“Bigfoot sighted by three hunters near Brackenville,” Ryan read aloud, bending to examine the headline on the top paper. “Looks like our boy doesn’t discriminate among creatures. Imagine what would happen if he ever found out about your connection to the Mothman.”
“That isn’t going to happen.” Caden had moved to the other side of the room where an old sofa and arm chair skirted a coffee table. An overflowing ashtray, two soda cans, and a pizza box cluttered the table. He lifted the top of the box to peer inside. “Empty. Not like he left in a hurry or in the middle of dinner.”
“Did you get a chance to check with his employer?”
“Yeah. He was at work the other day, same as usual. His supervisor said he was fine.”
“So how come his car is here, but we find him curled up against the wall of the hospital, nearly comatose?”
“Five bucks says Deputy Brown could tell us.”
“Yeah.” Ryan should have paid more attention when Katie first mentioned the man. The guy was obviously an imposter, but it stumped him how Brown could have gotten his hands on a sheriff’s car.
A glance around the living room showed nothing that would make Jerome a target for someone who would want to harm him—faded furniture, a console TV, some cheap artwork and posters on the walls, the latter depicting space observatories or star fields. A solar system mobile hung above the TV, its colorful array of planets suspended by wire. Magazines and newspapers covered the floor and tables, no surface spared Jerome’s messy obsession.
Realizing Caden had already moved off to investigate the kitchen, Ryan took the bedroom. Unlike the living area, Jerome’s bedroom was relatively orderly, the single bed neatly made, the top of the dresser bare but for some loose change, a paperback novel, and three bottles of cologne. He checked the closet, found it filled with clothes and shoes, more magazines stuffed on the top shelf.
“Hey, Ryan. You’ve got to see this.” Caden’s voice drew him down the hall.
Ryan found him inside a small bedroom that had been converted to an office.
“What the…” Words failed him as he gazed around the cramped space. Two of the walls had been plastered with maps, star charts, and photographs of the night sky—all tacked up haphazardly with pushpins. A separate wall was devoted to the Mothman, the surface covered with newspaper clippings, drawings, and maps of the TNT. Several aerial photographs captured shots of the abandoned weapons igloos built into hillsides, their domes crowned with grass and trees.
“Where the hell did he get all this garbage?” Ryan wondered aloud.
“Who knows?” Caden bent over a desk, sorting through a hodgepodge of papers scattered on the top. “Look at this stuff. Alien abductions…extraterrestrial visitors…ley lines…” He called off random titles as he flipped through the pages. “This goes way beyond the scope of a hobby. I always knew Jerome was a bit whacked, but this is crazy.”
Ryan picked up a paperback book. “UFO Sightings and Stories.” His gaze tracked to the far wall where a pen-and-ink rendering of the Mothman held center stage. “He seems pretty gone on the ET stuff. So what’s the connection to the Mothman?”
“You live in Point Pleasant and can ask that?” Caden began pulling out drawers, rummaging through the contents of each. “There’s a whole faction of people who think our town is located on some sort of doorway between worlds or dimensions.”
“A ley line.” Ryan nodded to one of the papers Caden had left lying on the desk. “I’m not totally ignorant about this stuff. Once I found out you had a few powwows with the Mothman, I did some reading.”
Caden’s mouth twisted into a frown. “They were hardly powwows. But I guess I’m impressed by the effort, since you were always a skeptic.” He returned to the search, opening another drawer. “Some people think the Mothman is from another world. An alien.”
“Looks like Jerome agrees.” Ryan flipped through the paperback. Handwritten notes lined the margins, several sections underscored. “Why else the overkill with UFOs and the Mothman? The guy probably moved here hoping to have an encounter. I remember hearing he bought this place because of its history.”
Caden stiffened abruptly. “Hank?” he whispered.
“Not that.” Ryan winced at the blunder, sensitive to his brother’s role in Hank’s death and Parker’s incarceration. “Don’t you remember Hank talking about the strange shit that took place here? Seeing the Mothman…lights in the skies, noises in the woods.”
“Yeah.” Caden relaxed marginally. “Everyone thought he was blowing smoke.”
“Well, something tells me Hank and Jerome would have gotten along. Hey, look at this.” Ryan pulled a slip of paper from the center of the paperback. “Jerome might have been connected to Hank in more ways than one.” He passed the note to Caden.
“October 14, seven-thirty, P. Kline.” Caden read the scribbled handwriting aloud. “Has to be Parker, but what would Jerome want with a guy in a mental ward?”
“The fourteenth was Thursday,” Ryan observed. “When Katie found Jerome off the road.”
Caden’s glance was sharp. “You think he went to see Parker at the hospital?”
His brother wouldn’t like the answer, but there really was only one way to find out. “How do you feel about a drive?”
“To see Parker?” Caden hesitated, the fingers of his right hand straying to the welts on his forearm.
Ryan’s gaze followed the movement. For years he’d believed the marks were the result of an injury Caden sustained when the Silver Bridge fell. The night of the collapse, his brother had been trapped under water, his arm pinned in the wreckage of his car. But the disfigurement had never faded. To this day, the odd marks remained every bit as vivid and red as when Caden had been eighteen, dragged from the icy waters of the Ohio River. It was only recently Ryan learned the Mothman had made the gashes. A wound that never healed, the marks were a branded reminder of the bond between the creature and Caden.