314 Book 2 (39 page)

I’m just about to head out to Widowsfield.
It’s not quite midnight on the 12
th
of March, 2012. I would stay at the hotel another day, but my funds from my time in Widowsfield dried up long ago, and hotels aren’t cheap!

I’ll camp up on the cliff overlooking the Jackson Reservoir, out where the ship had been built. I now know that the ship itself had something to do with the fog, but I’ve never been able to figure out how.

There’s no ship there now, and when I did some research I discovered that it had been a World War Two battleship. It was rebuilt in the reservoir as a tourist attraction, and was disassembled shortly after the event that caused everyone in town to disappear.

Part of me is terrified that I’ll come back here one anniversary and find the ship is back in the water. I dread that day.

Lost in Widowsfield

“I know where we have to go,” said Alma.

Jacker was driving the van as they headed out of Widowsfield. “What?” he asked as he tapped his fingers on the wheel. “Aren’t we headed home?”

“No,” said Alma. “Stop the van!”

“What’s wrong?” asked Rachel.

“We’ve done this before,” said Alma. “We’ve done it hundreds of times. I can prove it.” She closed her eyes. “Coming up behind us is a blue Ford sedan. A man that looks like a younger version of my father will be driving, and a little girl will be in the back seat. They’re going to be driving fast, and will force you off the road if you don’t stop.”

Jacker glanced in his side mirror and muttered, “Son of a bitch.”

“What?” asked Stephen as he turned to look
out of the van just as the blue sedan rocketed past.

“There, see!” Alma pointed, but was shocked to see that the child sitting in the back seat wasn’t a little girl; it was Ben. He grinned at the van as the Ford passed by.

“You were close,” said Jacker. “But that’s a little boy in the back seat.”

“How did you know that a blue sedan would be…” Rachel started to ask, perplexed by Alma’s odd behavior.

“Forget the kid,” she said as she tried to ignore the odd change. “Just try to remember anything that happened in Widowsfield. You won’t be able to because we’ve been trapped in it for years now, I guess. I don’t know, my head is filled with all sorts of horrible things that I know happened to us here. I don’t know how to explain it.” She was starting to cry when she looked down at Aubrey.

The young bartender smiled back, but her eyes were covered in a thick gel.
Alma used her thumb to wipe the jelly off, but Aubrey didn’t react at all other than to smile up at anyone that looked at her.

“What in the hell?” asked Rachel as she examined the girl. “What’s wrong with her?”

“Holy shit,” said Stephen as he leaned over his seat.

“She’s dead,” said Alma.

“No she’s not,” said Rachel. “She’s breathing! What’s gotten into you, Alma?”

“We can’t help her. You have to trust me, we have to get her out of the van. I’m not sure if Terry’s still in Widowsfield or if she crossed over.”

“What in the hell are you talking about?” asked Jacker. He pulled the van off on the shoulder of the road and opened his door to get out and come around.

“You have to trust me,” said Alma. “We have to leave Aubrey here and head out to the rese
rvoir. We have to do it before The Watcher in the Walls finds us. We have to go now!”

“Talk about a mental breakdown,” said Stephen.

“Wait, wait,” said Rachel. “She’s right. I can’t remember anything about being in Widowsfield. Why are we on our way back home if we never even stopped in the town.”

Jacker made his way around the van to the side door that Alma was sitting
near. He slid the door open and was prepared to pull Alma out because of her erratic behavior.

“Hold on, man,” said Stephen before Jacker could do anything. “Something’s wrong here.”

“Yeah, no doubt,” said Jacker.

“No, I mean, Alma and Rachel are right. I can’t remember anything about being in Widowsfield.”

Alma stepped out of the van and grabbed Jacker by his shirt. She forced him to look at her as she asked, “How do we know each other?”

“What has gotten into you, girl?”

She shook him and asked again. “How do we know each other? You can’t tell me because you don’t know. This place stole someone from us, someone named Paul.” She dug into her pocket and retrieved her keys. She showed Jacker the teddy bear that was attached by a ring to her keys. “He gave me this, and he introduced us to each other. I’m sure of it, but something in this town is trying to make me forget him.” She turned back to the van and looked at Aubrey, whose glassy eyes stared back at her as the girl smiled. “Aubrey, I’m so sorry. I really am, but we have to leave you here. Guys, you have to trust me. We have to leave her here and go…”

“We can’t just leave her!” Jacker yelled over Alma. “She’s sick or something. I’m not leaving the kid on the side of the damn road!”

“We’ll call an ambulance,” said Rachel.

“You can’t,” said Alma. “Your cell phone won’t work. None of ours will. You have to trust me, please!”

“She’s right,” said Stephen as he got out of the van as well. He was holding his smart phone, and showed it to Jacker. “It’s just a blank screen.”

Jacker reached into his pocket and took out his phone only to discover that it didn’t work either. “Fuck me,” he muttered before running his hand through his
shaggy hair.

“I know it doesn’t make sense, but you’re going to have to do what I ask. We’ll leave Aubrey sitting here by the side of the road, and if I’m wrong then we’ll come right back and pick her up.”

“Where is it you want to go?” asked Stephen.

“To the north side of town. To the Jackson Reservoir.”

“Why there?” asked Jacker.

“Because that’s where the witch told me to go. I know it sounds insane, but that’s what this place is.” She almost laughed as she pointed back at Widowsfield. “It’s one giant insane asylum in there, and there’s one creature controlling all of it. The only place that’s safe is the reservoir. Listen, we don’t have time to argue. Any minute the fog is going to come over the town, and once that happens we’ll be lost again.
Aubrey has to stay here because she possessed or something.”

“I say we trust her,” said Rachel. “What the hell else are we supposed to do?”

Stephen nodded. “I agree.”

“This is nuts,” said Jacker.

“You’re outvoted, big guy,” said Stephen.

Jacker stared at the young bartender and then shook his head. “Sorry guys,
this is my van. I’m not just dumping the kid off on the side of the road. I don’t care what you say.”

“What if you let me drive,” said Alma. “And you can stay in the back with her. If she starts to convulse, or says anything bizarre, then we’ll pull over and get away from her. Does that sound fair?”

Jacker shrugged and said, “Yeah, I guess so.”

Alma got out and Jacker took her place in the back seat, forcing Aubrey and Rachel to squeeze tightly together. “Wait,” said Rachel. “You sit in the middle Jacker. That way you can push Aubrey out if she starts to freak out.”

Alma closed the door and went around to the driver’s seat, leaving Jacker and Rachel in the back to situate themselves. As she was climbing in, she glanced around in search of the grey or white fog that she knew would envelope the town any minute. The area seemed oddly calm, unlike any of the various memories she had of what had happened to them here.

“I’m not crazy,” said Alma before opening the driver’s side door. She sounded as if she were trying to convince herself of the fact as she said again, “I’m not crazy.”

Alma wasn’t sure of anything anymore; least of which her own sanity.

Inside Cada E.I.B.’s Facility

March 13
th
, 2012

“Just keep moving,” said Oliver as he led Paul through the complex. They went back up to the main level and were careful that no one else was around as they snuck past the cafeteria where Tom’s body still lay. Oliver led Paul to an office near the entrance, and locked the door once they were inside.

“What are we doing here?”
asked Paul.

“I need to figure out the truth,” said Oliver.

“Truth about what?” asked Paul.

Oliver sat down at the desk and opened a drawer on his left side. He paused, and then took a piece of paper off the desk to use like a cloth, shielding his fingertips from whatever he was retrieving. He was holding the pistol in his right hand as he used his left to pull out a small, sp
iral notebook with a blue cover. He dropped it on the table. He set the paper down and pointed at the notebook. “Pick that up.”

“The notebook?”

“Yes, pick it up.”

“What for?” asked Paul.

“Because I have a gun pointed at you and I’m telling you to.”

Paul obliged, and flipped throu
gh the innocuous pages. “There’re drawings in it, and notes about the town.”

“Right. Now tell me about your girlfriend.”

“Alma?”

“Yes, yes. Tell me what you remember about her.”

“She’s tall, for a girl, and thin. She’s got black hair that used to be long, but she just got it cut…”

“Do you know how she died?” Oliver leaned forward as he asked and his elbow
pushed against his computer’s keyboard.

“She’s not dead, you asshole,” said Paul. “She’s downstairs in a coma because of whatever you…”

Oliver interrupted him, “You have no recollection of her dying in the lake?”

“No, because that never happened.”

“Damn it,” said Oliver, confused and disgruntled. “I believe you about Alma, but I was certain she was dead. I thought maybe a psychic that I worked with several years ago might’ve tried to trick me by implanting memories into that notebook.”

“This? How?” asked Paul as he turned the simple notebook over.

“She had psychometric abilities. That’s where a person can pull memories out of inanimate objects.”

“No kidding?” asked Paul.

Oliver nodded and continued as he reclined in his seat and stared at the blank screen of his computer. “Some people with her ability can imprint memories into objects, but she never told us she could do it. Seeing Alma downstairs made me question whether or not this girl had imprinted a false memory into that notebook.”

Paul dropped the pad onto the table and it opened to a drawing of the city council office of Amelia Reven.
The picture depicted a woman lying dead on the floor, her face turned to the side and a pen sticking halfway out of her mouth.

“Three or four days ago I would’ve called you crazy for believing in something like that, but now I don’t know what to believe,” said Paul.

Oliver leaned forward and picked up the notebook. “Yeah, me neither.”

He flipped through the pages. There were various pictures, all of them well drawn, depicting the scenes in the homes and businesses throughout Widowsfield as Nia had described them. Then he got back to the very first drawing, a simple line that Nia had drawn to represent her theory about how the time lines in Widowsfield had fra
ctured.

Oliver recal
led something that Nia had said when they were in the high school library just after the girl had been brought to the town.

“I think I can explain it better with a drawing. I’ve always been better at dr
awing the things I can remember instead of explaining them.”

Oliver flipped through the notebook again, and reviewed the various pictures. Before that day, all of the notes in the little blue book were by hand, but afterwards it was
filled with pictures. Oliver recognized occasional sentences here and there that he’d scrawled in the notebook, but the vast majority of the pages were pictures depicting the scenes in Widowsfield leading up to the event on March 14
th
, 1996.

The very last picture was
of a broken guard rail overlooking the Jackson Reservoir.

Oliver set the notebook down and started to curse as he rifled through the contents of his desk drawer. He yelled at Paul to stay back as he searched for a USB drive,
and then shouted in triumph when he found it before sticking it into his desktop.

“What’s going on?” asked Paul.

“I’m not sure,” said Oliver as he turned on his monitor and then opened the USB’s file. He stopped before clicking on the recording that had been taken inside of the cabin when Nia had recounted the scene for Lee to sketch in the notebook. “If I’m not crazy, then this video will show me in the cabin five years ago, with a colleague of mine and a young black girl. She was the one with the psychometric ability, and we used her to help us recreate the town to look like it did in ’96. I haven’t watched this video in a long time, because it’s easier to just use Lee’s notes.”