Headlights(87)

The shadow moves into the bathroom doorway.

“But this isn’t my life now,” Hannah says. “I don’t want to do it anymore. I don’t eat any meat, I stay away from people, don’t even let myself smell them. I think it wanted me back, and it was angry that I didn’t want that too.”

“If I…” I try to collect my thoughts. “If I were to believe any part of this story, if any of this is remotely true…” I run my good hand over my head.

One part of it sticks. One part that makes me think …

“You think that’s what spoke through Father Sky? The Witchwalker? That it wasn’t just some circus act?”

“I know it was. I know its voice, it comes to me in my dreams, whispers along the walls of the cabin. I think…” She looks away from me. “I think it wanted us to find each other, for some reason. You and me. It wants something from you too.”

“It wants…”

“What were you doing when it came back?” she asks. “When the murders started again?”

“I was about to move.”

“Somewhere far away?”

“I—”

“And now,” she says, thoughts and connections lighting up her eyes. “We left Denver, and there’s been another one. It’s like the tongue and me. It wants you the same way it wants me. It thinks you’re a part of its ecosystem. It doesn’t want us to leave. When I ran from my cabin, it pushed me toward you. It wanted this for some reason.”

“This being…”

“You and me. Together. I don’t know why.”

“But I’ve never known … it. Whatever the fuck it is. I’ve never had some symbiotic relationship of night cannibalism—”

“Well, I don’t know!” she says. “I’ve told you everything. Everything I have, to try and figure this out. Now you,” she says. “You have to tell me what your part is in this.”

“I…” I watch her. Her story. I don’t know if I should believe any of it. I don’t know why I should when she’s lied this whole time. But that traitorous part of me that is so taken in by her says, Of course she lied. She was scared. She was alone. And maybe she’s a victim in this as much as you are. Maybe more.

“You don’t believe me,” she says, her face fallen. “You know what, fine. I don’t care. But for some reason they think you’re involved in this too, your own coworkers and friends, and if there’s one of us who shouldn’t trust the other, it’s me, with you. You owe me answers.”

“I don’t have any answers, I told you, I have no idea why this is happening.”

“Why did you steal that card from my cabin?” she asks.

“I—”

“Why do they think you’re involved?”

“I don’t know.”

“Yes, you do! Look, I’m trying to help and you’re just—”

“Because this sounds insane.”

“More insane than killers having no idea why they’re doing what they’re doing? While they skin an entire body?”

More insane than some person somehow stealing my hair and coercing these people into doing these things after tying it around their tongues. I realize now. The simplest answer is that I did it all and left a calling card for everyone to find. And they could say I’ve muddied and fucked the investigation from the inside, and that’s how it’s all gone on for so long.

“I’m the one who shouldn’t trust you,” Hannah says.

“Why do you then?”

“I don’t!”

“Great!” I push myself up to stand, move.

Wouldn’t it just make the most sense that I got messed up young by a bad thing that happened to me with my parents, and have somehow been playing it out in these murders, intentionally not solving them, steering investigators off the trail? Isn’t that the cleanest possible answer, and won’t the judges and the public love it? I’m facing the door, my back to Hannah. Hannah Lawrence who has a knife and could just …

Maybe I just let her at this point. Maybe that solves it all.

“I don’t think you did it,” Hannah says.

Her words sink in, and I turn to look at her.

“How do you know what I’m thinking?” I ask. “How did you know at my house what message I got? That I was implicated by something? How do you always know?”

She stares at me and shrugs, helpless. She says, “You can’t pretend you don’t feel it.”

“What?” I ask. The room very still around us. My heart pounding.

“The connection between us. I’ve felt it since I first saw you in that motel. I’ve felt it ever since. It was the same thing I felt when I met Eden. Sometimes, it’s just…”

The connection between us.

I can’t … her eyes on me, now. Searching. Is she manipulating me? Of course she is. Right?

I swallow, tell myself to slow down. “So you can read my mind? That’s what you’re saying?”

“I told you, I get feelings sometimes. I don’t know. You don’t have to believe me about that, I don’t care,” she says. “But there is something else in all this. Something different from us. Something not human. And for whatever reason, it wants you. If the killings stop, it might let me go, might not need me there for the bodies. If we can get to the bottom of what it wants from you, it may be the key to everything. To both of us being freed from it.”