Blur (Blur Trilogy) (22 page)

CHAPTER
FORTY-FOUR

“I don’t think it’s like the doll,” K
yl
e said.

“What’s not like the doll?”

“What’s going on here. I don’t think it’s like the doll in the window over in Minnesota. You kno
w—f
rom the stor
y
I told
yo
u about.”

“I’m not sure I’m following
yo
u.”

K
yl
e pulled out his phone. “I mean, about something happening and then a stor
y
coming along and finding it.” He tapped the screen, brought up the calculator app.

“No, seriousl
y,
K
yl
e, not toda
y.
This isn’t the time.”

“No, I just wanted to remind
yo
u of what
yo
u can do.”

“I know what I can do. Put it awa
y.
”

He held up the phone just to show Daniel the screen. “Listen,
yo
ur mind, it calculates stuff no one else can. It does it subconsciousl
y,
in wa
ys
even
yo
u can’t figure out. Remember? Like me with music.”

“Sure, but what does that have to do with what’s going on here?”

“I think somehow
yo
u’re threading clues together, things no one else is noticing, like with Trevor, going out to the lake, the necklace Emil
y
wears in all those photos.”

“But how?”

K
yl
e pocketed his phone. “You’re seeing this stuff, I don’t know, in the paper, from tweets, remembering it from when
yo
u saw her around school, I’m not reall
y
sure, but
yo
ur brain is integrating it all.” He tapped the side of his head. “You’re solving things up here, but then
yo
u have these visions. The deal is we just need to decipher what
yo
ur mind is tr
yi
ng to tell
yo
u.”

“What about Akira? Wh
y
do
yo
u think I did that?”

“To get us out to the grave
ya
rd.”

“But that was originall
y yo
ur idea.”

“True,” K
yl
e acknowledged. “But ma
yb
e somehow it jarred something in
yo
ur head and
yo
u realized coming out here would help us. Or, like I said earlier, ma
yb
e it had something to do with thinking about Trevor.”

“But wh
y?
And wh
y
would all this start now?”

K
yl
e shook his head. “To solve how Emil
y
reall
y
died? I’m not sure. You said it felt like flakes of realit
y
were falling awa
y.
What’s it like when that happens? When
yo
u see these things?”

“Realit
y
gets blurred. I can tell something’s happening that shouldn’t be, but ever
yt
hing else is the same. It looks completel
y
real. Sounds real.”

“And it feels real: like when
yo
ur arm was burned.”

“Right.”

“So this is different from da
ym
ares or hallucinations. And I don’t necessaril
y
think it has to do with ghosts.” K
yl
e thought for a moment. “Call
’e
m blur
s—I
mean when
yo
u see these things.”

Even if the
y
were some sort of hallucinations, Daniel was glad to refer to them as something else. “Blurs sounds good to me.”

“I think we should look more into how Mrs. McKinne
y
died.”

“So do I,” Daniel agreed. “As soon as we can.”

“You mean tonight?”

“Wh
y
not? Meet at m
y
house?”

K
yl
e considered that. “Let’s cruise over to m
y
place. That wa
y yo
ur dad won’t accidentall
y
walk in on us and find
yo
u still looking into all this.”

“Good point.”

Since Daniel had told his father he wouldn’t keep investigating things, he felt a small sting of guilt, but moving forward on this, finding out the truth of what had happened to Emil
y,
seemed to trump ever
yt
hing else, even the promise he’d made.

Before leaving the grave
ya
rd the
y
told Mia and Nicole what was going on and the girls asked to join them at K
yl
e’s. “We’re part of this now too,” Mia reminded them firml
y.
“We need to find out answers just as much as
yo
u two do.”

“Oka
y,
” K
yl
e said, “give me a chance to help tuck m
y
little sister i
n—I
need to tell her a bedtime stor
y.
Let’s meet at m
y
place in an hour.”

CHAPTER
FORTY-FIVE

The walls of K
yl
e’s attic bedroom were plastered with posters of his favorite bands. His electric guitar sat propped on its stand in the corner beside his impossibl
y
cluttered desk.

Mia was alread
y
there when Daniel arrived, but Nicole was still taking care of a few things at her house.

“Well,” Mia said. “What’s the plan?”

All three of them had their laptops open.

Daniel got things started. “We need to find out whatever we can about Mrs. McKinne
y’
s death. Also, there are stories about other people drowning at Wind
y
Point. I want to know if those are just the kinds of things kids sa
y,
or if there reall
y
have been other cases of people who’ve died out there.”

“I’ll search for stuff about Wind
y
Point,” K
yl
e offered.

“I’ll take Mrs. McKinne
y,
” Mia said.

“Alright.” Daniel contemplated things. “I’ll look into Mr. McKinne
y’
s past, see what I can learn about him, if there’s an
yt
hing suspicious that pops up.”

The
y
worked in relative silence. After a little while Mia asked them to fill her in more on what was going on. “I mean, what’s
reall
y
going on. There’s something
yo
u two aren’t telling me.”

“That’s either presumptuous or perceptive,” K
yl
e said.

“Perceptive. I’m a girl. Go on.”

When she pressed them, Daniel finall
y
ended up explaining about the hallucinations.

Mia took it all in. “Sort of like macropsia.”

“What’s that?”

“When I was doing research for m
y
novel on inexplicable things people see,
yo
u know, for the ghost-sighting parts, I came across this reall
y
bizarre disorder: macropsia. Rather than seeing things as the
y
reall
y
are, people who have it see certain objects as if the
y’
re enormous. A girl’s brush might appear bigger than the girl. Or it might look like her doll is the size of a house, or her folded-up blanket is as big as a mountain. Micropsia is the opposite. You see stuff as wa
y
smaller than it is.”

“How is that like what’s happening with me?”

“Well, it’s about perspective and differentiating between what
yo
ur mind is telling
yo
u is real and what actuall
y
is real.”

“So,” K
yl
e said, “how do
yo
u tell if
yo
ur e
ye
s are pla
yi
ng tricks on
yo
u?”

“See, that’s the thing. Our e
ye
s don’t pla
y
tricks on us; it’s our mind that does. We see what our brains tell us to see, not what our e
ye
s do. It’s wh
y
optical illusions work. Your brain is tr
yi
ng to make sense of things, but ends up getting confused.”

Yup.

That was a prett
y
good wa
y
of describing what was going on: his brain was tr
yi
ng to make sense of things, but was getting confused. Ver
y
confused.

Nicole arrived, and since Daniel had just told Mia what was happening, he brought Nicole up to speed as well.

She listened in silence. It was hard to tell what she was thinking. “That’s wh
y yo
u were asking me about ghosts and demons the other da
y?
”

“Yes.”

For a moment no one spoke.

“You know,” Daniel said at last, “the flowers weren’t the onl
y
thing on Emil
y’
s grave. There were stuffed animals, that pinwheel, and some photographs from Mr. Ackerman’s studio. He’s the gu
y
who takes pictures at all our football games. You see him in the hall sometimes getting photos for the
ye
arbook. He was set up to take portraits at the homecoming dance.”

“Are
yo
u thinking what I think
yo
u’re thinking?” Mia asked.

“I don’t know. I saw him at the funeral. If we’re going to look into Mr. McKinne
y,
we should probabl
y
find out what we can about Mr. Ackerman too.”

“I’ll check the website for his studio,” Nicole offered, “see if there are an
y
pictures of Emil
y
or Mrs. McKinne
y,
an
yt
hing like that.”

The
y
searched.

Time passed.

Mr. Ackerman?

Mr. McKinne
y?

Was it reall
y
possible that one of them might actuall
y
have killed Emil
y?

But what about Grace McKinne
y?
Is her death connected to Emil
y’
s?

Too man
y
questions, too few answers.

Finall
y,
the
y
gathered in a circle to share what the
y’
d
found out.

“Well,” Mia said, “from what I can see online, Mrs. McKinne
y
was swimming alone when she drowned. Her husband was downstairs doing some kind of woodworking projec
t—a
t least, that’s what he told the police. He said that, through the window, he saw her dive in and never come up. B
y
the time he got out there it was too late to save her.”

Nicole looked at her inquisitivel
y.
“Let’s sa
y
he’s l
yi
ng. What possible motive could he have had? Was there some sort of life insurance polic
y
or inheritance if she died?”

“It didn’t sa
y.
It doesn’t look like he was ever a suspect.”

“But then what about Emil
y?
” K
yl
e asked. “If he reall
y
did kill them both, he would’ve needed some other motive to drown a girl from his class, right?”

“I guess,” Mia acknowledged. “Yeah, that makes sense.”

“Motives are prett
y
much like eels,” Daniel said, remembering something his dad had told him one time. “The
y’
re twist
y
and slipper
y
and as soon as
yo
u think
yo
u have one in
yo
ur hand, it slides awa
y
from
yo
u. Was it greed? Was it anger? Hate? You’ll alwa
ys
come up short when
yo
u tr
y
to nail down the motives people hav
e—a
nd there are almost alwa
ys
more than one in there swimming around.”

K
yl
e didn’t come across an
y
evidence that an
yo
ne else had died at Wind
y
Point. As far as he could tell, the rumors and legends were just tha
t—t
he kind of stories kids make up and that eventuall
y
end up with a life of their own, just like the stories about the doll in the window in Janesville, Minnesota.

“Oka
y.
” He turned to Daniel. “What do we know about Mr. McKinne
y?
”

“Well, not much that’s ver
y
helpful. From what I can se
e—h
is profiles on social media sites, that sort of thin
g—h
is hobbies are deer hunting, fishing, and caving, he likes countr
y
music and Jason Statham movies, and he moved to town three
ye
ars ago. He’s a member of Whitetails Unlimited, lists himself as not being in a relationship, no kids, graduated with honors from UW–Madison twelve
ye
ars ago.”

“So, nothing earth-shattering,” Mia said.

“No.”

With nothing more to share about Mr. McKinne
y,
Daniel took the conversation in a different direction. “I still want to know how T
y
found out what was in Emil
y’
s notebook.”

“That’s not that big of a m
ys
ter
y,
” Mia replied. “I think one of those gu
ys
who hangs out with him has a brother who’s a freshman. Even if Emil
y
wasn’t popular, it would’ve been eas
y
enough for him to overhear something.”

Nicole reported on Mr. Ackerma
n—n
o pictures of Mrs. McKinne
y
or Emil
y
on his site. Nothing else reall
y
struck her as unusual there. No link between him and Mrs. McKinne
y,
apart from having his home studio near their house.

When Nicole finished, the
y
all processed things for a moment, then she noticed the time and told them she needed to be heading home.

“I’ll walk
yo
u to
yo
ur car,” Daniel offered, and grabbed his windbreaker.

The night was chill
y
and brisk.

He offered his jacket to Nicole and she draped it over her shoulders. “Thanks.”

“Sure.”

“It must have been terrif
yi
ng to see those things,” she said. “Ghosts, whatever.”

“Blurs.”

“Blurs?”

“It’s K
yl
e’s term. Seems to fit. It’s when the line between what’s real and what couldn’t possibl
y
be real becomes fuzz
y
to me.”

Or actuall
y
doesn’t exist at all.

“Listen,” she said, “remember when I said Jesus proved to his disciples that he wasn’t a ghost? How he told them to touch him because ghosts don’t have flesh and bones? That’s what convinced them he was a real person after he rose. Touching him.”

“But what if the ghost touches
yo
u? At the funeral Emil
y
grabbed m
y
arm. It left a mark. So, according to what
yo
u’re sa
yi
ng, I shouldn’t have felt that, right?”

And if the
y’
re just hallucinations, would
yo
u feel an
yt
hing an
yw
a
y?

Well,
yo
u felt her hand on
yo
ur arm.

It was hard to know what to make of things.

“Hmm . . .” Nicole seemed to be thinking aloud. “I can’t sa
y
I understand how it all works, but it’s worth a tr
y,
isn’t it? I mean, the next time
yo
u see Emil
y,
reach out and tr
y
to touch her.”

“You have no idea how unappealing that suggestion is.”

“Now that I think about it, I see
yo
ur point.”

The night eased in around them.

He couldn’t quite figure out how to sa
y
good-b
ye
. A small hug might have been in order, but his nervousness around girls swept over him again, and instead of a hug he just laid his hand gentl
y
on her arm. “If someone reall
y
did kill Emil
y,
we’re going to find out who it was.”

“Yeah.”

Mia stepped out of the house. “He
y,
yo
u two.”

He realized he still had his hand on Nicole’s arm and lowered it again. “He
y.
”

Nicole took off the jacket and handed it back to him.

Daniel held back on the hug, the
y
all said goodnight, and then he returned to K
yl
e’s room to touch base before taking off.