Shadowlands

by Kate Brian

  But when I looked down at the sand again, Tristan was gone.

  Thorns tore at my ankles. A wet branch whipped my cheek. I fell to my knees, a sharp rock piercing my skin. But it was all nothing. Nothing. Nothing compared with what Steven Nell was going to do to me.

  When I tried to get up, my knee buckled and all I could do was crawl. If only I knew where I was. If only I could just see where I was going, but it was so dark. So very, very dark.

  Then something caught my eye—something white and smooth looming in the darkness. Whimpering, I leaned forward for a closer look. White fingers with chipped nail polish. Darcy’s hand. Her arm stuck out at an unnatural angle from beneath a holly bush, the sleeve of her cheerleading sweatshirt soaked through with blood. Shaking, I pushed the branches aside. Darcy’s eyes were open, lifeless, the back of her head smashed in.

  “Darcy!” I screeched. “No!”

  I scuttled backward on my hands. Steven Nell had killed her, and I was next. I opened my mouth to scream again, and a gloved hand clamped over my lips.

  “No!”

  I opened my eyes and found myself staring at the ceiling of my room. I was still alive, but Darcy… The moment I remembered everything that had happened earlier, I sat up straight and screamed. Someone was sitting in my desk chair, dressed in head-to-toe black. His knees faced my mattress, his hood was up to cover his face, and his posture curled forward as if he was in mourning. As soon as I screamed, he looked up, the hood falling back from his blond hair.

  Tristan.

  “Shhhh!” he whispered, bringing a finger to his lips.

  My chest heaved as I struggled for breath and tried to make sense of what was happening. I looked down and realized I was wearing nothing but a thin tank top with no bra, and I yanked my blanket up to cover my chest.

  “What the hell are you doing?” I demanded. “How did you get in here?”

  “We need your help,” he replied, ignoring my question. He leaned toward me, resting his forearms on his knees and rubbing his hands together before clasping them. I saw the woven leather bracelet peeking out from the cuff of his sleeve. His blond hair fell forward, grazing his cheekbones as he looked me dead in the eye. “Steven Nell has your sister somewhere on the island.”

  “What?” I shrieked, jumping up, still clutching the blanket. My pulse raced so fast I was about to pass out. I brought one hand to my head and tried to focus. “I knew it! I knew—”

  I paused and looked down at Tristan. He eyed me with a sort of reluctant expectance. Like he was waiting for me to realize what I was slowly realizing.

  “How do you know about Steven Nell?” I asked, trembling. “Did the police tell you? Did they tell Joaquin?”

  “It doesn’t matter how I know,” he said, standing. “I just do.”

  I blinked, completely confused. “Chief Grantz said he’d gone to Canada. He said the FBI—”

  “Chief Grantz lied,” Tristan said flatly.

  “What?” I breathed. “Why?”

  He blew out a sigh, looking at the floor as he shook his head. “It’s a long story.”

  I paced in front of him, holding my head with one hand. “Okay, okay,” I said, my brain working hard to process all this. “How do you know he’s here? Did he contact you?”

  “No,” he said, shaking his head.

  “Tristan, you’re giving me nothing here. What’s going on?” I asked, growing more frustrated, more desperate, by the second. “What do you mean, you need my help?”

  Tristan moved over to the north-facing window and leaned his elbow against the upper ledge on the lower pane. He closed his eyes and pressed the heel of his hand into his forehead, as if my questions perturbed him. As if he didn’t know how to answer.

  “All I can say is, you’re the only one that can find her,” he said, turning to look at me, his blue eyes pained.

  Then he gazed out the window in a way that made my heart skip a beat. He was looking at something or someone down below. My breath short and shallow, I walked over to join him, my long blanket swishing behind me. At first all I saw was the glow, but as I approached the window, the crowd came into focus. There were at least a dozen of them gathered in a close-knit pack in the sand. Each of them wore a hooded sweatshirt, and each carried a black flashlight. I could see Joaquin, Lauren, Krista, Fisher, Bea, and Kevin, plus a few others I’d noticed around town. They were all there, and they were all gazing up at me in grim silence.

  “Will you help us?” Tristan asked quietly.

  I swallowed hard. My throat was dry, my heart was pounding, and white-hot adrenaline warmed my skin from the inside out. I knew I should go wake my father. I knew I should get him to contact the police. Nothing about this made sense. And there was no way I should be going out with a pack of strangers, a pack of kids, to try to take on a serial killer. But when I looked into Tristan’s eyes, I knew there was only one answer to his question.

  “Of course I will,” I said. “She’s my sister.”

  The sand was soft and cold beneath my bare feet as Tristan and I made our way across the beach to his hooded friends. Every one of them watched my approach as if I were some kind of prophet. As if I were going to start glowing from within and spout the meaning of life. I held my running shoes to my chest, grasping them in my sweaty palms.

  This was really happening. Steven Nell had found us.

  “Rory,” Joaquin said in a deep, no-nonsense voice. “What do you know about Steven Nell?”

  “Not a lot,” I said. “I thought he was just a regular math teacher until he attacked me in the woods near my house. I’m not actually from Manhattan,” I clarified, remembering how Darcy had filled Joaquin in on our faux history. “I’m from New Jersey.”

  No one even blinked.

  “Go on,” Tristan said, touching my back briefly.

  “Well…it turns out he murdered fourteen girls all across the country, and I was the only one to get away,” I said. Tristan and Krista exchanged a grim look. “The FBI agent who put us into witness protection told us Nell had never failed before, so there was a good chance he’d try to come after us, but that’s all I know. I was hoping they’d caught him, until…”

  “Until now,” Tristan finished for me.

  “Yeah.” I gulped back a sob and looked down at the sneakers against my chest, knowing how terrified Darcy must be. If she was even still alive. “Until now. Why aren’t the police here?” I asked, looking up again, sniffling back a tear. “Shouldn’t we be talking to them about this? Or at least tell some adults?”

  “The adults are useless,” Joaquin said with a scoff. “They’re all in denial.”

  “They think it’s impossible for this man to be here,” Krista explained. “They refuse to believe us.”

  I glanced at Joaquin, whose jaw was set. Was that what he’d been arguing with Officer Dorn about?

  “But you think he’s here?” I said. “Why?”

  “Because nothing like this has ever happened before,” Lauren piped in, her voice shrill. “Ever.”

  Tristan and Joaquin shot her an admonishing look, and she bowed her head, blushing.

  “Nothing like what?” I asked. “Someone going missing? But Grantz said this happens every once in a while. That they always form a search party and…”

  My words died on my tongue. Tristan was looking at me like he was waiting for me to catch on already.

  “Oh,” I said, my heart turning to stone. “That was a lie, too.”

  But why? Why would the police chief lie to me and my father? Was he in on it? Did he know Steven Nell somehow?

  “What I don’t get is why he took Darcy,” Joaquin said, clenching a fist in front of his mouth. “If he’s so pissed off he failed, why not just come after you again?”

  “Because he’s messing with me,” I said, hugging my shoes even tighter. “He wants to make me pay before he—”

  I couldn’t finish the sentence. The crowd shifted on their feet, murmuring, whispering. I looked at Tristan.
>
  “Has he contacted you since you’ve been here?” he asked.

  I thought of the note he left on my bed back home in Princeton. “No,” I said.

  “Are you sure?” He squared off with me, toe-to-toe, and reached for my right hand. He held it lightly in his own for a second, then squeezed. “Think, Rory. You haven’t received any messages from him of any kind?”

  I looked into Tristan’s eyes, and all of a sudden it hit me. It hit me so hard it knocked the wind out of me. The laughter, the humming, the song on the jukebox. The scrap of fabric, the messenger bag, the lighthouses. Maybe they hadn’t been coincidences. Maybe they hadn’t been taunts or reminders. Maybe they’d been messages.

  “‘The Long and Winding Road,’” I breathed.

  “What?” Joaquin asked.

  “The song. ‘The Long and Winding Road,’” I said, my brain racing as I clutched Tristan’s hand. “It’s his favorite song. I heard someone humming it my first morning here, and then it was on the jukebox at the Thirsty Swan.”

  Joaquin looked at Tristan. “‘The Long and Winding Road.’ What could that mean?”

  “I don’t know,” Tristan said, still looking into my eyes. “What else, Rory?”

  “There was a scrap of fabric that looked like it had been torn from his jacket,” I said. “It had two patches sewn on it. I think they were flags like you see on a sailboat.”

  “Can you draw them?” Krista asked, breathless.

  “With what?” I asked.

  “The sand,” Joaquin suggested, gesturing down.

  I tugged my fingers away from Tristan, dropped my shoes, and fell to my knees on the cold beach. The whole pack of locals gathered around me, their hoods shadowing their faces as they pointed their flashlights at a single spot in the sand. Shakily, I managed to draw the two flags.

  “This one was blue-and-white checks, and this one was blue, white, and then red in the center,” I said, looking around at them.

  “They are signal flags. That one means N,” Kevin said, pointing to the checked one. “And the other is W.”

  “Northwest,” Tristan added.

  Another murmur went through the crowd. All the tiny hairs on the back of my neck stood on end. My stomach turned, and I had to hold my breath to keep from vomiting on someone’s feet.

  “Dryer’s Way,” Lauren said. “That’s a long and winding road.”

  “And it ends at the northwest point of the island,” Joaquin added.

  I stood up, dusting the sand from my legs. Another wave of nausea hit me, and I instinctively grabbed for Tristan’s arm. I took a breath, cleared my throat, and let him go to stand on my own.

  “There was one other thing,” I said. “His messenger bag. He left it hanging on my fence, and it was full of tiny lighthouses.”

  Joaquin blinked. “There’s no lighthouse on Juniper Landing.”

  I felt my heart start to fall. I’d thought we were getting somewhere.

  “There used to be,” Tristan said.

  Everyone turned to look at him.

  “What do you mean?” Joaquin asked.

  “It was situated at the northwest point,” he said, looking startled but resigned. “They took it down because people…visitors…kept getting hurt up there. But the foundation is still there. And so is the lighthouse keeper’s cottage.”

  “How did I not know this?” Joaquin asked.

  Tristan fiddled with his bracelet. “We never go up there. Unless we’re going to the bridge,” he said, glancing at Krista. All the friends exchanged knowing looks. Clearly, this meant something to them.

  “He wanted me to find him,” I said, shaking. “He was planning this all along, and now he has his bait.”

  Tristan took a step forward. “But he didn’t plan on all of us coming with you.”

  I looked around at them. At Lauren and Krista, Fisher, Bea, and Kevin, all the others whose names I didn’t know. Even Joaquin. All of them were willing to help me—to help Darcy. All of them were willing to risk everything to save her. I didn’t understand why, but I was grateful. Standing in their midst, I felt safe. I felt like it was still possible that everything could be okay.

  I glanced over at Tristan hopefully. His eyes were determined but somehow sad.

  “Well, what are we waiting for?” Joaquin said. “Let’s go get her.”

  We drove to the northwest point of the island in silence, me wedged in the front seat of an old, rusty pickup truck between Joaquin and Tristan, with Krista’s sneakered feet on my thigh. Joaquin was driving, and Krista sat sideways on Tristan’s lap. Three cars full of the others trailed behind us, their headlights occasionally catching in the rearview mirror, blinding me at random intervals.

  The light filled the car. The jarring crunch as the truck slammed into our bumper. Darcy screaming. My dad desperate at the wheel. Then the weightlessness, the pain, the terror. My father dead splayed on the ground.

  “Take a left here,” Tristan said.

  I slammed back into the present. I realized I was clutching Tristan’s arm, and I slowly released my grip. He looked me in the eye, but not in a disturbed or judging way. He looked at me as if he understood.

  Joaquin leaned over the steering wheel, squinting into the darkness through the windshield. “Where?”

  “Right there!” Tristan said, raising his voice for the first time since I’d known him.

  I spotted the dirt road at the exact same time as Joaquin, and then the truck veered left and the tires squealed, kicking up sand and dirt behind us. I gripped Tristan’s shoulder as we made the turn. Krista’s head banged against the passenger-side window.

  “Ow,” she said plainly, rubbing at it.

  No one asked if she was all right. Everyone was too focused on the small, wind-battered cottage bobbing in and out of view as Joaquin navigated the bumpy road. My sister was inside that house. Alive or dead, she was there. I was sure of it.

  The fog clung to the bay like the meringue on top of a lemon pie, and a few fingers of mist curled around the base of the house. Off to our left was the bridge, a tall, coppery structure with two towers, leading from the island off into the fog. It was even bigger than I’d thought, hovering over the water like a massive alien structure.

  “Stop here,” Tristan said. Joaquin hit the brakes, parking just around the bend from the cottage, the car camouflaged by a huge forest of overgrown reeds.

  “Kill the lights,” Tristan instructed. Joaquin did as ordered.

  Behind us, the other cars cut their lights as well and rolled to a stop. Several car doors popped. Within seconds, the rest of the group had gathered around our truck, hoods drawn, flashlights off.

  “What do we do now?” Fisher asked, his voice deep. His nostrils were wide, his jaw set. He looked like he was ready to rumble.

  “We go in.” Joaquin started to open his door, but I felt a surge of panic and grabbed his shoulder.

  “No.”

  “What do you mean, no?” Joaquin snapped. “We’re wasting time.”

  “Hear her out,” Tristan said.

  Joaquin exhaled loudly through his nose but sat back, the springs under his ancient vinyl car seat squealing.

  “This guy is a genius,” I told them. “He traveled the country killing girls and managed to elude the authorities for ten years. He baited me into coming here. Going inside could be a trap.”

  “So what do you want to do?” Krista asked quietly.

  I pressed my lips together. I could just see the top of the roof over the reeds.

  “We make him come to us,” I said determinedly.

  I gestured for Joaquin to get out of the truck. I slid out after him, and my knees almost buckled when my feet hit the dirt. I took a breath to steel myself and walked to the front of the car, the crowd of locals parting around me. My feet crunched on pebbles, sand, and broken shells as I tromped down the lane toward the house. I stopped ten feet from the door, Tristan behind my right shoulder, Joaquin behind my left, the rest of them gathered aro
und like a small army.

  In my mind’s eye, I saw Steven Nell’s dry hands as they grabbed me. Felt his breath against my face. Saw the watery film in his eyes. Every inch of me was shaking, but I curled my fingers into fists. I had to do this. I had to save my sister.

  “Steven Nell!” I shouted at the top of my lungs.

  Dead silence. There was no wind, no waves, nothing.

  “I’m here! I did what you wanted!” I screamed, my voice breaking. “Now let me see my sister!”

  We waited. I breathed in and out, counting the beats of my heart. Onetwothreefourfivesixseveneightnineteneleventwelve—

  The door creaked open. My breath stopped. Tristan took a step closer to me. I felt his chest against the back of my shoulder. The shaft of light grew wider. Wider.

  “Rory Miller!” Steven Nell’s reedy voice called out. “Won’t you come inside and play?”

  Bile rose up in the back of my throat. Tristan took my hand, his warm fingers lacing around mine. “No! I want to see my sister first.”

  “You’ll only see your sister if you come inside,” he taunted, still hovering out of sight.

  My heart slammed in my chest. My pulse pounded in my temples. Never in my life had I felt this terrified, this cold, this unsure. But I had to save Darcy. I’d come here to save Darcy. I took one step forward.

  “What’re you doing?” Joaquin whispered. “You said yourself going inside could be a trap.”

  “Let her go,” Tristan said, releasing my hand.

  “I don’t know about this, dude,” Joaquin said. “I don’t like it.”

  Something inside of me snapped. I was sick of them talking about me like I wasn’t there. Deciding what to tell me and when to keep me in the dark. This had nothing to do with them. This was about me and my sister. “I don’t care if you like it or not,” I said sharply. “Darcy’s in that house, and I’m going in there to get her.”

  Joaquin and Tristan looked at each other. Neither one said another word. A light breeze kicked up as I approached the squat white building. Light shone through one cracked window. The roof sagged at the center, and the whole front porch leaned to the right. The boards let out a loud wail as I stepped up toward the front door, and the wind lifted my hair off my neck. I glanced back once at Tristan and Joaquin. They were as still as statues. Then I turned and stepped over the threshold. Darcy jumped up from the floor and lunged at me.