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David adjusted the breathing mask on his face, rubbing the reddened furrows the rigid plastic had dug next to his nose. Peter watched his son’s movements, the effort it cost him to simply raise his arm, and the loathing he felt for God rose to his throat in a barely-suppressed roar. He glanced at the door to the private room, locked now from the inside. The drugs he would need were in his hip pocket, mixed in a single syringe. He’d taken them from the operating room days ago, when he made his decision.
Is he going to kill his child? An attempt to ease the pain? Or is he just crazed?
David fell silent now, and Peter could feel the light mood slipping away as irretrievably as his son’s life. Leukemia. A cold bullet of a word born of a nose bleed that wouldn’t stop. A month of aggressive chemo. A brief remission and then relapse. A fucking nose bleed in a kid who only six months ago could do fifteen chin-ups and run like the wind.
Oddly, he recalled something he’d overheard an OR nurse say when she thought he was out of earshot. His son had been diagnosed the week before. How much misery can one man endure? Peter thought: No more.
This is super powerful. Everyone talks about how much they love and care for their loved ones but at what point will it break someone?
Without hesitation, Peter took the syringe from his pocket, poked the needle into a vein in the crook of his arm, and injected a lethal mix of morphine and muscle relaxant into himself. Now he tightened his grip on David’s limp body, and in seconds he stopped breathing, too. Wherever his son was going, Peter was going with him.
HOLY SHIT
In a way, the kids’ reaction had been the more genuine. No one wanted to face it. The bereaved was someone you hoped to avoid, but realized, particularly where friends or coworkers were concerned, you could not. So you had to come up with something, some statement, some thoughtful gesture.
People streamed around him, going about their duties, but Peter was unaware, in this moment as lost as these children, these precious faces push-pinned to the wall. What kind of monster stole a child? What aberration of human circuitry did it require to abduct, rape, and kill an innocent child? If he could get his hands on one of these bastards—
Peter cleared his throat, uncomfortable but determined to go on. “The dream I had the other night was different. The first time, that figure—death or whatever it was—it came right up to us. And though I didn’t witness this part, I believe it took David. I was being resuscitated at this point so I can’t be sure. Maybe my so-called rescuers took me away from David.” Tears stung his eyes. “Maybe, if they’d left well enough alone, I could’ve helped him.”
Roger said, “Good,” and jogged back to the church. Peter lingered a moment, thinking the single greatest foible of the human condition was hope. Even now, with his wife and son in the ground, he couldn’t help but hope they were together somehow, at peace, waiting for him. You could hate God, but the hate was impotent without belief.
As he passed David’s door, he considered going inside again. But in spite of what Erika had suggested at the meeting—and in spite of his own vain hope what he’d seen in this room had actually been his son—he’d already decided what he’d experienced was a dream . . . vivid, heartbreaking, but a dream nonetheless. He could see no point in attempting to relive it. He climbed into bed, pulled the covers up to his chin, and slipped into a dreamless slumber.
Peter Croft was curled on his side on the top bunk, squinting against the light, tears leaking from his eyes. “I’ve been in this room,” he said, and Roger shuddered. “I’ve seen the man who took your boy.”
“If it were me, I’d start with your mother-in-law. Find out if David said anything about it, if for nothing more than to convince yourself of the impact the event must have had on your boy. Then, just . . . do what you’ve been doing. Keep your eyes and your mind open, and eventually it’ll work itself out.” “No séance or anything?” “You watch too many movies.” Peter chuckled, exhaustion trying to claim him. “You’re right, I do. Thanks, Erika.” She touched his hand. “Anytime.”
Roger swatted a fly off his arm. “You talked to Erika about it.” “How did you know?” “I called her this morning. She told me how bad you felt.” “What else did she tell you?” “She said you’re not crazy. Neither of us is. She thinks what you saw was real. She said there’s dozens of examples of psychics helping police solve crimes, and in a way, you have that ability now.”
And Peter did, responding to her prompts to the best of his ability, encouraged by the steady hiss and scratch of charcoal against paper. When she was done, Sara held up the page and Peter felt spicules of ice sprout in the flesh of his thighs. What she’d drawn was exactly what he’d seen: a negative, a ragged sculpture in two dimensions, dark against dark. “I’m sorry, Peter,” she said, misreading his reaction. “No,” Peter said. “That’s it. That’s exactly what I saw.”
Roger lay on his bed, staring with parched eyes at Jason’s photo, bracing against a fresh assault of fury. He was caught in a place from which there was no escape, a housefly helpless on its back, wings mired in glue, denied death’s blessed release. He owned a shotgun, knew the feel of that cold steel against his throat. But a dead man couldn’t search, and above all that was his mission, to search a world that had forgotten him and his boy. The enormity of it, this demoralizing task, made him feel microscopic, without consequence.
He found Jason in the M’s, the picture identical to the one on the desk, and wondered why Peter hadn’t come across it while searching the site. Probably never looked past the D’s, his weird obsession with this kid preventing it. And wasn’t that all this was? A grieving man’s obsession? A well-intentioned but ultimately hopeless deflection of the pain he was feeling? Busywork for the heart, twisted into something ‘mystical’ by the depth of his grief. He must’ve seen Jase at least once in the past—at the daycare, probably—and just forgotten about it, the picture of this other kid jogging his
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He awoke in gray dawn light with a sensation like butterflies from a dream in which Jason Mullen was drowning. Drowning in shallow water.
“When I was a kid, I could sometimes see things other people couldn’t. Scary things, for a kid, anyway.” “Like what, ghosts?” “I prefer to think of them as spirits. The doctors called them hallucinations, and I spent some time in institutions, learning the joys of antipsychotics and electroshock therapy. And that taught me to keep what I saw—and felt—to myself.” “Jesus.” “Yeah. It started when I was thirteen. My best friend’s dog went missing, a beautiful Samoyed named Booker. Booker had slipped his collar one night and run off. He’d been gone a couple days, and Teri, my friend, was beside
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As he left the house and got in the car—about to embark on a six-hour drive with no sleep and an empty stomach, planning to approach a complete stranger with a bizarre and baseless theory—it occurred to Peter—again—that perhaps he really was losing his mind. Perhaps the best thing for him now would be a nice long stay in a padded cell at Algoma Psychiatric.
Peter remembered the tall, angular woman he’d seen in the video and couldn’t imagine her overweight. “She lucked into an office job with a lawyer’d just hung out his shingle. Maggie didn’t know the first thing about typing or computers, but she’s a fast learner and a hard worker . . . and the way I heard it, lawyer-boy’s interest in the woman wasn’t entirely professional, if you catch my drift.” Peter took a bite of his biscuit and suppressed a smile, realizing he was in the presence of the county gossip. He nodded, urging the old boy on.
What he was leaving behind was a living tragedy, a once-strong woman and mother broken by suffering and loss, her sanity fragile, its remaining shreds bound by depression, isolation, and paranoia, no one to keep her company but that odd boy, his own mind stalled in early childhood.
With a stifled roar, Peter buried his face in his hands and wept, huge, convulsive sobs. At this moment more than any other, he felt critically unhinged, his connections to the world perilously frayed. He was so sure he’d seen David—and that kid had pointed right at him, calling him Tommy Boy . . . Now he felt Roger’s hand on his shoulder, Roger saying, “Hey, hey, what’s up? They’re going to get this guy now, man, no matter how far he runs. And I want to be there when they take him down. They aired an update after you called, saying about a dozen people saw him, and they expect to get good DNA
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Now his dad said, “Tommy Boy’s his imaginary friend.” The police lady looked at his dad and Graham could tell she was annoyed. She said, “Why don’t we let your son tell it?” Graham said, “Just because you can’t see him doesn’t mean he’s not there,” and felt bad for getting angry at his dad. More quietly, he said, “His real name is David.” Now he looked at Vickie. “Are we finished yet? I really need to go to the bathroom.”
“Could it’ve been a kid who looked like David?” “When I watched it at your place, there was no kid on the monkey bars. I’d’ve been prepared to believe I’d only imagined it if the Cade boy hadn’t pointed right at him and called him Tommy Boy.” “Like in the movie?” Peter nodded. “David loved that show, and his mom used to call him Tommy Boy sometimes.” Surprising him, Roger said, “Makes sense. I read someplace kids are more sensitive to stuff like that, seeing ghosts.”
She turned left at the bottom of the steps and strode across the lawn, noting the narrow basement windows and thinking about Cade’s gun safe. She’d have to give the plainclothes guys a heads up. Citizens with guns made everyone nervous.
Now the man said, “Bitch,” and raised the gun, and in a second yellow flash that slammed that terrible bang into Graham’s ears again, he saw the dark mask, heard his mother’s scream, and understood the man had shot his mom and dad, and now he launched himself across the bed in a fury belying his years, mouth torn wide in a scream of his own, a scream he could barely hear over the drone in his ears. His tiny body struck the man’s shoulder and Graham held on tight, clawing at that mask, slamming it with his fist, the hard skull underneath hurting his hand.
Mrs. Cade had been the luckiest, the bullet shattering her clavicle but missing anything vital. She was conscious and distraught, her fury aimed at Vickie as the paramedics loaded her into the ambulance. “You,” she spat, her head coming up off the pillow. “You said it was random. You said we didn’t need to worry and now my boy is gone.” Vickie felt sick to her stomach.
He said, “What’s wrong?” “It’s the bad man, honey,” she said, reflected light from the rearview printing a silver Zorro mask across her eyes. “But don’t worry your little head. There’s no way he’s gonna catch us.”
Either way, Roger was losing it. That crazed gleam was back in his eyes, and he was pushing the car too hard on this loose gravel surface. To make matters worse, Peter had lost the 911 operator while she had him on hold, and hadn’t been able to get her back. On the upside, he’d just seen a sign identifying the road they were on as Murray Side Road. He dialed 911 again and this time he got through. He identified himself and the woman said, “I’ve got Sergeant Taylor holding for you, Mister Croft,” then set him adrift on dead air again.
She took her hair off now and dropped it between the seats. It landed upside down and Graham stared at it in horror. When he looked up, he saw the bad man where the woman had been, rubbing red lipstick off his mouth with a paper towel. Graham felt something tighten inside him and he closed his eyes again, closed them hard. “Here we go,” the bad man said in the woman’s voice, and Graham covered his ears, too.
Peter looked away from the savage intensity of that gaze. At different times in his life, he’d wondered about people who killed. Wondered what it took, and whether he’d have it should a situation demand: wartime, protecting his family, defending himself. When it came to protecting his family, he’d always believed he could. But in Roger’s eyes, he saw no trace of doubt. If Roger got his hands on this man, he’d kill him if he could, without qualm or hesitation.
“So this woman, all she’s got left is a mental image of the boy at six—or a photograph she carries with her everywhere—and she becomes fixated on that. She sees Jason and grabs him, believing she’s found her son. But time goes by and Jason starts growing up. After three years, he looks almost nothing like the kid in the photograph anymore.” He showed Roger the age-enhanced shot of Clayton. “See? Even her own son looks different after a few years. So she wakes up one morning, looks at Jason and thinks, ‘This isn’t my kid,’ and starts searching for the next six-year-old.”
Peter felt the weight of this confession like a dropkick to the chest. Self-loathing was coming off Roger in waves now, and he cursed and damned himself to hell, the heat of his anguish palpable in the room, a thrumming turbine eating the air.
He said, “Can you give me a few minutes?” Roger looked at his watch. “What for?” “To decide,” Peter said, standing. “I’m going to go outside, sit somewhere quiet and think this through, okay? I want to do what’s best for everyone. Maybe it’s the nature of the work I do, but I can’t rush into things. Not when they matter this much.”
And yet, God help him, he understood. The woman was acting out of the fiercest breed of love. The tragedy was, she was wrong. Had either child actually been her own, no parent on the planet would’ve faulted her actions. As it stood, only her fractured mind made what she’d done even remotely defensible. Either way, once caught, she’d be facing a lifetime of incarceration.
She said, “Oh, this is so hard. It seems like such a long time ago now, but it really isn’t. I mean, look at you. You’re still the same. I couldn’t believe it when I came home that day and they told me you were gone. Do you remember that day, baby? The day the bad man took you?” Graham was confused. She was the bad man and of course he remembered. It happened just last night. But he didn’t think she was talking about that so he said, “No.”
She rested the hair on the photo albums; it looked like a dead animal and Graham shivered again, his tummy doing sick little flip flops now. She said, “They’re never going to find us,” and Graham pushed the tray off his lap and ran to the bathroom, just making it to the toilet before his stomach turned again. But there was nothing left inside him.
She led him around by the hand, talking away, and Graham let her, hearing only half of what she was saying now, thinking only about finding his way home. The stuff about brainwashing frightened him, because this woman really believed it, and she had all those pictures of him doing things he couldn’t remember, and some he could remember but with his real mom and dad, and it made him afraid she was right, maybe he really had been stolen from her and just couldn’t remember.
The man looked at Graham with twinkling eyes and said, “Granted, the boy’s the spittin’ image of Clayton.” He shook his head. “It’s downright spooky, really. But Mag, think about this a spell, would you? When was Clayton born?” “Christmas Eve, nineteen ninety-five. A minute before midnight.” Looking at Graham now, the man said, “Tell me, son, what year is it?” Graham glanced at Maggie and saw a funny glaze in her eyes. He said, “Two thousand and eight.” “See?” Albert said. “Clayton’d be twelve now. Not six. He was six when he was taken.”
Peter said, “Be right back,” and got out. On his way past the Chrysler, he noticed Albert’s straw hat lying on its side in the trunk, the leather headband stained black from years of dirt and sweat. The sight of it struck a chord of alarm. On his first visit here, he remembered thinking the old guy probably slept in that hat. It was part of what he’d liked about the man. Why would he leave it in the trunk, tossed aside like that?
Graham saw the man smile, but it wasn’t a happy smile. It made him think of a nature program he’d seen, a snake slithering up behind a tiny bird with flickering wings, the bird drinking from a puddle when the smiling snake plucked it off its feet.
He edged along the building now, moving in quick sidesteps, the axe handle awkward in his grip, the idea of using it as a weapon totally foreign to him. In his whole life he’d never even been in a shoving match, let alone a fist fight, and had no idea whether he could actually strike the woman or not.
The flat part of the handle struck her above the left eye as she looked at him, recognition replaced by fury and then, as she toppled to the porch with her dress hiked up over bare white legs, no expression at all but the slack mask of unconsciousness. Peter bent to feel for a pulse, certain he’d killed her, seeing the empty scabbard laced to her thigh now and thinking, Oh, no, even as Roger screamed, “Stay away from her,” and her eyes clicked open.
“Get your hands off me,” Maggie hissed. “You took my son from me. But I’ve got him back now and you have no right to keep him from me.” She lunged in an attempt to head butt him, but her bonds prevented it, and when Roger backed up, she spat in his face. Roger cuffed the spit away, grabbed her right wrist and brought the hatchet down against the steering wheel, lopping the tips off her pinky and fourth finger. Maggie Dolan screamed.
The boy said, “Look,” and pointed at the T in the road. He said, “It’s Tommy Boy,” and Peter saw David standing by the No Trespassing sign, hand raised in a little wave. Smiling, Peter said, “I know.” He dug something out his pocket and said, “Go get Roger,” and Graham scooted down the steps.
Peter squeezed Roger’s hand and pointed again, saying, “See him now?” and Roger did, a tiny figure in a dark suit and white tie, almost solid in the heat shimmer at the T in the road. The instant Roger saw him, the boy turned on wavering legs to stride into the tall weeds over there, moving away from the road now, looking back over his shoulder in a way that made Roger feel the boy was looking directly at him. “My God.” Peter said, “Isn’t he beautiful?” squeezing Roger’s hand again. Their eyes met then, and Peter said, “Go to him, Roger. For me. Tell him I love him.”
“I pulled him out the barrel, run in’n’ showed Pa an’ he said, ‘Here’s what we’re gonna tell her. You and Clay was playin’ outside an’ a big man come out the bush an’ cracked you on your empty melon an’ when you waked up Clay was gone’.” Aaron said, “Then he picked up that ashtray an’ brained me hard with it.” He leaned forward now, digging in his hair to show Graham the long scar on his scalp. “After that, he wrapped Clay up in an ol’ blanket an’ put ’im in the hole over to the Misner place what burned down. Put ’im down the rut cellar.” He pointed into the distance along the road. There was
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Vickie said, “Incredible,” and heard a raised voice from outside now, calling her name in alarm. She looked at Laking looking at her, a sick feeling in her gut, then ran for the screen door, Laking hot on her heels. One of the coppers was standing at the foot of the porch steps, pointing at the road. Vickie saw the officer first, the one Laking had sent in search of Mullen, the man running full bore toward the farmhouse now, utility belt jangling. He was shouting something Vickie couldn’t make out, waving a hand in the air. Then she saw Mullen, fifty yards behind the cop. He was running too, a
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While Vickie spoke to the pilot, Graham undid his seatbelt and got up, almost losing his balance going to sit next to Roger. He belted in, took one of Jason’s limp hands and stroked it, saying, “It’s over now, you’ll be okay.” Mullen looked at Graham and broke down, making the most wretched sounds Vickie had ever heard.
“He hasn’t spoken yet,” Roger said, a fretful sadness in his voice, “but I believe he knows who we are, Ellen and me. We’ve been showing him pictures, telling him about his life before, but it’s difficult to say if we’re getting through. “Ellen’s been staying at the house. We’ve talked about trying again, but I don’t know. Even with Jason back, I’m not sure she can ever forgive me. It’s hard.”
Roger set the tiny boxcar on Peter’s headstone, gleaming black marble to match his son’s. Roger stepped off the damp sod quickly, not liking the spongy feel of it under his feet. Autumn leaves cartwheeled across the triple gravesite in a gust, and Roger shivered again, shoulders bunched against the chill. He felt something cool touch his hand now and realized it was Jason’s slender fingers lacing through his own. This was the first time since finding him that Jason had touched Roger on his own.
