The Surfer was standing again, between the two beds, seemingly oblivious to the destruction that occurred all around him. He was staring straight at Lance, and Lance could feel the Surfer’s eyes sending their message. As if he were silently letting Lance know that he would remember this, that they would meet again. And then he left, his rubber flip-flops crunching the shattered glass around Lance’s feet as he passed by, heading out the door to join the Reverend.
And then Lance felt something let go, like some mighty hand had been holding him in place all this time and he’d been completely unaware, and now a great weight lifted from his shoulders. He could move again, but as he took his first step, meaning to follow the Surfer out the door, it was as though he were slogging through quicksand, his feet like cement blocks he was dragging along.
He was completely exhausted. His mind, his body, and even his soul felt completely drained. It was a sense of depletion the likes of which he’d never experienced before, nor could he fully articulate. And then, a terrifying thought: What if I’m dying? What if this is what death feels like?
He managed to get himself to the door and then step outside, all in what seemed like slow motion, like everything was stuck in honey and he was trying to dig himself out. The rush of wind and the cold snow bit at him but did nothing to wake him, to energize him. There were tire tracks in the snow, and at the edge of the parking lot, he saw the taillights of the Volkswagen bus disappear around the bend. Gone.
Quinten, Lance remembered and made the laborious turn to go back inside, to rescue the only person he’d ever met who was just like him. He lifted one cement-block foot and stepped over the threshold, and then the other, and then—
A rush of speed. His vision blackening to nothing. A momentary feeling of weightlessness.
And then his eyes opened and Lance found himself sitting on the floor of his motel room.
It was over.
He was back to the present.
25
Lance sat on the floor, the carpet feeling stale and sticky beneath his palms, his head drifting slowly back to full consciousness, the room coming into focus, as if he’d just awakened from a long midday nap. He felt groggy, his head full of fluff. He took three big breaths of air and closed his eyes tight. Counted to ten and reopened them. Felt himself sloughing off the remainder of the past and brining himself back to the present. Felt the exhaustion that had crippled him while he’d been in room six begin to fade, his energy restoring itself like a gas tank at the pump.
He looked around the room and saw his cell phone lying on the table, still tethered to the charging cord that snaked down and into the wall receptacle. He saw his backpack—his trusty traveling companion—exactly where he’d left it on the bed. Saw the dust on the pictures hanging on the wall and the chips and scratches on the headboards.
Yes, he thought he was definitely back to his real life.
But, there was one final test.
Lance stood, slowly, his head swimming a bit and his legs wobbling at first before he reclaimed control of his muscles and was able to walk forward toward the door. A foot away, he reached out his hand and pressed his palm against the wood. He made contact and had never been happier to actually feel the resistance of a door against his touch.
The world was real and he was alive in it.
He reached down and grabbed the handle and turned it, taking gleeful satisfaction as he swung the door open. He stepped outside and shivered at the chill, quickly pulling up his hood. The wind was dying down and the snow that was still falling was now doing so in a lazy flutter from the sky instead of the torrent of fury from before. He looked to his left, eyeing room six, was blasted with the memory of what had happened. Having so many questions about what he’d done—what he’d been able to do. Questions that maybe only one person could possibly answer.
Quinten.
And what had happened to the boy? Lance had kept the Reverend and Surfer from inflicting any further harm to Quinten, but when he’d gone back to help, to try and speak with him—whether out loud or through the secret tunnel they had somehow constructed between them,
(Hello, friend. Do it now.)
Lance had been whisked away, thrown back to now. Here.
Meriam!
Lance spun around and looked back through his motel room’s opened door and saw the phone sitting on the nightstand. How long has it been? he wondered. How many hours had passed since he’d made the phone call and called Meriam a liar and told her that he knew about the letter the dead woman had left her? How much time since they’d agreed to talk and both of them lay their cards on the table? Was it too late?
No, it couldn’t be. If Lance had to break down the door and wake her from sleep and prop her up in a chair himself, he would. He had to know. Had to know what had happened to Quinten and where to find him. This was one of the biggest moments—if not the biggest moment—of his life and he wasn’t going to let anything get in his way. Not after all he’d been through. All he’d lost.
After all he’d done for others, he was taking this for himself.
He rushed across the room and grabbed the phone from its cradle, punching the number for the office. It rang twice before Meriam answered, “Yes?”
She sounded mildly irritated.
“It’s me,” Lance said. “I got held up,” he offered. “I’m still coming over, and we’re still talking about this.”
Silence from the other end of the line. Seconds that grew and grew. Finally, Meriam said, “You just called me, maybe a minute or two ago. The coffee hasn’t even finished brewing yet.”
Lance hung up the phone. He wasn’t even going to attempt to explain. Because how could he explain something he didn’t understand?
Like his entire life.
The Universe had allowed him to spend hours, witness several days spread over who knows how long a timeframe, all within a couple of minutes in Lance’s reality. It was revelatory moments like this one that caused Lance to wonder if he’d ever had any control over any of his life at all, or if it was all just some predetermined path he was being led along under the guise of having free will.
In the end, he figured it had to be a little of both, because the former option was too overwhelming to process, too depressing to accept as the truth.
He thought about Leah. Lance had made the painful decision to leave her behind in Westhaven, doing what he thought he knew deep down to be the right thing. Wanting to protect her. But now, she had made her own decision, regardless of his. She was leaving her home and coming to him. They would join together again soon, and what happened after that … they’d just have to figure out as they went along.
Or so Lance had thought.
Because in moments like this one, he had to ask himself: Was Leah’s decision to join him her own, or had there been a gentle nudge from the Universe involved. Had Lance made the wrong decision in Westhaven and now the higher powers were working to correct it?
Lance couldn’t dwell on these types of things for long. There were some mysteries that even he, with all his abilities, simply could not solve. Instead, he chose to live one day at a time. The way everyone should. Each moment an opportunity that should not be passed on.
He cinched his hoodie’s drawstrings and stepped out onto the walkway, patting the pocket of his shorts to make sure he had his key, and then closed the door behind him. It was time to shove internal philosophical debates aside and speak to somebody who could give him real information, whether she wanted to or not.
Lance turned right and started for the office.
He did not get far.
Standing on the walkway, Lance turned and stared at his motel room’s window. He was completely certain that the blinds had been down and the curtains drawn when he’d left. But now, he was looking through the glass and directly into his room. The lights were off, but the television was on, another episode of Full House on the screen, the flickering glow of color bouncing soft light across the room. There was somebody as
leep in the bed, a sweatshirt hood pulled up around their head, their entire body buried beneath the comforter, the shape rising and falling slowly with each breath the person took.
Lance was watching himself sleep. Of course he’d recognized the hoodie at once, and though it was a mind-bending experience to witness a living version of yourself that was, well, not yourself at that given moment, who better to know the size and shape and layout of your own body than you?
Lance had no doubt he was viewing himself through the glass like some peepshow, but unlike before, when what he’d seen had all been events from the past, this scene was different. Lance had never been to this motel before. Not until tonight. And the only time he’d slept had been when he’d first arrived and had had the dream where he’d seen Quinten for the first and then witnessed himself right before he’d entered room six. He’d fallen asleep with the lights on that time, he was certain of that. So if what he was seeing wasn’t something from the past, that meant it was possible that what he was seeing now was…
The future, he thought. This hasn’t happened yet.
And just as he thought this, a person came into view from the right side of the window, appearing from the shadows like a child’s monster from their closet. Slow, lurking with frightening purpose.
The knife was clutched in their right hand, its long blade glinting in the glow from the television, short bursts of light as the person moved across the room toward the bed. Lance watched as he remained motionless beneath the comforter, unaware of the new presence in the room with him.
Move, he wanted to yell. Get away!
The words built up in his throat but they did not escape. Lance swallowed them down, knew they’d do no good.
He could only stand and watch as the person raised the knife above their head and then brought it down with ferocity, sinking the blade into the comforter and the person beneath.
And then again.
Again and again and again and again. Each stab of the knife causing Lance to flinch as he stood in the cold and helplessly watched himself be murdered.
Finally, the person with the knife stopped. Standing still over Lance’s slaughtered body, waiting.
Then Lance noticed something different about the scene. Something subtle, but significant. Something that was, and then suddenly wasn’t.
The shape beneath the comforter had stopped its methodical rise and fall. Lance in the bed was no longer breathing.
The person with the knife turned around then, moving to head toward the door, and in the light of the television screen, Lance looked into Meriam’s face and saw the tears running down her cheeks.
26
Lance pushed through the motel’s office door, the bell announcing his entry. Meriam was standing behind the check-in counter, her arms crossed and her eyes serious. No hint of the polite hospitality from earlier, yet not quite aggressive either. Lance shook the bits of snow from himself and then pulled down his hood. He stared back at Meriam. Now that he was here, and after what he’d witnessed in his motel room’s window, he was quickly trying to figure out how to play this. Ultimately, he landed on an option that was dangerous. But given his current situation, he was okay with playing the high risk–high reward game.
He would be completely honest.
“Come on back,” Meriam said and turned and disappeared into the back living space. Lance followed her, feeling as though he were passing through so many memories as he crossed the floor and rounded the counter, the visions of all he’d witnessed happening years ago replaying in his head like a quick recap to reinforce his reason for being here.
The coffeepot was on a pot holder atop the small table, two mugs steaming from their brim set at either seat. Meriam was already seated, waiting. Her eyes locked onto Lance as he entered and never let him go. Lance sat across from her, lifted his mug to his lips and took a sip. Too hot, again, but so good. Time travel had made him thirsty. He took another long sip, gulping down a third of the mug, and as he drank, he looked over the bottom of the mug and beyond Meriam, over her shoulder to the kitchen counter where, sitting right next to the toaster, was a butcher block full of knives.
He gently set the mug back down. Meriam waited, clearly intent to let him make the first move. Lance understood; she’d kept secrets for so long, she wasn’t going to give them up now without a compelling reason.
Lance took one more sip of coffee and then cleared his throat. “You have a nephew,” he said. “His name is Quinten. He’s tall like me, and slim like me. When I first arrived tonight, you thought I was him. Understandable. Because from the back, and from a distance, we look the same. It’s only when you can see our faces clearly that you can tell the difference. That’s why you asked me what you did when you first saw me. You said, ‘Is it you? Is it really you?’”
Meriam opened her mouth to speak, but Lance cut her off. He was just getting started. “But our looks aren’t the only way your nephew and I are similar. He has special abilities, special talents. I don’t know for sure how much of them he shared with you, but I’m talking about things like being able to find lost items with ease, knowing information about people or places that nobody else could possibly know, with no satisfactory explanation as to how. And bigger things, perhaps”—here comes the honesty—“like being able to get inside people’s heads, hear their thoughts. And not just the living, either. I believe your nephew might have the ability to see and hear spirits. Communicate with the dead, if you will.”
At this, Meriam’s eyes grew larger, and again she tried to interject. But again, Lance cut her off, holding up a hand to silence her.
“There’s two reasons I both know and, more importantly, believe these things about your nephew. The first is because I’m the same way. That’s why I say we’re similar. All those things I just mentioned that your nephew is able to do, I can do them as well. For the longest time, I’ve thought I was completely alone in this. I’ve always wondered if there were others, and had honestly assumed that there must be, somewhere out there. I refused to believe that in the entire world, I was the only one. But I’d never come across anyone else. Not even close.” Lance paused, catching his breath.
“The second reason I know and believe these things about your nephew is because I’ve seen it. I’ve seen him and some of the things he’s done. I’ve heard conversations between him and you and your late husband, Murry. This might sound crazy to you, but I’m willing to bet it won’t, because you’ve spent a good portion of your life with somebody like Quinten, who has probably told you stories like the one I’m telling now, and you know that no matter how ridiculous, how much like science fiction or a ghost story it might sound, you know it’s true. Because you’ve seen behind the curtain, so to speak. You’ve seen too much of the evidence to deny it or pretend to discourage it.
“When I called you back and said I’d gotten held up, what I really meant was I somehow got lost, found myself living in the past of this motel. I walked room to room to room, walked in this office. I relived very specific moments of yours and Murry’s and Quinten’s lives that I feel must be important, if maybe for no other reason than to let me know that I’m not alone.”
Meriam sat and stared silently. Like she’d suddenly fallen into a state of shock.
But Lance wasn’t finished. He couldn’t stop, wouldn’t rest until he’d poured everything out, drained himself until he was empty and Meriam would have no possible angle for denial.
“If you want more proof, how about this: the letter. I know the woman who hanged herself in room one left you that letter, which I’m betting nobody but you has ever laid eyes on. I know about the Backstroms, too. How Murry murdered them and then covered it up. I’m guessing whatever he did worked pretty well, because he did it again, didn’t he? With the man who died in room five, the cop with the young girl? Murry and Quinten made him disappear, too. I don’t know why, I’ll admit that, but I do know that it happened. I know Murry and Quinten got in an argument after the cop. Because getting
rid of the cop had been Quinten’s idea, but he hadn’t known about the Backstroms, and that upset him.
“And I know about what happened in room six, too. I know why you say that room is off-limits. It’s because something terrible happened there, and I’m guessing you just can’t bring yourself to step foot inside it ever again.”
Lance stopped there. Picked up his mug and drained his coffee. Refilled it from the pot on the table and then said, “Start talking. Please. I don’t care about anything but answers, and where I can find Quinten. I think you’ll agree he and I would be happy to see each other.”
Meriam was quiet for a long time. Lance waited patiently, understanding that the bomb of knowledge he’d just dropped was certainly a lot to process for somebody who had likely spent most of their life keeping all this information locked away in their head, never whispering a word about any of it to another human being. Then Meriam raised her own mug to her lips, taking a small sip, and when she looked across the top of the mug at Lance, he saw the wet of tears in her eyes. She set the mug down, as gently as if it were made of the most delicate china, and asked, “You … you actually saw him? You saw Quinten?”
Lance felt the heartbreak in the woman’s voice. Whatever had happened between them all, it had clearly never been resolved. “Yes,” he said, “but not now. Not in the present. Like I said, I saw things that happened here before. It was like I was living in a movie of your past.”
Meriam, as Lance had assumed she would, did not try to rebuke this. “We loved him so much. He was like our own son.”
Lance nodded. “Tell me about him.”
She did.
Quinten was Meriam’s sister’s son. His father was a security guard at the rubber factory where his mother had worked, but he’d gotten fired and skipped town before Quinten was ever born.
Something else we have in common, Lance thought.
With not much money, an ever-changing shift schedule at the factory, and no father figure to help share the child-caring workload, Quinten’s mother turned to her only sister and her husband for help.
The Lance Brody Series: Books 3 and 4 Page 37