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I study the man’s face, shocked to realize it’s similar to a photo I’ve looked at a hundred times. And while the age-progressed picture on the NamUs site didn’t get it completely right, the family resemblance is close enough that I can recognize with certainty the person who minutes ago stood in this very yard.
But it’s not an image of Billy I’m looking at.
It’s his brother.
THIRTY-THREE
I continue to stare at the screen, caught in a state of suspended animation as everything clicks into place. Of course it wasn’t Billy’s ghost haunting the edge of the woods. It wasn’t his spirit putting baseballs into the yard and scribbling in my notebook. It wasn’t Billy who Vance Wallace saw rushing through his backyard. Something I should have realized from the start, for Vance never uttered Billy’s name. He always referred to “the Barringer boy.”
Andy Barringer.
Flesh and bone.
Pretending to be his dead brother for reasons I can’t begin to understand.
That I was duped so thoroughly would consume my thoughts if not for several more pressing ones.
First, Andy ishere.
Not off the grid but on Hemlock Circle.
And he’s been here for days. At least since the day Billy’s remains were found at the falls. I know because the next morning was when the first baseball was left on the lawn, setting off this whole chain of events.
Now he has Henry, a fact that snaps me back to action. I start across the yard, heading to the woods. “I think I know where he is.”
I’d tell Ashley more, but it’s too complex to explain. In this moment, I simply need her to trust that I know what I’m doing. Apparently, she does, because she’s now right behind me as we crash through the trees. Darkness closes in around us the moment we’re inside the woods. I point the flashlight on my phone at the ground ahead of us. Ashley does the same, the forest floor a blur in the harsh light.
“He’s at the falls, isn’t he?” Ashley says.
“Yeah,” I say, for it’s the only place I can think of where Andy would go. It’s where I suspect he’s been staying all this time. I think back to my trek there. The open barn door, the footprints in the dirt, even the can of tuna. All signs that someone was squatting on the grounds of the Hawthorne Institute.
Then, of course, there’s the fact that it’s where Billy was found. His resting place for thirty long, lonely years. It feels right that it all leads to that cursed place. So right that it almost seems inevitable.
Ashley and I don’t talk as we push on through the woods. It’s too loud, the insects here not singing but screaming. The frantic screeching sounds like a thousand sirens as we keep our lights on the ground ahead, watching our step, focused only on getting to the falls as fast as we can. When we reach the road at the halfway point, neither of us pauses to look for oncoming cars. That’s precious seconds we can’t afford to waste. We simply burst from the forest like swimmers emerging from water to catch their breath before plunging back in on the other side.
Not long after that, the lights latch onto something ahead of us.
The wall, looking extra forbidding at night.
We make a right until we reach the gap in the stone. I push through it first, followed by Ashley right behind me, breathing as heavily as I am, the puffs hot on the back of my neck.
On the other side of the wall, the night noise of the forest is joinedby the distant roar of water, which gets louder each step we take. Once it drowns out all other sounds, I know we’re there.
Pushing through the thinning trees, I point the phone’s light straight ahead to the outcropping. Caught in the glare are two people.
The first is Andy Barringer.
He’s bigger than the photos from the trail cam suggest. Not only taller, but thicker. A frame built by hard labor and not the gym. His eyes are big and round and attentive. Like an owl’s. They make him look otherworldly. Almost spooky.
Andy steps to the side, revealing Henry at the edge of the precipice, looking so small, so helpless. His hands have been bound together at the wrists with rope, giving the awful impression of someone being forced to walk the plank.
Ashley cries out when she sees him. “Henry!”
He jerks to life. “Mom?”
“I’m here, baby,” Ashley says as she starts to rush toward him. I pull her back and whisper in her ear.
“Wait. We don’t know what he plans to do.”