by P. T. Hylton
She fished the phone out of her pocket and saw a photo of a skinny, balding man on the screen. She groaned. Was this coincidence or catastrophe?
She took a deep breath and touched the green icon on the screen.
“Hey, Dad! What’s up?”
“Sophie, what are you doing?” His voice was matter-of-fact but clipped. This was his get-down-to-business voice.
Sophie let out an exhausted breath. Catastrophe.
“You’d rather I was there with you and Mom manning the tip line?”
“Actually, I would.”
It was always the same. It had been this way when Taylor was on the run. Sophie got frustrated that Mom and Dad weren’t doing enough, and Mom and Dad got frustrated that Sophie was distracting them from the work at hand. Fundamentally, her parents believed in the system. They thought Charles Taylor was a problem that could be solved through paperwork and phone calls. Sophie thought that was bullshit.
“You getting a lot of great tips on the hotline today?” she asked. “Did that guy who claims to have Heather’s left foot in his basement call again?”
The number of crank calls to the hotline was overwhelming. Most of them barely even remembered the details of Heather’s death. It was even worse this time. Not only did the crazy serial killer fans and wannabes call, now it was the Rook Mountain conspiracy nuts, too. Charles Taylor had been taken by aliens. Charles Taylor had been taken by giant birds. Charles Taylor had ascended into heaven to sit at the right hand of Jeffrey Dahmer. The crazy calls never stopped.
When her father didn’t answer, Sophie said, “How’d you know I was here, Dad?”
“Somebody at the prison called Don Gurke. Don called me.” Don Gurke was the family’s attorney—a victim’s rights advocate who had become a close friend of the family over the years. “Sophie, what exactly are you trying to accomplish? Did you really think anybody there would talk to you?”
She paused, trying to decide how to answer. What was she doing here? It had all seemed so clear fifteen minutes ago. “I had to try something different. Sometimes sitting and waiting for the phone to ring isn’t the best approach.”
“We’ve done a hell of a lot more than that. You know the money, the hours, the years we’ve put into capturing this madman?”
Sophie squeezed her eyes shut. She remembered. She remembered being shooed out of the room while her parents sat at the dining room table, a two-foot tall stack of files in front of them, when all she wanted was a hug. She remembered the painful, distracted looks in their eyes on every special occasion since Heather’s death. Every milestone in Sophie’s life was just another reminder of the daughter who wasn’t there.
“We’re trying our best here. Answering the phones might not sound like much. I know it’s not flashy, like driving to a prison across the state, but this is how real cases get solved. Ask any detective, any criminal lawyer. Real investigations aren’t sexy and they aren’t exciting. They’re long hours and paperwork. They’re a grind.”
“Yeah? How far has that grind gotten you this time?” She paused, the rest of her comment stuck in her throat. A tall man in a uniform was strutting toward the car, his arms swinging at his sides. His crooked smile revealed perfectly white, level-straight teeth.
“I gotta go,” she told her father.
“Wait, we need to talk about this. Your mother and I—”
Sophie hit the END icon on her phone. Whatever authoritative, by-the-book resolution her father had been about to suggest would have to wait.
The closer the man got, the bigger he looked. Sophie gripped her phone tightly. Why hadn’t she thought to bring a weapon? At least a can of mace or something.
The man reached the car, leaned over, and rapped on the driver’s side window.
Sophie paused only a moment before she stabbed at the button to lower the window. As the glass descended, the man leaned forward, his smiling face getting uncomfortably close to hers.
“I’m hitting on you,” the man said. He spoke in a low throaty voice. She smelled the freshly chewed wintergreen gum on his breath.
“Well, you’re direct. I’ll give you that.”
His smile wavered. “No. I’m not really hitting on you. I mean, pretend I’m hitting on you. My friends are watching.”
She struggled to keep her face even. Just what she needed. A horny guard. “Yeah? What did they want you to say?”
The man cleared his throat and looked away.
“It’s okay,” she said. “I worked in a bar in Nashville for five years. I’ve heard it all.”
His eyes met hers, and she noticed his cheeks were red. “They, uh… they wanted me to tell you that if you really want to get into prison, you’ll have to let me frisk you…”
“Go on.”
“And you’ll have to frisk me, too. Nice and slow.”
“Lovely.” She turned the key and started the engine.
“No. Wait. It’s not like that.”
She adjusted her rearview mirror and stepped on the clutch. “Oh yeah? What’s it like?”
The man looked back and forth as if scanning to see if anyone was close by. He didn’t look pervy to Sophie anymore; he looked nervous. “It was an excuse to come talk to you. I know who you are. Who your sister was. I followed the case pretty closely back then.”
She took her hand off the stick shift and set it on the wheel. “You and everyone else.”
“Yeah, well, the difference is I remember. I remember what that monster did, and I never let him forget it while he was in here.”
Sophie looked at him out of the corner of her eye. He wasn’t bad looking. She glanced down at the ID badge hanging from his shirt pocket, and she saw the name Timothy Rodgers.
The man shook his head. “It’s not right the way they’re covering everything up. The way they pretend the last eight years don’t matter. Taylor’s proof they do. All the damn scientists and government types in town, looking in every old lady’s cupboard for the secrets of the universe. And here a man, a killer, disappears and nobody sees the connection.”
“Okay,” she said, “what’s the connection?”
He shook his head. “Not here. I’ll talk to you, but if the guys find out I did, I’ll wake up in a burlap sack being beaten with bars of soap, you know?”
“Not really. Listen, man, I want to hear what you have to say, but I’m not an idiot. Somewhere public, okay?”
He nodded. “There’s a pizza place called Leon’s downtown. We can grab a slice and I’ll ruin your appetite with what I have to say. I’ll be there at five thirty. Sound okay?”
It sounded like she’d struck gold and fallen into a trap all at the same time. “When you go back to your buddies, will you at least tell them I spit in your face?”
He grinned. “I don’t like lying to my friends.”
She spat in his face and threw the car into reverse.
3.
Sophie stopped at the first gas station she saw and grabbed two bottles of water, a bag of Doritos, and—after a moment’s hesitation—a frozen burrito. No way was she showing up at this pizza place hungry. If she was hungry, she would order food, and then she’d be committed to sitting there eating it even if this Rodgers guy turned out to be a complete nut job.
She popped her burrito into the food-splattered microwave, hit the START button, and looked around while the microwave hummed. The gas station was oddly crowded for a Wednesday afternoon. The two cashiers were ringing up customers and handing out change and lottery tickets as fast as they could, but the line still snaked down the candy aisle and past the microwave station where she stood.
She eyed the kid in line standing closest to her. He looked like he was maybe fifteen years old. She glanced down and noticed a large tattoo on the back of his right hand. It featured the face of a clock with a jagged crack running down the center of it.
Sophie looked up and saw his eyes were on her. He’d caught her looking. Probably thought she was checking him out. With her slight build
and her playfully-styled brunette hair, she was often mistaken for ten years younger than her age, and she constantly had to fend off guys far too young for her tastes.
She gave him a polite, thin-lipped smile. The kid grinned back at her.
He gestured to the long line in front of him. “This is crazy, right? It’s always like this now.”
Sophie gave him a disinterested look. She supposed it had been hard for this kid, going from cut off from the world to being at the center of a media circus. “Yeah. Not like the good old days, I guess.”
The look on his face changed at that. His smile narrowed, but something about it looked a little more genuine. The line in front of him moved forward. He gestured to the man behind him. “You can go ahead.” He stepped out of line and held his hand out to Sophie. She gave it the briefest of shakes.
“I’m Grant. I’m pleased to meet you.”
“I’m Sophie. I’m waiting for my burrito.”
He pointed to the back of his right hand. “I saw you checking out my tattoo.”
She shrugged. “Kinda jumped out at me, I guess.”
Grant grinned. “I know, right? That’s the whole point. To not live in the shadows anymore.” He gave the tattoo a rub like it was a lucky rabbit’s foot. “I like what you said before. About the good old days. I agree.”
“Swell,” she said. She stared hard at the timer on the microwave, willing it to move faster.
The kids nodded vigorously. Then he leaned closer and spoke a bit more quietly. “You know about the second coming, right?”
She raised one eyebrow. Maybe she had this kid’s intentions wrong. Maybe he was about preaching rather than flirting.
“He’s coming back. All these people want to pretend like he’s not important, but they have a surprise coming. He’ll be back, and there’s nothing they can do about it.”
“Yeah, man, that’s cool. Jesus is coming back. I get it. I’m on board.”
The kid looked confused. “What? No, not Jesus. I’m talking about the way things were, like you said. Zed’s coming back to set things right. He’s coming back, but there’s work to do before he gets here. That’s what my tattoo is about. We’ve done a lot already, but our work’s just beginning and—”
“Grant!”
A bigger kid, probably a year or two older than Grant, marched toward them. He reached out and grabbed Sophie’s right wrist. He pulled her hand in front of Grant’s face. “You see a broken clock here?”
Sophie jerked her hand away, then pushed it against the kid’s chest and shoved him backward. “What the hell, man?”
The guy regained his balance and shot Sophie a disgusted look. Then he stared back at his friend. “Well? Answer the question. You see a tat?”
Grant looked away. “No.”
The bigger guy stood chin-to-chin with Grant and shoved him. “Then what the hell you running your mouth about?”
Grant rubbed his chest where the kid pushed him. “Look, Colt, I’m sorry. She was talking about the good old days. I got excited is all.”
Colt leaned into the smaller guy’s face. “You know who else talks about the good old days? My grandma. She lives in Fort Wayne, Indiana. Maybe you want to call her up, confide in her too?”
The microwave beeped. Sophie pulled out the hot burrito and ripped open the package. “Maybe lay off, Colt. Let’s all pay for our burritos and—,” she glanced down at the bottle in his hand, “—our Mountain Dews and call it a day. Cool?”
Colt looked her up and down as if she were something dead on the side of the road. He lifted his right hand, making sure Sophie could see the broken clock tattoo that matched Grant’s. He held it there like Sophie was supposed to be impressed.
When Sophie didn’t react, he said, “You’re not even from Rook Mountain, are you?”
She shook her head. “Just here for the day.”
Colt shot Grant a fiery look, and Grant’s face reddened.
She moved to the back of the line, wanting to put as much distance as the gas station allowed between her and these weirdos.
Colt called back to her, “Get out of Rook Mountain soon. You won’t like what’s coming next.”
4.
She slipped into the pizza place at five thirty-five and saw Rodgers sitting at a table in the corner, staring at a menu. He was wearing jeans and a tee shirt, and his wet hair was slicked back, as if he’d either just stepped out of the shower or stuck his head under a faucet.
She marched to his table and slid into the seat across from him.
He nodded a greeting. “You want to order something? The calzones are great. They use fresh ricotta.”
“I’m not eating. I just want to hear what you have to say about Taylor.”
He shrugged. “Suit yourself. Me? I’m getting the calzone. With mushrooms and sausage.” He set down the menu. “So, why’d you come here, anyway? Did you think you could bat your eyelashes at the warden and he’d hand over Taylor’s files?”
“I wanted to get in the door. I thought maybe if I reminded him what my family’s been through, he’d be willing to at least tell me what happened.”
Rodgers chuckled. “Yeah, well, that isn’t how Warden Cades works. He’s a hard man. He had to be, the things that happened. You know how long I’ve worked at the prison?”
“Mr. Rodgers, you said you had information for me. Something about a cover up? Can we talk about that?”
Rodgers grimaced, and she saw the rough prison guard edge underneath his boyish good looks. “We are talking about it. I’ve worked at the prison thirteen years. Since 2011.”
She started to correct him and then stopped herself.
“Yeah, see what you did there?” he asked. “This town aged eight years while the rest of you experienced one second. Big deal, right? The news cycle moved on, and the only people still thinking about it are the scientists, the government, and the nut jobs. Nobody cares. Nobody from the outside, anyway.”
She glanced around the crowded restaurant. “Looks to me like the town’s still full of people from the outside who care.”
He shook his head. “These are the bottom feeders. They’re waiting for another fight to break out so they can write about how violence is on the rise in Rook Mountain.” He shifted in his seat and leaned toward her. He lowered his voice when he spoke again. “Let me ask you a question. You ever heard that urban legend about Sanctuary?”
She tilted her head, puzzled at the non sequitur. “Yeah, of course.”
“When did you first hear it?”
Sophie thought about it for a moment and then shrugged. “I’m not sure. It’s one of those things I’ve known my whole life. Like saying Bloody Mary in the mirror. Kids talk about it to scare other kids. We’d dare each other to try it at slumber parties and stuff.”
He leaned forward and looked into her eyes. She saw emptiness in those eyes, a hollow sadness.
“I’m gonna tell you something now,” he said. “Something you aren’t going to believe. But I’d appreciate it if you’d hear me out anyway.”
“Okay.”
“That legend about the Sanctuary didn’t exist before March twenty-seventh of this year.”
She waited for some indication he was kidding, but none came. He sat there looking at her with those sad eyes. What he was saying wasn’t true. There was no doubt about that. She had played Sanctuary with Heather when they were kids. They would stand on the balcony outside of their parents’ bedroom and lean over as far as they dared. When they felt like they’d leaned a little too far, they would shout the word Sanctuary.
Of course, nothing ever happened. Just like Bloody Mary never came out of the mirror no matter how many times they said her name. Granted, the urban legend said your life had to be in danger. Leaning over the railing of a second story balcony wasn’t exactly a death-defying situation, but still.
She took a sip of water before speaking. “Do you mean you hadn’t heard about it before March twenty-seventh?” She asked the question even
though she knew perfectly well that wasn’t what he meant. “It’s possible the story didn’t make it out to these parts, I guess.”
He shook his head. “I mean what I said. It didn’t exist.”
She smiled even as she wondered how to politely extract herself from this odd conversation. “Well, that’s just not true. Like I said, I heard about it when I was a kid.”
“When I was a teenager,” Rodgers said, “I went through this phase where I was obsessed with urban legends. I had a shelf full of books on modern folklore. It was mostly garbage, people looking to make a quick buck by writing down stories everyone already knew. But I devoured those books. I knew it all. Candyman. The headless Lincoln. The song that steals your free will. The standardized test that secretly checks you for psychic abilities.”
Sophie had heard of the Candyman, but not any of the others. “You’re telling me none of those books mentioned Sanctuary?”
He grinned his crooked boyish grin. “They didn’t the first time I read them.”
The waitress set a tall skinny beer glass in front of him. He thanked her and took a long sip before wiping the froth from his mouth with the back of his hand and continuing. “I heard somebody mention Sanctuary on TV back in April, so I looked it up online. There were a bunch of different versions, but they all had the same basic idea. If your life is ever in immediate danger, you can say the word ‘Sanctuary’ and you’ll be saved. You’ll be taken to some other place. No one knows where it is or what happens there, but you can never return. That sound like what you heard as a kid?”
Sophie nodded. This was all common knowledge, of course. There was even a saying people used when presented with a risk they couldn’t help but take. Close your eyes and ask for Sanctuary.
Rodgers said, “You know that thing where you hear a word for the first time, and then you hear it a bunch of times over the next week or so? It was like that with Sanctuary. I started seeing references to it everywhere. In movies, online, in books. I felt like I was going crazy. So I brought it up to the guys at work. Most of them hadn’t heard of it either. One guy knew of it, but he said he’d first seen it on TV a couple weeks back.”