Earthbound (20 page)

I don’t even know which people that means anymore.

My ears strain for the sound of footsteps behind me as I tear through the forest, not bothering to keep quiet. My leg throbs and my lungs ache from the frosty air, and it’s all I can do to keep running at all. The snowflakes sting my already-freezing face and blur the forest all around me until I feel like I’m running in circles.

Maybe I am.

Gratitude fills me when I see lights peeking between the tall tree trunks, and in a shorter amount of time than I thought possible, I’m back on the road.

But I’m not safe.

I’m on the wrong side of Camden; that’s why I got to the road so quickly. In order to reach Benson, I’m going to have to go all the way through the middle of the city.

There’s no other option. I have to keep running.

It’s past two in the morning now and the streets are full of ghostly silence and a few drunk people, probably wending their way back to chintzy bed-and-breakfasts. I stand out, I’m sure. But I suspect no one will stop me unless they see a tall guy in Revolutionary War era clothing chasing me.

And then
he’ll
be caught.

And he won’t be able to bother me again.

I hate that tears are streaking down my face, making icy lines along my cheekbones. I was so certain—every instinct within me screamed that I could trust Quinn. It’s bad enough when you can’t trust your family or your therapist. Now I can’t even trust myself.

Maybe I never could.

My body is so exhausted I can barely see when I finally get to the other side of the town. The sidewalk ends and turns into a crumbly shoulder thick with wet mounds of new snow and my feet skid out from under me. I can’t think of a word bad enough to express the agony that shoots up my hip when I land hard on my side, so I clamp my teeth down against a weak whimper instead. I take one second—maybe only half a second—to sweep my eyes back, peering into the flake-speckled darkness behind me.

A hint of movement.

Quinn?

I don’t know, but I’m on my feet and running again before my mind can process whatever my eyes did or didn’t see.

Finally I reach the road where we parked the car. Every muscle in my body hurts, and my hands are so numb they can hardly grip the keys as I dig them out of my pocket. I throw the door open and crash into the driver’s seat, my finger instantly pushing the lock button. I’m still fumbling the keys into the ignition when Benson’s voice reaches my ears.

“What’s wrong?” he demands, not sounding particularly sleepy. “What happened?”

“Quinn found me; we’re leaving.”

“Quinn? But you”—he hesitates, then adds in a small voice—“you came here because of Quinn; you … you like him.”

“Not anymore,” I say, but the pain in my chest calls me a liar.

My lungs burn and my leg muscles complain as I press on the gas pedal, forcing myself to stay within the speed limit, grateful to be alive.

I should never have come to Camden. I’m so stupid. Quinn’s never been trustworthy—never given me the time of day. Why did I think this time would be different?

My entire body is filled with the deepest, most mournful sorrow I’ve ever experienced. Somehow worse even than the moment I realized my parents were dead. The world swirls around me and I want to scream, to curse the universe for taking him from me, just as I was getting a taste.

I want to cry, but I’m past the point.

He’s gone.

I’m alone.

And a part of my heart I never knew shatters.

I
focus on the news on the television the next morning. Anything to keep from looking at Benson. There are more victims of the mystery virus—these ones in a small town in Texas. It makes me think of Jay. Mark. Whatever the hell his name actually is. I wonder briefly if he really was working on the virus or if that was a lie too.

“We can find no connection between the victims or their towns. No common threads whatsoever,” the reporter says, staring into the camera like this is the most important story in history.

Who knows, maybe it is.

I flinch as the chime on the front door dings, and I try to turn and look without being too obvious. Just some guy in Wranglers. His eyes drift by me before his face lights up and he waves at a woman waiting in a booth.

I let myself breathe again.

“Okay. I’m done,” Benson says, smacking his hand down on the table.

I jump at the noise, nearly spilling my tea.

“Tave,” Benson says, softer now. Probably because everyone in the dinky little restaurant is looking at us. Waitresses included. The whole restaurant is way too intimate for my taste—it’s like one of those diners you see in old movies, the tables so close together that you can just turn your head and join in someone else’s conversation.

Which I have no doubt happens frequently.

I’m not sure what town we’re in. Last night I just drove until I felt safe. Not
safe
, but safe enough to sleep.

For a little while. As much as one can in wet jeans.

Benson didn’t ask questions, but I had the sinking feeling he hadn’t actually slept much while I was gone.

And judging by the shifting of our bodies once I found a new place to park, neither of us slept much in the wee hours of the morning, either.

When the sun came up, I could see I had brought us to another oldish town like Camden—a throwback to the fifties with the addition of smart phones. I think they do it on purpose, actually—bright storefronts, rocking chairs in front of the shops. I even saw a guy sweeping his sidewalk.

The people here look set in their ways, and I bet most of them don’t even have to order their breakfast anymore.
My regular, Flo
, I can hear them saying in my head. And she just nods and brings it out because the cook already had it made.

“Please, talk to me.” Benson reaches for my hand.

I flinch away before my weary mind comes back to the present.

“I haven’t pushed; I’ve tried to give you space. I haven’t asked any of the
million
questions I have about everything we learned yesterday. But
you
brought us out to Camden, and don’t try to tell me that was some random decision,” he says, cutting off a protest I didn’t even have the energy to make. “I know it had something to do with Quinn. So I waited; I trusted that you had a reason not to tell me. Then you snuck off in the middle of the night under the pretense of a bathroom break and came back
two hours later
—yes, I noticed and worried about you every second since by the time I realized you were not, in fact, peeing, I couldn’t follow you—covered in snow and half frozen and said you found Quinn and you don’t like him anymore—which, just so you know, I’m totally in support of—and proceeded to drive like a crazy person for two hours and then conk out in the front seat in some waffle place parking lot in the middle of nowhere without saying a word. Talk, Maple Bar.”

I have to smile a little at his pastry nickname.

“There we go,” he whispers, touching my bottom lip. “Come on. You’ll feel better if you tell me.” I feel his fingertip rub under my eye, and it’s the first time I notice there are tears rolling down my cheeks.

Benson hesitates for a moment, then scoots off the bench and comes over to my side of the booth and wraps both arms around me, squeezing me tight against him.

“Go ahead, cry it out. My shirt needs to be washed anyway.”

I giggle and hiccup, and that just makes me laugh and cry all at the same time. For a few minutes we sit, my face buried against Benson’s shoulder, his arms tight around me. “You must think I’m so stupid.”

“Nah,” he says, trying to tuck a strand of hair behind my ear, but it’s still too short to stay. “People do irrational things for the people they love all the time.” He pauses, then adds in a whisper, “Really stupid things.” I look up when he stops speaking, but after a few seconds he squishes me a little harder.

I give him a sort-of smile, but I don’t really feel it. When I woke up this morning, curled unnaturally into the front seat with my knees braced against the steering wheel, every muscle in my body ached. On top of that, now I have a long scab across my face from a tree branch. My legs are sore from running and my arms from simply being terrified.

But it balances out the numbness that has enveloped me on the inside.

“You were right,” I whisper against the soft fabric of his jacket. “About Quinn, I mean. He’s—he’s dangerous and obsessed and … and … you were right.”

His hands are suddenly tight on my arms. “Did he hurt you?” he asks, eyes flashing fire. “Did he lay a single finger on you? I’ll kill the bastard!”

“No, no,” I say before he can get any louder. “I’m fine. I promise. I just …”

“Do we need to call the cops?”

I feel tears build as Quinn’s betrayal sweeps through me again, but I push them back—I will
not
shed another tear over him. “No. Technically he didn’t do anything. And I have nothing to tell them even if he did. His name’s not even Quinn. Everything he ever told me is a lie.”

“Tavia, seriously, did he hurt you?”

“He never touched me. He just led me to this old … cellar, I guess. It was kind of hidden.”

“A hidden cellar?” Benson asks, not exactly disbelieving, but there’s a hint of that.

I open my backpack and, after a quick look around, pull out the ancient journal.

An impressed whistle escapes Benson’s mouth as he reaches for the book. “You’re good,” he says, smiling in earnest now, and I feel a faint glow at his compliment. I crave his approval, though I’m not sure quite why. Maybe I just need
someone
to believe I’m not out of my mind.

Just psychic.

And magic.

And something called an Earthbound.

I’m
so
in over my head.

“This is seriously impressive.” Benson flips through the pages, and something clanks onto the table.

“Holy crap,” I say, picking up the gold coin. “I didn’t mean to take this.”

“Is that … ?” Benson’s eyes shoot up to mine.

“I think so.”

He holds it up, turning it and watching the light glint off it. “Is it really awful if we keep this?” he asks, his voice tense.

“I am
not
taking it back,” I say. “I’m never going there again.”

“Ten tanks of gas,” Benson says, pocketing the coin and turning his attention back to the journal. “So this was just sitting in there?”

“Whoa! Benson, look!” I close the journal, and on the front cover is a triangle, each side at least six inches long. “You can see
that
, right?” I ask, a little paranoid.

“Yeah,” Benson says quietly. “The triangle; I can see this one.”

I trace the small indentation with my finger, going around all three sides. A strange flicker crosses my vision and I see another hand following my fingers.

But I blink, and it’s gone.

Holding back a sigh at yet another disappearing image, I flip to the front of the journal. “Right before we went in, he called me Becca.”

“Rebecca Fielding,” Benson says softly, his eyes on the curly script. “1804.”

I skim the book in silence, Benson giving me peace. The darkness inside my chest spreads as I find more and more familiar words. “It’s all in here,” I say, paging carefully through the book, each new entry making the waffles I just ate feel heavier and heavier in my stomach. “Everything he ever said to me. Look, here she talks about how he had
things to show her
. Here he asks her to trust him. How he messed everything up and frightened her. And this part”—I point at the book—“this is the part I read last night. It’s word for word what he said to me. He’s obsessed with this dead Rebecca and trying to reenact his sick fantasies with modern-day girls. With … with
me
. But there could be others. He could be a freaking serial killer!”

A hard look is pasted on Benson’s face as he leans over the book. “This is so weird,” he says.

I flip back toward the beginning and a name catches my eye. “Benson!” I can feel all the blood draining from my face as I read the passage.

“What?” he asks, leaning over the page and looking where I’m pointing, his vague expression indicating that he doesn’t see what I’m so upset about.

“It says she first saw him when she was walking past his house, and he was minding his little sister.”

Benson is trying really hard, but his face is completely blank.

“There was a little girl with Quinn when
I
first saw him! In Portsmouth, a few days ago. Do … do you think he kidnapped her?” My heart is beating wildly as I wonder just how major of a psychopath I’ve run into.

“There’s no way,” Benson says. “I don’t know how he got that girl to play the part, but we’d have heard something on the news if a little girl was missing.”

It makes sense, and I try to latch onto Benson’s confidence to calm myself. “But the house was gone too,” I think aloud. “When I went back, it wasn’t there anymore. It
wasn’t real.
Maybe the little girl wasn’t real either.”

“Maybe this Quinn guy isn’t real,” Benson says, and there’s a low simmer of hostility in his tone.

“No,” I say dismissively, still focused on the words in the journal. “He talks to me. He got that door open in the dugout.
He
is definitely real.”

“The journal’s real too,” Benson says. “Not just physically real,” he adds, rapping a knuckle softly against the cover. “It appears to be authentic. Do you think Quinn just stumbled onto it somewhere?”

“I don’t know,” I admit in a small voice. “Honestly, I haven’t had the time or energy to think of anything except that I was a complete moron.”

“No,” Benson says, rubbing a hand on my arm. “People like this are always über-charismatic and nice and all that. I mean, come on, every time a serial killer gets caught, what do the neighbors say?
Oh, he was such a nice guy.
”

“You’re not making me feel better,” I mutter, laying my head down on the table.

“Point is, it’s not your fault he’s a creeper; it’s his.”

Mentally, I know it’s true, but I don’t feel that way.

“So … it looks like maybe Quinn has nothing to do with … the … the Earthbound thing?” he asks hesitantly.