Later Read online

63

  He was like a burned log with fire still inside. I don’t know any other way to put it. He had turned black, but his skin was cracked in dozens of places and that brilliant deadlight shone through. It was coming out of his nose, his eyes, even his ears. When he opened his mouth, it came out of there, too.

  He grinned and lifted his arms. “Let’s try the ritual again and see who wins this time. I think you owe me that, since I saved you from her.”

  He hurried down the stairs toward me, ready for the big reunion scene. Instinct told me to turn tail and run, but something deeper told me to stand pat no matter how much I wanted to flee that oncoming horror. If I did, it would grab me from behind, wrap its charred arms around me, and that would be the end. It would win, and I would become its slave, bound to come when it called. It would possess me alive as it had possessed Therriault dead, which would be worse.

  “Stop,” I said, and the blackened husk of Therriault stopped at the foot of the stairs. Those outstretched arms were less than a foot from me.

  “Go away. I’m done with you. Forever.”

  “You’ll never be done with me.” And then it said one more word, one that made my skin pebble with goosebumps and the hair stand up on the nape of my neck. “Champ.”

  “Wait and see,” I said. Brave words, but I couldn’t keep the tremble out of my voice.

  Still the arms were outstretched, the blackened hands with their brilliant cracks inches from my neck. “If you really want to get rid of me for good, take hold. We’ll do the ritual again, and it will be fairer, because this time I’m ready for you.”

  I was weirdly tempted, don’t ask me why, but a part of me that was far beyond ego and deeper than instinct prevailed. You may beat the devil once—through providence, bravery, dumbass luck, or a combination of all—but not twice. I don’t think anyone but saints beat the devil twice, and maybe not even them.

  “Go.” It was my turn to point like Scrooge’s last ghost. I pointed at the door.

  The thing raised Therriault’s charred and sooty lip in a sneer. “You can’t send me away, Jamie. Don’t you realize that by now? We’re bound to one another. You didn’t think of the consequences. But here we are.”

  I repeated my one word. It was all I could squeeze out of a throat that suddenly felt like it was the width of a pin.

  Therriault’s body seemed poised to close the distance between us, to leap at me and close me in its awful embrace, but it didn’t. Maybe it couldn’t.

  Liz shrank away as it passed her by. I expected it to go right through the door—as I had passed through Marsden—but whatever that thing was, it was no ghost. Its hand grasped the knob and turned it, more skin splitting and more light shining through. The door swung open.

  It turned back to me. “Oh whistle and I’ll come to you, my lad.”

  Then it left.

  64

  My legs were going to give out and the stairs were close, but I wasn’t going to sit on them with Liz Dutton’s broken body sprawled at their foot. I staggered to the conversation pit and collapsed into one of the chairs near it. I lowered my head and sobbed. Those were tears of horror and hysteria, but I think they were also—although I can’t remember for sure—tears of joy. I was alive. I was in a dark house at the end of a private road with two corpses and two leftovers (Marsden was looking down at me from the balcony), but I was alive.

  “Three,” I said. “Three corpses and three leftovers. Don’t forget Teddy.”

  I started laughing, but then I thought of Liz laughing pretty much the same way just before she died and made myself stop. I tried to think what I should do. I decided the first thing was to shut that fucking front door. Having those two revenants (a word I learned, you guessed it, later) staring at me wasn’t pleasant, but I was used to dead people seeing me seeing them. What I really didn’t like was the thought of Therriault out there somewhere, with the deadlight shining through his decaying skin. I’d told him to go, and he went… but what if he came back?

  I walked past Liz and shut the door. When I came back I asked her what I should do. I didn’t expect an answer, but I got one. “Call your mother.”

  I thought of the landline in the panic room, but I wasn’t going back up those stairs and into that room. Not for a million bucks.

  “Do you have your phone, Liz?”

  “Yes.” Sounding disinterested, like most of them do. Not all, though; Mrs. Burkett had had enough life left in her to offer criticism about the artistic merits of my turkey. And Donnie Bigs had tried to hide his stash of torture porn.

  “Where is it?”

  “In my jacket pocket.”

  I went to her body and reached into the righthand pocket of her duffle coat. I touched the butt of the gun she’d used to end Donald Marsden’s life and drew my hand back as if I’d touched something hot. I tried the other one and got her phone. I turned it on.

  “What’s the passcode?”

  “2665.”

  I punched it in, touched the New York City area code and the first three digits of Mom’s number, then changed my mind and made a different call.

  “911, what is your emergency?”

  “I’m in a house with two dead people,” I said. “One was murdered and the other one fell down the stairs.”

  “Is this a joke, son?”

  “I wish it was. The woman who fell down the stairs kidnapped me and brought me here.”

  “What is your location?” Now the woman on the other end sounded engaged.

  “It’s at the end of a private road outside of Renfield, ma’am. I don’t know how many miles or if there’s a street number.” Then I thought of what I should have said right away. “It’s Donald Marsden’s house. He’s the man the woman murdered. She’s the one who fell down the stairs. Her name is Liz Dutton. Elizabeth.”

  She asked me if I was okay, then told me to sit tight, officers were on the way. I sat tight and called my mother. That was a much longer conversation, and not always too clear because both of us were blubbering. I told her everything except about the deadlight thing. She would have believed me, but one of us having nightmares was enough. I just said Liz tripped chasing me and fell and broke her neck.

  During our conversation, Donald Marsden came down the stairs and stood by the wall. One dead with the top of his head gone, the other dead with her head on sideways. Quite the pair they made. I told you this was a horror story, you were warned about that, but I was able to look at them without too much distress, because the worst horror was gone. Unless I wanted it back, that was. If I did, it would come.

  All I had to do was whistle.

  After fifteen very long minutes, I began to hear whooping sirens in the distance. After twenty-five, red and blue lights filled the windows. There were at least half a dozen cops, a regular posse. At first they were only dark shapes filling the door, blotting out any last traces of daylight, assuming there were any left. One of them asked where the goddam light switches were. Another one said “Got ’em,” then swore when nothing happened.

  “Who’s here?” another called. “Any persons here, identify yourselves!”

  I stood up and raised my hands, although I doubted if they could see anything but a dark shape moving around. “I’m here! My hands are up! The lights went out! I’m the kid who called!”

  Flashlights came on, conflicting beams that strobed around and then centered on me. One of the cops came forward. A woman. She swerved around Liz, surely without knowing why she was doing it. At first her hand was on the butt of her holstered gun, but when she saw me she let go of it. Which was a relief.

  She took a knee. “Are you alone in the house, son?”

  I looked at Liz. I looked at Marsden, standing well away from the woman who had killed him. Even Teddy had arrived. He stood in the doorway the cops had vacated, perhaps drawn by the commotion, maybe just on a whim. The Three Undead Stooges.

  “Yes,” I said. “I’m the only one here.”

  65

  The lady cop
put an arm around my shoulders and led me outside. I started shivering. She probably thought it was from the night air but of course it wasn’t. She slipped off her jacket and put it over my shoulders, but that wasn’t good enough. I put my arms down the too-long sleeves and hugged it against me. It was heavy with cop-things in the pockets, but that was okay with me. The weight felt good.

  There were three cruisers in the courtyard, two flanking Liz’s little car and one behind it. As we stood there, another car pulled in, this one an SUV with RENFIELD CHIEF OF POLICE on the side. I guessed it would be a holiday for drunks and speeders downtown, because most of the town’s force had to be right here.

  Another cop came out the door and joined the lady cop. “What happened in there, kid?”

  Before I could answer, the lady cop put a finger over my lips. I didn’t mind; it actually felt sort of good. “No questions, Dwight. This boy’s in shock. He needs medical attention.”

  A burly man in a white shirt with a badge hung around his neck—the Chief, I assumed—had gotten out of the SUV and was in time to hear this last. “You take him, Caroline. Get him looked at. Are there confirmed dead?”

  “There’s a body at the foot of the stairs. Looks like a woman. I can’t confirm she’s deceased, but from the way her head’s turned—”

  “Oh, she’s dead, all right,” I told them, then started crying.

  “Go on, Caro,” the Chief said. “Don’t bother going all the way to County, either. Take him to MedNow. No questions until I get there. Also until we’ve got an adult who’s responsible for him. Get his name?”

  “Not yet,” Officer Caroline said. “It’s been crazy. There are no lights in there.”

  The Chief bent toward me, hands on his upper thighs, making me feel like I was five again. “What’s your handle, son?”

  So much for no questions, I thought. “Jamie Conklin, and it’s my mother who’s coming. Her name is Tia Conklin. I already called her.”

  “Uh-huh.” He turned to Dwight. “Why are there no lights? All the houses on the way up here had power.”

  “Don’t know, Chief.”

  I said, “They went out when she was running down the stairs after me. I think it’s why she fell.”

  I could see he wanted to ask me more, but he just told Officer Caroline to get rolling. As she eased her way out of the courtyard and started down the curving driveway, I felt in my pants pockets and found Liz’s phone, although I didn’t remember putting it there. “Can I call my mom again and tell her we’re going to the doc-in-the-box?”

  “Sure.”

  As I made the call, I realized that if Officer Caroline found out I was using Liz’s phone, I could be in trouble. She might well ask how come I knew the dead woman’s passcode, and I wouldn’t be able to give a good answer. In any case, she didn’t ask.

  Mom said she was in an Uber (which would probably cost a small fortune, so it was good the agency was back on a profitable basis) and they were making excellent time. She asked if I was really all right. I told her I really was, and that Officer Caroline was taking me to MedNow in Renfield, but just to get checked out. She told me not to answer any questions until she got there, and I said I wouldn’t.

  “I’m going to call Monty Grisham,” she said. “He doesn’t do this kind of legal work, but he’ll know someone who does.”

  “I don’t need a lawyer, Mom.” Officer Caroline gave me a quick sideways glance when I said that. “I didn’t do anything.”

  “If Liz murdered someone and you were there, you need one. There’ll be an inquest…press…I don’t know what-all. This is my fault. I brought that bitch into our house.” Then she spat: “Fucking Liz!”

  “She was good at first.” This was true, but all at once I felt very, very tired. “I’ll see you when you get here.”

  I ended the call and asked Officer Caroline how long it would take us to get to the doc-in-the-box. She said twenty minutes. I looked over my shoulder, through the mesh blocking off the back seat, suddenly sure that Liz would be there. Or—so much worse—Therriault. But it was empty.

  “It’s just you and me, Jamie,” Officer Caroline said. “Don’t worry.”

  “I’m not,” I said, but there was one thing I did have to worry about, and thank God I remembered, or me and Mom might have been in a heap of trouble. I put my head against the window and half-turned away from her. “Going to take a little nap.”

  “You do that.” There was a smile in her voice.

  I did take a little nap. But first I powered up Liz’s phone, hiding it with my body, and deleted the recording she’d made of me passing on the plot of The Secret of Roanoke to my mom. If they took the phone and found out it wasn’t mine, I’d make something up. Or just say I couldn’t remember, which would be safer. But they couldn’t hear that recording.

  No way.

  66

  The Chief and two other cops turned up at the MedNow place an hour or so after Officer Caroline and I got there. Also a guy in a suit who introduced himself as the county attorney. A doctor examined me and said I was basically fine, blood pressure a little high but considering what I’d been through, that wasn’t surprising. He felt sure it would be normal again by morning and pronounced me “your basic healthy teenager.” I happened to be your basic healthy teenager who could see dead folks, but I didn’t go into that.

  Me and the cops and the county attorney went into the staff break room to wait for my mother, and as soon as she got there, the questions started. That night we stayed at the Renfield Stardust Motel, and the next morning there were more questions. My mother was the one who told them she and Elizabeth Dutton had been in a relationship that ended when Mom discovered Liz was involved in the drug trade. I was the one who told them how Liz had scooped me up after tennis practice and took me to Renfield, where she was expecting to rob a big haul of Oxy from Mr. Marsden’s house. He finally told her where the drugs were, and she killed him, either because she didn’t get the jackpot she was expecting or because of the other stuff she found in that room. The pictures.

  “There’s one thing I don’t understand,” Officer Caroline said as I gave her back her jacket, which I had kept wearing. Mom gave her a wary, ready-to-protect-my-cub look, but Officer Caroline didn’t see it. She was looking at me. “She tied the guy up—”

  “She said she secured him. That was the word she used. Because she used to be a cop, I guess.”

  “Okay, she secured him. And according to what she told you—also according to what we found upstairs—she tuned up on him a little. But not all that much.”

  “Would you get to the point?” Mom said. “My son has been through a terrible experience and he’s exhausted.”

  Officer Caroline ignored her. She was looking at me, and her eyes were very bright. “She could have done a lot more, tortured him until she got what she wanted, but instead she left him, drove all the way to New York City, kidnapped you, and brought you back. Why did she do that?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You had a two-hour ride with her, and she never said?”

  “All she said was she was glad to see me.” I couldn’t remember if she’d actually said that or not, so I guess it was technically a lie, but it didn’t feel like one. I thought of those nights on the couch, sitting between them and watching The Big Bang Theory, all of us laughing our heads off, and I started to cry. Which got us out of there.

  Once we were in the motel with the door shut and locked, Mom said, “If they ask you again, say that maybe she was planning to take you with her when she headed west. Can you do that?”

  “Yes,” I said. Wondering if maybe that idea had been knocking around someplace in Liz’s mind all along. It wasn’t a good thing to speculate on, but better than what I had thought (and still do today): that she planned to kill me.

  I didn’t sleep in the connecting room. I slept on the couch in Mom’s. I dreamed that I was walking on a lonely country road under a sickle moon. Don’t whistle, don’t whistle, I told
myself, but I did. I couldn’t help myself. I was whistling “Let It Be.” I remember that very clearly. I hadn’t gotten through more than the first six or eight notes when I heard footsteps behind me.

  I woke up with my hands clapped over my mouth, as if to stifle a scream. I’ve woken up the same way a few times in the years since, and it’s never a scream I’m afraid of. I’m afraid I’ll wake up whistling and the deadlight thing will be there.

  Arms outstretched to hug.

  67

  There are plenty of drawbacks to being a kid; check it out. Zits, the agony of choosing the right clothes to wear to school so you don’t get laughed at, and the mystery of girls are only three of them. What I found out after my trip to Donald Marsden’s house (my kidnapping, to be perfectly blunt) was that there are also advantages.

  One of them was not having to run a gauntlet of reporters and TV cameras at the inquest, because I didn’t have to testify in person. I gave a video deposition instead, with the lawyer Monty Grisham found for me on one side and my mom on the other. The press knew who I was, but my name never appeared in the media because I was that magic thing, a minor. The kids at school found out (the kids at school almost always find out everything), but nobody ragged on me. I got respect instead. I didn’t have to figure out how to talk to girls, because they came up to my locker and talked to me.

  Best of all, there was no trouble about my phone—which was actually Liz’s phone. It no longer existed, anyway. Mom tossed it down the incinerator, bon voyage, and told me to say I’d lost it if anyone asked. No one did. As for why Liz came to New York and snatched me, the police came to the conclusion Mom had already suggested, all on their own: Liz had wanted a kid with her when she went west, maybe figuring a woman traveling with a kid would attract less attention. No one seemed to consider the possibility that I’d try to escape, or at least yell for help when we stopped for gas and grub in Pennsylvania or Indiana or Montana. Of course I wouldn’t do that. I’d be a docile little kidnap victim, just like Elizabeth Smart. Because I was a kid.