Headlights(56)

I’m so goddamned sick of these goddamned memories coming out of nowhere.

The smell.

A smell at the river. I’ve never smelled something like it before, it’s kind of— A horn blasts through the night, and I swerve just in time not to have a full head-on collision.

I pull over, cut the engine. My heart fucking racing.

The smell.

I smelled something, that first night between Mama Tried and the motel, out in the field. The night we found Hannah and Tony in the motel. Bitter, chemical.

This memory that keeps coming back. The smell that keeps coming with it, I don’t know. I don’t know what it is, but … I breathe into my hands again. I can’t remember anything else.

Mom and me in the river, by the green grass and trees. Where was it?

I start the car. Why can’t I remember? Where is any of this coming from? And why now?

The music picks up, grows to such a volume and such a staticky discordance that I want to punch something, want to fucking scream.



* * *



At Whileago Manor, I open my computer, looking away until the screen lights up from black. Turn on the hotspot, still no power. I still have some battery though. I go to the chat room, use the handle someone at the office created so we could log in.

I read a few recent posts. And—

A new one appears, from Wizdumteller.

I blink.

I wonder if it’s not time to give our friends a little hint. Maybe we should say it’s important to keep your eyes to the SKY.

I check the time. Posted eleven seconds ago.

The likes start pouring in immediately, shoot up before my eyes. This post coming right after I logged in. Comments—laughing faces, salutes, prayer hands. Posted just now. Is our username compromised? That must be it, they’ve figured out we’ve been logging in all this time. Or …

I look around the giant living room, the house I left vacant for four years. No surveillance. Could someone have broken in here? Left a camera at some point?

A record starts spinning, one I didn’t put on the turntable. Ted Hawkins. “There Stands the Glass.” I stand, reach for my gun. There’s no one by the record player, just a shadow lurking.

Once, when I was a kid, there was a break-in. The burglar took things from pretty much every room on the main level before we realized he was in the house. But by the time he made it to the door to leave, he mysteriously dropped everything he’d grabbed. And by the time he got to the front lawn, he dropped dead of a heart attack. My parents never knew what to make of it. But I understood right away. I saw it happen out the window, the last part. The shadows got him. Now, as an adult who doesn’t believe in shadows and fantasies, I realize the stress of a robbery probably just did it.

Still … I don’t think anyone’s been in here. I don’t know how to explain it, but I just kind of know. I do a sweep anyway, check all the rooms upstairs and in the basement. If someone’s here I can’t find them. And if someone was here and has been surveilling me, well then that just sucks I guess. I could try and get one of those device finders, but I don’t know, I just don’t think I need it. But I’ve been wrong before.

I sit down again, turn back to the chat room, watch the likes come in. They keep coming.

Eyes to the sky. Eyes to the skies. Tillman. Who could he have said that in front of? Is our car bugged? Is Tillman a part of this? I search for the word “sky” anywhere in the chat room, but there’s nothing. I search for “Witchwalker.” Nothing, but a lot of mentions of “WW,” all from Wizdumteller. Do we start contacting these hundreds of people liking these posts? Clearly they know something we don’t, none of them are asking questions, for clarification. We just start asking every one of them who Wizdumteller is?

It’s almost like they’ve been instructed not to comment. Like they’re all following some code, or … I think of Tillman, what he said about Mona Brown. Obsession. Devotion. The way she spoke about Wizdumteller. People will do a lot for someone they’re obsessed with, for someone they love. I pull up Tillman’s interview with her and listen again as I head down to the basement for another workout in the dark. Seems like she might be our best bet, to see if she’ll talk to me or maybe Frazier or Garcia, or have Tillman talk to her again.

My father gave it to me.

I text Frazier to see if we can get any info on Mona Brown’s dad.

Mona Brown. Oliver Wright. Wizdumteller.

Bite marks. Motel.

Questions. So many questions.

Hannah Lawrence. My heart pounding every time I think of her.

Do you get it yet?

A call lights up my phone. Frazier.

“Hello?” I say.

“Hey,” she says. “Um, you have to see this right now. Just uploaded. Hannah Lawrence’s file.” She sounds out of breath. Almost frantic.

I remote access Hannah’s file.

New JPEGs in a folder titled “Hannah Lawrence Film Roll.”

She says again, “You need to see this.”

Digital copies of film photographs, with time stamps.

A small fox with large ears, 5:10 PM, the day Hannah Lawrence was taken to the Happy Inn, November 16. A bird in the grass the same day, earlier. A lizard two days before. Then … I squint, zoom in. A photo that looks like a mistake, a week before Hannah’s abduction. Blurred, camera moving, a trailhead parking lot. And …