Vision (25 page)

The killer had not only sat in the driver’s seat, he’d driven the vehicle.

“Boo!” someone shouted as the garage light flared on.

Bobby clutched his chest, his eyes involuntarily squeezing shut against the sudden pain.

“H
aha!” Aaron laughed. “Scared ya, didn’t I?”

“Don’t
ever
fucking do that again, Aaron,” Bobby growled, tears stinging his eyes. “It’s no joke.”

“He’s just getting a little restless, Bobby,” Mr. Cooper said. “We should probably get him over to the Woods’s house.”

Bobby still felt the murderous vibrations pinging through his fingertips. “Is this thing yours, Mr. Cooper?”

“That? It’s an all-terrain vehicle. It belongs to my cousin, Carl. He likes to use it when he visits.”

Eyes still smarting and tearing, Bobby kept them squeezed shut and let Mr. Cooper lead him out of the garage. When he thought it was safe to open them, it was as he expected, the typical aftermath of a lighting overdose. Complete darkness.

“Has your cousin been to visit Graxton lately?” Bobby asked conversationally as they climbed the stairs to Mr. Cooper’s front door. It had to be Carl who Mr. Cooper had been arguing with.

Mr. Cooper cleared his throat. “Carl stops by from time to time. We’re each other’s only family, you know? But the visits are never pleasant. Carl is a peculiar fellow.”

“In what way?” Bobby asked, a chill slithering up his spine.

“Well, Carl’s never been able to hold down a job. Don’t get me wrong. He’s brilliant. And I guess, with all his money, he doesn’t need one.”

“So, he’s rich. Does he share any of it with you?”

Uncharacteristic bitterness crept into Mr. Cooper’s voice. “My aunt made him the executor of her estate. Left her fortune to him. Even though she raised me, she favored her natural children, Carl and Olivia, after all. I get… She left me a small inheritance, which Carl parcels out when the spirit moves him. Which is usually when he needs a favor from me.”

Bobby’s skin began to crawl.
Carl
. The name reverberated with a cold resonance.

“Olivia?”

“Carl’s older sister. She was so beautiful. A spectacularly brilliant child. A pianist. But she died tragically. It was—” Mr. Cooper’s voice choked off. “She drowned. They said it was an accident, but I—I’m sorry, Bobby. Even after all these years, it’s still hard to talk about.”

“Where does Carl live?” Bobby blurted, unable to let it go.

“I’m not sure. Carl is what you might call a recluse. He keeps very much to himself.” Mr. Cooper laughed nervously. “But never mind Carl. We have some music to serve up in a few short hours, and I have to load the car with the sound equipment. Did I tell you? I found us a bass player for the night.”

“That’s great,” Bobby said absently. But he couldn’t let it go. “Carl’s last name wouldn’t happen to be Galloway, would it?” His heart sped up as the pieces of the puzzle slid neatly into place.

“How did you know?” For a moment the air went chill. He could sense the tension coiled in Mr. Cooper’s muscles.

“I, uh, stumbled upon the old abandoned estate by the reservoir when I went hiking with Pete—before my eyes started to go. I was curious, so I found out that it used to be owned by a family named the Galloways. I just took a guess that the estate belonged to Carl’s family.”

Mr. Cooper sighed, his voice mild. Weary. “Yes,” he said sadly. “I spent a good part of my childhood summers at the Galloway estate. The summer cottage, they called it. But Aunt Regina let it fall to ruin after Olivia died.”

Bobby swallowed, but it was like trying to choke down sand. Sweat beaded his forehead, his mind racing, remembering the sense of dread he’d felt in Mr. Cooper’s school office—the vision of Dana’s death.
Had Carl been there?
Had he been watching him all along?

Bobby was tempted to question Mr. Cooper further, but what was the point? That would only upset him, and to what end? He’d probably find it hard to believe his own cousin was a depraved killer.

Of this, Bobby had no doubt. Carl Galloway was his man.

But how to prove it?

Inside Mr. Cooper’s house, Bobby bristled with frustration. He felt Carl Galloway’s eyes on him, everywhere, coldly watching. Waiting. He could strike at any time.

And when he did, who would be his target?

Gabe touched his arm. “You okay, Bobby?”

He drew her close, hugged her hard.

It came to him in icy clarity.

Carl Galloway was making a circle around him. And the circle was getting smaller and tighter.

One by one, Bobby was certain, Carl Galloway was going to pick off everyone he loved.

And Bobby, with his eyesight fading fast, was powerless to do a thing about it. All he could do was pray, and try to keep everyone alive until he signed those papers in four days.

“Gabe,” he whispered, “promise me you’ll stay close. That you’ll believe me when I tell you that I sense danger.”

“Hey, you’re shaking. Your eyes are glazed. Do you have a fever?”

“I’m not sick, Gabe. It’s just the tumor progressing. Quickly. At the moment, I can’t see at all.”

He felt her draw closer, felt her lips touch his. She pressed the white cane into his palm. “You’re going to get through this.”

He sighed. She didn’t understand. She didn’t get that they were prey. That Carl was watching them, enjoying the game.

With Aaron and Pete bounding ahead, Bobby scraped the cane along the pavement, Gabe by his side. They were about to pile into her truck when something caused him to stop. On his seat was a clump of soft, cottony hair.

It didn’t feel like real hair, more like Halloween costume hair. The terror emanating from it sent a zing of warning through his bones.

“How did that get in here?” Gabe asked. “What the hell is it?”

“It’s from a wig,” Bobby muttered, fingering the false hair.

He didn’t need to see it to know that it was colored the same acid-bright, neon-red that had poked from under the killer’s ski mask in his vision. He stood, probing the air for signs, but the killer was long gone.

A few minutes later, the lights of the Graxton Grill swam out from the darkness, a glowing gold puddle in an indigo sea. Color and form had come shimmering back, but with less clarity and tone. His world was flattening rapidly, objects sorting into useless patterns of dark and light.

Inside the restaurant, Bobby was met by the roar of voices, laughter, and clinking glasses. People touched his arm, murmured greetings, clapped him on the back. It was all a blur, the crowd and tables and chairs melting and stirring into a swirl of shapes and tones.

Blinking, he flipped open the cane and slid it back and forth along the floor. Gabe had gotten his medicine, so the lights didn’t bother him so much. He swallowed down the lump in his throat, scanning his inner map of the room, probing for dark energies, evil watching from the shadows. He sensed nothing.

“We’re going to be setting up in the front corner, by the windows,” Gabe said. “Mr. Cooper’s already here.”

“Good.” Bobby cringed. They were falling into a pattern. Already, she knew to fill him in on what he couldn’t see for himself. How long was she going to want to stick around to be his guide dog?

More people milled around them in shifting waves, thumping Bobby on the back. Gabe herded him to a booth. He slid into the seat, relieved to be safe from the faceless mash-up of bodies, but his heart wouldn’t slow. The faint sense of the killer permeated the room, floated in on every voice.

“What time are we going to play?”

Suddenly, he couldn’t wait to feel the steel strings beneath his fingers, to close himself off in a cocoon of sound.

Gabe squeezed his hand. “Soon. After we eat.”

Tongue-tied and unable to make sense of his surroundings, Bobby felt his focus burrow through the insubstantial blobs until it flashed with warning, sharply aware that Carl had been there, skulking in the back alleys. The sense of him was clear and painful, like a thin gash in his mind.

“Lighten up, Bobby,” Gabe said, then groaned dramatically. “Ohhhh, yeesh. Listen to me. I’m sorry. I—I—”

He grabbed her hand. “You don’t need to watch every word you say. Just being with me is enough. But maybe coming here tonight was a mistake. Maybe I’m just not ready for this.”

His heart hammered, his attention suddenly drawn away, zooming through the hazy interior of the Graxton Grill to the streets outside, his consciousness probing its familiar surroundings, infinitely sensitive to what did not belong.

Footsteps. The footsteps of the killer, firefly vivid against the dark. Leading inside.

Right inside the restaurant.

Whoosh
. In a stomach-churning flash, Bobby was back inside, the noise and heat of the crowded room pressing in on him.

His breathing sped up. He couldn’t get enough air. “We have to get out of here.”

The footsteps. Where did they lead? Could he find the killer in this senseless soup of dim forms? Ignoring the useless blur his eyes were broadcasting, he went deeper, sensing heartbeats, emotions, memories. A quilt of sensations.

It was fascinating. And terrifying.

The worse his eyes became, the sharper this other world came into focus.

And he was certain. The killer had somehow walked into the restaurant and vanished into thin air.

Was he insane? Was the sudden onset of blindness causing his mind to snap? To invent a new reality to replace the one he’d lost so abruptly?

He didn’t know. But he couldn’t take a chance.

He was about to stand, fight his way through the crowds to the back alley where he could investigate further, when Gabe touched his arm.

“We’re on now, Bobby.”

With the weight of the guitar in his lap, his fingers poised on the strings, Bobby finally began to relax. Mr. Cooper had offered to let him use the antique Stratocaster, but he’d insisted on his own well-worn guitar.

Once they started to play, he understood. This was Mr. Cooper’s and Max Friend’s gift to him. The music swept him away, out of himself. He was a spider spinning a web of sound, creating infinite patterns and designs. Amplified by the microphone, his voice boiled up from his chest. He poured every aching moment into the song, brought every lost bit of beauty back to life in the notes of the melody.

Mr. Cooper’s drumbeat was the backbone. The unseen bass player was the heartbeat. Gabe’s piano was the nervous system, alive with vibrant energy. And his guitar, his tenor with the raw edge, was the soul. Together, they were a living, breathing monster of music.

Bobby let go of the anchor that moored him to earth and allowed himself to drift off on a wild flight of sound. As he played, the colors faded even more, but the heat of the music glowed inside his ribcage like a new heart. His fingers prickled with life.

The crowd erupted in a deafening roar as a thunderous wave of applause engulfed them.

“We’re a smash, Bobby!” Mr. Cooper shouted over the noise.

Bobby played tirelessly for what felt like hours, lost in the music, connecting with Gabe, weaving his love for her into each note.

Bathed in sweat, it took Max’s gentle urging for him to stop.

Bobby let Gabe lead him back to their booth. People appeared like puffs of smoke out of the fog, murmuring their appreciation, then disappeared. Claps on the back, shaking hands. Finally, Jerry Woods’s massive form and deep, comforting voice was hard to mistake.