Headlights(111)

Can that be right? How?

And Room 6. The door looks exactly as it did when I was a kid, even down to the same indentation at the bottom from when Calvin one time tried to kick it in. Slow motion, as we run to it, as Tillman tries the handle.

It’s locked. But we hear voices inside. Tillman swears.

I run to the Innkeepers’ Suite. Time, strange. Strained. Everything staticky and crackling. A sign in the window says OFFICE CLOSED. I can just see inside to the drawer where they keep the keys. Or where Sherie used to, when I was a kid. I take my jacket off and then my shirt, wrap the shirt around my good hand, and punch through the window glass. It rains down onto the floor, and I clear enough shards to reach in and open the door. Inside, I pull out the small key drawer.

I run the keys back to Tillman and Hannah, shrug my jacket back on, and close it up against the cold as Tillman digs through the keys until he finds the right one, the orange and yellow plastic key chain dangling.

When he puts it in the lock, his hands are shaking.

The door swings open.

VOOM.

The room looks exactly the way it did when I was a kid. My mom’s makeup and jewelry on the bathroom counter. Our cassette tapes and VHS tapes. My cowboy boots. The sunset paintings and scratchy yellow and orange carpet.

The TV’s on, playing Take Me Home with the volume on. My dad’s bottle of whiskey sits beside the TV.

Space feels off. Reality does.

The door slams shut behind us. We all take half a second to understand what we’re seeing.

Jack Murphy sits on the edge of the bed, slumped against the headboard, a wound on the side of his head, bleeding. Father Sky stands over him with a familiar crude bone knife, a cold, calculating expression on his face. Intense, wolfish. Blood smeared on his off-white turtleneck and pants, his brown shearling jacket. No wounds on him as far as I can tell. The knife, from Hannah’s cabin. From the bag we left in the Stanley SUV with the files. Did Father Sky follow us there and take it?

“Come on in, Danny boy,” he says. “Been waiting for you too.” He nods to Hannah and Tillman with a smile.

Tillman charges forward, and—

His body flies back through the air, hits the wall beside the front window, plaster powdering. I blink, gun in my hand, try to understand what just happened. Then I see it. I don’t know why I didn’t at first. This room so strange, making me feel sick, and that chemical smell, but— Ghosts. It’s not just us in here. Ghosts at the edges of the room, three of them. I would guess part of Father Sky’s shadow congregation. One of them holds Tillman against the wall by his throat. Tillman chokes, kicks, his eyes wild. I start to move toward him.

I’m thrown back too, into the door, the handle hitting my lower back, hard. I groan. A ghost holding me against the door. It’s strong. I try to fight it, but I can’t, it’s too strong. Tillman chokes, kicks his legs at something he can’t see. Hannah stays in the corner to my right, assessing. Jack— “Stop,” I rasp out.

Father Sky waves a hand, and Tillman sucks in a breath, the ghost backing off just enough to let him. Tillman falls to his knees on the carpet, and the ghost lingers beside him, ready to keep him there. The one on me doesn’t let go.

“So this is the place where it all began. The origin story of the Daniel Stansfield,” Father Sky says, looking around the room. “This was where your life changed forever. And mine.” He leans back to flip his hair off his face.

“What do you mean yours?” I ask.

“I’m gonna get there. But I just want to say before we begin that I get it. This is actually a pretty great movie.” He swings the knife to point at Chad Lowe on the screen singing “This Old Guitar.”

“What did you do to Jack?”

“Thanks for leaving this in the car,” Father Sky says, tossing the knife from one hand to the other. “Was convenient to find. So you went to visit your old man? How’d that go?”

“How do you know about my life?” I ask. “Do I know you?”

He catches the knife in one hand and then cuts his eyes to me. That strange predatory stillness. “The thing is, you don’t. Know me. But I know you. And maybe that right there is the whole crux of this thing.” He lifts the bone knife, tilts it back and forth. His eyes never leaving me. I wonder now if he made it, if he is the one who planted it in Hannah’s cabin, who gave it to each of the Drifters to skin their victims.

“Are you responsible for the Drifter murders?” I ask.

Father Sky tilts his head. Tilts the knife. Watches. “You know, I couldn’t believe it at first. That you people with your jobs and power, that you with your ability, would have no idea. It’s just…”

He tosses the knife to his other hand, and before I can stop it, before I can even blink, he stabs the knife deep into Jack’s thigh. Jack lets out a groan, head still hanging, slumped against the headboard.

“Stop,” I say, and I push against the ghost holding me. It’s too strong. I can’t move.

Father Sky says, “To answer the first question, I guess you could say I’m a fan. I mean I do know who’s done all this. And I have been telling you through the chat room the entire time that I know. But who am I? Just Theo Wharton. Just a no one.” He smiles a charming smile. “But there is something I want, and these murders have provided me the opportunity to get it. So no, I’m not responsible for them. You can think of me as a ghost, passing through. Or maybe”—his eyes cut to Hannah, wild—“a carrion bird, coming to pick from what’s left.”