The Summoning (13 page)

“I don’t know what to do,” Ryan said. “I don’t even know where to start. I haven’t remembered anything until today in the woods. It’s like I
want
to remember, but I’m also
afraid
to remember.”

Amber nodded and thought for a moment. “I would say the first place you should start is with Carol. Like you said, she must have something to do with your past or you wouldn’t have her address in your wallet.”

Ryan nodded as he turned onto Amber’s street.

“Maybe you should snoop around her house.”

Ryan glanced at her.

Amber smiled. “It’s just a suggestion.”

“I can’t risk it. Victor and Tom are always there, and they always seem to be watching me. I can’t risk them telling Carol and getting me kicked out of the house. I know I need to be there for some reason.”

Ryan pulled up in front of Amber’s house and parked on the street. She looked at him. “Sorry I can’t stay with you. I have to go to work tonight.”

Ryan nodded – he understood.

“But I want to help you. If you think of anything I can do, just let me know.”

Ryan sighed and smiled. He did feel better now that someone else knew his secrets, like some of the weight had been lifted off of him. “I’m sorry to put you through all of this. I know you think I’m crazy.”

Amber kissed Ryan again, a gentler kiss this time, and she backed away. She looked out her passenger window at the small house, the cracked walkway, and her brother’s black pickup truck in the driveway – the truck where so much of the money from her mother had gone to.

She looked back at Ryan. “I don’t think you’re crazy. Living here with Gary, now
that’s
crazy.”

Amber got out of Ryan’s car and hurried up the walkway to her house.

Ryan watched her for a moment, he wanted to make sure she got inside okay and that Gary wasn’t going to give her a problem. But Gary never came to the door.

He drove away and he felt good. Amber had made him feel so much better. She wanted to help him, and he would eventually help her, he knew that. He felt a strange feeling inside; it was like something he hadn’t felt in such a long time – hope.

Carol spent twenty minutes looking through her den (her husband’s study) until she found a key hidden away in a jar on one of the bookcases. The jar had been filled with other odds and ends, but when she emptied it out she saw a small gold key on a ring. That must be the key to the suitcase, she thought, yet she wasn’t sure why she was so certain.

You know why you’re so certain, her mind whispered.

But she didn’t want to listen to that voice right now.

She needed to see inside that suitcase. She needed to be sure of things.

She slipped the key into her front pants pocket and left the den.

Carol went to the front door and opened it. She stepped out onto the front porch to check the driveway and make sure that Ryan hadn’t come back yet. His car wasn’t in the driveway. She went back inside, locked the front door, and then headed for the stairs.

In the hallway, she stood in front of Ryan’s bedroom door. She glanced down the hall to make sure no one was spying on her through a cracked open doorway. She took the spare key to the bedroom out of her pocket and slid it in the keyhole, trying to be as quiet as possible, yet move as quickly as possible – the longer she stayed out in the hallway, the more of a chance Victor or Tom might see her.

The lock clicked as she turned the key. The clicking noise sounded so loud in the hallway, it seemed to echo off the high ceilings and narrow walls. She pulled the key out with a trembling hand. She wasn’t surprised that she was trembling – she was nervous, she had to admit that to herself. She opened the door and slipped inside Ryan’s room.

She closed the door and stood there for a moment with her back to the door. She had expected Ryan to be in the room for a split second, waiting for her, the window would be open from where he’d crept up the tree branches. He would have a twisted smile on his face and insanity in his eyes as he ran at her.

But he wasn’t there.

Carol peeled herself away from the door and moved into action. She walked to the closet and looked inside; there was nothing inside the closet except for a few clothes on hangers and a duffel bag crumpled up in the corner. She picked up the duffel bag – it was completely empty. It looked like the duffel bag he had come here with, his only piece of luggage as he had said. Probably had these clothes in it, she thought.

The only odd thing about the duffel bag was the musty odor it had. The clothes smelled clean – in fact, they looked new – but the bag seemed old and musty.

She set the bag back down in the corner, trying to crumple it like it had been. She didn’t see the brown suitcase in the closet.

Under the bed, she thought.

She hurried over to the bed and bent down. She saw the brown suitcase lying flat underneath the bed. She pulled it out by its smooth wooden handle. She lifted it up onto the bed and laid it flat. The suitcase was somewhat heavy, but not too heavy for her to lift, maybe like a suitcase full of clothes. As she hefted it, she felt something moving around inside, like something liquid moving back and forth. And she’d heard a faint tinkling sound inside, like metal objects bumping into each other. She didn’t remember these things when she’d picked up the suitcase from the front porch – she was pretty sure she would’ve remembered something like that.

She pulled the small key on the ring out of her pocket. The key seemed small enough to fit the two padlocks on each strap; the key even seemed like it was the same gold color as the padlocks.

With trembling fingers, she tried the padlock.

The first one unlocked.

She unlocked the other one and slipped the key back inside her pants pocket. The padlocks were unlocked, all she had to do now was remove the padlocks and the straps and open the suitcase.

Why was she hesitating?

She couldn’t stay up here too long. She knew Ryan wasn’t working anymore, Buddy had told her that. She didn’t know where Ryan was right now or when he would be back. She needed to hurry.

She took off the padlocks and unstrapped the suitcase. She opened it up and stared down at the contents as the breath left her body for a moment and everything in her peripheral vision faded to black, like she was staring down a tunnel at the open suitcase on the bed.

And she didn’t move for a long moment, she just stared down at the suitcase in horror and disbelief.

This couldn’t be true, her mind whispered. This couldn’t be possible.

And another sudden thought occurred to her – she was pretty sure she was going to throw up. She could feel her stomach churning and the bitter taste of bile at the back of her throat.

Just then she heard the gravel in her driveway crunching as a car pulled up.

Ryan was back!

Ryan was still feeling good when he got back to Carol’s house. It felt so good to have Amber’s support, for Amber to know about him, about his secrets.

Some of his secrets, anyway.

He pulled up into the driveway and he heard the now familiar sound of the gravel crunching under his tires. He parked behind the two vehicles that never seemed to move. One was Carol’s car, he assumed. The other one must belong to either Victor or Tom. He thought of peeking in the windows of the cars, begin his snooping there, but he didn’t think that would accomplish much.

He didn’t really know what to do next.

Except that wasn’t exactly true. Amber had told him what he should do even though he didn’t want to do it.

Maybe you should follow the man in your dreams, her voice echoed in his mind. See where he wants to take you.

As Ryan walked across the flagstones to the front porch, he thought Amber might be right. He was never going to find out anything until he let himself follow this Nightmare Man from his dreams.

The Nightmare Man had so many things to show him. The Nightmare Man had answers for him, he was sure of that.

But were they answers he wanted to find?

Carol panicked. It was hard to tear her eyes away from what she’d seen inside the suitcase, but she needed to hurry. Ryan would be up here in a few minutes. She closed the suitcase and buckled the straps. Her fingers fumbled with the padlocks as she slipped one of the padlocks back through the little brass loops in the straps and she clicked it shut, locking it.

She heard the front door open and then close.

She grabbed the other padlock and it slipped out of her fingers and dropped down onto the wood floor with a clunk and then it rolled underneath the bed. She dropped down to her knees and reached under the bed, groping for the padlock in the shadows underneath the bed.

Oh God, she had to hurry – Ryan would be coming up the stairs any moment, and if he saw her in his room with the suitcase, if he saw that she’d opened it …

Her fingers found the padlock. She jumped up and clicked the padlock shut around the brass loop. She grabbed the suitcase and nearly flung it under the bed. She felt a muscle stretch painfully in her back from the quick twisting and pulling motion she’d just made. She practically sprinted to the bedroom door, opened it and stepped out into the hall.

Ryan wasn’t in the hallway yet, but she could hear him on the stairs, clomping up the steps, moving quickly.

She pulled the skeleton key out of her pants pocket and (Oh God she’d nearly dropped the small gold key from her pocket in the process, but she caught it just in time) jabbed it into the keyhole on the first try. She turned the key and locked the door. She turned and …

… saw Ryan enter the hallway from the top of the stairs.

He smiled at her. “Carol,” he said. He seemed surprised to see her standing in front of his bedroom door.

“I was just about to knock on your door,” she said quickly as she tried to hide the skeleton key in her clenched fist. She didn’t like the sound of her own voice, it sounded too frightened to her own ears. She was afraid he would see right through her.

And you
should
be frightened, her mind whispered. After what you just saw in his suitcase, you should be very frightened of him right now.

“Oh?” Ryan said and walked towards her. He already had his own skeleton key in his hand, ready to unlock his bedroom door.

“I … I am making lasagna tonight,” she said. “I wanted to let you know that it would be ready in a few hours in case you were going to go out somewhere and eat.”

Ryan stood in front of Carol and he was silent for a moment, but he was still smiling at her. He nodded. “I appreciate that, Carol.”

Carol brushed past Ryan and hurried back down the stairs, happy to be away from him right now. It was all she could do to not totally lose it, to not scream at the top of her lungs in her own hallway.

She got to the bottom of the stairs and glanced back up to make sure Ryan wasn’t watching her from the landing. She slipped the spare skeleton key into her pants pocket and hurried to the kitchen.

After what she’d seen in the suitcase, she knew everything had changed now. Everything she had thought she’d known was now different. And now, she feared, she knew the truth.

But there was one last thing she could check on. She grabbed her purse and her car keys and headed for the front door.

Ryan unlocked his bedroom door and entered his room. He closed and locked his door, and then he looked around at the room. Something seemed strange in his room, but he couldn’t put his finger on it. Something seemed different.

The bed.

The suitcase under the bed.

He could see that the corner of the brown suitcase was poking out a little; he could see it from the doorway. He was pretty sure that he hadn’t left it like that. And the blanket on his bed looked disturbed and wrinkled.

Ryan pulled the suitcase out from underneath the bed and studied it for a moment. It was still locked; he even tugged on each padlock to make sure they were both locked. He pushed the suitcase back under the bed, farther under the bed in the shadows where he’d placed it the first time.

He stood up and picked up his mattress and stared down at the layer of money, making sure it was all there, making sure that it was untouched.

That was another thing you didn’t tell Amber about, his mind whispered. The brown suitcase under your bed.

Ryan tried to ignore the voice in his head.

If he wanted Amber to trust him, if he wanted to trust her, then why was he keeping these things from her?

And why was he so hesitant to look inside the suitcase?

Because you already know what’s inside,
that low voice whispered again in his mind.

At the same time Ryan was checking on his layer of money underneath his mattress, the black Lincoln drove up the county road and passed a sign that welcomed drivers to Edrington, Oregon.

Jake drove and Lita sat in the passenger seat.

Middle of fucking nowhere, Jake thought.

Mr. Murdock sat in the backseat. He held the photo of Ryan in his gloved hands, staring at it, studying it.

“We’re here,” Jake said.

Mr. Murdock didn’t answer. He looked out his tinted window at the houses and stores whipping by. There were forests everywhere in the distance, like this tiny town had been carved out of these woods and mountains.

At the same time Mr. Murdock’s black Lincoln entered the town of Edrington, Amber was busy at the bar. She stacked more glasses when she got a break from serving customers.

Buddy was in the bar tonight. So were John and Scooter. She wanted to ask Buddy about Ryan, but she didn’t. She knew Ryan had quit, but she didn’t want to raise any suspicions with Buddy.

She thought back to when she and Ryan were in the woods. He had driven down that road, to that trail in the woods. He had told her everything he’d known, everything that he could remember anyway. He had confided in her and trusted her. And she hadn’t told him everything that she knew. She should’ve told him more about that shack in the woods where the body of the serial killer and his last victim were found. She should’ve told him that the shack had been torn down a long time ago – nobody wanted that shack in the woods anymore, nobody wanted a reminder of all of the horrible murders in Edrington ten years ago.