Michael Koryta - Last Words

Mark looked up, and now she seemed flustered.

“I researched you, of course,” she said. “It seemed prudent, after you’d trespassed on our property. I had to see who I was dealing with, that’s all.”

“Sure,” Mark said. He wanted to know what he had said to Lauren in his sleep, what had been so sweet, but he couldn’t bring himself to ask. He rose unsteadily, each bruise taking the opportunity to announce its presence. “I’m sorry. I can’t believe I fell asleep here. This was embarrassing.”

“Where are you going now?”

“I’ll find a hotel.”

“It’s past midnight, it’s snowing again, and you’re ill. All things considered, I think you should stay here tonight. There’s a blanket and another pillow next to the couch. Just so you’re aware, I will be in the room at the far end of the hall. I keep the door locked, and I have a handgun, and I’m accurate with it.”

She spoke with a firmness that suggested she believed in her capabilities to protect herself, and no doubt she did. The young often believed in their own capabilities and their own safety. Too often.

“You won’t need any locks or guns,” Mark said.

“I’ll make that judgment, thank you.”

She left him then, and a few seconds later he heard the door close and the lock engage. He turned and looked out of the window behind him and saw nothing but blackness and a skein of ice on the glass. The wind came in shrieks and howls. He knew he should leave but the thought of that long walk through the snow and up the hill to his car seemed exhausting, and the motel where he’d paid for surveillance videos that morning held no more appeal. He took his boots off, stretched out on the couch, and didn’t even bother to look for the blanket or pillow she’d mentioned. He was asleep again almost immediately, and though she’d said he’d dreamed sweet things of his wife, all he was aware of dreaming of now was Ridley Barnes, Ridley sitting in a straight-backed chair with his eyelids fluttering, then Ridley with a smile like a deranged clown and endlessly dark eyes. I told you, he said, all you needed to do was spend some time down there. In the dark. Let’s go back. Let’s go back to where we both belong.

And Mark followed, because in the dream he had no other choice. He knew that it was the wrong path, the dangerous one, and yet he followed Ridley out of the light and into the darkness. He was cold immediately, and then his clothes were gone and he was crawling in the dark again, crawling once more in an endless room, and though he was alone, he knew that Ridley was still with him, invisible but watching, always watching.

Mark woke before Danielle MacAlister. He rose from the couch and went into the kitchen, poured a glass of water, drank it gratefully, then chased it with another. In the pale light of dawn he could see that maybe two or three new inches of snow had fallen overnight. He’d slept deeply and he felt physically better and more mentally in control than he had when he’d arrived. That thought disturbed him more than it comforted him, though, as if his coming to Trapdoor hadn’t been his own idea.

If you can get Danielle MacAlister’s cooperation, Julianne had said, her unseen clock ticking loudly, and then Mark had driven to Danielle’s house.

There was a laptop computer on the dining room table, and Mark went to it and opened it and got on the Internet and began to search for information on Julianne Grossman. He found no criminal or civil charges, but Garrison County and Orange County did not strike him as places where local records would be picked up by the major search databases. Small towns required local searches, even in the computer age. In general searches, all he found was that she had a website advertising her services and that her professed specialties were just as she’d claimed: help with addiction, anxiety, confidence building. She identified a number of hypnotherapy certifications that meant nothing to Mark but neglected to add any formal educational history. She appeared to be a local girl who’d gotten very interested in hypnosis very early. As an agent for positive change, I will help you rewire your brain to transform! she promised on the site.

He ran searches for the Erickson handshake induction she had referenced. He watched half a dozen videos of people supposedly put into immediate hypnosis with a few slight hand movements, and he said “Bullshit” under his breath. You’ll see some obvious frauds, and some things that once would have made you laugh, she had told him. But now? Now you won’t laugh.

She was right about that much. He wasn’t laughing.

“Make yourself at home,” a voice from behind him said, and he turned to see Danielle standing in the kitchen.

“Sorry,” he said. “I shouldn’t have—”

“It’s fine.” She waved him off and turned her attention to the coffeemaker. She was dressed in jeans and a formfitting long-sleeved shirt, and she stood barefoot on the hardwood floors. Her auburn hair was loose around her shoulders, and the sight of her, so natural and comfortable in her own home, drove thoughts of Lauren at him like a spear. There had been other women since Lauren, but not many, and he’d never lingered long enough to see one of them at home in the morning. Watching Danielle MacAlister go about making coffee was, in its own way, a more intimate moment than any he’d shared with a woman since Lauren died.

“Last night you wanted maps,” she said. “Do you still?”

“Yes.”

“Well, we can go downstairs and pick one out.”

He closed her laptop and came into the kitchen. “Why are you cooperating?”

She set the coffee to brew without answering, then watched it for a few seconds. When the pot began to fill, she turned back to him.

“You’ve been told that I wouldn’t, I take it?”

“That seems to be the family reputation.”

“It better be. The property is my family’s and there’s no small amount of liability risk with a cave. Your situation is the perfect example. If you’d died in there, someone might have sued us, even though you’d trespassed.”

“That explains your defensiveness. But I asked about your cooperation.”

She took a breath, pushed a stray strand of hair out of her eyes, and said, “Ridley Barnes talked to you.”

“Correct.”

“Ridley Barnes hasn’t talked to anyone in ten years.”

“You want to know what he says to me.”

“And why. Yes. If you bring Ridley a map and he sits down and looks at it and talks to you about the cave? About anything? My God, would I love to know what he has to say and why he’s decided to say it. It’s fascinating. He hasn’t spoken to anyone about Sarah, at least not as far as I know.”

“He speaks to Evan Borders.”

She stared at him. “What?”

“They exchanged calls the day I ended up in your cave. I found that interesting, to say the least.”

“Ridley talks to Evan.” She said it as if she were trying to believe it.

“At least that day. Did you know Evan?”

“Oh, yes. He’s very different now than he was back then.”

“How was he back then?”

“Funny. He was an entertainer. He liked to get you laughing, and he was good at it. That’s hard to remember now.”

“He wasn’t telling many knee-slappers when I met him, that’s for sure.”

“Evan is another casualty, in my opinion. He wasn’t killed, but whatever happened that night took what he was, what he could have been, and snatched that away. Then he became what the town probably expected him to be all along — like his father. One of those people who just seem destined for bad luck and trouble, you know? But when he was a kid...” She shook her head. “There’s a reason a girl like Sarah Martin ended up in that cave with him. You see him today, you wonder how it would be possible, because he seems...”