed, almost seeming to deflate like a balloon. The monster vanished and everything around her changed. The last thing she saw were Alex’s sad eyes still looking at her.
And then Sara woke up.
Chapter Thirteen
Sara found herself standing near a playground, with Alex just a few feet away.
She was disoriented and confused, sure that she was still trapped in her strange lucid dream. It took a moment for her to realize this was no longer a nightmare. Or if it was, it was the kind that happened when you were wide awake.
She looked down at her thin cotton pajamas, the same ones she had put on before she climbed into bed with Alex. The ground felt damp beneath her bare feet and the cold air made her shiver. She looked beside her to find Alex staring sightlessly straight ahead.
“Alex,” she said, but he didn’t respond.
She gripped both his arms and turned him toward her, but he didn’t engage. He was alive and breathing, but his consciousness seemed very far away.
Sara glanced around her. The playground was unfamiliar. It looked like it hadn’t been used in years. There was a battered slide in one corner and several swings with rusty chains. The see-saw was broken, with one half lying on the ground and the other missing entirely.
In the dim moonlight, she could see a slight mist hanging over the equipment, adding to the terrifying atmosphere.
She reached into a pocket on her pajamas hoping to find a cell phone, but there was nothing there. She had no keys, no wallet and no sense of where she was. Nothing about this place seemed familiar.
The playground was ringed by trees. If there had once been a path i
nto this park, it was long since overgrown. She needed to leave, but there was no obvious path out.
She shook Alex again.
“Alex, honey,” she said. “I need you to wake up.”
But he was completely unresponsive. It was as if he was...sleepwalking.
She realized that was what had happened to her. She remembered the dream of Soren’s room on fire and how she and Alex had escaped the building. The fire hadn’t been real, but opening the window and running into the woods had been.
She thought of the story of Alastair Horne, how he had vanished in the middle of the night with only the window open. They assumed that someone had broken into the house, but what if instead Horne had just left on his own? What if he’d been compelled to open the window, perhaps while trapped in a dream?
But Alex was still trapped in the dream. She tried slapping him gently, and then a little harder, to see if it would wake him up, but there was no response. Alex just stared straight ahead.
She thought of the monster that had been standing there with them and how it had hurt her. She hoped it couldn’t do the same to Alex.
Sara didn’t know how long they’d been walking, but they might still be near Soren’s apartment. It would explain why she didn’t recognize the place. It was somewhere in Loudoun County, an area she hardly knew.
“Soren!” she yelled. “Soren! Ken!”
Only the wind answered her. She heard a squeak nearby and turned to see one of the swings swaying in the breeze.
“Help me!” she screamed. “Please, someone! Help me!”
Her hands were shaking. She wanted to grab Alex and run, but without knowing where she was running to, it could just make the situation worse. Soren lived in Leesburg, but there was a lot of open land around the town. If she chose the wrong direction, they might end up even further from civilization.
“Help me!” she shouted again.
She heard a branch break nearby and turned in that direction. In the mist and gloom, she saw nothing.
“Is someone there?” she asked.
There was a metallic clang and Sara jumped. She spun around to see two of the swings had hit each other, apparently slammed together by the wind.
Closed at Dark: A Soren Chase Novella (The Soren Chase Series) Page 8