Found You (13 page)

Jake had never been able to lie to Erik, but he’d be damned if he could tell him about what was really going on. And even if he did, it wouldn’t matter. Erik couldn’t help him. The dead wanted to get him back, he supposed, and when that was the plain truth staring you in the face, what did you tell a guy who, but for the virtue of a few years’ more sobriety, was really no better off in
this miserable life than you? “There’s nothing to talk about, man. I just saw—thought I saw—someone who looked like Chloe, and it bugged me out. I don’t even think—”

“Jesus, man. I’m trying to tell you I understand.” That calm rippled with annoyance. “I’ve been there, where you are. I’ve seen things, too. I…know what you’re going through. It happened to me, too.”

Jake frowned, offended by what he thought was Erik’s implication. “I’m not using,” he said in a defensive growl. “I swear on my life.”

A sigh came from the other end of the phone. “Don’t ever swear on your life. It’s too easy to lose that. And besides, this has nothing to do with drugs.”

Jake was momentarily taken aback by that. “Really? Then what does it have to do with?”

There was a long, thoughtful pause from the other end of the phone, and then, “It doesn’t have a face.”

For a moment, the world got fuzzy around the edges, and Jake slapped a hand against the wall to keep upright. “Huh?” No way, no way, no fucking
way
Erik could possibly be talking about the same thing.

But what he said made the hairs on Jake’s arms and all along the back of his neck stand up. It made his skin tingle. He took a new cigarette from the pack on the dresser and lit it.

“You know what I’m talking about, don’t you, Jake?”

Jake couldn’t tell from his tone if he was coaxing an affirmation or looking for reassurance. “Yes.” The word came out as little more than a hiss, so he tried again.
“Yes. I do. But I thought it was me. I didn’t think—I mean, how do you—I, ah…I thought…”

He wasn’t sure how to explain what he thought, exactly, because he’d never considered the possibility that it wasn’t his punishment alone, whether in his head or outside of it. He’d always assumed that he’d done something wrong. That Erik knew exactly what it was he was seeing made him feel guilty, somehow. Exposed, like he’d been caught. He thought maybe a drug conversation might have been easier. “You know about it?”

“Yeah, I know about it. And we all thought we were the only ones, for what it’s worth. That maybe we’d done something wrong, to deserve that. Yeah, I’ve seen it. It wears a black fedora hat and a long black trench coat. Black clothes underneath. Black gloves. Voice like a hundred people laughing at you, all at once.” Erik cleared his throat as if dusting off a rusty old instrument and went on, his voice a little stronger. “That is, when it isn’t pretending to be people you know, or…once knew. It doesn’t have anything remotely like a face of its own because it steals the faces it needs. The bodies. The lives. It doesn’t really touch anywhere when it walks, and it never touches you. But it knows things about you, knows about your family, your friends, your fears and insecurities and all your weaknesses. It wants to hurt you. It wants you to hurt yourself.”

Jake cast another glance, this one steeped in guilt, at the gun on the bed. Erik knew. He knew, but how? How? He whispered, “What are they?”

“It. It may appear as many different people, but it’s
only one—at least so far as it ever was in our experience.” Something about the way the words came out bothered Jake, but he was too stunned to really think to question it. Erik continued. “And we don’t know exactly what it is, except that we think it comes from another dimension and can go between worlds. It can change and move the world around you to confuse you and scare you. It uses you against you, Jake. And it uses the people you love and even the places where you feel safe.”

“You’re bullshitting me. Another dimension? You know how absolutely, totally-not-funny-right-now, bat-shit crazy that sounds?”

“Anyone else under any other circumstances would, and rightfully so, hang up on me and write me off as a fucking insensitive asshole at best, or a lunatic at the worst. Except that you know I’m telling you the truth. I wouldn’t have called if I wasn’t sure that you…that I was right about this,” Erik replied carefully. A pause. “And this is the last conversation I’d ever want to have, except that I can’t avoid it. Not in good conscience, I can’t. It intends to kill you. But it isn’t invincible. My friends and I killed one once, together. We can kill this one, too.” At that last, his voice dipped into the tinny quality of empty comfort words, but Jake nodded all the same, right into the phone, still taking it all in. He wasn’t alone. He wasn’t going crazy. And if he wasn’t the only one being haunted…maybe there was another way to end the bad stuff going on in his life.

Jake exhaled a slow stream of smoke. When he found the words, he said, “We? Do other people see the—it, too? Sober folks? Why does it want us dead?”

Erik replied, “I don’t know why. We have something it needs, I guess, when we’re at our weakest and most vulnerable. It feeds on that, gets off on it. And yeah, other people see it, too. Like I said, we—there were six of us—killed one a while ago that came after each of us. It tried to isolate us, make us give up on ourselves and each other. But we found we were safest when we were together. Jake, listen to me and listen carefully. You can’t fight it alone. It destroys people from the inside out. But you don’t have to do it alone, anyway. I guess that’s why I called. I know someone who will understand. The three of us can stop it.”

“This guy was one of the six?”

Erik laughed, a dry brittle sound that Jake didn’t much like. “You could say, the first of the six.”

Jake had no idea how to respond, so he muttered the first, most honest thing that came off his tongue. “I’m scared.”

Erik was silent for several seconds. Finally he said, “You should be.” As an afterthought, he added, “I’ll pick you up in an hour. We’ll go see Dave.”

Jake didn’t argue. He hung up the phone, finished the cigarette, and returned to the bed, picking up the gun. He looked at it, then at the phone, then at the gun again.

He thought,
Maybe there is more than one way to save a
life, too
and slid the gun under the bed, before getting up to change his clothes.

Dave got out the bottle of tequila. Jose Cuervo. An old amigo.

He considered taking the phone off the hook, but Erik had gotten a hold of his sponsee and was supposed to call to let him know what time they’d be dropping by. Truth be told, although he didn’t want to be around anyone just then, he thought Erik might be one of the few people who could appreciate his loss.

That is, aside from her brothers, he supposed. It was one of them who had called to tell him about Cheryl. She’d collapsed at Newark Airport. They’d rushed her to the hospital, but it had already been too late. In a strange turn of events, Cheryl’s brother told him, the doctors were inclined to list her cause of death as hypothermia. Her heart had stopped, her limbs had evidence of frostbite, and even her body temperature was far lower than it should have been. The doctors had been baffled; she was young and otherwise healthy, and found in the middle of a bustling, climate-controlled airport. They suspected maybe it was some foreign substance, a drug or poison whose effects produced similar symptoms. They were waiting on the toxicology report, but the doctors had already gently prepped them that it was likely they might never know the true cause.

He’d called Dave because he knew that Dave would want to know. Cheryl, he said, had always cared for him. She would have wanted him to know.

Dave felt like all the wind had been knocked out of him. His legs felt weak and his chest felt heavy. He thought he might throw up. He muddled through the phone conversation in a haze, and when he hung up, he sank into a nearby chair and stayed there until the dizziness passed.

Two deaths. Two of the most important women in his life had been ripped away from him in horrible, painful ways. And he suspected the same fucking thing was responsible for both.

It was something her brother had said about cuts on her ankles and around her legs. It reminded him of the story she’d told him once about the man who had molested her as a girl at the beach. More so, it reminded him of the night the Hollower attacked her at the Tavern. She’d been alone, and he and Erik were on their way to pick her up, when it had found her. It reconstructed a whole shoreline, just like the day the man had touched her, and to keep her from running away, it had frozen the water around her ankles. The ice had cut into her legs, and when they found her, she was bleeding and didn’t have the strength to stand. Cheryl had only ever told him once about what happened that night, and then she filed it away and never brought it up again. But there were nights he’d lain awake with the soft sounds of her breathing floating in the night air of the bedroom, and thought too much and too hard about what a failure he was for not having gotten there sooner to protect her.

But this account of her death (God, he had trouble even putting that concept together in his mind,
her
death
)—the ice, the bruised, cut legs—sounded way too much like this new Hollower had gotten to her right through her memories. Right in a public place, in front of everybody. Like Sally, at the home. It was going after them, all of them who had been there that night, and some new folks, too, apparently, if Erik’s sponsee was
any indication. One at a time, it would kill them all. It would destroy the ones who had killed its kin. He wondered about DeMarco, about the baby growing inside her, and didn’t envy what horrible things it could show her, if it found her. And poor little Sean…DeMarco had told him once that Sean’s mom had moved him to PA, to a nice, quiet little place called Uniontown, about an hour outside of Pittsburgh. Too far for them to reach him, to protect him. It made Dave a little sick to his stomach.

It did not, however, keep him from opening the bottle of Jose Cuervo and taking a hearty gulp. It burned a little going down, but he didn’t much care.

Cheryl was gone.

He loved her. He’d never quite told her in as many words how much she really meant, but he loved her. And the thought that he’d never see her again was like a heavy, black steel weight on his chest, on his back. It made him feel like he was being crushed beneath the sadness.

And the guilt.

She’d left because of him. And she’d been on her way back, he was sure, because of him. Because of Sally, maybe. Because of the Hollower. Maybe she sensed it. Maybe she knew. Or maybe she just missed him. But whatever the reason, she’d been alone because of him, and she’d been vulnerable because of him, and once again, he hadn’t done a goddamned thing to save her.

Her or Sally.

He was useless and pathetic, and it should have been him. He’d gladly rather it had been, if he could bring
them both back and make sure they were safe from it forever.

In that moment, his self-pity hardened into a black ball of self-hate. Somewhere beneath that, he was vaguely aware that it was exactly what the Hollower wanted, what it craved, but that didn’t make the hate go away. If anything, it almost seemed an invitation for the Hollower to come get him, too.

She was gone. Both of them were gone. It was too much, too soon.

He’d let them die.

He drank more tequila, and taking the bottle, wandered over to the couch, fully intending to drink until blessed black oblivion swallowed him up.

The phone rang, and it made him jump, almost sending him flying off the couch. Regaining his bearings, he set the tequila bottle down on the coffee table. The phone rang again.

It was probably Erik. He groaned. He really didn’t want to deal with Erik or the Hollower or anything else.

The phone rang again. He got up to answer it, swaying a little with the booze-induced vertigo. He steadied himself and made his way over to the phone, if for no other reason than because he’d promised Erik. Maybe he wasn’t much good for anything, but at least he could try to keep his promises.

“Hello?” he said into the receiver. His own voice sounded funny in the gathering dusk, the empty, sad quiet of the house.

It wasn’t Erik. The voice said, “Hello, Mr. Kohlar?
This is Detective Corimar. We spoke once before, when your sister passed. I’m one of the investigating officers.”

Dave closed his eyes, opened them, reclaimed control. “Do you have any news for me on her case?” He wished DeMarco hadn’t gone on maternity leave. He didn’t feel up to playing the run-around game with an officer who wouldn’t understand.

“I think so. Well, I have some theories, and I would really like to sit down and discuss them with you. Will you be free any time in the next few days?”

“I suppose there’s tomorrow—”

“May I pay you a visit to night?”

“Actually,” Dave said, clutching at the oncoming headache in his forehead, “I’m not in the best shape right now. In addition to losing my sister, my ex- girlfriend just died—”

“Cheryl Duffy?” The recognition—the wonder—in his voice was evident. It made Dave feel nettled, maybe because Corimar was horning in on a private matter, because he wasn’t DeMarco and couldn’t possibly understand as much as he thought he did.

“Yes, that’s her. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got a tall bottle of mourning to attend to and I—”

“Mr. Kohlar, I need to speak to you about a videotape.”

Dave opened his eyes, focusing for the first time on the conversation. “I’m sorry?”

“A videotape. I understand you were sent a copy of a videotaped suicide note of one Maxwell Feinstein, as requested in his Last Will and Testament, is that correct? In his file, there is a note about the videotape, and your
copy of it, but little else by way of explanation. Do you have the tape still?”

Dave didn’t answer. Detective Corimar seemed to take this as an affirmation nonetheless and pressed on. “We had a copy here, of course, in evidence, but I was told it was lost, and when I did finally find it and attempt to play it, there was something wrong with the tape. Perhaps someone left it near a magnet or something, accidentally erased it, but like I said, all I got was static—” the detective’s voice sounded funny, as if maybe that wasn’t all he’d gotten off the tape “—and that was about it. But I’ve been reviewing some files that may or may not be connected to your sister’s case, and I think there may be some important information on that tape. I’d like to see it, if I may.”