“I’m fine now,” he said. “There’s no need for all this. I have patients to check on.”
Jennifer laid a hand on his arm. He really did look fine then, but she couldn’t shake the feeling something very bad was happening.
“Doctor, what did you see in the fog?”
“Everyone. Every single missing man, past, present, and future. I saw myself with the same silver-coated eyes as Jim had when I found him.” He shook his head, and fear entered his eyes again.
Jennifer noticed the fear returned and sat down next to him on the hospital bed. “Tell me, please. You’re safe here.”
Dave looked at Jennifer and terror washed over his face, turning it so pale he looked inhuman. “I saw Mae White and all her boys with her.”
Chapter Eighteen
Jennifer followed Dr. Peptic into the hallway but changed direction once they passed the nurses' station. She needed to talk to the sheriff, but privately. There were too many ears in this area, the center of the hospital. Too many shoes squeaking across the floor, too many machines blipping, too many white walls lined with grey bumpers. Whoever decided on the burgundy privacy curtains for each room made a bad decision. It had always reminded her of blood, and then it overwhelmed her. She didn’t know where she needed to go, just anywhere but in that ward. So, she wandered the halls until she found a darkened ward. The doors opened with a soft swish, and she slipped between them and disappeared around the corner into the first empty room she found. Her fingers trembled as she pushed the buttons on her cellphone. It seemed to take forever before someone picked up on the other end, though it only rang twice.
“Rickdale Sheriff’s Department. Carla speaking.” Carla’s voice was usually enough to calm anyone, but Jennifer’s breath hitched.
“Tom,” she said, her gasps for breath sending high-pitched shrieks through the receiver.
Carla pulled the phone away from her ear and put it on speaker instead.
“Who’s calling?” she asked as she waved to the sheriff.
“It’s-it’s Jennifer Archer calling from the hospital.” Another intake of breath whistled from the speaker.
Tom joined Carla at the desk. “I’m here, Jennifer. What’s wrong?”
A sharp gasp made both the sheriff and Carla cringe.
“Jennifer, listen to me. Breathe in through your nostrils and out through your mouth. Whatever you have to tell me can wait ‘til you calm down. Do I need to breathe with you?”
She didn’t answer, but they could hear shallow breaths slowing and steadying on the other end.
“Thank you,” Jennifer said. “Tom, something’s happened.” She told Tom about Dr. Peptic. “When I asked him what he saw in the fog, his answer gave me chills.”
Tom stared at Curtis, and his hands curled into fists as he leaned against the desk. “And what did he see?”
“He saw everyone who’s ever disappeared, past, present, and future, and Tom? He said there was something wrong with their eyes.”
“Silver and milky?”
“Something like that, but Tom, there’s more.” Jennifer paused as fear overrode her emotions, and she struggled to regain her breath. “He said- he said he saw Mae White and all her boys with her. Everyone she’s ever taken is returning with her. I think she’s giving us our boys back!”
Tom heard the carefully hidden joy in her voice and frowned. He wasn’t sure what it all meant yet, but he was absolutely certain the lady in white had no intention of giving anyone back. She was there to collect the rest of the souls of Rickdale, and he still hadn’t figured out how to stop her.
“Now, Jennifer, you listen to me, and you listen to me good, you hear me? We have no reason to believe anything coming out of that fog is good. Nothing. You see anything or anyone coming out of that fog, you run as far and as fast you can. You hear me?”
Jennifer swallowed hard. “Okay,” she said, a little too quickly, too easily.
Tom had no reason to believe her. She would follow Shane in a heartbeat if he called to her from the fog. Tom would bet his life on it.
“Jennifer?”
“Yeah, Tom?”
“You heard what I said, right?”
“Yeah. If I see anyone coming out of the fog, I should run.” A tear spilled from her eye and trailed down to her chin. Jennifer knew as she said the words she wouldn’t run because she couldn’t even see the fog. Shane would just stand there, waiting for her with open arms. He knew she waited for him. She’d always waited for him. She’d never allowed herself to love anyone else because her heart knew he’d come home one day. How could she let him go again? She’d fight Mae to her dying breath if it meant saving them all. How do you fight a ghost?
“Jennifer?” Tom’s worried voice droned from her phone.
“Tom? I have to go. I have to get home to Caleb, keep him safe.”
“Jennifer, wait, there’s something you need to know.” Tom waited for her to acknowledge him before he continued. “Jennifer?”
The only response he received was the incessant silence of a disconnected phone call. His fist hit the desk.
“Dammit! She’s going out there. I have to stop her. She doesn’t know Shane is Mae’s great grandson.”
“What?” Carla said, her chin dropping in shock.
“That’s right. We traced her family line. We found the adoption papers. I know why she’s come back, and why she keeps coming back. She’s saving her babies. It started with her oldest son, Jeremiah Walker White, who was raised by Mae’s mother until she died. He dropped his last name and just kept on his mother’s maiden name. He died of mysterious causes around this time of year about eighty or ninety years ago, leaving behind one son, Andrew. Andrew, better known as Drew, walked out on his pregnant girlfriend, Naomi Betters. Tarnished and ruined, Naomi put the baby up for adoption—a boy. That boy was Shane McCarthy’s father, who disappeared when Mae came around about sixty years ago, just after Shane was born. Thirty years ago, she took Shane. Now, she wants Caleb Archer, the last of her line. Jennifer doesn’t know. Jennifer has no idea. I have to go out there.”
“But, Sheriff, she doesn’t just take the Walker line. She takes them all,” Carla argued.
“Curtis, show her. I have to go stop Jennifer.”
He didn’t wait for Curtis to drop the heavy file down on the desk. He grabbed his keys, took his gun from the safe, and locked the doors to the sheriff’s office behind him.
“Well?” Carla asked, disbelief still clouding her face. She could believe the whole story about adoptions and stuff, but the vengeful ghost was still outside her scope of belief.
“It’s simple, really. Thirty years ago, Shane McCarthy was the last man to disappear. The time before that, it was Simon McCarthy, his father. As far back as we can see, according to the reports, the last person to go missing is related to her. Once she finds her ‘baby,’ she goes away.”
“Okay. So, she takes Caleb Archer, and she goes away? What about all these other men?” Carla’s hand stretched over the long list of the names of the missing men.
Curtis nodded. “We believe they are just random victims she takes out of revenge. It was her husband that killed her, even if he didn’t push her off the bridge his jealousy drove her to it. I found an old handwritten complaint where he’d gotten into a bar fight because a few of the men there couldn’t stop looking at his wife. He blamed her for flirting, even though she probably wasn’t. She was cursed with beauty, and he was cursed with a mean streak, and it cost them both their lives. Unfortunate, really. So, the whole legend of the beautiful hitchhiker crying for her babies makes sense. A guy picks her up, she associates him with the cause of her death, and that’s it. He’s gone, just like the rest of them. Simple, yet so sad.”