Page 57 of Last Seen

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Halley

“We have to leave.” Noah bounds from the room, gathering things in his arms. “We have to leave now.”

“Is this why Cameron was telling you to get rid of me?” Halley asks. His movement is making her dizzy. “Does he know about Ian?”

“He must. Or at least he suspects. Shit. Seriously, we need to go. I can’t stay here. Not knowing he’s alive. Not knowing he might be here.”

He sounds like a child, panicked by a nightmare. Halley doesn’t know how to help him; she is as deeply afraid as she has ever been.

“What did he do to you?”

“You don’t want to know. My brother was cruel, and he was mentally ill. My father sent him off to a camp to straighten him out, but it only made him worse. Please, Halley. We need to leave.”

Bells are ringing. Her sister was sent to a wilderness camp to work on her behavioral issues, too.

“You really don’t remember me, do you?”

Why? Why should she know him?

“Okay, yes. We’ll go to Nashville. We’ll figure it out from there.”

Noah throws her a grateful glance, then stops, halting dead. The meager color in his face drains, and his eyes go wild. He takes three steps back.

“Where do you think you’ll get to, little brother? Do you think you can go anywhere without me finding you?”

She whirls, and a man stands between them and the front door of the cottage.

It is the stranger from Marchburg. The man from the pictures. Ian. His words are slow and measured and crawl on her skin like ants on honey. She is nearly frozen in place.

He moves sinuously into the living room. She is reminded of a great snake slithering through the grass. Has he been here all along? When did he get in? How?

Worse, he is holding Halley’s gun.

“Come with me,” he says to her, pleasantly, as if inviting her for a picnic.

“No!” Noah roars. “Halley, run!”

He surges forward, and Ian pulls the trigger. It is so sudden. Noah collapses as if he’s a folding table, straight down in a heap, and stays there.

Before she can react, Ian has her by the arm and is dragging her out of the door. She starts to scream, but he yanks her to a halt and puts a hand over her mouth. The madness in his eyes is enough to rob her of her voice anyway.

“Do that and I might as well just put a bullet in your chest, too.”

Better death than whatever horribleness this man is planning for her. She looks over his shoulder at Noah. Blood is spreading beneath him.

“He needs help or he’ll bleed out,” she manages. “He’ll die.”

“Like I care. Sniveling little twit. Besides, you killed him.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Your prints on the gun, my sweet.” He waves it in front of her. He’s wearing gloves. “Your Jeep found in Nashville. You shot him, you ran. You disappeared into the fabric of the universe, with law enforcement on your tail.”

“No one would believe I could do such a thing. My Jeep is here.”

“Not anymore. A little birdie did me a favor.”

“This is insane. This isn’t happening.” She has conjured this fever dream. It is the migraine. None of this is real. Please. Please let it be her imagination.

“Your inner monologue aloud is fascinating.” The sarcasm in his voice, the dismissive tone, the ease with which he murdered his brother, without blinking an eye, makes the hair stand up on the back of her neck.

His hand is bruising her arm. The pain is very, very real.

“It is happening, because I’ve made it so.

You were with every single victim of this little spree.

You were unstable. You were upset. Your life was falling apart.

You went a little mad, killed a few people, and went on the lam.

It’s not a stretch at all, considering.”

“You’re sick. This isn’t going to work.”

“Really? Watch.”

He tightens the grip on her arm and drags her out to the garden shed. There is a plank in the floorboard pulled up, and she sees stairs into the darkness below. Noah said something about tunnels.

“No, no, I won’t! Hel—”

Her shouts are cut off. She sees the gun coming at her, then she sees nothing else.

Halley wakes in darkness.

It is velvet and alive, wrapping her in a claustrophobic embrace so intense she has to fight back a scream. She feels her face; she is not wearing a blindfold. She can’t see her hands.

She looks everywhere, sees nothing.

The migraines sometimes strip her of sight, but she feels only the echo of that previous pain. No, there is a lump on the side of her head, crusted blood in her hair. She remembers the gun coming toward her face. He hit her so hard she’s gone blind.

“Help!” she bellows, and the word is flat.

There is no reverberation, it dies in the thin air.

She listens frantically, but the only sound is internal.

Her heart, her blood, rushing through the subclavian artery.

She can hear its whoosh as clearly as if she has a stethoscope planted against her neck.

She moves and her bones creak. Her ears are crackling—the tinnitus she has grown so accustomed to living in the city is like the remnants of a sharp bell pealing again and again.

She is lying down. She sits up and there is still nothing. Nothing but her own body’s internal noise. It is cacophonous; she must breathe to allow herself to adjust.

What is happening? Where am I?

“Hello? Help!” Her voice is strange. She doesn’t sound at all like herself. Her voice is higher pitched than normal.

She uses her hands to feel around. Whatever she is lying on feels like fine mesh.

She crawls to her left and is met with a sharp triangle of what feels like foam, rows of it, one after the other.

To her right, the same. There is not much room to move.

She stands up, reaching her arms to what she thinks must be the ceiling, and vertigo swamps her.

There is no horizon, nothing to latch on to, nothing to keep her upright.

The darkness is so complete, the absence of sound so profound, she has to think this is how the blind and deaf must feel.

She collapses back to the mesh. She is now among their ranks.

At least with that, she can lie down again.

Her thoughts are jumbled, spinning. Memories of the past week come fast and hard. There is still no light, no sound, no movement. She is buried alive and her senses are gone.

Hysteria seizes her. Tears pour from her eyes.

Rational thought is impossible. Her neurons fire, and in the absence of all stimuli and the overwhelming terror of this dark place, something breaks inside her head.

She is trapped there, inside her own mind, and can’t escape.

She has lost her grip on reality. The darkness has eaten her soul.

This is what going insane feels like. She shrieks, wailing, again and again and again, and knows deep inside no one can hear her. The crack inside her sanity is audible to her alone.

She is back in the house she grew up in.

She is six years old.

Her sister is fighting with her mother.

Screaming, crying.

There is a man.

His back is to her.

There is a glint in his hand.

He charges forward.

Her sister screams.

The knife connects.

Her mother falls.

The white carpet, red.

The wail building from deep inside her.

She runs, falls at her mother’s side.

Blank eyes, light leaving.

Mouth moving. A harsh whisper.

“Run, Halley Bear. Run.”

She runs.

He follows.

Cat cries out.

He ignores the protest.

She knows. She has to die.

He catches her by the foot.

Swings her around.

Her head hits the mantel.

Pain. So much pain.

Red. Red. Red.

Black.

Hands on her shoulders.

“Shh. Thank God. Stay down. Don’t move. Make him think you’re dead.”

I am dead.

I am dead.

I am dead.

Blackness, again.