The Binding (40 page)

“John.”

“Yeah,” John Bailey’s sleep-bleary voice rasped on the other end.

Nat was watching the man at the end of the street. He turned, blowing a wreath of steam into the air, then began to retrace his steps. He reached his hand up, and it disappeared beneath the hood.
Trying to keep warm
, Nat thought.

“I found something,” he said.

“What?” John said. “Nat, you there? What the hell did you find?”

“I know why people are dying,” he said.

The sound of John’s breathing. “Why?” he said.

“I’ll be there in ten,” Nat said.

CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

R
amona steered the Altima up Hanover Road. The weather was crisp, the dome of sky above the wall eggshell blue. Ramona’s heart was palpitating as she came to the tree where they’d found Margaret. She slowed down and stared at the ash’s black branches spread out against the red wall.
I wonder if the killer grabbed her here
, she thought,
because he wanted every Wartham girl to have to pass the spot of her murder again and again, so that we would remember that none of us is safe.
That was one of the latest theories she’d come across online. Jezebel had done a whole roundup of theories on the Wartham murder. Ramona usually tried to steer clear of the rampant gossip surrounding Margaret’s death; it was grotesque to see her life dissected by people who’d never known her. But that one little nugget had stayed with her.

She hit the gas and made the right into Wartham, passing under the arch that read
Terras Irradient
, the Altima’s front end groaning as she made the wide turn. The car always made her self-conscious when she was on campus. It had made her even more conspicuous among the brightly colored Fiat 500s and the Beemer 3-series that dotted the campus like pieces of candy. The car was twelve years old and loud; the noises from its engine seemed to bounce off the Johnson Chapel with enough force to break its windows. Ramona had to get the damn thing looked at, even if she couldn’t afford the repairs.

She didn’t want to be any more exposed than she already felt.

Ramona pressed the accelerator and made her way down Johnson Drive, past the chapel. She could feel the girls on the
paths, walking home from the dining hall, their books held high up, turning to look.
The hell with them
, she thought.
At least I have wheels.
Most of them had to wait for Mommy and Daddy to come pick them up in the Jag, but Ramona Best was
mobile
. The thought failed to lighten the darkness of her mood, which had been steadily deflating all the way up 95 North.

The Altima edged over a little hump in the road. She turned down Raitliff Road and touched the brake as the car’s nose tipped downward, accelerating slightly down the little hill. When she reached the bottom, Ramona swung the car into the lot behind her dorm. She parked near the door in the back. Exit strategy.

She took out her little two-day bag and headed in the back entrance. When she opened the door, the dorm smell came rushing out to greet her—it always smelled like floor wax, baby powder, and one other ingredient she never was able to nail down. White girls, maybe.

Ramona started up the stairs. Martina Webb came down toward her, munching on a celery stick.

“Oh, hey, Ramona.”

Martina was a thin, acne-pocked sophomore, plain as anything, and a generally pleasant person. Ramona never felt she needed to be on her guard with her.

“Hi.”

Martina leaned back on the steel railing and pointed with the celery. “Been away?”

Ramona nodded.

“Went home?”

“Yes, Martina. I went home.”

Martina made a face. “Wish I could. But I’ve got papers up to my tits.”

“Already? Classes have barely started.”

“Some leftover stuff.” Martina looked more closely at Ra
mona. “Are you okay, hon?”

“I don’t have cancer, Martina. I’m not recovering from anything. And good for what? Forgetting about Margaret?”

Martina made a face. “We all miss her.”

“No, ‘
we
’ don’t,” Ramona said quickly. Then her face softened. “But I do believe you do.”

Martina sniffled and came in for a hug. Ramona gave her a brief one, no patting on the back, then picked up her bag and started up the stairs.

The unadorned door of her room, with its plain black plate reading
2C
screwed into the wood, made her tear up a little. Feeling in her bag for the keys, she glanced down and saw the white stuff along the floor at the door’s bottom edge. She didn’t need to touch it to know what it was.

Salt. A line of salt.

Nat drove to John Bailey’s house. The porch light was off.

It was odd.
You want to show criminals you’re home
, John had always told him.
Forget that movie shit about turning off all the lights when you think they’re ready to break into your house. Most thieves and burglars are cowards. Show them you’re home and they’ll go away.

But the lights were off now.

Nat pulled into the driveway and parked behind John’s Malibu.

The pathway was shining palest blue in the evening light. He went up and knocked softly on the door. It immediately cracked open an inch, and Nat saw John’s pale, haggard face. Nat could see the glint of gunmetal pointed straight at his belly button.

“It’s not me you have to worry about,” Nat said. Where had he heard that before?

But the door didn’t open.

“John.”

“What’d you find out, Nat?”

“It was Maggie Voorhees. She’s come back to kill us all.”

The eyes were remote, unamused. “What . . . did . . . you . . . find?”

Nat frowned. “A list.”

Five seconds ticked by. Then the door opened.

“Sorry,” John said, waving him in with the gun barrel.

Nat entered quickly and shut the door behind him.

“Answering the door with your gun?” he asked John. “Are you all right, buddy?”

John sat heavily on the couch, crunching the front section of the
Boston Globe
under him. He was dressed in a white T-shirt and his blue Pats shorts. His skin looked unhealthy, and his right hand was shaking. He laid the gun on a side table.

“I don’t know what got into me. Maybe I’m losing my fucking mind.”

“I’d keep it in the safe, if I were you.”

John closed his eyes and rubbed his eyelids vigorously with his index fingers. After a minute, he gave a quick nod. “You’re probably right.”

Nat went to the window and peered out between the curtains.

“What list?” John said.

Outside the edges of things were glowing with frost—trees, mailboxes, the crust of snow over the trimmed grass.

Nat brought the book out of a zippered carrying case he usually carried his laptop in. He flipped through the pages as he walked toward John. At the back of the book was a list of the squadron members. He stopped there and handed the journal to John. “Here,” he said.

John looked at him dubiously. “What is it?”

“It’s a diary by a member of a squadron from the Marines 2nd Regiment. The regiment was sent to Haiti in the summer of
1919. I won’t get into the reasons, but it was basically a restore-order kind of mission. We occupied the country for the next seventeen years; the 2nd Regiment was the second wave of troops going in. They sailed from Baltimore harbor in June 1919. Part of the regiment was a squadron under a Captain Thomas Markham. The squadron was all from around here. Northam men.”

John stared dully at the pages. “John Prescott,” he said. “Ezra Dyer.”

“Yep.”

John’s eye slid down the list. He stopped. “I’ll be a son of a bitch. Otis Bailey.”

“Your great-great-grandfather?” Nat said.

“Yeah. I knew he was in the Marines, but I never knew he’d gone to Haiti.”

“He did. They all did. And when they were down there, something ugly happened. Bad enough that the squadron leader, Captain Markham, was brought back here and hanged in the town square.”

“I’ll be a son of a bitch,” John said again.

Nat stared at his friend. “Look at the next name.”

“Vincent DeMott. So what?”

“What was the name of the first guy that Chase Prescott killed when he went on his little rampage?”

John’s forehead wrinkled. “Matt DeMott.”

“It wasn’t an accident,” Nat said.

John was staring at the rug. “Margaret Post, too?”

Nat moved closer to John and pointed at the list of squadron members. The third name was Steven Post. “I checked Genealogy.com. He was Margaret’s great-great-uncle.”

“So Margaret is the last of his relatives?”

“No. The last one in Northam. The literature says that the traveler can only work within a certain range, so any cousins in
California or wherever are probably safe. For the moment.”

“That’s why Margaret’s parents, the missionaries, aren’t dead? Because they lived in Brazil.”

“That’s my guess. But I’d get them the hell out of town if I were you.”

John stared at the page. His lips moved.

“Okay. So everyone who’s died or gone missing recently has a relative on this list. Post. Dyer. Godwin.” His brow wrinkled. “John Thayer,” he read.

“My mother’s grandfather.”

John rubbed his eyes with the palms of his hands and then stared at the carpet. “Do we know they’re related, or are we guessing?”

“We know. I just spent some time with Mr. Atkins at the Northam museum. Not the most pleasant two hours of my life, I can tell you. We went over genealogies of some of the twelve families: Markham, Kelly, Monk, Ford, Prescott, Dyer, Godwin, Bailey, Thayer, Post, DeMott, and McIlhane. I thought we might find some mysterious deaths there, some evidence that our killer had been working at, let’s say, pruning the family trees before he got down to our generation. Atkins and I had the town death records for the past hundred years.”

“And?”

“I underestimated him. It. In fact, his work is almost done.”

“What?”

Nat pulled a sheet of paper from his right front pocket. “You want the box score?” he said bitterly. “McIlhane and Ford were murdered by Captain Markham. Unmarried and childless, both of them. Markham was executed here. No children. Kelly died in Haiti two weeks after Bule’s death. He blew his head off with his Marine-issued Springfield rifle. He was just eighteen years old
and had no wife or kids that we know of. Ford went insane soon after, ran amuck in the camp outside Port-au-Prince, hacking at soldiers with his bayonet. He was shot in the chest by a Marine guard, died three days later. No descendants either.”

“So who’s next?”

Nat shrugged. “Let’s go with Private Post. He made it back to Northam, married a local girl, Sarah Bishop, and had three children.”

The word
children
slowed Nat down. He cleared his throat and his voice quieted just a bit. He read from the sheet of paper in his hand. “Nicholas Post died, age twelve, as a result of a boating accident on Brooks Pond. No newspaper reports to be found, possibility of foul play unknown. Balthazar Post was employed as a forger in the ironworks over on the east side and died at age seventeen, poisoned himself with an industrial dye. Delphine Post survived, married, and had two children. Mary—”

“Enough!” John cried.

Nat stopped reading.

“They all died?” John said.

“Not all, obviously. We’re here. Some members of the squadron survived long enough to have children, some escaped with a natural death. But yeah, the rate of suicides, murders, and accidental deaths was much higher for the descendants than for the general population in Northam.”

John rubbed a hand through his greasy hair. “Who’s left?”

Nat felt he’d burdened John enough already. “You sure you want to know?”

“Yeah.”

“Of the original families? In Northam? Margaret’s dad, me, you . . .” He stopped.

“Charlie,” John said.

Nat was about to say,
Nothing’s gonna happen to Charlie
, but
he and John had never been bullshitters, so he just said, “Yeah. And Becca Prescott,” and his mind filled with an image of her face. He set his jaw. “He’s in some kind of a hurry.”

“You can say that again. Speaking of which, I visited the widow Godwin. She’s half off her rocker.”

“I had her at the clinic. She’s convinced her dead husband is walking the hills.”

“Crazy is what it is,” John said. “But hold on. What about Jimmy Stearns?”

“No relation to the squadron. Did you find out anything about him?”

“Not a lot there. Local, kept to himself. Seemed to have a crush on the Dyer woman, from what some of his friends said.”

“Maybe he got in the way.”

“But why all this killing now? What happened?”

“Who knows? Maybe the traveler’s found a powerful host, someone whose gifts are stronger than anyone before. The binding is the combination of two souls. Maybe the traveler has met . . . another powerful spirit.”

Nat let the journal fall onto the coffee table.

“You know, my mother always said the family was cursed. Mental illness, alcoholism, strange accidents that were probably suicide.”

The two men stared at each other.

“But now we know, old man,” Nat said. “Now we can stop it.”

“Stop it how?”

The question Nat had been turning over and over in his mind all night. “By finding the traveler.”

John’s eyes asked,
Then what?
As if he knew the answer but didn’t want to say it out loud.

“And then we kill him or her before the spirit has a chance to jump to another host.”

“But Charlie . . . ,” John said.

“What about Charlie?”

John pursed his lips. “What if I took him out of town?”

Nat stared at his friend, then dropped his gaze. “Would Leah let you do that?”

John closed his eyes. “No. She wants him near her mother, to keep an eye on us.”

“What would happen if you did it anyway?”

“I’d lose him for good, probably.”

Nat thought that over. “I’m not sure it matters, John. When the traveler’s done here, it’ll move on to its next set of victims. Might as well keep him close.”