Headlights(112)

Hannah stands with her back to the wall beside the TV stand. Watching him.

“Why is Jack Murphy here?” I ask.

It takes Wharton a moment to tear his eyes from Hannah, then he turns and looks at Jack like he has forgotten him. Jack, whose leg is now bleeding. “I called in a hint to the station that maybe you three were here, and then I posted in the chat room saying the agents were here, for you. So…” He smiles again. The knife drips blood to the carpet. “Now it’s a party.”

“Agents?” Tillman says, catching the plural.

“Oh yeah. Maybe you know her. Curly hair, pretty smile, butterfly tattoo right on her—”

“Where is she?” Tillman says.

“Somewhere in the motel. She got a bit … cut up. Before.” Again, the easy smile, the ever-watchful gaze. “But I think it’s been good enough. I just needed extra bodies for pain. And I thought having her here would get you here. You can go find her,” he says.

The ghost lets Tillman go, and he pushes up off the carpet to stand.

“Just a word to the wise,” Father Sky says. “This place is a bit … treacherous. It’s a little hard to know which way is up just now. Time, space here is…” He shrugs, narrows his eyes, and smiles again. “You can thank your friend for that. Be careful out there,” he says.

Tillman glances to me, and I nod. I’m moving, somehow. Sliding to the window wall, next to the door. The ghost holding me is moving us so Tillman can get out. Holding me by the throat, my toes just on the ground.

Tillman opens the door, the cold rushing in, and disappears into the night. The door slams shut behind him.

Father Sky’s eyes land back on me.

“Daniel Stansfield,” he says. “Calvin Keller. The prodigal son.”

“What do you want from me? Who are you?” I ask.

“You have so much power,” he says, eyes narrowed on me. “And you don’t even realize. You know, I can do party tricks. And I’m very good at them. You’ve seen. I have a devoted congregation, living and dead. But I don’t have what you have. No one does, just … you two.” His gaze cuts to Hannah, that violence simmering behind his eyes. “You two shining so bright.”

“What do you want?” I say, to get his attention back on me.

“Okay, I’ll tell you a little about me. It’s privileged information. I make my congregants work for it for a very long time. And … they want to.” He flashes that smile to us, licks his lips. “But we all know how special you two are, so … I’ll give you it for free.”

He sits down on the bed beside Jack and tilts the knife back and forth slowly. Take Me Home plays on the TV. I haven’t looked to the bathroom yet. My focus is on Wharton and Hannah. On the ghosts who haven’t moved to touch her, but could at any moment.

You okay? I ask her in the other-space.

She nods.

Father Sky whips his head to me and throws the knife across the room. It hits me in the thigh, right where he got Jack. I make a sound, try to move. Pain flashes.

“So rude,” he says. “Side conversations, while I’m about to give you such a gift. Every answer. Everything you’ve been searching for, for so long.”

He steps across the room and pulls the knife from my leg. I groan, the ghost still pinning me against the wall, still not letting me move. Hannah watching everything, calculating, trying to see what she can do. That other ghost who held Tillman before hovering, its attention on her.

“I grew up on the other side of the mountains,” Father Sky says, backing up again, the bloody knife in his hand. Jack’s blood. Mine. Maybe Josie’s. He sits on the bed, flips his hair back. “And I always had a bit of a gift, you could say. Saw things, knew things, just … enough. Not like you two. But I’ve always been … persuasive.” He winks at Hannah, and a dimple shows in his face. “But there was one night that changed everything for me. That broke open my whole world. Can you guess what it was?” The question is directed to me. I don’t say anything.

“I’m two years older than you,” he says. “I was eight when it happened. When I woke up to the brightest light of my life, shining all through the night. And this … feeling. I knew. I could tell that something much bigger than any of us had entered the world. I didn’t know what it was, where exactly it was, or what it wanted. But I knew, from that moment, that my life was changed forever. Because I had to find out.”

He lifts up the knife and slides the blade against Jack’s arm, blood spilling onto the bed between them. Jack lets out another half-conscious groan. I try to move, but I can’t. My throat held by the ghost, my arms inexplicably somehow glued to my sides. Hannah takes a step forward, and the ghost that held Tillman rushes her. It shoves her down on the floor beside me, all the way down, on her stomach.

“Stop!” I say.

“So I searched,” Father Sky says. Hannah, pinned to the floor, her face pressed to the carpet. She whimpers. I fight, and the ghost knocks my head back against the wall.

Father Sky continues.

“I studied religion, physics, science, mythology, because I had to know what it was that I had experienced. I was a man obsessed. A UFO or something like it seemed most obvious, but it just never … resonated. Something in me just knew it wasn’t it. I went to jail for a bit—unrelated to any of this—and when I saw the first Drifter murders come on the news, I knew, instinctually, that I had found what I was looking for. Finally. I knew that the thing that had entered our world when I was a child was responsible for these murders. And if it sounds outlandish, you’ll remember I’m a holy man. I’ve learned some things, and I’ve got some”—he waves at the ghosts—“connections.