The Hawley Book of the Dead (19 page)

“Reve, you should have told me sooner.” He reached for me again, and I let him. I let his hand brush mine, caress it softly. I remembered the baby wren we found once. He’d stroked the tiny thing so delicately, it was more like his mind alone was touching the bird’s, willing it to live. It had.

I took a breath, tamped the tears back down. I struggled to answer Jolon calmly, to
be
calm. “He’s not anywhere close by. I don’t
think
he is yet. But I got an e-mail from him this morning. Saying he’ll find us, no matter what.”

“And you have no idea who he might be?”

“None. I just call him the Fetch.” Jolon studied my face, his eyes seeking more answers. “You remember Nan’s story of the Fetch?”

“The stealer of souls? Yeah, I remember that one. Guaranteed to terrify an eight-year-old. But if you’re right about your husband’s murder, this guy’s real, not just a specter.”

“He’s real, all right.”

“Do the Las Vegas police know?”

I nodded. “But they think … Well, they still think I had something to do with Jeremy’s murder. Although they also know that whoever he is, the Fetch isn’t just a figment of my imagination. He was sending photos, of me, of the girls …” The rest of the story just spilled out. “That’s why we moved. I thought maybe he wouldn’t be able to find us. That he’d just leave us alone.”

“Shit, Reve.” He folded my hand in his then, but in a moment let go and scrubbed his hair back. I could see him shift into cop mode, but it was all right. He’d been my friend first, and his touch had reminded me. “Okay—first thing is, I need to see that e-mail. And those photos.”

“Can I forward the e-mail to you? The Las Vegas police have the photos. I don’t want the girls to know. You don’t have kids, but …”

“I understand. I won’t come to the house. I can get copies of the photos from the LVPD, and their reports. Just forward the e-mail, like you said.”

The Lithia church bells chimed the hour.

“I need to get back, Jolon.”

We got in the car, and I drove out of the parking lot toward Hawley. The day was still beautiful, the leaves striking in the pearly autumn light. But it was all blurred at the edges to me, blunted by nerves. The man beside me had to know more if he was going to help me, more than the police in Las Vegas had, more than anyone else probably could.

“Jolon. There’s something else I need to tell you. I think all this may have to do with my … ability. You know what I mean.”

“I do. I remember, Reve. I remember everything.” I knew he did. And I knew I was safe with him, at least in that moment. So when he said, “Tell me why you think that,” I did. I told him the story of Maggie.

Two nights after my conversation with Maggie by the pond at Bay State, I drove back to Amherst. I left my car in town and met her outside the old Stockbridge horse barn. It was eerie in the moonlight. Bats swooped around our heads. We went into the barn, stood under its chestnut beams. It had been all but abandoned when the university bought a new barn to house their equestrian program. The few horses that remained seemed restless, although they knew us from past visits bearing apples. Three Morgan mares and Teddy the old Paint gelding shifted in their stalls, snorted and pawed.

“I’ve got nothing for them,” I whispered.

“I didn’t think of it …”

I went to the stall that held a few bales, threw them each a flake. “We
are
using their barn.” Teddy blew into his hay, then settled. I walked back to Maggie’s silhouette. The mares remained watchful. Their breath in the cool air wreathed around us. Maggie was silent, and I felt a tremor of fear that unsettled me. “Did you find out where the gate is?” I asked. Maybe she hadn’t, and we could go home.

“Yeah. Right under the barn.”

“Where the manure pile is?”

“Can you think of better camouflage? There’s an opening. It’s hard to see, but at the same time, you could drive a truck through it. You’ll find it. I’ll be here when you come out. You won’t have to wait long. They do most of their work at night, just like Leon told me. I was up here last night and from Eve’s stall window, I could see them. They come and go till sunrise. It should be fine, with you disappeared and all.”

I prayed it
would
be fine. I couldn’t back out now. “What exactly am I looking for?”

“We don’t know. Not really. Anything that might be a clue to what happens down there, what they’re working on.”

I sucked in a breath. “All right. Here goes.” I started toward the manure pile. Before I turned the corner, I glanced back. I could see Maggie petting Eve’s nose. I knew that she could no longer see me. No one could.

When I got to the lower level of the barn, I stepped under a low tree limb, and there it was. A wide opening beneath the barn, hidden by trees and the manure pile. I ducked into it. There was no light at all, so I felt my way along a cement wall. The wall went down and kept going down. Soon enough, the entrance was just a moonlit gap as big as my fist. I crept slowly, and in another minute felt the wire mesh of a gate. I pressed against the wall and waited.

It seemed like forever. I slid down the damp wall, rested my elbows on my knees and tried to be patient. I hoped no one would come. I hoped it was all made up, only another one of the many legends that flourished around campus, only another tall tale. Just as I was drifting into a doze, I saw the pinpoint of a flashlight at the tunnel entrance. I jerked to my feet. The light danced and bobbed, and a man walked up to the gate. He shone the flashlight at a panel, swiped a card, the gate opened, and he went through. I stepped behind him, my heart thudding, glad I’d worn my Adidas, like silence on my feet. The man paused just inside the gate, looked around. I was only inches from him. He could have stepped on me. But people trust their eyes more than their other senses, and he saw nothing when he swung the flashlight beam. So he went on, with me padding softly after him.

Only a dozen steps and he came to a door with another panel, where he swiped his card again. When the door opened, a blaze of light hit me. Blinded, I almost didn’t make it in, but I managed to squeeze through as the door swung shut. The man continued down a hallway lined with windows. People sat at desks and typed, or drank coffee, or were busy looking through file drawers. Maggie was right: It was just like the administration buildings aboveground. Everyone was dressed casually, in jeans and sweaters. I didn’t see any lab coats.

I decided to keep following my guy. He’d taken off a trench coat,
draped it over one arm, and I could see that, unlike the others, he was wearing a suit. Maybe he was more senior, would go deeper into the labyrinth. He strode down another hallway, then into an office that was identical to all the others I’d seen. Another suited man was there. He was sitting at a desk but had his feet up, reading a Tom Clancy paperback. He only gave a lazy wave when my guy entered. I hung in the doorway and listened.

“Hey, Lupo. What’s goin’ down?”

My guy, Lupo, answered, “Dunno, Andy. Another quiet night with the lab rats?”

“Yeah. Guess so.”

“Boss been in?”

“Yeah. He’s somewhere. In some big-shot meeting.” Andy rose from his chair, cracked his knuckles, yawned. “S’pose I’ll head out. Busy day tomorrow.”

“You back here?”

“Nah, detail in town the next few days. Glad to be done with the graveyard shift for a while. Boring as hell. And it gives me the heebie-jeebies. I’d rather be tailing the kids. Who the hell knows what they’re doing down here? Could blow us all up.”

“Yeah. You never know,” Lupo agreed. “Me, I’m happy not knowing. Your problem is you read too much. Those books put ideas in your head.”

“Maybe you’re right.” Andy stuck the book in a drawer, hitched up his pants, and saluted Lupo, who planted himself in the chair, took up a file from the desktop.

“Anything else in the hopper?”

“Same old.” Andy smoothed his rumpled jacket. Then he lifted something out of the desk drawer. “Good one,” he told Lupo as he snicked the gun into a holster under his arm.

“Yeah. You, too.”

I stepped aside for Andy and took a shaky breath, concentrating hard on staying unseen. The gun made me break out in a sweat. The guys in the suits must be FBI. Or something. The men in black, Maggie had called them. Whoever they were, getting shot was not on my agenda. But I
hadn’t really found anything out, except that these guys were serious about whatever secrets they were protecting, even if they had no idea what the secrets were. Figuring I’d get nowhere hanging around Lupo at his desk, I walked to the end of the hall, turned a corner, and went back to the area where the non-suits were working. I hoped they didn’t have guns.

I wandered around gaping at all the desk jockeys. I tried to read their work over their shoulders, but what I read didn’t make any sense to me, only graphs and numbers.

Then I saw the flash of a lab coat. I followed the coat to another hallway. The lab coat was worn by an older woman with graying hair in a ponytail that swung as she walked. She was heading for a green door that said
LEVEL 6 CLEARANCE
. I caught right up to her, so close I could hear her rubber-soled shoes squelch softly on the linoleum floor. She swiped her card; I whisked in after her.

It was like another world behind that door, although I still can’t describe what I saw there with any precision. The room was vast. It seemed as if there was no end to it. There were more men and women in lab coats, working at stations with microscopes and petri dishes. There were big tanks and vats filled with who knew what. Wires and pipes ran every which way above and around me. Compressors thunked and whooshed. I slunk around for a while, watching one scientist and then another work. But I realized soon enough that even if I watched and listened all night I hadn’t the knowledge to interpret what was happening. All I really knew was that something big was going on. At that moment, though, I was more bored than frightened. Maybe I was just too young to understand the potential consequences of what I was seeing, and the corresponding price I would pay if I were caught spying.

Eventually I decided I’d had enough for one night, and was heading for the door to wait for the next opening, when my eye caught movement in a recessed corner. Two scientists—a man and a woman—were standing before a glass wall, looking into a small room. One held something like a television remote. I looked in. The narrow room was even more brightly lit than the lab. It held only a chair, with a man sitting in it. The chair was made of wooden four-by-fours, dwarfing the man, who seemed caught in
the web of rubber tubing he was struggling against. His bare arms and legs were bound with it, and the skin that showed looked red and raw from his struggles to free himself. He was leaping and jerking, as far as the tubing would allow.

A scream burned in my throat but I choked it back. I stood frozen, as captive as the man I couldn’t drag my eyes from. His face was covered with a black cloth, but I could see the metal cap on his head, and the singed white hair and scorch marks on his scalp. The black cloth across his face moved like a curtain in a powerful wind, sucked into the hole that must have been his mouth, then blown out again by what could only be screams. But there was no sound outside the glass window. That was almost the worst of it. The soundless screams of the electrified man, who seemed unable to get away, even by dying. Minutes must have ticked by, while the scientist with the remote pushed the button for more electric current, and still the man did not die. Just screamed and screamed in that awful silent way.

Then one of the scientists turned suddenly and walked right into me—walked into my disappeared self. She fell on the floor at my feet. Somehow I had the sense not to reach to help her up, but I must have lost control and reappeared for an instant.

She saw me and screamed. Like I was worse than the frightful experiment being conducted in that glass room.

“Dr. Harmon? Are you okay?” Men and women in white coats swirled around me while I concentrated on disappearing again, and staying that way.

“She … she … There’s a girl!” Dr. Harmon pointed to where I’d been, but I was invisible again. I tried to calm my ragged breathing while I waited for someone to open the door so I could slip out, escape.

“Call Security! Call the boss! There’s a student in here!”

“Where?”

“I saw her, too!” another white coat called. “She has to be here somewhere.”

Drumming feet sounded outside the door, and then pounding. One of the scientists had the presence of mind to swipe his key card to open the
door. I rushed out into a cluster of men wearing suits, Lupo and three or four others. Men with guns. I slammed into one with the full force of my weight before I could stop. I caromed off him and ran, but then he was after me. I had no idea whether I was disappeared or not—I was too frightened. I looked back, and his eyes bored into me. Bluest of eyes, ice blue. A big man, but graceful. He leapt, and caught me. Panicked, I fought like a fish on a hook, and like a hooked fish would have stayed caught, but Lupo tripped and fell into the man with the ice eyes, toppling him. I felt his hands on me slipping. I gave one heave and I was away, running as hard as I could, safe in my invisibility again.

I ran, didn’t look back until I was past Lupo’s office, at the door to the outside. There were alarms going off, people running everywhere, but I pressed myself against the wall and waited, focused on quieting my hammering heart. What had I gotten myself into? I stayed frozen, terrified to risk another run-in. There must have been a lockdown. No one came near the door for more than an hour. It was hard to stay invisible all that time, and to keep from going further into that parallel world I always sensed floating near me whenever I disappeared. I was afraid of being found out, but I was more fearful of the absolute cipher that world held. So I kept it up, balancing just out of sight. It was well after midnight when a whistling office worker finally keyed the door, and I tore out.

When I reached the barn, breathless, Maggie sprang to her feet. “Where the hell were—”

I clamped my hand over her mouth. “Shhh! Don’t talk! Come on!”