Don't Ever Forget (Adler and Dwyer)
Page 27
We have to save ourselves.
“I want you to tell me who Hagen is right now!” Cindy yelled.
Dr. Phines was beginning to cry. “I don’t know anything about a Hagen. I came here to see Trevor. Look.”
She put her hands down and grabbed her pocketbook, reaching inside.
“She’s got a gun!” Trevor screamed. “Shoot her now! Shoot her!”
Trevor ran from the corner he was hiding behind and pushed Cindy toward Dr. Phines, screaming in her ear to shoot her and save them. The sudden impact and the screaming startled her, and she felt Trevor’s hand close over hers, another finger poking through the trigger guard and squeezing. The house exploded with a single shot, rocking Cindy and Trevor backward. Trevor let go and fell to the side while Cindy crashed into the small table that held the mail and the keys.
She’d been too close to miss. Dr. Phines flew against the door, the pellets from the shotgun shell ripping through her chest and stomach. She landed faceup, staring at the ceiling, the side of her body against the front door. Smoke filled the space.
In a matter of seconds, everything was still. Cindy’s ears were ringing as she sat up. The only sounds she could hear were the two or three ragged breaths Dr. Phines took before dying.
Trevor scurried past her and knelt down next to Dr. Phines. He checked her pulse while Cindy tried to push herself to her feet. As she climbed to her knees, she noticed the framed picture of Trevor’s family that had fallen off the table and shattered. She picked up the frame by its corner, and the photograph fell out.
The picture wasn’t a picture. She could see the watermark from the stock photo website; the photo had been printed and placed in the frame. The thin matting around the scene of the pretty blonde woman and young boy had covered the advertisement and logo from the site. Now that she thought about it, Trevor hadn’t been in any of the pictures that were displayed around the house. Not one. It hadn’t registered until just then.
Cindy held her breath and looked over at him. He was whispering something into Dr. Phines’s ear; then she watched as he kissed her gently on the lips. When he looked up at her, she could see a bit of Dr. Phines’s blood on his chin. He smiled, and this time his eyes narrowed and the edges of his lips curled up higher than they normally did. He looked so completely different.
“Hagen,” she murmured.
“Hello, Cynthia.”
Cindy immediately raised the shotgun and pulled the trigger, but nothing happened.
Trevor shook his head. “Just one shell for just one purpose.” He rose to his feet and wiped the blood from his hands with the bottom of his shirt. “You did good. I’m proud of you. It’s nice to see something finally go right.” He walked toward her, and she cowered against the wall. “I’m not going to hurt you, but we need to find the others. It’s time to end this. We’ve waited long enough.”
69
The ground was cold, wet, the snow about two inches deep. Within a few steps, his socks were soaked and his feet frozen. James staggered through the dead stalks, pushing them aside as he tried to run with no real destination in mind. Where was he going? What was his plan? His head was still spinning, confused at the reality of being in a cornfield instead of on the streets of Manhattan, where help from a stranger was supposed to be right there.
The sky was turning deep shades of pink and purple as the sun slid toward the horizon. He realized this was the first time he’d seen the sky or been outside that he could remember. The air felt good in his lungs and on his face, but with each passing moment he knew his body temperature was dropping. His sweatpants and sweatshirt wouldn’t keep him warm for long. The wind and the cold would have him before the night was through.
He ran toward the silo, which was the only visible structure. The field he was in must have been hundreds of acres, if not thousands. The silo stretched into the purple sky like a lighthouse on a rocky shore. It was his only option.
James staggered forward, his feet so cold they hurt. His hip and knee barked with every step, but he pushed himself, seeing only the silo. Seeing his salvation.
There was movement behind him.
More movement off to his left.
Then his right.
James stopped and listened. The snow crunched lightly all around him, and he turned in time to see one of the ghosts—the girl—slipping in and out of the cornstalks. He looked to his left and could see the boy standing still, staring at him with those dead eyes that no longer held life or color. The boy smiled, and James saw his black gums and rotting teeth, one tooth missing. The sun was going down. They were coming for him. He had to keep moving.
“Get away from me!” he cried as he started walking again, stumbling through the snow, his feet hurting so much he could feel them burning.
The silo was still about two hundred yards away. There was no way he was going to make it. He began to lose his balance. Between his feet freezing underneath him and the fact that his legs had been immobilized for so long, his muscles didn’t have the stamina to keep him upright and active. He knew if he fell, he would die where he landed. The cold would take him. Or perhaps the ghosts would get him first. Either way he’d be nothing more than a corpse by morning. He never should’ve left the basement.
The boy and girl were flanking him about two rows away on each side. He could see them on his periphery, their dirty and tattered clothes streaming behind them like tails on a kite. The wind blew, and the girl’s hair pulled away from her pale gray face. The rot along her hairline was starting to pull her skin from her skull. And she laughed. The entire time she chased him, she laughed and skipped along.
The boy was quiet, concentrating on keeping pace. He ducked and dodged around the cornstalks, his brittle dead fingers pushing them out of the way as he went. His eyes were focused on James. No more smiles. No more games. They wanted him, and they knew they were close. The other two girls appeared a row behind the boy. They were all there now, tracking him, closing in.
James stepped and hit a patch of ice. His left leg slid out from under him, and he lost his balance, falling into the snow. He pushed himself up on his elbow and lifted his head. The sky was getting darker. From where he lay, he could no longer see the silo, but his feet wouldn’t allow him to stand. He rolled into a sitting position and gently touched his toes. Pain shot through him. His feet were frozen. His hands weren’t far behind.
The children were coming. They would take him, piece by piece, leaving nothing but ashes to be spread across the cornfield by the winter wind. James closed his eyes and waited for them. He didn’t want to watch as they took their first bite, to feel the pain as they tore him limb from limb. He wanted to sleep. Just . . . sleep.
“Get up!”
James felt someone poking him, and he tried to open his eyes.
“Get on your feet.”
So dark. Everything. No stars in the sky or lights anywhere he could see. His eyes were open, but it didn’t matter. It made no difference.
“Get up now, or I’m going to hurt you.”
Hands slipped behind his back and roughly pushed him into a sitting position. He looked around and tried to figure out where he was. All he could make out was the shadowy figure in front of him and the outlines of cornstalks as far as he could see. It was the black man who he’d seen a few times before. Or maybe more than that. He couldn’t remember.
“Where am I?” he asked.
“Are you serious? You’re in the fields. Could’ve died out here. No shoes. No coat. We probably should’ve let you.”
“How did you find me?”
“Followed the tracks in the snow.” The man grabbed him by his arms. “Get up.”
James got himself into a standing position. Pain shot through his feet and legs.
“I can’t walk. My feet.”
“I don’t care.”
“I can’t walk.”
“You probably got frostbite or something, but you have to walk. I’m not carrying you. Let’s go.”
/> James felt the end of a blade press against his cheek.
“They stopped me before, but no one’s here now. Just you and me. You killed my sister.”
“No. I didn’t kill anyone.”
“I could pull this knife across your throat and tell them you tried to attack me and there was a struggle. Something like that. They’d buy it. I can be convincing. They’d buy it, and I’d deal with Hagen and the rest of them, and your body could rot out here.”
“Please,” James muttered. His teeth were chattering. “Don’t kill me.”
“As long as you keep walking, you don’t have to worry about me killing you. Yet.” He pushed him hard. “Walk.”
“Where?”
“Back to the house. We’re not done with you.”
70
James felt the heat coming from the basement as soon as he stumbled in past the hurricane doors. His extremities began to thaw almost immediately, his skin burning as he got warmer. The pain in his hip and knee was a constant now. His body was failing him.
The familiar sounds of the city filled the room again, and James knew, at that moment, the honks and footsteps and calls for taxis and sirens were all just recordings, pumped through speakers he couldn’t see. He looked toward the three windows, knowing now that there was nothing beyond them. He’d been trapped all along.
“We didn’t want you to feel like you were alone out here,” the man explained, following James’s gaze toward the windows. “We knew you liked to visit Manhattan, so we found a soundtrack to make you feel more at ease.”
“Who are you?” James asked.
“You don’t remember me?” the man asked. He held up one of his fists, the knife occupying the other. “You remember this?”
“No.”
“I’m Rebecca’s brother. David.”
James had to think. The fog was rolling in and out, and it was difficult to hold on to a single thought for any length of time. “I think I know the name.”
“We’ve met a bunch of times, but whatever.” David leaned in and whispered, “I’m going to get you for what you did to her.”
“I didn’t do anything. I love Rebecca.”
David grabbed the back of James’s shirt and pushed him into the wheelchair. Before James could wiggle away, David pressed his weight against him and pinned down each hand, then pulled zip ties from his pocket and fastened his wrists to each armrest. He did the same with his ankles, tying them to the footrests that were still raised from when he’d had the braces on.
The woman and the other man who’d helped him at night came down the stairs. The woman looked like she was crying. The man had a shotgun resting casually against one shoulder and an ornate wooden jewelry box under his other arm. Something in the back of James’s mind clicked. He recognized the box. How did they know about the jewelry box?
The man nodded toward the upended mattress and the papers that had been scattered about. “What happened?”
David secured the last zip tie, stood up, and shrugged. “I have no idea. When I came in, I saw on the monitor that the room was empty. I came down to check it out, and I found everything like this, with the doors in the back open.” He reached down and grabbed a few of the notes. “What are these?” he asked, reading them as he flipped through. “They want to hurt you. You’re in danger. They’re not who you think they are.” He looked at the man and woman. “Which one of you did this?”
“I did,” the man on the stairs said. “I tried to show him that he had someone looking out for him, but he kept forgetting what I was telling him, so I wrote these little messages to help him remember. Never worked.”
David let the notes fall. “What are you talking about?”
“He’s Hagen!” the woman cried. “All this time, it was Trevor. Trevor’s Hagen!”
Trevor nudged the woman down the rest of the stairs and set the jewelry box on the landing. Before David could react, Trevor pulled the shotgun from his shoulder and aimed it at him. “Everybody calm down.”
David could only stare, his hand clenching the hunting knife. “Is that true? You’re Hagen?”
“It’s true.”
“Why?”
“I realize in the grand scheme of all this, it’s going to sound stupid,” Trevor began. “The bottom line was, I wanted a family. I wanted to start fresh with my dad, but between the dementia and him confessing to being an accomplice to murder, it didn’t seem like that would be possible unless I silenced everyone who knew his secret. I needed to get you all up here so I could put an end to it. All of it. All of you.”
James watched the scene play out before him as if he were watching a movie. None of it seemed real. The fog was in and out, confusing him at times, then clarity seconds later.
“When my father was first diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, the hospital found me from some of his old medical files that linked him to my mother and me. They wanted to add me as a next of kin, make me responsible for him. I told them no. We were father and son in blood, but that was it. I never even knew the man, and at that time, I didn’t want to.”
The room was silent.
“They dropped it, but there was a note about me in the file that was given to Sara Phines when she became his new neurologist. She called a couple of times to update me about his treatments, and I started to warm to the possibility of having a second chance with my biological father. My mom was gone, and my grandparents had died years ago. I never got married. Had no kids. I was lonely, and this was a chance to have a family again. This was my chance to start new. I knew it would be short lived. The Alzheimer’s was getting worse, and it would only be a matter of time before it took him away, too, so I decided to let him into my life. I decided I wanted a father.”
The woman was still crying, standing alone, head down.
“I started digging into James’s past and visiting him on the weekends, when I knew Rebecca wasn’t around. He’d tell me stories when he could remember, and I’d tell him about my life growing up on this farm with my mom and my grandparents. It was good; things wouldn’t always stick. One second he’d be telling me a story, and the next he was asking me to drive him to his class. One day he was having an episode and told me about killing Sonia Garland. He told me about what he did with Cindy’s mother and how he still carries all that death and remorse around with him. After a few more visits of me trying to push him to remember, he showed me the hole in the floor and the jewelry box of things he kept down there to remind himself about what he’d been a part of. I couldn’t believe it.”
James tried to move, but his hands were fastened too tight. All he could do was sit and watch and listen to them talk about things he’d done but that he didn’t remember. The other man and the woman were focused on Trevor, hanging on his every word.
“Then he told me about Cindy being his daughter, and just like that, our family grew. I had a sister. And she was someone who could be part of my life even after James passed. I was going to reach out to her, but then he started getting worse and couldn’t control his thoughts or what came out of his mouth anymore. I think because I was making him tell me about what had happened, it was fresh in his mind, and he started blurting out details of the abductions and the murders. All of a sudden people knew his secret. Sara Phines knew. Rebecca knew. I figured it wouldn’t be long before one of them told the police, so I decided to do something to help him. I mean, he was my dad, and I wanted to try and have a relationship with him before it was too late.”
“You’re crazy,” David mumbled. “All this to reconnect with your father? All these lives changed or ended because you were trying to build this sick relationship?”
“No,” Trevor said. “Lives were changed and ended because people got nosy and greedy and became liabilities. That was their own fault. I just wanted to protect my dad from himself. That’s all.”
Fear gripped James as Trevor looked at him and continued talking.
“I decided the best way to find out what everyone knew was to get close
with Dr. Phines. I romanced her. Took her places. Did things to her and with her that hooked her for real. Once I had her trust, I made her promise she wouldn’t go to the police, and she agreed. She told me how Rebecca had said James kept talking about kids he’d kidnapped and killed, and for whatever reason, playing The Birds seemed to trigger it. Sara also told me Rebecca had told her brother, which made sense, since she knew he was trying to come up with an idea for a book. I couldn’t have that—right, David?”
David was silent, his eyes focused only on Trevor, his knuckles white around the handle of the hunting knife.
“And my dad just kept getting worse. So I set up cameras in the house to keep tabs on things. I watched Rebecca come in every day and put the movie on to try and coax a confession, while David sat around taking notes. Total exploitation. It was tough to watch, but at the same time, it helped me come up with this plan. I knew I had to get you all together in one place so I could stem the flow of information that was in danger of getting out and wrecking my new family. So I dangled a few carrots. I created Hagen and texted Rebecca from a burner phone, telling her I knew all about what James had done, and in exchange for helping me kidnap him, I promised a liver for their mother. Once she was on board, I knew she’d tell David and that he would be too. Then I had her contact Cindy with an opportunity I knew she couldn’t refuse. I offered her the chance to finally learn the truth she’d been obsessed with finding for decades. All she’d ever wanted was to hear the real story about what happened to her sister, and I was the only person who could provide that. After she agreed, I had her contact me, and I played the victim, panicked after Hagen kidnapped my fake family. I had to show you all that I was in this with the rest of you, and you all bought it. It was easier than you might think.”
Trevor took a few more steps into the basement.
“I thought if I could give Cindy the truth about Sonia, she’d forgive me for lying to her about being Hagen, and we could start fresh as brother and sister with our father. My new family. The plan really had a chance to work, but then Rebecca panicked and backed out because she’d grown too attached to James. That left us with the hooker. Then the hooker freaked out after we abducted my dad, and she became a very dangerous loose end. I had to take care of her. I had to kill the trooper after Cindy got pulled over, and when the police found Rebecca’s car, I knew everything had gone to shit. At that point, it became time to just clean up the mess and go. No more games. No more screwing around. I would’ve done it sooner, but I had to wait until I could get Sara up here. She couldn’t leave while she was a resource in an open investigation. It would’ve drawn too much attention to her.”