I turn up the brightness on the laptop as much as I can, minimize the Skype screen, and go to a white page. Then I angle the laptop awkward over the edge and shine the light down.
It’s not as deep as I thought. If it was once a well, it’s been filled in part of the way. About fifteen feet down, the ladder ends in a concrete floor.
There’s a white pile of sticks down there. Lots of sticks. I don’t know what it is until I see the pale curve of something that looks . . .
. . . like a skull.
I’m looking at bones.
I almost drop the laptop. I hear a high, thin hissing in my ears, and I stumble backward and sit down, fast. The laptop falls on the ground next to me, but the lid doesn’t close. Everything looks grainy and weird, and I feel like I’m floating.
I’m fainting, I think, and that’s so stupid. Why would I do that? My heart isn’t pounding, it’s almost fluttering, and I feel sick. Cold sweat has broken out on the back of my neck, on my face, my neck, under my breasts and arms. It smells rancid.
I don’t know what’s happening to me.
“Lanny!”
I blink. Kezia’s been calling my name for a long while now. I turn toward the laptop. I tilt it so the camera can see my face, and I bring up the Skype screen. Kezia’s practically filling the camera, she’s leaning so close.
“There are dead people,” I tell her. “In the well. They’re dead.”
I see her swallow. I want to cry again, but everything feels wrong side out now. I don’t know if I have tears. I can’t feel anything but cold.
“Are you coming?” I ask her. “Please come. Please.”
“We are,” she promises. Kezia’s got tears for me. I can see them rolling down her cheeks. “You just breathe, sweetheart. We’ve—” She pauses to listen to something someone’s shouting in the background. Takes in a deep, unsteady breath. “Okay, we’ve got your signal triangulated. We’re coming, Lanny. We’re coming right now. I’m going to send Connor with Detective Prester, and I’m going to stay right here with you. Right here. I’m not going to leave you alone, okay?”
“I’m okay,” I say. It’s automatic. I’m not okay. I’m glad she didn’t shut down the call. I don’t know what I’d do if someone wasn’t looking at me. Scream, probably. Or just . . . vanish. This feels like a place where people just . . . disappear.
Kezia keeps telling me I’m safe, but I don’t feel safe at all.
I sit and stare at that open pit until I hear the sirens coming. All this time I thought I knew what evil was. Mom knew. I pretended. But now I know it’s that room in the cabin. That pile of bones. Evil’s a quiet place, and darkness.
Kezia says, “Can you see the police cars? They’re coming up that road. They’re coming now. Don’t worry about the man in the van. They got him down toward the main road. He’s in custody. He can’t hurt you.”
I nod. I look away from the pit. I look at her, and I say, “He was going to bring Connor here. Wasn’t he?”
She doesn’t answer.
I’m glad she doesn’t.
24
SAM
Mike Lustig and I sit in the coffee shop where I’d retrieved the tablet, and a few customers trickle in as the leaden sun rises. Some of the cloud cover begins to thin. Ice will melt off by noon, the news is promising, but commuting will still be a mess. Flights are starting in an hour out of the airport, which is now packed with stranded travelers.
Gwen is gone. There’s no tracking her now. We lost any chance at it the second that van went over the hill and disappeared into thin air. There’s nowhere for me to put my grief and fear and anger except to bottle it up inside. That pressure cooker will only hold for so long, but it has to hold for now.
We have to find a way to get to Melvin Royal that they can’t foresee.
Mike and I ignore the slow resumption of normal life and sit in the corner watching the video as we try to find something, anything, that we’ve missed. The tablet has a provision for two sets of earphones, and he has his own. When we get to the end of the video the first time, Mike nods and makes a circling motion with his hand. Play it again. I do, all the way through. We watch it over and over again, and I’ve lost count of the screams, the pleas, the questions and answers. I see nothing I didn’t see before.
And then I do.
It’s a flash of memory rather than what’s on the screen, sparked by the sight of a dirty eighteen-wheeler moving past the coffee-shop windows. And from that random glimpse, my viewpoint shifts, and I get it. I know why all this is happening. Why I’ve been feeling this shadow, this weight, almost from the beginning.
I wish I could feel relief. I don’t. I feel real horror twisting my guts into a knot. This can’t be happening. Can’t be right.
Mike sees it in me as I take my headphones off, and he pauses the video midscream. “What? What is it?”
“We got it wrong. No. No, I got it wrong from the start.” My voice sounds rough and distorted. It’s my fault. That fact yawns in front of me in a black, bottomless canyon of blame. “Christ, I did this, Mike. It’s—”
“Hey, man, focus. What did I miss?”
“You didn’t miss anything,” I say. “Come on. We’ve got to move, now.”
I’m already on my feet. He grabs the tablet and shoves the headphones in his pocket. “Where are we going?”
“The airport.”
“Airport? Tell me you’re not taking their bait and going to Kansas, man. You’re smarter than that . . .”
The walkway’s been coated with rock salt, and it crunches under my boots as we head for the Jeep. The air tastes heavy, sharp in my lungs with ice crystals, but the sun’s a thick, hazy glow behind the clouds. The front will burn off soon. I’m thinking about that because I’m trying to figure logistics. Logistics is better than the guilt, because if I fall into that chasm, I’m never climbing out of it alive.
“Let me ask you a question,” I tell him. “What was the name plastered on that eighteen-wheeler on the access road last night?”
Mike pauses to stare at me over the hood of the Jeep. “The hell are you talking about?”
“Last night we were following the white van. It was about a half a mile up when the pickup wrecked, remember? When we came over the hill, we saw a red sedan, another black Jeep going too fast, a police SUV with lights burning. And an eighteen-wheeler.”