Blackwater Lights (14 page)

Thunder woke them both.

Ellen pulled herself against him. “I don’t want anything bad to happen to you,” she said sleepily. “I’m worried about all this poking around you’re doing. And after what happened to you at the Hand … that really scared the crap out of me.”

“Don’t worry,” he said.

She buried her face in his chest. The silence was awkward and charged. He wanted to say so much more, and knew she did, too. But it was too soon. Saying too much could jinx it. The whole thing had happened so fast.

“I wish you could stay here all morning, but you should probably go soon. My sister will be bringing William home. It might be a little weird for him.”

He got up from the bed, then bent over and kissed her forehead. “I’m going to run to the library later. I forgot I was supposed to meet up with Denny for a drink last night, but some sexy little wench got me so worked up I forgot all about it.”

“That poor guy. Now he’s really going to hate me.”

“Don’t worry. I’ll apologize and buy him dinner to make up for it.” He pulled on his shirt. “I’ll call you in the afternoon.”

She gave him a sharp look. “Damn straight you will,” she said.

When he got to the library Denny wasn’t working, so he left a note with the assistant librarian. He stopped at a pay phone—the town still had at least one of those, thankfully—and called Kevin’s house. Nothing. Maybe he was on his way from the airport. At least he’d be home soon. He left a long message on Denny’s answering service, apologizing profusely and promising to treat him to a dinner at the restaurant of his choice. He hoped the librarian wasn’t deliberately
avoiding him.

He listened to the local radio station on the ride back to Kevin’s. Heavy rain in the forecast for the next few days, with possible flash flooding and warnings for those who lived near rivers. Great. He’d seen on Denny’s map how close Kevin’s house was to the Blackwater River.

He still smelled Ellen’s floral perfume. They’d jumped on each other like lonely, affection-starved people. Which was what they were. And he couldn’t kid himself—he was falling for her. Hell, he’d already
fallen
. But how would they see each other once school began and he had to go back to teaching? Six hours from Baltimore to Blackwater every Friday night and six back home on Sunday nights? Impossible. He’d had a few long-distance relationships, none of which had endured more than a handful of months. If anything lasting was to come out of their possible relationship, one of them would have to move. With William in school and her sister and father living in Blackwater, it wasn’t like she’d want to be the one to uproot. And even if there were teaching jobs nearby, which was doubtful, there was no way in hell he’d want to live in this—what was the word Denny had used? This far too
Fortean
town.

But what was happening between him and Ellen was different. It felt hyper-accelerated and unavoidable, as if their meeting had been preordained. He couldn’t imagine just leaving and never seeing her again.

No sense worrying about it now. He’d had the first sane, nightmare-free night in a long time. And he planned on having a few more nights lying next to her before he left.

He sat up, his neck aching. He’d fallen asleep on the couch. The little sleep he’d gotten at Ellen’s hadn’t been enough, and he’d passed out with the TV on.

The phone rang. He staggered into the kitchen, bumping his knee on the kitchen table, and looked at the caller ID.
Unknown caller
again. He stared at the readout, watching it ring. Maybe it was Kevin.
Please
let it be Kevin.

He clicked the talk button and held the receiver to his ear. He waited.

“Hello, Ray,” Lily said.

He hung up.

The phone rang again. He took it into the bedroom and stuffed it under a pillow. It kept ringing, muffled. The bitch was nothing if not persistent. Maybe he should answer—just tell her to fuck off and go away, to stop calling him.

He took a deep breath and picked up the phone.

“What do you want?” His heart pounded.

Her voice was flat and calm. “I’m willing to forgive you. I’m asking you—one last time—to consider what I’m offering.”

Ray stayed silent. Let her get to the point.

“There’s a lot in it for you if you work with us.”

The
us
again. Lily and Crawford. “I don’t get it. Why won’t you just leave me alone?”

After a moment’s silence, she answered. “You have something important—something we are very interested in. And we’re willing to reward you. Quite well. Monetarily … and otherwise.”

“I’m not interested,” he said.

“Oh, you are most definitely interested,” she said. “After all, that’s what brought you here, isn’t it? A need to know? About what happened to you all those years ago?”

He sat on the bed to steady himself. They knew. They fucking
knew
. Of course they did.

“It’s a win-win deal, darling. We all get what we want. All you need to do is come and see us again. We have a little chat, and you go home a very satisfied man, with enough compensation to kiss your little high school job goodbye.”

“A little chat? You need to be more specific.”

Another pause. “Come pay us a visit. That’s all. We ask you some questions, and you tell us what you know. And you leave. You decide whether or not you want to continue working with us.”

“Then why can’t we just do it over the phone? Ask me your questions, I’ll ask you mine, and we’re both happy. Right?”

“It’s not that simple. We need to speak in person. At Crawford’s. The discussion is delicate. And sensitive.” Her voice softened. “Plus I’d like to see you. I know the other night didn’t go very well, but I do like you, Ray. You interest me. I want to learn more about you. And there are lots of things I can show you, things that will open doors for you. Our connection is
real—you know it. You felt it.”

He closed his eyes. Maybe she was telling the truth. He could answer their questions and then he’d have the answers he wanted, too—why he’d been chosen, and what they’d done to him or what he’d seen when they took him down that dirt path on a star-filled night when the sky opened up. Answers to all of it. At last.

No
. She was doing it with her voice—bewitching him. The rhythm, the pitch, the way she hit certain syllables, were fogging his thinking. More of her hypnosis. He stood and shook his head. If he didn’t cut the mental circuit now, he’d start believing her. It was hard to get his reply out, but once he did it resonated with an odd but satisfying power.

“No.”

The abrupt silence made him dizzy. He’d done it.

“I really don’t think you understand the decision you’re making,” she said. “You were part of something special. And it left its mark on you. Crawford can allow you to see it again. To remember it. To
touch
it.”

“Fuck you,” he said. “I don’t want anything to do with you or it. Just stay away from me.”

“Look under the mattress, Ray.” Another voice—a familiar male voice. Crawford. He’d been listening on the line. “Go ahead. Put the phone down and look under the mattress, near your pillow.”

“What?”

“Just take a look, Ray. Go ahead, I’ll wait.”

Ray put the phone down and lifted the mattress near the pillow. A plain manila envelope, large enough to hold a manuscript. His hands trembled. It was tied shut with a little red string. He picked up the phone. “I have it.”

“Open it,” Crawford said.

He unwrapped the string and lifted the flap. He reached in and pulled out a stack of photos—letter-sized, on heavy stock. It took him a moment to comprehend the top photo. It was upside down. He flipped it.

It couldn’t be, but it was. Crystal—the girl who had awakened him that night that seemed so long ago—and she was naked, beneath a man, in a barely lit room. And the man on top of her was
him
.

No. Not possible.

He was holding her arms, pinning her to the floor. His eyes looked wild, ravenous, pupils wide and ghastly red in the reflection of a camera flash. A foam of saliva coated his lips. He could barely recognize himself in that face, almost as if it were some lunatic twin he’d never known. The bad Ray. Crystal’s mouth was open. Screaming.

“Oh, there are more. Go ahead, look at the rest.”

In the next photo she was tied up, her mouth sealed with duct tape, eyes wide and imploring the camera for help while he stood above her. In his hand was a black-handled hunting knife with a serrated blade.

“There are more, but that should be enough to get your attention, yes?”

Ray dropped the photos. He felt his sanity spilling like sand.

“I think you’ll understand now that you have no choice in the matter. We have many more of them—a lot more, in fact, some extremely compromising. After what you did to that poor girl … Pity the dear thing. That was so terribly
messy
.”

The room shifted. The lights flickered and the temperature dropped. Crawford, though miles away, might as well have been standing next to him.

“No,” Ray said. It was all he could muster. They had him. They’d drugged him, set him up, and now he was theirs.
Checkmate
.

“Come see us. Tomorrow. Join us in the Great Work, Ray. I promise you …” He laughed quietly. “The rewards are beyond anything you could imagine.
Ciao
, my friend.”

The phone clicked.

Ray slumped to the foot of the bed. He started to weep, but his tears wouldn’t come—just dry convulsions and, eventually, emptiness.

The flames tasted the photos, and consumed them.

He knew it didn’t make any difference; Crawford would have plenty of copies. But it felt cathartic, watching the images as they were reduced to ash in the dirt behind Kevin’s house. The last bit to burn was a close-up of Crystal’s face. Her wide eyes vanished, accusing him as tendrils
of fire erased them.

What in God’s name had he done? Rather, what had they done to him? It seemed impossible that he could have been tricked into those horrific, staged scenes. His eyes were open in the photos, but there was no
him
in them. More like a man possessed by something alien. Somehow Lily had drugged him and hypnotized him after they had gone swimming. He’d been strung along, zombie-like, posed like a cheap prop, and then the whole thing had been expertly wiped from his mind.

And anyone seeing those photos would convict him in an instant.

After what you did to that poor girl
, Crawford had said.

No. Impossible. They might have posed him, but there was no way he could have hurt her. It was staged to make him look guilty, but she had to be okay. But who would believe him? The photos were damning. And Crawford claimed he had many more—and that what Ray had done to her was
messy
.

He kicked dirt over the smoldering ashes. There was one last option, though he dreaded it. Just thinking about it made him sick to his stomach. He showered, shaved, and drove into Blackwater.

The police department was a squat brick rectangle with an American flag above a West Virginia flag and some unhealthy azaleas by the main door. Ray pulled into the lot and parked next to a black Mercedes. The receptionist had platinum-blond hair brushed high above her forehead and thin lips painted glistening pink. She told him he’d have to wait. The sheriff was eating lunch.

Ray waited, his hands damp with nervous sweat. He paged through a year-old racing magazine, and it was like reading something from another planet—he didn’t know the first thing about auto racing. He tossed it aside and rubbed his eyes.

Sheriff Morton was probably looking through the whole collection of Crawford’s photos now, fingering the safety on his gun, eating his ham and American cheese on white bread and giggling about the lethal injection Ray most certainly would be sentenced to. Maybe he was on the phone with Crystal’s parents:
Yes, ma’am, we’ve got him. The man who murdered your precious little girl, as a matter of fact, he just walked into the station to confess—

“Hello again.” Sheriff Morton’s door was open. He waved Ray inside and closed the door behind them. “Sorry for the heat. Damn air conditioner broke.”