by H. P. Bayne
Eloise wasn’t supposed to be back that early, but her art class was cancelled when the teacher called in sick.
She’d arrived home, she realized, in time to prevent her little boy’s murder.
Her first thought was to confront Roman, even to kill him. But Roman hit her sometimes, and she knew she’d never win a fight against the man. If she was injured so badly she was rendered helpless, she’d be no use in protecting her son.
She next thought of escape, of taking David with her and running. Running so far Roman would never find them. But there were faults in that plan too. Roman knew people. Wealthy, powerful people. He belonged to a group he called the Circle, and she knew they had eyes everywhere. The kind of resources and skills they possessed collectively, she’d never run far enough fast enough.
She tried anyway. She packed their bags, just one each for her and David. She took the boy’s favourite train, of course, and his copy of Oh, the Places You’ll Go! If she could turn this into a fun outing for them, he would ask fewer questions she didn’t know how to answer. She packed several changes of clothes and enough cash to see them through a week or two without having to revert to credit cards. She’d envisioned herself getting a job in a small town somewhere, preferably in a place where she was near enough to see the school. That way, she could watch all the time, make sure Roman didn’t return.
She didn’t make it. She’d booked them into a motel in a nearby small town and they’d been there less than a day when Roman turned up, furious, at the door. How he’d discovered their location, she didn’t know, but she was aware of at least one policeman in the Circle’s ranks.
She managed to convince Roman they’d simply gone on a little holiday, arguing honestly that they never went anywhere as a family, and she’d tired of asking him.
He let it go. She didn’t.
She knew then there was no other way. If she wanted David alive, she’d need to give him up.
She nearly didn’t survive the conversation with Mariel and their father, a kind man who would have done anything for his family. And he did do anything. He helped his girls plot a kidnapping.
He knew a couple, he said, who were unable to have a child of their own. They were desperate, but the adoption process was slow and they’d so far been unsuccessful in speeding it up. Eloise insisted on meeting them, but the best she could manage, given Roman was checking her car’s mileage now, was to speak by phone. They were lovely, said all the things she’d told herself she needed to hear to go through with this. They’d let her visit, certainly. They’d find ways to keep her updated on David. She would be a part of his life.
She agreed. They would arrange it well, all of them. Eloise would be “distracted” by a call from Mariel, and their dad would take David from the backyard. He’d drive the little boy to the couple’s acreage out of town, and he’d stay there. Eloise would find a way to get there, to explain to him what was happening. She’d take him his favourite things, his trains, his books, the shirts he liked the best. She’d tell him his father was going through a bad time and it was best, for now, that David not be around there. That much, at least, was true.
She stuck to the plan, and when the police came to speak with her, her grief had been genuine. Walking away from David in the backyard had almost killed her, knowing her little boy would never again call this house his home. That he was about to meet someone else he would begin to call “Mommy.” She reminded herself again and again as she went to answer the ringing phone that this was for the best, that David’s life depended on this. But it didn’t hurt less. The police didn’t doubt her.
Roman had been furious. He’d started to beat her that night, accusing her of losing their son, but she’d stopped him with a threat, that the police would be back with further questions and she wouldn’t lie to them about the origin of the bruises. The police were around a lot with questions. They worked hard to find her son so that she never felt comfortable sorting out a way to visit him. What if they followed her? David’s adoptive parents would be arrested. They all would be. All but Roman, who had played no part in this. David would be placed back with him, alone. All alone with the man who had tried to kill him.
So she kept her distance. She didn’t try to quell her pain; it continued to serve her well with the police. Some days she went into David’s room and never left it. Others, she shut it up and avoided the upper floor at all costs. The house became a prison, just her and the man she’d come to hate with every fibre of her being. She’d stopped him killing her boy, but he’d taken him from her all the same. Sometimes she thought about nothing but how she might kill him and get away with it.
She bided her time, waited until the police investigation and media coverage dwindled, once there weren’t eyes on her every move. A little over a year had gone by at that point, a long, painful year. She’d waited until the police and media had reignited interest in the disappearance at its one-year mark. Only then, once the stories were read and additional tips came to nothing, did she act.
She once again packed up her bag, but this time, she took more with her. She’d leave a lot behind but she didn’t care. She needed enough to get by, but not so much as to slow her down. And she left a note: “Goodbye, Roman. I can’t bear to live anymore in a place where my boy isn’t. Please, don’t try to find me. It’s better this way for both of us. -Eloise.” He could take it as a Dear John letter or a suicide note. She didn’t care either way.
She called a cab this time, ensuring no one could trace her through her car. The cab took her out of the neighbourhood, and she found a friendly woman at a coffee shop willing to give her a lift. She’d considered calling her family, but she didn’t want them involved. They’d already taken on far too much. If Eloise was going to take her son back, she needed to keep them out of it.
The lady took Eloise to a car rental place, and she picked out the cheapest model she could find. Then she drove out to the acreage, using the land location she’d been provided, back when she still expected to go out and visit.
The couple had intended to homeschool their adopted son; they’d really have no choice. Word was they had talked about obtaining some forged documents for him under a new name—their name—but Eloise didn’t know if they’d gotten to it yet. Whatever the case, it wasn’t likely David left the acreage much, and she expected he’d be there when she arrived.
Only he wasn’t. A woman answered the door, a lady with pretty features and the sort of build people described as “sturdy.” It took a moment, but the woman clued in upon greeting the stranger standing on her doorstep.
David wasn’t there. He’d gone fishing for a few days with his father. His father. The strangeness of it struck Eloise, the idea of calling anyone other than Roman David’s father. It was odd, but not disagreeable. Roman had never been much of a father to him anyway.
What wasn’t so welcome was the realization that if this new man was David’s father, the woman Eloise was speaking with was, by extension, his mother. Eloise knew it, of course, had helped to plan for it. It didn’t make it any easier, this idea of having been replaced.
The woman—her name was Val, she reminded Eloise—invited her in. She showed Eloise David’s room. He’d been playing with his favourite train, the gift from Eloise, on the day he’d been taken from the backyard, and it sat on a shelf in a place of pride, easy access for him to reach it whenever he wanted. It was a comfortable room, warm, cozy and tidy. Plenty of toys, lots of clothes in the closet, books sitting in a shelf just like in his old room in The Forks. It was the photos atop the bookshelf that gave Eloise another moment of pause. There were, of course, none of her. Only these two new parents.
She didn’t look more closely at the photos, only a quick glance. It was enough. David wore the largest grin in one of them, the sort of grin Eloise had struggled to pull from him in those later days when Roman had become increasingly dark and unpredictable.
That David was grinning like that for someone other than her was unbeara
ble.
He was happy. Happy, even without her in his life.
It was enough to break her, to steel the resolve to do what she’d come here for.
Standing in the kitchen, she told Val she wanted her son back, that she’d left Roman and intended to start a new life somewhere with David. Val paled. Eloise read the other woman’s silence as room to continue her argument.
Something changed. Val’s face, moments ago placid and pretty, twisted in anger. No, Eloise was not taking David. The arrangement had been made, and so it would stay. David would not live like that, on the run, for the rest of his childhood and youth.
But Eloise was not backing down. He was her son, not Val’s. Arrangements could be altered, broken.
The argument continued, became more heated. Val paced, waved her arms wildly, raged at Eloise. And her voice changed, became deeper, raspy, as if Eloise was dealing with a different person entirely. It occurred to her Val might have multiple personalities, and it became just another reason for Eloise to fight for her child.
And a fight was exactly what it became. The first blow from Val was unexpected, a punch to the face as quick and as sharp as a rattlesnake strike. Eloise buckled under the force of it and fell to the floor. She’d never fought back against Roman; it had always served her better, she believed, to simply take it, as it would end more quickly and with less violence. She didn’t know how to fight back, and she didn’t now, merely curling into herself as Val continued to deliver kicks and blows to every part of Eloise’s body she could reach.
Finally, it ended, just as assaults by Roman ended. Val stalked away, leaving Eloise gasping and sobbing on the floor.
Only it wasn’t over. Not this time.
Eloise looked up to the approach of footsteps, saw Val reappear over her.
This time, she held a butcher knife.
Eloise screamed as the knife streaked toward her. They felt like sharp punches at first, the knife blows that struck her chest. She gasped beneath the weight of them, the screams caught in her throat.
Then the blade, coming down again and again at breathtaking speed, arced toward her throat. Eloise tried to move away, to put a hand up to block, but Val wouldn’t be stopped. Eloise watched her own blood as it left her body until, at last, darkness stole over her.
25
The image changed, darkness giving way to bright light, Eloise slipping away so that Sully reemerged.
It wasn’t the light of heaven he was seeing, despite having just experienced the horror of having been murdered. It was a light hanging over his body.
A fiery pain from his middle seized him, reminding him of the bullet wound there. But he forced himself past it, the continued danger he was in leaving him no room for anything else.
He cast his gaze around, noted the familiar sky-blue, windowless walls, the grimy white tile.
The Blue Room.
Sully knew from experience what he’d discover upon trying to move his arms and legs, but he attempted it anyway. He was indeed strapped down, ankles and wrists secured in padded restraint cuffs locking him to the treatment bed. Somehow, Gerhardt has managed to drag him in here, despite any restrictions his disability and age might create. Needs must and all that.
Gerhardt stood nearby, regarding Sully thoughtfully. “You’re back.”
He was, and he knew what came next. Gerhardt would question him, quite likely with brutal force, even torture. The only escape Sully could imagine came with the three ghosts nearby. He could sense them rather than see them.
It was enough.
He closed his eyes, shutting out Gerhardt’s additional questions and demands for answers. Sully locked onto the entities, all three at once. He’d never managed more than one at a time, but then, he’d never tried. He’d do it now. He needed to.
It was palpable the moment he drew their flailing energy into himself, allowed the hangman to consume it. The most startling thing was a gradual lessening of his pain, the burning in his abdomen fading to a dull throb. He felt the hangman’s answering laugh, felt it bubble up within his own throat until Sully gave it physical voice.
“What are you laughing about?” Gerhardt’s tone was still its usual brand of bitter, but a tremor sounded within the words. Sully didn’t blame him. The sound of that laugh had shaken him too.
The hangman pressed forward, urging Sully to allow him to control this moment. Past events dictated the executioner was stronger, more capable of doing what had to be done. Yet, for some reason, this time the hangman hadn’t been able to simply take over.
Gerhardt stepped forward. “Answer my questions! What did she tell you? Where’s my son?”
Sully snapped his head toward Gerhardt, took pleasure in the way the sudden movement caused the older man to flinch. Sully allowed a sneer to form, the sort of dangerous smile he didn’t know he could truly pull off.
“I’m not telling you a damn thing, you son of a bitch. Go to hell.”
The psychiatrist took one more step. “You’re in no position to refuse me. Now we can do this the easy way or the hard way. You don’t want to know what ‘the hard way’ entails. Now I want to find my son. I need to find my son.”
A voice, spoken in a solid Cockney accent, sounded in Sully’s brain, coming from somewhere deep within. Now’s the time. Let me at him, boy.
Sully ignored it. For now.
He fixed his eyes on Gerhardt’s. “All this time, I thought you were looking for him because you loved him. Because you wanted to give him a proper burial or find some peace for yourself. But all you really want is to kill him.”
“What?”
“The second son prophesy. I know about it. I also know you tried to kill David shortly before he disappeared.”
Gerhardt opened his mouth to deny it, but closed it again. When he reopened it, a dark smile formed. “I supposed there’s no sense denying anything more to you. You’re not leaving here alive anyway.”
Now, boy!
“Harry Schuster—you remember Harry—he came to our Circle when he was still quite young,” Gerhardt said. “Well, we were all young then, I suppose. He convinced us of his abilities, in part because of a tragic car crash he’d predicted that came to pass. He went into these trance-like states and said things. None of us understood it, including him, and it eventually drove him mad. But as strange as these visions were, they always came true. When he came to us with the second son prediction, we were understandably concerned. We’d begun to really get somewhere as a group. We were achieving the things we’d come together to achieve. I, for instance, was able to finish paying off large debts from school and secure myself a job as Lockwood’s chief psychiatrist thanks to my contacts in the Circle. I owed them everything.”
“So you agreed to kill your own son?”
“It wasn’t an easy decision to make. But, by then, Harry was starting to zero in on some people. He told me I was the father of the second son. We decided, as a group, that I had a chance to stop things before the Circle was destroyed. ‘When the second son rises, the Circle will fall.’ That’s what the prophesy says. We were what we were because of each other. The Circle was greater as a whole than any of its individual parts. I owed everything I’d achieved to it. I couldn’t allow it to crumble, so I did what I had to do.”
Sully thought back to the little boy in the vision, pale-haired, bright-eyed and innocent. Not so different from another child who’d fallen victim two decades later to the same prophesy. Aiden and David. They’d been killed for nothing better than greed and a desperation for power.
Sully’s hands balled into fists as he snarled his response at Gerhardt. “He was just six years old.”
“Exactly. He wasn’t yet a threat. I couldn’t wait until he was older, when he’d be able to defend himself. If I waited until I saw the evidence myself, he’d have been too strong for me to fight. If I waited even another year or two, he’d be strong enough to put up a struggle. Struggles leave bruises, marks. If I simply owned up to my responsibility w
hen he was still very young, there would be little to no evidence of wrongdoing. Police would likely ask questions, but there would be no way to prove a murder.”
Heat bubbled inside Sully. The hangman was begging to be let loose. Not yet. Sully pinned Gerhardt in a glare. “You fucking bastard.”
“I know what you must think of me, but I truly had no choice. The child had to die. Problem was, he disappeared before I could finish it. After the failed attempt I’d made, I had to bide my time, wait until he stopped being so suspicious of me. In the meantime, I became more and more convinced David had gone against my orders and told his mother. When he disappeared, I thought it very possible Eloise had something to do with it. I wasn’t certain, given her grief was certainly very real, but it sat there in my brain, wouldn’t let go. Finally, she disappeared, taking all possible answers with her.”
“Dez told me about a young woman who said she saw David, that he was with you.”
“Fifteen years or so after the disappearance, yes. She said she saw him, and I believed what she meant was that he was dead. I thought if I could find the body and prove it was my son, I’d have something to take to the Circle to settle them. Harry, you see, had never stopped going on about the second son prophesy and everyone was anxious. Some of them looked at me like I’d failed them and, you have to understand, failing the Circle is not an option. I would have done anything to find David, to prove to them he was no longer a threat.”
Sully thought of Lucky, his teenage birth mother who’d lied to her own family about his existence to protect him. If she’d known about or sensed Gerhardt’s true intentions with David, the last thing she would have done was hand him over. And there was the other possibility, that she’d been trying to find a way out of Lockwood. If she could convince the psychiatrist to let her leave, to search for David or his final resting place, she could find a way to escape.