As he stood in front of the mirror above his bureau and slipped on a necktie, something in the doorway behind him caught his eye. He turned slowly and saw his daughter smiling at him. She was still in her pajamas and robe.
“Hi, Daddy.”
“Hey, sweet pea.” Even with all that was happening to him, he couldn’t help but smile back at her. The magnificence of his little girl never ceased to amaze him. It seemed impossible to him that he could have been a part of creating anything so pure and perfect, and though it had been nine years since he and Cynthia had brought her home from the hospital, he still marveled at her existence the same as he had when she was a newborn. “You better hurry up and get dressed or you’ll be late for school.”
Debra scrunched her face into a puzzled expression. “It’s Saturday, though.”
Darian froze, staring at her with a befuddled look of his own.
“It’s Saturday,” she said again, as if to be certain he’d heard her. “I don’t have school today.”
He forced his fingers to move, to finish knotting the tie and to tighten it up under his collar. How could he have forgotten what day it was? Surely that happened now and then to everyone, but until that moment he hadn’t realized the extent to which his sense of time and place had been anesthetized. He’d simply gotten up and prepared himself for work like a tortured lab rat awakening and scurrying through plastic mazes as it had been taught. There was something so lifeless about it all, something cold and detached. And he was so tired, so damn tired he could barely see straight. “Right,” he said awkwardly. “Of course it’s Saturday. I was just teasing.”
Debra padded closer, arms folded across her chest. “Are you OK, Daddy?”
“He’s fine, sweetheart.” Cynthia appeared in the doorway, a spatula in one hand and a dishtowel in the other. “Daddy’s being silly.”
Debra smiled and gave her father a hug. As Darian wrapped his arms around her small shoulders he couldn’t be certain if she had done it for her benefit or his. As he held her close, careful not to squeeze her too hard, his eyes lifted and found Cynthia frowning at him. “Well, I think since I have to work today,” he told Debra, quickly taking his wife’s lead, “it’s only fair that you go to school.”
Debra laughed, released him and shook her head. “No way!”
“Yup, already called the principal and he’s going to open school just for you.”
“Yeah, right!”
“Sweetheart, go downstairs and set the table, please,” Cynthia said. “We’ll be down in a sec and I’ll make pancakes, but I need to talk with Daddy first, OK?”
Debra’s laughter ceased, her smile quickly replaced by a look of concern indicative of wisdom well beyond her years. “OK,” she said softly.
Rather reluctantly, Debra left the room.
Darian strode to the closet, pulled a suit jacket from a hangar and slipped it on. He returned to the mirror to inspect himself; straightening the creases on his lapels slowly, hopeful his wife wouldn’t see how badly his hands were shaking.
“You’re working today?” Cynthia finally asked.
“Thought I’d try to catch up on some paperwork,” he lied. “Why, what’s the big deal about me going into work for a few hours?”
“The big deal, is that you already made plans with your family. Your family,” she said, spitting the word at him like it caused a bitter taste in her mouth. “Remember us?”
Darian swallowed hard. Heart racing, a horrible sense of dread and fear welled within him then just as quickly receded, leaving behind an overwhelming feeling of paranoia. It suddenly felt as though they were being watched, listened to and gawked at like helpless animals in the zoo. “What plans?” he managed.
“The movies, remember?” Cynthia shot him a disgusted look and wearily shook her head. “You promised Deb we’d all go together. You promised, Darian.”
“Oh, that. I didn’t forget.”
“Sure you didn’t.”
“It’s not a problem.” He turned away from the mirror, faced her. “I’ll be home in time for us to catch a matinee, OK?”
“Where are you going?” she asked. “Really.”
“This is ridiculous.”
“Tell me the truth.”
“These suspicions of yours are nonsense,” he said through a quick burst of nervous laughter, “and I’m not about to give them credence by discussing them.”
“You’re acting as if you’ve lost your mind. You spend hours staring out the window at night. You check on Debra twenty times a night. You rarely sleep, and even when you’re here, you’re not here, not really. You’re coming apart right before our eyes and you expect us to just stand by and watch? You expect us to be completely unaffected by all this? Did you see the look on our daughter’s face just a moment ago?”
A clammy film of perspiration broke out across his scalp. “I have to go.”
“Darian, obviously something’s happened and you’re having problems. We can get through this. We can go talk with someone, but you’ve got to let me in. You can’t shut me out like this and expect me to understand.”
She looked so beautiful standing there in her robe. God, how he loved her, how he worshipped this woman who, along with their daughter, made him whole.
I don’t want you to understand, he thought. Not this.
Something moved in the corner of his eye. Something small, gone even before he’d completely realized it was there. In its wake came feelings of claustrophobia and terror, and Darian was gripped with a sudden need to run, to get as far from here as possible, and to take whatever evils were infecting his mind with him, away from this house and away from his family.
Ignoring a churning pain deep in his gut, he moved past her, through the doorway. “I’ll be back later.”
“You need to talk to me, Darian.”
“I have to go,” he said from the hallway behind her.
“You need to talk to me before I stop asking you to.” Cynthia bit her tongue in an attempt to ward off the tears already filling her eyes. “Do you understand?” she asked.
But he was already gone.
* * *
There had been a violent thunderstorm the night before. Raymond remembered how it had awakened him, and how he had lain in bed with the covers pulled up tight, watching the blue flashes of lightning fill the windows then vanish while Seth lay just feet from him in a bed of his own, asleep and unaware of the storm. He’d eventually fallen asleep while praying frantically to God to make it all go away, and awoke early the following morning feeling tired but relieved. In the morning, the world was still wet, dripping with remnants of the heavy rains the night before, and Raymond, filled with a new sense of dread, had gone down to the field behind their house, a solitary and quiet place he often went to when he wanted to be alone or think, a place where he felt safe and at peace.
The shadowed forest just beyond the touch of the slowly rising sun bordered the field, and a small creek ran through a portion of sloped land between the two. Raymond sat atop a large rock there and watched the water trickle past. He could sit for hours and watch armies of ant soldier about, or sometimes he’d study the delicate flight of a butterfly as it bounced from flower to flower, blade of grass to branch, or occasionally even when they landed on his outstretched fingertips.
On this particular morning, however, rather than watching the beauty around him with his typical sense of wonder and awe, little Raymond sat on his favorite rock and wrestled instead with a sense of trepidation and sorrow. A tear fell free, trickled the length of his face, as he wondered why God made people like him. Different. Crazy.
“Isn’t it beautiful out today?”
Raymond looked back over his shoulder and saw his mother approaching across the field, the grass tall this time of year, nearly to the tops of her thighs. Dressed in a white summer dress and sandals, her long hair pulled back and fastened with a matching white and silver clasp, she was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen.
“I
figured I’d find you down here.” She smiled that big smile of hers, but when she realized Raymond was crying it transformed quickly into a frown. “What’s wrong, honey?” She slid up next to the rock and let her hand rest on his knee. “What is it? Why are you crying?”
Raymond shrugged.
“Did you have a bad dream again?”
He shook his head in the negative.
She gave his knee a slight squeeze and smiled up at him. “You sure?”
“I’m OK, Mom,” he finally said, wiping the tear from his cheek.
“Want to go for a walk with me?”
“Will you sing a song?” he asked.
“Tell you what. I’ll trade you a song for a smile, how’s that?” She raised an eyebrow. “But you first.”
Raymond smiled, slid down off the rock and into the waiting arms of his mother. She kissed his cheek and whispered, “I love you,” then hand in hand they started off across the creek and up into the forest for their walk. His mother began to sing, her exquisite voice sweeping through the trees, and while Raymond found solace in her sweet voice, as he always did, the bad feelings that had filled his head since he’d awakened remained. Feelings of fire, a raging fire burning and destroying everything in its path, refused to leave him.
The following day, when a house in their neighborhood burned to the ground due to an electrical fire, and the Delmont family was left homeless, the feelings finally left him, replaced by those of helplessness and grief.
Memories of that day faded, blurred, and became landscape along the Cape Cod highway rushing past his window. Raymond took a hard puff on his cigarette. “I’ve always been different, Seth.”
“Not always. For a long time now, but not always.”
“Once the night terrors started I changed. They changed me. I could sense things I couldn’t before. Sometimes I could see things.”
“I know.”
“No one believed me, and I couldn’t talk about it because I…I felt like a freak.” He shook his head sadly. “I guess I was. Am.”
“Ray, don’t—”
“It is what it is, man.”
“Talking like that about yourself isn’t going to help the situation.”
“Sometimes I could see things. Things that weren’t there, that weren’t supposed to be there. But I could see them. And for a long time I dealt with it the best I could. It’s fucked up my whole life. I never had half the shit most people do. A decent job, good place to live, somebody to share it with. My whole fucking life, I’ve dealt with it. I’ve lived with it. If you can call what I do living.” He left the cigarette between his lips. “Only since that night at the cabin it’s worse. It’s darker, more extreme.”
Seth stammered something unintelligible as he struggled to form his thoughts into a coherent response. “Nothing’s right,” he finally managed. “Nothing’s been right since that night. I know things have been bad for you for years, but this is new to me, it’s not something I understand, I—”
“You think I do?” Raymond asked.
“I think you know more than you’re telling me, Ray.”
“Is the same thing happening to you? Is that what you were trying to tell me when you said—”
“I don’t know.” Seth glanced in the rearview then slowly pulled over into the breakdown lane. Another car rushed by but otherwise the highway was strangely empty. Once stopped, Seth put the car in PARK but left his hands on the wheel, head bowed. “Things have been off for a while,” he said softly. “When Peggy and I split things got worse. I know it was a stupid move but I couldn’t stay with her. As much as I loved her—and still do—I couldn’t stay with her. Things were different. I was different. I started to remember things… things I didn’t want to remember. I started to hear things, and sometimes even see things. Not the way you normally see things, but from the corner of my eye, or I’d just sense it, see it in my mind, do you understand?”
Raymond drew on his cigarette. “What do you think?”
Seth finally looked at him, his face contorted into a muddle of emotion. “That’s just it, Ray. I don’t know. It’s like someone or something is there but I don’t know what it is. I’m having odd nightmares and the strangest sensations even while I’m awake. It’s why I started seeing a doctor. I thought, here we go; I’m going crazy, just like...” he caught himself and stopped just short.
“You can say it,” Raymond told him. “Just like me.”
“I didn’t mean that, I—it’s just—insanity can be hereditary, you know.”
“You think that never occurred to me? I think about that shit every day.”
“I started to feel like I was losing it at times, Ray. I was having trouble functioning and I was afraid of what I might do. I didn’t want to do what you did. I didn’t want to just drop out of life—I still don’t—but sometimes I wonder if I have any choice. And that makes me angry. Unnaturally angry, I’m not a violent person and yet lately I get these feelings of rage that scare the hell out of me.”
Raymond nodded. He’d tried cleansing himself through violence—bar fights and street brawls—but nothing had ever washed it all away. The fear was a constant, something he had been forced to endure as both a ghost from the past and a continual reality in the present, and all of it with no end in sight.
“My time with Doc helps,” Seth said a moment later. “She helps keep me focused and thinking clearly. But I know there’s more to this than meets the eye, Ray, there always has been.”
“I’d say that’s a safe bet.”
“I know something’s happened. Something happened that night at the cabin, something I can’t remember for some reason. I know all that as sure as I’m sitting here. I just don’t know what the hell to do about it.”
Ray nodded.
“And whatever it is, it’s—I know this sounds crazy—but it’s as if it’s changing us, killing us off slowly, all of us, from the inside out.”
“I told you before: it’s like a disease, and that’s what some diseases do. They rot you from the inside out…slowly…gradually.”
Seth’s expression remained still, neutral. “Why does it want us?”
Raymond smoked his cigarette for a while without responding. When it had burned to the filter he flicked it out the open window. The cool fresh air felt good, sobering. “I’ve spent my whole life running from this shit, telling myself none of it mattered, that it was all bullshit, but always afraid one of these days I’d wake up and it’d be true. I was a regular kid once, man, I was normal a long time ago. Wasn’t I, Seth? You said it yourself. A long time ago, wasn’t I a normal kid?”
“Sure, Ray, of course you were.”
“Then things changed. That was hard enough to deal with, but then that night at the cabin things changed again. When I was a kid, I tried to fight it off, I tried to pretend for a while that if I ignored the things I was seeing and thinking and feeling everything would go back to normal. But it didn’t work. It wouldn’t let me go. It came out of nowhere, slowly, subtly at first, but it got stronger and pretty soon I couldn’t even shake it when I went to sleep. Sometimes it got worse. The visions and thoughts would come to me in dreams, nightmares. No matter what I did or said or thought, it wouldn’t stop. Whatever this is that I have—a gift, a curse, psychic ability, whatever you want to label it—when it changed me as a kid it changed me for good, Seth. Years later, somehow these abilities—or whatever the hell they are—allowed me to see what was happening in those woods a year ago in ways none of you could. It was like there was a time bomb ticking away that finally went off and we were unlucky enough to be there when it did. And now maybe we’ve all got the same time bomb in our heads. Maybe it never goes off, but maybe one day it does, and just like that, you’re full-throttle motherfucking crazy.”
Seth finally released the steering wheel and let his hands drop to his lap. He was certain he had never heard his brother speak so openly and honestly about anything in his life, and knew if he didn’t push it further he might
not get another chance to find some answers. “What happened at the cabin, Ray?”
“I don’t know for sure.”
“Would you tell me if you did?”
The look in Raymond’s eyes answered for him. And it was in that moment that a memory flashed through Seth’s mind, a memory of Raymond looking at Christy when she first bolted into their camp that day, a look on his face that could only be described as a look of recognition. “My God…you knew, didn’t you? That’s it, you knew. That’s why you looked at Christy the way you did. She looked familiar to you…because you’d seen her before. You knew what was going to happen out there. That’s why you showed up when you did, that’s why you wanted to come along. You knew.”
“Yeah,” he said softly.
“You’d seen her before in—what—a vision?”
Darkness. The forest. That night unfolding before him, the snow draping everything and coming down with unusual ferocity. Sounds of his boots crunching beneath him, and his own gasping, labored breathing. The flashlight in his hand bouncing and shaking, its beam cutting enough of a fissure in the night to reveal blurry views of Christy running several yards in front of him, maneuvering through the trees and along the uneven terrain, her nude body impossibly pale amidst the darkness. Another cabin coming into view, the door open…
Raymond slammed shut his eyes, rubbed them until it all went away.
“Why can’t I remember what happened, Ray?”
“Maybe we’re not supposed to. Maybe we’re not allowed to.”
“But we have to find out,” Seth said. “We have to know.”
Raymond ran a hand through his hair, pulling it away from his face. “Then drive.”
CHAPTER 12
Lighthouse Shores was the kind of quaint little town people envisioned when Cape Cod came to mind. Picturesque, with long stretches of beautiful beach, sand dunes, pastoral homes sprinkled among miles of unspoiled countryside and an old lighthouse still in commission, it could have been lifted directly from a postcard. A place where time did its best to stand still, the permanent, year-round population was just shy of three thousand, and though that number increased a bit in the summer months with the influx of seasonal townsfolk, the increase was significantly smaller in Lighthouse Shores than in most Cape Cod communities, as for the most part, it was a more exclusive area and not one where tourists were especially welcomed. There were no department stores or strip malls in Lighthouse Shores, only a small general store and recently refurbished post office, both of which resembled something out of the last century, a small bed and breakfast, a diner, and a handful of quaint gift shops that catered more to the year-round residents than to the modest summer trade that occasionally passed through town.
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