Available Darkness Box Set | Books 1-3

by Platt, Sean

  He absentmindedly twisted his wedding ring, pondering the second appearance of his killer in less than twenty-four hours.

  Though the video suggested the supernatural, Caleb had been on the job too long and had seen too much. His team specialized in the unknown and had worked hundreds of cases that seemed to offer no reasonable explanation at the outset. Alien abductions, monsters, fucking Sasquatches, you name it, Caleb had worked it. Every time the agency had been able to articulate a reasonable explanation. And on the rare occasions when his team couldn’t find a logical answer, cases were kicked upstairs to a more specialized unit who always made sense of the senseless.

  He wasn’t too proud to hope for a monster. A demon would make his quest for justice almost romantic, rather than the up-at-dawn, never-ending, soul-swallowing quixotic siege it was now.

  He watched the monitors as stations hit the top of the hour and started replaying the scene on repeat. His left leg refused to stop bouncing.

  The phone vibrated inside his pocket, making Caleb imagine for a moment he was having a heart attack. He looked at the phone’s screen to see who was calling and breathed a near silent fuck: Special Agent in Charge Bob Cromwell, his direct superior.

  “Why is this goddamned video on every channel?” Cromwell asked, almost as if it were a question.

  Caleb brought him up to speed. The case was ice this morning, and had frosted further. Not only did they now have a missing child and a murderer, they’d added a cop killing and a second kidnapping to the pile. Caleb could barely imagine how the case could get any more fucked up, so he swallowed hard and closed his eyes, preferring not to tempt fate.

  “We need to talk,” Cromwell said. “How soon can you be here?”

  Caleb sighed and came out the other end with a quick calculation. “About four hours.”

  “Meet me at my house. I have something to show you.”

  Caleb stared at the phone for a full minute after the call. What was so important that SAC Cromwell wanted him there in the middle of the night during the largest news story to hit the West Coast in five years?

  Well, at least he was homeward bound. Soon enough he’d be sharing city limits with his bottle of pills.

  Fourteen

  John

  John was driving north along the highway following a shadow-flocked trail of instinct, hoping to find his way to Abigail. His quest to find a van he’d barely glimpsed through other people’s memories, a van she might not even still be in, seemed only slightly more likely than finding a police escort to assist his search.

  He punished the car to drive faster, a rising bile in his gut telling him to flip the car in the opposite direction — he was going the wrong way and piling miles between himself and Abigail.

  The farther he got, the less likely he’d be to find and save her.

  No, keep going the way you’re going. Ignore the doubt and fear. It’s fucking with you. Trust your gut. You’re on the right path.

  John obeyed the voice in his head, hoping it wasn’t delusion.

  He’d cautiously flown by a few squad cars, but none had taken notice. Yet. An exit sign overhead caught his attention and sent a current between his temples.

  Get off here.

  Driving in the far left lane, he checked his rearview and merged right. The lane was clear, and then …

  Darkness.

  He was in a dark room, bound and…

  Only it wasn’t him. John was plugged back into Abigail. He could see only through her eyes even as his hands felt the steering wheel slipping under his sweaty fingers. Somewhere on reality’s horizon, a muffled horn blared.

  No!

  Panic froze his hands tight on the wheel. He drove blindly ahead, his eyes seeing Abigail’s world, his body bracing for the impact of a crash he couldn’t see coming. He managed to steer back right, praying no one was in the lane …

  He stared into a mirror, saw Abigail bound in a chair, a reddish room draped in haze. His heart raced at the sight, salt stinging his eyes …

  The car shook as a loud grinding echoed from some faraway reality. John’s hands blindly turned the wheel slightly, and he felt the car pull away from the unseen wall it had almost started to climb before straightening out. He tried to remember before Abigail’s black vision swallowed his own.

  He hoped his foot had held steady on the accelerator and that he had not, in his excitement, slammed down on the gas to send him rocketing blindly into an accident. He braced for impact from any direction, easing on the gas in an attempt to slow and then stop the car on a busy highway. More horns, this time louder and closer …

  John saw movement in Abigail’s mirror, someone drifting into her line of vision. A tingle of familiarity ran through his body as a bald man stepped into view.

  I know him.

  A flash of memory of the bald man flickered in his head so quickly that he could hardly make sense of it. He only knew that he wanted to somehow rewind, pause, examine it for clues.

  But it was gone.

  Along with the view through Abigail’s eyes.

  Reality returned in an orchestra of discord. Horns blared, his rearview mirror swelling with the sight of a red sports car blazing toward him.

  John braced himself.

  The sports car merged left at the last possible moment, flying by in a blur of angry red, sending a draft of wind and causing John to swerve left. His car nearly ran into the barrier again before he corrected course and floored the gas, the back of his car fishtailing briefly.

  Again in control, John glanced up at the quickly approaching EXIT sign.

  He checked to make sure no flashing lights were behind him then sped up and merged toward the exit.

  John had been rolling along the dark lonely mountain roads for nearly an hour, mired in an aimless search for any sign of Abigail, like an elusive cell signal in a wide dead spot.

  He knew she was close, or had been recently. He’d felt her out there, like you’d feel the ripples of water from someone swimming beside you. Except he could also see through Abigail’s eyes, feel her emotions, and even occasionally capture her thoughts.

  Whatever connected them had done so in a way that made her feel like a part of him in a weird way.

  But the last time he’d felt her presence was nearing an hour ago. As the clock ticked, John could no longer sense her; fear bubbled forth concerns that she’d either been taken farther away — or was dead.

  His eyes scanned the rural stretch of nearly nothing, an uneven sampling of homes sprinkled along dusty dirt roads. It seemed to John like the sort of place where the people all knew one another, were likely to have guns for protection, and rarely took kindly to strangers.

  The few people he’d seen outside their homes had quietly hurled suspicion as his car drifted by well below the speed limit. A little suspicion was inevitable, given the condition of his shot-to-shit car, but he hoped to keep it dim enough to avoid a call to the cops. He’d been lucky to escape once. He didn’t want to keep tempting fate.

  Though his body had completely mended itself from the earlier wound, John wasn’t sure he would be so lucky if shot several times, and shuddered to wonder what would happen if he took a bullet to the head.

  An old woman, being pulled by a dog that was slightly too large for her delicate-looking arms, fixed her stare on John’s hood as he drifted into a slow approach. Her hand sank into the pocket of her long brown coat as he passed, and John kept his eyes on her in the rearview as she retrieved a cell phone and brought it to her ear.

  Shit.

  John softly tapped the brakes then slowly reversed the car until he was even with her. He hoped his stopping wouldn’t cause her to dial faster. He had to make contact quickly. He rolled down the window with a slight nod, doing his best to look as though the outside chill meant nothing to his naked torso.

  “Hello, ma’am. Any chance you seen a German Shepherd run by these parts? You’d know her by a spot of white on her backside.” John chuckled, doing his be
st to be congenial. “’Course, old Lucy likely wouldn’t have been going slow enough for you to have seen her spot.”

  The lines on the woman’s face relaxed. She almost smiled. Still holding the phone, she said, “No I haven’t. Did you lose your dog?”

  “Yeah,” the lie fell effortlessly from his mouth, “A-gain. My daughter was walking her and BAM! Lucy just took off after a rabbit in the woods like she always does. We’ve been looking for round about half an hour now already.”

  “No, I’m sorry,” the woman shook her head, eyes involuntarily drifting to the surrounding woods.

  “Have you seen a dark-haired girl and a bald guy? The bald dude’s my dad. He and my daughter got foot patrol. I was lucky enough to get the wheels.” John gave the woman a friendly smile and rapped his knuckles on the door.

  “No, I haven’t seen anybody, but I haven’t been out long. I hope you didn’t lose them, too.”

  John laughed. “Nah, if I know them, they’re probably already back home watching the game and feeding Lucy my share of the pizza. A-gain!”

  They exchanged a laugh and a wave before John put the car into drive, watching the woman from his rearview. She returned the phone to her pocket, and John drove on, waiting for something. Any sign from Abigail.

  Five minutes later, the anything emerged, and he was tuned back into Abigail. His pulse accelerated.

  The road was replaced by an inky darkness, almost blue beneath a bleaching moon. Abigail stared at the bright white satellite, then at her surroundings.

  She was in the woods …

  Somewhere nearby?

  John shuddered as she looked around, afraid that he (and she) would see the bald man lurking in the shadows, but there was nothing but an endless swath of forest.

  Abigail looked at her arms. Her wrists were red from being bound, but she wasn’t bleeding. John could clearly see she was lying on the ground.

  Get up, he thought.

  Fifteen

  Abigail And John

  Abigail

  Abigail’s head was woozy as she opened her eyes to the moon piercing branches above.

  Where am I?

  The last thing she remembered was being dragged into a van. Before that … an officer taking a shot to the head. She looked down to see if his blood was still on her.

  It was.

  She wondered how she’d come to the forest, and if her angel had somehow rescued her again. She looked around and so no sign of him. A cold chill ran through her body, and she pulled her legs to her chest.

  Then she heard his voice.

  “Get up.”

  She spun around in search of her angel.

  John

  He watched through Abigail’s eyes, seeing her look frantically around.

  What was she looking for?

  What was scaring her?

  Then he heard her voice.

  “John?”

  Abigail

  Abigail realized it was John’s voice, speaking in her mind.

  “Whoa,” she said, a small laugh lighting the darkness.

  “Can you hear me?” she whispered.

  “Yes.”

  “Where are you?”

  “I think I’m close … Can you see this?”

  She looked around but saw nothing.

  “No, all I see are trees.”

  “No, in your mind. Do you see anything?”

  She didn’t understand what he was trying to say. “No.”

  “Never mind. Look around for a landmark, anything … I think I’m nearby. If you see it, I’ll see it too.”

  And then Abigail understood. She was hearing John’s thoughts, but he was somehow able to both hear her and see through her eyes. She rose unsteadily to her feet and stumbled forward through the darkness. Branches and rocks dug into the flesh underfoot, so she tried to walk on the soft grass instead.

  “Do you see anything?”

  “No, not yet. Oh, wait.” Abigail’s eyes found a narrow path where the trees were beginning to thin, and thought she saw something illuminated by the moonlight. She moved closer. “I think I see something.”

  Abigail ascended the slope. The trees thinned further, revealing a water tower, its red light blinking every other second.

  “Did you see that?” she said.

  Silence.

  “John?”

  Nothing.

  Fear gripped her. She glanced around, suddenly exposed in the middle of the big black open. And alone, so utterly, completely alone.

  Abigail wondered if she’d imagined the conversation between her and John.

  Her head, like her heart, started to throb.

  John

  The connection was severed before John could witness whatever it was she had wanted him to see.

  Dammit.

  He waited a moment, reaching out into the night, searching for her, still unsure how he’d made his earlier connections, and hoping he could do it again.

  After a lingering silence, he went vocal.

  “Abigail!”

  What if something happened to her?

  What if the man from his past had reappeared?

  Abigail

  Abigail’s eyes blurred with tears as she looked around, hoping to see John.

  He must be nearby.

  But as darkness and silence continued, fear eroded her hope. She’d gone from a tiny prison to a wide open one, all alone, nowhere to go.

  Then she heard her name.

  At first, she thought it was only in her mind, then realized it didn’t feel like a whisper between her ears. Less direct and far more distant, coming from the woods.

  “John?”

  John

  John’s heart leaped in his chest. She was close.

  The steady hand of fate, or something, had led him to her. It was impossible, but no more unlikely than anything else that had composed his past twenty-four hours.

  “I’m here, on the hill!” Abigail screamed.

  “Stay there, I’m coming! Just keep yelling!”

  John burst into a run, hurtling knotted branches and rocks like a forest native. His instincts had sharpened since his previous jaunt in the woods. So had his night vision.

  Abigail screamed again: “Hello!”

  John smiled, even as tears of joy streamed down his face. He raced up the hill and saw the moonlit clearing ahead. Then he saw Abigail, standing under the moon’s spotlight, alive and in one peace — a beautiful sight for his sore eyes.

  Abigail

  A flash of motion in the woods below; her angel had arrived. She cried out his name and broke into a sprint.

  John

  Ten yards away.

  All John wanted to do was embrace Abigail and never let her go. Hold her, keep the girl safe, even if that was the only thing he could do with his life.

  He didn’t question the almost paternal need to fiercely protect her. It was as ingrained in him as the instincts that drove him. Still, he wondered if his forgotten past included a child at some point, which had honed these feelings into something he couldn’t forget.

  Five yards away, and suddenly — only after they were locked into imminent collision — did they both seem to realize the danger their embrace would bring to Abigail.

  Four eyes widened as she tried to swerve left, and instead slipped. She fell forward and hurtled toward John.

  He jumped up, narrowly missing her touch, and launched into the sky nearly twenty feet before crashing back to the ground and rolling to a stop.

  He quickly stood and looked back at Abigail, lying on the ground, hair spilled across her tender face.

  He ran to her, afraid she’d smashed her head on a rock, or worse. What if they had touched, but he hadn’t realize it? Leaning down, John saw Abigail’s head moving up and down as she made some sort of strange noise. And then he realized it was laughter.

  She was okay.

  Abigail looked up at him, the moon illuminating her face in a way that tugged at some phantom memory or emotion tha
t John could only call love.

  “You’re here,” she said, smiling.

  Sixteen

  Jacob

  In a room with only a single door and a small red bulb gently swaying from the ceiling, Jacob sat on the floor lotus style. He had left the girl in the woods and was now waiting for his prey to take the bait.

  His eyes were open, but Jacob saw nothing of the room around him. Instead, he stared through Abigail’s eyes.

  A smile crept across his face as John stepped into view.

  “Hello, Brother.”

  Seventeen

  John

  “Do you believe in fate?” Abigail asked from her spot, curled on the front seat of an old pickup John had lifted from a grocery store parking lot.

  She’d washed up in an all night diner’s bathroom and changed from her dirty, blood-and-piss-stained clothes into some navy sweats and a long-sleeve purple tee they’d bought while risking a shopping excursion in an all-night Walmart using money John had stolen from Randy. He’d bought jeans and a black tee for himself and felt somewhat fresher, though he still craved a hot shower.

  “Well, do you?” Abigail repeated. “Do you believe in fate?”

  “I dunno,” John said as he drove in search of the address he had found scrawled on the note in his pocket.

  Something told him that if they could find the location soon, he would find safety, and maybe some answers to his many questions. He glanced down at the map. They were a few miles from their destination, with about three hours of darkness remaining.

  “How can you not know?”