Vanish (14 page)

Devon swore and pointed off to the side. “Tell me I am
not
seein’
that
!”

Something had risen out of the water. Mitch could barely make it out in the darkness. A head, shoulders, and torso. Like someone standing waist-deep in the lake.

A second, identical shape rose up beside it. Then a third.

“There’s more over there.” Helen’s voice sounded oddly detached. Like she was describing something to them from a picture.

“They’re all around us,” Conner said.

Mitch tried the key again. The motor chugged.

“They… uh… they’re getting closer.” Devon had lost his thug facade. Now he sounded like a scared teenager.

Mitch peered into the mist. The kid was right. They looked closer now than they had a moment ago.

“Uh… Mitch?” Conner’s voice was shaky.

Mitch cursed and slammed his fist on the panel.

The engine popped, then fired up. He clicked the throttle into neutral and gently pressed it forward. The engine sputtered a little but was running nonetheless. He pulled it back again until he felt the prop engage.

They were completely encircled now.

Conner began shouting, “Go! Go! Go!”

Mitch grimaced and pushed the throttle forward again. The boat lurched ahead through the mist.

Mitch felt a thump of bodies slamming into the hull, but he didn’t see any of them trying to climb over the rail. Up ahead, swirls of mist rushed toward them. Behind them, the prop churned a solid wake. The boat lurched and bumped, and after several minutes, Mitch relaxed a bit and eased back on the throttle. The engine sounded like all the pistons were firing.

Conner’s voice came up a moment later. “I don’t see any of them anywhere.…”

That was good, Mitch thought. But he had no idea what direction they were headed. He glanced down at the compass. “What the—?”

HELEN HUDDLED INSIDE the cabin. They had been traveling for over an hour now. Mitch had said something about the compass not working, so he didn’t want to risk going too fast.

Conner had gone up on the bridge. The boat had a mounted spotlight there, and Helen could see the beam sweeping back and forth in the foggy darkness.

She couldn’t see more than a few yards beyond the edge of the boat. She closed her eyes but could still see the creatures rising out of the water. Encircling them. She recalled how the idea to get away from land had at first seemed like such a good one. But now the gloom and the hellish attack had caused a serious reevaluation.

It was as if everything they tried to do only made things worse for them. Only put them into a more dangerous predicament. Now they were lost somewhere on Lake Michigan, not knowing what direction they were headed in or what to do next. If they stopped, how long would it take for those things to find them again? All they could do was keep moving until…

Helen shook her head. Until what? Until they ran out of gas? Great.

The dim bulb inside the cabin flickered. Helen sat at one end of the U-shaped bench around a cluttered table. The cabin itself served as a meager kitchenette with a small sink and microwave across from her. But it was also cluttered with fishing gear. A narrow set of stairs led down to the cramped forward berth.

Helen rubbed her temples. Her head throbbed. She was exhausted but couldn’t sleep. She had tried to close her eyes. She tried her breathing techniques, but nothing relaxed her. She had long since given up hope that the whole ordeal was a nightmare. That she’d wake up in the morning and everything would be restored. That Kyle would be back.

Kyle.

For twenty-four years her life had revolved around him. She had always been protective, perhaps overly so. It had been more than a little difficult juggling her modeling career and raising a child alone. But she had been too proud to ask for help.

The light in the cabin flickered again. And went out.

Helen sighed. “Come on.” She reached up and tapped the plastic cover.

It flicked back on. Kyle was sitting across from her.

His face was covered with dark blisters, cracked and bleeding. His eyes were nearly swollen shut. His beautiful black hair was matted with blood.

Helen tried to scream, but her throat was numb. Her chest pounded and she tried to get up, to get out of the cabin, but she was unable to move. Her limbs were suddenly paralyzed.

Kyle sat there. Motionless.

After a moment he opened his mouth. “Mom?”

Helen shook in fear and rage. She struggled vainly to move. She closed her eyes tight. “No! You’re not here. This isn’t happening!”

“Why are they doing this to me?” His voice was a hoarse whisper.

Helen opened her eyes again. They flooded with tears. “Please stop. Please go away!”

“Why did you let them do this?”

Helen blinked back her tears. She tried to will her limbs to move. “What do you want?” she sobbed. “What do you want from me?”

Kyle shook his head. “I thought you loved me.…”

“What are they doing to you, baby?” Helen rasped through her tears. “Who are they? What do they want?”

“Why did you do it?”

“
I didn’t do anything
! Kyle. Baby. Please tell me!”

“Why, Mom?”

Helen now wept uncontrollably. She had tried to steel herself against these mind games, but it was no use. They were messing with her head. They had found the one person she loved most in the whole world and were using him against her. She could only sob.

Kyle stood up and walked out into the darkness. A moment later, Helen’s control returned. She screamed and lunged after him. Kyle stood at the rail, looked back at her for a moment, then folded over and fell into the water. Helen cried out and dove over the rail.

Suddenly an arm reached out of nowhere and caught her around the waist.

Helen opened her eyes. It was daylight. Her hands were grasping the boat rail, and Conner was clutching her waist.

She struggled against his grasp, screaming. “Kyle!”

“Stop it!” Conner strained to pull her back.

“Let me go! I have to save him!”

Mitch and Devon appeared. They forced her back onto the deck. She struggled with them, teeth clenched, hissing curses at them.

Then someone slapped her. Her cheek stung.

“Helen!” It was Conner. “There’s no one out there. You were dreaming! Snap out of it!”

They had her pinned. She lay there, panting, sobbing. She tried to stop. She had to control herself. She couldn’t lose it in front of these strangers. These men. She wasn’t going to be the weak one.

After a moment she calmed down and they let her go.

“It was Kyle.” She sat up, choking back her tears.

She felt an arm slip around her shoulders and a soft voice on her neck. “It’s all right. It’s over now.”

“It was so real,” she said after a moment. “He was right there. He was in the cabin with me.”

Conner helped her to her feet. “It’s them,” he said. “They’re doing this to us. They’re just trying to scare us.”

Devon grunted. “And doin’ a pretty good job too.”

Helen looked at the overcast sky and frowned. “What time is it?”

“A little after six,” Mitch said, surveying the water. “Looks like the fog is letting up a little too.”

Mitch and Devon returned to the bridge, and Conner helped Helen back into the cabin.

She sat down again at the table. “I’m going crazy.”

Conner got her a bottle of water. “It’s happening to all of us. We’re all in this together.”

Helen shook her head, wishing she could erase the image of her son from her memory. “He talked to me. He sat there and talked to me just like you are now.”

“Your son?”

Helen nodded. “He was covered with burns. He looked horrible. It looked so
real
. How are they doing that?”

Conner sat down. His eyes were fixed at the table. “I don’t know exactly, but they must be able to detect our brain patterns somehow. Maybe they’re scanning our memories and reproducing images so real. Touch, smell…”

“But why? What do they want?”

Conner shook his head. “I don’t know. I’ve been trying to figure any logical reason for this.”

Helen ran her hand through her hair. “It’s like they’re using the people who were closest to us to… I don’t know. To torment us.”

“What did he say to you?”

Helen looked down. “He kept blaming me for what was happening. He said I was letting them hurt him somehow.”

They fell silent for several minutes, listening to the rumble of the motor. Helen shuddered as she tried to push the image of her son from her mind. Or at least to convince herself it wasn’t real. Kyle couldn’t just appear out of thin air. Conner was right—they had to be manipulating her mind somehow. She knew she needed to convince herself.

She downed most of her water. She had been so thirsty lately.

Finally Conner spoke up. “So, you, uh… you lived in Chicago long?”

Helen glanced at him a moment and nodded. He was obviously trying to make small talk. Maybe just to get her mind off her hallucination. “About thirteen years.”

Conner nodded. “What do you do?”

“I’m a modeling consultant. I help girls get started with their portfolios.”

“Did you used to be a model?”

Helen sniffed.
Used to
. “Yeah. I did some modeling. Even a little acting.”

“You have family there?”

“No. I grew up in Boston. My parents are both dead. I have a sister in Montana, but I haven’t spoken to her in twenty years.”

“What about Kyle’s father?”

Helen stared out the window into the mist. “Nick was a photographer. We, uh… we met on a photo shoot in Hawaii. I fell for him hard. I thought he was going to ask me to marry him.”

“You loved him?”

Helen’s jaw tightened for a moment. She nodded. “He was the only man I ever really loved.”

“So what happened?”

“Kyle. I got pregnant.” Helen shook her head. “Nick said he wasn’t ready to settle down. Wasn’t ready for that kind of commitment.” She sighed. “So it’s just been me and Kyle his whole life. My parents disowned me when I went into the modeling business. It didn’t conform to their morals.”

“What did they think about Kyle?”

Helen frowned. “They never knew about him. My father died before I even got pregnant, and my mother… Well, I never told her. She passed away ten years ago. She never even knew she had another grandson.”

Conner was silent for a few moments. Then he spoke up again. “You think about that much? Ever regret not telling your mother?”

Helen raised an eyebrow. “Are you trying to psychoanalyze me now?”

Conner chuckled. “No. I’m just trying to figure out why they’re using your son—”

Mitch started yelling from the bridge. They rushed out of the cabin.

“The depth finder,” he was saying. “We’re starting to shallow. I think we’re getting close to shore!”

Helen closed her eyes. A wave of relief washed over her. At this point, if she had a choice between being on land or water, with these creatures after them, she would have to choose land.

She turned to Conner and gasped.

His face had gone completely white. His eyes were round and his teeth clenched hard. His body contorted suddenly. Arms and legs stiffened. His back arched violently as he collapsed to the deck.

BRILLIANT, WHITE LIGHT flooded Conner’s vision. And a thunderous roar, like a violent wind, howled in his ears. But beneath the roaring was another sound. Muffled. Changing in pitch and volume. It sounded at once so completely alien and yet somehow vaguely familiar.…

But he was freezing. Numb, bone-chilling cold.

And then it faded.

The white light dissolved into a gray curtain of clouds. Faces stared down at him. A familiar band of strangers he had met only yesterday.

“Conner? Can you hear me?”

“Dude. You okay?”

“Yo, man, I think he’s dead.”

Conner rolled his head and groaned. “I’m okay.”

Mitch helped him back into the cabin and sat him down at the table. Through his haze and confusion, Conner heard Mitch say something about the depth finder showing the lake was shallowing. Then he and Devon headed back to the bridge to keep an eye on the horizon.

Conner’s head spun, though he couldn’t tell how much of that was from his seizure and how much was from being on the boat.

Helen brought him another bottle of water. “Is that what you were telling me about? The seizures?”

Conner nodded. “I don’t know what’s causing it. They’re getting farther apart but more intense.”

“You’re not epileptic, are you?”

“No, this is something else. It just started early yesterday. I see this bright light and there’s a loud noise. Like a waterfall or something. It’s deafening. But there’s something else too. Another sound. It sounds like something I maybe heard before, but I can’t quite tell what it is.”

Helen shook her head. “I don’t know what to tell you.”

Conner grunted. “Just tell me I’m not going crazy.”

“Do the seizures trigger your visions? your hallucinations?”

Conner thought a moment. “The first one did, but not since then. The first two were within a half hour of each other. Then the third was yesterday afternoon. Just before we met.”

“And this one was over twelve hours later,” Helen said. “If there’s a pattern there, maybe you can calculate when the next one will happen.”

“Maybe…”

“What about your visions? What are they like?”

Conner leaned back and closed his eyes for a moment. His head throbbed. “I was back at my old house in Lake Forest. And I saw my son running through the house.”

“Did he say anything? try to communicate with you?”

Conner shook his head. “No. It was like he was playing hide-and-seek or something. I never even got a good look at him.”

“But you’re sure it was him.”

“Yeah. Yeah, I’m sure.”

They both fell silent. Conner rubbed his eyes. He had been up all night staring into the fog and now felt worn out. Yet somehow he wasn’t sleepy. He took another drink. He had been so thirsty lately.