He pulled the sheet of paper from his front pocket and unfolded it. Though he’d already memorized the directions Vincent had given him, he studied it one more time. He’d heard of the lake where Coyote had his rental house. It wasn’t too far from the Wyland campus—about forty minutes north—and one of his professors had a summer vacation home there. Harden had never been to the area.
Harden gripped the steering wheel more tightly as he thought about Emma and what might have happened to her. Or be happening to her at this exact moment. Maybe she was screaming for help. Maybe she was bleeding.
Harden cracked the window and let the cool air distract him. It smelled like morning, when the air sat heavy on the earth and only moved reluctantly when something pushed its way through it. He looked out the passenger-side window and saw the sun peeking over a cluster of interstate fast-food restaurants, each of which had a line of cars at the drive-through but hardly any parked in the lot. He spied a coffee shop and was tempted, wondering if the jolt of caffeine was worth the risk of stopping.
I’m probably overthinking this.
Yes, my picture has been on national news, but the story only lasted a few days after I was found. The cycle has turned, and now the country’s attention is on to the next story. No one will recognize me.
Temptation gave in at the last second and Harden had to veer more sharply than he wanted to make the exit. It wasn’t until he was slowing down on the off-ramp that he noticed the cop behind him.
Fuck.
He tried to slow without braking too hard, but he wasn’t used to how sensitive the Challenger’s brakes were and the car jolted abruptly. The cop came up fast on him, and Harden shifted his gaze between the rearview mirror and the stop sign looming before him. His stomach turned over as he waited for the squad car’s lights to sparkle and dazzle behind him, but nothing happened. He turned right at the stop sign. The cop followed him.
He debated rolling through the parking lot of the coffee shop and heading back to the interstate, but thought that would appear too suspicious. He pulled in to an empty slot next to the store, and the cop, to Harden’s dismay, pulled in the one next to him.
Harden got out.
The cop did, too.
Harden went for the door of the coffee shop.
Locked. The damn place wasn’t open yet.
“Couple more minutes, should be,” the cop said.
Harden cursed himself. Why did I stop here?
“Oh,” Harden mumbled, searching for words that sounded neither suspicious nor inane. “Guess the clock in my car is fast.”
The cop approached Harden’s car and ran over the lines of it with an appreciative gaze. Harden guessed the man in his early forties and, given the officer’s physique, was probably not tasked with much more than paperwork and school vandals in whatever sleepy Pennsylvania town this was.
“Nice car. What year?”
“Um . . . seventy-eight.”
The cop mmm-hmmmed, as if he had guessed as much.
Harden’s mind whirred. He thought about how his driver’s license wouldn’t match the car’s registration. How his dad was now already awake and panicking that both his son and car were gone. How he didn’t know the first thing about Challengers, and that’s all the cop would probably want to talk about as they waited for the coffee shop to open.
But the cop said nothing more about the car. He looked from the Challenger to Harden himself and said, “You look familiar. You from around here?”
Don’t lie, Harden told himself. He knew the tags on the Challenger would say exactly where he was from.
“Nope. From Owen.”
“Owen, huh? Been down there once or twice. Didn’t stay too long.”
“Not much to stay there for.”
A faint smile from the cop, who seemed fixated on Harden’s face. Harden felt himself grow hot.
“I know I’ve seen you before. You come up this way often?”
Harden wasn’t sure which direction to go with his answer, and as he was deciding, a teenage girl with blond hair, black roots, and a green apron unlocked the door to the coffee shop. Harden tried not to look desperate to go inside, as much as he was. He pushed the door open and turned back to the cop.
“I go up to school in New York, so I always drive through here. Got a ticket around here a couple of years ago. Maybe that was you.”
The cop nodded and looked up at the sky, as if the recollection was going to fall on his head. “Maybe that’s it.”
Harden didn’t wait to extend the conversation. He slipped inside and ordered a large coffee. The cop followed and waited in line behind him, then stole a few sidelong glances as Harden moved to the end of the counter to receive his drink. Harden took his drink and attempted to sneak out of the store without any more interaction, but the cop asked him a question as Harden walked by.
“What school you go to?”
Harden’s mind simply froze. He could not think of an answer other than the truth, and then he just blurted it out.
“Wyland.”
As he left the store and got back into his car, Harden hoped he hadn’t just made a big mistake.
CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE
He didn’t want to do this during daylight. He pulled the Challenger over in an empty parking lot outside a grocery store forty miles from his destination and napped in the car. Sleep didn’t come easily, and when it did, it only came in bursts, punctuated by nightmares. His dreams were too close to reality. He saw himself as helpless. Helpless to stop Mr. Kildare. Helpless to get out of the cell. Helpless to save the girl in the car by the cemetery. Helpless to save Emma.
The sleep finally sucked him in fully and didn’t spit him back into consciousness for several hours. He woke confused, weak, covered in sweat. He looked at his watch: just before ten p.m., much later than he wanted. He drove to the nearest McDonald’s, used the drive-through, and devoured a Quarter Pounder and a Coke in about three minutes. Afterwards, he went inside and used the bathroom, keeping his head down as he passed the front counter.
It was nearly midnight when Harden finished navigating the series of country roads that twisted through the valleys of upstate New York. Harden had never been to Ulysses Lake before, though he knew it wasn’t far from Bradford College, where a lifetime ago he’d gone with Coyote and Jacob. They went to pick up non-lesbians, but they ended up paying a hooker to drink with them in a hotel room while Coyote told them all how he’d murdered a boy in the woods on a camping trip.
Did all of that really happen, or was it a false memory induced by his time in captivity? Ever since he walked out of the cell and into that farmhouse, Harden struggled to clearly remember things that occurred in the months before his abduction.
He looked out the car window into the night and saw a conspicuous absence of light, knowing that was the lake. He knew he had several miles left before approaching the house Coyote rented, so he pulled over and double-checked the torn map page Vincent had given him.
27 Hollow Way.
It looked like Hollow Way was only a stub of a road, one that jutted out from the lake like a stray whisker on a freshly shaved face. Harden had no idea whether Coyote’s was the only house on Hollow Way, but given how few houses he saw in general, it was a good bet.
He rolled his window down a few inches and breathed in the lake air. Since getting out of the cell, he sucked in the outside air a lot.
Smells like camp, he thought.
Harden reached out and touched the butt of the gun in the seat next to him. It didn’t feel reassuring.
It felt dangerous.
CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO
Harden slowed and drove past the road once without stopping. He was right—there was only one house on Hollow Way. Even in the moonlight Harden could tell the house was large, maybe three levels, with a back deck extending into a pier. He saw lights in three windows but no movement. No car out front. No idea if anyone was even home.
He drove about another half-mile before pulling the
car over onto a dirt shoulder. There would be no fast escape if something went wrong, but Harden couldn’t chance parking anywhere Coyote might see him.
He stepped into the still and cool night, and, despite his nerves, it felt good to stand. As he shut the car door, he made sure the safety of the gun was on and then gently nestled the weapon into the waist of his jeans. He had a sudden vision of shooting himself accidentally, so he removed the gun and tried to check the safety again under the weak light. He couldn’t see well enough, so he felt for it instead. Up. Down. Safety is up, that’s what Vincent said. Okay. Good.
Safety was on.
The gun went back into the waist of his pants.
Harden locked the Challenger and shoved the key in his jeans pocket.
The house wasn’t far, and Harden started to walk.
His feet rolled small pebbles as he walked. He heard them crunch beneath his favorite pair of sneakers. His only pair of sneakers, actually. His t-shirt left his arms exposed to the cool lake air, and a flirting breeze raised goose bumps on his skin.
Something splashed nearby on the lake. Small, but enough to make a sound. Fish, probably.
A smattering of lights appeared in the distance, across the black expanse of water. Houses on the other side. Far away. Maybe a mile?
Harden stopped walking for a moment and listened.
He thought he could hear something like music in the distance, very soft, like someone talking to you in a dream. It didn’t seem real enough, so he decided it wasn’t. Just his nerves.
Focus.
He walked on. As he reached a slight curve in the road, he finally saw the house. He could see the dark outline of its roof against the moonlight, and from this angle he only saw lights on in two windows. Either the third window wasn’t visible from this viewpoint, or someone had turned off a light.
As the house grew closer, Harden wondered if there was a security system in the house. Would he just try to open a door and see what happened? He had the entire drive up here to figure out a plan, but he was now realizing he hadn’t a clue how to go about any of this. And the uncertainty was terrifying.
He stopped again and listened. He heard music again, and this time he was certain it wasn’t his imagination. It was coming from the house. It sounded . . .
Not right.
Somewhere, way out there, a dog barked. Twice. Then silence.
He pressed the button on his watch to illuminate the digital dial.
12:37 a.m.
He hadn’t felt so alone since he was in Coyote’s cell. Here, he had all the heavens above him yet still felt trapped in a tiny box.
His pace slowed as he got closer. He felt himself hunching over, almost creeping as he neared the place he’d come so far to find.
The music grew louder from the house.
He took a dozen more steps.
Close now. Close enough to hear . . .
It wasn’t actually music, was it?
Maybe.
More like . . . all the sounds in the world. Played an instant at a time, strung together.
Sounds. Just sounds. All the sounds. It didn’t make sense.
He was less than a hundred feet away and the goose bumps washed over him again, covering his arms like a rash. It suddenly felt like too much. Way too much.
He desperately wanted to be able to call someone. The police. His father. Anyone who could come and help. He wasn’t ready for this. But he was far from a phone, far from anyone who could help.
Then he heard the scream.
CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE
A woman’s scream, cutting through the night.
Emma. Oh my God. That’s Emma.
The second he heard her, Harden abandoned all thoughts except getting inside that house. He had found her, and he was not leaving here without her. He hunched down and scurried toward the house, moving as fast as he could while still trying to be quiet.
There was no wind now. The night was still, and Harden braced himself for the next scream. It didn’t come, and the silence was even more agonizing.
There was no streetlight. Under the moon, Harden could just make out the first few feet of Hollow Way. The main road dropped off toward the lake. There was probably a more covert way of approaching the house from the shoreline, but there wasn’t enough light. He could stumble. Fall into the water. Make too much noise.
No. He had to go down the dirt path of Hollow Way.
Closer now. The sounds grew louder. He thought he heard the words of a familiar movie line, but wasn’t sure.
Sharp, jagged sounds. Too many to take in.
So close.
The house loomed in front of him. He could feel it watching him, like a lion patiently eyeing a rodent.
It’s just a house, he told himself. Just a house.
Harden approached, holding his hands in front of him, just as he had done that first moment he’d woken in the cell. Feeling for whatever was waiting for him in this unfamiliar, evil place.
The porch light was on. Had it always been on?
He thought so. But . . . maybe not.
He stopped in a shadow cut by the light, just beyond the edge of the porch.
Go around back. Must be another door. More windows.
The sounds grew louder. It sounded like someone had the television on full volume and was changing the channel every second.
Harden crept around the lakeside edge of the house, where the land seemed to spill over into nothingness. He touched the house for the first time, felt the flaky paint from the old siding scrape off in his fingers like dead skin. The ground shifted under his feet, and the rocky soil threatened to give way at the steepest point of the slope.
Keep going, Harden. She’s in there.
The noise was much louder. Coming from a nearby room. Music. Static. Words. A scream, but not from Emma. From something else. Almost like an animal’s scream, a monkey.
Harden felt for his gun and thought about taking the safety off. His brain told him it was the smart thing to do, but his fingers didn’t listen. They were frozen in place. Another step.
Take out your gun, Harden.
Another step. Now he heard words inside. They were clear. A movie?
“Time is time is time. Don’t you know that?”
“Dead eyes. Like a doll’s.”
Another cut in the sound. Harden’s ears were assaulted by machine-gun fire.
Then the sound of a car crash.
A baby crying.
Water running.
Harden stopped breathing. He felt the muscles in his arms tighten into knots.
What is happening in there?
Then he saw the window. Light flickered around the edges of interior drapes. A fissure of light shot out from the middle of the windows, where the drapes didn’t quite close together.
Harden took out his gun and felt for the safety. The metal was cool and smooth, the gun heavy. He slid the safety off.
Another step. Toward the window. Toward the crack.
At the window, Harden got on his knees. A sudden memory jolted him. He thought of the water balloons in their apartment back at Wyland. Harden, Derek, and Jacob all fell beneath the sightline of the window after firing a round. Not Coyote. Coyote looked out the window, daring anyone to challenge him.
Music now. Acid rock. Screaming lyrics.
Laughter.
A cartoon.
“One lump or two?”
He slowly rose, nose first, toward the crack in the light.
His eyes took a second to adjust.
When they did, he saw her.
Emma.
She was strapped to a chair on the far side of the room, facing him. Her eyes were open, but just barely.
She blinked once as she continued to watch rapidly changing movie clips playing on a vinyl projection screen on the other side of the window.
Emma.
Harden felt time stop. He couldn’t take his eyes off her. She was dying, he knew. He had to stop it. He had to�
�
Coyote ripped open the drapes and smiled down at him.
CHAPTER SIXTY-FOUR
There. Again.
On his face. Something touching. Crawling.
Probing.
“Charlotte,” Harden said. He swiped at his face, remembering the black widow from the cell. Was he in the cell? What had happened? Was everything a dream?
Harden opened his eyes.
“Hey, buddy.”
Coyote crouched over him and lightly drew his fingertips back and forth across Harden’s face. It was almost loving. Harden tried to move but couldn’t. He looked down.
He was strapped to a chair, and it all came flooding back to him. He was in the lake house. He had seen Emma through the tiny opening in the curtains, and she was strapped down, watching some random series of scenes projected onto a screen. The sound was so loud, but her eyes showed only the faintest glaze of life. Then Coyote appeared like a phantom. It all happened so fast.
Now it was silent.
“What are you—”
“Shhh.” Coyote stroked Harden’s upper lip with his finger and Harden recoiled.
“It’s not quite time for you to speak.”
Harden moved his head enough to take in the room. The music was gone, but a projector on the floor fired out images like bullets onto a white screen nearly the size of the wall. So many images, each lasting no more than a second or two. Bodies from ancient war footage. Animals attacking each other in the wild. Lights from a nightclub. A naked baby crying alone in a metal crib.
Harden moved his head to the other side. Emma stared at him. Duct tape now covered her mouth, and her eyes were halfway rolled up into her head.
At least she was alive.
Harden tried to remember what had happened after Coyote appeared in the window.
It flashed in his mind, bits and pieces of a struggle. Harden had jumped backwards, just enough to lose his footing and balance. He had tumbled down the slope next to the house, falling hard and twisting his ankle. He reached for his gun, but it was no longer there.
Revelation Page 26