She cursed quietly and opened her eyes. For the meantime she’d take a chance and fill Adam in. He’d be nuclear at what she did, but he’d have to understa—
The wind nudged clouds away from the moon, revealing the twisted man standing at the edge of the parking lot.
Clare jerked, blinking and leaning forward.
He was gone.
No, no, it wasn’t possible. He’d never been there in the first place. She was seeing things again. Whoever that man was, he was in Oregon—over a thousand miles away. And he hadn’t looked the same. He hadn’t been bent and twisted like the first time she’d seen him. This phantom had been tall and straight, not a hint of warped posture.
She shook her head, staring again at the spot where he’d been. Nothing. Just the woods. Nerves, she told herself. Afterimages from the adrenaline rush. She needed the security of her hotel room. Needed sleep. That was all.
When she gathered the courage to climb out of the rental the assurances weren’t strong enough to keep her hand away from the gun at her back, or from half running across the parking lot to the hotel’s front door.
She risked a shower after making it to the room without encountering the deputy on watch. The desk clerk had merely nodded at her as she ascended the stairs. So far so good.
When she stepped out of the shower she saw her fears confirmed in the trip’s telltale marks across her body. Mosquito bites peppered her neck, shoulders, and arms. There were a few minor scratches on the right side of her face, but she might be able to conceal them with makeup. The worst injury was where a sharp stick had jabbed into her thigh. The area was already a deep red, on its way to purple, and the center had leaked some blood. Clare cleaned it the best she could and put a small bandage she found in the bottom of her purse over it.
When she opened the bathroom door Shanna was standing inches away, swaying on her feet.
Clare bit back a cry of surprise and let out a long breath instead. “Jesus, you scared the hell out of me.” When Shanna said nothing, only stared vacantly over one of Clare’s shoulders, she grasped her sister’s arm and guided her toward the bed. “Honey, what are you doing? Are you okay?”
Shanna let herself be led and settled on the edge of the bed. Her eyes were glazed and she continued to rock slightly like a child trying to self-soothe. Clare felt her forehead for a fever but the skin was cool and clammy. “Shanna?” Nothing. No response.
She was in some kind of trance. Maybe a waking nightmare. What were you supposed to do with people who were sleepwalking? Wake them up? Get them back into bed? Clare took one of her sister’s hands and was about to lead to her the other side of the bed to tuck her back in when Shanna spoke. At first it was so quiet Clare couldn’t make out what she was saying, but as she leaned closer the words became clear, and her skin prickled with goosebumps.
“He is the only, the everlasting one. Forever guiding, laid low his only son. No darkness encroaches, his will is the light. Eons unbroken, unto paths beyond night.”
“Shanna,” Clare breathed, her grip on her sister’s hand tightening. “Stop. Wake up.”
Shanna’s voice was monotone. Robotic. She finished the hymn and started again, looping the words so that they blended together—faster and faster until it was a steady stream and Clare grasped her shoulders and shook her.
“Stop!”
Shanna’s gaze gained depth and she blinked. “He was here.”
“Who?”
“The Ferryman. He was standing right over there.” She pointed to the far corner near the entrance, which was heavy with shadow but nothing else.
“Everying okay?” Adam asked from the next room.
“Yeah . . . yeah, just a nightmare,” Clare managed before focusing on Shanna again. “You were dreaming.”
Shanna shook her head. “He was here, Charon was here. He was singing.”
Clare hugged her, partially for comfort but mostly to hide her own expression, the way her hands were beginning to shake. “Let’s lie back down,” she said after a moment. Shanna crawled beneath the covers and Clare settled in beside her. After an interminable span of time Shanna’s breathing became deep and slow. Clare waited several more minutes before rolling to her back to stare at the ceiling.
What were the chances of Shanna reciting the exact hymn Parson’s group had tonight? How many zeros were after that decimal point? It couldn’t be a coincidence. There was no way. So what was the connection? Shanna had been asleep when she left, asleep when she came back, and dreaming. Dreaming about Charon being in the room.
He was singing.
Clare shuddered, throwing a look at the far corner again, half expecting something to be standing there. She returned to what Shanna had told her the day before, how it had felt like someone else was there in the shack the night Rainier was whispering to himself. It sounded like something a disturbed person would say. And wasn’t the display she just witnessed more evidence of that? Wasn’t it possible both of them could be succumbing to the same illness their father suffered from? Both of them seeing things that weren’t there, hearing hymns that might’ve been something else?
Her breath caught. How sure was she that she’d heard the hymn tonight at Parson’s camp? Very. She hadn’t hallucinated it. Hadn’t hallucinated Shanna repeating it either. But for a moment the possibility felt frighteningly real. Could she even say with full certainty she’d left the room and gone out to the compound? Maybe when she’d woken Shanna from a dream she’d been waking from one herself.
No. Clare inhaled deeply, trying to calm the galloping of her heart. She wasn’t losing her grip on reality. She’d gone to the camp, seen the toy truck, heard the hymn, and Shanna had repeated it. She cemented the facts in her mind, fighting against the conflicting thoughts trying to upend them like brutal waves on a sea.
She threw a look at her sister in the dark, took in the familiar profile again and tried thinking of an alternative to madness. For a moment she considered the mythic figure their father had claimed to be in contact with. What if Charon was real? That everything he had ever said was true? Clare rolled to her side, facing the wall. She couldn’t accept that. Any of it. There was an explanation for Shanna’s fugue, and it didn’t have anything to do with the supernatural. She just needed to figure out what it was.
Shanna shifted in her sleep, letting out a soft moan. Clare found her hand in the dark and held it. Shanna’s eyes fluttered open for a moment. A tired smile formed on her lips upon seeing Clare, and she slipped away again.
The window behind the hotel’s heavy curtains had begun to gray with morning light by the time Clare finally succumbed to sleep. In the recesses of her mind, voices singing a forgotten hymn followed her down to darkness.
Chapter Thirty
She woke to a dry, rasping whisper. Someone saying her name.
Clare opened her eyes to sunshine. The drapes had been pulled away from the window and a blue eastern sky shone into the room. The rasping came again and she sat up, fully expecting something to be crouched at the foot of her bed, grinning. Instead she saw Shanna seated at the table, paging through the Refuge’s case folder, the paper scratching against the table as she set it aside.