The Summoning
Author: Mark Lukens
Date: 2014-01-01 05:00:00+00:00
Description: The Summoning . . . a supernatural mystery. Edrington, Oregon - a town with a dark past, a town hiding secrets, a town where a woman has summoned something terrifying from hell. Three hundred and fifty miles south, Ryan wakes up in a motel room with a bag of stolen money, bullet hole scars on his chest, and no memory of his past. His only clue is a scrap of paper in his wallet with an Edrington address scrawled on it. Plagued by nightmares of a tortured man who seems to be forcing his way from the dream world into Ryan's world, Ryan journeys north to the small Oregon town where the horrifying

Table of Contents
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

THE SUMMONING

A novel by

Mark Lukens

The Summoning – copyright © 2013 – Mark Lukens

All Rights Reserved

No part of this book may be reprinted without written permission from the author.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead (or in any other form), business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Cover design by: Damonza.com

As always, I dedicate this book to my wife, son, and family.

Other books by the author:

Ancient Enemy

Night Terrors

Descendants of Magic: Devon Richards and the Dark Storm

CHAPTER ONE

1.

Pitch black.

Something dripped in the darkness. Water? Blood?

He could feel something near him; it was breathing heavily, coming for him, trying to take him away and drag him deeper into the darkness.

“No! I’m not ready to go yet!”

2.

Ryan’s eyes popped open. He lay in the bed and stared up at the ceiling for a long moment as the nightmare began to fade away.

In the dream he had been in a dark place, a terrible place. But it was a familiar place. He’d been there before, he was sure of that. And he was sure that he could never allow himself to be taken back there again.

Ryan sat up in the bed and swung his bare feet to the floor. He looked around at the dingy motel room he was in. The room was murky. The heavy drapes were pulled tight over the windows that looked out onto the motel parking lot. He had kept the drapes shut through the night, but he had left the TV and the bathroom light on all night. He needed the light – he couldn’t be in the dark.

He knuckled sleep from his eyes and sighed. He didn’t remember much about getting to this motel room. And he didn’t remember anything about his life at all before he’d driven here. His entire past was a blank. He didn’t know where he’d been. He didn’t know who he was.

Maybe he’d been in a car accident. That seemed to be right, but he wasn’t sure why he was so certain about that. Maybe he’d hit his head and lost his memory somehow. But he’d checked his head and he hadn’t found any wounds.

But he had found scars on other parts of his body.

Ryan looked down at his lean and muscular body which was naked and sheened with sweat – it wasn’t particularly hot in the motel room, but he’d been sweating during his nightmare. He saw the scars on his chest and abdomen. Three of them. He’d noticed them yesterday when he’d gotten to the motel room. He could only remember back to yesterday – his earliest memory was speeding down the county road and seeing this motel – The Starlight Motel – off the side of the road in the middle of nowhere with hardly any cars parked in front. He pulled into the parking lot and checked in. As soon as he was inside the room, he locked the doors. And hours later, he eventually drifted off to sleep. He knew he needed sleep, but he was afraid he would wake up and not remember anything before that.

But now he remembered part of yesterday.

And he remembered the dream last night.

So maybe his memory was beginning to come back.

He brushed his fingertips over the thick scar tissue on his torso; there were two scars on his chest, and one on his abdomen. He was pretty sure they were bullet-hole scars. At some point in his past he’d been shot three times and lived.

But he couldn’t remember any of it.

Ryan looked at the nightstand next to the bed where there was one of two clues to his past life – the other clue was stuffed underneath the bed. The first clue on the nightstand was a wallet. Inside the wallet was a driver’s license. According to the license and the photo, he was Ryan Freeman from 811 Cordova Street in Oakland, California. There was only one other thing inside the wallet besides the driver’s license; a scrap of paper with an address on it – a street address in a place called Edrington, Oregon. The address had been scrawled on the paper, like someone had written the information down quickly. He guessed that it was his own handwriting.

It would seem to make sense to go back to the California address on his driver’s license, but for some reason he felt like it wasn’t safe to go back there. He felt like he had been running away from that place.

They would be looking for him there.

But who were they? And why was he so certain that people were after him and they would be at the California address? He couldn’t be sure. It was like the memories of his past were there under his consciousness, just underneath the fog of his memory loss. He could almost reach it, but no matter how much he tried, he couldn’t remember. It was frustrating, but if this was some kind of temporary brain injury, then maybe he would remember soon.

He felt like he needed to remember soon – he felt like his life depended on it.

Ryan thought briefly of seeking help; medical help or help from the police. But because of the other clue to his past, the one stuffed underneath the bed, he knew that seeking any kind of help was out of the question.

And he knew that if there were people after him, then they would be after what was under the bed.

He got up and walked across the room to the heavy drapes that covered the window. He pulled the drapes to the side just a bit and peeked out at the parking lot. Bright sunlight invaded the room when he pulled the drapes back and he had to squint for a second and let his eyes get used to the light before he could see the parking lot.

Out in the parking lot was his car (which he was sure wasn’t really his car), and only one other vehicle – an old Ford pickup truck. Beyond the parking area was the county road he’d driven last night. Cars and trucks rumbled by in the early morning light; people on their way to work or on the way home, people who knew where they were going, people who knew who they were.

Ryan let the drapes fall back in place and he walked back to his bed with its rumpled sheets and covers.

He crouched down beside the bed and pulled out the duffel bag from underneath it. He unzipped the bag and stared down at the stacks of money – stacks of one hundred dollar bills wrapped tightly in plastic. One of the packets had been torn open. He guessed he must’ve opened it to get money for gas and for this motel room – he didn’t remember doing it, but he must have because there was a wad of hundred dollar bills in his pants pocket.

Where had this duffel bag of money come from? A bank? A business? A drug deal?

Ryan had dumped out the duffel bag last night; he’d taken all of the stacks of money out and searched the bag, he’d looked for any other items inside, or a hidden pocket, any kind of clue that he could find.

He found nothing but the money.

The only other thing that he noticed was that the canvas duffel bag felt damp and smelled a little musty, like it had been wet at some point in the past. His clothes had the same musty smell as the duffel bag so he had washed them out in the bathtub with a small box of laundry soap that he’d bought from the vending machine in the motel’s laundry room. He’d also bought a few sodas and snacks from the other vending machines in the laundry room. His shirt, pants, underwear, and socks now hung from the shower curtain rod in the bathroom.

He zipped the duffel bag back up and he took it with him into the bathroom. He closed and locked the bathroom door. He took a quick, hot shower. Then he dressed back in his clothes – the only clothes he had with him. He would need to find some more clothes when he got to Edrington, Oregon.

He’d already made up his mind that he was going to find the address that was written down on the piece of paper in his wallet – it was his only choice.

There was something about the name of the town – Edrington. Something familiar about it. He wasn’t sure why, but he felt certain that the answers to everything were in that town.

3.

Ryan walked across the parking lot to his car, his car keys in one hand and the duffel bag of money gripped in his other hand. He unlocked and opened the trunk and stuffed the duffel bag down inside, he shoved it as far back into the trunk as he could. There was nothing to cover the duffel bag with; the trunk of the car was clean and completely empty except for the spare tire and a jack. He had searched through the car last night, but it was devoid of any kind of clues as to who the previous owners were. No registration, no insurance papers, no paperwork of any kind in the car. Had he gotten rid of everything when he’d gotten the car? Had he stolen the car? He couldn’t be sure, and he didn’t want to think about it right now.

He slammed the trunk lid closed and stuffed the car keys into his pants pocket. He looked at the Starlight Motel office which occupied the last room at the end of the strip motel. He walked across the dusty parking lot to the small office with its cheap plastic OPEN sign in the window.

The bell dinged when he opened the door to the office. He could remember checking in last night, but this person wasn’t the same clerk he’d checked in with. This clerk was a little chubby and needed a shave. He sat behind the counter playing some kind of game on his cell phone, and he didn’t even look up when Ryan entered. A small TV sat on top of a battered filing cabinet – the TV was turned on, but the sound was turned all the way down. The area behind the checkout counter was a little messy and disorganized, but it didn’t seem like it bothered the clerk one bit.

Ryan stood at the counter. The clerk seemed very interested in his phone at the moment. Ryan slapped his room keycard down on the counter top. “Checking out,” Ryan said in a loud voice.

“Thanks,” the clerk muttered without looking up. “Hope you enjoyed your stay at the Starlight Motel.”

Ryan was about to turn away and leave, but he turned back around and looked at the clerk. “I need to get to a town called Edrington. Do you know how far it is from here?”

This got the clerk’s attention; he looked up from his phone with bloodshot eyes set deep in his unshaven face. “Edrington?”

“Yeah.”

The clerk cleared his throat and sat up a little more in his chair. “You go out on that county road out there, hang a right, drive north about three hundred and twenty miles and you’ll run right into Edrington.”

“Thanks.”

“Small town. Don’t blink; you might drive right through it.”

Ryan nodded and gave the clerk a fake smile. “Thanks,” he said again, about to leave. But the clerk’s next words stopped him cold.

“What do you want to go up to Edrington for? You got family up there or something?”

Ryan turned and stared at the clerk for a moment. “I’m visiting a friend,” he lied.

The clerk shrugged and turned his eyes back to the game on his phone. “Just trying to make conversation,” he muttered.

Ryan opened the office door and the bell dinged again. He stepped outside, shut the door and walked away.

The clerk looked up from his phone and stared at the closed door. He could see Ryan through the window, walking away from the office towards the parking area.

“That town is famous for only one thing,” the clerk said to himself and went back to the game on his phone.

4.

Ryan got in his car (which he was even more certain wasn’t really his) and he stuck the key into the ignition. The car was a Chevy Impala. Silver. 2003. It was definitely well-used; some wear-and-tear on the seats and interior, a few dings and dents in the rear quarter panels, a crack in the front bumper. But it ran well. Started right up when he turned the key.

He sat there for a moment as the engine purred. He checked the gauges. The gas tank was almost three quarters full. He caressed the steering wheel which was already warm from the morning sun beating down on it through the windshield. It was going to be a hot day.

He shifted into reverse and backed out of the parking spot. He was ready to get on the road. He felt an urgency to get to the town of Edrington. Part of the urgency was because he knew that the answers waited for him there. But not just answers to his foggy past, but also to his nightmare. And the other reason for his urgency was because he was sure someone was after him – someone was following him. And that person would find him if he stayed anywhere for too long.

And he couldn’t let that person catch up to him.

The person from your nightmares, his mind whispered to him.

Ryan pushed the whispering voice from his thoughts as he turned onto the county road and headed north.

CHAPTER TWO

1.

Edrington, Oregon

“He’s coming.”

The words slipped through Carol’s lips in a whisper as her eyes popped open in the murky room. And just before her eyes popped open, she could’ve sworn she’d heard a noise in the room with her – it sounded like something was dripping.

No, that was just your imagination, she told herself.

Carol was nearly fifty years old, but she was still in very good shape. Her beauty had faded over the last decade, and she had accepted that; but even though she had always been critical of her appearance throughout her life, she had to admit that she had aged well. Aged gracefully, as some might have said. She didn’t do any wild things to try and hold on to her youth. She tried to eat right and eat in moderation. She exercised a little, mostly walking. She tried to keep busy with her business – renting out rooms in her house. And she always tried to find time for prayer, at least once every few days in her den.

She got to her feet from where she’d been kneeling in the middle of the room, and she glanced down at the rug she’d been kneeling on. There was a secret under that rug. But she didn’t want to think about that right now.

This was her den; but it used to be her husband’s den years ago when he was alive. Back then he called it his study. And this room always brought the memory of her husband back to her.

A few candles burned; she always placed them around the room when she prayed. They were scented candles, but they could never completely mask the smells of the den (study), the smell of wood and furniture cleaner, musty old books, the smell of leather from the couch and chair.

Normally she used this time in here to pray – thirty minutes; almost like meditation. But this time had been different. The peacefulness of her prayers had been interrupted by an overwhelming feeling of not being alone in the den, of someone watching her from the shadows. But she didn’t dare look around as she kept her eyes closed in prayer.

But now she looked around the murky room and there was no one in the room with her. It had just been her imagination.

She blew out the candles and the room was even darker with the blinds and curtains drawn shut over the one window that looked out onto the side yard. After she blew out the last candle, she walked towards the door. As she moved towards the door, a panic began to build inside of her. She walked faster as her heart thudded in her chest, her eyes focused on the closed door that led out to the hall.

The feeling of a presence in the room with her came back with a sudden ferocity. And for a moment she could not only see movement in the shadows out of the corner of her eye, but she could hear the sneaky sounds in the darkness. And she could hear something dripping again – a steady drip.

The panic was white-hot in her mind now as her thoughts turned to pure static. All she could think about was running to the door and getting out of her husband’s study. She grabbed the door handle, struggled with it, tried to turn it. But it wasn’t turning. It was like someone was holding it from the other side of the door.

Oh God! her mind screamed. He’s coming! He’s coming after me!

Finally, the door handle turned, and she yanked the door open so fast that she almost toppled backwards.

She rushed out into the hallway, trying to catch her breath. She slammed the door shut and backed away from it. She turned when she heard a voice from down the hall. “Carol, you okay?”

2.

Carol managed to get a hold of herself as she walked down the hall and out into the living room where the voice had come from. The voice belonged to Victor, one of her two tenants right now. He stood in the living room, his large blue eyes oozing with concern. He was in his early sixties, and he was still in reasonably good health; he took a few pills for high cholesterol and blood pressure, and he had a little bit of a potbelly, but other than that he was as healthy as a horse.

“I’m okay, Victor,” Carol said. She had her breathing back under control and she gave him her normal razor-thin smile that showed no humor.

“It looked like you ran out of your den just now,” Victor said, not letting it go. “Like you were running from something, running like a bat out of hell.”

What a choice of words, she thought as she stared at Victor. “And you shouldn’t be spying on other people.”

Victor looked like he’d been slapped. “I wasn’t spying. I was just … I came down here to get something to drink from the kitchen …” Victor paused, still watching her with those eyes that sometimes seemed to stare right through her. He had been renting a room from her for years and they had gotten to know each other pretty well by now. “Can’t I just be concerned without you jumping down my throat?”

Carol walked past Victor on her way to the kitchen. “Thanks for your concern, I’m fine. I’m going to make some sandwiches for lunch if you want one.”

Victor just stared at Carol as she walked away.

Carol entered the kitchen and began the preparations for lunch. As she grabbed a loaf of bread from the pantry, her mind slipped back to her prayers. She’d seen something during her prayers, a vision of some kind. She’d seen him. Not in any great detail, just a shadowy figure really. But she knew it was him, she could feel it; she could sense it with every molecule of her body.

Yes, she thought, he was coming back very soon.

A shudder rippled through her body, tickling over her skin on little spidery legs as she laid out an assortment of meats and cheeses. She worked slowly, her body still slightly numb from both the vision she’d seen and the presence that she’d felt in the den. She was both excited about his return … and terrified.

3.

On the other side of town, the side of town that wasn’t as nice as Carol’s side of town, Amber got ready for work in her small house. After she was dressed and ready to go, she studied herself in the mirror that was attached to the back of her closet door. Her uniform consisted of a pair of white short-shorts and a tight blue, low-cut T-shirt that didn’t leave much to the imagination. Her dark hair was pulled back in a French braid. She had a little make-up on even though she didn’t need it. She grabbed her apron, her purse, and her ticket book and she left her bedroom. She locked her bedroom door, but she knew that it didn’t matter whether she locked it or not.

She walked into the living room and Gary sat in his recliner, sprawled out, a can of beer in his hand. His shirt was off revealing his massive bulk – it used to be muscle years ago but it was quickly turning into a landslide of flab. He watched her walk to the front door.

“You look like a fucking whore, you know that?” he said.

Amber ignored him as she checked to make sure she had her house keys. She had to constantly check her keys in the door because every time Gary would get mad at her (which was often) he would change the locks on the door. She opened the door and walked outside; she slammed the door shut without a word or a glance towards Gary.

She walked out into the afternoon light which was still warm, but she knew the colder weather would be coming soon enough. She saw her friend’s car driving down the street towards her house. Thank God Michelle wasn’t running late, she didn’t feel like waiting out in front of her house any longer than she needed to today. She didn’t want Gary staggering out onto the front steps and hurl more slurred insults at her.

She wished she could afford her own car.

She wished she could move from this house. From this town. From this state.

Michelle’s car pulled up next to the cracked sidewalk and Amber got in the passenger side and they drove to Charlie’s Pub.

4.

In a different area of Edrington, closer to the edge of town, closer to the woods, Walter left his small but tidy home and got into his car.

Walter had been visited by the man in his dreams lately, but he couldn’t make out the man entirely because he seemed to stay in the shadows of the dreams, in the darkness where something dripped. Walter had a feeling that his dream visitor was injured somehow; no, he was more than just injured, he was mutilated. Even though Walter couldn’t see the man, he could hear the man’s voice from the darkness very clearly. The voice seemed slurred just the slightest bit, not from alcohol or drugs, but from an injury to the man’s mouth.

“You need to dig it up, Walter,” the dream-man had said to him.

“I want to help you,” Walter whispered back.

“This will help very much. You need to go to the place in the woods and dig it up.”

“Whatever you need me to do.”

Walter drove away from his neighborhood and out onto Winter Road. He followed the road that twisted up into the mountains and through the dense woods until he came to a smaller road that led even deeper into the woods.

He found the spot.

He parked his car at the side of the road. It was still early in the afternoon, still plenty of time, he didn’t think it would take him too long to hike into the woods, dig it up, and bring it back with him. He grabbed his pick and shovel from the trunk of his car and then he hurried into the woods.

He had seen the spot in the woods in his dreams – it was right in front of a massive oak tree that had been struck by lightning some time ago. But the tree had survived the lightning strike somehow and another part of the tree had grown out from the twisted remains of the trunk.

When he got to the tree, he used the pick to break up the dirt and any roots in an area five feet in front of the base of the trunk. He didn’t want to bury the pick too deep in the ground and possibly damage what lay buried beneath. He used the shovel and took his time digging up the dirt.

Then his shovel struck something hard under the dirt. He dug around the object carefully, scooping out small shovelfuls of dirt. After a few minutes of unearthing, he could see the object.

It was some kind of suitcase, but a little smaller than an average suitcase.

He tossed the shovel to the side and dropped down to his knees and used his hands to push the dirt out of the way. After a few moments of excavation, he pulled the case free from the dirt. He wiped away the dirt and cleaned it up as best he could – he would clean it better when he got it back home. The dark brown suitcase seemed to be made from a hard shell, but it wasn’t deteriorated at all after being buried. Two thick leather straps were folded over the suitcase, and each strap was held in place with a small padlock locking the latches shut.

Walter wasn’t supposed to try and open the suitcase; the dream-man had been very specific about that.

His job was just to deliver it, that’s all.

He would follow instructions, because to disobey could be dangerous.

Walter didn’t even bother filling the hole back in. It wasn’t very deep; the suitcase had only been buried a few feet down. He grabbed his pick and shovel; he carried these in one hand and the suitcase in his other hand as he walked back through the woods to his car.

CHAPTER THREE

1.

After a three and a half hours of driving north on the county road, Ryan finally saw a sign declaring that Edrington was only a few more miles up the road. As he got near the limits of the town, the woods gave way to homes and then to plazas, businesses, restaurants, and banks. He stopped at a red light and looked around at the intersection. On one corner of the intersection was a shopping center with a supermarket, a dollar store, some kind of boutique clothing shop, a dentist’s office, and a Chinese restaurant. Across the street was another shopping center with another supermarket. Next to the supermarket were more small businesses. They all seemed to be newer construction.

The traffic light turned green and Ryan drove deeper into the center of Edrington; he passed Tenth Street, Ninth Street, Eighth Street. Quaint small-town businesses lined both sides of the main street – it seemed like the townspeople of Edrington wanted to keep the small-town feel downtown and keep the newer businesses and plazas on the outskirts of town.

As he drove Ryan glanced down at the passenger seat where the small, folded-up piece of paper from his wallet sat. He didn’t need to open the paper and look at the address; he’d memorized it. The address wasn’t hard for him to remember, it was the only clue he had to a life he couldn’t remember.

Ryan slowed down and turned left onto Fourth Street. He drove down the wide street that was shaded by massive trees. The houses on this street were large and old, set far back from the roads on meticulously manicured lawns.

Ryan slowed his car down.

There it was – the same address that was scrawled on the paper. 246 Fourth Street.

The house looked like a large Victorian, three stories high with a stately front porch that ran the length of the front of the house. The roof of the front porch was supported by four wooden pillars that had been painted a bright white. The house looked to be nearly a hundred years old but it had been updated with vinyl siding and new windows. The house was surrounded by neat landscaping. In the middle of the vast front lawn was a Room For Rent sign.

Ryan pulled up into the gravel driveway and he could hear his tires crunching over the tiny rocks. A little farther up, the driveway turned to concrete. There were two cars parked next to each other underneath an awning constructed of wood and trimmed in white, just like the pillars on the front porch. Gigantic trees loomed behind the house in the backyard. Ryan parked behind the other two cars, and he sat in his car for a moment with the motor rumbling as he stared at the house.

What was he supposed to do here at this house? Meet someone? Get something from someone? He didn’t know. He didn’t know what to even say to whoever answered the door. Would they recognize him? Would they ask him for information that he may not have because of his lost memory?

But he couldn’t sit here all day. He still felt the constant urgency coursing through him, humming like live electricity just under his skin. He felt like he needed to find these answers before it was too late. Like time was running out.

He shut the car off and got out. He stepped out onto the driveway, his sneakers grinding down into the gravel, crunching it like the tires of his car. He glanced at the Room For Rent sign in the yard. He could ask whoever answered the door about the room for rent – he needed somewhere to stay the night anyway.

The walkway up to the front porch was made up of pieces of flagstone set down in the grass like stepping stones. He climbed the steps of the front porch and walked across the wood floorboards to the front door. His sneakers clomped on the wood deck of the front porch; it was a loud sound and he almost expected someone to come rushing to the front door just from his loud approach.

But no one came.

He pressed the doorbell button, and then he knocked on the door. He waited and glanced around at the neighborhood, trying to see if anything jogged his blank memory. On his drive into town he hadn’t seen anything that triggered any memories, yet he couldn’t help feeling like he’d been in this town before; he wasn’t sure how he knew this, but he was so certain.

The front door opened and tore Ryan from his thoughts. A woman stood in the doorway. She was small and thin, late forties or early fifties maybe. Her dark hair was just beginning to show strands of gray and she had it pulled back in a severe bun. She had an even more severe look on her face. She stood there in the doorway for a long moment, saying nothing.

Ryan wasn’t sure how to react – he’d been hoping for some clue from whoever answered the door as to why he had this address written down on a piece of scrap paper in his wallet. But this woman wasn’t saying anything, and he sure didn’t see any kind of recognition in her eyes.

“Uh … I was just wondering about your room for rent,” Ryan finally stammered out.

2.

Carol eyed Ryan for a few seconds like she was sizing him up. “Just one of you?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“You smoke?”

“No, ma’am.”

“Any pets?”

“No, ma’am.”

“I need the first month’s rent up front, along with a security deposit. Is that going to be a problem?”

Ryan shook his head no and tried a smile on her. “Not a problem at all.”

She didn’t smile back. She opened the door wider and gestured for him to come inside. “The room’s upstairs.”

For a moment Ryan thought of telling her about the scrap of paper with her address on it and about his lost memory. But he decided against it. She didn’t seem to know him and he didn’t want to freak her out. She might kick him out of the house, and he didn’t want that to happen because he was sure that he needed to be here.

Carol closed the front door after Ryan stepped inside. Ryan looked around at the formal living room he was standing in. There were two antique couches and a recliner situated around a small coffee table in the middle of the room. There was no TV, no computer, no signs of recent technology. The whole room seemed like it had been decorated around the time the home was built and hadn’t changed much since.

Ryan followed Carol to a wood stairway at the other end of the living room that led upstairs. A hallway to the right led to more rooms, and an archway to the left led to a dining room with an immaculate dining room table and chairs that looked like it hadn’t been used in decades – saved for special occasions, Ryan thought.

Carol climbed the steps quickly and Ryan followed her to an upstairs hallway under a high ceiling of rough and uneven plaster. She stopped at the first room on the right-hand side of the hallway. She dug an old-fashioned skeleton key out of her front pants pocket and unlocked the door.

As she unlocked the door, Ryan saw something move out of the corner of his eye; he turned and looked down the hallway and he saw a door shutting very quietly, making no noise at all. Someone had been watching them, and now that person had closed the door.

“You coming inside?” Carol asked.

Ryan looked back at Carol who was already inside the bedroom, waiting for him to enter. She stared at him with a disapproving look. He smiled and ducked quickly into the room.

The bedroom was larger than Ryan expected. There was a bed in the middle of the room; the bed was neatly made and its headboard rested against the wall. There was a bright comforter folded up at the foot of the bed – it looked handmade. Across from the foot of the bed was a dresser against the opposite wall with an ancient TV balanced on top of it. A bookcase crammed with books was pushed up against another wall. Homey pictures of country settings hung on the walls. An area rug was laid out on the wood floor between the bed and the large window set in the far wall – the window looked out onto the branches of one of the gigantic trees in the backyard.

Ryan stared at the window – there was something about the window. One of the large tree branches was right outside the window, only inches away from the glass. A perfect place for someone to sneak out, he thought to himself, yet he wasn’t sure why that thought had occurred to him. Smaller branches sprouted off from the main branch and their leaves filled most of the window.

“There’s a closet over here,” Carol said, snapping Ryan’s attention back to her.

She walked to the closet and opened the door. “It’s not a walk-in closet, but there’s a lot of room in here.”

“I don’t have much luggage with me,” Ryan said and then wished he hadn’t volunteered that bit of information when he saw the look on her face.

Carol sighed and gestured across the room at another door. “There’s a bathroom over there; your own private bathroom. That makes this room a little more expensive than the other two rooms I rent out. The other two tenants have to share the bathroom at the end of the hall.”

Ryan nodded. He was about to walk towards the bathroom to check it out, but a scratching noise from the window stopped him in his tracks. His eyes darted to the window. A breeze blew and the branches of the tree brushed against the window and scratched at the glass, making a high-pitched scratching sound, like fingernails on a chalkboard.

Carol studied Ryan as he stared at the window. “I intend to have those branches cut back soon.”

Ryan nodded. He looked at Carol and smiled. “I’ll take the room,” he told her. He dug out the wad of money from his front pants pocket and counted out eight one hundred dollar bills and handed them to Carol. “Is this enough for the rent and deposit?”

Carol counted the money in her hand, and she seemed a little surprised. She looked up at Ryan and nodded. “This will do just fine.”

Carol nodded at the TV on the dresser. “You have cable TV up here. Basic cable. Meals are included with the rent if you want them. I cook three meals a day, but I don’t take any requests. You eat what I prepare, or there’s always the McDonald’s on the outskirts of town.”

“Fair enough, ma’am.”

Carol eyed Ryan. “I don’t make anyone sign a lease. You can leave whenever you want; I just require a week’s notice.”

Ryan nodded in agreement.

“I have an understanding with my tenants. I can evict you at any time if there’s any sort of trouble. Believe me, I know the police pretty well.” She paused for a moment and stared at Ryan. “There isn’t going to be any trouble, is there?”

“No, ma’am.”

“Good,” Carol said and turned to leave the room. But she turned back around and stared at Ryan. “And you can lose that ma’am crap. Just call me Carol.”

Ryan smiled at her. “Okay, Carol.”

Carol turned and left the room without another word.

3.

Ryan grabbed his only piece of luggage out of the trunk of his car and went up to his room.

In his room, Ryan sat down on the bed and looked around again. He was hoping to see something that would make him remember his past, or at least some kind of clue or hint. But he still couldn’t remember anything.

He got up and walked over to the bedroom door. Carol had left him a skeleton key in the lock. He locked the door – it made a loud clicking sound – and then he pulled out the key and slipped it into his pocket.

He went back to the bed; he lifted up the mattress and flipped it onto its side, revealing the box-spring below. He set his duffel bag on the box-spring and unzipped it. He laid out the stacks of money in an even layer all over the box-spring, and then he pulled the mattress back down over the layer of money. He adjusted the bedspread and eyed his work – it looked pretty good to him.

After stowing his empty duffel bag in the closet, Ryan lay down on the bed, testing it out. It was comfortable; it didn’t squeak when he moved around. Not too lumpy. He lay on his back and slipped his hands underneath his head. He stared up at the ceiling of rough plaster that had a few hairline cracks here and there.

He would need to go to the store and get some supplies: toothbrush, soap, and shampoo for the bathroom. He would also need some deodorant, cologne, razors and shaving cream. He would also need to buy a few changes of clothes. Maybe a light jacket.

His eyes began to close as he made his plans to go to the stores.

He had almost drifted off to sleep when he was jerked awake.

The scratching noise at the window. A shrill screech, like a sharp piece of metal being dragged down the door of a car.

He stared at the branches that scraped against the window’s glass from the sudden breeze that moaned outside.

His eyes closed as he stared at the branches and he drifted off into …

4.

… pitch black.

He stood alone in the pure black darkness. He was afraid. He could hear footsteps from behind him, echoing in the dark. Someone was approaching.

He turned and saw a reddish-colored light mixed in with the darkness behind him. And someone was walking towards him, emerging from that light. It was a man.

As the man approached, Ryan could see him better, like his eyes had adjusted to the darkness. The man seemed to be in his late thirties. He had a shock of red hair on his head and he was dressed in a black suit and tie.

But even from this distance Ryan could tell there was something wrong with the man’s face and hands. His face was a roadmap of scars. Some of the scars wound down his face and snaked down into the white collar of his shirt and tie. But the worst scars were the thick slashes that ran from each corner of his mouth up to his earlobes, almost like his face was split in half. And his lips and the flesh around his mouth seemed to have been pulled away

(chewed away)

from his face, revealing too much of his teeth and gums. Because his teeth and gums were revealed from the missing flesh, it seemed like he was constantly giving Ryan a rictus smile; it gave the man an insane, clown-like appearance. A tortured clown.

The red-haired man’s scarred hands hung down beside him. Ryan could see that all of the man’s fingernails were gone, and the ends of his ruined fingers were dripping blood.

Drip. Drip. Drip.

The red-haired man stopped approaching and stood in front of Ryan; he was only ten feet away. The man smiled at Ryan and the scars on each side of his face bunched up grotesquely.

Ryan backed up a step away from the man; he was beginning to panic. “Who … who are you?” Ryan asked as he struggled for breath.

“You know who I am,” the red-haired man whispered.

His ruined fingertips continued to drip blood down to the dark floor below.

“What happened to you?” Ryan whispered.

“You know that, too,” the man said.

Ryan couldn’t take it; he couldn’t stand in front of this monstrosity anymore. He turned and ran into the darkness and he was suddenly …

… drowning in dark, churning water. He tried to swim up to the surface of the water where he could see a dim light. In the strange way that dreams have, Ryan was both inside his body and outside of it; he watched himself swim up towards the light.

And he could see that when he lifted his face up to the light that his own eyes were gone – there were only two deep black holes where his eyes used to be.

5.

Ryan jumped awake in his bed. He sat bolt-upright, breathing hard, staring straight ahead at the dresser with the TV on top of it. It seemed to be late afternoon, but it wasn’t dark yet.

Thank God I didn’t wake up in the dark, he thought.

His hands went to his own eyes, almost like he was making sure they were still there as he remembered seeing himself swimming in the dark water, looking up to the surface with no eyes.

He tried to push away the pictures of the dream and he began to relax a little. His heart and breathing began to slow back down to a normal rate. Then he heard the scratching noise.

He turned and looked at the window.

The red-haired man from his dream was right outside the window among the tree branches – but he wasn’t on the branch, he seemed to be floating in the air. He stared at Ryan with his constant smile of exposed teeth and gums and the deep gashes that ran from his mouth to his ears were bunched up. He ran his ruined fingertips across the glass of the window and left bloody streaks behind.

Ryan backed away from the man in the window without even realizing what he was doing. He fell off the other side of the bed and crashed down to the wood floor. In a panic, he jumped up from the floor onto his knees and he crouched over the bed like someone praying at the side of their bed. He stared at the window.

But the red-haired man was gone.

There was nothing there, no bloody smears on the glass, only the branches scratching at the window.

6.

Downstairs, Victor and Tom sat at the small table in the kitchen. There were plates of half-eaten dinner in front of them. Carol stood at the sink, putting leftover dinner into Tupperware dishes.

They all looked up at the ceiling when they heard the thumping sound from upstairs when Ryan fell onto the floor.

Both Victor and Tom stopped chewing their food as they watched the ceiling for a long moment.

There were no other noises from up there.

Victor looked at Carol. “And you don’t think this one’s going to be trouble?” he asked her.

Carol looked at Victor. “I hope not.”

CHAPTER FOUR

1.

Ryan got up from the floor and hurried to the bathroom. He washed his face with cold water that shocked his flushed skin. His eyes kept darting up to the mirror; he almost expected to see the red-haired man’s ruined face floating right behind him in the reflection.

It was just a nightmare, he told himself. That’s all. It wasn’t real.

Ryan dried his face off with a “good towel” that Carol had hanging from decorative fake brass rings on the wall. He walked back out to his bedroom. He really wanted to take a shower and change into a different set of clothes. But he didn’t have another set of clothes – he still needed to go to the store.

He thought about the red-haired man again. There was something about the man, something … familiar.

No, Ryan didn’t want to believe that.

It was just a nightmare.

But the red-haired man could have something to do with the answers to my past, Ryan’s mind whispered. Maybe that’s why I’m here.

Ryan left the bathroom and went back to his bed. He sat down on the edge of it and stared at the window. He didn’t want to think about the red-haired man right now. He didn’t want to think about the nightmares.

He just watched the tree branches moving in the breeze outside the window. Leaves fluttering, sharp ends of small branches clawing at the glass.

After a half an hour Ryan stood up. He was calm now. He needed to go to the store. He needed a change of clothes.

And he needed to get out of this house for a while, drive somewhere, clear his mind some more.

Ryan walked to his bedroom door. He checked to make sure he had his car keys, wallet, and the wad of money in his pants pocket. Then he fished out the skeleton key and unlocked his door and went downstairs.

2.

Downstairs in the living room, Carol sat in her recliner and knitted. Victor and Tom each sat on a couch. They were both reading; Tom was reading the financial section of the newspaper, and Victor was reading a detective novel. This seemed like a nightly routine for them. They all looked up as Ryan came down the stairs.

When Ryan got to the bottom of the stairs, he saw a big orange cat. The cat stared up at Ryan like it had just seen a monster. The cat’s ears went as flat as airplane wings and he hissed at Ryan before darting off down the hall to Carol’s bedroom.

Ryan watched the cat run for its life. He looked at Carol, Victor, and Tom who were all staring at him. He shrugged and gave them a lop-sided smile. “I guess the cat doesn’t like me much.”

“He usually likes everyone,” Victor said.

“Don’t give him a hard time, Victor,” Carol said. She looked at Ryan and gestured at the two men. “These are my other two tenants: Victor and Tom.”

Ryan smiled at them and walked over to shake their hands, but he stopped in his tracks when he realized that neither one had any interest in shaking his hand. “Pleased to meet you,” he said as he pulled his hand back.

“This is Ryan,” Carol said to Victor and Tom. “My new tenant. He’s renting out Bob’s old room.”

“You’re not from around here, are you?” Victor asked as he studied Ryan unabashedly.

“No,” Ryan answered.

“What brings you to Edrington?” Victor kept probing.

Ryan hesitated.

“You got family here?” Victor asked. “Friends?”

Ryan shrugged. He needed to give them some kind of answer. Even Carol had stopped knitting and waited for his response. Ryan surely couldn’t tell them that he’d woken up in a motel room with no memory of his life and that he’d found this address in his wallet.

“Work,” Ryan finally said. “I’m uh … looking for some work.”

Tom barked out a laugh and went back to reading his newspaper. “You came to the wrong town if you’re looking for work.”

Victor’s eyes never left Ryan. “I think you’re looking for something other than work.” Victor paused, waiting for a reaction from Ryan that he didn’t get. “Or more like you’re running from something.”

Ryan’s heart skipped a beat. Did Victor know something about Ryan’s past? Was he testing him in some way? Was Victor the reason Ryan was here? Ryan couldn’t be sure, and he couldn’t risk questioning Victor about it in front of Carol. He would have to wait it out and see what happened.

Carol tossed her knitting aside and got to her feet. “That’s enough from you, Victor.”

“What?” Victor said with feigned shock. “I was only trying to make conversation.” Victor glanced over at Tom for help, but Tom still had his nose buried in the newspaper.

Carol walked over to Ryan and she surprised him by gently taking his arm and leading him towards the dining room. “I think you’ve had enough of the Inquisition for one day. Are you hungry?”

Tom put his newspaper down. “He missed dinner time. Those are the rules.”

Carol stopped walking and she turned to Tom with fierce eyes. “Well, I’m making an exception this time.”

Tom looked wounded. “Okay, Carol. You don’t have to snap at me.”

Carol looked back at Ryan and she gave him a razor-thin smile. Ryan was sure Carol meant the smile to be comforting – but it wasn’t.

“Come on into the kitchen with me,” she said.

3.

In the kitchen, Ryan sat at the small wood table that seated four. The décor was cozy-country, with old blue plates set on a high shelf all around the room. There were wood cabinets, the wood table, a wood floor – a lot of wood in the kitchen. Even though most of the kitchen still looked like it belonged to the turn of the century, the appliances had been updated to modern times. And Carol stood in front of one of those modern appliances, the microwave oven, and waited as a plate of food heated up.

“I’m sorry about Victor and Tom,” Carol said as she watched the plate of food rotate inside the microwave. “They’ll warm up to you, they’re just being overprotective. They’re always that way with new tenants.”

“It’s okay,” Ryan said from the table. “How long have you been renting rooms out?”

The microwave oven dinged and Carol opened the door and pulled out a heaping plate of food. She brought it to the table and set it in front of Ryan. “About ten years now. I started renting rooms after my husband died.” She turned away to grab some silverware for Ryan.

Ryan wished he hadn’t asked her now.

She brought a knife, fork, and paper towel back to Ryan. “We never had any children, and when he was gone, the house just seemed so … empty.”

Ryan nodded. Carol didn’t seem sad about it; she said everything matter-of-factly, like she had learned to deal with this long ago. She walked back to the refrigerator. “What do you want to drink?” she asked over her shoulder.

Ryan stared down at the knife and fork Carol had just laid down beside his plate of food. He picked up the knife and stared at it; it was a steak knife with a serrated edge. And it fascinated him for a moment. He turned it slightly in his hand and he let the overhead kitchen light wink off the blade.

“Uh … whatever you have,” Ryan finally answered Carol, but his voice sounded so far away to his own ears.

He set the knife down and looked at the plate of food. Some kind of meat smothered in brown gravy with mashed potatoes and mixed vegetables on the side. His stomach grumbled and he realized that he was very hungry. He wondered how long it had been since he had eaten. The last thing he remembered eating were the crackers and candy bars from the motel vending machines.

“I’ve got iced tea,” Carol said from the refrigerator. “Milk. Water. Orange juice.”

Ryan looked at Carol. “I haven’t had orange juice in a long time,” he said, but he wasn’t sure if this was true or not because he couldn’t remember his past. But it seemed true to him in a way that he couldn’t explain.

Carol poured a glass of orange juice and brought it to the table.

“Thanks,” Ryan said and he picked up the glass of juice. He had meant to just take a sip, but he ended up drinking almost all of it down. He was suddenly so thirsty and it tasted so good.

Carol sat down in one of the chairs at the table and she watched him carefully. Ryan noticed that she was staring at him and he smiled. He took a bite of the food and, much like the orange juice, he found it hard to stop eating the food once he started.

Ryan shoveled food into his mouth and then stopped when he realized that Carol was still staring at him. He smiled at her and swallowed a lump of food. “Sorry. I guess I was hungrier than I thought.”

“That’s quite all right,” she said and smiled, but her smile was tight and it didn’t touch her eyes. “I like to see a hungry man eat.”

Ryan ate the rest of the food.

Carol glanced at the archway that led out to the dining room like there might be someone spying on them, and then she looked back at Ryan as he wiped gravy from his mouth with the paper towel. “If you’re really looking for work, I know Buddy McRae is hiring.”

Ryan nodded. “Yeah, that would be great.”

“He’s building a new plaza on the north side of town. You ever do any construction work?”

Ryan couldn’t really answer that. He didn’t know what he’d done before last night. But he shrugged. “A little, I guess. I’m a quick learner.”

Carol jumped to her feet and hurried to a kitchen drawer. She took out a piece of paper and a pen. She jotted something down and brought the paper to Ryan. “I know Buddy very well. I’ll call him in a little while and let him know you’ll be coming by tomorrow morning.”

Ryan looked down at the directions Carol had written on the piece of paper. He looked up at her. “Thanks. You don’t have to go to all of this trouble.”

“Oh, nonsense,” Carol said and smiled at him. “I want to help.”

4.

After Ryan finished his dinner, he tried to help Carol clean up the kitchen but she wouldn’t let him. He thanked her again for the dinner and told her that he was going to a store. He went back out to the living room and braced himself, ready for another onslaught of interrogation from the two old men, but they weren’t in the living room. He left out the front door and went to his car.

He drove back down south on the county road to a Super Wal-Mart he’d seen on his way into town; he figured they should have everything he needed there.

He roamed the aisles through the supermarket section first. He grabbed some toothpaste and a toothbrush, a comb, deodorant, some cheap cologne and aftershave, some shaving cream and razors.

In the clothing section, he picked out three sets of clothes – pants and shirts. He grabbed a pair of sweat pants to sleep in and a pack of socks and boxer briefs. He also selected a light jacket in case it got chilly at night.

That should be enough to get me by, he thought.

For how long? his mind whispered.

How long was he going to be here? Until his memory came back? Until whoever was following him caught up to him? Until the red-haired monstrosity from his nightmares came to –

Ryan pushed these thoughts away as he rolled his shopping cart to the checkout lanes. It was dark outside the plate glass windows of the store – later than he thought.

He sighed as he waited in line and made himself calm down. He just needed to take things one day at a time, let his mind relax and see what memories came back to him.

5.

Hours after Ryan left the Super Wal-Mart, it was closing time at Charlie’s Pub.

Amber cleaned up the bar as Charlie tried to get the last of the drunks to stagger on home. Amber wiped down the bar, restocked the glasses, checked the liquor levels and recorded them in a log. She gathered up the two bags of garbage and took them to the dumpster out back.

As soon as she stepped outside the back door, the night wind toyed with her dark hair. She walked through the darker area of the parking lot (Charlie refused to spend the money on lights in this back parking area which was mostly for employees) to the dumpster that sat in the far corner; right now the dumpster was just a dark shape in the night.

When she got to the dumpster, she threw the garbage bags over the edge of the metal wall and heard the bags land on the bottom. But then she heard another noise that stopped her in her tracks.

A growling noise.

It sounded like a dog was growling – a big dog. She froze as she listened to the low and throaty growling. It sounded very close. She could imagine a big dog (or a wolf) jumping out at her and attacking her as she tried to run back to the pub.

She glanced at the back door of the pub that looked so far away now. She hadn’t moved a muscle yet as she tried to tell where the dog was in the darkness. She was trying her best not to make a sound.

But the dog knows I’m out here, she thought. It can smell me, that’s why it’s growling.

Amber moved one step away from the dumpster. Then another step. Then a third step. Her eyes were on the dumpster the whole time, but she still couldn’t see the dog anywhere in the darkness.

But she could hear the low growling.

Amber couldn’t fight the panic anymore; she turned and ran back to the pub. She knew she shouldn’t run – she’d always heard that running from a dog just made them want to chase you even more because it turned you into prey – but she couldn’t fight the natural instinct to flee back to safety. She didn’t even bother to scream or to cry out for help as she ran, she didn’t want to waste any energy on that; she wanted to pour every ounce of her energy into getting back inside the pub.

She finally reached the back door and tore it open. She bolted back inside. She was just about to slam the door shut, but she stopped herself. She made herself look out at the dark parking lot – the light from inside only reached so far from the back door and she couldn’t see much beyond it. She studied the darkness, and she could nearly make out the dark blob of the dumpster in the distance. But she still couldn’t see the dog.

“What’s wrong?”

Amber nearly jumped out of her skin and slammed the door shut as she turned around.

Charlie stared at her with a smirk on his face, but there was a trace of concern in his eyes. “What is it?” he said as his smile faltered a little.

“It’s … I think I heard a dog out there by the dumpster,” she finally said.

“Let me go see,” he said.

She was about to warn Charlie not to go out there, but he brushed by her and stepped outside. He looked around as he stood in the splash of light from the open back door. He didn’t see anything. He marched towards the dumpster. She watched him from the doorway as he looked around the dumpster.

Charlie looked for a few moments, but he still couldn’t see a dog. He even called out to the dog as he looked. “Here, boy. Here, Fido. Spot? Killer? Cujo?”

Amber didn’t think that was funny.

“I don’t see anything,” Charlie said as he walked back towards her. He was still a big man even though he was in his early fifties. He was a hard and practical man; a stray dog probably didn’t scare him, Amber thought.

“Well, he was out there a few minutes ago,” she told him. “I heard him growling.”

“Take a stick with you when you go out there next time,” he said and gave her a sarcastic smile. He shut and locked the back door and then he looked at her. “You get a hold of Gary yet?”

“No,” Amber answered. “He won’t answer his phone. He’s probably drunk anyway.”

Charlie nodded like he knew that already. Gary could drink all he wanted, but he’d never be allowed back in Charlie’s bar again – he had told Amber that plenty of times. “Give me thirty minutes and I’ll give you a ride home.”

6.

Oakland, California

A black Lincoln Continental drove down a crummy neighborhood street, and then it parked in front of Paco’s house. The houses on this street were squeezed in close to each other, and many front lawns had chain-link fences around them. A few of these fenced-in front yards had restless dogs prowling around inside. A group of young men hung out across the street, some of them sitting on the trunk of a car.

Jake shut the car off and pulled the keys out of the ignition. Lita sat next to him in the passenger seat. They got out without a word or even a glance at each other. They stood by the car in the night. They both wore dark clothing and sunglasses. They both had semi-automatic pistols tucked away inside their coats. They walked towards Paco’s house.

Paco, a thin man in his late twenties, waited on his front steps for them. He jumped to his feet when he saw them marching up his walkway. He wiped at his sweaty upper lip with the back of his hand and nodded at them in a greeting.

“Was it Ryan?” Jake asked Paco.

“Yeah,” Paco answered. “That’s why I called you.”

Jake and Lita stood right in front of Paco, very close to him. They stared at him through their dark sunglasses.

“You saw Ryan take your car?” Jake asked.

“No,” Paco answered quickly. “Lester saw it … he saw him do it. He told me about it. And I called you guys right away. I didn’t report it or nothing.”

“That’s good,” Jake purred. “You did real good.”

Paco smiled, and wiped at his face again. “I can get a hold of Lester if you want to talk to him.”

“We’ll talk to Lester soon,” Jake said.

Paco nodded nervously.

Jake reached inside his jacket pocket and pulled out a wad of cash. “How much do you think your Impala is worth?”

Paco hesitated. “I don’t know.” He shrugged. “Two thousand maybe?”

Jake stood very still.

For a moment, Paco thought he’d overstepped his bounds.

But then Jake finally nodded. “Two thousand, it is.” He counted out the hundred dollar bills quickly without any emotion on his face and handed them to Paco who took the money with his damp hand.

“How did Ryan steal your car?” Jake asked.

“Lester watched him do it,” Paco said quickly. “The doors were unlocked. He watched Ryan get in and look for the spare keys. They were under the floor mat where I always keep them.”

“You leave your spare keys in the car?” Lita asked him. “And your doors unlocked?”

Paco shrugged and gave her a nervous smile.

Lita stared at him. “I guess that’s how cars get stolen.”

“He knew where I kept the keys,” Paco said. “I thought he was a friend. I didn’t think he’d ever steal my car.”

Jake and Lita stared at the man for a long moment.

“I didn’t have anything to do with this,” Paco stammered out. “Whatever Ryan’s gotten himself involved with, I didn’t have anything to do with it.”

Jake and Lita glanced at each other, and then they looked back at Paco.

“Is there anything else that you can think of that could be helpful?” Jake asked. “No matter how insignificant it may seem.”

Paco thought it over for a minute. “Uh … Lester said that Ryan had a duffel bag with him … and he said that Ryan seemed wet. But it wasn’t raining. Hasn’t rained in days. It just seemed odd to Lester, that’s why he told me about it.”

“What about any blood?” Lita asked.

The question seemed to take Paco by surprise. “Blood? What do you mean?”

“Was there any blood in the area where Ryan stole your car?” Jake asked in a calm voice. “Like on the pavement. Drops of blood maybe.”

“No,” Paco answered, “Lester didn’t say anything about blood. I’m sure he would’ve said something about blood if he’d seen it. I didn’t see any on the ground that I noticed.”

“Did Lester know which way Ryan drove?” Lita asked.

“North,” Paco answered. “He followed Ryan as far as he could, but then lost him on the highway.” Paco hesitated for a moment. “That’s all I know. I swear.”

Jake and Lita nodded.

“Okay,” Jake finally said.

Paco seemed relieved that it was over. He hurried back inside his home.

Jake and Lita left Paco’s yard and walked back up the cracked sidewalk to the black Lincoln. Jake sighed as they walked. “It doesn’t make any sense,” he said. “Ryan should’ve been dead. I shot him three times. He should’ve been injured and bleeding at least.”

“Maybe you didn’t shoot well enough,” Lita replied.

Jake ignored her comment. He thought back to yesterday. Ryan was running to his pickup truck with the duffel bag of money. Jake shot him as he got inside his truck; he knew he’d hit him all three times. Ryan should be dead on the side of the road somewhere, slumped over in his truck. But instead, he ditched his truck and stole Paco’s Impala.

They got back inside the black Lincoln and shut the doors.

A man sat among the shadows in the back seat. He was dressed in a dark suit and he wore thin leather gloves on his hands; the black gloves were longer than usual, tucked up under the cuffs of his white shirt. “Well?” the man asked.

“Ryan took the car, Mr. Murdock,” Jake said as he glanced into the rearview mirror. “But we’ll find him.”

Jake started the car and they drove away.

CHAPTER FIVE

1.

The town of Edrington was quiet and peaceful, the eastern sky was beginning to lighten, but the sun hadn’t peeked up over the line of mountains in the distance yet.

Ryan tossed and turned in his bed. The bed sheet was twisted around his sweaty body. He teetered on the edge of sleep as he heard footsteps in his bedroom. Someone was walking across the wood floor, walking towards him, getting closer and closer to his bed.

He opened his eyes and looked around, but there wasn’t anyone in the room with him. Just the remnants of his dream, he thought.

But then he heard a rustling noise at the foot of the bed, like something grabbing at the fabric of the bedspread – he could even feel the bed shaking a little underneath his body.

He sat up quickly and stared down at the end of his bed. He saw hands reaching up from the edge of the bed and grabbing onto the bedspread – they were ruined hands with smashed fingertips and deep scars twisting through the pale flesh. The hands grabbed at the covers, like a person trying to pull himself up from the floor. Ryan could see the top of the man’s head rising up from the foot of the bed. He could see the shock of red hair.

“You’ll never be able to hide,” the red-haired man whispered. “We’ll always find you.”

Ryan started to scream but then he …

… jumped awake, choking back a nightmare scream; his arms were up and ready to defend himself.

He sat up and stared down at the foot of the bed – but there was no one there. His eyes darted around the room as his breaths came out in quick and ragged gasps. There was no one in the room with him. He looked at the bedroom window and he didn’t see anything out the window except the silhouette of the tree branches against a dark blue sky that was lightening more and more by the minute.

Ryan breathed out a long breath, shuddering, his body beginning to tremble.

It was just a dream, he told himself.

He was about to get out of bed. He needed to get up and move around, splash his face with cold water – he knew he wasn’t going back to sleep any time soon. But as he was about to swing his legs over the side of the bed, he felt something move in his lap, something small but heavy. And then he saw it.

It was a folded-up straight razor – the old-fashioned kind. The handle was made of wood and it looked old and weathered. And there was something carved into the wood of the handle. A word. A name.

Ryan tried to grab the straight razor with two fingers, like he was picking up something too disgusting to touch, but the razor slipped from his slick fingers and fell down into a crease in the sheets between his legs. He fished at it with his fingers, and then found it among the damp sheets. His fingers folded around the straight razor and he felt a slight electrical charge racing over his flesh, and he felt an instant wave of nausea flood through him.

He flung the straight razor across the room. It landed with a thump on the floor and then slid across the floorboards and rested against the far wall.

Right underneath the window.

Where it had come from in the first place, his mind whispered.

Ryan jumped to his feet and he hurried around to the foot of the bed – no one there. He rushed to the bathroom. He didn’t know why, but he was suddenly afraid he was going to puke.

But he didn’t. He leaned over the toilet for a few moments, dry-heaving until the nausea passed. Then he washed his face with cool water and stared into the mirror. He wasn’t wearing a shirt and he could see the three knotted scars on his torso.

The bullet hole scars.

He shook his head as he stared at himself in the mirror. He couldn’t dismiss the straight razor. Someone had put it there in the bed with him; someone wanted him to see it. Maybe it had been Victor or Tom. Or Carol.

It must be a clue to his past. Whether he wanted to or not, he had to face it. He had to go get the straight razor and look at it. He needed to see what was carved into the handle.

Ryan went back out to the bedroom and walked over to the window. Just being near the window frightened him. He felt an unreasonable fear that the red-haired man was going to rise up outside from the bottom of the window, floating in the air, smiling at him, leaving bloody smears on the glass with his ruined fingertips as he pawed at the glass.

But there was no one outside the window.

And the straight razor wasn’t on the floor.

He looked and looked, but it wasn’t there anymore.

It had never been there, he told himself. It was just a dream – only a nightmare.

2.

Ryan got dressed in a pair of jeans and a T-shirt. He grabbed his light jacket and left his bedroom. He locked his door with the skeleton key and stuffed it into his pocket. He glanced down the hall at the other doors, but he didn’t see any movement, no doors shutting quickly and silently. He turned and headed for the stairs.

Ryan snuck through the dark house, through the living room, into the dining room, and then he stopped. The light was on in the kitchen. He crept towards the doorway to the kitchen and he saw Carol.

He entered the kitchen and Carol turned and smiled at him. “Good morning, Ryan. Sit down at the table. I made some breakfast for you.”

“You didn’t have to do that,” Ryan said as he walked over to the table and sat down.

“I know I didn’t,” Carol snapped, but she still smiled at him as she brought over a plate heaping with scrambled eggs, hash brown potatoes, and sausage patties. She set the plate down in front of him.

Ryan dug into the plate of food. He had never tasted anything so good; he couldn’t stop eating, and after five or six bites, he looked up at Carol who was staring at him with a perplexed expression. “Sorry,” he muttered around a mouthful of food. “It’s just so good.”

“And it’s your favorite, isn’t it?” Carol asked him as she gave him that strange smile of hers; it never seemed like a happy smile, more like a slightly amused smile. And there was always something in her eyes – like she was studying him.

Ryan nodded. “Yeah,” he answered her even though he didn’t know if this was his favorite food. But she seemed to know that it was his favorite.

She walked back to the sink.

Ryan watched her as he took another bite of food.

She stood at the counter and made two ham and cheese sandwiches.

“I’m surprised you’re already up,” Ryan said as he took another bite of food. “I was planning on sneaking out early before I woke any of you up.”

“I’m always up early,” she said without turning around to look at him. “I don’t sleep well. Sometimes I have nightmares.”

Ryan felt an instant lump in his throat and he struggled to swallow the next bite. The food now felt like a stone in his stomach. He wanted to tell her that he suffered from nightmares too, but he wasn’t sure he should. He wasn’t sure if he could trust her yet. He wasn’t sure of anything. He needed to be careful here, he thought, but he didn’t know why.

Carol put the sandwiches in small clear bags and stuffed them down into a brown paper sack. She folded the sack over three times in neat, tight folds and brought the bag to the table.

“I packed you a small lunch.”

“You didn’t have –

She interrupted him. “I talked to Buddy last night; he knows you’re coming to the jobsite today.”

“Thanks, Carol. This means a lot to me. I just hope this Buddy guy doesn’t mind too much when he finds out I don’t have much experience.”

Carol gave him her razor-thin smile as she stared at him. “Oh, I think once you get there, you’ll know what to do.”

3.

Ryan showed up at the jobsite. He hadn’t really planned on working, but he had to follow through with the story he’d told Carol and her wonder-twin tenants. But he didn’t really mind the idea of working. Something about the idea of working with his hands appealed to him. It would be something to keep him busy and take his mind off of things for a few hours – it might be a welcome relief.

He got out of his car and his thoughts returned to his forgotten past. He knew he needed to be here in Edrington; Carol’s address scrawled on the scrap of paper in his wallet was proof of that. But since he’d been here in town, he hadn’t gotten any closer to his lost memories and his past.

Except for the red-haired man in my dreams, his mind whispered. And the straight razor that wasn’t on the floor anymore. And the strange things Carol said this morning.

Ryan walked from the dirt parking area towards a block building in the distance that would be a shopping plaza in a few months. There were groups of men huddled together, talking with each other, some of them already had their tool belts on, some had electrical cords slung over their shoulders, and some had their hard hats on. Ryan nodded at the men, but he kept on walking, searching for someone who looked like the boss.

And there he was. He was tall and Ryan could tell he was muscular even though he wore a long-sleeved shirt and jeans. He barked orders out to several groups of men. Some of the men were already working, pushing wheelbarrows or carrying materials from one place to another.

Ryan walked right up to the man and greeted him with a smile and an offered handshake. “Excuse me, sir. Are you Buddy McRae?”

The man gave Ryan a hard look. “I’m John. What do you need Buddy for?”

“I’m looking for some work.”

John seemed to measure Ryan with his eyes in an instant, a quick up and down look, perhaps already dismissing him as an applicant. He shook his head no and gave Ryan a fake smile. “Sorry, man. Not much work available right now.”

John was about to walk away, he was about to call out some orders to a man shoveling dirt, but Ryan stopped him. “Carol sent me. She said Buddy McRae would have some work for me.”

John turned and glared at Ryan. “Look, man, I just told you -”

“You’re Ryan?”

Both Ryan and John turned towards the sound of the booming voice. Ryan saw a tall, overweight man in his early fifties walking towards him with a beaming smile. He thrust his big hand out at Ryan.

Ryan hesitated for a split second, and then he smiled back at the man and shook his hand. “Yes,” he answered.

“I’m Buddy McRae. Carol called me about you.”

“Yes,” Ryan answered.

“So, you’re looking for some work?”

“Yes, sir.”

“You have any construction experience?”

Construction experience, Ryan thought. I don’t have any experience at anything that I can remember. But he couldn’t tell him that. “No, sir; not much.”

But you’ll know what to do once you get there, Carol’s words echoed in his mind.

Buddy’s smile slipped.

“But I’m a fast learner and I’ll do whatever job you need me to,” Ryan added quickly. “I’ll buy my own tools if you need me to.”

Buddy erupted in a fit of laughter. He nudged John who didn’t look very happy with this conversation. “You ever hear a guy offering to buy tools?”

John didn’t answer.

Buddy’s laughter faded away. “Well, without any experience, all I can offer you is a laborer position. It doesn’t pay that much to start out.”

Ryan smiled at Buddy. “That’s fine with me. When can I start?”

“Eager to work,” Buddy said and nodded. “I like that. You can start today if you want to. You got I.D. with you and reliable transportation?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Alright. Just follow John to that trailer over there. You can fill out some paperwork and we’ll get you started. We’ll see how you do for a week, and then see if we want to keep you on full time. That sound fair?”

“Yes, sir. Sounds fair to me.”

Ryan followed John to the trailer. Inside the trailer, John thrust some papers at him and pointed to a small table and chair. Ryan sat down and filled out a standard application and some tax paperwork. He jotted down a fake social security number and fake prior work experience. A few fake references. He was sure he’d be caught after a week, but he didn’t care, this was going to be a temporary gig for him anyway.

An hour later, John had Ryan working. Ryan unloaded a truck full of wood. He stacked the wood in neat piles on the concrete floor just inside one of the bays that was going to be office space in the future.

John watched Ryan from a distance. Buddy walked up behind him. “That fella’s a hard worker,” Buddy said. “He seems to really like this kind of work.”

John kept his eyes on Ryan as he spoke. “Buddy, you know I’ve always been honest with you.”

Buddy nodded. “Sure, John, I know that.”

“You know about my past,” John continued. “You know I’ve done some time in prison.”

Buddy nodded even though John’s eyes were still on Ryan. Buddy didn’t feel the need to answer – he knew about John’s stint in prison. He spit out a wad of chewing tobacco down into the dirt, waiting for John to continue.

John was motionless as he stared at Ryan like a lion staring at prey. “Well, I know that guy’s done some time, too. Hard time, I’d guess. He’s fresh out and happy to be free, too happy to be doing this kind of work, but happy to be doing anything besides sitting in a cell.”

Buddy watched Ryan unload the wood for a moment, he watched him stack the piles up neatly, adjusting each pile so the stacks were perfect. Buddy turned to John and laid his big hand down on John’s shoulder. “I gave you a chance once, John.”

John turned and locked eyes with Buddy.

“Maybe this fella deserves a chance, too,” Buddy continued.

John stared at Buddy who turned and walked away without another word. John got the message loud and clear – get off this kid’s back. But John wasn’t going to do that. There was something wrong with this new guy, John didn’t know what it was, but he could feel it, and he trusted his instincts.

He looked back at Ryan.

Ryan had stopped working and he stood in front of the piles of wood he’d just stacked up. He was staring at John. Just staring at him.

John would never admit it, not even to himself later on, but a chill ran up his spine for just a second.

“It aint break time, Ryan!” he shouted. “Get back to work!”

4.

Carol nearly jumped out of her skin when she heard the three loud knocks at her front door. She stood at the counter in her kitchen getting a chicken ready in the roasting pan. She turned and stared at the archway that led into the dining room. Her hands were covered in chicken fat, oil, and seasonings; and she held them in front of her like a surgeon prepping for surgery.

“Tom?” she called out to the living room. “You out there?”

No answer from the living room.

“Victor? Can you see who’s at the door?”

Still no answer from the living room.

They must be upstairs, she thought. Maybe they didn’t hear the knocks at the door. But the knocking had been so loud, they should’ve heard it.

She walked over to the sink and washed her hands with some dish soap, then dried them off with a towel. She marched through the dining room and into the living room.

Carol hesitated for a moment as she stared at the front door; it was made of solid wood with three small windows at the top and tall, thin frosted glass panels on each side. If a man was tall, she could usually see the top of his head or hat in the little windows, but she didn’t see anyone in the windows now nor did she see the blurry shape of a person through the frosted glass.

But she could see something through the frosted glass – there was some kind of object on the porch.

She walked towards the door as a wave of dread washed over her. What was she afraid of?

You know what you’re afraid of, her mind whispered.

Drip. Drip. Drip.

Carol pushed these thoughts from her mind and walked purposefully towards the door. It was probably just some salesman out there. Or a Jehovah’s Witness. Or maybe it was Ryan, he hadn’t gotten the job with Buddy and he came back, but forgot his key to the front door.

Carol opened the front door. There was no one in the doorway.

“Hello?” she said as she stepped out onto her front porch. She looked up and down the long and wide porch, but there was no one there. No one on her front lawn or in the driveway. No car in the driveway. She looked up and down the street and she didn’t see anyone walking away down the sidewalk.

She looked back at the doorway and saw the object she’d seen through the frosted glass – it was a suitcase. A brown suitcase.

She inspected the suitcase more closely. It seemed to be made of some kind of hard material, like a shell. It was bigger than a briefcase, but smaller than a full-size suitcase. There were two decorative leather straps that folded over the suitcase keeping it shut, and on each strap was a gold padlock looped through the gold latches.

A locked suitcase on her porch.

She stared down at the suitcase and saw the other thing that struck her as odd about this case (besides the slight musty odor it exuded), it was the small white tag that had been attached to the wooden handle with a piece of wire. She reached down and turned the tag over so she could read it. Her hand was trembling and she was suddenly afraid again, but she needed to see what was written there.

Scrawled on the white tag were two words: For Ryan.

CHAPTER SIX

1.

It was quitting time at the job site. Workers rolled up electrical cords and put tools away into tool boxes. Ryan stowed a wheelbarrow inside one of the half-completed offices. He brushed the dust off of his hands and walked through the dirt and debris towards the parking area where his (stolen) car waited for him.

He smiled as he walked. It had been a pleasant day of working. For a few blissful hours he had forgotten about his missing past, his lost memory, the urgent need to find out why he was supposed to be in this town. For a few hours he had just worked and concentrated on his tasks. His body felt good, his muscles were a little sore, but he felt good.

As Ryan walked towards his car, Buddy approached him.

“Hey, Ryan. A few of us are going over to Charlie’s Pub and grab a few beers. You wanna come along?”

Ryan smiled at Buddy as he stood in front of him. He nodded. “Yeah, sure.”

“I’m in that white pickup truck over there. Just follow me.”

2.

Ryan followed Buddy’s truck into the parking lot of Charlie’s Pub. The sun hung low in the west and the sky was already getting dark in the east. There was a slight chill in the wind that twisted its way through the parking lot.

He parked his car and got out. The parking lot was about half-full, not too crowded. He met up with Buddy and followed him to the small building. It was a brick building with a row of dark windows along the front with neon signs advertising different brands of beer.

Ryan and Buddy entered the pub. To Ryan’s right was a small hall that led to some restrooms. A few feet down was a bar that took up the whole side of that room. The other side of the pub had a few tables and chairs, three booths tucked away against the far corner in shadows, and one pool table. The paneled walls were covered with signs and framed photos and other memorabilia. There didn’t really seem to be a theme to the pub. A bull skull hung on one wall right next to an Oregon State football jersey. Fishing gear hung on another wall right next to a poster for a Clint Eastwood movie. An old-fashioned juke box blared out a country song that Ryan had never heard before (or if he had, he didn’t remember).

There were two men playing pool, and Buddy went right over to them and greeted them. One of the men was John – Ryan didn’t know the other man, but he’d seen him at the jobsite. Buddy introduced the man as Scooter. Scooter shook Ryan’s hand.

After a few laughs and slaps on the back with Scooter, Buddy looked at Ryan and gestured at the bar. “You ready for a beer, Ryan?”

“Sure.”

John chalked up his pool stick as he watched Ryan and Buddy sit down at the bar. Scooter leaned against the pool table and watched John with a smirk. “You gonna shoot some time tonight, or what, man?”

John turned back around and eyed the table; he aimed his stick at the cue ball.

“Buddy sure seems to like that kid,” Scooter said with the smirk on his face as he tried to get in John’s mind and disrupt his game of pool. “I mean it’s only his first day, and he’s just a laborer, and they’re already hanging out at the bar.”

“There’s something weird about that guy,” John said as he slid the stick back in his hand and struck the cue ball. The cue ball smacked into the number three ball and smashed it into the corner pocket, and then the cue ball rolled all the way back down the table and sunk in another corner pocket. A scratch. “I’m going to find out what his story is.”

Buddy and Ryan sat side by side at the bar.

“So how was your first day?” Buddy asked Ryan.

Ryan smiled. “I loved it. I know I don’t have a lot of experience, but I want to help out.”

“You did a fine job, today.”

Ryan was about to respond but his words were caught in his throat as he saw Amber push through the swinging doors from the kitchen with a rack of glasses in her hands. She took the rack of glasses to the middle of the bar and squatted down to put them away on a shelf underneath the bar.

Ryan couldn’t take his eyes off of Amber. She was beautiful, but there was something more about her. Something almost familiar. Did he know her?

“Hey, Amber,” Buddy called down to Amber as she put the last of the glasses away. “Two beers please. Whatever you got on draft.”

Amber stood up and smiled. “Hey, Buddy.”

Buddy looked at Ryan. “Draft beer okay with you?”

Ryan’s eyes were on Amber the whole time. “Huh?” he finally asked. He looked at Buddy and smiled at him. “Uh…yeah. That will be fine.”

Amber poured two draft beers. She set the mugs down in front of Buddy and Ryan.

“This is Ryan,” Buddy said as he nodded at Ryan.

Amber held out a dainty hand to Ryan. “I’m Amber.”

“Pleased to meet you,” Ryan said in soft voice as he shook her hand. He felt the slightest sensation of electricity running through his skin from her touch. He couldn’t stop smiling at her.

“I better get back to work before Charlie yells at me,” Amber told Buddy.

“If he yells at you, then you come and let me know,” Buddy said to Amber.

She laughed. “Yeah, okay.” She turned and went back to the kitchen with the empty rack for the glasses in her hands.

“I aint afraid of him,” Buddy called after Amber as she left. “You can tell him that, too,” he laughed.

Ryan drank half of his beer down. He couldn’t help it, it tasted so good. He didn’t know how long it had been since he’d drank a beer, but it seemed like a long time.

Buddy watched him. “You sure do seem to enjoy life,” he said.

Ryan turned and smiled at him. “What do you mean?”

“I don’t know; it’s like you’re tasting things for the first time in a long time, seeing things for the first time in a long time.”

Ryan shrugged. “You have to enjoy things while you’re here – you never know how long you have.”

“Amen.” Buddy raised his beer mug in a mock toast, and then he downed the beer.

Ryan drank the rest of his beer down.

“You’re not from around here, are you?” Buddy asked.

“No, sir.”

“You’re from California.”

Amber came back out of the kitchen with some bottles of liquor. Ryan watched her as she stocked the upper shelves. “Uh, yeah,” he answered in a distracted voice.

“I read your work history,” Buddy said.

Ryan turned and stared at Buddy.

Buddy smiled and shook his head a little. “I’ve been doing this for a long time – I can tell when something’s faked.”

Ryan didn’t know what to say. He was caught.

“Look, Ryan,” Buddy said and his voice was a little lower, a little softer. “If you’re running from something, you don’t need to tell me about it. We’ve all got our secrets.”

Ryan stared at Buddy, and he only nodded at him.

Buddy glanced around the bar, at John and Scooter playing pool, and then he turned back around and stared straight ahead at the shelves of liquor with the mirrored wall right behind it. “Hell, this whole town has its secrets.”

This got Ryan’s attention. “What do you mean?” Ryan asked in a low voice.

Buddy seemed like he was about to expound on his statement, but then he shook his head and smiled. “Forget it.”

Ryan didn’t press Buddy. Instead, he asked: “Does this mean you don’t want me to show up tomorrow?”

Buddy didn’t answer right away

“I understand if you don’t want me to,” Ryan added quickly.

Buddy smiled and shook his head no. “Come on in tomorrow and we’ll take it from there.” He raised his beer mug up to Amber. “Could we get two more, sweetheart?”

3.

After the second mug of beer, Ryan told Buddy good-night and thanked him again for not firing him. He tried to pay for the beers, but Buddy insisted on buying.

On his way out he went to the restroom. He washed his hands and face at the stained sink and looked at himself in the mirror for a moment, staring at his blue eyes, his dark hair, his chiseled face. It was like he recognized himself, but at the same time, he didn’t.

Ryan stepped outside to the parking lot. He looked up at the night sky, at the stars twinkling against the blackness.

He started to walk towards his car, but he stopped cold when he heard a noise – it was a dog growling. And it sounded like a big one.

Then he heard the slight squeal of a scream.

Ryan raced across the parking lot, rounded the brick building and hurried over to the dumpster. He saw Amber frozen with fear, a small garbage bag in her hand. Only a few feet away from her was a large black dog – so black it almost blended in with the darkness.

“Don’t move,” Ryan said to Amber in a low voice.

“He’s going to … attack … bite …”

“Just stand very still,” Ryan said as he walked towards her.

The dog growled at Amber, but then it turned its eyes on Ryan, watching Ryan’s every move.

Ryan stood beside Amber and the dog’s growls not only stopped, they turned into whimpers. The dog turned and bolted back into the darkness with its tail between its legs.

Amber turned and stared at Ryan in awe.

“You okay?” Ryan asked her.

“How’d you do that?”

“What?”

“Make that dog leave. That thing was about to attack, and then when it saw you, it just … just ran away.”

Ryan shrugged and smiled at her. “I don’t know. I didn’t really do anything. Most dogs don’t want to fight. You stand up to them and they run off.”

Amber smiled back at Ryan, and then she tossed the bag of garbage into the dumpster. “I’ve been telling Charlie that there’s a big dog out here, but either he doesn’t believe me or he doesn’t care. Or both.”

She turned to walk back to the pub. “Anyway, thanks. You saved my life.”

Ryan barked out a laugh. “I don’t know about that.”

Amber walked towards the building.

Ryan watched her walk way. “Hey, can I ask you something?” he called after her.

She turned around, waiting for him to go on.

“Are you with anyone? I mean, do you have a husband? A boyfriend?”

Amber shook her head no. “Nope.”

“I was wondering if you’d like to go somewhere sometime. Maybe do something. I mean, since I saved your life and all.”

Amber stared at Ryan for a moment. “You got a car?” she asked.

“Yeah, it’s right over there.” Ryan turned and pointed at the parking lot like he needed to show her proof.

Amber smiled at Ryan as she took her ticket book out of her apron. She scribbled on the paper, ripped it off the book, and handed it to Ryan. “Here’s my phone number. Call me when you want to do something. I’m off tomorrow night.”

“Tomorrow night? That would be … that’ll be great.”

4.

Ryan turned his headlights off as he entered Carol’s driveway. He parked behind the other two cars that never seemed to go anywhere and he shut off the engine. He got out and tried to shut the door as quietly as he could. It was very quiet; the whole neighborhood seemed bedded down for the night. Ryan looked at Carol’s house and saw that the windows were dark. He hurried across the flagstones and crept up the porch, trying to walk as softly as he could across the floorboards. He opened the outer door and unlocked the front door, then slipped inside.

He closed the door, locked it, turned around and jumped. Carol sat on one of the couches with a little lamp on beside her. She had her knitting in her lap.

“Sorry,” Ryan said. “I didn’t know if anyone would be up.”

“Don’t mind me,” Carol said.

“Buddy wanted me to come along with them to a place called Charlie’s Pub.”

“I figured that would happen sooner or later,” Carol said as she knitted a few more stitches.

“I only had two beers,” Ryan said; he felt a sudden urge to explain and defend himself. “I was okay to drive.”

Carol glanced at him, and then concentrated on her knitting again.

“I am tired, though,” Ryan continued. “First day on the job. I’m gonna go on up and get some sleep.”

“Goodnight, Ryan.”

“Goodnight, Carol. And thanks for talking to Buddy about me.”

“Not a problem.”

Ryan walked past Carol and headed for the stairs.

“Something came for you today,” Carol said.

Her words stopped Ryan in his tracks. He turned and stared at her.

Carol set her knitting aside and pushed the brown suitcase away from the couch towards Ryan, sliding it across the wood floor.

Ryan didn’t move – he stared down at the suitcase. It seemed vaguely familiar to him, but he didn’t think it was his for some reason. He just shook his head no. “I don’t think that’s mine.”

Carol nodded down at the white tag wired to the handle. “That card says it’s for you.”

“Who sent it?” Ryan asked and his voice threatened to crack.

“I don’t know. There was a knock at the door. I opened the door and no one was there. Only this suitcase.” Carol studied Ryan, waiting for him to come and retrieve his suitcase.

Ryan made his legs move, made them walk forward, made himself bend down and pick up the suitcase. It was a little heavier than he expected and he thought he felt something move inside. As soon as he touched the smooth, wooden handle he felt a sense of dread slither its way up his arm and into his heart. But he smiled at Carol and nodded. “Thanks.”

Carol stared at Ryan – her mouth was just a slit. Like a razor blade.

Like a straight razor, Ryan’s mind whispered.

“I’ll have breakfast ready in the morning before you leave for work,” she told him.

Ryan nodded again. “Thanks.” Then he headed up to his room.

5.

Ryan unlocked his door and slipped inside his room. He walked over to his bed and laid the suitcase flat down on the blanket, glad to be rid of it, glad his flesh wasn’t touching it anymore. He went back to the door and locked it with the skeleton key. He set the key on the dresser next to the TV, and then he turned to the suitcase.

He would have to deal with the suitcase some time.

He walked towards it, studying it as he moved closer. It seemed old, but it looked like it might be high-quality. The suitcase might even be expensive, but he didn’t know anything about suitcases. He noted the two thick leather straps, and the two newer-looking padlocks looped through the latches that kept the suitcase locked. And he noted the musty aroma of the case.

Like the duffel bag full of money.

Is this my suitcase? he wondered.

He fished his car keys out of his pants pocket and looked at them. There were two other keys on the key ring besides the ignition key; but he didn’t know what they went to. Maybe one of them was for the padlocks on this suitcase.

He tried the keys in the locks, but neither one fit; they were both way too big for the key hole in the padlock. He needed a smaller key.

Who sent this case?

Someone knew he was in town. Someone knew he was at Carol’s house. Did that someone know that he’d lost his memory? Did that someone know that he was looking for clues to his past?

Were the clues to his past inside this suitcase?

He could look inside. He could maybe pry it open, or even cut it open if he needed to. He could find a screwdriver or pry bar in Carol’s house and jam it into the locks. Or he could buy a saw from the store. A hand saw or maybe even a power saw. He could do all of that, but he didn’t think he would.

For some reason he was in no hurry to open the suitcase and see what was inside. For some reason that he couldn’t explain, he was afraid of what he might find inside there. It was like he already knew what was inside, but he was afraid to let himself remember.

He grabbed the suitcase by its worn-down wooden handle and he shoved it under the bed.

Ryan walked away from the bed and took his shirt off. He kicked his shoes and socks off and headed for the bathroom. A nice long shower after a hard day’s work sounded great. He pushed his thoughts away from the suitcase and wondered about Amber. That made him feel better. He wanted to get to know her. He wanted to see her again.

After his shower, Ryan turned on the TV and lay down in bed. He wore the pair of sweat pants that he’d bought at the Super Wal-Mart and nothing else.

He watched TV for a few minutes, flipping through the channels with the remote control.

His eyes began to close and he drifted off into …

6.

… pitch black.

Ryan stumbled through the endless darkness, his hands out, trying to feel his way along. He walked carefully, afraid that he was going to stumble over something. Or into something. His breathing was heavy, and it sounded so loud in his ears. He could hear his own rapid heartbeat thundering in his chest.

Then he stopped, frozen in the darkness for a moment.

He heard something.

The sound of a knife blade being dragged lightly across stone.

Or a straight razor.

“They don’t know how you managed to do it,” a voice said – a voice that belonged to the red-haired man. “But they want you back.”

Ryan felt like bolting, he felt like running away blindly into the darkness, running anywhere as long as it was away from that voice. He turned away from where he thought the voice was coming from, trying to move away from the red-haired man.

But then he stopped as a red light appeared in front of him, the light filtering through the darkness like lights in the fog. And out of the red mist the red-haired man materialized. He stood right in front of Ryan with his wide, creepy smile of ruined flesh. His mutilated hands hung down at his sides, they were dripping blood and puss, and in one hand the man held a straight razor, its blade open.

Ryan backed up a step, then another, trying to back into the darkness, trying to get away from this monster. “No! Stay away from me!”

The red-haired man took a step forward. “You can’t get away from me.”

Ryan shook his head no as he backed up a few more steps, but the more he backed up, the more the red-haired man and the red lights moved towards him. “What do you want from me?” Ryan screamed.

The red-haired man’s mutilated smile widened. “I want to take you somewhere. I want to show you something. There’s a place you need to see. A place you know very well.”

“No,” Ryan breathed the word out. “I … I can’t go back there.”

Ryan turned and ran into the darkness. And suddenly he was …

… drowning in the dark swirling waters. He swam up towards the surface, up towards the light. He reached out for the light that shined down into the water, the light that shined right onto his eyeless face …

7.

Ryan sat bolt-upright in his bed. His breath was caught in his throat, a trapped scream of terror.

Something scratched at the window.

Ryan could see the shadows dancing around the room, an eerie creation from the lights of the TV. He turned towards the window.

It can’t be him … he won’t be there ….

Only the branches scraped at the window. No red-haired man levitating outside the window in the night air.

Ryan let out a long breath, more like a shudder. His body trembled with dread. He remembered his dream. The red-haired man claimed to know him. He wanted to take him somewhere. A place Ryan knew very well.

Where?

Ryan felt like he might know where the man wanted to take him, he seemed to know in the dream, but now that he was awake it was like his mind was blocking it.

But he needed to remember. That was why he had written down this address. That’s why he came to this town. He needed to remember something that had happened here. And it had something to do with the red-haired man and the place he wanted him to see in the dream. It had something to do with him floating in the water with his eyes gone. It had something to do with the brown suitcase underneath his bed that someone had sent to him.

Did it have something to do with Carol? Tom and Victor? Amber?

Ryan closed his eyes and shook his head no. He had a sudden overwhelming urge to just grab his money from underneath the mattress, stuff it all back into the duffel bag, and run out to his car and leave. Just drive. East maybe. All the way across the United States. Just head east until he ran into the ocean.

But he couldn’t leave. He needed to be here. And there was someone following him, he was sure of that. Someone from Oakland, from his old life. And they would follow him wherever he went – even all the way east. They would never stop looking for him.

Ryan looked at the small digital alarm clock that Carol had let him use. It was almost five o’clock in the morning. He didn’t need to set the alarm because he wasn’t going back to sleep. He lay back down and stared up at the ceiling, he watched the flickering lights and shadows that the TV made on the ceiling.

CHAPTER SEVEN

1.

At six o’clock in the morning Ryan went down to the kitchen. He halted for a split second when he saw Tom and Victor sitting at the small table. They were both hunched over plates of breakfast that Carol had made for them. He didn’t know why they were up so early; he didn’t think that either one of them worked, but he wasn’t sure. They never told him anything about themselves.

“Good morning,” Ryan said and he smiled at them.

Victor and Tom both stood up without a word to Ryan. They took their plates to Carol. “I’m done, Carol,” Victor said. “That was a wonderful breakfast.”

Carol glanced down at their plates. “You didn’t even finish all of your food, Victor.”

Victor shot a glance at Ryan, and then he looked at Carol and gave her a smug smile. “Suddenly, I’ve lost my appetite.”

Tom nodded in agreement. “I need to get going. There’s some stuff I need to get done.”

Carol eyed Tom. “You don’t do anything except sleep all day. What could be so important now?”

Tom stared at Carol, his mouth moved as he tried to think of an answer. He glanced at Victor for help.

Carol shooed the two older men away and gave them a disgusted scowl. “Go on, then. Get out of here.”

Ryan moved out of the doorway to give the men room to scuttle out through the doorway. He entered the kitchen and stared at Carol. “If I’m disrupting things around here, I can find somewhere else to stay.”

Carol scraped the plates of half-eaten food into the small kitchen waste can. “Nonsense,” she snapped at him. She gestured at the small table. “Go on. Sit down.”

Ryan sat down in the chair, his body rigid and tense. “I can tell they don’t want me here.”

Carol looked at Ryan. “This isn’t their house, is it? It’s my house. They don’t make the rules, I do.”

She poured Ryan a glass of orange juice and brought it to him.

Ryan took a sip, but it didn’t taste the same. Everything seemed better yesterday, fresh and new and exciting, but today the dark dread was washing over him, clouding everything, ruining everything.

“You okay, Ryan?”

Ryan nodded and gave Carol a half-smile. “I just haven’t been sleeping too well lately.”

“Something wrong with the bed?”

“No,” Ryan answered quickly. “It’s just me.” He smiled at her and then added: “I’ll be fine.”

There seemed to be something in Carol’s expression that Ryan was trying to pinpoint. She seemed concerned about him, overly concerned for a total stranger. But there were other emotions mixed in – sadness and fear underneath her expression. And there was something strange about Carol; she seemed to know things about him, but she didn’t seem to want to reveal too much, and for that reason Ryan felt it was best not to reveal anything to her either.

Did she know something? Ryan asked himself. How much did she know? Was she going to help him or hurt him? Could he trust her?

Carol must be a part of this, he thought. He was sure of that; he just didn’t know what role she played right now. And since she wasn’t going to volunteer anything, he would have to find out more before he could trust her.

He sipped his orange juice as he watched her prepare a plate of breakfast for him and another bag lunch with two sandwiches inside.

2.

Ryan needed to get away from Carol’s house, and driving to the construction site made him feel a little better. He looked forward to the hours of mundane work ahead of him; tasks that he could totally concentrate on instead of letting his mind wander and torture himself with questions about his past – questions that he couldn’t answer right now (or didn’t want to answer, his mind whispered). It was blissful to just work and forget about everything for a while.

After Ryan parked his silver Chevy Impala, he walked across the dirt parking area to the buildings. He met up with the always-cheerful John who gave him a list of jobs to do. John wasn’t overly friendly, but he wasn’t mean either, like he had gotten used to the idea of tolerating Ryan for the moment.

Hours later, Ryan felt a little better. He had swept up some empty rooms in one building, getting them ready for the painters. And now he pushed an empty wheelbarrow to another building which he was going to clean up and get it ready for the drywall hangers. He pushed the wheelbarrow past another laborer that he’d seen yesterday. Ryan nodded at the guy, he was pretty sure his name was Miguel.

“Morning,” Ryan said as he pushed his wheelbarrow past the man.

Miguel nodded as they walked past each other.

“Drip, drip,” Ryan heard Miguel say after he was a few steps past him.

Ryan stopped in his tracks. He dropped his wheelbarrow down to the concrete floor with a crash and turned back to Miguel who was still walking away. “What did you say?” he called after him.

Miguel turned around and stared at him. “What?” he asked.

Ryan ran up to Miguel and stood in front of him. “You just said something when you walked past me. What did you say?”

Miguel stood his ground, but there was an uncertainty in his eyes, a growing fear. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, man.”

“You got something to say to me?” Ryan asked. “If you know something, then spit it out.”

Miguel shook his head. “You’re loco, man.” He turned around and walked away quickly.

Ryan watched Miguel walk away, and then he went back to his wheelbarrow.

3.

Ryan picked up scrap pieces of metal, wood, wire, and pipe in a room in the next building. The walls were filled with pink fiberglass insulation and there were stacks of drywall leaning against the metal stud walls.

Something on the floor a few feet away caught Ryan’s eye as he was about to pick up some scrap pieces of metal. He walked a few steps over to the spot on the floor and stared down at it. It was a small dark spot. It was still wet. It looked like blood.

There was another drop near this drop. And then another drop beyond that one – a trail of blood drops. He looked up to see where they were leading to and he saw the red-haired man. He had been in the doorway that led out to the hall, but he was already gone, just a blur of movement of his dark suit, red hair, and pale skin.

“Hey!” Ryan shouted. He could feel an anger boiling up inside of him. Why wouldn’t this man leave him alone? What did he want?

Ryan ran out into the wide hallway of metal studs and insulation. Work lights were strung along the ceiling.

The red-haired man wasn’t out there. Ryan looked down at the concrete floor and he saw the trail of blood drops.

Blood from the red-haired man’s fingers.

Drip. Drip.

Ryan ran down the hall, following the trail of blood. He turned a corner and saw just the flash of dark movement at the end of the hall. The red-haired man had just entered a doorway into a dark room. Ryan raced down the hall to the doorway of the dark room. When he reached the doorway, he hesitated. He looked down at the floor in front of the room and he saw more drops of blood, bigger drops.

Ryan stepped inside the room.

The room was dark – it already had drywall up on the walls. Almost immediately Ryan’s eyes adjusted to the murkiness. The room was large; it was going to be some kind of utility room and the doorway was the only way in or out. The room was empty except for the red-haired man at the other end; he stood facing the wall, his back to Ryan. His ruined hands were clasped behind his back, his blood dripping down onto the floor, forming dark puddles on the concrete. Ryan could hear the dripping sounds.

Ryan took a step towards the man. “This can’t be real,” he whispered.

The red-haired man made no movement – he just stared at the wall in front of him, his back still to Ryan.

Ryan took another step closer to the man.

This man couldn’t be real. This was just a dream, just some kind of nightmare that he was having while he was still awake. Some kind of hallucination. “You’re not real,” he whispered.

He stood right behind the red-haired man. He reached his hand out towards the man’s back, about to touch his shoulder with his trembling fingers, but then he drew his hand back to himself. The man still hadn’t moved a muscle.

Ryan glanced behind him.

No one behind him. No one in the hallway outside the room.

Ryan turned back around and the red-haired man had turned around. They were face-to-face now, only inches away from each other. Ryan could see the eaten-away flesh around the red-haired man’s mouth in more detail now. He could see the long gashes running from each side of the man’s mouth up to his ears with horrifying clarity. He saw the other smaller scars that lined the man’s pale face; the scars took up almost every square inch of the man’s flesh. The red-haired man’s eyes were so light blue that they were almost translucent.

“Nice to see you again, Cutter,” the red-haired man whispered, and Ryan could feel the man’s ice-cold breath on his face; he could smell a musty odor from the man that was not unlike the duffel bag of money and the brown suitcase, a wet and earthy smell.

Ryan shook his head no and backed up a step, nearly tripping and falling down. He couldn’t fall down – he couldn’t be helpless on the floor in front of this monster. He needed to run.

“No,” Ryan grunted out. “This is all wrong. This can’t be real.”

The red-haired man took a step closer to Ryan and his polished dress shoes echoed on the concrete floor in the dark room. “This is no dream. This is real. More real than you can imagine.”

Ryan took a few steps backwards, ready to bolt out of the dark room, back out to the hallway, away from this thing.

The red-haired man didn’t walk towards Ryan anymore; instead, he raised his ruined hands towards his own face, his smile never wavering. The red-haired man grabbed his own mouth, one hand on top, the other on his lower jaw, his fingers gouged inside of his mouth, finding a grip. And then he pulled on his mouth, pulling his lower jaw down impossibly wide, ripping open the scars on each side of his face, the skin slowly splitting apart with a sick, wet sound. The scars split all the way up to the man’s ears and the lower half of his face hung open, the bottom jaw hanging down loosely, bottom teeth exposed and a tongue (which seemed way too long) wiggling and squirming around inside like a pink snake.

Ryan stared in disbelief, his grip on sanity suddenly beginning to slip. A short grunt of a scream escaped his throat without his noticing.

He had to get out of here he had to get out of here he had to get out of here.

Ryan bolted out of the room and sprinted down the hall. He glanced back at the doorway to the dark room, sure that the red-haired man would be running after him with his loose lower jaw swinging back and forth as he ran. But he wasn’t there, he wasn’t coming after him.

Ryan turned back around and ran right into …

… John, who did not look happy.

“What the hell are you doing, Ryan?”

Ryan stared into John’s eyes and he tried to speak, his mouth was moving and he was trying to form the words as his mind spun with horror. He looked down at the concrete floor about to point down at the trail of blood that he’d followed earlier, but the spots of blood were gone. He turned and looked back at the doorway to the dark room, but the blood spots weren’t there anymore, either.

He turned back around to face John. “They were there,” he finally managed to whisper. “He … he was there. In there.”

“You on something, Ryan?”

“No. I saw … saw …”

“You need to get back to work.”

“I don’t … I don’t …”

But Ryan couldn’t finish his sentence. He bolted past John and threw open a door that led to the outside. He barely made it a few steps outside before he bent over beside the exterior block wall and threw up the breakfast that Carol had prepared for him.

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” John said from the doorway.

Ryan shook his head no as he wiped away spittle and puke from his mouth with the back of his trembling hand. “I don’t feel very good. I need to go home.”

John rushed up to Ryan, but he didn’t get too close, there was something about the smell of that vomit, something he recognized, but he couldn’t put a name to the smell. “Yeah, I think you should go home. There’s something fucked up about you and I don’t want you here anymore.”

Ryan nodded at John. “Maybe you’re right.”

4.

Ryan pulled up into Carol’s driveway, his tires crunching on the gravel. He got out and hurried to her house.

No one was downstairs right now; Carol wasn’t in the kitchen – a small blessing for Ryan. He hurried across the living room towards the stairs, but then he stopped in his tracks. Carol’s big orange cat sat in front of the stairs. The cat was up on its feet, crouched down and ready to either attack or bolt. Ryan heard a low growl from the cat’s throat. But then after a hiss, the cat raced away down the hall.

Ryan didn’t waste any time, he didn’t want Carol coming out of her bedroom or den to find out what had terrified her cat. He bounded up the stairs, but he tried to be as quiet as possible. He didn’t want to see Carol right now, he didn’t want to explain why he was home from work a few hours early, and he didn’t want her to see the fear on his face, hear it in his voice. And he definitely didn’t want to see Victor or Tom.

Ryan entered his room and locked the door behind him. He slipped the skeleton key back into his pocket and he stood there by the door as he scanned the room with his eyes. He looked at the bed, the door to the closet and the door to the bathroom, and then he looked at the bedroom window at the far side of the room. Nobody floating outside the window among the tree branches.

He stumbled over to the bed and plopped down. His legs felt weak, his mind was spinning. Why was he having these visions of this tortured man? And the man had called him Cutter, but that wasn’t his name – he was Ryan Freeman. He had a driver’s license with his picture on it. And why was he having these continuing nightmares? The red-haired man wanted to take him somewhere, show him something. Ryan felt like he knew what it might be, but it was something he didn’t want to make himself face.

Ryan jumped up from the bed and paced around the room. He didn’t want to be here in this house, he had only come back here because he couldn’t think of anywhere else to go. Then he thought of Amber who he’d met at the pub. He grabbed his wallet out of his back pocket and plucked out the small piece of folded paper, the ticket that she’d written her phone number on. He unfolded it and traced the numbers with his finger.

5.

After Ryan took a quick shower, he stood in the kitchen. Luckily no one was downstairs yet. A car was gone from the driveway, he had noticed that earlier when he’d pulled up. Maybe Carol was at the supermarket replenishing her supply of food – God knew that Ryan had eaten a lot of it since he’d been here. He hurried over to the phone on the wall and dialed Amber’s number.

He listened to the ringing on the other end. He really wanted to see her, he wanted to be with someone to take his mind off of the vision he’d seen today. But she could be busy. Maybe she had been just being polite when she’d written her number down, never really expecting him to call –

“Hello?” he heard Amber say.

“Hi, Amber,” Ryan said. “It’s Ryan,” he finished, but he would need to tell her more about himself, she wasn’t going to remember who he was. She probably got offers to go out on dates all the time. Who did he think he –

“I remember you,” she said.

Ryan couldn’t help smiling. “Okay. Yeah. I was thinking maybe we could get together and do something.”

“When?”

“Maybe tonight.”

A silence on the phone like she was thinking it over, but not for long. “Pick me up in a few hours,” she said and gave him her address. “Don’t come to the door,” she added. “Please. Just wait in your car until I come outside. I’ll see you pull up.”

CHAPTER EIGHT

1.

To kill time, Ryan drove around town for two hours until it was time to pick up Amber. He had the layout of the town down pretty well by now from his few hours of driving up and down the streets (even though his travels around town weren’t jogging his memory in any way). The town of Edrington sprawled out from a center of the mom-and-pop businesses that lined the main county road that ran north and south. Another main county road ran east and west. Ryan didn’t have to drive too far out of town in any direction before he reached the woods.

Finally, it was time to pick up Amber.

He pulled up in front of her house which was located in a crummier section of Edrington. These were small houses squeezed in close together with cracked walkways splitting the unkempt yards, dirty siding and broken windows. There was an even worse neighborhood, a run-down trailer park, only a few blocks away.

Ryan parked on the street and waited. He didn’t shut off the engine. He stared at Amber’s house; it was small with a cozy yellow light spilling out of the front windows into the darkening world, but like all of the other houses up and down the street, it was in need of many repairs. He glanced at the driveway, but he didn’t see any vehicles parked there.

He wondered why Amber was so insistent that he not come to the front door. Was she ashamed of her house? Was she hiding something?

Minutes later, the front door opened and Amber hurried out of the house. She practically ran down the cracked walkway to his car. She jumped into his car and slammed the door shut. She gave him a weak smile as she stared at him with her big brown eyes that seemed so nervous. “I’m ready to go,” she said and seemed to be hurrying him along.

Ryan nodded, but he didn’t smile.

Amber tilted her head with a look of concern on her face. “Something wrong?” she asked.

Ryan shook his head no and tried to smile. “I just had a bad day at work.”

Amber nodded and sighed. “If you’re not feeling up to this, I understand. We could -”

“No,” Ryan interrupted and really smiled at her this time. “I’m feeling a lot better now.”

2.

Hours later Ryan and Amber strolled down a concrete path that meandered through a park. The path circled a large pond. They both licked at ice cream cones that were beginning to melt in the warm night air.

“That’s your plan?” Ryan asked Amber. “You’re going to get out of this town.”

Amber nodded. “Yep. That’s my dream. To get away from this depressing hell-hole.”

Ryan glanced around at the idyllic park they were in. “It doesn’t seem so bad here.”

“Yeah, the perfect little town.”

Ryan licked at his dripping ice cream cone – it was delicious. “So, what’s so bad about this town?”

Amber walked beside him in silence for a moment and then she looked at Ryan. “You don’t know about this place? No one’s told you about it?”

“No,” Ryan answered. “What is it?”

They came to a picnic table and sat down. They had eaten the last of the ice cream cones. They sat close to each other. Amber shivered even though it wasn’t cold. Maybe it was the ice cream she’d just eaten, Ryan thought. But he believed it was her feelings about this town that sent the shiver through her body.

“Ten years ago there was a serial killer in this town.”

Ryan just nodded and let her continue.

“He killed at least thirteen people that they knew about. Who knows how many other bodies were never found. A person would go missing and then they would find the body somewhere in town, badly mutilated. A lot of people in this town were related to the victims, or knew the victims, or knew people who knew the victims. It’s like an invisible thread that runs through everyone in this town. You can’t go anywhere or talk to anyone without the memories of the murders coming up.”

Ryan stared at her.

She smiled at him. “Sorry, I know it’s a gruesome subject.”

“No, I want to hear about it. Nobody has told me anything about this.”

“It’s not something that we talk about too much.” She paused. “I really don’t like talking about it, either. I wish I hadn’t even brought it up.”

Ryan sat there as a silence blanketed them for a moment. But he didn’t want the conversation to end; he didn’t want to leave Amber just yet. He didn’t want to go back to Carol’s house.

“So they caught the killer?” Ryan asked.

“Yeah, sort of. He killed himself. No one knows why he killed himself, but nobody really cared why, everyone was just glad it was all over.”

They were quiet for another moment and Amber looked up at the night sky, at the stars twinkling against the darkness.

“I just want to get out of here,” she said. “I want to go someplace where I don’t know anyone.”

“When are you going to leave?”

She shrugged, shook her head slightly and looked at him. “I don’t know. I’m trying to save up the money right now, but it’s tough.”

Ryan nodded. “What are you going to do when you get to this other town where no one knows you?”

“I want to go to school to be a nurse. A nurse that works with kids. Maybe even the physically disabled. I want to help people who can’t help themselves.”

Ryan smiled at her. “That’s a noble endeavor.”

Amber studied him and her eyes narrowed even though she was still smiling. “Are you making fun of me?”

“No!” Ryan nearly shouted out, but he couldn’t help smiling which he felt made him seem guiltier. “No, I mean it. Most people don’t have dreams like yours. They dream of becoming rich and famous. They don’t dream of helping other people.”

Amber studied Ryan for a moment, and then she seemed content that he was telling the truth. “What about you? What are your dreams? Your plans?”

Ryan shrugged. “I don’t know. Just drifting right now. Taking it one day at a time.”

Amber reached her hand towards Ryan’s face. He didn’t back away as she touched the corner of his mouth and wiped at it with her thumb.

“You had a little bit of ice cream on your mouth,” she whispered to him.

They stared into each other’s eyes. Her touch, like the handshake at Charlie’s Pub when they first met, sent shivers of electricity through his body.

They leaned closer to each other.

And they kissed.

3.

After Ryan dropped Amber off at her house (but she would not let him walk her to her door – she was adamant about that and Ryan wasn’t going to argue with her about it on their first date), he went back to Carol’s house. His car tires crunched on the gravel as he pulled up into the driveway and parked behind the other two cars.

He got out of his car and walked across the front lawn to the porch. He tried his best to sneak across the floorboards to the front door. He unlocked the front door and entered the house. It was dark inside the living room, but there was a light coming from down the hall where Carol’s bedroom and study were; it was a flickering light, like light from a candle. He closed the door and locked the deadbolt, trying to be quiet.

He snuck across the living room floor and peeked to his left at the dark dining room and archway to the kitchen beyond that. He glanced to his right to the hall and he could see where the light was coming from, a door was cracked open on the right hand side of the hall, and the soft, yellowish light flickered around the door’s edges. He paused for a moment, expecting the door to fly open and Carol to rush out into the hall.

But she didn’t. And he didn’t know why he’d had such a thought.

He shrugged it off and hurried up the stairs, being as quiet as he could.

In his bedroom he lay down on his bed after locking the door and checking on the stacks of cash underneath his bed – his nightly ritual. And checking the bedroom window, he couldn’t forget about that, it was another one of his nightly rituals. He had inspected it closely, making sure it was locked. He looked out the window, even though he didn’t like being that close to it, and watched the smaller tree branches and leaves rustling in the night breeze. There wasn’t much of a breeze outside, but still the leaves rustled and the sharp points of tiny branches scratched at the glass.

He lay in bed and stared at the ceiling, watching the flickering shadows dance across the plaster from the TV’s light. He thought of Amber, of her dreams of running away, of starting over.

He was tired, he knew that, but he couldn’t seem to sleep very long without slipping into the nightmares. He wondered how long a person could go without sleep. How long before their health suffered, before their mind snapped?

His eyes began to close.

4.

Pitch black.

Ryan stood alone in the darkness and he saw that now-familiar reddish glow in the darkness and he saw the red-haired man emerge from the foggy light. And even though the thick gashes on each side of his face always made it seem like the man was smiling, Ryan knew that he wasn’t smiling, his mouth was as closed as it could be with the missing flesh around his mouth. His light eyes were cold and leveled right at Ryan.

“You need to see something,” the red-haired man said.

Ryan was about to resist, about to run, but he found himself …

… standing in front of a small wood house in the middle of the darkness, the house was very small – really just a shack. That same reddish glow that surrounded the red-haired man surrounded the small house. The wood siding was covered with green mildew and the roof sagged. The woods were crowded all around the house; heavy branches hung over the roof, some of the smaller branches hung down onto the roof and they scraped at the loose shingles every time a breeze blew. They made a scraping sound – much like the bedroom window, Ryan thought.

Ryan could feel the red-haired man right behind him in the darkness, slightly to his left but close enough that the man could’ve touched him if he wanted to. His body shivered at the thought of a touch from this man’s fingertips.

An instant later, Ryan was even closer to the house, right in front of one of the windows. He was close enough to see the cracked glass panes of the window, close enough to see the peeling paint on the siding, the wood rotting in many places. Some kind of insects burrowed through the wood. Spiders constructed webs in the corners of the window panes.

“Look inside,” the red-haired man whispered from right behind him.

“I don’t want to,” Ryan answered and he could hear a hitch in his voice, he could feel tears stinging his eyes. He could feel the weight of despair crushing him, of all hope gone. “I can’t go in there.”

“You don’t have a choice. You have to see it.”

Ryan turned to run, but the red-haired man grabbed Ryan’s arm, his slimy ruined fingers sunk into Ryan’s flesh. Ryan swore he could feel things slithering out of the man’s fingers, spreading out on his skin, they felt like tiny insects skittering across his flesh, some of them trying to burrow inside of him.

For a moment, Ryan couldn’t move as the tears fell from his eyes. He stared at the red-haired man. They were so close to each other, just like they had been in the dark utility room at the construction site. He could feel the freezing breath from the man’s ruined mouth on his face. He could smell the musty odor.

“What is this place?” Ryan begged. “Why do you keep taking me here?”

“This is your place,” the red-haired man answered. “You built it. You did legendary things here. And you will again.”

Ryan shook his head no. “No! Let me go! I don’t remember any of this!”

“You can’t fight what you are, Cutter.”

“NO!!”

Ryan ripped his arm away from the red-haired man’s grip (and he could’ve sworn pieces of the man’s flesh pulled away from the man’s fingers as he did this and these pieces were stuck to his skin). Ryan ran and he was suddenly …

… drowning in the dark swirling waters. He was closer to the surface now, only inches away. His hand had already broken through the surface of the water and reached up into the warm air. He could feel the light shining down on his eyeless face; he could feel its warmth on his skin even through the water.

He was just about to swim up and let his face break the surface …

5.

Ryan jumped awake in bed.

He looked over at the bedroom window and he could see the early morning light through the silhouette of tree branches beyond the glass. He glanced at the cheap alarm clock on the table beside his bed – it was six thirty in the morning. He had slept for almost five hours. The dream hadn’t seemed very long, but he’d been sleeping for a while.

He got out of bed and paced around the room.

The dreams were horrifying, but they were leading somewhere, he had to admit that. But he didn’t want to see where they were leading to.

He thought of last night, of walking in the park with Amber. She wanted to leave, she wanted to start over.

And he did, too.

What if he could take Amber with him and they could run away from this town? Maybe she was right, maybe this place was evil. Maybe it was best that he didn’t find the answers to his past.

Ryan grabbed his wallet and car keys from the dresser – he knew what he wanted to do now.

CHAPTER NINE

1.

Ryan snuck into Carol’s kitchen which was still murky this early in the morning. She wasn’t up and making breakfast for him. It was like she knew that he had lost his job and that he didn’t need breakfast or bagged lunches anymore. He knew he needed to hurry, he felt that she would be coming to the kitchen soon anyway. He rummaged through the kitchen drawers until he found what he was looking for – the biggest kitchen knife he could find.

He held the knife in his hand and turned it slightly, letting the early morning light that shined through the window wink off the metal blade. He stared at the knife for a long moment, almost like it was familiar to him, the look of it, the weight of it, the balance, and the sharp edge.

He took the knife and left the kitchen.

2.

Ryan wandered down the aisles of the supermarket. It was still early and he’d gotten there right when the store opened. There were a few patrons rushing in to grab a few things, but other than those people, Ryan was the only customer in the store. The only other people were the cashiers, an overweight store manager patrolling around, and a few teenage employees stocking the last of the shelves from the night before.

Ryan pushed his cart down the wide aisles. He let his eyes wander over the shelves of food and household supplies. He would stop every so often to throw an item into his cart – these were surprises for Amber.

The cashier rang up his purchases and she gave him a strange look from the assortment of items, but she didn’t say anything. Ryan was sure that the cashiers were taught never to remark negatively on anything a customer purchased.

He carried the bags to his car and put them in the back seat. He arranged them just the way he wanted, including the knife, for Amber’s surprise.

Then he drove around town for a few hours, even parking at the same park that he and Amber had walked around the night before. He watched the lake that they had walked around, in the daylight there were groups of ducks floating peacefully along the surface of the water. The sky was blue in a few areas, but a ceiling of gray clouds was moving in from the west.

3.

Ryan made himself wait until eleven o’clock before going to Amber’s house; he knew Amber didn’t work until tonight so he wanted to let her sleep in. But he didn’t want to wait too long; he wanted to catch her before she went somewhere. He pulled up in front of Amber’s house and parked his car on the street just as he had on their “first date.” She had told him not to come to her front door and she had told him not to come to her house without calling first, but he needed to see her. He wanted to surprise her.

He shut the car off and noticed a black pickup truck parked in the driveway.

He got out of his car and walked up the cracked walkway that split the small, weedy front yard. He stared at the beefed-up black pickup truck in the driveway as he approached the house. It was an older model truck, but it looked meticulously maintained, much better maintained than the house it was parked in front of. There were added goodies to the truck; a metal tool box in the back, chrome bumpers, dual exhaust pipes, and expensive rims.

The truck bothered Ryan. This truck hadn’t been here when he’d picked Amber up last night. Whose truck was this? It looked like a man’s truck. Amber had told him that she wasn’t with anyone.

Up close, Ryan could see that the front door of Amber’s house was cracked in a few places, and the paint was peeling. Cobwebs decorated the corners of the doorframe.

He rang the doorbell.

No answer.

He knocked on the door.

He could hear someone stomping through the house on what sounded like wooden floors, he could even hear someone grumbling and maybe cussing through the thin and most likely under-insulated walls. The voice sounded male – the owner of the pickup truck.

The door flew open and a large man with thinning dark hair and stubble on his face loomed in the doorway. He stared at Ryan with dark eyes that seemed groggy, like he had just woken up.

“Help you with something?” the man asked.

Ryan cleared his throat. Seeing this man and his pickup truck had caught him off guard, but he still needed to see Amber. “I was wondering if Amber was here.”

Gary stared at Ryan. “Can I ask who the hell you are?”

“Ryan. My name’s Ryan.”

“Ryan who?”

Ryan hesitated.

“What’s wrong? You don’t know your fucking last name?”

Amber moved around in the background behind the man and then she rushed to the door. “What’s going on? Who is it, Gary?”

Amber squeezed in between Gary and the doorframe and her eyes widened in shock. “Ryan, what are you doing here?”

“I’m sorry, Amber. I should’ve called.”

Ryan turned to leave – obviously Amber was with somebody, that’s why she didn’t want him knocking on the door or coming to her house without calling her first.

As Ryan walked back down the cracked walkway to his car, Amber had to squeeze past Gary who wasn’t letting her past him. “Get the fuck out of the way,” she growled at him, and she managed to squirt out between his mass and the doorframe. She ran after Ryan.

“Ryan! Wait!”

Ryan stopped when he was almost to his car – it was a short walk. He stood face-to-face with Amber whose expression crumbled in concern.

“Ryan, what’s wrong?” she asked. “Why are you here?”

He shook his head in dismissal. “I thought … I was going to ask you if you wanted to go somewhere.”

Amber’s face lit up with surprise. “Yeah. Sure. Just give me a few seconds to get a jacket and some shoes on.”

Ryan looked down at Amber’s bare feet.

She bubbled with energy as she turned around and raced back to the house. This time Gary stepped aside to let her in the house, and then he was back again, filling the doorway with his bulk. He smiled at Ryan. “Why don’t you come inside and wait for her?”

“Thanks, but that’s okay. I’ll just wait in my car.”

Gary’s face fell into an instant scowl. “You too good to come inside my house?”

His house? This guy lived here with Amber?

Gary smiled again and took a step out onto the little concrete pad that served as their front porch. “Come on, I’m sorry we got off on the wrong foot. Please come inside.” He was still smiling, but it seemed like the smile a shark or a tiger might have if they could smile.

Ryan found himself walking back up the walkway and into Gary’s house. Gary closed the door and gestured to a lumpy couch against a wall of the small living room. Gary plopped down in a worn-out recliner that must be “his” chair. He still smiled at Ryan as he stared at him.

Ryan glanced around at the small house. It seemed to be more of Gary’s house than Amber’s. The place was a mess; stains on the carpet, the walls needed paint, stacks of papers and beer cans overflowed the end tables. The only nice and modern thing in the whole room was the massive TV and entertainment system right across from the recliner. The TV was off right now.

Gary studied Ryan. “So, Ryan Nobody, how long you been dating Amber?”

“We just went out last night for the first time,” Ryan answered and he could feel an anger building up inside of him – it seemed like a strange emotion, a dangerous one, and a familiar one. He couldn’t explain it, but he felt almost frightened of this slow rage inside of him, frightened of what it could turn him into, frightened of what he could do to someone if he let the rage consume him and take over his mind and body. “We got some ice cream and walked around the park,” Ryan added.

“How sweet,” Gary said in mock sincerity. He leaned forward and grinned at Ryan. “Hey, did you get lucky?”

Ryan stared at Gary who hadn’t lost that shark-smile. “Excuse me?”

“Lucky. You know, did you get some ass? It shouldn’t be too difficult with Amber.”

Ryan stood up quickly. He could feel the boiling ball of anger churning in his chest, about to erupt. He could feel a noisy static of rage buzzing in his mind. He could feel his muscles flooding with blood and adrenaline. He could feel himself losing control and he was afraid he was only a few seconds away from snapping.

“This was a mistake,” Ryan said. “I should get going.”

Just then Amber rushed out from the hallway into the living room. She had changed her clothes and put on a pair of stylish boots with low heels for walking. She had a leather jacket with fringes draped over one forearm. She was still beaming. “I’m ready to go.”

Gary, still seated in his chair, stared at her. “You look like a slut.”

“Shut the fuck up, asshole,” Amber shot back at him and at the same time she grabbed Ryan’s arm – hard – and whispered in his ear. “Come on, let’s go.”

Gary jumped to his feet. “You don’t talk to me like that, you fucking whore!”

Amber practically dragged Ryan to the front door. They exited the house and walked quickly down the walkway towards Ryan’s car.

“You’re nothing!” Gary screamed from the doorway at Amber as she walked away. “You’re nothing but a lazy whore!”

“Just keep on walking to your car,” Amber said in a low voice, and Ryan could hear the tremor in her voice.

They got inside Ryan’s car.

Ryan had his keys in his hand, and he looked past Amber in the passenger seat and saw Gary standing in the doorway. Ryan looked back at Amber who stared straight ahead, her head held high, her body tense as she sat ramrod straight.

“Amber, what’s going on here? Are you married? Is that your boyfriend?”

“No,” Amber said and she looked out the passenger window and stuck her middle finger up at Gary.

Gary exploded out of the doorway and ran down the cracked walkway in his bare feet, his face red with rage.

Amber turned to Ryan with a look of terror on her face and tears in her eyes. “Drive! Just drive!”

Ryan started his car and shifted into drive. He stomped his foot down on the gas pedal and he heard the bark of his rear tires as he tore out into the street. He didn’t hear any thuds from Gary striking his car, but he did catch a glimpse of Gary standing on the sidewalk in his rearview mirror; Gary was just staring at his car as he drove away, his face red, his fleshy chest heaving from the short run.

They drove in silence for a few blocks. Ryan wanted some answers, but he wanted to let her calm down first. He saw that she was crying, wiping away at her tears and turning away so Ryan wouldn’t see her. “I’m sorry about all that,” she said.

“Who is he?” Ryan asked.

Amber looked out the windshield as she spoke. “He’s Gary, my brother. He’s crazy. Probably taken too many drugs over the years. When my mother died, she left him everything. Which wasn’t much, believe me. She always babied him. Of course she didn’t know about his drug habit and I never told on him. I didn’t want it to hurt her in her last days.”

“If he’s so crazy, then why do you live with him?”

“I don’t have anywhere else to go. I’m saving my money, and as soon as I get enough I’m out of here.” She paused for a second like she was considering whether she should say the rest. “Of course, it’s kind of hard to save money when Gary demands so much of my money to pay for the mortgage and utilities. I can’t seem to get enough saved.”

“There’s no one else you can stay with? Friends? Other family?”

Amber gave Ryan a pleading smile. “Can we change the subject please?”

Ryan nodded, but didn’t say anything, he just continued driving.

They drove in silence for a few more blocks through the neighborhood.

“So, where did you want to go?” Amber asked. “Did you have something in mind?”

Ryan could already hear the change in her mood, like these fights with her brother happened often enough that she got over them quickly.

Ryan tried to hide a smile. He felt better just being with Amber and he knew he’d made the right decision by coming to her house to see her. Like the labor work at the constructions site, being with Amber was a distraction from his nightmares and the mysteries of his past.

“Look in the backseat,” he told her.

Amber, much more energetic now, nearly hopped on through between the passenger and driver’s seat to the back.

And she saw the picnic basket.

She grabbed the basket and got back into the passenger seat; she didn’t bother to refasten her seatbelt. She looked at Ryan with an excitement in her eyes that nearly choked Ryan up – it was like this was the biggest surprise she’d ever seen, like nobody in her life had ever shown her any kindness.

“You like picnics?” Ryan asked.

Amber shrugged. “Yeah. I’m sure I do. I’ve never been on one.” She couldn’t wait – she opened the basket and rifled through the contents. She pulled out a few of the small cheeses wrapped in plastic. “These must’ve cost a fortune.”

“The guy at the deli counter called them cheeses from around the world. There’s one from the Netherlands. One from Sweden. One from France. And … and some other ones. Some cold cuts. Crackers. A bottle of wine.”

Amber pulled out the knife from Carol’s kitchen, she held it up and stared at it with wide eyes, and then she turned to Ryan and giggled. “Big knife.”

Ryan nodded. “I stole it from Carol’s kitchen. I hope she doesn’t mind.”

Amber put everything back in the basket and closed it. She held onto the basket, like she could barely contain her excitement. “Where are we picnicking?” Then she thought for a split second. “Picnicking? Is that how you say it?”

“I guess.”

“Picnicking. It sounds like something rich people say. Like on Downton Abbey.”

Ryan couldn’t help laughing – he didn’t know what Downton Abbey was, but it was obviously Amber’s idea of rich. It felt good to laugh; it seemed like something he hadn’t done in a long time. “Uh, I don’t know where to go … picnicking. I hadn’t really planned that far ahead.”

Amber’s eyes lit up. “I know a place we could go. It’s outside of town.”

“Off Winter Road?”

She gave Ryan a strange look. “Yeah, that’s what I was going to say.” She studied him for a moment as he drove. “If you’ve never been here before, then how do you know about Winter Road?”

Ryan wouldn’t look at Amber as he drove. “I don’t know. I’ve done a lot of driving around since I got here.” But Ryan knew this wasn’t true. Winter Road was from his memory, he was sure of that. It had something to do with his past. Maybe the secrets from his past were beginning to break through his foggy memory whether he wanted them to or not.

CHAPTER TEN

1.

The black Lincoln pulled up into the dusty parking area of the Starlight Motel where Ryan had stayed only two nights ago, where Ryan had woken up with no memory of his past. But his past was pulling up now and parking right next to the motel office.

Jake put the car in park and glanced at Lita. She checked her gun, making sure a bullet was chambered, and then she tucked it away into her jacket pocket. Jake glanced at Mr. Murdock in the backseat. Mr. Murdock didn’t say a word. He held a photograph in his gloved hands. He always wore gloves, day or night. He leaned forward and handed the photo to Jake.

Jake looked at Lita and they got out of the car. They walked through the dust to the office door. Lita wore dark clothes that fit her athletic body nicely but didn’t reveal the small gun tucked away inside her jacket. She wore knee-high, black leather boots. Jake wore a dark suit coat and pants with a crisp new white shirt underneath his coat. They both wore dark sunglasses.

The same clerk who had checked Ryan out of his room two days ago sat behind the counter when Jake and Lita entered the office; the bell dinged as they opened the door. The clerk didn’t look up when the bell dinged; he was in the same chair, his feet up, his interest in his phone still as intense as before, his focus on a new game he had downloaded. The small TV on top of the filing cabinet was on, but the sound was turned all the way down.

“Help you?” the clerk asked without looking up from his game.

Lita waited by the door as Jake approached the scarred counter that could use a wipe-down and maybe some disinfectant; he didn’t even want to touch it. He pulled out the photograph from inside his suit coat pocket.

“I need your help with something,” Jake told the clerk.

The clerk looked up and saw Jake; he saw the photograph in his hand. “Help with what?”

“I need to know if you’ve seen this man before.”

The clerk seemed upset at this distraction. He got to his feet and the chair creaked as he stood up. He walked to the counter and sighed. “I don’t have time for this. You guys want a room or not?”

Jake hadn’t moved a muscle, his face was set in stone, his eyes behind his sunglasses were on the clerk’s every move. He held out the photograph for the clerk, waiting for him to take it. “Have you seen this man before?” he asked again; there was more of an edge to his voice now.

The clerk tried to keep up his tough act, but there was something about the tone of this man’s voice, something about the way these two were dressed, the way the woman waited by the door, the way they both watched him from behind their sunglasses.

He gently took the photograph out of Jake’s hand. He looked at the photograph of Ryan for a moment, and then he shrugged his shoulders and handed the photo back. “Not really sure,” he said. “I don’t think I’ve seen him before,” he added even though he remembered Ryan – he just didn’t want to get involved in whatever these two were doing.

Jake didn’t take the photo back. He stared at the clerk. “Take another look.”

Normally the clerk would be kicking these two out of here and threatening to call the police, but instead he did as he was ordered. He looked at the picture again, and then looked up at Jake. “What are you guys, cops or something?”

The clerk handed the picture back to Jake who tucked it back inside his suit coat pocket.

“No, we’re not cops,” Jake answered.

“Why are you looking for this guy?”

“Did he say where he was heading?” Jake asked, ignoring the clerk’s question.

“I didn’t say that I knew him.”

“It shows on your face.”

The clerk’s eyes darted from Jake to Lita, and then back to Jake. “Look, I don’t know what’s going on here, but I don’t want to get involved.”

Jake stared at the clerk. He didn’t say anything, he didn’t move a muscle, he just stared at him.

“I don’t have to tell you anything,” the clerk said, his voice squeaking just a bit. “I mean, what’s in it for me?”

Jake still said nothing.

“I’d like you two to leave now,” the clerk said. He had meant it to come out as a threat, but it sounded more like a plea.

Jake and Lita didn’t move a muscle.

“Now!” the clerk yelled. “I want you to leave or I’m calling the cops!”

Lita locked the office door and flipped the OPEN sign to CLOSED. She twisted the plastic blinds closed on the door’s window.

The clerk stared at her in disbelief. “Hey, what the hell do you think you’re doing, lady?”

In a blur of movement, Jake reached inside his suit coat pocket and pulled out a large hunting knife. He stabbed the knife deep down into the filthy counter top.

The clerk stared down at the knife with wide, terrified eyes. “Holy shit, man,” he breathed out.

While the clerk was distracted by the knife for a second, Jake slammed his fist into the clerk’s face and knocked him back into the desk and chair. Papers and the clerk’s cell phone crashed down onto the floor around him as he collapsed to the floor.

Jake hopped over the counter in a flash and grabbed the clerk by his shirt before he had a chance to try and get back to his feet. Jake picked up the heavy man by his shirt and dragged him across the floor and shoved him into the wall.

The clerk gasped for breath. His nose was already bleeding. He shook his head no.

Jake pulled the clerk forward and then slammed him back into the wall again, dislodging pictures from the wall. The clerk’s head rocked back and his eyes rolled to their whites for a moment as he clung to consciousness.

“I tried to ask you nicely,” Jake said. “One last chance now. Did this guy say where he was heading?”

The clerk tried to clear his head and stammer out an answer at the same time. “He … he … he asked how far Edrington, Oregon was. I asked … asked him if he had some family up there or something, just trying to be friendly and make conversation. And he said he was going to see a friend. He looked kind of … kind of …”

“Kind of what?”

“I don’t know how to explain it,” the clerk blubbered, afraid he might be giving the wrong answer. “He looked like he was … lost.”

“You’re sure he went to Edrington?”

“Yes,” the clerk spit out. “He said he needed to go there. He said he was going to see a friend, that’s exactly what he said.” He sniffed up some of the blood that was running out of his nose.

Jake let the clerk’s shirt go and he smiled at him. “Now, was that so difficult?”

The clerk slid down the wall on legs of jelly. He shook his head no, already close to passing out.

Jake left the clerk on the floor and came out from behind the counter by way of a small door. He pulled his knife out of the countertop and stuck it back into the holster hidden inside of his suit coat. He nodded at Lita who opened the blinds and flipped the sign back to OPEN. She unlocked the door and stepped outside.

Jake looked back at the clerk on the floor. “We were never here, right?”

“No, of course not,” the clerk said through his bloody lips. He even tried a smile through his blood-stained teeth, but he wasn’t very successful at it.

Jake left the office without a look back at the clerk and he slammed the door shut. The bell dinged violently.

The clerk shuddered on the floor, holding onto himself. He wiped at his bloody nose with the sleeve of his shirt. He looked down at the dark smear of blood on his sleeve. “Shit,” he muttered. “I don’t fucking believe this.”

Jake caught up with Lita at the Lincoln. The back window was down and Mr. Murdock already had his black leather-gloved hand out, waiting. Jake handed him the photograph of Ryan. “He went up to Oregon, Mr. Murdock. A town called Edrington.”

Mr. Murdock didn’t reply. He pulled his arm back inside the car and the tinted window rose back up silently.

Jake and Lita glanced at each other and then got back into the car. Jake started the car and then punched in the words Edrington, Oregon into the GPS on his cell phone.

2.

Ryan and Amber found a spot for their picnic; they were in a meadow with the woods all around them and the mountains in the distance. They sat on a checkered blanket that Ryan had spread out on the tall grass. The picnic basket was right at the edge of the blanket, holding a corner of it down. Some of the cheeses and meats were scattered around the basket. The neck of the half-empty bottle of wine stuck up out of the top of the basket. Ryan and Amber took up the other half of the blanket.

Ryan sat with his back against a large rock, and Amber lay down on the blanket with her head in his lap. The day was warm, not too chilly yet, and the sky was mostly clear of clouds for once.

It was a perfect day, she thought.

“It’s beautiful here,” Ryan said.

Amber looked up at Ryan. “I told you it would be.”

She smiled up at him as he looked around at the rolling hills and meadows and the trees in the distance. But there was something strange about his look, she thought. She couldn’t describe his expression, like something about this place was puzzling him, or maybe unnerving him.

As she studied his face and the strange look in his eyes, it occurred to her that she didn’t really know much about this man. She knew his name, she knew that he worked with Buddy at the construction site north of town, and she knew that he was new in town – but she didn’t know anything else about him.

Well, it was time to find out.

“You know everything about me now,” Amber said as she looked up at him, “but you never talk about yourself.”

“Not much to tell,” Ryan answered without looking at her.

“I don’t know anything about you. I don’t know where you’re from. What you used to do for a living. Nothing.”

Ryan still wouldn’t answer her or look at her – he still had that strange look in his eyes that was starting to give her the creeps. He seemed like he was getting suddenly agitated. Was it because she was asking him questions about his life? No, she thought, it was this place that was making him nervous, this meadow, these woods all around them. She didn’t know why she was so sure about that, but she was.

Amber sat up and stared at him, and her smile faltered. “I’m serious, Ryan.”

Ryan finally looked at her, but he still said nothing.

“Where are you from?” she asked him, her voice a little more stern now.

Ryan still wouldn’t answer her.

“Ryan,” she said. “Why won’t you tell me anything?”

3.

Ryan shook his head as Amber kept on asking her questions. He felt like he needed to tell someone about his missing memory, he needed to trust someone. Why not Amber? He took a deep breath and then exhaled slowly.

“You probably aren’t going to believe me,” he said as he looked at her.

She stared at him, and he could see that she was bracing herself for some terrible revelation.

“I can’t remember anything about my past.”

Amber stared at him for a moment, confused. “What? What do you mean?”

“It’s hard to explain.”

Ryan stood up and walked away from the blanket. He stared at the trees in the distance. There was something about this place, not just this meadow, but these trees, all of these woods around them. There was something he was beginning to remember, something murky in the shadows beginning to swim up to the surface of his memories. And he could almost make it out now. He was remembering some kind of place in the woods off of Winter Road.

A house? A shack?

That’s it, he thought. The same one from his dreams.

“Ryan, what’s wrong?” Amber asked as she watched him.

Ryan hurried back to the blanket and repacked the food into the picnic basket. He needed to hurry, he was afraid the memory might slip away if he didn’t act on it right now.

“What’s wrong?” Amber asked again.

He picked up the picnic basket and looked at her. “I think I remember something. Let’s go.”

4.

Something was wrong, Carol thought as she kneeled on the rug in her den – the rug that covered a secret. She didn’t hear any more dripping sounds in the room as she prayed, and she didn’t feel the presence in the room with her, but she could feel a crushing weight of despair all over her. This wasn’t working out the way it was supposed to – something had gone terribly wrong.

She got up and blew out the candles. She left the den and went a few steps down the hall to her bedroom. She got her light jacket out of her closet and shrugged into it. She caught a glimpse of her husband’s face in the framed photo next to her bed. A moment of loss caused her heart to ache. She turned away from the photo and left her bedroom.

She hadn’t seen Victor and Tom all morning – probably sleeping the day away as usual. She loved those two to death, but they could also annoy her sometimes.

Carol left her house and walked across her flagstone steps to the driveway. She got in her car and started it.

She needed to go and see him. She needed some answers.

5.

Carol pulled up in the driveway and turned off her car. She got out and walked up to the front porch of the neat and tidy house. His car was in the driveway so she knew he was at home. She knocked on the door and waited.

A moment later, Walter answered the door. He seemed a little surprised to see her, but he covered it up quickly with a warm smile. “Carol. What a surprise.”

Walter invited her in. “I was just making a pot of tea.”

“That would be lovely,” Carol said and gave him her razor blade smile.

“Come sit down in the dining room,” Walter said and then he hurried into his kitchen where a tea kettle was whistling away.

Carol sat down at the dining room table. The house was tastefully decorated, but now Carol noticed subtle clues in the decor that others might miss – a painting on the wall with strange squiggly symbols in it if you looked closely, a gargoyle head on top of a bookcase built into the corner of the dining room. In that bookcase were books on strange occult subjects squeezed in between other books.

Walter, who seemed a little too feminine to Carol, came back with a silver tray in his hands. He was a thin man, and he was as neat and tidy as his house. On the tray were a ceramic teapot, two cups, and some cookies. It was almost like he had expected company and had already begun preparing the tea.

That made Carol slightly nervous.

Walter, and the things he claimed to know, made her nervous.

He sat down and poured a cup of tea for each of them. “I hope you like green tea,” he said. “It’s very healthy. Helps you live a long life.”

Carol nodded. “Thank you.”

“Try a cookie,” he offered.

Carol didn’t make a move for the cookies and she only took one sip of her tea. She hadn’t come here for tea and cookies. She needed answers from Walter. And she suspected that he knew why she was here.

“Walter,” Carol said. “I did everything you told me to. I followed all of your instructions to the letter. But it isn’t working.” Carol thought for a moment. That wasn’t exactly true, was it? She rephrased her sentence. “I mean, it’s not working the way it’s supposed to.”

Walter sipped his tea and smiled at her. It was a fake smile, and his light eyes bored into hers. It almost seemed like he was amused by all of this, like a child might be amused by torturing a bug on the sidewalk. He didn’t answer her.

“I don’t know what to do now,” she said and hated the miserable sound of her voice.

“It’s what you asked for,” Walter finally said.

“Is it him?” Carol asked. It was the question she had really wanted to ask. She had believed at first that it was him, but now she wasn’t so sure, and she needed to know the truth now. “I’m not sure if it’s him,” she added.

“You need to be patient,” Walter said.

“I’m afraid I’ve made a mistake,” Carol finally spit the words out. She hated the sound of her voice, the hitch in it like she was on the verge of helpless tears. “I’m afraid I’ve done something really terrible.”

She didn’t see any mercy in Walter’s eyes.

He didn’t say anything for a long moment and then he sipped more of his tea.

“Don’t like the tea?” he asked.

Fuck your tea, she wanted to say even though she rarely cursed. But she smiled and nodded. “No, it’s wonderful.”

They were silent for a moment.

“Anything else?” Walter asked.

“Something came for him the other day. It was a suitcase.”

Walter just nodded, but Carol could see the small smile still on his face, a smug smile like he knew everything, like he knew every secret, but he wasn’t going to reveal anything to her.

“I think I need to see what’s inside that suitcase,” Carol told Walter.

“So look inside,” he said.

“I don’t have the key.”

“You’ve had the key all along. Look in a place close to your heart, a place that’s close to your memories of your husband.”

Carol nodded. She would look for the key when she got home. She took another sip of her tea and tried to think of a reason to excuse herself. She suddenly wanted to be out of Walter’s house very badly.

She shouldn’t have done what she did, she knew that now. But it was too far along and she didn’t know how to stop it. She didn’t know what to do. And she could tell now that Walter wasn’t going to help her.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

1.

Ryan sped down the country road that twisted through the tall evergreen trees. He drove in silence; his hands gripped the steering wheel.

Amber watched him. “Where are you going?”

Ryan didn’t answer and Amber could feel a knot of fear gnawing at her.

“What is it that you remember?”

Ryan still didn’t say anything.

“Ryan!” she snapped. “Where are you going?”

“I don’t know,” Ryan said in a low voice. “But I’m remembering something. I remember this road we’re on. I remember these woods. There’s something … something I need to see here.”

They drove down Winter Road and turned onto an even narrower road that cut through the woods, it was more like a back road. Ryan’s car bumped along the uneven road as the trees seemed to crowd in around them even more.

Amber was beyond nervous now and heading right towards outright fear. She liked Ryan, but she didn’t really know him as much as she thought she did – and today she realized that she didn’t really know anything about him at all.

Except that he couldn’t remember his past.

“I think I should go home,” Amber said. She never would’ve dreamed she would ever say that, she never thought she would rather be back at home with her psycho brother. But what if she was with a worse psycho right now?

She watched Ryan drive; he seemed to be watching the trees whip by, like he was studying them.

Like he was looking for something.

She wanted to tell him again that she’d like to go home, but she decided to stay quiet and just watch him. She knew that the big knife was still in the picnic basket if she needed it.

And thinking of the big knife made her wonder why he’d brought such an instrument on a picnic. To cut cheese with? Seemed like overkill to her. Maybe he had other intentions for the kitchen knife that was, if she was being honest with herself, more like a butcher knife. And out here in these woods, she couldn’t help but think of the serial killer that had terrorized Edrington ten years ago.

Ryan hit the brakes and Amber had to catch herself with her hands so she wouldn’t dive head-first into the dashboard – she still wasn’t wearing her seatbelt, and she wasn’t going to put it on now in case she needed to make a mad dash for the picnic basket.

He stared out the driver’s side window at the dark woods for a moment while the car’s motor rumbled.

Then he shifted into reverse and backed up a few car lengths, and she could see what he was looking at now. It was a trail that led into the woods; if you were speeding by you would never see it. There were two small wooden posts on each side of the beginning of the trail, nearly hidden by the brush and ferns, and strung between the wooden posts was a chain with a rusty sign dangling from it that read: No Trespassing.

Ryan put the car in drive and pulled off to the side of the road. He shut the car off and pulled the keys out of the ignition and got out. He didn’t even look at Amber; it was like he was mesmerized by the trail in the woods and all of his attention was focused on it.

Amber got out of the car. She glanced at the backseat and the picnic basket with the knife inside. She hoped the back doors were unlocked, but she didn’t dare try to open the door right now. She walked around to the back of the car and watched Ryan as he stared at the entrance to the trail.

“Ryan, you’re not thinking of going in there, are you?”

2.

Ryan stared at the trail that led into the woods. He could feel the memories wanting to come back to him now, and he was trying to hold them back, but it was like trying to hold back a bursting dam.

There’s something back there, his mind whispered. Something in those woods.

And you know what it is, his mind whispered to him.

He took a step closer to the dark woods, and then he heard Amber’s voice.

“Ryan, you’re not thinking of going in there, are you?”

Ryan didn’t answer her question. Instead, he asked her a question of his own. “There’s something back there in those woods, isn’t there?”

Amber stood motionless near the back of Ryan’s car – she wanted to be close to the car for some reason, and as far away from these woods as she could get.

“There’s some kind of … of house back there; more like a shack,” he added, still staring at the No Trespassing sign and the trail that led into the dark woods. “It’s a bad place,” he whispered.

“How do you know that?” he heard Amber whisper.

Her words broke his momentary hypnosis. He turned and looked at her and for the first time he saw how frightened she was. He watched her back up a step as he stared at her.

“There’s no way you could know that unless you’ve been here before, been in this town,” she said.

Ryan took a step towards Amber. “I can’t remember. Maybe I’ve been in this town before. I don’t know how I know, but I’m sure there’s a shack down this trail in these woods.” He glanced back at the trail into the woods and then turned back to Amber and shook his head no. “But I don’t want to go in the woods and see it,” he said, finally answering her earlier question.

He took a few more steps towards her and he could see that she was practically shaking with fear; she looked like a frightened deer ready to bolt. “I’m sorry,” he told her. “I didn’t mean to scare you. I … just … it’s just that you wanted to know about me, and there’s nothing to tell you. I can’t remember anything. I woke up in a motel room a few days ago and all I had was a handwritten note with Carol’s address on it. I came to this town, hoping it would jog my memories, but it hasn’t. Carol didn’t seem to recognize me, but I rented a room there because she must have something to do with my past or I wouldn’t have her address written down in my wallet.”

Amber just stood there staring at Ryan, watching him like someone might watch a wild animal.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered and stood right in front of her. “I don’t want you to be scared of me. I don’t want to be like your brother.” He looked into her eyes. “I just need some help.” He wanted to touch her, try and reassure her, but he was afraid he’d frightened her too much already. He nodded at his car. “I’m sorry. I’ll take you home now.”

3.

They drove out of the woods and headed back into town. Amber hadn’t said much on the way back from the woods, and he hadn’t said much, either. What could he say? He had scared the hell out of her, and he couldn’t blame her if she never wanted to see him again. When they got back to her house, he expected that she would bolt out of his car and run screaming to her brother.

Amber stared out the passenger window at the houses streaming by outside as they drove through town. She didn’t seem so scared now that they were out of the woods and back in town.

“I’m sorry, Amber,” Ryan finally said as he stopped at a traffic light. “I know you think I’m crazy. I don’t blame you.”

Amber turned and stared at Ryan. She surprised him by lunging at him and grabbing on to him. She kissed his lips fiercely, clinging to him for a moment. He could feel her body shaking underneath his arms. She backed away after their intense kiss and stared at him.

“I don’t think you’re crazy,” she said in a low voice. “I think you can’t remember your past and it’s making you feel like you’re crazy. I think you need some help. And I want to help you.”

Ryan felt a pang of compassion surge through his body; it was as much of an electric feeling as her sudden kiss had just been.

A car honked its horn from behind them.

Ryan looked up and saw that the traffic light was green. He gunned the engine and drove through the light. He looked at Amber, searched her eyes to make sure that she was telling the truth. She looked right back at him. “But I want you to tell me everything you remember so far,” she said.

And Ryan told her.

He told her again how he’d woken up in the motel room with no memory of his past. But he left out a few details – the bullet hole scars on his chest, the duffel bag full of money, his certainty that someone was following him. But he told her about the piece of paper that was in his wallet with Carol’s address scrawled on it.

“I know Carol has something to do with this,” Ryan told Amber. “I just don’t know what it is. There has to be a reason that I had her address written down. I must’ve known her somehow. But I can’t remember her or anything about her. And at first she didn’t seem to know me or recognize me. But then she said some strange things. It was like she knew me, like she knew things that I liked, like my favorite foods and drinks, things I couldn’t even remember about myself.”

“I don’t know who Carol is,” Amber said. “Sorry, wrong side of town for me.”

Ryan told her more as he drove. He told her a little about his dreams, about the tortured, red-haired man who visited him in his nightmares and wanted to show him things.

“Maybe that man is a figment of your imagination,” Amber offered. “Someone your mind made up to try and show you things, to get you closer to your memories. Maybe you should follow him and see what he wants to show you.”

Ryan nodded. That sounded like good advice. But he couldn’t explain to her the fear and dread he felt when he was near that person. He was afraid of what the red-haired man wanted to show him.

“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.

CHAPTER TWELVE

1.

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!

2.

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?

3.

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.

4.

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.

5.

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.

6.

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.

But she had been too afraid at the time.

Amber was still conflicted. She wanted to help Ryan, but she wondered what he knew about the shack in the woods? If he still remembered the shack, if he still thought it was there, then his memories must be from ten years ago. But he was around her age, early twenties, and that would have made him between ten and thirteen years old when the murders occurred. But that would mean that Ryan used to live in Edrington when he was a kid.

But she didn’t remember him. And no one else that she knew of so far seemed to recognize him.

But she still wanted to try and help him in any way she could.

Maybe there was a way to find out when Ryan lived here in town.

“Sweetie?”

The voice snapped her out of her daydream. It was Petey, a regular customer. He held up his empty shot glass.

Amber smiled and got him another shot of Wild Turkey.

She decided that she was going to tell Ryan everything she knew about the shack and the murders, which wasn’t much. But maybe she could find out some more information for him. She could start with the internet, then maybe ask some of the older folks what they remembered. There were still so many unanswered questions about the killer and those murders, so many mysteries that were never solved.

She smiled and she felt better.

7.

Carol parked her car and turned off the ignition. She got out of the car and walked for a while along the grass. And then she stopped and stared down at the grass for a long moment.

She had her answer now.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

1.

Ryan stayed awake late into the night. He’d eaten lasagna with Carol earlier (Victor and Tom waited to eat until Ryan was out of the kitchen, of course), but Carol seemed very distracted and nervous. She didn’t talk much as they ate dinner together; she didn’t even ask him why he had quit working for Buddy.

He finished his plate off, downed his glass of orange juice, and thanked her for the delicious meal.

Then he went up to his room. He changed into his sweat pants and sprawled out on his bed, leaving the bathroom light on. He watched TV for a while, fighting sleep. His mind spun as he thought about things. He hadn’t gotten very far in his search for the answers in this town. There was something about Carol, some reason he needed to be here. There was something about the brown suitcase underneath his bed with the locks on it. He knew at some point he was going to have to open it, even if he needed to cut it open. Why was he putting off opening the suitcase if the answers might be in there right underneath him? What was he so afraid of?

And the dream-man. Why was he so afraid to see what he wanted to show him? Did it have something to do with the suitcase? Something to do with the straight razor with the word carved into it that he hadn’t read? Something to do with Carol?

Ryan rolled over and looked at the bedroom window. He could close the curtain, but it was flimsy and he would still be able to see the dark window through the sheer curtain. He had thought of hanging his blanket over the window, but as frightened as he was of the window, he thought he’d be more afraid if it was covered, more afraid if he couldn’t see the red-haired man coming.

Ryan lay awake for a few more hours as his thoughts began to scramble, becoming hard to understand, beginning to mix in with the first fingers of his dreams that reached out to envelop him.

And for once, he didn’t fight it.

He sank down into the darkness of sleep, down into the …

2.

… pitch black of his nightmare. But there in the darkness was that familiar reddish glow in the distance, and in that glow he could see the wooden shack with its sagging roof and the tree branches that hung over it, the branches scratching at the shingles and the moldy wood siding.

Scratching.

And he heard the familiar dripping sound in the darkness. The red-haired man, his nightmare escort, was close by, standing somewhere in the gloom.

And suddenly Ryan was right beside the shack, standing in front of the same window as before with its cracked panes and the cobwebs in the corners.

“You need to go inside,” the Nightmare Man whispered from somewhere nearby.

Ryan didn’t turn to look at him.

He wanted to run. He wanted to bolt into the next dream where he was in the churning water trying to reach the surface.

But he needed to see what was inside the shack. He needed to see the answers no matter how frightened he was.

And then he was inside the shack.

The shack only had one room. The walls were wood paneling, the ceiling was vaulted and the rough trusses of the roof were exposed. There were no lights overhead, no wires, no electricity. The room he stood in was large and dark. It sounded like bugs, and maybe even rats, skittered in the shadows that clung to the corners of the room.

The middle of the room was lit up, yet Ryan couldn’t see where the light was coming from, it was just “there” like it is in dreams sometimes.

The light shined down on a large, homemade wooden table where a naked man was strapped down. The only thing covering the man was a white cloth draped over his face. Splotches of bright red blood stained the white cloth.

The man’s ankles, knees, chest, arms, and neck were strapped down to the table with leather straps (they reminded Ryan of the straps on the brown suitcase under his bed). The man on the table was completely immobile. Even his head was held motionless between two pieces of wood on each side of his head, with smaller leather straps underneath his chin and strapped over his head. His hands were held down to the table by some kind of wooden box on each of his wrists, the boxes were attached to the table and each one had wooden slots where the ends of the man’s fingers poked out – each finger totally immobile and exposed.

Ryan looked back at the man’s head trapped in the wooden box with the blood-stained white cloth over his face. The man wasn’t moving – he couldn’t move, but his chest was heaving and the white cloth was fluttering up and down from each quick breath the man took.

Ryan shook his head no. His own breathing was so heavy and quick, he was afraid he was going to pass out. He could feel his heart jack-hammering in his chest. It was like he was really here in this shack at this moment, like all of this was real.

“This is only a dream,” Ryan whispered as he stared at the poor man strapped down to the table.

“It’s no dream, Cutter,” the red-haired man whispered from behind him.

Ryan spun around and stared at the red-haired man. The man’s eyes were cold, his mutilated grin wide, his scars bunched up on his cheeks from his smile.

The Nightmare Man walked past Ryan and over to the table. He stood beside the table and now Ryan could see that there was a metal cart next to the table, a cart he hadn’t noticed before. On top of the cart was an assortment of tools: hammers, knives, pliers, clamps, razors, and other instruments of torture.

The man picked up a ball-peen hammer; he stared at the hammer with an insane glee in his ice-blue eyes.

Ryan looked back at the man on the table. The man tried his best to struggle against his bonds, but it was hopeless – the leather straps were so tight that they dug deep into the man’s flesh. He groaned underneath the white cloth.

The red-haired nightmare man watched Ryan. “I see you’ve noticed the boxes on his hands.”

Ryan didn’t answer.

“They are clever little devices,” the red-haired man continued. “They are constructed to leave the ends of the fingers exposed and helpless, unable to move.”

The Nightmare Man took a step closer to the table, the hammer still clutched in his ruined hand. “The object is to smash the fingertips over and over again.”

He brought the hammer down on one of the man’s fingertips and smashed it flat, a spray of blood shot out of the fingertip and stained the wood table.

The man screamed from underneath the white cloth. He tried to struggle, but he couldn’t move his body or his head at all. His scream was muffled like the leather chin-strap was clamping his jaw shut.

“You smash the fingers again and again,” the red-haired man continued, “until the fingernails are gone, until the bones are mush, until nerve endings are exposed.” He brought the hammer down on the same smashed finger and the man screamed again.

The red-haired monstrosity looked at Ryan and walked towards him with the bloody hammer gripped in his ruined hand. Ryan noticed that the red-haired man’s fingers looked much like the man on the table’s smashed finger.

“Then you wait a few days,” the red-haired man said as he took another step towards Ryan. “You wait until the wounds in the fingertips become infected, where just the slightest pinprick is excruciating. And then …”

The red-haired man turned and brought the hammer back down on the same smashed finger. “You start all over again!” he shouted into the small room. He was nearly laughing. “The fingers become useless after a while. Even if this poor soul could escape, his hands would be useless.”

The man screamed and sobbed underneath the white cloth.

The red-haired man moved quickly down to the end of the table and stared at the man’s naked feet.

“And the fingers are only the beginning. We haven’t even begun with the feet, yet.”

Ryan felt sick. He was sure he was going to puke – he couldn’t seem to hold any food down lately. “I can’t look,” Ryan whispered. “I want to leave.”

The red-haired nightmare man was suddenly right in front of Ryan’s face, he grabbed Ryan’s shirt with his scarred hands, his ruined face was only inches away from Ryan’s face.

“You can’t leave yet, Cutter,” the red-haired man said. “Don’t you want to see who’s under the cloth?”

Ryan shook his head no. “I can’t be here,” he muttered.

The red-haired man’s eyes widened in alarm. “No! You’re not leaving this time! You’re not -”

Suddenly, Ryan was swimming in the dark churning waters. He was so close to the surface now.

He broke through the surface and tried to stare up at the sky with the deep black holes where his eyes used to be. But he could feel the warmth.

Oh God, he could feel the warmth of the sun on his face!

As before, Ryan was both in his body and outside of his body. He could see his eyeless face looking up at the blue sky and the sun; he could see the insane smile on his face.

And he saw that he was in a stream, a wide stream, it was too small to be called a river. And in the distance was a pickup truck, its rear end sticking up out of the water like it had crashed into the stream. And floating in the water were the packs of money wrapped in plastic from his duffel bag.

3.

Ryan jumped awake from his dream and fought for his breath for a moment. He looked at the bedroom window and saw that it was almost morning; the sky beyond the tree branches was a dark blue now instead of inky black.

He was alive.

He was free of the dream. Free from the stream. Free from the shack.

But only free for a moment.

He had gotten his horrible answers in the dream.

Ryan got out of bed and ran to the bathroom, he could feel his stomach churning just like it had in his dream – he had to puke. He made it to the toilet just in time. He retched for a moment, and then threw up into the bowl. He flushed the waste down with a trembling hand, and then he looked into the bathroom mirror. He couldn’t hold food down anymore. Was he sick?

But he knew what was happening now. He saw the answer right in the mirror. How had he missed it this whole time?

“Oh God,” he whispered. “This can’t be real.”

But it was real and he knew what he needed to do now.

4.

The big orange cat bolted from the living room as Ryan hurried towards the front door. But Ryan stopped in his tracks when Carol spoke to him from the dark hallway.

“You okay, Ryan?”

Ryan turned and stared at her. She looked frightened as she stood in the hallway that led to her den and her bedroom.

He thought about asking her if she’d been in his room yesterday. He thought of asking her if she’d tried to open his suitcase. Had she seen what was inside?

But he shook his head no – if she’d seen what was inside the suitcase, then she would be running away and screaming.

He managed a fake smile for her. “I’m not feeling too great.”

Carol nodded quickly. “I was just concerned, that’s all.”

“Thank you,” he said, but he was impatient, ready to bolt out the front door.

“Where are you going?” she asked.

“I … I have something I need to do.”

“There’s a big storm coming tonight. Will you be back by tonight?”

“Sure,” he said, yet he didn’t know if that was true. He didn’t know what was going to happen after today.

He turned and left her house without another word to her.

5.

Carol watched Ryan leave. She stared at the front door for a moment and she finally exhaled a long breath – it felt like she’d been holding her breath the whole time. And now her legs felt like jelly and she was afraid she might collapse. She held onto the wall for support until a wave of vertigo passed.

You’re not him, her mind whispered. She knew that for sure now after what she’d seen in that suitcase.

Ryan is not him.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

1.

Ryan got in his car and started it. He shifted into reverse and stomped the gas pedal with his foot. The back tires spun for a moment in the gravel, and then found traction. He backed up down the long driveway and out into the street. He slammed the shifter in drive and sped away.

He drove through town for an hour as the morning sun rose and lightened the world. Birds began to sing, commuters drove to work, mail carriers started their routes, school kids got ready to go to school. The world seemed like it was normal and safe, but it wasn’t, Ryan knew that.

He was in trouble and he needed help.

As he drove on a side road that was off of the main drag, he saw a large church only a block away.

Ryan parked his car in front of the church and killed the engine. He jumped out of his car and practically ran up the wide walkway that cut right through the landscaped lawn and shrubbery. He stood in front of the massive double doors that led inside the sanctuary.

Was this a sanctuary for him?

He tried the doors – they were unlocked. He pushed his way inside the holy place.

Inside, the church was a vast hall. Two wide rows of pews led down to a podium on a stage in the distance. Off to the right, there was a section on the stage for a choir. A large cross with the figure of Jesus hung on the wall right below a massive stained glass window. The morning sun shined through the stained glass window, creating different colored lights that flooded the stage, the podium, and the pews below.

It’s beautiful, Ryan thought. So beautiful in here.

But he was reluctant to enter the church any further.

Why?

You know why, his mind whispered. And he could’ve sworn he heard that same voice snickering – and it didn’t even seem like his own voice in his mind anymore, it sounded more like the red-haired man’s voice now.

Ryan made himself enter this holy place. He made himself walk past each row of pews. He was mesmerized by the cross and the figure of Jesus with the beautiful lights shining down on them from the stained glass windows.

“Can I help you?”

The voice made Ryan jump. He turned and saw a young reverend standing in a doorway that led off to other rooms from this main sanctuary.

Ryan hurried down to the front of the pews and walked past the stage and podium on his way to the young revered who looked a little nervous.

“You’re a little early for services, friend,” the reverend said and offered a practiced chuckle at the end of his sentence to try and ease the tension.

Ryan stopped walking towards the reverend; he could tell he was making him nervous. “I need help.”

“What’s wrong?” the reverend asked, but his eyes darted around like he might be looking for some help for himself. Or an escape route.

“I … I can’t tell what’s real and what’s not real anymore,” Ryan said, his voice beginning to choke up.

“Slow down, son,” the young reverend said, and he held out a placating hand to Ryan. “Just take it easy.”

Ryan took a deep breath and tried to collect himself. “I woke up a few days ago in a motel room and there was this duffel bag full of money. I don’t know where I got it. I don’t remember anything before that. I just knew that I needed to get here to this town. I knew that there were answers here for me about my past.”

The young reverend tried a comforting smile on Ryan, but he still looked like he might bolt at any second if things got too far out of control.

“I don’t know how I can help you,” the reverend said in a gentle voice. “Maybe your problem is for someone different. A doctor, maybe. Or the police.”

Ryan took a step closer to the young man. “You don’t understand. I need help. There’s someone after me. He comes to me in my dreams. He’s … he’s been tortured and he shows me things – things I don’t want to see.”

“Just calm down, sir.” The young reverend’s voice had gotten louder and sterner.

“I don’t know who I am,” Ryan growled. “I don’t know who I was, what I’ve done.”

Ryan took another step closer to the young reverend.

The reverend took a step back, closer to the doorway he’d just come out of.

And from that same doorway an older reverend exploded out from the shadows. He was in his mid-sixties, tall and solid, and his eyes burned with fire. His face was set; his mouth was a grim line. He carried a worn bible in one of his large hands. “You stop right there!” the old reverend shouted at Ryan.

Ryan was caught off guard. He stared at the two men in their black coats and white collars. “You don’t understand …”

“I understand perfectly what you are and what you’ve brought into this house of God!” the older reverend shouted. “You’re not welcome here!” He held his bible out in front of him like a weapon, like a priest from the movies trying to exorcise a demon.

“Leave!!” the older reverend yelled as he took another step forward. The younger reverend moved out of the old man’s way. There was fear in the old man’s eyes, just like the younger reverend’s eyes, but there was also anger in those eyes, a holy fury. “Leave this instant!”

Ryan took a few steps back. He could feel helpless tears spilling out of his eyes. “I just want some help.”

The older reverend’s eyes narrowed, but they never left Ryan for an instant. “There’s no help for you now,” he growled.

The words hit Ryan like a punch to his gut.

He turned and ran out of the church. He ran back to his car. The morning was brighter and the streets were busier as he got into his car.

Ryan needed some help – he only knew of one place he could go.

2.

Carol sat in her kitchen. She didn’t have any lights on and there was no breakfast cooking on the stove. The only thing she’d done was make a pot of coffee. She sipped her coffee and stared at the kitchen as the day brightened outside.

She had been sitting in the kitchen for a long time.

Victor entered the kitchen and he looked at Carol, but he didn’t say anything to her. He walked over to the coffee machine and poured himself a cup of coffee. He dumped some cream in and a spoonful of sugar. He was supposed to cut down on coffee and sugar, but he had a feeling he might need a little extra boost this morning.

He sat down at the small table across from Carol. He sipped his coffee and looked at her.

Carol finally looked at him. “What is it, Victor?”

“You know what it is.”

“I’m really not in the mood for games this morning.”

“I saw you go into his room yesterday.”

Carol wasn’t surprised. She knew Victor had a habit of peeking out through his keyhole in the door or even through the crack when the door was ajar.

Victor’s expression softened a little. “What were you doing in there? You know you’re not supposed to go into a tenant’s room.”

“I know. I never go in your room, or Tom’s room. Never.”

“I know that, Carol. I would never accuse you.” Victor sipped his coffee, choosing his words carefully. “But Ryan is different, isn’t he?”

Carol didn’t say yes, but she didn’t have to.

“What’s wrong with him?” Victor said, and his eyes were suddenly alive with excitement. “Does he have a criminal past? You find drugs?”

Carol shook her head no; she wished it was something so simple. She looked at him and she couldn’t hide it from him any longer.

“Worse than that?” Victor asked, and he didn’t look so excited anymore.

Carol nodded.

“You want to talk about it?” Victor said and he reached out and touched her hand gently.

“Not here,” Carol said. “Let’s go take a walk.”

3.

Ryan pulled up in front of Amber’s house, he nearly screeched to a stop. He slammed the shifter into park and shut off the engine. He jumped out of his car and ran up the cracked walkway to Amber’s front door.

He knew it was still early, but he didn’t care. He pounded on the door.

“Amber!” he yelled. “It’s me, Ryan! I need to talk to you!”

Moments later Gary answered the door, he wore a pair of baggy shorts and a stained T-shirt. The little bit of hair he had left was frizzy from sleep. He rubbed at his eyes, but he still gave Ryan his shark-smile. “Well, well. Look who it is, Romeo coming to pick up his sweet, innocent Juliet.”

Ryan stared at Gary with his cold blue eyes. He spoke through gritted teeth. “Look, motherfucker, I don’t have time for your bullshit right now.”

Gary took a step back from the doorway, and for a moment Ryan saw true fear in those eyes.

Behind Gary, Amber materialized out of the gloom. She had thrown on a robe over her oversized T-shirt and silky pajama bottoms; her hair looked messy, but she didn’t seem to care. She seemed worried.

“Ryan,” she said. “What’s wrong? Are you okay?”

Ryan looked past Gary like he wasn’t even there. “Remember when you said you would help me in any way you could?”

Amber nodded. “Give me five minutes to get dressed.”

Gary turned and watched her walk away. “Where the fuck do you think you’re going?”

“Anywhere she wants to,” Ryan growled at him and stepped into the house.

Gary backed up a few steps, nearly tripping over his own feet. “Hey, man. What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”

Ryan closed the door and didn’t say a word – he just stared at Gary.

Gary shook his head and tried to muster up his tough act, but Ryan wasn’t fooled, he could see the fear in the big man’s eyes. “I’m going back to my room,” Gary said. “And you’d better be gone when I get back out.”

Ryan just stared at Gary.

Gary walked out of the living room to the hallway. “Both of you,” he said over his shoulder.

4.

Less than ten minutes later Ryan and Amber were driving away from her house.

“Where are we going?” Amber asked.

“The woods,” he said as he drove.

Amber didn’t say anything.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I need to see that shack in the woods.” He glanced at her. “You don’t have to go if you don’t want to.”

“No,” she told him. “I want to.” She wanted to tell him that the shack wasn’t there anymore, that it had been torn down after the murders. But then she thought maybe it would be better for him to see for himself.

5.

Ryan parked his car on the side of the road by the trail that led into the dark woods. He got out and stuffed his keys into his pants pocket. Amber got out and looked around at the tall trees surrounding them.

“You sure you want to go with me?” Ryan asked her one more time. “You can stay here if you want to.”

She shook her head no. “I’ll try to help you out however I can. I’m no expert about the murders, but I’ll try.”

Ryan smiled for the first time all morning. He felt like hugging her and kissing her. Holding her. It would make him feel so much better. But he had to get this done – after last night’s dream there was no putting it off any longer. He had to see the shack. He had to see if it triggered his memories.

They walked to the trail and stepped easily over the sagging No Trespassing sign that was rusty at the edges. They started their trek into the woods.

The woods got darker and the trees closer together the farther they ventured in, and the trail grew narrower and more overgrown with brush and ferns. It was becoming difficult to tell where the trail continued in some places, but Ryan pushed on, almost like he could tell where the trail went.

From memory.

Fifteen minutes later they could see the clearing.

And they could see the shack.

Amber stopped dead in her tracks and stared. She couldn’t believe it – the shack was still here. She’d always been told that it had been torn down.

Ryan hurried into the clearing and stared at the shack. It looked just like the shack from his dreams. It was the same place, he knew it. He caught his breath, and then he had to force himself to breathe.

“It’s the same place,” Ryan whispered into the forest air.

Amber caught up to him. “What do you mean?”

“It’s the same place from my dream,” he turned and stared at her with wide, insane eyes. “I followed the tortured man in my dreams last night and this is where he took me.”

Amber felt a chill run up and down her body on tiny spider legs, but she walked with Ryan to the sagging front steps that led up to a simple door.

Ryan walked over to a window at the side of the shack – the same window he’d stood next to in his dream, the same cobwebs and peeling paint, the same cracked window panes. He walked back around to the front and climbed the steps up to the front door. The rotting wood of the steps sagged with each of his steps, but each step held his weight. He tried the door handle, but it was locked. Or maybe the door was stuck.

“This isn’t supposed to be here,” Amber said in a low voice. “It was supposed to have been torn down ten years ago.”

Ryan looked at Amber. “But it’s here.”

“I know, but …” Amber shook her head in confusion. Maybe it had been a rumor that the shack was torn down. Maybe she hadn’t remembered correctly. But that didn’t seem right, she was sure that it had been torn down.

“The killer lived here?” Ryan asked, snapping Amber’s attention back to him.

“I don’t think he lived here,” Amber said. “I think he just used this place to torture and kill people. I don’t really know. Sorry.” But she couldn’t really trust her memory anymore now that she was standing on the sagging front step of this shack that wasn’t supposed to be here anymore.

Ryan didn’t say anything. He turned back to the door and kicked at it. It only took one more kick to smash the door open.

He entered the shack and the inside was the same as it was in his dream – one large room with paneled walls and exposed roof trusses. But there was no homemade wooden table to torture people with. He stared down at the floor and he swore he could still see dark bloodstains ingrained in the wood floorboards. He could feel Amber standing slightly behind him.

The same place the red-haired man in my dreams stood, his mind whispered to him.

“What was the killer’s name?” Ryan asked – it was the question he really wanted to ask, but he was afraid he already knew the answer.

“I don’t know what his real name was,” she told him. “I know that the news called him Cutter.”

6.

Carol and Victor strolled down the sidewalk along Fourth Street. Her house was a few blocks behind them now. They were both walking slowly, at a leisurely pace. This was the route that Carol walked a few times a week. She liked to walk at this time in the morning because the kids were in school, people were at work, and the early morning joggers were already done for the day. It was peaceful this time of day and she usually had the wide sidewalks to herself.

“There’s a reason I went into Ryan’s room,” Carol told Victor as they walked.

“You know you can’t just go into his room like that,” Victor said. “I know it’s your house, but he’s still a tenant. If you suspect something, then you need to call the police.”

Carol ignored Victor’s lecture.

Victor watched her for a moment while they walked. “Just tell me what it is. I can help you.”

They stopped walking and Victor took Carol’s hands into his.

She looked away as tears spilled out of her eyes.

“Carol,” Victor begged, really concerned now. “Just tell me. You know you can trust me with anything in the world.”

Carol nodded and pulled her hands out of Victor’s hands so she could wipe at her tears.

“What is it? Did Ryan threaten you?” Victor stared at her with fierce eyes.

Carol shook her head no and glanced away, making sure no one else was near them – but the sidewalks were still empty.

“No matter what it is,” Victor said, “I’ll try to help in any way I can.”

Carol looked at Victor and she smiled – it was a real smile this time, not her usual razor-thin slash. She appreciated his help. And maybe he could help her.

“I … I just feel like I’m going crazy sometimes,” she finally whispered.

Victor hugged Carol and she let him hold her for a minute, and then she pulled away.

“I know,” he told her. “We all feel like that sometimes.”

“No, I don’t think you’ve ever felt like this, like I do right now.”

Carol turned and started walking back the way they had come, back to her house.

“What do you mean?” Victor said as he fell in step beside her.

“Do you believe they can ever come back?” she asked him. “Do you believe that they can be brought back somehow?”

“Who?” Victor asked.

“The dead,” she answered.

Victor stopped and stared at Carol. “Carol,” he said in a low tone, “what are you talking about?”

She stopped and stared at him. “I’ve done something terrible. I want to show you something in the den.”

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

1.

Ryan and Amber were back in his car, speeding down Winter Road through the woods.

“Calm down,” Amber told Ryan as he took a curve in the road so quickly that the tires squealed in protest.

Ryan kept his hands gripped on the steering wheel, his eyes on the road; the front bumper of the Impala seemed to be eating up the pavement.

“Ryan, what you’re saying doesn’t make any sense. It can’t be real.”

He kept on driving.

“Slow down before you wreck the car!” she shouted.

Ryan eased up on the gas pedal and breathed out a long breath. He felt a shudder run through his body.

Amber sighed; she felt a little better now that they were back down under fifty miles an hour and not taking hairpin curves at forty. If another vehicle had been coming around the curve at the same time … she didn’t want to think about that.

“There’s no other explanation,” Ryan finally said. “I’ve seen it in my dreams, and now I’ve seen it in reality.”

“You can’t be Cutter,” she told him. “He died ten years ago. He killed himself.”

“Maybe Cutter’s inside of me somehow,” he told her. “I can’t remember anything before a few days ago.”

“You think you’re possessed?” Amber asked. “That stuff’s not real. That’s just Hollywood bullshit. You don’t remember anything about your past, that’s all. Maybe you saw something in your past about this killer and it’s stuck in your mind somewhere, and now you’re making up a past that you never lived.”

Ryan wished he could believe that, but this was too real for him. “I want to find out Cutter’s real name. See what his face looks like.”

“Okay, go to my house. I’ll look it up on my computer.”

“Is Gary going to be a problem?” he asked, but he didn’t really care. He’d walk right through Gary right now if he had to.

“No. Gary is always gone most of the day on Sunday. He plays paintball with some of his friends.”

Ryan nodded, and he wondered for a moment what kind of friends a person like Gary could have, but he didn’t say anything.

“We’ll look everything up, and then you’ll see,” Amber told him, still trying to calm him down.

Ryan glanced down at his instrument panel – the gas gauge was low, almost empty. “Shit. I need to get some gas. Soon.”

“Just turn left at the end of this road. I know where we can get some gas.”

2.

Lita walked down the aisle of a drug store. She carried a copy of the photograph of Ryan in her jacket pocket. Mr. Murdock was back in the motel room – the nicest one they could find, and she and Jake had split up to canvass the area, asking people if they’d seen Ryan.

Ryan was in this town for some reason. He had told the clerk at the Starlight Motel that he needed to be in Edrington. Somebody here had to know where he was and what he was doing?

Or he could’ve left town already. But it didn’t matter – Mr. Murdock wasn’t going to stop looking for him no matter where he went.

She walked up to an old man who held two different varieties of cough medicines in his hands. He coughed into his sleeve as he looked at one of them, squinting through his glasses as he tried to read the back of the package.

Lita tucked her sunglasses into her jacket pocket and she faked a big smile to seem more approachable.

“Sir,” she said to the old man.

He nearly jumped when she spoke, but he didn’t drop the boxes of cough medicine.

“Could I bother you for just a moment?” she asked in a sickly-sweet voice.

He studied her for a moment, and then he broke into a big smile. “Sure,” he told her as he put the two boxes of cough medicine back on the shelf.

Lita kept on smiling; she could practically see the old man melting in front of her. She pulled out the photo of Ryan from inside her jacket pocket and handed it to him.

“I’m trying to find this man. I heard he came up here to Edrington. Is there any chance you’ve seen him? Or maybe you heard of someone new moving into town recently? Maybe renting a room or something?”

Jake and Lita had already covered the two motels and the one Mom-and-Pop Bed and Breakfast that existed in this small town, but Ryan hadn’t stayed at any of them. He hadn’t registered under a fake name, either. Jake and Lita had made sure that the hotel workers they talked to understood the consequences of lying to them.

So that meant he must be staying with a friend or someone that he knew.

Or he left town already, just passed right on through Edrington.

The old man took the photograph and studied it for a long moment. Then he shook his head no and handed it back to her. “I haven’t seen him. Sorry, my dear.”

“That’s okay,” she said. She was about to ask him another question, but something across the street caught her attention.

She looked out through the plate glass windows of the drug store at the gas station across the street. A silver Chevy Impala had just pulled up to one of the gas pumps and parked.

And then Ryan hopped out of the car and ran to the gas station building.

“I’m sorry, I can’t -” the old man began.

“Never mind,” Lita interrupted him, and her voice had suddenly become cold and her sweet smile had turned sinister. She brushed past the old man, almost pushing him out of the way. “I think I just found him.”

3.

Ryan ran into the gas station store to pay for the gas. He pulled a hundred dollar bill out of his pocket and threw it down on the counter. “Give me fifty on that car out there.”

“Sure thing,” the attendant said. He opened his register and he seemed to be taking his sweet time to find change for the hundred dollars.

Ryan shifted his weight back and forth from each foot, growing impatient; he was just about to make this young man’s day and tell him to keep the fucking change, but then the kid turned around with the bills in his hand. He counted them out slowly for Ryan who thanked him and then hurried back to his car to fill it up.

Lita walked out of the drug store. She crossed the street and walked across the gas station parking lot towards the back of Ryan’s car. He was back at his car now and beginning to fill it up with gas.

“Ryan!” Lita shouted.

Ryan looked over at where the voice had come from. A woman had just called his name.

And then he saw her. She looked like she was in her late twenties with short blonde hair. She had a pretty face, but it was lean and chiseled; there was a dangerous look about her. She wore dark clothing that hugged the curves of her body and she wore shiny black boots that came up to her knees.

She walked towards him like she knew him.

But he didn’t know her.

“Yeah?” he said and then glanced back at the digital numbers on the gas pump. He had only pumped in twenty dollars’ worth of gas so far.

“You need to come with me, Ryan,” she said. She was about to reach inside her jacket pocket for her gun, but then Amber got out of the passenger side of the car.

“Go with you?” Ryan asked. “Who the hell are you?”

Lita glanced at Amber and she took her hand back out from inside her jacket. She looked back at Ryan. “You know who I am.”

Amber looked at Ryan, but his eyes were on this blond woman.

Lita glanced at Amber again, and then out of the corner of her eye she saw the young gas station attendant come out of the building. He stood there watching them. She looked across the street from where she had come, and she saw the old man she had spoken to earlier standing in front of the drugstore, just watching her.

What the hell was this, some kind of big event for them in this town?

Lita looked back at Ryan. “Let’s stop playing games, Ryan. You know what we want.”

Ryan put the nozzle back into the gas pump even though he hadn’t pumped the whole fifty dollars’ worth into his gas tank – he didn’t know who this lady was, but he had seen the butt of her pistol when she had started to reach inside her jacket, and he knew it was time to leave. He screwed the lid back on the gas tank of his car and closed the flap.

He knew what she wanted now – the money from the duffel bag.

But he smiled at her. “Sorry. I really don’t know who you are.”

Lita took another step towards Ryan – there was something about him that was strange, she thought. And then it hit her, she just realized what it was. It couldn’t be, she thought, but it was true.

“Come on, let’s go,” Ryan said to Amber.

Amber could read his expression – something was wrong here. She got into the car as Ryan sat down in the driver’s seat.

“You can’t keep running, Ryan!” Lita shouted at him. “He’s going to find you! Just give him what he wants!”

Lita watched the car drive away – she couldn’t do anything about it right now. She pulled her cell phone out and dialed a number. She waited for Jake to pick up.

“What’s up?” Jake said in her ear.

“Come pick me up,” she said into the phone. “I just spotted him.”

“What the fuck? Why isn’t he with you right now?”

“I couldn’t do anything. I’m at a gas station with half the town watching me. Just get over here at …” she read the two street signs at the intersection, “… Ninth and Elm Street.”

4.

Ryan drove fast down the streets as he headed towards Amber’s house.

Amber watched him as he drove. “Who was that?” she asked.

“I don’t know.”

Amber kept her eyes on him.

Ryan glanced at her. “I swear. If I know her from my past, then I don’t remember it.”

“She knew who you were. She wanted something from you. She wanted you to give her something.”

“I wish I knew.”

He isn’t telling me everything, Amber thought suddenly. He had told her about his lost memory, his belief that he needed to be in this town, and that Carol had something to do with his past. He had told her about the tortured man in his dreams who kept trying to take him back to the shack in the woods, the same shack where some of Cutter’s mutilated bodies were found, and where Cutter was found, dead by his own hand. But there were other things he was leaving out, she was sure of it now.

Amber was sure that Ryan knew what that woman at the gas station wanted from him, but he wasn’t going to tell her.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

1.

Carol and Victor entered her house. She led him through the living room, down the hall, and into the den that used to be her husband’s study – the same room that she’d found the small key hidden down at the bottom of a jar, the key that just happened to fit the small gold padlocks on Ryan’s suitcase, the key that Walter told her she already had in her house, somewhere close to her heart, somewhere that made her think of her dead husband.

They entered the den and Carol closed and locked the door. She didn’t really think anyone would try to come in while they were in here, Tom and Victor both knew that this was her private space, even more private than her bedroom.

Victor eyed Carol a little suspiciously after she had locked the door.

“So, what’s going on?” Victor said, and she could hear the slight tremor in his voice. He was nervous, but not just nervous about what he might find in here, Carol thought. She thought he might be concerned about her state of mind, about her sanity.

She nodded down at the huge rug that took up most of the wooden floor in the middle of the den. All of the walls around the room were filled up with various pieces of furniture: an ancient leather chair and small couch that didn’t match, an antique desk with a roll top, several bookcases overflowing with books, an old dresser with wooden wheels and a yellowing mirror, and a few small tables with old globes on top of them that definitely did not portray the modern world anymore.

“Help me roll up this rug,” she told Victor.

“It’s under there?” he asked, and she definitely could hear the tremor in his voice now. His eyes bulged as he stared at her.

“Yes,” she snapped at him as she bent over to grab one corner of the rug. “I can do it by myself if you don’t want to help,” she said. And she could, but the pain in her back from twisting it earlier was beginning to really flare up now.

“No, let me help,” he grumbled.

They rolled back the heavy rug together.

After they had rolled the rug back, Victor took a step back and stared down at the wooden floor. Carol had opened the blinds a little to let some light into the room, but not enough so that someone could see inside. She had also turned on the small lamp on top of the desk. It was plenty of light for Victor to see the pentagram painted on the wooden floor with white paint. The pentagram was huge, big enough for someone (Carol) to kneel inside of completely. There were strange symbols painted inside the circle at each point of the five-pointed star. And there were strange symbols on the outside of the circle at each point of the star. And next to these strange symbols outside of the circle were what looked like slight scorch marks in the wood, like something had burned there. Candles, Victor thought. But then he thought it looked more like something had actually been burned on the wood floor itself – like a clipping of hair perhaps, or a piece of cloth.

“What is this?” Victor finally asked and looked at Carol. “What are you doing?”

Carol shook her head, she looked as miserable as she had when they’d been walking on the sidewalk earlier. “I don’t know,” she said. “I didn’t even think it was going to work.” She hesitated, took a breath and let it out slowly. She stared at him. “But it did. It worked, and I brought him back here. And he’s with us now.”

Victor took a step back – a step away from Carol, away from the gigantic pentagram painted on the floor with its squiggly symbols and scorch marks, away from all of this. “I … I don’t believe in this kind of stuff,” he told her.

“You believe in God,” Carol challenged.

“Yes, of course I do,” Victor nearly spat the words out.

“Then why not the devil? Why not demons and hell? They’re all in the Bible, the Word of God. You can’t believe in the parts of the Bible that you want to, you have to believe in all of it or none of it.”

“I believe in God, and that’s it,” Victor growled. But he glanced back down at the floor. “But this … pentagrams on the floor, summoning the dead. That isn’t real. The dead stay dead, and that’s it.”

Victor’s voice had risen; he was getting louder with each word that he spoke.

Carol glanced at the locked door of the den, and then she looked back at Victor.

She spoke to him in a low and calm voice. “It’s real, and they are coming soon.”

“Carol …”

“You need to take Tom and leave. Go somewhere for the night. It’s not going to be safe here.”

“Carol, what are you talking about? I’m really beginning to worry about you.”

Carol sighed and she pulled the small key she’d found in this very room, hidden at the bottom of a ceramic jar with a bunch of other odds and ends – it was lucky she hadn’t thrown it out over the years.

But the key would’ve found its way back into my house somehow, her mind whispered in a voice that didn’t even sound like her own anymore.

She showed Victor the small key. “I can prove it to you,” she told him.

2.

Ryan parked in the street in front of Amber’s house. And sure enough, like she said, Gary’s black pickup truck wasn’t there. She said that she didn’t know when he would be back, but Ryan didn’t care anymore. He could feel that rage building inside of him.

A murderous rage, he thought. Maybe the same rage Cutter felt when he tortured his victims, when he drained the life out of them.

He would never hurt Amber, he told himself. He believed he might love her.

Where had that thought come from? Why would he even question himself about hurting Amber?

He could feel his mind splitting into two parts – part rational, part crazy and unpredictable. He felt like he might be running out of time, like the sense of urgency he’d felt since he’d been in this town was even more critical now. He knew that the blond woman from the gas station, and whoever else was with her, was after him and the money. And they would find him soon.

They got out of his car and hurried up the walkway to Amber’s front door.

When they got inside Amber’s room, she got on her computer right away.

It was the first time Ryan had been in Amber’s room. It was small, but she kept it tidy. The closet door was open and he saw that she kept the few possessions that she owned neatly arranged. There were a few framed photos of a woman on top of Amber’s dresser. Amber’s mother, Ryan guessed.

Amber sat at a small desk with her computer crowded on top of it. The computer was ten years old but she hadn’t bothered to upgrade – all of her money went into savings (what she could keep from Gary anyway) for her escape from this house and from this town. But the computer worked fine, even if it was a little slow. She let it warm up and then logged on to the internet. She brought up the Google page and typed in: Serial killer – Cutter.

Thousands of pages were brought up in a nanosecond.

She clicked on a few of them until she found some information about Cutter.

Ryan paced in the background.

“I got it,” Amber said.

Ryan hovered behind her, looking over her shoulder as she read from the page on the screen.

“Cutter’s real name was Michael Davis. They finally figured out who the killer was, but he killed himself before they could arrest him.” She scanned down the page with her eyes. “Looks like he killed himself at the shack right after he killed his last victim. But no one knows why he killed himself.”

“Cutter, that’s what the red-haired man in my dreams called me when he took me to that shack in the woods. He said the shack was mine, that I had built it, and that I had done legendary things there.”

Ryan stumbled away and ran a hand through his dark hair. “I’m Cutter,” he whispered.

Amber turned and looked at Ryan. “No, you’re not,” she said in a stern voice. “It’s impossible. I just told you he killed himself ten years ago before they could take him to jail.”

Ryan stared at Amber.

“You just lost your memory,” she said. “And you’ve seen this stuff somewhere before, and it was buried in your mind, and now you’ve got things mixed up in your memories.”

Ryan didn’t look convinced.

Amber turned back to her computer and she clicked on a different page. “Here, come look at this, Ryan. It’s a picture of Cutter, and it’s not you.”

Ryan hurried back over to the computer screen and saw a photo of Cutter. The man in the photograph looked nothing like Ryan – the man in the photograph was beginning to go bald, he had soft features and kind eyes, he looked more like a tax accountant than a torturer and a killer.

The man’s face seemed familiar to Ryan, but he couldn’t place it. He knew it was important to remember where he’d seen that face, but he couldn’t make himself remember – or he wouldn’t let himself remember.

“It’s not the red-haired man, either,” Ryan whispered.

Ryan walked away from the computer and sat down on the end of Amber’s neatly-made bed. He shook his head. “I know all of this sounds so crazy,” he said.

Amber came over to the bed and sat down beside him. “You’ve just got things mixed up, that’s all.”

“Who’s the red-haired man in my dreams?” Ryan asked, more to himself than to Amber. “Why was he tortured? Was he one of the victims? Why is he coming back to me and calling me Cutter?”

Amber stared at him. She touched his hand, and then his arm.

“There’s something I’m missing about all of this, a piece of the puzzle I’m not seeing.” He paused and sighed. “I’m just so tired. I wish I could sleep without dreams.”

“Maybe you should try and sleep,” Amber told him.

“I don’t want to dream again. I don’t want to see the red-haired man again.”

“Maybe you need to see him again. Maybe you need to see where the dream takes you next, maybe then you’ll see the piece of the puzzle that you’re missing.”

Ryan looked at her with hope in his eyes.

“Maybe if you dream, you’ll find more clues.”

Ryan nodded. He took out his wallet, keys, and a wad of money and set them on the table next to the bed. He kicked off his shoes at the side of the bed. Then he lay down on the bed, his head on one of her pillows. The pillows and bedding smelled fresh, much better than the rest of the house that Gary possessed. He closed his eyes and his breathing deepened.

Amber lay down beside him and stroked his hair. “Just go to sleep for a few minutes. I’ll be right here beside you. I can wake you up if it looks like you’re having a bad dream.”

Ryan barely nodded. He could feel himself drifting off to sleep, drifting down into the pitch black darkness.

3.

Jake picked Lita up at the gas station. She got into the Lincoln as the gas station attendant and the old man in front of the drugstore watched her. She slammed the door shut.

“Which way did he go?”

“That way.” Lita pointed.

Jake glanced over his shoulder and pulled out onto the street. “Not too big of a town, shouldn’t be too hard to spot his car.”

Lita didn’t say anything. What she’d seen had bothered her – there was something very different about Ryan now.

Jake noticed. “What’s wrong?”

“I walked up to Ryan’s car,” Lita told him. “I was about to pull out my gun, but as you could see, I had an audience.”

Jake nodded.

“It was weird. I called Ryan’s name and he looked at me, but he didn’t seem to remember me. Or even recognize me.”

“He’s just acting like that.”

“But why would he? It doesn’t make sense.”

Jake shrugged.

“Besides, this is Ryan we’re talking about,” she added. “He wouldn’t be able to pull off an acting job like that. He was never the smartest person around.”

“That’s why he would do something so stupid like take Mr. Murdock’s money,” Jake said as he turned a corner at the first street he came to and began his methodical search up and down the neighborhood blocks. He had a great memory for layouts of streets and roads. He’d bought a map earlier in the day and had already marked down some of the streets he had driven down. But that didn’t mean that Ryan couldn’t double back. But this was a small town and it was laid out pretty simply, a main road ran north and south, and another main road ran east and west, like a cross, and the rest of the town sprawled out from there. But the town only sprawled out so far, eventually everything ran into the woods and the mountains in this town.

“He wasn’t acting,” Lita said, not letting the conversation go. “When he looked at me, it was like he’d truly never seen me before in his life.”

“Hurt your feelings?”

Lita ignored his comment. “I think he might’ve lost his memory somehow. Maybe when you shot him or when he wrecked his truck.”

Jake scanned the driveways as he drove slowly down the street. A van had to pass him because he was driving so slowly.

It was getting late, but Jake wasn’t going back to the motel room and face Mr. Murdock without Ryan and the money.

The sky had darkened quickly. There was a big storm moving in. Not only had the radio proclaimed that, but every townsperson he had met so far had told him – a storm must be a big deal around here, the only exciting thing that was happening these days. And there was cold weather following the storm, he had also been informed by these same townspeople. God, he couldn’t wait to get this over with and get back down to California.

“There’s something else,” Lita said. “Something strange about Ryan.”

“What?” Jake sighed.

“He has blue eyes.”

Jake came to the end of the street and stopped at the stop sign.

He looked at her. “So?”

“He had brown eyes before.”

“So he got some contact lenses.”

“I don’t think those were contact lenses. They looked real.”

“So he got some very good contacts. He can afford them now.”

“But why would he do that? Why would he change only his eye color and nothing else about his appearance?”

Jake shrugged. He didn’t care. He only cared about finding Ryan and getting the money back. He turned left to drive down the next block.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

1.

Amber watched Ryan. He was sleeping peacefully on the bed, in a deep sleep. She raised her head and looked at his wallet, his car keys, and the wad of money on her nightstand next to her bed. She got up very carefully, trying not to disturb him; she could tell that he needed sleep. Now that Ryan had seen Cutter’s face, maybe he could clear things up a little in his mind after he got some good sleep.

She crept around the foot of the bed with her eyes on Ryan the whole time. She stood in front of the nightstand. She needed to look inside his wallet. She needed to make sure he was telling the truth; she needed to make sure he wasn’t another nutjob. She didn’t need another nutjob in her life – she already had Gary.

She picked up the wallet and watched Ryan the whole time. She expected him to sit up with a big insane smile on his face and yell, “Gotcha!” But he didn’t; he slept peacefully, his breathing still deep. If he was having one of his nightmares right now, she couldn’t tell.

Amber picked up Ryan’s wallet and opened it.

Ryan groaned and turned over in his sleep.

She froze with the open wallet in her hand, expecting him to wake up, but he turned over on his side, facing away from her. That made her feel a little better.

She looked down at the wallet. There was nothing inside except his driver’s license, which she studied very carefully. It read: RYAN FREEMAN. He was from Oakland, California. His height was 5’10” and his eyes were stated as BROWN.

Brown eyes? Ryan didn’t have brown eyes, he had blue ones. Intense blue eyes.

She set the wallet back down on the table and left the room.

2.

Ryan’s eyes popped open. He jumped up and looked around the bedroom. For a split second he couldn’t remember where he was. He looked around at the frilly curtains on the window, the pink bedspread he was lying on, the white dresser with the collection of mementos and framed photographs on top.

It all came back to him in a rush. He was in Amber’s bedroom.

He didn’t think he’d slept much, if at all. Maybe just a few minutes. He didn’t remember any dreams. Maybe he had slept for a few moments without dreams. He would take what he could get. At least he felt a little better, like he had gotten some rest.

His wallet, keys, and money were still on the end table next to the bed.

But Amber wasn’t in the room.

“Amber?” he called out.

No answer.

He got up and walked over to the open doorway that led out into the hall. He poked his head out in the hall which was dark. The house was very quiet. “Amber, you out here?”

Still no answer from her.

He walked down the hall to the next open doorway – it was a bathroom. Amber wasn’t in the bathroom, but there was something sitting on the edge of the sink – something he’d seen before.

He entered the small bathroom and walked towards the sink, his eyes on the object balanced at the edge of that sink – it was a straight razor, the old-fashioned kind with a wood handle. And there was something carved into the handle. He had seen that same straight razor before – in his bedroom at Carol’s house.

And here it was in this bathroom.

He picked up the straight razor and looked down at the word carved into the handle: CUTTER. He opened it and studied the lethally sharp blade. The wood handle looked very old – worn and stained, but the razor blade looked brand new and ready to do its job.

And it was here waiting for him.

He looked in the mirror at his face. That wasn’t his face – he was sure of it. That was a different man’s face that looked back at him, that was Ryan Freeman’s face in the mirror, not his.

Ryan brought the razor up to the top of his forehead and drew the sharp blade across his skin just under the hairline and left a deep red line in his flesh. Then he drew the blade down each side of his face, right beside his hairline, all the way down to his jaw. The cuts were thin and deep, the blade so sharp that the wounds had only begun to bleed now.

He set the straight razor down on the edge of the sink; it made a clinking sound in the quiet house. He probed with his fingers at the line he’d cut around his face. He dug his fingers underneath his skin and began to pull at his skin, tearing it away from his skull in one sheet.

“Ryan!” Amber screamed from the doorway. “What are you doing?!”

Ryan turned and looked at Amber with a big smile on his half-peeled face. “There’s another face under here!” he shouted at her.

And Ryan drifted off to …

3.

White.

Heavy breathing.

The white cloth was taken away and all Cutter could see was the ceiling of wood trusses from the shack from the woods.

And then the red-haired man leaned over into Cutter’s field of vision. He was grinning and holding the straight razor with the word Cutter carved into its old-fashioned wood handle.

“We’ve got all of eternity to find out how you did it, Cutter. But for now, you know what you need to do. You need to cut her.”

You need to cut her.

You need to cut her.

Cut her …

4.

Cut her.

Cut her.

Ryan snapped awake from his nightmare.

He stood at the foot of Amber’s bed with the straight razor in one hand.

Amber slept on the bed in the same place she’d lain down beside him when she stroked his hair and told him to go to sleep.

Ryan stared at her and he could hear the red-haired man’s voice whispering to him from somewhere.

“Cut her. Cut her. Cutter.”

Amber’s eyes popped open and she sat up when she saw Ryan standing at the foot of her bed. “Ryan, what are you doing?”

Ryan felt confused – what was he doing?

“Where did you get that razor?” Amber asked in a careful voice.

He looked down at the straight razor in his hand.

“I don’t know,” he told her.

“You didn’t have it with you before?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Are you okay, Ryan?”

Ryan stared at Amber for a long moment. It was quiet in the house. But there was a distant rumbling of thunder from some far off distance.

“You were right, Amber. The dreams would give me the answers I needed. Now I know what to do. I know who I am. I know what I am. I’m Cutter.”

Amber got out of bed very slowly, making sure she didn’t make any sudden movements; her eyes were on Ryan the whole time.

“Ryan, you know that’s not possible. We already talked about this.”

Ryan took a step towards the corner of the bed. “I’m not going to hurt you. I promise. I’ve changed.”

Amber stood by the side of her bed, staring at Ryan.

“You’ve got to trust me,” Ryan said. “I need you to go with me to Carol’s house. I didn’t tell you everything. I didn’t tell you what that woman at the gas station was after, what she wanted.”

Amber still watched Ryan, unsure about him for the moment.

“I want you to go with me. Please. I want to give you something.”

The house was very quiet for a moment – quiet enough for them to hear Gary’s truck pull up in the driveway outside.

5.

Jake and Lita turned onto Amber’s street. They drove slowly down the street, both of them searching the driveways with their eyes.

Then a black pickup truck came from nowhere and roared past them, honking its horn. It passed right by them and Lita got a glimpse of an overweight man with not much hair left scowling at them. Heavy metal music poured out of the cab of the pickup. He swerved in front of the Lincoln, cutting it a little too close to the front of their car, and then he sped down the road.

“Asshole,” Jake muttered.

But Lita saw where the truck was speeding to – a small house with a silver Chevy Impala parked in front of it. “Look,” she told Jake.

Jake slowed the car down even more, and then pulled over to the side of the road; they were still a few houses down from Amber’s house. They sat in the car with the engine running and watched the black pickup whip into the driveway. The truck nearly skidded to a stop and it rocked for a moment as the large man got out.

“That’s Ryan’s car,” Lita whispered.

Jake could see that. He could also see that there was going to be at least one other person in the house when they paid Ryan a visit.

The radio was on in their car, but it was turned almost all the way down. But Jake could still hear an announcer talking about a storm coming that was going to dump buckets of rain. He could see the buildup of clouds in the sky, and lightning on the horizon.

“This storm’s going to be a doozey,” the radio announcer said.

Yep, Jake thought, a storm is definitely coming.

“He seems angry,” Lita said with no emotion as she watched Gary march across his lawn. He looked at the silver Impala as he went to his front door, and he was cussing, he definitely seemed upset about Ryan’s car being there.

Jake checked his gun; he checked the clip and made sure there was a bullet in the chamber. “It’s show time.”

Lita looked at Jake. “What about our friend in the pickup?”

“Looks like it’s his unlucky day,” Jake said as he put the car in drive and rolled slowly down the street to Amber’s house.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

1.

Amber didn’t know what to say to Ryan’s request. He wanted her to go with him to Carol’s house and give her something – something that the lady at the gas station wanted, something that other people wanted. Could she trust him? There was something wrong with him mentally; she had to admit that to herself now. She had tried her best to help him, tried her best to show him that he couldn’t be the serial killer called Cutter. But somehow Ryan believed he was this man, or the reincarnation of this man, or possessed by this killer. And now he had a straight razor with him.

She didn’t know what to do.

And then she heard Gary’s truck pull up in the driveway.

For a moment, she thought that Gary would come in and protect her from Ryan if he tried to do anything to her – like take a swipe at her with his old-fashioned straight razor.

But Ryan hadn’t opened the straight razor yet, he just held it in his hand.

“I had some more dreams,” he told her. “I think I understand everything now. I’ve seen the missing pieces of the puzzle. And I know what I need to do now.”

Amber glanced at the straight razor in his hand again.

“I’m not going to hurt you, Amber,” Ryan said and he slipped the razor into his front pants pocket. “I swear I won’t. I want to help you.”

Amber heard the front door explode open out in the living room. Gary slammed the door shut and yelled for her.

“Amber, you fucking whore! Where the fuck are you?”

She felt her skin tingle with fear at the sound of her brother’s voice. She’d never heard him so angry before.

He sounded drunk. And he sounded crazy.

Is Gary as crazy as Ryan is? her mind asked her. That’s what you’re gambling on here.

“You and that pussy you’re with had better come out right now!!” Gary screamed from the living room.

She’d made her decision. “I’ll go with you,” she told Ryan.

Ryan smiled. “Thank you.”

Amber went to her bedroom door and locked the twist lock on the door handle. That was one thing she had spent her money on, a lock for her bedroom door.

She grabbed Ryan’s shoes, wallet, car keys, and money and brought them to him. He slipped his shoes on and took his keys, money, and wallet from her. She watched him stuff the wallet into his back pocket, the wallet that was empty except for his driver’s license, a driver’s license that stated that Ryan’s eyes were brown, not blue.

She needed to ask him about that, but they didn’t have time right now.

As Ryan stuffed his money and keys into his front pants pockets, Amber hurried over to her bedroom window. She ripped the dainty curtains apart and opened the window (she always kept the window unlocked in case Gary changed the locks on the front door again).

She looked at Ryan. “Come on, we gotta go.”

Amber crawled out through the window with ease – she’d had plenty of practice over the years. Ryan followed her out the window.

They were at the back of the house, standing in the tall grass that needed a mow. There were some truck parts and other items stacked up against the back of the house in some places – all of it was Gary’s stuff. Their backyard wasn’t very big and it was only a few quick strides to a wooden fence that separated their backyard from their neighbor’s backyard. The neighbors had put up the fence to block the sight of Gary’s growing collection of junk that he refused to throw away.

She looked up at the sky above them. It was growing dark quickly. The clouds were churning above them, gray clouds bloated with rain, ready to pour down on them.

“This way,” she whispered and hurried to the corner of the house. She was going to hurry around this side of the house to the front yard and make a mad dash to Ryan’s car while Gary went to her bedroom door and beat on it. By the time he realized that she had gone out the window, they should be in Ryan’s car.

They hurried down the side of the house. Amber was in front of Ryan and she froze when she came to the corner of the house.

There were two people walking up the walkway to the front door. A man and a woman, both of them were dressed in dark clothing that hugged their athletic bodies, and they both wore sunglasses. They both looked very determined, Amber thought. She didn’t know who the man was, but she recognized the blond woman from the gas station. She was the same woman who had been looking for Ryan. They wanted something from Ryan.

“What’s wrong?” Ryan whispered from behind her. “If it’s Gary, I don’t care.”

“Ssshh,” she whispered as she turned to look at him, at his blue eyes even though his driver’s license clearly stated that his eyes were brown. “The lady from the gas station is out there,” she whispered into his ear. “And there’s a man with her.”

Ryan changed places with her and he peeked around the corner. He saw Jake and Lita walking up to the door. They were both slipping on pairs of thin, black gloves as they walked.

He couldn’t remember them, but he knew what they wanted, and he knew that they would do anything to get it.

“Wait a minute,” Ryan told her.

2.

Jake and Lita had their gloves on now. Jake rapped on the door with the edge of his fist. The door was thin and it seemed to be rotting in some places. He pounded on the door again and it sounded very loud in the growing darkness.

He was sure Ryan heard the knock.

Gary ripped the door open and filled the doorway. His scowl of anger morphed into a look of confusion. “Who the fuck are you guys?”

Jake pulled his gun out and pointed it at Gary. He used his other hand to shove Gary back inside his house. Gary moved easily from Jake’s shove even though he was a big man; his fear of the gun had turned him into a mass to gelatin.

Lita glanced around outside, making sure no one was watching them, and then she entered Gary’s house and closed the door. She stood by the door, waiting.

“What the fuck are you guys doing?” Gary shrieked as Jake pushed him back into the center of the cluttered living room.

“Shut the fuck up before I blow your fucking knee caps off,” Jake said in a calm and even tone.

Gary seemed about to blubber out more questions, but he glanced down at the gun pointed at him, and nodded his head yes to show them that he understood.

“I’m going to ask you some questions, and I want answers immediately,” Jake told him.

Again Gary nodded.

“Where is Ryan?”

“He … he’s in the back of the house. He’s in the bedroom with my … with my sister. Her name’s … she’s Amber.”

Jake looked at Lita and he gestured with a nod of his head for her to check the back of the house.

“Her door’s locked,” Gary informed Lita as she darted across the living room towards the hallway.

Jake turned back to Gary. “Did I tell you to say anything?”

“I … I’m sorry,” Gary said and tears spilled from his eyes.

Lita hurried down the dark hallway, past a bathroom with its door open, and then she came to a closed bedroom door. She pulled out her gun and attached a silencer to it. She reached down for the door handle with her gloved hand and gave it a gentle twist.

It was locked like Gary had said.

“Ryan,” she said through the door. “Amber?”

She didn’t get an answer.

3.

Ryan looked back at Amber and he nodded at her. “I think they’re both inside. Let me run to the car and I’ll give you a signal to follow me. Okay?”

Amber nodded.

Ryan didn’t waste any time. He knew it wouldn’t be more than a minute or two before they figured out that they were outside. He was surprised that one of them wasn’t waiting by his car. Maybe one of them was at the windows watching, waiting to pick him off like a sniper as he ran.

But there were no gunshots as he ran across the front lawn.

He got to the back of his car and the world was nearly dark now, which provided some cover. He moved around quickly to the driver’s side of his car so he couldn’t be seen from the living room windows, then he shot his arm out and waved Amber forward.

Amber bolted across the weedy lawn.

Ryan opened his driver’s door and jumped into his seat – he already had his car keys in his hand ready to stab the key into the ignition. The interior light came on when he opened the door and he felt terribly exposed for a moment.

Amber opened the passenger door and jumped inside. She brought the door almost all the way closed, but she didn’t want to slam it shut yet because Ryan hadn’t started his car.

She watched Ryan as he started the car. The headlights came on – they seemed to be lit up like a spaceship out here on the street. They were vulnerable, her mind whispered. They were targets.

She couldn’t help looking at the living room windows of her house, and she saw a person pull the curtains to the side and peek out.

4.

Lita was about to kick the bedroom door open when she heard Jake yell at her from the living room.

“They’re outside! They’re fucking leaving!”

Lita bolted down the hallway, through the living room, then out the front door which Jake had already opened. She had a split second to see that Jake still had his gun pointed at Gary and that he had a look of anger on his face that she’d never seen before.

They had fucked up.

This guy had told them that Ryan was in the bedroom with his sister and they had trusted him. Jake was going to make this man pay for that piece of misinformation, Lita was sure of that.

She ran down the walkway to the street, her gun in her gloved hand. She didn’t care anymore if the neighbors were watching. The sky was dark, which provided a little bit of camouflage from prying eyes. And it was beginning to drizzle.

She stood in the street and watched the tail lights of Ryan’s car disappear.

“Fuck,” she whispered.

She ran back into Gary’s house and closed the door. Jake and Gary were still in the same exact places, Jake with his gun pointed at the large man who was quaking with fear, his hands up to show them that he wasn’t planning on doing anything stupid.

“They drove off,” Lita said. “You want to go after them?”

“No,” Jake said, “we don’t know where they’re going. By the time we start to follow them, they’ll already be long gone.”

Jake’s voice was too calm, Lita thought. He should be angrier than this. This was when Jake was most dangerous, when he seemed calm, but she knew, much like the storm outside, that lightning was going to strike from Jake soon, and thunder would follow.

Jake turned back to Gary. “Besides, I think our friend here has an idea of where they’re going.”

Gary shook his head no, almost violently. “I’m sorry. I don’t know. Please. I swear to God.”

“Sssshh,” Jake whispered and gave Gary a half smile. “What’s your name, big boy?”

“G – Gary.”

“Okay, Gary. We’re going to have a little talk, okay?”

Gary nodded with his hands still up like he was surrendering.

“It’s very simple,” Jake told Gary. “We’re going to ask you some questions and you’re going to answer them.”

“I don’t know the answers,” Gary said and he began to cry.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

1.

“I can show you something that will prove everything I’ve said to you,” Carol told Victor. “Please.”

Victor watched Carol.

“We’ve known each other for a long time,” Carol said. “I’m just asking you to trust me.”

Victor finally nodded.

Carol unlocked the door to the den and walked out into the hallway. Victor followed her out to the living room and watched as she hurried to the front door; she opened the front door and checked the driveway to make sure Ryan wasn’t there.

She closed the front door, locked it, and then walked to the stairs. Victor followed her up the stairs and down the hall, and then they stopped in front of Ryan’s room. Carol took the spare skeleton key out of her pants pocket – the other key was down in her pocket as well, the smaller key, the shiny gold one that unlocked the padlocks on the brown suitcase.

“Carol,” Victor hissed. “What are you doing? We can’t go in there.”

Carol already had the bedroom door unlocked. She opened the door and looked at Victor. She entered the room.

Victor glanced down the hall to make sure Tom wasn’t watching them. The house had grown dark suddenly from the storm outside and there weren’t many lights on.

He followed her inside the bedroom and closed the door. The curtains were drawn back from the window at the far side of the room. The wind outside blew the branches of the trees back and forth and they scraped at the glass – it was a screeching sound, almost like someone screaming at them from far away. But at least the window allowed them enough light to see by.

Carol didn’t waste any time. She crouched down by the bed and pulled out a brown suitcase and lifted it up onto the bed and laid it flat. She felt another twinge of pain in her back, but she had to force herself to ignore it.

Victor watched her with wide eyes. “Wait a minute, isn’t that Ryan’s suitcase?”

“Someone delivered it here to Ryan, left it on the front porch with his name on a card,” Carol answered as she dug the small gold key out of her pants pocket and unlocked the padlocks quickly and tossed them aside. She opened the latches and unbuckled the straps that held the suitcase shut.

“This is going too far,” Victor said, ready to bolt.

She opened the suitcase and backed away. She turned and looked at Victor with wild eyes in the semi-darkness. “Just look inside, Victor. Please. We need to hurry!”

Victor was ready to run out of this room, ready to run away from this madness, from this insane woman that he thought he’d known all these years. She had been keeping secrets, he now realized. She had a pentagram painted on her den floor underneath the area rug, and there were scorch marks there where she had burned God knows what.

Offerings to the Underworld, a voice whispered in his mind.

And now he was in a tenant’s room with her, snooping through this man’s stuff.

But he hadn’t run yet, because he had known all along that there was something wrong with Ryan, something about him that had never set well with him. He’d known this all along and Carol was about to show him proof of his theories.

Victor felt his legs moving forward, he heard his shoes thumping on the floor with each step, and throughout it all he heard the screeching on the bedroom window glass from the pointy twigs and branches scraping back and forth – they looked like the arms of some kind of spidery monster trying to scratch its way into the house, he thought.

He was at the side of the bed and he looked down at the open suitcase and its contents inside. The first thing he saw was a large sealed jar full of a yellowish liquid. Inside the jar was a man’s head. The man’s eyes were swollen shut, and his mouth hung open. The face was disfigured, a lot of the flesh around the mouth was gone and Victor could see the man’s teeth and gums. He saw the gashes on the sides of the face that ran up to the ears. And he saw the red hair that floated in the liquid above the mutilated face.

The next thing Victor saw in the suitcase was an odd collection of trinkets in trays and compartments that had been built into one side of the suitcase and covered with green felt. In one of the compartments was a small clear bottle that contained human teeth; various bones that looked like they could possibly be human finger and foot bones were in another compartment. A few knives and other instruments of torture were carefully tucked away in other compartments behind ribbons that held them in place. But the prominent weapon that was displayed was a straight razor; it was obviously the centerpiece of the collection. It was an old-fashioned straight razor with a word carved into the handle – a word that Victor recognized right away, a word that tugged at nightmare memories from ten years ago when this town was terrified of a killer. Cutter.

Victor could feel his stomach doing flip flops inside of him. He could feel his balls shriveling up from fear. He could feel a tingling sensation running along his skin, almost like an electrical charge, standing his arm hair up, like lightning was going to strike any moment.

He looked at the face in the jar again, and then he looked at Carol as the dread wormed its way through his body. He knew that face in the jar as well as he knew the word Cutter on the straight razor’s wooden handle.

And Carol knew that face, too.

“Oh God, Carol,” Victor said.

Carol only nodded, watching Victor like she wanted him to say it, like she wanted to hear it out loud to make her certain that she hadn’t been hallucinating, certain that what she’d seen was really there.

“That’s your … your …” But Victor couldn’t spit the words out.

“My husband’s face,” Carol finished the words for him. “Cutter’s last victim before he killed himself.”

“But how can that be?” he asked. “Your husband was buried … did Cutter hide his head somehow?”

“No,” Carol said and shook her head no almost violently. “His head was still on his body when they found him in that shack. I had to identify his remains. I know he was buried with his head.”

“Maybe Ryan went to the cemetery …” Victor said, but left the rest of his words unsaid.

Again Carol shook her head no. “I went to the cemetery yesterday. His grave hasn’t been disturbed. There’s no way someone could’ve gotten his head.”

“But that doesn’t explain …” Victor just glanced down at the open suitcase in the gathering darkness. “I don’t understand any of this.”

“I summoned him, Victor. I summoned my husband back from the dead. I wanted him back so badly. I missed him so much. I found someone who showed me how to summon him. But something went wrong, it didn’t work right. At first I thought he might be inside of Ryan, but with some memory loss.”

Victor felt like he was going to be sick – this couldn’t be true.

“But I was wrong,” Carol said and grabbed Victor’s arm with a fierce and surprising strength. Her eyes were wild and her mouth a thin slash on her face. “There’s been someone else inside of Ryan the whole time – Cutter. He came back instead; somehow he was summoned instead of my poor husband.”

Victor only nodded at Carol. He couldn’t believe any of this. Somehow Carol had things mixed up. This couldn’t be real.

“Cutter’s coming back soon,” Carol whispered to Victor in the darkness. It had grown much darker now, and he could barely make out the items in the suitcase and he was happy about that – he didn’t want to see that face floating in the yellowish liquid again.

“You and Tom need to go,” Carol whispered. She still hadn’t let go of his arm and her fingers dug into his flesh. It hurt a little, but he was too afraid to tear his arm away from her. “Go find somewhere to stay for the night.”

“We should call the police,” Victor said.

“No,” Carol hissed. “They won’t understand. I brought Cutter here and I have to send him back. It’s the only way.”

Victor finally nodded. “Okay. No police. I’ll go get Tom.”

“Thank you, Victor,” she said and surprised him with a quick kiss on his cheek.

He nodded and left the bedroom and headed down the hall for Tom’s bedroom door – but he wasn’t going to leave with Tom; he had a different plan.

2.

Ryan sped down the streets of Edrington as the rain began to pour down from the night sky.

Amber looked at him. “What’s going to happen to Gary?”

Ryan drove in silence for a moment. “I guess they’ll question him,” he said.

“Are they going to hurt him?”

Ryan didn’t answer.

“Are they going to kill him?”

Her voice was calm, almost detached, like she wasn’t talking about her own brother.

“I don’t know,” Ryan finally answered.

“I brought this to him,” Amber said and looked out the window, and now Ryan could hear emotion in her voice. Even though her brother was a monster, she still cared about him somewhere deep inside of her. And that’s why Ryan was sure that he loved her.

“You had no way of knowing,” Ryan told her.

She looked at Ryan. “Pull the car in there.” She pointed at a spot next to a building not too far from Main Street.

Ryan looked at her. For a moment he wasn’t going to pull the car over – they needed to get to Carol’s house, but he slowed the car down and pulled up next to the building.

“Go around back,” she told him. “We won’t be seen from the street if those guys are looking for us.”

Ryan drove around to the back of the building and put the car in park. He didn’t turn off the engine. The motor rumbled as the rain poured down on the car.

“I’m not going to Carol’s house with you until you tell me everything,” she said.

She waited for Ryan to argue that he’d already told her everything. But he didn’t argue. Instead, he looked out at the rain for a moment, thinking. Then he looked back at her.

Ryan unbuttoned the front of his shirt and opened it up. She could see his muscular torso, but she saw what he wanted her to see, the three round scars, one on his abdomen, and two on his chest.

“I know I should’ve told you about this before,” he said. “But if you’ll go with me to Carol’s house, I’ll tell you everything you want to know. I swear.”

3.

Carol closed the suitcase back up and slipped the small padlocks through the gold loops in the straps. But she didn’t close the padlocks. And she didn’t slide the suitcase back underneath Ryan’s bed. She grabbed the suitcase by the handle and carried it out of the room into the hall. She didn’t bother locking Ryan’s door; the time for sneaking around was over now.

She glanced down the hall and saw Victor standing in front of Tom’s door. She wasn’t sure if he had knocked on Tom’s door yet, and she didn’t care. She had warned Victor to take Tom and leave – and that’s all she could do.

Carol went downstairs and carried the suitcase into her den. She shut the door nearly all the way. It was very dark in the room with the curtains and blinds drawn shut, but she could feel her way around. She set the suitcase down carefully on the floor; she wanted to be very careful with the contents inside. She grabbed the lighter from the desk and lit the few candles around the room with a trembling hand, the same candles she lit when she prayed. The flickering light pushed back the darkness, but in the corners the shadows danced and moved.

The rug was still rolled up and out of the way, revealing the pentagram painted in white on the floor. She picked up the suitcase and laid it down flat at the top of the pentagram. She pulled the padlocks off and tossed them away into the shadows in the corner of the room. She opened the suitcase and took out the jar with her husband’s head floating inside. Tears threatened as she set the jar down in front of the suitcase.

And she began to pray.

4.

Victor knocked on Tom’s door.

Tom answered and he was instantly concerned when he saw the expression on Victor’s face. “What’s wrong, Victor?”

“I need a huge favor from you.”

“Yeah, sure. What is it?”

Victor pulled out his wallet and plucked out three one hundred dollar bills and handed them to Tom.

“What’s this?”

“I need you to stay somewhere else tonight. A motel. Just for the night. Take the best room.”

Tom looked a little confused, but then a realization dawned on him. “Oh wow. I know what’s going on here.”

Victor was a little shocked by Tom’s reaction. “You do?”

Tom gave Victor a sly smile and nudged him. “I knew it was going to happen eventually.”

Victor shook his head, not sure what Tom was talking about.

“I’ve seen the way you two look at each other,” Tom said and smirked at him.

Victor was beginning to understand.

“You two finally hooked up,” Tom said and slapped at Victor’s arm playfully.

Victor managed a fake smile and nodded his head. “Yes, that’s it. That’s exactly it. So, will you please leave so we can have some time alone?”

Tom nodded his head knowingly. “Sure, Victor. I understand.”

Victor handed his car keys to Tom. “Here, take my car.”

“Your car? You sure about that?”

“Yes. Please, I need you to leave right now.”

“In a hurry?” Tom snickered. “Medication starting to kick in?” Tom asked and winked at him.

For a second Victor didn’t get what he was saying, but then it hit him. He nodded his head yes. “I only have a few hours until it doesn’t work again,” he told Tom with a grin. “So could you please hurry?”

Tom nodded.

Victor knew he should call the police, but the more he thought about it, the more he thought it might make Carol look bad. Ryan would just say the suitcase wasn’t his. And Carol would be stuck with a jar with her husband’s head in it.

But how did Ryan get Carol’s husband’s head in the first place? Carol said her husband was buried with his head and that his grave hadn’t been disturbed. He couldn’t think about that right now. All he needed to concern himself with was that Ryan was a dangerous man and Carol needed to be protected.

Victor hurried back inside his bedroom and shut the door. He went to the end table next to his bed and opened the drawer. Inside was a pistol – a .38 revolver. He checked to make sure it was fully loaded.

5.

Jake set his gun on the countertop that separated the living room from the kitchen. He studied the kitchen: the garbage had been taken out and the dishes had been done, but the kitchen was dilapidated and falling apart. There were holes punched into many of the cabinet doors and one of the doors was completely off, revealing canned and boxed food. There was a big dent in the freezer door on top of the old refrigerator that hummed along loudly. On top of the refrigerator was a case of warm beer. There was another case of beer beside the refrigerator – Gary had stocked up on beer.

Lita waited near the front door with her gun pointed at Gary. She glanced at Jake as he wandered around in the kitchen like he was looking for something.

“I don’t know where she went to,” Gary sobbed. He sat on the lumpy couch now; Jake had ordered him to sit down, relax, and try to concentrate on where Ryan and Amber might have gone.

Jake opened a drawer in the kitchen and rummaged around inside of it.

Lita knew what he was looking for.

“Please,” Gary continued to beg. “I don’t know what that bitch does. I hate her; she’s nothing but a whore. If she’s sleeping with your friend, I can’t help that. I don’t even know him …”

“Shut up,” Lita said with her gun still aimed at him.

Gary shut up.

“Ah,” Jake said from the kitchen.

He found what he was looking for, Lita thought.

Jake came back into the living room with a hammer in one gloved hand and a dish towel in the other. He hefted the hammer like he was testing its weight. He turned it and studied it for a moment, and then he looked up and smiled. This hammer would definitely do the job, his eyes said.

“What … what’s that?” Gary mumbled; his eyes as big as dinner plates.

“This?” Jake asked, glancing down at the hammer in his hand. “This is a hammer, you idiot. You don’t know what a hammer is?”

Gary didn’t answer.

Jake stood in front of Gary. “Now, I’m going to ask you some questions. And I want answers.”

Gary’s face crumbled and tears flowed down his cheeks. He shook his head no. “Please. I don’t understand what’s going on here.”

“I’m sure you want to get on with your night,” Jake said. “Get on with drinking your cheap beer. Watching some TV. Maybe some internet porn. You like porn, Gary?”

Gary was crying too much to answer.

“Well, you can get back to your evening, and you can still have your knee caps in their proper places. All you have to do is tell us what we need to know.”

Lita moved closer to them, her gun aimed at Gary’s head, her gloved finger on the trigger.

“Ryan took something from us and we want it back,” Jake said. “It’s that simple. And he and Amber went somewhere and we want to know where.”

“I’m sorry,” Gary sobbed. “I … I don’t know.”

Jake glanced at Lita and shook his head and clucked his tongue. “That’s not good,” Jake said.

He threw the dish towel down onto Gary’s lap.

“Pick up the dish towel, Gary.”

“Why?”

“Pick it up,” Jake snapped.

Gary picked it up with a trembling hand.

“Now when I don’t get an answer that I like, then I want you to put that dish towel in your mouth.”

Gary cried some more.

“You understand me?” Jake asked. “We don’t want your screams to be heard.”

Gary nodded, still crying.

“Now, one more time. Where did they go?”

“I’m sorry … I don’t … know …”

“That’s too bad,” Jake said. “Now put the dish towel in your mouth.”

Gary did as he was told.

“Shove it all the way in there,” Jake said.

Gary shoved the dish towel deep into his mouth. He sobbed into it.

Jake brought the hammer down on Gary’s kneecap.

CHAPTER TWENTY

1.

The rain pelted the Impala as Ryan stared at Amber with his shirt open. He showed her his scars.

“These are bullet hole scars,” he told her. “At some point in my past, I was shot. I don’t remember being shot, but I think those people back at your house did it to me. They are after something, and I should’ve told you, but I didn’t want you to get involved with this part of it.”

“I’m already involved now,” she told him in a dry tone.

Ryan nodded and sighed. He needed to tell her everything now.

“When I woke up in the motel room with no memory of my past, I saw these scars on my chest. And there was a duffel bag full of money under my bed. Lots of money. And obviously the money must be what those two are after.”

“So give it to them,” she said.

“Even if I give it to them, they won’t let me live. Not these kind of people.”

Amber was silent for a moment.

“What are you going to do?” she finally asked.

“I want to go to Carol’s house. I want you to go with me. I want to give that money to you and I want you to get out of this town. I want you to make your dreams come true. I want you to be happy.”

Amber couldn’t say anything for a moment as a wave of emotion washed over her. He wanted to give her all of his money. He wanted her to be happy.

But then a thought occurred to her.

“If you give me the money, then they’ll be after me.”

“I won’t let that happen,” Ryan said in a low and menacing voice. He didn’t sound like the Ryan that she’d known so far, this man in front of her was a different Ryan, the new Ryan.

“How?” she asked.

But Ryan didn’t answer, and Amber had a feeling she didn’t want to know.

“If I take the money,” she finally said, “then I want you to go with me.”

Ryan smiled and nodded. “Yeah, I can do that.”

But Amber couldn’t help believing that Ryan was lying to her again. She looked out her passenger window at the pouring rain, at the darkness.

Ryan touched her arm and she looked back at him. Ryan stared straight into her eyes, his deep blue eyes focused on her like laser beams. “I’ll go with you,” he said again. “I love you.”

Amber felt her stomach drop and the blood rush to her face. She felt her throat constrict. She smiled and couldn’t help the tears that slipped from her eyes. “I love you too,” she told him.

They kissed each other.

He pulled away from her and put the car in drive. He looked at her again. “Will you go with me to Carol’s house?”

“Yes.”

“We need to hurry,” Ryan said as he pulled his car out onto the street.

2.

Gary moaned on the couch. The knees of his pants were dark with blood. He held onto them with his trembling hands, and he could tell that the bones weren’t right anymore; they had moved and fractured from the hits from the hammer. He still had the dish towel in his mouth from the last hit of the hammer and he sobbed into it. He just wished they would stop hitting him.

Jake paced back and forth with the blood-stained hammer in his gloved hand. He glanced at Lita who still held her gun aimed at Gary. Jake looked down at his watch, they couldn’t waste too much more time here.

“Well, I guess he doesn’t know anything,” Jake said to Lita. “We don’t need him anymore.”

Lita nodded and moved closer to Gary. She aimed the gun at the side of his head, ready to pull the trigger.

Gary yanked the dish towel out of his mouth that was stained with blood and screamed at Lita. “Wait! Don’t shoot! Please, let me just … just think for a second.”

“We’ve given you time to think,” Lita said.

“No, I remember something. I … I think Amber met this guy you’re after at the pub she works at. I remember now that she said he worked for Buddy McCrae. I know a guy who works for Buddy, his name is John. John would know where Ryan is staying. And John would help me, he hates that guy you’re after. I don’t know why, but he does.”

Lita looked at Jake who walked to the kitchen and grabbed the cordless phone. He threw the phone at Gary who caught it in his lap.

“Hope this works,” Jake said.

Gary dialed John’s phone number and listened to the ringing on the other end. He was good friends with John; they had just played paintball this afternoon together. He remembered now that John had said something about Ryan only a few hours ago, about how he didn’t trust him. Gary told John that Ryan was sniffing around his sister, and John warned Gary to keep her away from him. John believed that Ryan was bad news, and Gary could see now with these two pointing guns at him, and with his broken knees, that John was right.

John’s phone rang. And rang and rang.

Please pick up, Gary prayed. He didn’t think these two were going to give him any more chances.

Lita glanced at Jake; she was ready to pull the trigger at any second.

“What’s up?” John said into Gary’s ear and Gary almost felt like sobbing with relief. Instead, he babbled into the phone. “John, I really need your help.” He glanced up at Jake and Lita and thought better of mentioning them in any way. “You know that guy who was working with you, that guy Ryan?”

“Yeah,” John said in a wary voice.

“I need to know where he’s staying?”

“Why?”

“Please,” Gary practically sobbed into the phone. “I can’t tell you right now, I just need to know where he’s staying.”

Jake grabbed a writing pad from the kitchen and a pen. He threw them at Gary who caught the pad and then had to find the pen which slipped down between some seat cushions. He held the pen in his trembling fingers and scribbled down the address as he listened on the phone.

“You’re absolutely sure this is where he’s staying?”

“Yes,” John said. “That’s what he wrote down on his application.”

“Thanks, man. You’ve been a big help.”

Gary hung up and smiled at them as he handed the notepad to Jake.

Jake looked down at the pad, then at Gary. “What’s the fastest way to get there?” he asked.

“Fourth Street is right off Main Street.”

Jake already had an idea of where this street was – he’d memorized the town that much already. They could swing by the motel, pick up Mr. Murdock, and be at the house in less than fifteen minutes.

“You did real well,” Jake said.

Gary smiled. “I’m sorry. I wish I would’ve thought of this earlier. I swear, I just couldn’t remember. You guys had me so nervous.”

Jake smiled like he understood. He looked at Lita and nodded his head.

She pulled the trigger twice and two bullets spit into Gary’s head before he had a chance to beg them not to shoot.

3.

Ryan pulled up into Carol’s driveway. He parked his car and turned off the engine and the headlights. He noticed that only one car was parked under the wood awning – Carol’s car. He wondered where Victor or Tom was, but he didn’t really care. He looked at Carol’s house and noticed that the house was dark – there didn’t seem to be any lights on inside. He wondered for a moment if the electricity was out from the storm, but then he glanced around at the other houses and saw that they all had their lights burning. No, he realized that there might be a different reason the lights were off. He thought Carol might know more than she was letting on. He thought Carol might be waiting for them.

And then another thought occurred to him. Maybe those two at Gary’s house were inside waiting.

But Gary didn’t know where he lived; Amber had assured him of that.

There were no other vehicles parked on the street. Still, he had to be careful when they went inside.

He looked at Amber.

“We need to hurry up to my room,” he told her.

She nodded.

“We’ll get the money and get out of here.”

Again she nodded. She was ready.

They got out of his car and raced across the lawn as the rain pelted them. They got onto the front porch and hurried to the front door. Ryan unlocked the door and they entered the house. He closed and locked the front door. He also locked the deadbolt and attached the security chain.

Ryan stood still for a moment in the darkness. There was a flickering light coming from down the hall, coming from Carol’s den. It seemed like light from a candle – like the same light he’d seen before from down the hall.

He pointed at the stairs that led up to the second story, and Amber nodded.

They crept up the stairs to the hallway.

Ryan unlocked the door to his bedroom and they rushed inside.

4.

From down the hall, Victor watched them enter through the crack in his barely open door. He had expected Ryan to be alone, not with a woman. He sighed … this was going to be a little more complicated than he thought. But it still had to be done.

Victor slipped out of his bedroom and crept down the hall. He held his breath as he snuck past Ryan’s bedroom door. His heart thundered so hard in his chest he was sure Ryan and the woman would hear it.

He made his way down the stairs, painfully slow, skirting the creaky part of the steps, glancing every few seconds back up at the top of the stairs to make sure they hadn’t come back out of the bedroom.

Once he was on the ground floor, he moved quickly across the living room towards the couches and chair. He ducked down behind the couch and pulled his revolver out of his pants pocket. He waited in the gloom.

He had seen the flickering light coming from Carol’s den. She was in there. Praying to that pentagram on her floor. Doing whatever ritual she imagined would send Cutter back. Maybe it was true, and maybe it wasn’t. But Victor was only going to keep his mind on one thing, and that was protecting Carol. He would wait here and if Ryan made a move towards Carol’s den, then he was going to have to shoot him.

5.

Inside his bedroom, Ryan locked his door and shoved the skeleton key down into his pocket. He rushed over to the bed; he picked up the mattress and tossed it off of the bed. And underneath was the layer of money on the box-spring.

Amber walked over to the bed, her eyes wide with disbelief as she stared down at the layer of money, the stacks of hundred dollar bills sealed in plastic.

“You weren’t lying,” she whispered.

“I’m not lying about any of this,” he told her. “In the closet, there’s an empty duffel bag.”

She got the duffel bag out of the closet and they began filling the bag up with the money.

6.

Jake had made better time than he thought. He pulled the Lincoln over on the side of the road half a block away from Carol’s house and cut the headlights. He shut the engine off and pocketed the car keys. He saw Ryan’s Impala parked in the driveway.

Jake and Lita glanced in the backseat at Mr. Murdock who nodded at them.

All three of them got out of the car and stood in the rain which had slowed to a drizzle for a moment. They shut their doors quietly and then ran down the sidewalk to Carol’s driveway. They checked Ryan’s car – no one inside. From Ryan’s car, they split up and ran off in different directions.

Lita took the front door.

She ran onto the front porch and snuck across the floorboards, barely making a sound. She tested the front door handle with her gloved hand – it was locked. She pulled a lock pick from her pocket and went to work on the door. This one should be easy to pick, she thought, but she was having a difficult time with it.

She knew Jake and Mr. Murdock went to the back of the house. And at the rate she was going, she thought they would be inside the house before her.

Jake worked the lock on a back door as Mr. Murdock continued on past him towards the large trees in the backyard. He waited there for a moment by one of the large trees, the one closest to the house. He looked up at the branches that reached out towards a second story window.

Mr. Murdock tucked his gun inside his suit coat and began climbing the tree up towards the window.

7.

Ryan zipped up the duffel bag full of money and handed it to Amber.

She stared at him. “What are you doing?”

“Take the money,” he told her. “They’re all unmarked bills. Untraceable. I don’t know how I know that, but I do.”

“But what about you? You said you were coming with me.”

“I will. We can meet up somewhere.”

“Why? What are you planning to do here?”

“Amber,” he begged. “We don’t have time for this. You need to leave. Wait for me at the park tomorrow morning. I’ll be there.” But he wasn’t so sure that was the truth. He just needed her to be out of the house. He needed her to be safe. “If I’m not there, then you take the few possessions you want out of your house and you leave town. Promise me you’ll do that.”

“I’m not leaving without you, Ryan,” she said. “Whatever it is that you think you need to do here, just forget it. Let it go. We can just leave. Leave it all behind us.”

Ryan was about to tell her that these people would never stop looking for him, but then the words dried up in his mouth.

He froze.

They both heard a noise from downstairs, the sound of someone moving around down there in the darkness.

“Shit,” Ryan hissed. “They’re already here.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

1.

Ryan looked at Amber and spoke to her in a low but hurried voice. “Listen to me; you need to find somewhere to hide in here. Wait until I come back to get you. You understand?”

She nodded.

Ryan glanced at the closet. “Over there, hide in the closet.”

Amber got in the closet with the duffel bag in her hands and Ryan pushed the clothes back towards her. He could still see her. He got a blanket down from the shelf on top of the closet and draped it over her and tried to make it look as natural as possible. It would have to do, he thought.

He closed the closet doors almost all the way shut and then he left the bedroom.

He rushed down the stairs and looked at the living room for a moment. He didn’t see anybody in the living room. He glanced down the hall and he could still see the flickering light from Carol’s den. But that didn’t mean she was in the den – it could be a trick.

A noise from near the kitchen grabbed his attention. He hurried through the dining room, and then into the kitchen, and then into the laundry room.

2.

Jake picked the lock on the back door and got into the house through a mud room that also served as a laundry room. He closed the door quietly and stopped and listened, making sure he didn’t hear any sounds. His gun was still shoved down in the waistband of his pants, but he could get to it quickly if he needed to.

He took a step and then stopped. He heard a noise from behind him – a soft noise.

He turned and Ryan seemed to materialize out of the darkness in front of him.

Jake grabbed his gun out of the waistband of his pants, but he never got the chance to shoot. Ryan grabbed Jake’s wrist and squeezed. Jake felt all of the strength run out of his hand, it suddenly felt numb and useless. The gun slipped out of his fingers and dropped to the floor with a dull thud. He stared in horror at Ryan’s blue eyes. There was no way Ryan could be this strong, Jake thought.

As Ryan crushed the man’s wrist, he saw the handle of a knife poking out from a holster inside his suit coat. A big knife. He had planned on shooting the man, but this would work much better. In a lightning movement, Ryan grabbed the hunting knife out of the holster and stabbed the man in the gut.

Jake felt the white-hot searing pain of his own knife’s blade ripping into his abdomen. He felt the blade slice up underneath his ribcage, cutting through muscle and organs. His body went limp and much like his hand had done, he lost control of his muscles. He felt Ryan helping him down gently to the floor.

Jake wrapped his fingers around the handle of his knife that was still stuck in his gut. He tried to pull at it, but it felt like the tip of the knife was imbedded in bone somewhere inside his body. His fingers loosened on the knife and he felt everything around him slipping away.

He lay on the floor, curled up in a fetal position as the blood drained out of his body. He started to feel very cold.

3.

Carol knelt in her den, right in the middle of the pentagram painted on her wood floor. The candles burned and cast their flickering light. She had her eyes closed for a moment, whispering the chants she had learned from Walter. She opened her eyes and stared at the jar at the top of the pentagram, the jar in front of Ryan’s suitcase, the jar with her husband’s head floating in it.

One of the candles blew out even though there was no breeze in the room.

Then another one went out.

She heard footsteps behind her in the darkness.

And there was a sound that she had heard before, the sound she had heard when she had prayed a few days ago and knew that he was coming. But at the time she thought it was her husband coming back to her, now she knew she’d been wrong.

But maybe she hadn’t been wrong. Maybe her husband had come back, only Cutter, his executioner, had somehow come back with him.

The dripping sound continued from behind her.

She had done a terrible thing, she knew that now. But could it be mended? Could she fix it somehow?

She stared at the face in the jar. The last flickering candle that hadn’t been blown out sent shadows dancing all around her. “Is that you?” she whispered.

There was no answer from behind her, only the dripping sound.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I shouldn’t have called you back. I made a mistake. I want you to go back now.”

It felt like the person was right behind her now; she could feel cold breath on the back of her neck and in her ear. She could smell a rotting odor. “It doesn’t work that way, my sweet Carol,” the voice whispered into her ear.

Carol shuddered. The voice sounded different, a little slurred because of the wounds to his mouth, but she recognized it – it was her husband’s voice.

But she didn’t want to turn around; she didn’t want to see him. What would she see? Would he even have a face anymore?

“I just want to make it better,” Carol cried.

She felt the brush of fingertips on the side of her neck, and the fingertips were wet and pulpy. “There is one way you can make things better,” he whispered into her ear. “There’s one thing you can do.”

And the last candle blew out.

4.

It seemed to Amber like she’d been hiding in the closet for hours now, but she knew that wasn’t true. She thought she’d heard a sound, like glass breaking and then something opening. She couldn’t tell if it came from the bedroom or from downstairs; the stormy weather outside made the noises hard to pinpoint. Maybe it was Ryan. Maybe he had come back for her. She expected to hear him whispering from right outside the closet door that everything was okay and that she could come out. They could leave now.

But Ryan never whispered to her, and she didn’t hear any more noises in the bedroom. But she heard a few thumps and other noises that she thought came from downstairs.

What was Ryan doing? Was he going to try and kill these people who were after his money?

It was her money now, her mind whispered.

No, it was their money now.

She couldn’t take it anymore. She pushed the blanket off of her. It was too hot underneath the blanket and she felt like she couldn’t breathe. She stood up and ducked under the line of hanging clothes as she moved to the closet doors. She pushed the door open just a crack, she just wanted to make sure that Ryan wasn’t in the room.

She poked her head out into the dark room and looked around. She didn’t see anything in the darkness. She stepped all the way out of the closet with the duffel bag gripped in her hand.

She could hear the scratching sounds from the branches of the tree right outside the bedroom window, the scraping of wood against the glass, but it sounded different. The rain sounded louder.

She looked at the bedroom window.

It was wide open and there was a hole in the glass like someone had punched a hand through it.

And there were wet footprints that led from the window across the wood floor.

Amber was about to run out of the room, but then a flash of lightning outside the bedroom window lit up the room for a split second and she saw a large man standing by the bedroom door. He was dripping wet from the rain and he was dressed in black clothes and gloves. He was so dark it was like he blended in with the shadows. He held a gun in his gloved hand and it was aimed right at her.

Amber stifled a scream as she clutched the duffel bag, suddenly paralyzed with fear.

Mr. Murdock moved towards her and smiled. “Going somewhere, sweetie?”

5.

Lita finally got the front door unlocked. She’d never had this much trouble with a lock before – it seemed like something was keeping the lock from opening, but she pushed that thought from her mind. She opened the door and slipped inside. She locked the front door again, but she kept her back to the door and her eyes on the dark room. She saw an archway to the right that looked like it led to a bedroom or something, and an archway to the left that might lead to a dining room and kitchen.

She made herself stand still for a few more moments in the darkness, letting her eyes adjust to the room, scanning every corner to make sure no one was hiding. She had her gun in her hand – the silencer was still attached.

She moved forward through the darkness, heading for the stairs. She would check the archway to the right first, then the one to the left, before going up the stairs. She was sure she would run into Jake and Mr. Murdock soon.

As she walked towards the couch she sensed rather than heard someone coming for her. She spun around and saw an old man with a gun in his hand. He had it pointed at her.

“Put the gun down,” he said in a low voice.

Lita stood still; she was only a few feet away from the man. But he didn’t look like he was going to back down. She crouched down and set her gun on the wood floor.

“Kick it over there by the couch,” he told her.

She kicked her gun over to the couch with the toe of her boot. The gun slid across the floor, right past the couch towards the archway that led to Carol’s bedroom and den.

“Who are you?” he asked.

“We just want Ryan,” Lita said as she took a step towards him.

“That’s far enough,” Victor said.

Lita studied the man and saw him relaxing just a bit now that she didn’t have her gun anymore. She smiled at him. “You let us take Ryan and then we’re out of here.”

Victor hesitated.

“Why are you after him?” he asked her.

Instead of answering, Lita glanced to her left, like she’d just heard or seen something. It was a trick she’d used before, not too exaggerated, just enough to get the old man to glance that way.

And he did.

She only needed one second. She dove at Victor and plowed him back into the wall. He landed with a thud and she heard the satisfactory sound of his gun clattering to the floor and sliding across the wood.

She backed away from him as he bent forward, trying to catch his breath, and then she kicked Victor in his side with the toe of her boot before he even had a chance to move. He collapsed down onto the floor behind the two recliners.

Victor grunted as the air rushed from his body. An intense pain exploded in his side – he guessed that she had broken some of his ribs with that kick. Before he could think of too much else, the toe of her boot came out of the darkness and collided with his face.

Stars exploded in his field of vision and the pain was so sudden and intense that he nearly passed out.

Lita squatted down beside Victor and shoved the muzzle of his own gun against his temple. She glanced around to make sure no one had come running from the sound of their fighting. But the sound of the pouring rain masked a lot of the noise.

And this puzzled her. She was sure that Jake was in the house by now, but maybe he wasn’t; maybe he was having just as tough of a time as she had with these old but sturdy locks.

“Where’s Ryan?” she asked Victor.

Victor stared up at Lita, but he didn’t answer her. He struggled for breath from his cracked ribs, and he could hear his wheezing breaths in his own ears.

She pushed the muzzle of the gun harder against his temple. “I don’t have time for this, old man.”

Victor’s eyes widened in surprise as he looked up at Lita and then beyond her.

Lita didn’t have a chance to react; she didn’t have a chance to even dive to the side to avoid the attack.

Ryan was right behind her with the old-fashioned straight razor in his hand, the old-fashioned straight razor with the word Cutter carved into it. And like he’d done so many times before in his past, Cutter sliced through flesh with the razor blade; he slashed Lita right across her throat.

Lita dropped Victor’s gun and her hands grabbed at her throat, trying in vain to close the gaping wound, trying to stop the flow of blood that oozed through her gloved fingers and dripped down to the floor.

Ryan watched with no emotion as she fell over onto her side.

He picked up Victor’s gun from the floor and looked at him.

Victor struggled to push himself away from Ryan and Lita. He stared at Lita as he tried to move away from her; she lay on the floor and one of her legs kicked in spasms as she gurgled and drowned in her own blood.

Victor crawled past the recliner to the front of the couch and he had to stop, each movement sent searing pain through his body, every breath was a labor for him. But he needed to get away from Ryan – he was afraid Ryan was going to walk up behind him and calmly grab a handful of his hair with one hand and draw the razor blade across his throat with the other hand just like he’d done to that woman. Victor had seen the look in Ryan’s eyes – he knew that Ryan was going to kill them. He was going to kill every one of them.

If I could just get to the phone and call the police, Victor thought. But the phone was in the kitchen; there was no way he could make it that far right now. And he was crawling away in the wrong direction, taking cover in front of the couches.

Then he thought of the woman’s gun that she had kicked across the room. But he couldn’t see it in the darkness. It was beyond the couch he rested in front of, somewhere near the archway.

He got to the end of the couch and he had to rest. He knew Ryan would be on top of him in a few seconds. He knew his life would be over soon.

He just wanted to help Carol, and he had failed. He could feel a blackness washing over him; it was darker than the room he was in. He lost consciousness for a moment.

Ryan watched Victor crawl towards the end of one of the couches. Victor had curled up near the couch, breathing heavy and wheezing. He was very still and he seemed to have passed out. Ryan took a step towards Victor, but then he stopped and looked up at the ceiling when he heard a soft thumping noise from upstairs. It was a sound he’d heard before in this house. It was the sound of someone in the upstairs hallway.

Amber’s up there, he thought. And there’s someone up there with her.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

1.

Mr. Murdock held Amber with one arm around her neck, and his other gloved hand held a pistol jammed to the side of her head. She could feel the cold steel of the gun against her temple; he was pushing it against her head so hard. And he was breathing so heavy.

“Hold the duffel bag in front of you,” he told her in a grunting voice. “We’re going to walk down the stairs together. One step at a time. And we’re going to be careful. Got that?”

Amber nodded yes.

“You do everything I tell you to do, and I’ll let you live,” Mr. Murdock told her. “You understand that?”

Amber didn’t answer.

“Answer me,” he hissed into her ear.

She nodded slightly. “Yes,” she said.

“Okay. Start walking – we walk together.”

They left Ryan’s bedroom and moved slowly down the hall to stairs that led down to the first floor. The hall was dark, and she could barely see the steps in front of her because of the duffel bag she was holding. She tried to look down, but the man’s arm was so tight around her neck.

But she managed the descent down the steps; she felt each step with her foot as she stepped down, one by one.

“Jake!” Mr. Murdock yelled from right behind her ear, making her jump a little.

She guessed that Jake was the man she’d seen with the blond woman from the gas station.

But Jake wasn’t answering.

They moved down two more steps, down into the darkness of the first floor. The house was eerily quiet except for the pounding rain outside, and the man’s shouts were loud in Amber’s ears. “Jake! Lita! Where are you?! I’ve got it! Let’s go!”

But Jake and Lita still weren’t answering him.

2.

Ryan moved over to a wall and waited in the darkness, his body hidden from view as he watched a tall man walking Amber down the stairs. Lita had finally stopped moving and her leg had stopped kicking. The gurgling sounds as she tried to breathe had also stopped. Both her body and Victor were hidden from Amber and the man’s view as they slowly made their way down the stairs. He had heard Victor wheezing and trying to catch his breath earlier; he had seen the woman kick Victor in the ribs and in the face – he was pretty sure that Victor had some painful injuries, but he didn’t think they were life-threatening.

Ryan waited in the darkness against the wall and watched the man and Amber take the steps one at a time, very slowly. The man had a gun pointed at Amber’s head and she held the duffel bag of money in front of her. He was using her like a shield.

“Jake! Lita! Let’s go!”

Ryan was pretty sure that this man who held Amber in front of him like a shield was the only one left in the house. Ryan had taken the man and woman out quickly, the two this man called Jake and Lita. And this man seemed to be the leader.

Amber looked scared to death.

Ryan hadn’t wanted it to happen like this. He wanted to give Amber the money so she could leave. But he had made a mistake. He had waited too long.

But he wasn’t going to let this man kill her.

“Let her go,” Ryan said into the darkness from his hiding spot against the wall.

Mr. Murdock and Amber both paused on the steps; the man pulled his gun away from Amber’s head and pointed it straight ahead. Ryan noticed that the man’s gloved hand was trembling and he could tell that the man couldn’t see anything in the darkness; the man was only hoping he was aiming at someone.

“I’ve got a gun to her head,” the man shouted. “I’d be very careful what you do right now.”

Amber and Mr. Murdock were on the last few steps now, almost to the floor. Ryan wished Amber would just force herself forward, maybe they would tumble down together and the man would lose his gun. But she didn’t do that.

“Come out right now!” Mr. Murdock shouted. “Or she gets a bullet in the head.”

Ryan emerged from the shadows with Victor’s gun in his hand; he aimed it at Mr. Murdock.

Mr. Murdock shoved his gun against the side of Amber’s head. “Ryan,” he said and smiled. He even shook his head a little in disbelief. “You’ve been quite a pain in the ass lately.”

“I’m not Ryan,” he told Mr. Murdock.

“Drop your gun,” Mr. Murdock said. “I swear to God, I’ll kill her.”

“You kill her and I’ll carve you up into little pieces,” Ryan growled.

Mr. Murdock took his eyes off of Ryan for a moment and glanced around at the dark living room. “Jake!” he yelled. “Lita! Get out here. Ryan’s in the living room!”

“Jake and Lita aren’t coming,” Ryan said in a cold voice. “They’re both dead.”

Mr. Murdock stared at Ryan like he was trying to decide if he should believe him. He shoved the gun harder against Amber’s head. “Drop your fucking gun or I’m going to put a bullet through her brain.”

Mr. Murdock’s finger tightened on the trigger.

Amber squeezed her eyes shut, ready for the impact.

“Okay,” Ryan said and held Victor’s gun out with two fingers in front of him.

“Throw it away,” Mr. Murdock growled.

Amber opened her eyes and stared at Ryan, pleading with him with her eyes. It tore him up to see her like this, but he couldn’t risk a chance that this man would shoot her. He didn’t know if he was a good enough shot to kill the tall man before he shot Amber in the head – but he was pretty sure he wasn’t.

Ryan threw the gun into the dark dining room. He heard it hit a piece of furniture, bounce off it, and slide across the wood floor.

“Good boy,” Mr. Murdock said. He pushed Amber forward a little and they worked their way down the last four steps onto the floor. “Now here’s what’s going to happen,” Mr. Murdock said. “Me and the little lady here are going to walk out of here with my money. You just stay right there and I won’t kill you.”

Ryan stared at the large man in the dark clothing. “I’m already dead,” Ryan told him.

“I don’t know what kind of games you’re trying to play, but I’m fucking serious. I want you to throw your car keys by the front door. And then you’re going to let me walk out of here with my money, and then I won’t kill this girl. I swear. I just want my money. That’s all.”

Ryan knew the man was lying. He knew the moment he threw his car keys by the front door that the man would shoot him. And then he’d shoot Amber.

“I’m not Ryan,” Ryan told him.

Mr. Murdock shoved the barrel of his gun harder against Amber’s head. “I don’t know what kind of fucking drugs you’re on -” Mr. Murdock started, but his words were cut off by Carol’s voice.

“He’s not lying,” Carol said as she walked down the dark hall from her den.

Mr. Murdock turned towards Carol and he turned Amber with him at the same time. His arm was still clamped around her neck in a choke-hold. “Who the fuck are you?”

Carol stood at the end of the dark hall and stared at Mr. Murdock, unafraid of the gun pointed at her. “He’s not lying. There’s someone else inside of him, possessing his body. A serial killer named Cutter.”

Mr. Murdock shook his head, not believing what he was hearing. “You people are fucking crazy.” He turned back to Ryan, his gun aimed at Ryan now. “I’m not playing around anymore. I want your car keys by the front door. Now!”

3.

Amber felt the man’s arm slack a little around her neck as he turned from Carol back to Ryan. She knew that this was her only chance if she was going to make her escape. She dropped the duffel bag at her feet.

“What the fuck?” she heard the man scream from behind her.

She didn’t waste another second. She swung her elbow back as hard as she could into the man’s gut, and because he was so much taller than she was, she caught him at the bottom of his belly, a soft area near his bladder. His arm loosened from around her neck and the man crumpled back away from her for a moment, still in pain from the jab of her elbow – it was just enough of a separation for her wrench away from him and dive to the floor.

She didn’t care about the duffel bag of money anymore; all she cared about was getting Ryan out of here.

4.

Ryan watched Amber throw an elbow into the tall man’s gut and dive away from him. This was going to be his only chance, he knew that.

As Mr. Murdock doubled over in pain for a moment from Amber’s elbow jab, Ryan ran the few steps across the room like a possessed linebacker closing in on a quarterback. Mr. Murdock brought his pistol back up, but Ryan slammed into him and smashed his body into the bottom stairs before he could squeeze the trigger. The gun flew out of Mr. Murdock’s hand during the tackle; it landed on the floor and slid away into the darkness.

Mr. Murdock gasped for breath, his face wincing in pain from his back landing on the edge of the wood steps.

Ryan grabbed the tall man by the front of his shirt and slammed him into the stair railing and bannisters, smashing the wood apart. Ryan threw the man through the pieces of broken wood with strength he never knew he had. Mr. Murdock collapsed on the floor among the pieces of wood.

Mr. Murdock struggled back up to his feet much more quickly than Ryan had anticipated.

But it didn’t matter that Mr. Murdock was back on his feet. Ryan already had his straight razor out, the blade opened. He brought the razor down across Mr. Murdock’s face and throat in a diagonal slash. Then he slashed again and again in vicious movements that cut deep into the flesh of the man’s face and throat. Blood gushed out. Mr. Murdock held up a hand in defense, and Ryan sliced off two of the man’s fingers as neatly as if he’d stuck his fingers into a meat-cutting saw.

Mr. Murdock collapsed onto the floor, trying to scream and cry out in pain, but his vocal chords were slashed, and much like his associate Lita, he was drowning in his own blood as it poured into his lungs.

But Ryan didn’t stop; he slashed again and again, until the cuts crisscrossed on Mr. Murdock’s face, until sections of blood-soaked skin fell away from his face in layers.

5.

Amber moved out of the way of Mr. Murdock and Ryan and headed towards the back of the couch for safety. Carol dropped to her hands and knees and picked up Lita’s gun on the floor.

This was it, Carol thought as she held the gun. This was the way it could all be fixed. Her husband, back from the grave, had told her so.

She aimed the gun at the fighting men. Except this wasn’t a fight anymore, it was a slaughter. Ryan slashed and slashed at the man’s face and throat. Pulpy pieces of flesh were scattered everywhere. Blood soaked the wood floor. If Carol ever needed any proof that Cutter was inside of Ryan, this was proof enough now.

She watched as Ryan stood over top of Mr. Murdock. He had finally stopped his savage attack with the straight razor. He was breathing heavily, his back to her, staring down at his mutilated victim on the floor who somehow clung to life, gurgling out his last breaths.

She watched Ryan turn to Amber who cowered by the couch, holding onto it like a woman holding onto a lifeboat in a stormy sea.

“I did it for you!” Ryan yelled at Amber with an insane smile and a killer’s glee in his wide blue eyes. “They will never come after you now. You’ll be free!”

Ryan took a step towards Amber. Mr. Murdock’s blood was streaked across his face.

“Stop right there, Cutter,” Carol said, aiming Lita’s gun at Ryan. She knew how to use a gun, her husband had showed her how when they were first married. The memory caused a split-second moment of nostalgia, but she pushed it away. She knew what she needed to do here; she needed to do what her husband had told her to do.

Ryan froze.

Carol pulled the trigger and shot Ryan in the chest.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

1.

“No!!” Amber screamed. She watched Carol shoot Ryan. She saw the bullet hit him right in the chest and knock him backwards; he fell over the dying man in the dark suit and landed on the floor near him.

Amber rushed across the floor to Ryan and fell down beside him as he clutched at the wound in his chest.

“Get away from him,” Carol growled at Amber.

Amber didn’t listen to the old woman. She held Ryan’s head, cradling it. He stared up at her with his blue eyes that seemed to wonder where he was.

“Ryan,” she said and then cried.

“It’s okay,” he told her in a hoarse voice. “You need to take the money and get out of here.”

“No,” Amber whimpered. “Not without you.”

Carol took a step closer to them, her gun still aimed down at Ryan. “You killed my husband, Cutter,” she said to Ryan as she took another step closer. “You tortured him. You mutilated him.”

Ryan held his hand over the wound on his chest as his blood oozed out between his fingers.

“He didn’t deserve what you did to him,” Carol said as she took another step closer. The gun in her hand shook as her hands trembled.

“Don’t,” Amber said to Carol as she sat in front of Ryan like she was trying to shield him. “Please don’t shoot him again.”

Ryan smiled as a little bit of blood leaked out of his mouth. He struggled to sit up so he could stare at Carol in the eye. He had something to tell her. He remembered everything now. He was Cutter and he knew what he had done to his victims – the tortures, the murders. But there was something that Carol needed to know.

“There’s something I need to tell you about your husband,” Ryan said as he sat up.

“Shut up,” Carol said and took another step closer to them.

“He wasn’t just another victim,” Ryan went on. “He wasn’t some random person I selected.”

“Shut up!” Carol said a little louder. “I don’t want to hear your lies!”

“He was my helper,” Ryan said. “He helped me pick out my victims. He helped me torture them. He helped me kill them. All of them.”

“Shut up!”

“I wanted to stop, but he wouldn’t let me. He was my last victim and then I ended it for good.”

“I said, SHUT UP!!”

Carol pulled the trigger again and shot Ryan in the shoulder. The gunshot was only a spit of noise because of the silencer. Amber ducked out of the way just in time, falling down to her side. She turned back to the old woman, afraid to move now, afraid Carol was going to shoot her next.

“Don’t you move, either,” Carol told Amber. “I’ll shoot you, too. There’s only one way out of this. Only one way to send my husband and Cutter back to where they came from. Back to where they belong now.”

Ryan managed to sit up even with the fresh bullet wound in his shoulder, he looked at Amber. “You need to run,” he told her.

“No,” Amber whispered and shook her head no.

“This is the way it needs to be,” he told her.

Carol shot Ryan again in the chest, and the bullet knocked him back down flat to the floor with a thump.

Ryan laid flat on his back and struggled for breath. He stared up at the dark ceiling with wide eyes.

Carol aimed the gun at Amber.

Amber shook her head no, crying even harder now.

“Please, Carol,” Ryan whispered. “Don’t shoot her.”

“I have to,” Carol said.

Amber closed her eyes as Carol tightened her finger around the trigger.

But before she could shoot, Victor launched himself at Carol. He tackled her and knocked her to the ground as she squeezed off another bullet that went astray. She screamed under his weight as he held her on the ground. Even though his wounds pained him, he managed to knock the gun out of her hand.

Carol writhed on the floor underneath Victor, but he wouldn’t let her go.

“I’ve got to send them back!” Carol yelled.

Victor held her down. “You can’t kill that girl,” he whispered into her ear, trying to calm her down. “She’s got nothing to do with this.”

Carol stopped struggling and cried even harder.

“You sent him back,” Victor whispered into her ear. “Cutter’s dying. He’s going back. You did it, Carol. You sent him back.”

Amber scrambled back over to Ryan, but she could see that he was dying; there was no hope for him now. She stared down at him through blurred vision from her tears.

Ryan lay in an ever-widening pool of his own blood, struggling to keep his eyes open.

“Hold on, Ryan,” Amber cried. “I know you’re Cutter. But I know you could be different if you had another chance.”

“Please, Amber,” Ryan croaked out and coughed up a little blood. “Let me go.” Ryan struggled to smile. “Let me go, and I think you’ll be seeing me again real soon.”

Amber wasn’t sure what he meant by that.

“Now go!” Ryan coughed out through a spray of blood, he held out the keys to his car. He closed his eyes and his breathing stopped.

Amber grabbed Ryan’s car keys and jumped to her feet. She grabbed the duffel bag by the couch. She looked over at Carol and Victor. Victor still held Carol down on the floor and he was still whispering into her ear, trying to calm her down, trying to soothe her.

But there would never be any peace for her, Amber thought.

She ran out through the front door to Ryan’s car.

Ryan opened his eyes one more time even though he wasn’t breathing anymore. He watched Amber run to the front door. He smiled and closed his eyes.

But he didn’t have any other thoughts after that.

He drifted off into darkness and …

2.

… pure white.

Heavy breathing.

The red-haired man stared down at the naked man on the table, the man’s head encased in the wood and leather straps, his hands held down in the wooden boxes, the straps cutting deep into his flesh and holding him down to the wood table. The red-haired man walked slowly around the table, he didn’t need to hurry. Cutter could run, but he couldn’t run forever. It was only a matter of time before he was caught and brought back here where he belonged – back in Hell.

And now he would have eternity for his pleasure, an eternity to torture Cutter, an eternity to pay him back for what he had done to him.

He leaned over Cutter’s face which was hidden underneath the blood-stained white cloth. He could hear his grunts and groans. He watched him try to struggle against his bonds, but there was no hope. He didn’t know how he had escaped Hell and jumped into the dying body of Ryan Freeman, but he was going to make sure that it never happened again.

“We’ll have all of eternity to find out how you did it, Cutter,” the red-haired man said. “How you jumped into Ryan’s body.”

The red-haired man reached out with his ruined fingertips and tore the white cloth away from the Cutter’s face.

But it wasn’t Cutter beneath the white cloth.

Ryan Freeman, the real Ryan Freeman, stared up at him with wide brown eyes. He didn’t know where he was. He was hyperventilating, trying to catch his breath.

“Where am I?” Ryan asked as best he could through clenched teeth. He tried to work his jaws open against the leather strap under his chin, but the strap was too tight. “How did I get here?”

The red-haired man looked up at the wood ceiling of exposed trusses in the shack that was now back in Hell where it belonged.

“Cutter!!” the red-haired man who used to be Carol’s husband, the man who used to be Cutter’s partner, screamed up at the ceiling.

But Cutter was gone again.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

1.

Amber ran across the front yard through the rain. She carried the duffel bag. She got to Ryan’s car and got inside. She tossed the duffel bag on the passenger seat floor. She was still crying, but she needed to get control of herself. Ryan was dead now, and this was what he wanted for her. He wanted her to start over. He wanted her to be happy.

He loved her.

She jabbed the key into the ignition, shaking from the cold, shaking from shock, from sorrow. She started the car and the headlights came on automatically. She shifted into reverse and backed out of the driveway. She didn’t even look for other cars; she fishtailed out into the street, and then turned the wheel and shifted into drive. She stomped her foot on the gas pedal and the tires spun for a moment on the wet pavement, and then the car lurched forward. She drove down the wet street with tears in her eyes.

2.

Amber pulled up into the driveway of her house. She parked right behind Gary’s truck. He was probably waiting up for her, but she didn’t care. This would be the last time she would ever see him. She just wanted to get something from her bedroom, something she couldn’t leave without.

She turned off the car and got out. The duffel bag was on the passenger floorboard. If she had thrown it in the backseat, she might have seen the person hiding on the floorboards behind the seats.

But she didn’t.

Amber hurried through the rain to the front door. She got her keys out, but found the door unlocked. She entered, bracing herself for her brother’s shouting and cursing, but then she stopped and stared at her dead brother on the couch. He would never yell at her again. She closed the door, but didn’t lock it. She knew that the man and woman in the dark clothing had killed her brother.

But they wouldn’t be coming after her now – Ryan had taken care of that.

She looked at Gary for a moment, she stared at his bloody knees, his body slumped over on the couch, the neat bullet holes in one side of his head, and the other side of his head down on the couch, stuck to the couch cushions with thick, drying blood.

She wanted to feel sad, she wanted to cry, but she couldn’t. Maybe later, but not right now.

Amber hurried to her bedroom. She unlocked her bedroom door and rushed inside. She grabbed the things she wanted from the top of her dresser – the small, framed photos of her mom. It was all she wanted from this place. She didn’t take a change of clothes with her and she didn’t take any of her other possessions. She was going to start over. Everything new, nothing that reminded her of this place.

She knew she would have to talk to the police eventually. Explain to them that she had found Gary dead like this. No one would ever suspect her. The police would think it was a robbery or even that Gary was involved with the dead criminals in Carol’s house. Or it would be just one more unsolved murder – one more mystery in Edrington.

Amber left Gary’s house (she still could only think of it as Gary’s house – it had never been hers) and drove out of the town of Edrington and into the woods on Winter Road. She started crying again as she drove and she had to slow the car down. She knew she should probably pull over, it would be safer. But she needed to get away from this town for a little while. She had to think about things for a moment.

She saw the road that lead deeper into the woods, the road she and Ryan had taken to find the shack in the woods. She thought of going back to that shack, to see if it was still there. But she had a feeling that the shack wouldn’t be there now – it had been a vision from Hell, and that’s where it had gone back to now.

As she drove slowly down the rain-soaked back roads through the woods, she saw something in her rearview mirror, a flash of movement that caught her eye, a dark shape sitting up in the backseat.

Her eyes widened with terror.

Jake sat up in the backseat of the car and looked at her. He held the blood-stained hunting knife in his hand.

The Impala slid off the road and came to a stop in the tall grass, barely missing a tree. The headlights were still on, stabbing through the darkness as the rain poured down. The engine was still running.

Amber shook with fear as she turned around and looked at Jake. She reached for the door handle – she was ready to bolt outside into the rain and run into the woods.

“Don’t run,” Jake said.

Amber froze – she knew that voice.

Jake stared at her and he threw the hunting knife down onto the floorboard of the back seat and showed her that his hands were empty. “Amber,” he said. “It’s me. It’s Cutter.”

Amber stared at Jake.

“I’m Cutter.”

Jake tore his black suit coat off and then tore his blood-stained white shirt open and showed her the knife wound that Ryan had inflicted on him. He wiped away old blood from his abdomen and showed her that the stab wound was completely healed now.

“How …” Amber said.

“The wound, it’s healed,” Jake said.

Jake stared at her with Cutter’s blue eyes. “It’s me, Amber. I jumped into Jake’s body at the last second as he was dying. And I remember everything now.”

Amber shook her head, not sure what to do.

“I can go with you now. I love you.”

“I love you, too,” Amber whispered.

“I want to start over,” Jake told her. “I know I can be different if I can get another chance.”

3.

Hours later the rain had stopped, the storm was passing Edrington by as the night edged towards dawn. And like the townspeople had said, the colder air was following the storm.

Cop cars were parked in Carol’s driveway and on the street in front of her house. An ambulance was parked on the front lawn. Cops and paramedics moved around in the flashing lights of the police cars. A few cops worked the streets, trying to keep neighbors pushed back; they stood in the road wrapped in their robes and coats.

One man, Walter, had driven several blocks and parked his car down the street. He’d walked another few blocks in the rain just to watch this scene. He smiled as he watched the cops and paramedics move around like busy little ants.

One cop fixed yellow police tape across Carol’s front porch. And another two officers guarded Mr. Murdock’s car.

The bodies of Lita and Mr. Murdock were already being placed into the ambulance. Another ambulance was on the way from a nearby town for Ryan’s body.

Inside the house, Detective Harrison watched as the paramedics wheeled the bodies out of the living room. The hands of the victims had been bagged, photos had been taken, and evidence had been collected. It was time to get them to the morgue.

Carol and Victor had been questioned. Victor had been the one who called the cops. After the terror was over he realized that the cops weren’t coming because none of the neighbors had heard gunshots because of the silencer on the gun. And that gave Victor a chance to tie up a few loose ends before he called the police. Victor went into Carol’s den to clean up the mess on the floor. Even though his side screamed in pain and the side of his face was a dull throb, he knew he had to do this for Carol – she’d never be able to explain why this stuff was here if they searched this room. He had left Carol on the couch, she was in shock, nearly catatonic, but he had to leave her for a moment so he could clean up the evidence.

He entered the den and saw that the jar with her husband’s head in it was gone. So were the other items from the suitcase. Even the brown suitcase was gone. Where had it gone? Victor wondered. Had Amber circled back around and taken it? Why would she do that? But he knew that nobody had been in this den.

But the jar and the suitcase were gone.

He didn’t want to think about where they might have gone back to. He didn’t want to think about how much of Carol’s story might have been true.

Victor bent down to roll the rug back over the pentagram and an explosion of fresh pain shot through his side. He had to wait for a moment for the pain to pass a little before he could roll the rest of the rug back in place. But he got through it. As soon as his ribs were better, he was going to sand this floor down and get rid of that pentagram and the scorch marks around it.

He walked to the doorway and went out into the hall. He closed the door to the den and went to the living room to be with Carol.

After Victor called the cops, he waited with Carol for them to get there. Carol hadn’t said a word the whole time they waited. Victor rested his hand on her hand. She stared ahead blankly, but she didn’t pull her hand away from his.

They would get through this somehow, Victor thought.

4.

Detective Harrison, one of only two detectives on the small Edrington police department, walked over to the medical examiner who looked shell-shocked.

“What a blood bath,” the detective said.

The medical examiner nodded. “I haven’t seen anything like this in a long time. Not since the …”

“The Cutter case,” Detective Harrison finished for him.

“What did Carol say happened?” the medical examiner asked. The M.E. knew Carol, but he hadn’t been able to talk to her. She’d been questioned, and then taken to the police station. Victor had been by her side the whole time. He often wondered why she and Victor hadn’t gotten together after her husband’s death so long ago – they seemed so close now.

“She couldn’t say much, still in shock. Victor did most of the talking. He said these people broke in to kill this guy who was renting a room from Carol. Said the man’s name was Ryan Freeman. Ryan killed two of the attackers, but then he went after Carol. She picked up one of the other guys’ guns and shot him. She didn’t have a choice – it was self-defense. Seems like there might have been another wounded man that got away. But we’ll find him.”

“Why were these people after this guy?” the medical examiner asked as he looked down at Ryan’s body which was covered with a white sheet.

“Who knows?” Harrison said. “Drugs? Revenge?”

The medical examiner looked around to make sure that he and the detective were alone, that no one was within earshot. He had something to tell Harrison, and he didn’t want anyone else overhearing what he was going to say.

It was crazy, he knew that, but he needed to tell someone.

Harrison stared at the medical examiner as he glanced around at the living room. “You okay? You don’t look so good. I know you’ve seen this kind of stuff before …”

The medical examiner looked at Harrison and nodded. “It’s not that.”

“What is it? What’s wrong?”

“It’s really strange. I … I don’t even know how to explain it.”

Harrison stared at the medical examiner, waiting for him to continue.

The M.E. glanced around again, making sure no one was near them, and then he looked at Harrison. “Listen,” he said. “This can’t get out to anybody. I’ll put it in the report, but then I’m going to bury it. It just doesn’t make any sense.”

“You know me,” Harrison said. “You know I’m not going to go around talking about this stuff. Hell, I don’t even tell my wife about most of what I see.”

The M.E. nodded and sighed. But he didn’t say anything for a moment.

Harrison grew impatient. “Come on, what is it? You look … you look scared.”

The M.E. locked eyes with Harrison. “That body over there, that Ryan Freeman guy, he doesn’t have any eyes.”

Harrison winced. “No eyes?”

The M.E. went over to Ryan’s body and pulled the white sheet back away from his face so that the detective could see what he was talking about.

“See?” the M.E. said. “And I don’t mean his eyes were ripped out or cut out. I mean, it’s like … like they were never there at all.”

5.

The show was over.

The rain had stopped. The darkness was fading as the sky lightened in the east over the mountains. The cold air was coming down from the north.

The neighborhood people were going back to their homes now. The ambulances were gone. Some of the cops had left.

Walter walked back to his car and got in. He drove back to his tidy little house near the woods and went inside.

He went to a spare bedroom where he had his own pentagram painted in white on the wood floor. He lit candles and placed them at each point of the star. He stripped naked and entered the pentagram. He kneeled down in the center. He closed his eyes.

Soon he felt a presence inside the room with him.

He heard a dripping sound from behind him.

Drip. Drip.

He could feel cold breath on the back of his neck …

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Mark Lukens lives with his wife and son in Florida, not far from Tampa. He’s a full-time writer of several books including “Descendants of Magic,” a Young Adult novel he wrote with his lifelong friend, Tony Circelli. He wrote “Ancient Enemy” a supernatural tale available on Amazon and Kindle. He’s also a screenwriter with several works in progress. He has more novels coming soon, including “Night Terrors.”

He welcomes any comments and questions. You can contact him at: MarkLukensBooks@yahoo.com