Shadow of the Past (28 page)

Jack wanted to shake his head in
furious disagreement, but realized that if he did he’d more likely
slice his own throat open.

“I have so many things to show you,” he
continued, the pressure easing slightly on his chest, allowing Jack
to take in a giant lungful of air. “Marvels and wonders. A whole
new world and the potential for power as great as what I’ve been
granted. But I can’t show you them to you if you don’t
listen.”

“I’ll listen. I swear,” Jack
squeaked.

“I hope so,” he said, drawing the blade
slowly over Jack’s neck. “Because I’m only going to say this one .
. . more . . . time. Leave the boy alone. I need him for what’s
ahead. I need him to understand what’s happened and to understand
the error of his ways. He can’t very well see what I want to show
him if he’s got his brain all scrambled up with a baseball bat, can
he?”

Jack nodded as much as he dared. “I
understand. Leave him alone. I will, I swear.”

“Good, good.” The Shadow Man said, and
then with a sudden flick of his hand, the blade snapped back into
its sheath. The pressure on Jack’s chest began to ease again, and
the Shadow Man rose up, drawing himself up to his full
height.

“Pleasant dreams,” he said, and the
blackness swirled around him, blocking out Jack’s vision
completely. For a several horrible seconds, he thought he would
suffocate from the sudden, oppressive darkness and the almost
overwhelming smell of burning flesh, but just as quickly as it
passed over him it was gone, and all that was left were the
fluttering curtains in the chill autumn breeze.

He rolled over, but was shocked by
sudden moisture on his throat and chest. He wiped at it with one of
his blankets, desperate to get it off him. He stared at the new
stain, its origins dawning on him. He put his hand back to his
throat where the blade had rested, and could feel the sticky
remains of the blood that had been on the blade.

He stared at it on his fingertips, so
dark it was almost black. He leaned in close, smelling its metallic
odor with a hint of flame. Tentatively, he touched his tongue to
it, savoring the texture.

He pulled his stained blanket up close
to his face, and inhaled deeply again, closing his eyes with a
smile on his face.

Chapter
Twenty-Six

“Where is she?” David asked one of the
nurses, who pointed him down to the next waiting area. He nodded
his thanks and walked down the hallway. Even though things had been
quiet for almost a month he’d known that whoever had killed Clara
Washington and Carrie Kennedy wasn’t done. Even worse this third
killing left no doubt about who the focus of these killings
was.

David paused where the hallway first
widened into a waiting area. Christine Baker was sitting in a
chair, alone, at the far end of the room. She was staring blankly
out of red, puffy, heavy lidded eyes, and while he was sure that
she could see him, he didn’t think she realized he was there. It
was almost 5am, and from the looks of her she hadn’t gotten any
sleep. Mrs. Baker, David had been told, had been sedated and given
a room to try to calm down in.

The first responders had told him that
while they were getting the kitchen fire under control, Mrs. Baker
had to be forcibly pulled from the house, screaming about finding
her daughter. Christine had been nowhere to be found, and they were
about to put out an alert for her when she came running up to the
house.

David crossed the room and sat down
opposite Christine, waiting to see if there was any reaction. After
several moments, she glanced his way, and he smiled weakly at her.
“Hi Christine. Do you remember me? I’m Detective
Prescott.”

“I guess so,” she said, looking past
him.

“I need to ask you a few questions. Is
that okay?”

She let out a long, ragged sigh, and
focused her eyes on him again. “Have they told you if my Dad is
going to die?”

Dave looked down at the little notepad
he had fished out of his jacket pocket, consulting his notes.
“Well, he’s still in critical condition, but the doctors are pretty
optimistic. This is one of the best trauma hospitals in the area.”
He left out how they were uncertain as to the extent of the nerve
damage to his leg and spine, and what that would mean for his
mobility post-recovery.

“And my brother is really dead? They
won’t let me see him.”

“Yes, he is. I’m sorry they haven’t let
you see him, but he’s not ready for that yet. I’m sure we can
arrange something for you and your mother sometime
soon.”

“She is such a wreck,” she said, eyes
drifting down to the floor. “She gave me Aunt Helen’s number, and
she’s flying down from Hartford, but . . . I don’t know when she’s
going to get here.”

“I’ll see what I can do about that if
you want to give me whatever info you have on her. First, though, I
do need to ask you just a few questions, okay? This is real
important.”

She actually smiled a little at that
last part, but did not look back up at him. “I guess this is how he
felt.”

“Who felt?”

“Mark. He told me I didn’t know what it
was like to lose someone, and here I am.”

“You two are dating, right?”

He thought it would be a simple
question for her to answer, but instead her face seemed to spasm
with pain and she let out a choked mix of a sob and
laugh.

“Yeah,” she said. “We’re ‘dating.’ I
wouldn’t be sitting here right now if we weren’t
dating.”

It wasn’t exactly what he wanted to
hear.

“What do you mean by that?” he said
neutrally, and she just rolled her eyes at him.

“What do you think I mean? Clara, Ms.
Kennedy, and now this!” her voice was getting louder now. “And
before you even ask, no, I don’t know why! He said something to me
after Clara died, about dreams he was having, but after Ms. Kennedy
he said it was nothing, and that I shouldn’t worry about it. I knew
he was full of shit, but . . .” the volume dropped off, and her
eyes fluttered wildly. One of the nurses poked her head out of one
of the rooms down the hall, but he just flashed his badge at her
and she retreated.

“What do you mean he dreamt about these
things? Did he fantasize about them? Write them down?”

“No,” she said, losing patience. “He
said they were about these things happening, about seeing what
happened to Clara. At least, that’s what he told me, but you’ve met
Mark, he’s not much of a liar.”

He just nodded in acknowledgement. “Did
he give you any details?”

“No, I wasn’t too interested in the
finer points.”

“Is there anything else you can
remember about what he said about this?”

“He had a book,” she said. “He’s gotten
it from the library, and he was real mad when I picked it up. It
was about other crimes in the past, something about Corning or
something like that. There was a whole chapter about it he had it
open to.”

“He didn’t tell you why he had
it?”

“No, he lied about it, said it was for
school. I just let it go because I thought it made him feel better,
like he was actual doing something other than worrying.”

“Christine, do you think Mark is
involved in this? Do you think he knows who’s doing
this?”

She waited, staring off into space for
several moments until turning back to him. “I don’t think
so.”

Her eyes drifted away from him again,
and this time it looked like they would be away for a while. He
waited to see if she was going to refocus on him, but after about a
minute he cleared his throat.

“Christine, I’m going to see if they
can spare a bed for you here, okay? You may feel a little better if
you got some sleep before the sun comes up. When you wake up, I’ll
have an officer take you and your mother back to the house so you
can get some things together. Do you have your Aunt’s information?
I can try to get in touch with her and help her arrange a hotel for
you three.”

She made a slight head movement that
may have been a nod, and then dug into her pants pocket and fished
out small sheet of paper which had been torn out of an address
book. On it was an address, phone number and cell phone number for
a Helen Greene.

He went off in search for the nurse
from earlier as he dug the cell phone out of his pocket. He’d make
some calls to be sure that Christine and her family was taken care
of, and then he’d make some that would probably ruin Mark’s
life.

Mark woke up with a throbbing headache,
the worst he’d had since the day or two before the accident. He
wasn’t sure if it was from the stress of dealing with Steve and his
bullshit, worrying about Christine or staying up late failing to
make a dent in his homework.

Keep this up sport and
you’ll be able repeat a grade of high school, since you love it so
much.

Joe came in late last night, so it
didn’t seem likely that he’d see this side of noon. Mark figured it
was best to not to be in the immediate area when that happened. He
grabbed some cold leftovers from the fridge and headed out back to
the garage to get a look at the damage that had been done to the
V.

Steve had let him use his computer so
he could find a manual on the Internet and print it out. Mark had
been fascinated by the tiny engine and studied every aspect of it,
eager to get his hands on it and see how it worked but terrified of
breaking it and having to sink more money into his prized
freedom.

He’d changed the oil regularly, washed
it with care, and done everything he could think of to be safe on
it. Apparently, he shouldn’t have bothered.

Joe had rolled it into the garage to
let it lean against the wall, but in the week since it had fallen
over. From the way it had been laying, it looked like the fall had
caused one of the side mirrors to bend, so much so that if Mark
tried to bend it back into place he’d probably just snap the thin
piece of metal in half.

“How hard is it to put down the fucking
kickstand?” He squatted down to fully assess the damage. He’d hoped
what he’d seen of it and what he told Christine had been pessimism
brought on by trauma but if anything it looked worse than what he
remembered.

The back end was dented so deeply that
the back panel was mashed into the wheel and had dug into the tire
so much that it was punctured. The rear taillight was completely
wrecked, dangling from the chassis by a set of frayed wires, and
the back end of the seat was crushed and wobbled to the touch. He
wasn’t sure, but it looked like the wheel frame on the front tire
had been bent as well, but there was no way to tell without taking
the tire off.

It may have been fairly used when Mark
had found it last year, but now it looked like a giant had tried to
kick a field goal with it.

Joe had bought Mark a set of tools
after he’d gotten it, informing Mark that he wouldn’t be
responsible for any repairs on it. “If you want to ride something
you should be able to fix it if it breaks.” Tucked into the tools
was the print out of the manual.

He sat down, surrounded by tools and
little bits of Vespa that had fallen off and tried to find a place
to start. His head throbbed and he felt his body sink into the
ground at the enormity of the task

After fifteen minutes, he realized he’d
been reading the same page about removing the front wheel and not
getting any closer to understanding it. His head was throbbing more
and more, and with an irritated snarl he threw the stapled sheets
of paper against the garage wall, hoping the whole thing would just
burst into flame and he wouldn’t have to deal with it
anymore.

Flame. It took him a second, but then
the memory of it began breaking into his brain. Bits of it at
first: Corwin wrapped in shadows, eyes on fire . . . a house,
stairs, watching someone get shoved down the stairs, the silver
blade being thrown.

It took a couple of moments but he
remembered everything, dropping to the ground and rolling over on
his side. Corwin had been looking for her. He’d been there, in her
house, and he killed her brother and father when he couldn’t find
her. Had she been hiding? Did they run into him before he could get
to her? Was she okay?

It was the last though that propelled
him from the garage floor and up across the yard and into the
kitchen as fast as he could. His head no longer hurt, unclogged
from the psychic log-jam that the vision had caused, and he dialed
her number so fast that it took about three tries for him to get it
right.

It went right to voicemail, and before
he blurted out every detail of what he’d seen, he stopped and tried
to compose himself. No matter what he had seen, there was no way he
could explain it without sounding like a homicidal
maniac.

“Hey you, it’s Mark and I just . . . I
just wanted to see what you were up to and how you’re doing. Call
me as soon as you get this, so we can . . . I dunno, do something
today. I miss you. Call me.”

He hung up the phone and
stared at it.
That was way smooth. Really.
I think your voice only moved through a dozen or so octaves during
that little performance. There’s no way that she’ll know that you
know something is up.