The Waiting: A Supernatural Thriller (16 page)

The words seemed to come out of nowhere, and he shook his head, moving to the counter to make some tea. While the water heated, he watched the light fade from the day, the clouds on the horizon suspended, no closer or farther away than before.

He and Shaun were the clouds. Un
moving, unable to go forward or disperse, static in life. Soon they would both be old, himself in his eighties, Shaun nearing sixty. How would he take care of him then? How would he ensure that Shaun wouldn’t be scared if he couldn’t come to his calls right away, or if he couldn’t remember what he was supposed to do when he got there? What would they do when he couldn’t help them anymore?

The thought terrified him. This was the unsaid horror that stalked him each hour, submerged beneath the everyday trials and tribulations, the sadness and suffering. The image of Shaun alone and scared was too much to bear, so he banished it back to the depths of his mind from which it came, to hibernate with fangs of fear ready in its black mouth.

His hand felt cold, and when he looked down, he saw he was holding the basement-door handle. He yanked it back, surprised more by not remembering moving to touch it than by the chill it gave off.

“Basements are cold, that’s a fact,” he said to the kitchen.

His tea water wasn’t as hot as he liked it, but he poured it over the tea bag anyway, then sat at the table with his laptop. His email yielded no new messages, but he remembered he had no Wi-Fi service and couldn’t receive anything. He opened his article notes and scanned what he’d already written, and then typed for a moment.

Abel and Larissa Kluge
—dead under mysterious circumstances. Allison Kaufman—died the same day as Larissa, look into death. Cecil Fenz—related to Kluges? Bob’s story—notes in basement.

Evan paused, his fingers hovering over the keys.

Clock at the center of everything?

He glanced at the basement door before snapping the laptop shut.

“Nope, I’m tired.”

Without bothering to put his untouched tea away, Evan shut the
lights off and headed for bed.

But sleep
wouldn’t come. It seemed drifting off was a magic trick he’d forgotten, a subtle secret of the mind that wouldn’t show itself. His thoughts played on a continuous loop, facts and words whirling like a tornado in his skull. After nearly two hours of tossing and turning, he rose and headed to the basement.

“I gotta get that light fixed,” he said, traipsing down the unlit stairs until his fingers found the switch at the bottom.

The basement looked the same, and he didn’t spare a glance at the doll lying on the floor. Knowing it was silly but doing it anyway, he took a chair and positioned it at the end of the table, not wanting his back to the clock. He sat and ran his weary eyes over the notes. Tonight, the scrawls looked different, Bob’s incoherent hand not seeming wild or unruly. In fact, the lines actually appeared to be words, although disjointed and hacked into the page. Evan sifted through them, seeing letters strung together one second, and the next they were gone, lost in a jumble of scribbles.

At the bottom of the pile
, he found the words pressed into the paper. Closing his eyes, he ran his fingertips over the ridges, imagining he could read them like braille.
I CAN SEE THEM.

He sh
uddered and opened his eyes. What the hell was he doing? Looking through the ramblings of a man who most likely wandered off into the winter night to freeze in some hidden place. Evan rubbed his forehead. God, he was tired. Without thinking about it, he whipped a hand across the sheets of paper in frustration, scattering several to the floor. They landed next to one another like birds alighting to feed.

“I need some sleep, then I can sort this out,” he said. “I also need to quit talking to myself.”

With that, he stood and reached down to pick up the papers, but his hand stopped inches from the floor. The air around him froze, and all sound stopped. The pages lay side-by-side, their edges almost touching, the scribbles and unintelligible drawings finally becoming clear.

“What the fuck?” he
said, stooping to the ground.

He slid two sheets together and saw that they formed the word
BACK
. “No way,” he muttered.

He grasped another paper and
moved it close to the first two, flipping it different ways, but it didn’t fit. Grabbing all of the loose notes from the table, he pulled them to the floor, moving back to give himself room. He swung the papers different directions, matching their edges and then pulling them apart. Moving around the growing spread of pages, he looked at it from different angles like an artist studying a half-finished sculpture. His mind became focused on the task, the basement around him receding, the promise of something just out of reach coming together.

After pushing
the last page into place, he stood and observed the four-foot by eight rectangle he’d formed, the mosaic finally complete.

HIS NAME WAS BILLY AND I KILLED HIM WITH MY TRUCK. HE WAS SIX. I CAN GO BACK I CAN GO BACKICANGOBACKICANGOBACKICANGOBACK.

Evan staggered away from the papers, his hand coming to his mouth. “Oh my God,” he whispered.

12

The waiting-room Wi-Fi signal looked strong on his laptop screen.

Evan glanced at a passing nurse who gave him a smile
, then lowered his face into his palm. He hadn’t slept much the night before. Not that it surprised him. Bob’s message still hung like a macabre painting in the hall of his mind. He may have gotten two hours of broken rest in before Shaun woke.

Sighing, he logged on
to the Internet and sat still for a moment. Was he really going down this path? A madman had cut the trail before him, he was sure of it. The urge to shut the computer down overcame him, and he went so far as to put his hand on its lid before setting his fingers back on the keys. He typed
Bob Garrison car accident
into the search bar and waited. The results came back with nothing of interest. He tried again,
Robert Garrison Colorado
.

A webpage
appeared at the top of the screen, with the title
Bob’s Odd Jobs
over it. Evan clicked on it and saw a simple and outdated website with a few pictures of landscaped yards, paintbrushes, and a smiling man with sandy-blond hair in cargo shorts and sunglasses. He read through the description of services and studied the man’s photograph. That was him, it had to be. A phone number was at the very bottom of the page, and Evan hesitated only a second before calling it. It didn’t ring; an automated voice picked up and told him the number was either disconnected or no longer in service.

He put
his phone away and returned to the search engine, typing
Colorado car accidents Billy
.
A few dozen hits came up, but most were decades old and none involved any information about a child.

He
readjusted himself in the chair and glanced down the hospital’s hallway, his brain running too fast for him to examine his thoughts. He saw the arrangement of papers on the basement floor again and pushed the image away, but not before a new idea bloomed in his mind.

With trepidation
, he typed
Colorado hit-and-run Billy 6 years old
.
The first website that came up made his stomach coil in on itself.
Hit-and-run in downtown Boulder leaves 6-year-old dead
.
Evan clicked on the article and began to read.

A community mourns the loss of a young child today after a hit-and-run accident late
Tuesday evening. William Akely, 6, was playing in his front yard at approximately 9 p.m. when he wandered into the street near his home. An unidentified vehicle struck and killed him without stopping. Police say they are following up each and every lead in the case, and are confident that a suspect will be arrested soon. William’s mother, Janet Akely, was watching him at the time of the accident, but officials say she momentarily stepped into the house to answer a phone call. A memorial service will be held at St. Luke’s Lutheran Church of Boulder on Saturday, June 11. The Boulder Police Department is asking for any and all information in regards to the investigation.

With a shaking hand, Evan closed the webpages
, and sat staring at the opposite wall of the waiting room. He let the white paint invade his eyes until it was all he could see.

“Mr. Tormer?”

He snapped out of his trance and saw that a young Asian woman stood a few paces away, holding Shaun’s hands in hers.

“Sorry,” Evan said, putting his computer aside.
He stood.

“That’s okay
. I’m Becky Tram. Dr. Netler said you inquired about a PCA?”

Becky had
jet-black hair tied back from a round face. Her uniform looked tight in places, as if she had gained weight since she bought it and wasn’t willing to give in to a larger size. She smiled, revealing a set of very white teeth and dimples in her plump cheeks.

“Oh, yes, nice to meet you,” Evan said
, holding out a hand for her to shake.

“You too
. And this little man did awesome today,” Becky said, guiding Shaun to Evan.

Evan grinned and pulled Shaun up
, to hold him on his hip. “Did you?” he asked, tickling Shaun’s neck.

Sha
un laughed and kicked his feet.

“Yes, he did great. We worked really hard
, so he might be tired. Have you been doing small motor skills with him lately?”

“Yeah, we’ve been doing trac
ing and some therapy putty from time to time.”

“Great
. I can tell you work with him at home since he’s versed in most of the stuff we do.”

“He has a great PT an
d OT staff back where we live.”

“Well, he’s doing wonderful
, lots of echolalia today too. So, were you thinking of regular PCA hours, or once in a while?”

Evan shifted Shaun to his other hip. “Probably just from time to time. I’m home with him now
, but I thought it might be good to set something up in case I needed to go somewhere.”

Beck
y nodded. “Absolutely. My schedule is pretty open for the summer, and I could probably do almost any day of the week except for Mondays. Did the front desk give you my résumé?”

“They did, it looked great.”

“Good. Yeah, I’ve been doing PCA stuff for about six years now, and it works really well with my OT. I’ll eventually be full-time here, but not until they have an opening.”

Evan’s eyes glazed slightly
. “Would you be able to come out tomorrow?”

“Sure, what time?”

He blinked. “How about one? Shaun usually takes his naps in the afternoon.”

“That sounds great
. Where do you guys live?”

“The Fin
.”

Bec
ky’s cheerful face lost some of its color, but she recovered immediately. “Okay, sure, I know where it is. My dad has a boat he’ll let me use. I’ll be out a little before one.”

“Perfect,” Evan said, shaking her hand. “We’ll see you then.”

~

Even with the sun straight overhead, Evan
was cold. As they crossed the water and the Fin materialized, the notion to pack and leave as soon as they got there became more and more appealing. What were they staying for? The possibility of a story in a magazine? At what cost? Visions of a floating body and the doll standing on the basement landing flashed through his mind, and he pressed the heel of his hand against his forehead. That could’ve been his imagination, just circus acts in the old brainpan.

Shouldn’t you be worried about that? The cost for staying might be your sanity.

Lack of sleep paired with stress could do weird things.

Shaun saw it too
.

But he could’ve been asleep and dreamed it, or seen something on TV that scared him, Evan retorted. The voice didn’t answer, letting him stew in his own thoughts
until they reached the island.

The afternoon passed in a lazy blink of an eye. The sun arced overhead
, and Shaun napped. Evan sipped on coffee, maintaining a steady caffeine buzz that pushed him through the day. He cleaned a little, puttering around the house, ignoring the basement door as much as he could. When Shaun woke up, they sat by the lake’s edge, watching the afternoon rays walk across the waves.

When they returned to the house
, Evan surprised himself by pulling out the business card with Selena’s number on it. He stared at it for a while, and eventually drew out his phone and punched in the numbers before he could stop himself. The rush of adrenaline from calling her both frightened and soothed him. It was as if he’d just woken up, the day a haze of motions and words until then.

“Hello?”

Her voice startled him, and he nearly fumbled the phone, realizing he had no plan of what to say to her.