Shadow Stations: Unseen (4 page)

I had expected to see the prisoner’s body on the ground with his lifeless eyes staring up at the sky, but he was very much alive, standing against a boulder, furiously rubbing his wrists along a waist-high rock shelf. Trying to break his bonds. My heart leaped. I had hoped all along he would make it.

The sensations of the dining room faded away.

He still wore the hood. I wanted to see his face, but I couldn’t move past his shoulders. Sweat trickled over the muscles in his arms. He was probably in his twenties, somebody who’d led an athletic life in another country a million miles from this place. I could almost see him hiking in jeans or riding a mountain bike across rocky off-road trails. His deep sunburn said his captors must have kept him on the island for days until they realized he wasn’t going to cooperate and decided to dump him.

“
Who are you?” I dared to whisper.

Silence. Moisture dripped from the trees onto his clothes.

“
What happened to you?”

Still no answer. He kept working his wrists over the rock.

“
What’s the name of the island… can you hear me?”

The prisoner straightened up and looked over his shoulder. My heartbeat ratcheted up a notch. Maybe he could hear me after all.

Something rustled in the underbrush. Vines snapped, followed by heavy silence and another snap. Whatever it was, it was almost on us.

The prisoner scrambled over the rocks, bracing himself against the trees, chest heaving, panting. His gasps had the same distorted tone as the voices of the guards on my first trip, as if he were underwater or at a tremendous distance.

We crashed uphill, around the dense trees, past vines as thick as snakes, until the smothering greenery opened up to more jagged black rocks. My phantom body slipped through them as we ran on and on, stumbled and rolled and ran again. A bird screamed. Twigs snapped.

The prisoner wheeled in all directions and crouched down.

A soft rustle passed through the leaves on the hillside below us. Silence. I expected to see an animal stalking us, but instead the frightening green and black face of a man appeared among the palm fronds. A thrill of fear ran up my spine. His taunting smile was identical to John Savenue’s, but his head was thicker, with a heavier jaw and a low forehead. He wore leaves in his blond hair and had streaked his skin with camouflage paint that made it almost impossible to see him among the fronds and vines until he moved.

The hunter lifted an ominous camouflaged stick in his six-fingered hands. The end glowed.

The prisoner took off again and made it halfway up the slope when a
thock
sounded. Leaves blackened and shriveled beside him. Hunkering down, he scrabbled on his knees, rocking forward without the use of his hands, his breath hitching in his throat. Terrified. Another
thock
blew a smoking hole in a palm.

We made it over the hill and slid down the other side. Organized stone blocks appeared in the distance. A wall. Panting, the prisoner scrambled toward it.

A whispering sound began to run along the ground.

More stones branched out from the wall and then the suffocating green opened up before the tremendous ruins of a grim temple. Beyond it sprawled the walls of an abandoned city half covered with oppressive vines and ferns and those horrible blood red flowers. Vines wormed through the crumbling windows, trailed across shattered stairs and balconies, and grew over worn hieroglyphics some ancient culture had carved above the doorways. Black with mold and the rot of age, the ruins towered in all directions.

The whispers grew louder, flowing toward the ruins, desperate, a rush of words saying something over and over in a language I couldn’t understand. The horrifying sound had to be coming from the lava field or the insects in the trees, some freak of nature that mimicked human voices.

Birds shrieked. The brush rustled. The prisoner threw a look over his shoulder, scaled a broken staircase, and scrambled toward a shadowy doorway where deeper shadows roamed beyond the threshold.

“
No, don’t go in there,” I shouted.

Chapter 6

With a jolt I came to in the dining room, slumped over in the chair. Nikki nudged my hands and licked my face. A wide beam of light streamed in from the living room. She’d worked the door open, which was her best trick, and must have accidentally triggered the device.

“
You’re something else, you really are.” I hugged her around the neck.

My heart was still pounding. As soon as I wrenched the probe off my wrist, I heard faint knocks on the other side of the house. Somebody at the front door. That’s why Nikki had come for me. What if it was John Savenue? What would I say? I’d tell him he was a sick bastard, if what I’d seen was even halfway real.

I slipped the device into my jeans and wobbled to my feet, fighting a wave of nausea. One look through the peephole told me John Savenue wasn’t trying to break the door down. It was Mike. My roommate was standing in the dark with his arms loaded with bags. The chili. The thought of it made me want to throw up.

Hours must have passed again. I shoved my hair out of my eyes, knowing I looked like a mess, and opened the door.

Mike bustled inside. “What’s going on, Amy? I’ve been knocking for ten minutes.”

“
Sorry, I heard something in the basement and went down to check it and didn’t realize you were out here.” Man, I sounded stupid. Nobody would buy that.

Mike headed into the kitchen and set his bags on the counter. He had an injured, pissed off look, but I knew he was too nice to ream me out completely.

“
The chili’s already made,” he said. “I just need to heat it up. You sure I’m not walking in on you? I mean, if you need your space, that’s okay, just say so. I know you’re grieving and everything must be tough for you right now, so you tell me if you want to be alone and I’ll respect that.”

“
Oh, no, you’re welcome anytime. Really.”

“
I don’t want to crowd you.”

“
You’re not, and the chili smells great.” Another lie, but I was glad Mike was there. He added a dose of down to earth reality that I needed right now. Instead of chili, though, what I really wanted was an aspirin and a chance to go outside and scream.

He started to unpack the bags. “And I brought a salad and a movie and some popcorn.”

“
Oh, yeah, what’s the movie?” I picked up the DVD. “
Gandhi
, three hours and eighteen minutes. Kinda long, don’t you think?” Don’t get me wrong, I loved Gandhi, I admired Gandhi, but I didn’t think I could take three hours of Gandhi, not tonight.

Mike opened the salad. “Yeah, three hours and eighteen minutes, but it’s a classic. Eight Academy Awards, Best Picture, you’ll love it. I read his biography and the movie does a good job of sticking to the facts of his life.”

“
I’ve got a couple of things to do,” I said and escaped from the kitchen.

I hid the device in the hall closet and took Nikki and Luna for a walk. They disappeared into the darkness. While I went up the driveway to keep an eye out for them, an ache grew in my hands, a dull pressure that almost felt like a migraine in my bones. It had to be the cold. It was below thirty. I should have worn gloves.

Images of the island flooded my mind. Shadows roaming through the ruins. Shadows of what? And why the sadistic hunt? They could have saved themselves the trouble and killed the prisoner when they’d forced him across the lava field.

The stars were out, every single one of them. I took a deep breath. “I wish you were here,” I told Ben’s spirit. “I wish you were home where you belong. I wish you could tell me what to do about all this awful shit that’s happening to me.”

The dogs bounded out of the shadows at the sound of my voice. We returned to the warm house, where I fed them, put my social face on, and sat down over chili and salad in Professor Wu’s spacious dining room. Mike watched me every time I lifted my fork.

“
There’s plenty more of that,” he said.

“
This is fine.”

He looked disappointed. “You sick or something?”

I shook my head. “Just not that hungry.”

“
Hey, what happened to your wrists?”

I looked down at the raw purplish-red lines that encircled both wrists now and tugged my sleeves down, shocked. “I’m allergic to my detergent or something.”

“
I thought it was a bracelet.”

“
That’s what I meant.”

“
That looks kind of nasty. I mean, they’re both like that now. Maybe you should see a doctor. I can take you if you want.”

I shook my head. “It’ll clear up. I’ve got the Jeep if I want to go anywhere.”

After dinner, we ended up watching
Gandhi
on the couch together. My mind wandered back to the horror on the island. Then Mike took my right hand and began to massage my scary-looking wrist. He’d never done anything like that before. We were sitting too close to each other. Our legs were almost touching. Was he feeling sorry for me because I was at a low point in my life, or was he trying to make a move on me? I stared at him, incredulous, but I couldn’t read his face. I’d just lost Ben. My fiancé wasn’t a hamster that I was going to get over in a few weeks.

When my cell phone rang in the kitchen, I leaped up and hurried out to grab it.

“
It’s me,” Karin said. “Can I borrow your black dress?”

“
Sure, go ahead. I’m not going to wear it.”

“
It’s not here. I looked in your closet.” She sounded embarrassed.

“
Why don’t you just wear your own clothes? I mean, you have a ton of stuff.” Then it hit me. I’d worn the dress to Ben’s funeral and forgotten to pick it up from the cleaners. My throat tightened.

“
I need it for a photo with the dog, you know, to show how well-mannered she is. I don’t have anything that’s formal. So can I borrow it?”

“
If I can find it. When’s the dog coming?”

She laughed. “Next week. She’s really sweet so Nikki should be okay with her.”

When I returned to the living room, I knew I wasn’t going to make it through another two hours of
Gandhi
with Mike grabbing at me. The isolation of the house worried me for the first time, though. Maybe it would be better if he stuck around for one night. Having his truck in the driveway made it look like more people were at home.

“
Look, I’m kind of wearing out,” I began, trying to think of how to ask him.

“
I should be going.” He stood up.

I crossed my arms. “But I was going to say you can hang out here tonight if you want and finish the movie. You can stay down here on the couch.”

“
Well, I wanted to see it with you.” He gave me a smile. “But I’ll stay if you want.”

“
I’ll get a blanket.” I hurried upstairs for a pillow and extra blanket, feeling his eyes on me, but it took me a good ten minutes to find the blanket. When I finally came downstairs again, Mike had nodded off with the movie running in front of him.

I tiptoed into the kitchen and cracked the door to check the road again. The wind gusted inside. Night swallowed up the woods beyond the fence and turned the trees into formless black shapes. I was about to close the door when headlights crept behind the trees along the road and dwindled out of sight.

It was a public road. It could be anybody.

When I locked the door, I realized I’d been holding my breath. Even though Mike was getting on my nerves, I was relieved he’d agreed to stay. I was about to go upstairs when I felt drawn to the closet where I’d hidden the device.

I had to go back one more time. Mike would never know.

Chapter 7

But I wasn’t going to do it downstairs in case he walked in on me. I retrieved the flashlight and slipped upstairs where I could lock my bedroom door.

On the top step an idea struck me. I should be able to go through the controls if I blocked the probe with a shield. I went into Professor Wu’s study, a book filled room with a sun-faded oriental carpet, thinking he probably had something in his desk that I could use.

The frightening feeling that somebody was still outside came over me as soon as I walked through the door. When I couldn’t shake it, I left the light off and crept to the window. The road seemed to be empty. Moonlight shone over the pines. The woods cast long shadows across the lawn and the Camaro in the driveway. I couldn’t see a figure or any other cars and had chalked it up to nerves when headlights crawled behind the trees, just as they’d done a few minutes ago.

A dark car pulled into the driveway. Lightheaded with fear, I flattened myself against the wall. The tires crunched over the gravel and stopped as if the driver were waiting for something or looking at the house. Half a minute later, the car backed up, swung out to the road, and went the other way.

I had a clear view from the upstairs window and watched the red taillights turn toward Ski Liberty. The car didn’t circle back. It was probably somebody from the ski lodge using the driveway to turn around. People did that all the time in the country.