Dark Child (Wild Men 5)

“Why was I out of the house alone that night?” I ask the world in general, or maybe I’m asking myself.

But Gigi replies. “You left. Walked right out the back door. I was playing with my dolls. Left you alone in the kitchen. It never crossed my mind you’d go out and walk away.”

“Yeah, who would? Kids always catch us by surprise.”

“It took me a while to figure out you were gone, and then I had no idea which direction. I rang all the doorbells and asked all our neighbors. One—Mrs. Conrad in fact—said she saw you walking in the direction of Little River.” She sighs. “I ran up and down this shore for hours. It felt like hours.”

“Probably was,” Jarett mutters.

I chew on the inside of my cheek, clutch Cos’s hand. Our palms are sweaty, but I don’t care. The air is cold, the drizzle stinging my face. I lick the moisture off my lips.

The scent of the stream is foreign and familiar. That annoying light-headedness joins again the throb behind my eyes.

Awesome. The perfect beat to an already fucked-up day.

A bizarre family excursion in the woods, looking for—what? A sign from heaven? Footprints from a dream?

I look down, where I step over puddles and twigs, and try hard not to think of the things Ross said. About how nice his mom was. How she left one day without a word. How she wore a pendant of a swan.

A silver swan.

What are we doing here, walking in the mud? What are we going to find—a skeleton? More memories? A Clue with a capital C lying around, waiting for us to discover what spooked a young boy so much one night that he keeps dreaming about it fifteen years later?

“Look!” Octavia calls. She and Matt have gone on ahead. “The Pagoda.”

It comes into view in degrees, over the treetops, over the river bend. It’s smaller than it is in my dreams. Shorter. Unthreatening.

“Merc?” Cos tugs on my hand, and I find I’ve stopped walking. “Everything okay?”

Sure, except for that sinking feeling in my stomach, like dropping off a cliff, before gravity kicks in. The feeling you get as you enter dreamland.

I make myself start walking again, step after step, inching toward what looks like the center of my nightmares.

It’s a bend of the Little River, right across from the Pagoda, lined with desolate trees and shrubs, the ground green with grass. The sun is hiding behind gray clouds, so the colors are muted, ashen, gray.

Not golden rust caught in the last rays of the Summer sun, but I recognize the place. Damn, my dreams sure got the moment just right, the picture caught in the lens of my mind.

I stop and let go of Cos to crouch down—partly to imagine how it’d looked when I was little, and partly because my head is spinning, the sky dipping into the trees and the river bursting out of its banks to reach me. The earth is tilting sideways.

Bracing my hands on the wet grass, I bow my head and inhale.

“Is this some sort of ritual? What next, do we hold hands and dance?”

“Shut up, Ross,” Matt mutters. “Merc?”

“This is the place.” I lift my gaze, nod at him.

“Woo, spooky,” Ross says, and lifts his chin, meeting Matt’s gaze squarely. “I got goosebumps all over. How about we go back now?”

He sneers, but underneath the bravado and hard façade, I see his fear, and his pain, plain as day.

“You can go if you want,” I say. This is exactly the place I see in my dreams, night after night. I get up on wobbly knees and stumble to the edge of the water. “Here. She was lying here, framed by the Pagoda behind her. It was late afternoon. The sun was about to set. The water around her was cloudy with blood.”

“That’s bullshit,” Ross mutters.

But I barely hear him, because images hit me like fists in the head, and I fall back on my ass. “I’d seen the man bent over her. He wore a baseball cap, drawn low over his face. An ax. He held an ax.” A silver pendant glints at her neck. He pushes her under the water. She doesn’t struggle. “He killed her.”

“Stop talking,” Ross says.