“But he killed his wife, and burned his daughter, and then shot himself,” Lance said, unable to stop himself for some deep down reason he couldn’t control.
Jacob Morgan didn’t protest. He nodded his head. “He had demons, Lance. Just like all of us. His just got the best of him, I guess.” He hawked some phlegm from his throat and spat it out over the railing. “Here’s something else I never told the police, Lance, and you can decide whether you want to stick it in your book or not.” He shrugged again. “I don’t guess it matters at all now. But if I’d have known Mark was going to snap like that, do the things he did … I’d have killed him myself before he had the chance to hurt those girls. Natalie was the sweetest woman. Funny, charming, hell of a cook. And Mary…” The tears were so sudden and so strong, Jacob Morgan was sobbing into his hands before Lance had even realized what was happening. Deep cries of anguish that were choked off by a man ashamed to have lost control in front of another man—a stranger, digging into a painful past. Jacob looked up from his hands, wiping his eyes. “Sorry,” he said, forcing an awkward-sounding laugh. “She just had so much to live for, you know? She was so young, and just getting started. And that bastard killed her. His own goddamn daughter. He killed her!”
Jacob Morgan eyes were full of fire, his face electric with anger, but then he looked down at the rocking chair and saw Lance’s flip phone sitting open, and his features softened again. He worked to regain control of himself. Finally, he said, “Sorry. I guess I always think I’ve moved on from it, but I’m always wrong. It still stings, even after all these years.”
Lance nodded. “I can’t pretend to imagine what it must have been like.”
Lance had seen a lot of things in his life, and he could certainly imagine much worse than finding a few dead bodies, but it seemed like the right thing to say.
“I left,” Jacob said. “After it all. I left. Went to help my friend with his house, and then just bounced around for a while. I kept thinking I’d be ready to come back, but every time I got ready to start the drive, I found myself heading in a different direction. And then my sister and her husband were killed in that car accident, and I found myself suddenly with a newborn child under my wing. And the only place to try and start a home with him was … well, home. You know? So I came back, and here I am talking to a guy I hardly know about my deepest and darkest emotions.”
Lance picked up the flip phone, pressed a few random keys, and then snapped it shut. “I’m sorry if that was painful for you, but I do appreciate you talking with me.”
Jacob Morgan waved him off. “Glad to do it,” he said. “I’d rather you hear the truth than tell the world a bunch of gossip bullshit. Even though I’m sure that would sell more books, right?”
“Can I ask you something about Ethan?”
Jacob Morgan’s mouth snapped closed, and his eyes hardened and his arms crossed.
Lance Brody, ladies and gentlemen. Master of segues, and the art of subtle conversation.
Jacob Morgan’s words were slow and direct, as if he were suddenly thrown into a chess match he neither had expected or fully understood. “Ethan has nothing to do with what happened to the Benchleys.”
Lance shook his head. “No, of course not. I wanted to ask you something about what happened at the farmhouse last night.”
“No.”
“But—”
“No. Listen to me, I understand you have a job to do, and I understand I was a part of something that is never going to go away, and there will always be people like you showing up over the years to ask questions or ask what it was like. I’ve accepted that. But you have access to me only, not to my nephew. Not to a six-year-old boy.”
Lance tried to gain some footing. “I understand, sir. But if you could just let me explain, I think—”
“We’re finished here,” Jacob Morgan said, moving toward the door. “Good luck with your book, but I’d like you to leave.”
Lance, desperate and overwhelmingly surprised at how quickly this conversation—his one chance—had resulted in him getting completely shut down, went against everything his mind knew was right, against everything that had worked so hard to keep his secrets safe for years, and said, “I think he can see the dead.”
Jacob Morgan stopped at the door, turned and stared at Lance. His face was working something out, his mind dissecting and examining Lance’s words.
He knows! Lance’s mind screamed. He knows!
Somewhere overhead, a crow cawed twice, and then all was still and quiet.
Jacob Morgan took a step toward Lance, and his voice was hushed. “Get off my property,” he said, “or I’m calling the police.” Then, slyly, “I’m sure Sheriff Kruger would love another reason to drag you into the station, don’t you?”
Then he turned and went inside.
Lance heard the door’s deadbolt slide into place.
33
By the time Lance had made the walk through the trees and up the remainder of the path to the farmhouse, the clouds had blackened like a smoker’s lungs, and the wind had notched up enough to stir the fallen leaves in the yard into mini-cyclones and dancing waves of burnt oranges and browns. Lance walked through the yard with feet that felt heavy and a spirit that had worn down to just a thin strand, ready to snap.
He walked up the porch steps, his brain conjuring up the image of Natalie Benchley sprawled half on the steps and half in the dirt, her hand outstretched, reaching for … for what? For him? Reaching for help?
Lance mumbled under his breath, the words carried off with a strong gust of wind that whipped at his hoodie and whistled through the porch. “Better reach for somebody else.”
He pushed through the front door just as a far-off crack of thunder officially announced the impending storm. Lance didn’t even so much as glance over his shoulder to the horizon. He slammed the door with a crack to rival the thunder. The windows rattled, the ceiling creaked. Lance made his way to the kitchen, thinking that the old farmhouse could go ahead and fall down, collapse on itself with him in it for all he cared. One more casualty, another notch on the house’s belt. He could see the headline now, another back issue of the newspaper to add to the library’s archive: STRANGER THAN FICTION? TRUE CRIME WRITER DIES IN HOUSE COLLAPSE.
And nobody would care. A few people might actually be relieved. Sheriff Kruger, for example. And the Benchleys’ killer, happy the house had taken care of their dirty laundry for them. With Lance gone, things could go back to normal. People could let the house slide back into the background of the town’s memories, back onto the high shelf in the garage, where they put things that no longer served much of a purpose but they weren’t willing to toss away.
Nobody would care.
This thought wormed its way from the back of Lance’s mind, dug itself out from a grave where it’d been sealed away and asked to keep quiet because while it might be true, Lance was allowing himself to believe he was to serve a larger purpose in life. His life was about more than just his personal well-being and happiness. His life wasn’t about him at all, but about what he would do. The things his gifts would allow him to be for others.
My sweet boy. Oh, what great things you’ll do.
His mother’s words had pushed him, her memory a driving force. And while he knew he was special—that was the only word that seemed to fit, although Lance would argue that unique was his personal preference, because it carried with it a much less positive connotation—and his mother had, in her last moments on this earth, been gifted messages and maybe even visions of Lance’s future by the spirits of the Great Hillston Cemetery, a future that was apparently worth her sacrificing herself for, he was now overwhelmed with a great sense of failure, and along with it … a desire to give up.
Despite his gifts and his knowledge and the overwhelming sense of duty he’d carried with him since the time he’d been old enough to even begin to understand his abilities, today, right now inside the farmhouse while a storm as dark as his current mood climbed up
the doorstep, Lance was giving up. Not giving up on life, or a continuation of his apparent predetermined destiny—if you believed in such a curious word—but in Ripton’s Grove, he was finished.
He could not go on.
He couldn’t help the long-dead Benchley family—and did they actually need help in the first place? He’d not seen any of their spirits, no traces of ghostly bodies anywhere in the farmhouse during his entire stay. All he’d been given were some phantom words—a sort of prerecorded retelling of that terrible night they’d all died—and those didn’t tell the whole story.
There’d been the incident with Ethan
(She’s down there!)
that had started him on a dangerously desperate path of hope that the boy was like him and would…
Would what?
Come away with Lance? Leave his uncle and let Lance be his new guardian as they roamed the country together, Lance helping the boy to hone his skills and understand what he was and what he could become like some sort of supernatural-solving Batman and Robin?
How ridiculous that thought had been. How blindly ignorant.
Lance had gotten so emotionally invested in the idea of not being alone, he’d risked everything. He’d mentioned to Jacob Morgan that he thought Ethan could see the dead.
What would Jacob do with that information? What would he think about Lance, and who Lance really was?
It was still a stretch … because honestly, who really believed in such things—seeing ghosts and talking to the dead? But still, it’d been a slip. And Lance could not afford many of those.
The Reverend and the Surfer had found him once, and Lance knew they would find him again. He didn’t need to help the matter along by fanning the gossip fires about a young man who claimed to have supernatural abilities.
He found he’d ended up at the kitchen table, sitting at one of the wooden chairs, a half-empty bottle of water in one hand, its twisted-off plastic top in the other. He had no memory of sitting or digging the bottle from his backpack. Outside the kitchen window, rain lashed against the glass, the sky dark, both from the rain and from the sun that had settled down for the evening.
What time is it?
Lance pulled his phone from his pocket and gawked at the tiny display. Hours had passed since he’d started up the hillside from Jacob Morgan’s house. Lance shook his head and rubbed at his eyes and checked the time again. Same result.
He’d been checked out. His mind had almost literally blocked out the rest of the world—time and space and any sense of being—and Lance had vanished into what he could only describe as a fugue state, sitting alone in an old house, contemplating all the moves he’d made, and also the ones he hadn’t.
Alone.
He was all alone.
He looked down at the phone in his hand, watched as his thumb pressed the buttons to bring up the contact list, and then begin to scroll. The list was small, and it took only a few presses of the button to the get to the M section.
Mom
Lance’s thumb hovered, wanting so badly to press SEND and listen to the call go to voicemail. Needed to hear her voice.
But did he really? Did he need to hear her and be taken back to that night, back to the life before the one he lived now? Tossed headfirst back into the sinking feeling of tragedy and loss and broken heartedness that he’d been slowly and steadily climbing out of since the night she’d died?
The number might not even work anymore, he thought, and he was unsure which would be worse for his psyche: hearing his mother’s voice again, or discovering that he’d never be able to hear it again.
Thunder boomed so loud Lance jumped from the chair. It had sounded like cannon fire, a war reenactment taking place in the backyard. The entire house had shaken, the kitchen table vibrating enough that it had scooted to the left a quarter of an inch.
Alone.
God, he felt so alone.
He used his thumb to scroll up in his contact list. Stopped at the L section. Stared at her name.
No. He stopped himself. You know you can’t.
He scrolled down the S section instead. Needed somebody, anybody.
The rain caught the wind and slammed into the house. More wind gusted and circled and attacked. The noise was terrible, but the house held firm.
Lightning snapped and lit up the backyard in a freeze frame that was blinding.
More thunder rolled.
Lance navigated to Susan’s name and wondered what he’d say if she picked up. They barely knew each other. Same with Luke. What could he tell them? How could he explain?
But the urge was strong. So strong he felt at once he couldn’t put the phone away even if he’d wanted to. He just needed a voice, he reasoned with himself. I just need a friendly voice.
His thumb pressed the SEND button, and Lance put the phone to his ear.
It rang. Once, twice. Three times. After the fourth ring, Susan’s voice picked up, cheerful and full of life. It was a recording, apologizing for missing the call but asking Lance to leave a voicemail and she’d return his call as soon as she could. It was polite and professional, and Lance was furious. Finally, his emotions took over, his rage surfaced like water breaking through a dam, and he tossed the opened phone onto the table, grabbed his half-empty bottle of water and hurled it across the kitchen, where it struck the wall with a dull thud and fell to the floor, its opened mouth pouring the remaining water across the wooden floor in a slow and steady trickle.
Another explosion of thunder.
Another white-hot flash of lightning.
Lance grabbed one of the kitchen chairs in both hands and lifted it above his head, smashed it to the floor, where the back snapped off the seat with a satisfying crack. Lance tossed the chair aside and grabbed his backpack, yelling to the house as he made his way back down the hall toward the front door, “I can’t help you!”
He had to leave. Would walk in the downpour to the bus station and get out of town. He didn’t care if it would take hours. He couldn’t sit in the house anymore. He couldn’t be alone with his thoughts anymore.
He needed out. He needed
(my mom)
help.
When he was two steps away from the door, somebody knocked.
Three almost inaudible taps that were drowned out by the noise from the storm.
Lance ripped the door open, anger burning deep in his eyes.
And then his eyes lowered, taking in his visitor.
Standing on the porch, soaking wet in his blue jeans and sneakers and buttoned-up flannel shirt, was Ethan. There was a flashlight in his hand that looked big enough for him to carry with two hands, its bright light shining down to the rough wooden boards beneath his feet.
“She said you could help me,” the boy said, water dripping off his forehead and into his eyes. Lance thought there were tears mixed in with the rainwater. “The girl in the basement said you could help me.”
34
And the rest of his thoughts vanished—the anger and resentment and sadness disappearing as quickly as the flashes of lightning lit up the night sky.
“Help you how?” Lance asked, but he knew the answer didn’t matter.
This is why I’m here, he thought. I’ll do anything he needs.
He ushered the boy inside and closed the door, the bright cone of light from the boy’s flashlight becoming a spotlight in the dark house.
Lance hadn’t even realized he’d left the lights off. He’d been sitting alone all this time in a house as dark as his thoughts. He found the switch on the wall and flipped it, bathing the foyer in that awful yellow tint.
Ethan didn’t answer the question. Instead, he stood just inside the door, shivering in his wet clothes. Lance moved swiftly, stripping off his hoodie and telling the boy to take his shirt off. The boy did, obedient, and Lance held the oversized sweatshirt out to the boy, who raised his arms and allowed Lance to slide it over his head. It fell to the boy’s shins, the sleeves comically long, but the boy didn’t seem
to care. He wrapped his arms around himself and within a minute the shivering subsided. Lance picked up the wet shirt from the floor and hung it over the banister by the stairs.
“Better?” Lance asked.
Ethan nodded. “Yes.” Then, “I mean, yes, sir.”
The protectiveness Lance suddenly felt for this child was all at once overwhelming, as if he were being introduced to his own son for the first time. It was a feeling so foreign, and so unexpected, it nearly made his head swim and his heart flutter with elation.
But at the same time, something wasn’t right. Something wasn’t … him.
Along with the joyousness, there was a faint buzz of something beneath the surface. Something familiar. Something electric that was almost unpleasant but…
He knew then what it was, the realization presenting itself with stark clarity. It was a slightly more subdued version of the feelings he’d experienced last night when Jacob and Ethan had visited, the feeling that had intensified with an almost crippling effect when Ethan had begun walking toward the closed basement door.
He’s like me, Lance thought again. And he wondered if the boy was feeling the same things that Lance was. Was this some sort of cosmic connection between the two of them, two bare wires that spark when they touch?
Lance studied the boy’s face. Ethan had used the sleeves of Lance’s hoodie to wipe the water from his eyes, and it appeared that the tears had stopped as well. He looked stoic, almost dutiful. Like he was simply doing what was asked of him. He showed no outward indication that he was experiencing any of what Lance was.
I’m stronger, Lance thought. I’m more sensitive to it.
He had no idea what he was talking about. And why would he, really? This was an entirely new experience.
“Help you how?” Lance asked again, now that Ethan seemed more settled and at ease.
The boy looked at Lance sheepishly, shrugged. “I don’t know.”
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