He stepped into the upstairs hall with bated breath, an intruder in his own rental home. He waited for the voices—the same ones he’d heard earlier—but the house was silent. So quiet that he could hear the trees gently creaking outside. There was the lightest jingle of a wind chime somewhere, dancing in the breeze.
He crept past the door that should have led into Jeanie’s room. It stood wide open and inviting. The window was open, the curtain pulled back, filling the room with bright afternoon light. A pine-scented breeze pushed the drapes to and fro. He was drawn to the view, if only to see what the outside world looked like. Staring across an endless expanse of trees, he realized that he could have been a thousand miles from Pier Pointe without ever knowing. The landscape was a perfect repetition of green. The only suggestion that he may have been in the wrong place was the vibrant blue sky, not a rain cloud in sight. But he could still hear the ocean, wave after repetitive wave crashing onto the gray and rocky shore.
Just as he was about to turn away from the window, he caught movement out of the corner of his eye. A swatch of goldenrod ducked into the trees—wavy blond catching the light like a fleck of gold.
Jeanie.
Ready to yell, he stopped short. If someone was inside the house, it would be better to not alert them to his presence. Instead, he turned and ran with light feet, trying not to make a sound as he descended the stairs in the least possible amount of steps. When he reached the foyer, he shot a look over his shoulder at the living room, half expecting to see Jeff Halcomb standing there, staring at him with a perplexed smile across his face. The dead Jeff Halcomb—except that death didn’t seem to matter anymore. Lucas saw the top of someone’s dark-haired head as they sat on the couch. A woman. Her back was to him as she stared at a blank TV screen. Lucas crept to the door, winced as he opened it, and left it ajar before darting to the side of the house.
He rushed for the trees, his daughter’s name on the tip of his tongue, his feet crunching twigs and wild grass. Stepping wrong, his foot rolled over a pinecone. Pain flared deep in his ankle, but he didn’t stop. By the time he reached the tree line, he was limping badly and panting for air.
The interior of the forest was quiet. There was no snapping of branches, no talking, no sign of the girl he thought he had seen. Not until he glanced back to the house and saw Jeanie standing in the upstairs window, now closed, staring out at him just as he had looked out at her only moments ago.
“Jeanie!” But before he could tell if she heard him or saw him at all, his eyes went wide. Three, four, eight people rushed out from around the corner of the house in a full-on sprint. The group stampeded toward him. He lifted his hands and held them palm out to fend them off.
No. Stop. I’m not even supposed to be here.
But they kept on coming.
The boys were faster than the girls. The front-runner wore cowboy boots and a shirt that would have made John Wayne proud. Lucas searched for the right words to stop the group in their tracks, but he came up empty. Because the guy leading the charge was unmistakable with his tight blue jeans. Lucas had stared at the man’s picture long enough to have known Derrick Fink anywhere.
Mid-run, Derrick’s mouth turned up into a dogged sneer. In three seconds’ time Lucas would be knocked flat onto his back by a man thirty years dead. And the people that followed him shouldn’t have existed either. Kenneth, with his goofy face and his gangly arms, was hot on Derrick’s heels, grinning and whooping, as though this sprint was the most fun he’d ever had. Nolan trailed a few steps behind, his huge eyes impossibly wide as he struggled to keep up.
“Stop!” Lucas yelled, and tucked his head beneath his pretzeled arms, protecting himself from the impact. Derrick hit him head-on. Then came Kenneth and Nolan, followed by five girls decked out in their kaleidoscope dresses. The riot of color swallowed him whole. But rather than being knocked down, Lucas simply stumbled. His feet skidded across the grass as the group continued past him as though he wasn’t there at all. And yet, he could smell the perfume of patchouli and weed waft up behind them as they tore across the backyard. He could feel the brush of their polyester shirts and soft denim. The flap of airy skirts assured him that this was no hallucination.
He twisted around, watched them bolt for the trees he himself had been advancing toward only seconds before. This time the pine shadows weren’t as empty as they had been. Just beyond the bank of gently swaying conifers was the flash of a girl who, from behind, looked just like Virginia Graham.
Lucas couldn’t help it. He ran after them.
Maybe he had seen wrong.
Maybe Jeanie hadn’t been upstairs.
Maybe she was in both places at once.
Nothing made sense, so why should this?
He ran after them, listening to Kenneth carry on like a delinquent in search of trouble. A couple of the girls laughed while a third catcalled, “Come out, Avis!” Lucas’s steps slowed when a few of the group broke out of formation, the name rattling inside his head. Who the hell is Avis?
They reminded him of Serengeti predators, a group of hungry animals expertly breaking apart to box in their prey. The girl Lucas had thought was Jeanie made a panicked dash for the cherry grove, but they all cornered her in no time flat. She was slow, weighed down by a swollen belly, her arms wrapped around it as if to keep it from tearing away from her body.
Audra Snow.
She looked left, right, then directly at Lucas, as if to implore him for help. Making a final attempt to escape the group, she made a dash for a break in their ranks, stumbled, and crashed onto the forest floor with a muffled cry. Halcomb’s diviners jumped in to stop her. They surrounded her like hyenas falling onto fresh meat.