by Jen Blood
When I turned back to the tree line, the cloaked man from my nightmares had vanished into the woods.
I got to my feet and ran after him—through the woods, past the boarding house, down the trail to the ocean. I ran through a blue forest toward the deep black sea and I didn’t stop. Didn’t slow. The ground was rough beneath my feet. I tripped and landed hard, skinned my knees and jarred my bones. I tore my face on a bramble of thorns I couldn’t get free of, while just up ahead the man with all the answers I’d been looking for since childhood ran like a specter through the night.
Except I didn’t believe in ghosts.
I kept running.
He broke off from the path somewhere along the line; I caught glimpses of him through the trees, but he was always out of my reach. He was leading me toward the south side of the island, where the cliffs were high and the drop to the ocean below was fifty feet of hard edges. I couldn’t see him anymore. Heard nothing. Somewhere far off, Juarez was calling for me.
“Ssh,” my father says. It is night in the woods. We are alone. “Don’t make a sound. Hold your breath. Listen to the forest. You can hear a mouse creep, if you listen hard enough.”
I stopped running and held my breath.
Five seconds passed. Ten. Nothing but the wind in the trees and the distant surf, Juarez’s voice sounding more and more panicked as he shouted my name. And then…
Footsteps, moving fast. I followed the sound, running faster than I had ever run in my life. I saw him up ahead—a black silhouette racing like he couldn’t be stopped. I didn’t slow down when he led me off the path again, where the trees grew thinner and the wind got colder. We cleared the forest and reached the cliffs.
He kept running, leading me dangerously close to the edge. I could hear the waves crashing below, could feel a vast emptiness to my left. A single misstep and I’d be gone. The cloaked man was ten feet away, maybe less, when he turned toward me. He stood at the edge of the cliff and smiled. He held a long, bony finger to his thin lips.
“Ssssh.”
He turned to face the abyss.
An instant later, he was gone.
I ran after him, stopping short at the ledge. Below, I could see him make his steady way down the sheer face, hand over hand down a rope anchored into the granite just a foot down from where I was standing. A boat was idling in the waves below. I couldn’t see details, but at least one other person waited for him.
I stood there gasping for breath and watched as the cloaked man, the man in my nightmares, the man who had been a ghost but was now once and for all incontrovertibly proven flesh and blood, climbed into the boat. He disappeared into the night.
I found Jack in the woods fifteen minutes later, calling my name. Blood coated the front of his shirt. When I finally appeared on the path in front of him he stopped short, his breath coming hard. He wiped blood, sweat, and tears from his face with the back of his hand. I’d never seen him so angry.
“Diggs is right—you do have a death wish. What the fuck is wrong with you?”
I swallowed past the boulder-sized lump in my throat. I’d sprained my ankle and scratched my face. My jeans and jacket were torn.
“I’m sorry—I wasn’t thinking. I just… I had to try and catch him. I’m sorry,” I repeated. “Matt…?”
“They’re both dead,” he said numbly.
There’s a stack of bodies a mile deep, and they keep piling up, Ashmont had said. Matt might have killed Zion and Isaac all those years ago, but were the rest of the deaths really on my father’s head?
“I didn’t find Rebecca,” he said.
I nodded again. I took his hand and led him back down the path. “I think I know where she is.”
August 22, 1990
Joe appears after the shot is fired. He is not there, and then he is. The last remnants of coherence in her tangled brain tell Rebecca that he has been lurking in the background, waiting to intervene when he was needed. He is too late.
Isaac falls. He sinks to his knees, his eyes wide. The bullet hit him in the chest; the blood soaks his shirt and the ground beneath and he dies almost immediately. Rebecca barely notices, however. Her attention is fixed on Zion. He falls backward, hard, and she worries about him bumping his head until she gets closer and sees the gaping wound in his forehead. His face is still wet with tears, but his eyes do not see. She falls to the ground beside him. Pulls him into her arms.
Matt is screaming—the scream of a madman who will never be silenced. Joe is the only one who is calm, though she can see that he is barely holding on. He takes Matt by the shoulders and steers him away from them. Gives orders that Rebecca only half hears:
“Stay with her, Matty—I’ll come back for you. Just stay here till I can get back. I’ll take care of everything.”
Matt becomes very quiet. Joe takes his gun. He kisses Rebecca’s head and wipes away her tears, but he can’t get her to move away from their dead son.
“I’ll be back, Becca. I’ll take care of you.”
He leaves her there with her dead child and her dead lover and the man who took them both. Matt stands. He is still weeping. He goes out into the rain and disappears down the path. Rebecca is certain she will never see him again.
She hopes she will never see any of them again.
She sings to her son, lying broken in her arms.
The Angel of Death reappears. His brow is furrowed. He touches Rebecca’s head. “What a mess you’ve made,” he says. He smiles at her.
He goes to Isaac’s body and lifts it easily over his shoulder, as though it weighs no more than a sack of flour. He carries the dead preacher down the path, paying no mind to the rain or the blood that drenches his cloak. Rebecca blinks away tears, wipes away her son’s blood. The Angel turns back.
“Your son will rise. If he is chosen, he will rise. Leave him. Come with me.”
She kisses Zion’s lips. Arranges him as carefully as she can on the granite floor. She stands and crosses herself in a way that Isaac would disapprove of, though the priests she knew as a child would find it only fitting.
She follows the Angel of Death into the rain.
They go to the chapel. The sun is just coming up, and the congregation has already gathered for their early-morning service. Candles are lit, and churchgoers are singing inside. Their voices are hazy—the chorus of drunken sailors rather than a choir of angels. Her Angel of Death drops Isaac’s body at the bottom of the stairs leading up to the chapel. She watches as he latches the door to the chapel, and places a heavy iron padlock on it.
“It is God’s will,” he tells her. “You are here as witness to God’s fury.”
He goes to the back of the barn. When he returns, he carries a metal container of gasoline.
“You can’t—” she says. She feels the first vestiges of reality seeping in. Her son lies dead. And now…
“I have no choice,” he tells her. “This is what’s required. We sacrifice the flock to resurrect the Lamb of God.” He smiles at her again. There is something insincere about the smile; for a moment, she feels as though he is laughing at her.
Sacrifice the flock to resurrect the Lamb of God.
She stands outside in the rain while the angel completes his mission. The congregation is still singing upstairs. Someone is speaking. The Angel of Death returns to her side. He holds up a lighter.
“I’ll go. You stay here. Wait for your son to return to you. Hide from the world until he does.” He moves closer and presses a kiss to her cheek. He smells like blood and gasoline and the fury of a vengeful God. “Tell Adam that Father is watching,” he whispers.
He curls his body around the lighter, shielding it from the wind and rain until a flame appears. It takes three attempts before the gasoline catches and the fire starts. Someone screams inside the chapel. Children cry. When Rebecca looks around again, the Angel of Death has vanished.
She returns to the greenhouse to wait for Zion.
Chapter Thirty-Four
We found Re
becca Ashmont in my father’s cabin, where I suspected she’d been staying since my father left the island. She lay on my father’s bed with her hands crossed over her stomach and her eyes closed. Her once-dark hair had gone silver and there were obviously more wrinkles than there’d been in the photos I’d seen, but she was still a striking woman.
Jack checked her pulse, though the ligature marks around her neck made it clear what he’d find. I thought of the man I’d just chased through the forest; the man I was now positive had attacked me that morning at the old Payson house.
Rebecca and Joe Ashmont; Noel Hammond; Matt Perkins—all dead now. Ashmont had said Rebecca had seen an Angel of Death—that that Angel was the one who burned the Payson Church to the ground. There was nothing supernatural about this man, though; I’d looked in his eyes twice now, and he was nothing if not flesh and blood.
I touched Jack’s arm and motioned him outside. We watched the sun rise over the ocean and waited in silence for Diggs to arrive with the police.
It was late afternoon the next day before I got back to Diggs’ house. I’d been given a clean bill of health at Kat’s old clinic, then sat through several hours of questioning with Sheriff Finnegan and a multitude of much less friendly faces from the state police, while we tried to sort through everything that had happened. Without much luck, as it turned out.
Diggs’ Jeep was gone when I pulled in, but Jack’s Honda Civic was parked out front. The hatchback was open and a couple of boxes were already packed inside. Einstein bolted past Juarez when he opened the front door, and we had a brief but heartfelt reunion before Stein took off to christen a few bushes in my honor. Juarez approached.
He’d showered and shaved and presumably gotten a couple of hours’ sleep. All things considered, he looked a hell of a lot better than I’d expected. Still exhausted, still haunted, but there was a resilience about him that pleased me. It would take a lot more than a few dead bodies and an amnesic childhood to keep Jack Juarez down for long.
He set down the box he’d been carrying. “Police all done with you?”
“For now. They didn’t learn much—since I don’t really know anything.”
“You know who killed them; that’s something.”
“I saw who killed them—but I don’t have a clue who he is, or what he has to do with any of this. My father’s alive, but I don’t know how to find him. More people died because of this thing—whatever it is—and I don’t know why.” I couldn’t keep the frustration from my voice, try as I might. “I’d say that’s not much of anything, actually.”
“It’s more than I have,” he said quietly. I looked at him and saw the same frustration I was feeling, though considerably magnified. At least I knew where I came from; at least I had a place to start.
He touched a scratch on my cheek. “Aside from that, you survived relatively unscathed this time, right?”
“Nothing that time and a little concealer won’t heal. What about you?” I looked him in the eye. He wavered for just a second before the weakness passed and he smiled. It wasn’t so much an attempt to hide the pain as a refusal to give in to it. I liked that.
He shrugged. “I’m fine. Scratches, scrapes, a bruise or two…”
So, we weren’t talking emotional scars today. Fine with me. He moved in a little closer and ran his hand through my hair. I backed up until I hit the Honda Civic. Jack followed me.
“So, you’re leaving?” I asked.
“I’ve gotta get back—I’m starting to forget what I’ve got waiting for me.”
“Which is?”
He took a little while to think on that. “A job I love. Good friends. A bed that’s been empty too long.” He looked at me meaningfully. “What about you? Are you sticking around Littlehope, or can I tempt you out to D.C. now and then?”
The afternoon was quiet and his body was warm and, honestly, what the hell else was I going to do? I swallowed hard and looked deep into his dark, dark eyes.
“I don’t really know what I’m doing. But maybe a trip to D.C. could be arranged.” I hesitated. “It might be nice to spend a little time without quite so many distractions.”
“If those were distractions, I’d hate to see what qualifies as a real disruption in your life.”
I laughed. “Not just the death and mayhem. The whole thing with Diggs…”
There was barely room to breathe between us, but he moved closer. “I told you before,” he said. “I’m not worried about Diggs.” He leaned in and kissed me. I kissed him back, pressed against the car in the bright sunshine. The world was disappointingly lacking in electricity when he stepped away from me.
“I like you, Erin,” he said. “I think you’re tough and smart and sexy as hell. If Diggs is too scared of what people might think to admit he’s been in love with you since you were sixteen, that’s his loss.” He grinned like he knew full well the kind of bomb he’d just dropped, and didn’t really care. “I’m a good guy—but I’m not so good that I’ll just take a step back till he comes to his senses.”
The world got very, very quiet after that. Crickets, and so on.
“Diggs isn’t…” I started.
He gave me a look that implied arguing the point would be useless. I couldn’t explain the thing with Diggs to myself, let alone anyone else. Why bother even trying?
“So, you really want me to come out to D.C. sometime?” I asked instead.
“Name the weekend and I’ll show you the city.” He got close again. Leaned in and kissed my neck. “Among other things.”
We may have broken a few of your tamer public decency laws before we both came up for air. He had a flight to catch. I had thousands more questions that needed answering and a whole lot of sleep to catch up on. We kissed one more time, he promised to give me a call once he was back in D.C., and I watched him drive away.
I went back inside when he was gone, took a cold shower, and crawled into bed with Einstein.
I didn’t get up again for twenty-four hours.
◊◊◊◊◊
While I slept, I dreamed of the Angel of Death—the mysterious hooded man who chased me across Payson Isle twenty-two years ago, and who now took up almost as much space in my head as my missing father. He was chasing me again in the dream—so close behind that I could feel his fingernails at the back of my neck when he reached for me. I woke in a tangle of sweaty sheets, my head filled with unanswered questions.
Who the hell was he? And what did Kat know about any of it? What the hell kind of secret did my father have in his past that a creepy lunatic in a cloak would come to town after all this time and murder anyone who might reveal whatever he was hiding? And if that was the case, then why hadn’t he killed me when he had the chance? I went in the bathroom and brushed my teeth, still going over everything in my head. I’d solved one mystery: who set the Payson fire. But how many others did I stir up by answering that single question?
I went to see Kat in the hospital that afternoon. Juarez was back in D.C. I’d managed a couple of sleepy exchanges with Diggs, and been called in for more questioning with another half-dozen agencies now looking into the Payson fire and the most recent deaths on Payson Isle. So far, Maya had been adamant that no one be allowed to question Kat until she was on her feet again, but I personally didn’t think that would make any difference.
My mother wasn’t talking.
I went to see her anyway, just in case.
When I got there, she was sitting up in bed trying to type on her laptop with only one hand. Her face was less swollen but no less alarming, and judging by the look in her eye she’d cut off the painkillers about a week too soon.
“You heard what happened?” I asked.
She looked up. “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine.”
She pushed the wheely cart holding her laptop aside and nodded me closer. “Sit.”
I sat on the side of the bed.
She poked at my cheek and made a face. “Blackberry brambles?”
&nbs
p; “I think so, yeah. It was dark—hard to tell.”
“You’re limping.”
“I sprained my ankle. I’m okay, Kat.”
I got off the bed and pulled up a chair instead. I looked her in the eye. She didn’t look away, which I took as a good sign.
“Dad’s still alive.”
“We buried your father,” she said.
“I don’t know who you buried, but it wasn’t Dad. Joe Ashmont told me you’re the only thing standing between me and a bullet,” I said. “Why would he say something like that?”
“Joe Ashmont was a fool and a drunk to boot. How the hell should I know why he said anything?” I noticed that she’d stopped looking at me, though.
Clearly, this was getting us nowhere. I took a deep breath in a vain attempt not to throttle her in her hospital bed.
“Okay, let’s try something else. I’ll tell you what I know. Maybe you’ll have something you can add.”
She didn’t look enthusiastic, but she didn’t stop me, either.
“Isaac Payson helped Rebecca Ashmont and her son escape from Joe, because he was beating the tar out of them. But then Rebecca got out to the island and started sleeping with Isaac, which Dad didn’t like. And Isaac started paying a little too much attention to Zion, who may or may not have been off his rocker himself.”
She smiled faintly at that.
“So, Dad went to Reverend Diggins to get some advice on what he should do. And of course Daddy Diggs decided the best course of action was going out there and staging an intervention. They recruited Joe to help—I’m guessing because Rebecca said she wouldn’t go no matter what, and she was threatening Dad with whatever secret she knew about him. So, he needed her off that island.”
I looked at Kat to see if she would argue any of this. She waited for me to continue, sitting there like a very battered Queen of Sheba.
“So, Matt decided he would have a go at getting her off the island before anybody else went out there—maybe to play white knight, or maybe there were other motives at work. I don’t know. But things went wrong. Isaac showed up. Things got confusing. Matt’s gun went off, and he took out Isaac and Zion in one fell swoop.”