I Will Come for You (12 page)

So he keeps it to himself.

“I don’t like him,” Isaac says.

“Why?” His father hangs his coat over a chair, pulls a carton of milk out of the refrigerator and takes glasses down from a cupboard. “What did he say to you?”

“That you wanted to talk to him about Ms. Iverson.”

“He scared you.”

Isaac shrugs. “He tried to.” He stares at his plate, moves some food around, but doesn’t try to eat.

“How?”

“Maybe I was over reacting,” Isaac admits. Though he doesn’t think so. Just because Doss didn’t make an effective strike against his psyche, doesn’t mean he won’t.

“Look at me, Isaac.” Graham waits until his son lifts his head. “You don’t scare easily.”

Isaac never lies to his father. He does have secrets, though. A kid has to have a few of those, he figures, but no outright lies.

“I know. There’s just something about the guy.
Something spooky.”

And Isaac knows what it is: Doss’ ability to force will upon Isaac’s mind.

He lured Isaac down stairs, to the door, and pressed upon him the will to open it. But that’s as far as Doss got. He couldn’t completely penetrate Isaac’s mind. Isaac didn’t open the door. So Doss isn’t able to take over. But he got close. Too close. What was Doss looking for?

“He didn’t hurt you?”

“He didn’t touch me.” Not in the physical sense.

His father nods, then changes direction.

“What do you know about Ms. Iverson?”

Isaac thinks more about why his father is asking then his answer, “She loved nature. Even snakes and possums,” he reveals.

His father thinks about that so long Isaac wonders if he misunderstood the question.

He wonders if his father knows Isaac was at Ms. Iverson’s house. He returned with her blood on his clothing, could he have left something of himself behind? Something the forensic techs picked up and traced to Isaac?

“What else?” his father presses.

“She had a thing about lighthouses?” Isaac guesses.

“How do you know that?”

Isaac frowns and drops his fork. This is definitely an interrogation. He wonders what his father found at Ms. Iverson’s house and why whatever evidence they had led him to Isaac.

“She went on lighthouse safaris every chance she got,” Isaac reveals. “She told us all about them.”

His father nods and Isaac thinks his answer must have passed the test.

“Did you ever see her outside school?”

He catches his father’s gaze, feels broiled in it. For a moment he doesn’t know how to answer, because the tone in his father’s voice suggests something more than running into his old teacher at the mall.

“Sure, dad,” Isaac baits. “Friday nights. That was our big date night.” Then he erupts in laughter, but his father is unmoved.

“You would tell me if she hurt you, son?” his father asks.

“She never hurt me.”

“Sometimes things can happen that don’t feel like hurt, but they are.”

“Gross!” Isaac protests. “I was kidding about the date night, dad. Ms. Iverson wasn’t

like
that. I mean, she liked us, I guess, but not like
that
.”

The tension falls out of his father’s face. He picks up his fork and Isaac follows his lead.

“Why do you ask?”

“Police business.”

“What did you find?”

“More police business.”

“Please,” Isaac protests. “I’ll know about it by morning. No one can keep a secret in King’s Ferry.”

“We’re not advertising,” Isaac’s father says.

“I can probably help you,” Isaac insists. “I did know her a whole year.”

His father considers that,
then says, “Did Ms. Iverson ever ask you to work at her house?”

“No. That was for the bad kids. You know, for the kids who tore up books or just lost them.

One time a couple of kids got caught writing in permanent marker on her windows. They had to scrape the windows
and
work in her yard.”

“Everyone knew about that?”

Isaac nods. “We all knew what would happen if we broke the rules. And there was no getting out of a consequence. If a kid had trouble showing up for duty, the principal went and got them.”

His father thinks about that, then looks at Isaac for a long time before saying, “We

found some boys’ clothing at her place.”

Isaac feels like a pinned Monarch, his father’s stare is so intense. It’s hard for him to think. Why would Ms. Iverson have kids’ clothing in her house? Why would it be such a bad thing? And then he gets it and realizes how far off the mark his father is.

“Jeans?” Isaac asks. When his father nods, he says, laughing, “Those are loaners. She takes kids from Mr. Riley’s class. Those are the kids with emotional issues. They don’t always make it to the bathroom in time.”

The lines on his father’s face smooth out and he nods. “Thanks.”

“Ms. Iverson isn’t like that,” Isaac says.

“Good.”

“So did I help?” Isaac probes.

“You were helpful,” his father agrees. “You’re right. Information has a way of getting out, but I don’t want you to talk about this.
To anyone.”

Isaac tries to take the “duh” out of his voice, “Of course.”

He wants to tell his father that he has a lot more to worry about than the time Ms. Iverson spent with her students. Saul Doss is trouble. The whole time the old man was sitting on the deck, with the wall between them, he was trying to gain entrance into Isaac’s mind. He doesn’t know how else to describe the feeling, the sense, that the old guy was looking for something, that he was desperate to find it.

Doss is a dark stain on the earth. Isaac is sure of that. It comes with the gift, his ability to recognize good and bad. Some people are both and they shine, like they’re backlit; some appear almost featureless in their darkness. Even in pure daylight. Doss appeared as neither. And real
evil comes with a heaviness, a sharpness that pricks at the skin of the innocent, that draws blood. He didn’t sense this in Doss, either.

He’s more like an eraser mark.
Like he’s been shaded in with gray charcoal.

So, what does that make the man? Not of Heaven but not of Hell either? Is there a middle world where men like Doss wander, looking for redempti
on?

“So, you’ve never been to Ms. Iverson’s house?” his father asks and Isaac feels a cold hand slid down his back. “I would know it if you got into that kind of trouble?”

Isaac grabs his glass of milk and tries to swallow. He uses the time to look for an answer that isn’t a lie.

“Parents have to give their permission,” Isaac confirms. His words are as thin as the air in his lungs. “Can we talk about something else?”

“In a minute,” his father says. “Are you doing OK with this? You knew Ms. Iverson pretty well.”

But Isaac no longer thinks about life as linear or death as permanent.

“I’m OK,” he says. “It was the King’s Ferry Killer, wasn’t it?”

“That’s what we think.”

“It’s a man.”

“Looks that way.”
His father takes a second helping of chicken and potatoes. “Did you do your homework?”

Changing the subject.
Good.

“
All of it.” Isaac pushes the plastic container holding the slaw closer to his father. “Don’t

forget
your veggies, dad.”

“They’re for growing boys.”

“Please.” Isaac rolls his eyes. “The green stuff is good for everyone.”

Isaac feels a gradual shift in his perception. The air around him begins to simmer and he feels a little lightheaded. He’s going to transition.

Isaac pushes back his chair. “I need a shower,” he says, because it’s too early for bed and he can’t think right away of a better place to stash himself.

“Finish your dinner,” his father says.

There’s a chicken wing on his plate and some scraps of slaw.

“This is my second helping.” He tosses the untouched chicken back into the bucket and takes his plate to the sink. Then he heads out of the kitchen, calling back to his dad, “Thanks for dinner.”

When
Isaac surfaces on the other side he is in a field of tall, yellow grass. He searches the darkness for life. The wind stirs and the grass flows like water under a silver moon. The night is cold but there’s no fog, no mist. Northwest of where he stands is an old Victorian house with purple trim; the lights are on in every window and the back door is thrown open. Even from here, at least two hundred feet from the yard proper and another hundred from the porch, Isaac can hear a sharp, thin ribbon of loss. It’s almost like the caw of a bird.

He begins walking in the direction of the house, parting the grass with his arms. In some places it reaches as high as his shoulders and Isaac uses them to plow through the dry stalks. The crackling they make covers the insistent calling from inside the home and Isaac worries about
what he’ll find. The voice is strong. Never before have the dying truly lingered. Never has he been able to
save
someone.

He increases his pace anyway; the grass cuts through his skin and Isaac wonders if he’ll carry the marks back to the natural world with him. It happened with Shelley Iverson. He hopes this isn’t another murder.

He emerges from the field and the grass beneath his feet is spongy, thick. He passes a swing set, a wagon stuffed with dolls, and a blue tricycle. Dread builds in his gut, spreads through his blood. He hopes it’s not a kid. He never had to attend a kid. He would rather it be a murder. He feels better when it’s an old person. It’s easier on him when it’s a woman. He thought the opposite until he worked with the gift a few months, and then he realized that men, more often than women, refuse to accept their fate. Some are angry or agitated.

He looks up at the house. He doesn’t recognize it. From the open space that stretches away from the property, he can make a good guess on what part of King’s Ferry he’s standing: Callen’s Cross. It’s upwind of the ocean, in the seat of prime farm land.

He steps into the light spilling out from the house and hears again the voice take a stab at the night. The wooden stairs protest his weight. He ducks through the door and into a kitchen; the refrigerator is open; water is running in the sink;  the table is littered with the remains of dinner.

The dying isn’t in this room, but somewhere deeper in the house, and Isaac leaves the kitchen behind for a dark hall that
runs straight then makes a sharp left turn into a small living room. The ceiling fan is on, top speed, and the breeze turns the pages of a magazine. The heavy fronds of an indoor tree stir. The room is empty. Isaac passes through an arch and into another hall where he encounters several open doors. All rooms are lit within. He listens for the call, one beat, two, and follows it to the last room, pushes at the door. It’s a den. The computer is up, the screen filled with the broadcast of a rock concert. Isaac realizes the voice he’s been following belongs to the winnowing call of an electric guitar.

Somewhere else in the house a clock chimes
the hour. Beyond that, silence.

Since finding Ms. Iverson, the discovery part of his job is harder. He is grateful that he wanders through this realm invisible to all but the dying. When he attended Shelley Iverson, with the murderer still in her house,
breathing heavily as he walked through the rooms touching the teacher’s belongings, he felt exposed. The skin on the back of his neck and his arms crawled with spiders; at least that’s what it felt like. He wanted her to hurry up and die so he could fade back to his bedroom, to safety. But she stayed, longer than most. She touched her hand to his face and told him she always thought she was surrounded by a bunch of angels. She told him sometimes we fear the new when we should really fear what we know.

Isaac didn’t know what to make of that. Still doesn’t. And he can’t think about it now.

The man who murdered Ms. Iverson is here. Isaac feels him, in the heaviness in the air, in the sour stink that remains in the room.

And the dying needs him.

Lying on his back on the floor, a boy of about seventeen watches Isaac with sad eyes. He wears jeans and a flannel shirt and looks so much like normal, except his wounds, that Isaac feels a fist of sorrow uncurl in his stomach. The boy tries to lift his hands, but it takes too much effort.

“I’m dying,” he says.

“I know.”

The boy’s throat is cut and blood oozes out in heavy streams. Isaac kneels beside him. He takes one of the boy’s
hands in his own and squeezes it.

“Did God send you?” he asks.

“I think so. I haven’t worked that part out yet.” Isaac tries to smile a little; he wants the boy to know it’s going to be OK.

“Have you been to h
eaven?”

“Not that I remember.”