Headlights(110)

“Maybe it views it that way.”

“Why?” Tillman asks.

“Well,” Hannah says. “If it feeds off fear and pain, and Daniel experienced what he did at the motel…”

“Maybe it identified me as a food source,” I say. “When I was young. And it’s followed me from place to place since. At least as far as it was willing to go.”

It never left Colorado when I did. I consider that. “I wonder if it can’t go beyond certain places. Maybe there are barriers to its movements? Something it’s tethered to, or can’t move past.”

I bend down and look at the routes on the map, the flight paths, as Tillman called them. I look for the first one. Claire Wright taken from the gas station, her body found by Heather Ridge, her skin ending up near Baker. I put a number one by it. Then I go to the next one, number two. The first three murders, with our new map, the routes the Drifters would have taken.

Creating a perimeter around Whileago Manor.

A phone pings.

I stare at the map and try to think about how any of this makes sense.

Could someone feel they have a claim on my house? My life? It can’t be Josie. Or Nat Tillman next to me. It’s not Hannah, I know it’s not. So …

What could this possibly mean? Hannah steps in closer beside me. I reach out and take her hand in my bandaged one.

The phone pings again.

“Whose is that?” Tillman asks.

I realize it’s the burner, the same ping from the last time Wizdumteller—Father Sky—posted.

I let go of Hannah, grab the phone from its place on the table.

I read it out loud.

Playtime’s over. If the gumshoe wants to have some real fun, come join JM and me where it all began.

I look up at Tillman. Panic crosses his face, and I register just as he does.

JM.

Josie Maynor?

Jack Murphy?

Where it all began.

Fuck.

Hannah realizes too. On the map, the circle down below the center.

Because that avalanche, that great tidal wave of snow and cold and dark, has only ever been pushing us toward this all along.

The shadows of Whileago Manor are silent, as the three of us look back to the bottom circle on the map. My vision warps and distorts as I look at it. Almost as though the perimeter is pulsing around it. Beating like a giant heart.

We’re going back to the Happy Inn.





6



The snow is thick. Ghost creatures dot the highway, are lit up in our headlights. Denver glitches in and out of reality. White snow, white light, ghost heads turning to watch us pass. Tillman can’t see them, but his hands are tight on the wheel, his focus on getting to the motel. Hannah holds one hand over her nose and holds mine with her other.

She’s scared. I can feel it in the other-space.

It’s gonna be okay, I say. We’re gonna end this. You’re going to be free of this thing.

I’m going to make sure it’s true. I have to. However Father Sky is tied in with the Witchwalker, whatever any of this means, we are ending it here. Tonight.

Tillman slows, waits for the exit. And …

I see it. The Wander Inn. Glowing white and blue.

Then that glitch. It’s orange and yellow in the white night. The Happy Inn.

“Tillman, do you—”

“Yeah. I see it.”

I blink. Back to normal, the Wander Inn. Then—

Glitch back, as we drive toward it.

VOOM.

Like we’ve passed through a section of air charged with something different than the rest. It’s not the Wander Inn. The Happy Inn is here. Us, in the glitch world. The memory world.

Off the side of the highway, glowing bright, lit up like a beacon in the swirling snow. In the dark. Just like it was when I was a kid. Brighter even. Wilder. Orange and yellow. Red clown nose and hat. Free Smile with Every Stay at the Happy Inn! It’s like the Wander Inn never existed, like this was always here and always will be. Maybe it has been.

My John Denver cowboy boots on my feet.

Tillman says, “This is the way it used to look, when you were a kid?”

I nod. I don’t know how any of this works, why it’s here again. Why we can all see it.

The snow falls slower, over the motel. As if time functions differently in its immediate vicinity. I smell that strange bitter chemical smell, the one from the field, the one from the memory with Rose at John Denver Sanctuary in Aspen. A crackling, static in the air. Hannah shivers.

I turn to look at her in the back seat of the car. Her eyes on mine. The world falling silent for a moment, between us. Hannah who’d had to be in this room for days, even if it looked different.

Adrenaline courses through me already. There’s so much I want to say, wish I could give her right now. But I feel her, here, and in the other-space. And maybe that’s enough. Hannah and me. Here, and there. Together.

“I’m not letting go,” I say. I mean, of you. I mean, of us.

A tear falls from her eye, and she nods. She squeezes my hand again.

Tillman pulls the car to a stop, the tires crunching over the snow.

And it’s time.

Everything seems to go in slow motion. As we jump out, run through the cold. As we see Josie’s car is here.

So is the Stanley SUV that we left at the jail.