Blur (Blur Trilogy) (18 page)

CHAPTER
THIRTY-FOUR

Once he was in the car again, Daniel texted K
yl
e to call as soon as he had a chance.

Then he took off for home.

Clouds had blown in.

A storm was on its wa
y.

Daniel caught up with his dad in the garage cleaning his Glock at the workbench.

Partl
y
he was tempted to bring up something about the missing phone, but he realized his dad wouldn’t be at all happ
y
to learn that he was still looking into Emil
y’
s death.

“Mom called me this morning.”

His father set down the cloth he was using on the gun’s barrel. “She did?”

“Yeah. She wants to come to m
y
game on Frida
y.
She told me
yo
u called to tell her I blacked out at the homecoming game.”

“She’s
yo
ur mother, Dan. She has a right to know how
yo
u’re doing. Can
yo
u imagine what she would have said to me if she found out later that
yo
u’d gone to the emergenc
y
room and I hadn’t told her about it?”

“Wh
y
did she leave?”

His dad was silent.

“I asked her and she wouldn’t tell me. I mean, an
yo
ne could tell
yo
u gu
ys
were having some problems, I get that, bu
t—”

“I don’t reall
y
want to talk about this right now, Dan.”

“Sure, I know, bu
t—”

“Not right now.”

But Daniel didn’t give up. “Was there . . . is there another gu
y?
”

“When the time is right I’ll explain ever
yt
hing.”

“You know, that’s what she said too. That it wasn’t the right time.”

“There
yo
u go.”

“I asked her when it was going to be the right time. She didn’t tell me. Ma
yb
e
yo
u can.”

“N
o—t
here wasn’t another gu
y.
She just preferred being alone rather than with me.”

And with me,
Daniel thought.
She preferred being alone to having her son around.

He wasn’t sure his dad’s answer reall
y
satisfied him, but he accepted it for now. Rather than dwell on the reasons, he said, “She wants me to go see a doctor. She said
yo
u did too.”

“We think it might be best. I was going to bring it up to
yo
u, but we haven’t had much of a chance to talk. I scheduled an appointment for
yo
u tomorrow up in Superior.”

“What? I have school and then football practice tomorrow afternoon. I can’t miss that.”

“I’ll call the school to get
yo
u an excused absence, and I’ll talk to Coach Warner. I’m sure he’ll understand.”

“Dad, listen, I don’t want to go see a doctor.”

“I understand. But in this case I’m not asking.”

“We have a game Frida
y
an
d—”

“Daniel. We’re going to get
yo
u checked out.”

“Checked out.” Then it struck him. “Wh
y
Superior? It’s not our doctor?”

“I got a referral. It’s a specialist. A neurologist.”

“I can’t believe
yo
u didn’t at least talk to me about this before setting it up,” Daniel exclaimed. “That’s not right.”

Tension drew tight between them.

His father was the first to speak. “We leave at eight tomorrow morning.”

There was a rule at their high school that if
yo
u missed classes for the da
y,
yo
u weren’t allowed to practice with
yo
ur team or pla
y
in an
y
games that night. So, going to the doctor tomorrow would also mean missing practice.

Also, if he missed school tomorrow he wouldn’t be able to find out from Stac
y
wh
y
she hadn’t shown up at the dance, or talk with K
yl
e about Emil
y
and whether or not he knew she had a crush on him.

Sure, oka
y,
he could call or text them, but both of those things seemed like the
y’
d be better discussed in person than texted back and forth. Besides, Stac
y
wasn’t repl
yi
ng to his messages an
yw
a
y.

Daniel said nothing, just headed to the kitchen. He felt like slamming the door to make a point, but left it open instead. For some reason it seemed to make more of a statement than banging it shut behind him would have.

However, when he got to his bedroom he let loose on the door.

Anger gripped him, anger from ever
yw
here and nowhere.

He squeezed his hand tight and aimed it at the wall beside the window.

His fist left a dent in the dr
yw
all.

He stared at it.

This isn’t like
yo
u.

What’s wrong?

You’re changing. You’re losing it.

A little frightened b
y
what he’d just done, b
y
what was happening to him, he moved a Mavericks poster to cover the hole, and then dropped onto his bed.

Checked his texts.

Nothing from K
yl
e or Stac
y.

He went to the desk and tried to put ever
yt
hing else out of his mind and focus on his homework.

That turned out to be useless.

Without getting an
y
assignments done, he put his books awa
y.
After lifting weights until his arms and chest were prett
y
much wasted, he threw together a sandwich and some leftover spaghetti for a ver
y
late supper.

He checked his phone again, and this time he did have a text: Nicole, thanking him for taking her home last night and asking if he might have found one of her earrings in his car.

It didn’t take him long to locate the earring between the seats. He texted her back that he was going to be gone tomorrow, but would bring it to school with him on Tuesda
y.

She replied that that’d be cool and she’d see him then.

He got read
y
for bed, la
y
down, and closed his e
ye
s to tr
y
to get a full night of much-needed sleep.

But that’s not what happened.

Instead, he woke up at 3:14 a.m. in his clothes, chilled, and completel
y
drenched.

CHAPTER
THIRTY-FIVE

Daniel opened his e
ye
s.

His room was still steeped in darkness, with onl
y
a faint smear of light coming through his window from the streetlights down the block.

A storm had blown in and at first he thought he might have been awakened b
y
the thunder rolling through the night.

Yes, he confirmed he was still in bed. When he looked down, he could see that he was wearing his clothes and l
yi
ng on the sheets and ever
yt
hing was soaking we
t—h
is shirt, his pants, his socks, the blankets.

What on earth? Wh
y
are
yo
u wet? Wh
y
do
yo
u have
yo
ur clothes on? Could this all be a dream?

Daniel blinked, then squeezed his hand into a fist and felt the pain from when he’d smacked the wall earlier.

Yes.

He was awake.

He felt the bed.

Yes, absolutel
y,
it was wet.

He half expected Emil
y
to appear there in his room or at his window, scratching at the glass like in that old
Salem’s Lot
movie, when the vampires show up at the kid’s house and drag their fingertips against the window, tr
yi
ng to get invited in.

But she did not.

Nothing out of the ordinar
y
appeared.

He checked the time. Quarter after three.

He would’ve thought that getting wet like this would have awakened him right awa
y,
so nothing reall
y
made sens
e—n
ot wh
y
he was wearing his clothes, and certainl
y
not wh
y
the
y
were drenched.

Daniel sat up.

It was pouring outside.

He had to have been out there, out in the storm.

Flicking on the bedside light, he looked around the room and noticed his boots l
yi
ng discarded beside the dresser.

The soles were covered with mud.

Mudd
y
tracks and a trail of dribbled water led from his room to the hallwa
y.

Sleepwalking? He’d never done that before, not that he was aware of, at least, but he couldn’t think of an
y
other explanation for what was going on.

Reall
y?
Sleepwalking? You went outside during a storm and didn’t wake up, and then
yo
u took off
yo
ur boots and climbed into bed? All while
yo
u were asleep?

It seemed utterl
y
unbelievable, but not an
y
crazier than the other things that’d been happening to him all week.

Daniel swung his feet to the floor. Even though he felt apprehensive about following the tracks, about seeing where the
y
might lead, he also felt the need to do so. He’d been outside. Wh
y?

If
yo
u were sleepwalking in the storm, the rain would have woken
yo
u up.

But it had not.

He couldn’t remember an
yt
hing about getting dressed, leaving his room, or returning to bed, and he had no idea how long he’d been l
yi
ng there before he woke up a few moments ago.

Whether or not he’d been walking in his sleep, somehow he had been out in the rain, and there was no wa
y
he was going to be able to fall back asleep without knowing where he’d been.

He was alread
y
wet, so it onl
y
made sense to go back outside without changing clothes, but he didn’t want to trudge more mud through the house, so he decided to put on the boots when he reached the front door.

Picking them up, he left his room and walked quietl
y
down the hallwa
y,
following the mudd
y
tracks.

If his dad came into the hallwa
y,
he had no idea how he would explain wh
y
he was soaking wet or wh
y
he’d left a trail of water and mud in the hal
l—o
r what he’d been doing outside in the first place.

At the end of the hallwa
y,
enough light from the neighborhood seeped through the living room windows and crawled down the hall to make the tracks on the wooden floor visible.

The wind battered the roof, and a thick drumbeat of thunder rattled the windows, but as far as Daniel could tell, his dad was still asleep in his bedroom.

Apart from the storm outside and the hum of the refrigerator in the kitchen, the house was silent.

Tr
yi
ng not to wake his father, Daniel crept as silentl
y
as he could down the hallwa
y,
especiall
y
as he passed his dad’s bedroom door.

He’d never known him to be a light sleeper, but he heard the bed squeak softl
y
as his father turned over in his slee
p—e
ither that or got up.

Daniel froze and listened for the bedsprings to creak again.

His heart pounded and squirmed like it had a life of its own.

He listened, waited for the door to open, for his father to appear, but nothing greeted him except an anxious, expectant silence.

The water dripping from his clothes pooled slowl
y
around his feet.

It seemed like an eternit
y
passed, but it was probabl
y
little more than a minute or two. When Daniel heard no more sounds coming from his dad’s bedroom, he started down the hall again, following the mudd
y
tracks and splats of water.

His e
ye
s were becoming accustomed to the dark, so it was getting easier to distinguish where the hallwa
y
ended and merged with the kitchen on one side and the dining room on the other.

He’d thought the tracks might lead to the front door, but now he could see that the
y
did not. Instead, the
y
went toward the back doo
r—t
he one that led to the deck overlooking the garden and the swath of woods that la
y
behind the house.

The
y
disappeared outside.

When he opened the door to the night, a slash of lightning illuminated the
ya
rd and he noticed a shovel leaning against the side of the house. It was positioned beneath the overhanging gutter, which protected it from the driving rain.

The blade had clumps of fresh, wet soil stuck to it.

So, he’d either been digging something up.

Or bur
yi
ng something.

For some reason, probabl
y
because of the rain, the night held the damp, earth
y
smell of spring rather than autumn’s odor of slowl
y
deca
yi
ng leave
s—b
ut that onl
y
seemed to add to the disorientation Daniel was feeling.

It was almost like he’d slipped out of his normal life and landed in a place where time was fluid and could wander back and forth, wavering its wa
y
through the seasons, taking him with it.

He tried once again to remember being out here earlier, hoping that he might be able to recall somethin
g—a
wash of images, an impression, a fragment of a memor
y,
an
yt
hing that might give him a clue as to what was going on or wh
y
he’d left the house.

But it was no use; he wasn’t able to remember an
yt
hing.

The nearb
y
streetlights cast a blear
y
glow over the neighborhood, but their light was dampened and obscured b
y
the sheets of rain.

He was able to make out the faint outline of the woods looming before him, as well as the vague, dark forms of the neighbors’ houses, but that was all. He doubted it would be enough light for him to find what he might have been digging u
p—o
r bur
yi
n
g—o
ut here in the dark.

Another flash of lightning ripped through the night.

The mudd
y
boot prints ended at the edge of the deck.

The garden la
y
fift
y
feet ahead of him.

The forest rose just be
yo
nd that.

He didn’t want to risk waking up his father b
y
turning on the outdoor deck light.

Slipping back inside, he grabbed the flashlight he used when he went caving, a headlamp that he t
yp
icall
y
left stashed in a clutter drawer in the kitchen in case the electricit
y
went out.

He returned to the deck, turned on the headlamp, laced up his boots, and drew the door softl
y
closed behind him.

Then he grabbed the shovel and headed into the storm.