The Summoning (17 page)

“What is this?” Victor finally asked and looked at Carol. “What are you doing?”

Carol shook her head, she looked as miserable as she had when they’d been walking on the sidewalk earlier. “I don’t know,” she said. “I didn’t even think it was going to work.” She hesitated, took a breath and let it out slowly. She stared at him. “But it did. It worked, and I brought him back here. And he’s
with
us now.”

Victor took a step back – a step away from Carol, away from the gigantic pentagram painted on the floor with its squiggly symbols and scorch marks, away from all of this. “I … I don’t believe in this kind of stuff,” he told her.

“You believe in God,” Carol challenged.

“Yes, of course I do,” Victor nearly spat the words out.

“Then why not the devil? Why not demons and hell? They’re all in the Bible, the Word of God. You can’t believe in the parts of the Bible that you want to, you have to believe in all of it or none of it.”

“I believe in God, and that’s it,” Victor growled. But he glanced back down at the floor. “But this … pentagrams on the floor, summoning the dead. That isn’t real. The dead stay dead, and that’s it.”

Victor’s voice had risen; he was getting louder with each word that he spoke.

Carol glanced at the locked door of the den, and then she looked back at Victor.

She spoke to him in a low and calm voice. “It’s real, and they are coming soon.”

“Carol …”

“You need to take Tom and leave. Go somewhere for the night. It’s not going to be safe here.”

“Carol, what are you talking about? I’m really beginning to worry about you.”

Carol sighed and she pulled the small key she’d found in this very room, hidden at the bottom of a ceramic jar with a bunch of other odds and ends – it was lucky she hadn’t thrown it out over the years.

But the key would’ve found its way back into my house somehow,
her mind whispered in a voice that didn’t even sound like her own anymore.

She showed Victor the small key. “I can prove it to you,” she told him.

Ryan parked in the street in front of Amber’s house. And sure enough, like she said, Gary’s black pickup truck wasn’t there. She said that she didn’t know when he would be back, but Ryan didn’t care anymore. He could feel that rage building inside of him.

A murderous rage, he thought. Maybe the same rage Cutter felt when he tortured his victims, when he drained the life out of them.

He would never hurt Amber, he told himself. He believed he might love her.

Where had that thought come from? Why would he even question himself about hurting Amber?

He could feel his mind splitting into two parts – part rational, part crazy and unpredictable. He felt like he might be running out of time, like the sense of urgency he’d felt since he’d been in this town was even more critical now. He knew that the blond woman from the gas station, and whoever else was with her, was after him and the money. And they would find him soon.

They got out of his car and hurried up the walkway to Amber’s front door.

When they got inside Amber’s room, she got on her computer right away.

It was the first time Ryan had been in Amber’s room. It was small, but she kept it tidy. The closet door was open and he saw that she kept the few possessions that she owned neatly arranged. There were a few framed photos of a woman on top of Amber’s dresser. Amber’s mother, Ryan guessed.

Amber sat at a small desk with her computer crowded on top of it. The computer was ten years old but she hadn’t bothered to upgrade – all of her money went into savings (what she could keep from Gary anyway) for her escape from this house and from this town. But the computer worked fine, even if it was a little slow. She let it warm up and then logged on to the internet. She brought up the Google page and typed in: Serial killer – Cutter.

Thousands of pages were brought up in a nanosecond.

She clicked on a few of them until she found some information about Cutter.

Ryan paced in the background.

“I got it,” Amber said.

Ryan hovered behind her, looking over her shoulder as she read from the page on the screen.

“Cutter’s real name was Michael Davis. They finally figured out who the killer was, but he killed himself before they could arrest him.” She scanned down the page with her eyes. “Looks like he killed himself at the shack right after he killed his last victim. But no one knows why he killed himself.”

“Cutter, that’s what the red-haired man in my dreams called me when he took me to that shack in the woods. He said the shack was mine, that I had built it, and that I had done legendary things there.”

Ryan stumbled away and ran a hand through his dark hair. “I’m Cutter,” he whispered.

Amber turned and looked at Ryan. “No, you’re not,” she said in a stern voice. “It’s impossible. I just told you he killed himself ten years ago before they could take him to jail.”

Ryan stared at Amber.

“You just lost your memory,” she said. “And you’ve seen this stuff somewhere before, and it was buried in your mind, and now you’ve got things mixed up in your memories.”

Ryan didn’t look convinced.

Amber turned back to her computer and she clicked on a different page. “Here, come look at this, Ryan. It’s a picture of Cutter, and it’s not you.”

Ryan hurried back over to the computer screen and saw a photo of Cutter. The man in the photograph looked nothing like Ryan – the man in the photograph was beginning to go bald, he had soft features and kind eyes, he looked more like a tax accountant than a torturer and a killer.

The man’s face seemed familiar to Ryan, but he couldn’t place it. He knew it was important to remember where he’d seen that face, but he couldn’t make himself remember – or he wouldn’t
let
himself remember.

“It’s not the red-haired man, either,” Ryan whispered.

Ryan walked away from the computer and sat down on the end of Amber’s neatly-made bed. He shook his head. “I know all of this sounds so crazy,” he said.

Amber came over to the bed and sat down beside him. “You’ve just got things mixed up, that’s all.”

“Who’s the red-haired man in my dreams?” Ryan asked, more to himself than to Amber. “Why was he tortured? Was he one of the victims? Why is he coming back to me and calling me Cutter?”

Amber stared at him. She touched his hand, and then his arm.

“There’s something I’m missing about all of this, a piece of the puzzle I’m not seeing.” He paused and sighed. “I’m just so tired. I wish I could sleep without dreams.”

“Maybe you should try and sleep,” Amber told him.

“I don’t want to dream again. I don’t want to see the red-haired man again.”

“Maybe you
need
to see him again. Maybe you need to see where the dream takes you next, maybe then you’ll see the piece of the puzzle that you’re missing.”

Ryan looked at her with hope in his eyes.

“Maybe if you dream, you’ll find more clues.”

Ryan nodded. He took out his wallet, keys, and a wad of money and set them on the table next to the bed. He kicked off his shoes at the side of the bed. Then he lay down on the bed, his head on one of her pillows. The pillows and bedding smelled fresh, much better than the rest of the house that Gary possessed. He closed his eyes and his breathing deepened.

Amber lay down beside him and stroked his hair. “Just go to sleep for a few minutes. I’ll be right here beside you. I can wake you up if it looks like you’re having a bad dream.”

Ryan barely nodded. He could feel himself drifting off to sleep, drifting down into the pitch black darkness.

Jake picked Lita up at the gas station. She got into the Lincoln as the gas station attendant and the old man in front of the drugstore watched her. She slammed the door shut.

“Which way did he go?”

“That way.” Lita pointed.

Jake glanced over his shoulder and pulled out onto the street. “Not too big of a town, shouldn’t be too hard to spot his car.”

Lita didn’t say anything. What she’d seen had bothered her – there was something very different about Ryan now.

Jake noticed. “What’s wrong?”

“I walked up to Ryan’s car,” Lita told him. “I was about to pull out my gun, but as you could see, I had an audience.”

Jake nodded.

“It was weird. I called Ryan’s name and he looked at me, but he didn’t seem to remember me. Or even recognize me.”

“He’s just acting like that.”

“But why would he? It doesn’t make sense.”

Jake shrugged.

“Besides, this
is
Ryan we’re talking about,” she added. “He wouldn’t be able to pull off an acting job like that. He was never the smartest person around.”

“That’s why he would do something so stupid like take Mr. Murdock’s money,” Jake said as he turned a corner at the first street he came to and began his methodical search up and down the neighborhood blocks. He had a great memory for layouts of streets and roads. He’d bought a map earlier in the day and had already marked down some of the streets he had driven down. But that didn’t mean that Ryan couldn’t double back. But this was a small town and it was laid out pretty simply, a main road ran north and south, and another main road ran east and west, like a cross, and the rest of the town sprawled out from there. But the town only sprawled out so far, eventually everything ran into the woods and the mountains in this town.

“He wasn’t acting,” Lita said, not letting the conversation go. “When he looked at me, it was like he’d truly never seen me before in his life.”

“Hurt your feelings?”

Lita ignored his comment. “I think he might’ve lost his memory somehow. Maybe when you shot him or when he wrecked his truck.”

Jake scanned the driveways as he drove slowly down the street. A van had to pass him because he was driving so slowly.

It was getting late, but Jake wasn’t going back to the motel room and face Mr. Murdock without Ryan and the money.

The sky had darkened quickly. There was a big storm moving in. Not only had the radio proclaimed that, but every townsperson he had met so far had told him – a storm must be a big deal around here, the only exciting thing that was happening these days. And there was cold weather following the storm, he had also been informed by these same townspeople. God, he couldn’t wait to get this over with and get back down to California.

“There’s something else,” Lita said. “Something strange about Ryan.”

“What?” Jake sighed.

“He has blue eyes.”

Jake came to the end of the street and stopped at the stop sign.

He looked at her. “So?”

“He had brown eyes before.”

“So he got some contact lenses.”

“I don’t think those were contact lenses. They looked real.”

“So he got some very good contacts. He can afford them now.”

“But why would he do that? Why would he change only his eye color and nothing else about his appearance?”

Jake shrugged. He didn’t care. He only cared about finding Ryan and getting the money back. He turned left to drive down the next block.

Amber watched Ryan. He was sleeping peacefully on the bed, in a deep sleep. She raised her head and looked at his wallet, his car keys, and the wad of money on her nightstand next to her bed. She got up very carefully, trying not to disturb him; she could tell that he needed sleep. Now that Ryan had seen Cutter’s face, maybe he could clear things up a little in his mind after he got some good sleep.

She crept around the foot of the bed with her eyes on Ryan the whole time. She stood in front of the nightstand. She needed to look inside his wallet. She needed to make sure he was telling the truth; she needed to make sure he wasn’t another nutjob. She didn’t need another nutjob in her life – she already had Gary.

She picked up the wallet and watched Ryan the whole time. She expected him to sit up with a big insane smile on his face and yell, “Gotcha!” But he didn’t; he slept peacefully, his breathing still deep. If he was having one of his nightmares right now, she couldn’t tell.

Amber picked up Ryan’s wallet and opened it.

Ryan groaned and turned over in his sleep.

She froze with the open wallet in her hand, expecting him to wake up, but he turned over on his side, facing away from her. That made her feel a little better.

She looked down at the wallet. There was nothing inside except his driver’s license, which she studied very carefully. It read: RYAN FREEMAN. He was from Oakland, California. His height was 5’10” and his eyes were stated as BROWN.

Brown eyes? Ryan didn’t have brown eyes, he had blue ones. Intense blue eyes.

She set the wallet back down on the table and left the room.

Ryan’s eyes popped open. He jumped up and looked around the bedroom. For a split second he couldn’t remember where he was. He looked around at the frilly curtains on the window, the pink bedspread he was lying on, the white dresser with the collection of mementos and framed photographs on top.

It all came back to him in a rush. He was in Amber’s bedroom.

He didn’t think he’d slept much, if at all. Maybe just a few minutes. He didn’t remember any dreams. Maybe he had slept for a few moments without dreams. He would take what he could get. At least he felt a little better, like he had gotten some rest.

His wallet, keys, and money were still on the end table next to the bed.

But Amber wasn’t in the room.

“Amber?” he called out.

No answer.

He got up and walked over to the open doorway that led out into the hall. He poked his head out in the hall which was dark. The house was very quiet. “Amber, you out here?”

Still no answer from her.

He walked down the hall to the next open doorway – it was a bathroom. Amber wasn’t in the bathroom, but there was something sitting on the edge of the sink – something he’d seen before.

He entered the small bathroom and walked towards the sink, his eyes on the object balanced at the edge of that sink – it was a straight razor, the old-fashioned kind with a wood handle. And there was something carved into the handle. He had seen that same straight razor before – in his bedroom at Carol’s house.