314 Book 2 (24 page)

Nia ignored the question and walked across the gutted library. She ke
pt her hands in her pockets as she studied the short bookcases that were attached to the wall under the window that looked out on the hallway that Oliver was in. She knelt down and gazed into the empty book shelf.

“Ever since I discovered my ability, I’ve been more aware of the world around me. It’s fascinating to think that everything we touch remembers us. Kind of comforting, in a weird sort of way.”

“How so?” asked Mindy.

“It makes us immortal. Doesn’t it? To think that everything you do, and everything you say, is remembered.” She to
ok her hand out of her pocket and tapped the bookshelf. “Here. Memories trapped in the world around us.”

“I guess,” said Mindy, clearly disturbed by the thought.

“But there’s something else,” said Nia as she stood back up and turned to Mindy. “Something I never thought of before we came here. It has to do with the fog, and the creature they call The Skeleton Man. The one that Oliver is so interested in. For the first time, after all this time knowing that the things around us are remembering what we’ve done, I had a really scary thought.”

“What’s that?” asked Mindy.

Nia stared at the wall. “Who is it that remembers us? Who is it that’s watching?” She walked over to the bare wall and placed her hand against it. “What if they want out?”

Mindy shivered and scowled at her friend. “Stop saying stuff like that.
That’s messed up.”

The walls of the gutted library seemed a little more menacing to them both now.

Nia looked at her friend and then over to the entrance of the library, toward where Oliver was still talking on the phone. Lee was staring back at her, as if merely a reflection in the glass.

“I think they caused this. They did something that caused everyone in the town to disappear.”

“Are you sure?”

Nia shook her head. “No,
I’m not sure. It’s just a feeling I have.”

“Well, I can’t make heads or tails of your feelings these days.”

“Me neither,” said Nia. She stood up and stretched, reaching her hands high as she arched. “Although I know one thing for sure, my ability is getting stronger. I don’t think it’s because I’m more confident, or anything like that. Honestly, I think the moment in that house, when I freaked out and crawled outside, it let something in this town know that I could hear them. It’s like they spent the past eleven years screaming at people that paid no attention to them, and then, all of the sudden, a stranger wanders in that listens. Now they can’t shut up.”

“I guess that makes sense.” Mindy took a picture of the library with her phone, and then turned to take a picture of the window that Nia had said Jacob fell into.

“At first, I thought they just wanted to tell their story, sort of like a book that’s forcing me to read it. But now I’m not so sure.” She crossed her arms, a passively defensive gesture.

“What is it you think they want?” asked Mindy.

“I think they want out, and they think I can help them.” She looked back to the entrance where Oliver was. “The thing we need to figure out is what he wants. I don’t believe for a second that he just wants to know what happened.”

“Yeah, no shit,” said Mindy, equally distrusting of their host.

“The question is: Do they want to keep these things stuck in this town? Or do they want to get them out?”

“I don’t understand,” said Mindy. “Are we talking about the big fucking Twinkie?”

Nia looked quizzically at her friend. “What?”

“You know, like from Ghostbusters, where the tank in the basement explodes and all the ghosts shoot out. Is that what you’re talking about?”

Nia was going to shake her head, but then chuckled and nodded. “Yeah, I guess – sort of. Christ, I don’t know. This all sounds crazy.”

“How do you want to deal with him?” asked Mindy as she looked in Oliver’s direction.

“Whatever happened has something to do with that house he took us to first. I think we should keep feeding him information about the rest of the town, and I’ll pretend like I can’t stomach the idea of going back to that house. Then you and I will try to figure out a way to sneak out and go there alone.”

Mindy
frowned. “For real? You sure you want to go back there?”

“No, of course I don’t, but we’ve got to.
It’s the only way to figure all this out.”

“Maybe we shouldn’t,” said Mindy. “Maybe nobody should. Maybe some things are better left dead.”

Nia had no response for that.

I worked with Oliver for a couple months. He was hesitant to reveal much about his involvement with the experiment that Cada E.I.B. was responsible for, but I didn’t need to hear him say it to know he was part of the conspiracy that led to the disappearance of the people in the town. Every time I drew another picture in that notebook of his, I learned a little more. As he stared over my shoulder, and pointed at the things he was interested in, I started to put the pieces together.

When we first started working together, he didn’t fully trust me, but over time he stopped questioning every picture I sketched in his notebook. He stopped staring over my shoulder as I drew the scenes, and that’s when I was able to begin altering things.

Whatever reason he had to rebuild Widowsfield exactly as it had been in 1996, I knew that I had an opportunity to stop him from achieving his goal. I thought there was no way he could know the sketches were wrong, so I filled that notebook with slightly varied versions of reality. I was careful not to alter things too much, and I was thankful I did because I would later learn that they’d taken pictures of several areas immediately after the event. That made it harder to perfect my false sketches, because I didn’t want Oliver to discover the deception.

Still though, it was easy to change minor details, like the way a lawn ornament sat in the yard, or what type of flooring a particular room had before the looters ripped everything away. I hoped that these minor variances would be e
nough to drive a wedge between the Watcher’s world and the re-creation Oliver was hoping to create.

I had to do whatever I could to keep the demons in their prison.

Widowsfield

March 14
th
, 1998

Amanda Harper stood outside of the house that her husband used to take their children to during their spring break. Widowsfield was a ghost town, the homes broken and falling apart, with vines creeping along the sides and paint flaking away. The yards were overcome with weeds that had long ago choked out the grass, and even the sidewalks sprouted waist-high vegetation between their cracks.

“So this is it,” said Amanda as Alma stood on the sidewalk behind her. The sun was dire
ctly above them, blazing summer-hot even though it wasn’t even officially spring yet. “This is where he used to take you so he could fuck that whore?”

Alma stayed quiet. Her mother’s darkness seemed to swell the closer they got to this place, and now the woman hardly resembled who she’d once been. Even her face had become twisted, constantly scowling and hateful. Her arms displayed numbers and symbols, each stretching in a line from her shoulder down to her fingertips. Alma had been similarly decorated, except she’d tried to fight the graffiti, leading to a mess of scrawled numbers on her chest and back.

“This is where he lost my baby boy.”

The yard was abuzz with insects as Amanda walked up to the door. She had to push away the weeds as she went, and Alma stopped several feet behind, refusing to follow.

“Come on, Alma,” said Amanda as she stood at the door of the dilapidated house.

Alma shook her head.

“You don’t want to test me, little girl,” said Amanda with a vicious tone.

“I don’t remember anything about your son.”

Amanda was incensed and burst through the space between them, pushing the weeds aside like a lioness emerging from the brush to kill her prey. She latched onto Alma’s arm and jerked the ten-year-old forward, causing her to yelp in pain.

“He’s your brother! He’s your brother, Alma! I’ll make you remember.”

“I won’t do it!” Alma screamed.

Amanda threw the girl against the door, causing it to shudder on its hinges. Then she pulled her open palm far behind her head, ready to strike. Amanda paused, her face contorted in fury, her lower lip bleeding as she bit down on it. Her eyes resembled nothing of the woman that Alma had
once loved. Her black eyes were devoid of a parent’s love.

Amanda slapped Alma as hard as she could. The force of the strike sent the little girl falling from the stoop and into the weeds that lined the house. She hit her elbow first and immediately felt the burning sensation of broken skin. The fall stole her breath and she gasped as she stared up at her mother.

A snake slithered through the weeds, just as scared of Alma as she was of it.

“Don’t fight me on this,” said Amanda, unfazed by her daughter’s gasps for breath.
“I’m not crazy!” She screamed as if defending her honor to an affront that no one had made. “I’m the sane one! I’m the only one that remembers my little boy! You’re the one that’s trying to hide him from me, but not anymore. Not anymore. Get up. Stop wheezing. You’re fine.” She reached down and plucked her daughter up.

Air returned to Alma’s lungs and she doubled over as she coughed. Amanda cursed at her and then tried to open the door, but it was locked. “Fuck. Well, it looks like you’re going in through the window.”

“What?” asked Alma with a hoarse voice.

“Help me find a big stone,” said Amanda as she stepped into the grass.

“No, wait,” said Alma, struggling to speak. “Snakes.”

“Nevermind,” said Amanda as she reached down into the grass. “I’ve got one.” She pulled up what had once been part of a border that lined a flowerbed in front of the house. It was a red, square brick that she struggled to lift.
She got it up to her shoulder and then took a step closer to the house before counting down. Then she tossed the large brick at the window, shattering the pane into hundreds of pieces. She cheered as the glass fell to the floor inside and then she took off her shoe so that she could break away the remaining shards.

“Okay, come on,” said Amanda as she put her shoe back on.

Alma stepped back, away from her mother.

“Get your ass over here,” said Amanda as she pointed at the ground in front of the broken window.

“No, Mommy,” said Alma. “I don’t want to go in there.”

Amanda was furious as she ran over to the steps and caught her daughter. She grabbed Alma by the waist and lifted the kicking child. They struggled, and Alma started to slap her mother when Amanda slammed the girl’s face into the house’s siding, breaking off flecks of paint on her cheek. She seethed, “You’ll do what you’re told.”

“You’re hurting me,” said Alma as she cried.

“I’ll kill you,” said Amanda as she pushed Alma’s face even harder against the wall.

“Okay, I’ll go in! Please stop.”

Amanda released the girl and smiled in satisfaction. “That’s what I thought. Now let me help you up.” She got on one knee and then pointed at t
he other, offering it as a stool beneath the broken window.

Alma could remember looking through the window to watch the children at the nearby school as they walked home. If she remembered correctly, there was a couch pushed up against the wall that would soften her fall when she crawled through.

She put her foot on her mother’s knee and then set her hands on the sill, but the glass poked into her palm and she retreated. “There’s still glass there.”

“Stop being a baby,” said Amanda. “Climb through and go open the door for me.”

“But there’s glass there. I’ll get cut.”

“God damn it,” said Amanda as she grabbed her daughter’s waist and pushed her up.

“No!” Alma screamed as her mother forced her into the window.

Amanda grasped her daughter’s crotch and pushed until the ten-year-old was thrust halfway through the window. The shards of glass cut into Alma’s arms and belly, ripping her shirt as she was forced into the home.

There was no couch waiting on the other side. Alma fell face-first to the floor and onto the broken glass. Her hands crunched in the shards as she screamed in pain.

“Go open the door,” said her mother. “Hurry up, it’s almost time.”

Alma rolled onto her back to keep the glass away from her flesh. She saw a piece sticking out from her palm and suddenly felt the pain. She shuddered and felt her stomach lurch at the sight of the blood trickling down her arm. When she pulled the glass out, the blood flowed freely as her mother screamed from outside, “Hurry up!”

The house was empty. All of the furniture had been taken out, replaced by dust and cobwebs. It smelled of urine, certainly from an animal that had burrowed its way through the walls somewhere. Yet the house felt alive to Alma, as if there were people here watching from the dark corners.