CHAPTER 7
The sun was rising in the east, its ascent
reflecting upon the western horizon in pinks and golds. The dawning
colors made it almost appear like it was rising in the west, a
blazing orb about to burst into the skies above the Pacific. It was
a lie, a trick, a phenomenon Justice had missed for over two years,
and now he stared at it hungrily. The sea . . . the Pacific Ocean,
which stretched to forever . . . reached into his heart and pulled.
It had always been this way.
And now a memory stirred, crept up on
him like a thief.
He’d been odd as a child. Everyone told
him so. She’d dragged him to the cult time
and again, but they wouldn’t even look at him. She’d shoved him in front of that black-hearted bitch
with the blond hair and smug smile who had declared, “Changeling,”
in disgust when she’d laid her witch’s gaze upon him. He hadn’t
known what it meant, but she’d started
babbling away, swearing it wasn’t so, sweeping an arm to include
all the little blond girls the black-hearted bitch had birthed and
who were accepted into the inner circle while he was kept outside,
thrust from the heart of their group, scorned. The bitch had smiled
at him meanly from her side of the gates and told her to take him far, far away.
“He has no soul,” she’d decreed
solemnly, crystal blue eyes staring through the iron bars of the
gate. Then, with one final disparaging look cast in Justice’s
direction, the bitch had swept away from the gate back to the
lodge, where her precious brood of blond angels were waiting.
Giggling. Laughing at him. Secure in their huge lodge with its tall
fence.
While he’d been left with her.
He hated the bitch with the knowing
blue eyes.
But not as much as he hated
her—the sobbing, babbling puddle of a woman
who’d brought him to be judged by them in their high and mighty
fortress hidden in the trees.
Her.
His
mother.
She’d dragged
him from their lodge, swearing, crying that they would accept him.
He was no changeling. He was one of them. Couldn’t they
see?
It was all so pathetic and
futile.
Back in his bedroom at the time, he’d
hidden from her and looked up the word
surreptitiously. She hadn’t suspected he’d
had the means. A fine specimen of a fortune-teller, one who
couldn’t keep track of her only child. While she’d still been
wailing at the unfairness of it all, he’d been pulling a nail from
the floorboard of the rough-hewn planks that made up his bedroom
floor and taking out one of the books he’d stolen over the years
and made his own. The one he needed was merely a
dictionary.
Heart pounding in dread, he’d rifled
through the pages until he found the word he’d sought:
Changeling: idiot; a
being of subnormal intelligence; a human child exchanged for
another being in infancy.
Another being . . .
something not human . .
.
At first he’d been repelled; he’d
wanted to scream at the world, rage at the black-hearted witch
behind the gates that she was wrong about him! He was their cousin.
All those twittering, nasty blue-eyed girls. He was of them! He
belonged!
Of course, he’d been invited back, and
as time had passed, he began to realize that the blue-eyed guardian
of the gates was right, in her way. He was
different than they were. Better. Further along the path chosen by
their Maker. God.
He was God’s
choice.
Over time his mission became clear, and
as she, the embarrassment, the charlatan,
the fortune-teller, scratched out a living
by accepting coins from the tourists, he chronicled the blond
angels, learning their names, their habits, their special
abilities.
The first one he’d killed had been
easy.
Too easy, as it turned out, because
he’d been filled with a sense of self-importance and
overconfidence, which had tipped off the blond angels, who were
much wilier and clever than he’d first imagined.
He’d been blinded by success and he’d
lost track of the ones outside the gates, only reconnecting when
they were pregnant, when he could smell them again.
And when it had all been coming
together again, when he was about to send another of them into the
raging fires from whence they’d come, he’d been tricked! Fooled.
Cheated by them. Captured and incarcerated.
Laughed at . . .
He’d been patient.
But now he was free.
His lips twisted at the thought that
he’d fooled them all again. Including the weakling who had borne
him.
He watched the western horizon turn an
eye-hurting shade of pink and smelled the dank scents of the sea. A
huge whip of kelp, a bladder attached to one end, its way of
floating and capturing air, lay twisted on the sand in front of
where he stood.
It was in the shape of an m.
Mother.
God’s sign. He was being guided by a
divine hand.
Once again he felt himself going to his
special place, his outer shell dissolving, revealing his true
person, his beauty. But there was work to be done, and he
reluctantly fought it off. He couldn’t succumb as he had in the
past, letting his true self rule, because in this outside world he
could stumble and be captured again.
No . . . no . . .
!
With an effort he held his eyes open
wide, refusing to see and feel anything but what was right in front
of him: the beach littered with debris; the rising swirl and
plaintive caws of the seagulls, scrounging at the tide’s edge; the
brilliant refraction of light burning in his eyes; the restless,
beckoning water in shades of gray and green.
Now he spurned his true self and almost
wanted to cry out. It was his only refuge. His
sanctuary.
But God had a plan, and he couldn’t
tarry.
Turning away from the beach, he climbed
up a row of sand-dusted stone steps to the parking lot above, where
the Vanagon awaited in all its colorful, floral splendor. Anyone
who saw it would remember it, but no one had witnessed him driving
into this turnout with its view of the ocean.
He walked past the Vanagon without so
much as a sideways glance. Cosmo wasn’t going to need it anymore,
and he couldn’t be seen with it.
He was several miles south of a small
hamlet called Sandbar, which was south of Tillamook, which was
farther south from Deception Bay, his ultimate destination. He had
Cosmo’s driver’s license and his clothes, which fit in length but
were too big around. Not a problem for beachwear along the Oregon
coast. June’s weather was unpredictable, and winds and rain could
beat down at any time; the dress code was whatever
worked.
He also had Cosmo’s backpack, hiking
boots which fit okay, and a watch cap he’d discovered beneath the
baby gear. He was growing a beard. He had thirty dollars, courtesy
of Cosmo, who was really James Cosmo Danielson. He liked the
name.
He hiked up the road until he’d passed
the jutting rocks that divided this section of beach from the one
where he’d left the Vanagon. Now he clambered down a sharp cliff of
stones where rubble shifted under his feet and bounced down to the
beach thirty feet below. Reaching the sand, he walked to the
water’s edge and kept meandering northward. Fingers of wind
snatched at his jacket, flapping it open. It was colder than it
looked, and he passed several people: a couple strolling along,
bundled up, their heads tucked together; a woman jogging; a man
with a golden Lab, throwing a stick.
No one paid him the least bit of
attention, which was just what he expected. He’d grown up in these
parts, and he knew this section of coastline better than anyone. No
one knew him except the ocean. It whispered to him, God’s voice
trapped inside its swells and troughs.
A finger of land jutted out to the sea
and then took a sharp turn northward, creating a natural bay,
dividing the Pacific from a small protected area of smoother water.
Justice climbed up and over the jutting, rocky spit, moving closer
to the road rather than the ocean. At the eastern bay’s edge stood
a bait shop, a rickety wooden hovel, part of a dilapidated
structure that had once been a cannery; the cannery, in turn, being
all that was left of a once thriving industry that had all but
vanished over the last decades. Blackened, barnacle-clad posts
stood in broken rows along the waterfront, revealing where docks,
long rotted, had once stood.
As a seagull cawed, he climbed up a
clattery wooden ramp to the back deck of the bait shop, glancing
toward the bay before reaching for the door handle. He’d seen the
faded FOR RENT sign when he’d driven by
earlier, and he’d disposed of the Vanagon at the particular beach
parking lot where he’d left it with the express purpose of heading
back to this place. If, and when, the search for Cosmo began, it
would fan out from the van, and Justice could be vulnerable to
detection, except for the fact that he knew this area and he knew
exactly what kind of person the bait shop’s owner, old man Carter,
was: an ex-con with a healthy disregard of police in general, and
the Tillamook County Sheriff’s Department in
particular.
That was, if he was still alive. And
still around.
As Justice walked in, a jingly bell
above the door announced his arrival. Carter, a few pounds heavier
than he remembered, his hair a little grayer, was standing behind
the bait shop counter. Though Justice knew of Preston Carter, the
man didn’t really know him; and anyway, he was half blind and older
than dirt.
“Yeah?” Carter barked in greeting,
lifting his head. His eyes were bluish, rheumy, above a grizzled
beard that sported a bit of oatmeal from the morning’s
breakfast.
“The room,” Justice said.
“You want the room?” Carter repeated
loudly. Undoubtedly, he was hard of hearing, too.
“I only have thirty
dollars.”
“Thirty?” He seemed to consider. “Okay.
We can start with that. Ya got any ID?” he shouted.
Justice slipped Cosmo’s driver’s
license from his wallet, and Carter squinted at it. He didn’t write
anything down, just slid the license back across the scarred
Formica counter to him. “What’s your name, son?”
“Dan,” Justice said, handing him the
money.
Carter fingered the bills. “I’m gonna
have my girl, Carrie, check to make sure these are tens,” he
warned. “I don’t see as well as I could.”
“Go ahead.”
He nodded in satisfaction. “All righty.
But I guess meanwhiles I can give ya a key. You know, there’s a
toilet? Back over there by the clamming sinks.” He waved an arm to
encompass the other dilapidated buildings. “That’s all we
got.”
Justice glanced toward the next
building, with its rusted corrugated roof, where a row of sinks and
clamming and crabbing paraphernalia, shovels, nets, and the like,
stood beneath a listing roof that was streaked with seagull
crap.
Justice made a sound of acceptance.
He’d certainly seen worse. And despite the building’s dilapidated
state, he was free. Away from that hellhole of Halo Valley
Hospital.
“Good.” Carter turned to a coffee can
on a shelf behind him, dug inside, and fished out a key. He handed
it over to Justice and the deed was done. Justice determined he
would stay in the room above the bait shop as long as he needed.
Days . . . weeks . . . months . . . But he would be vigilant. If
the sheriff’s department came looking for him, he would know
it.
Climbing the outside stairway, the
steps teetering a little, he let himself into a one-room space
filled with cobwebs and worn linoleum flooring whose scarred and
blackened surface looked like a permanent stain. He thought
longingly of the sleeping bag in Cosmo’s van, but he’d sensed that
people would remember him more later on if he were seen as a hiker
of some sort, the guy with the sleeping bag. . . . No, that
wouldn’t do. So he’d left the bag.
No matter. Justice was an accomplished
thief, and he could gather things as needed. He was no good with
conversation. No good dealing with people. He was too odd. Said too
little. He caused people to remember him without even
trying.
But he was a wraith. She had once said that about him. “You’re in the
shadows. A listener. A plotter. A wraith.”
It had not been a compliment, but it
had been accurate.
Dropping Cosmo’s backpack in the center
of the room, he unzipped it and rooted through it. The hippie had a
few interesting items, one of them being a jackknife. To go along
with the box cutter. Moving the knife to his pocket, Justice also
pulled out a pack of beef jerky, a picture of a woman holding a
baby and the hand of another child, and two joints. He stuck a
piece of jerky in his mouth and chewed slowly. The joints he
transferred to an inner pocket of his coat. Nothing he planned to
use himself, but they might be collateral. The picture of the woman
and kids he tore into tiny pieces and shoved the pieces in the
pocket of his pants. Later, he would scatter them to the
wind.
He left other items in the backpack,
planning to examine them more closely later. For now, he needed to
sleep, and he lay down on the floor and put his head on the
backpack, staring toward the cobwebbed joists above his head. Soon,
he would have to get rid of all the rest of the evidence he’d taken
from James Cosmo Danielson, deceased.
Then she came to him again, her heavy,
vile scent wafting through this dingy room in thin, but distinct
waves.
Sissstterr . . . I can
smell you. . . .
His nerve endings jangled again. His
eyes opened more widely.
She was close. Within a ten-mile
radius. Maybe she was even with them at their lodge.
He smiled as he sent the message:
The scent of your devil’s spawn is a beacon. . . .
I’m coming for you. . . .
Saturday morning Laura stood motionless
under the spray of her shower, her face turned upward into the hot
needles, eyes squeezed shut, his words branding across her mind as
she slammed the door to him once again.
He could really smell that she was
pregnant?
Could that be true?
When she herself barely
knew.
It was surreal and disturbing, and as
she caught the fury and hatred in his message, her entire body
quivered, not just with fear, but a building rage. The only person
who knew she was pregnant besides herself was this deadly and
strange psychotic who was bent on destruction!
Not on your life,
bastard, she thought, twisting off the taps, then grabbing
her towel and drying off. She was dead on her feet, having gotten
home at dawn, but she dared not sleep and allow even the small
chance that somehow he would find her.
She didn’t doubt he would; she’d grown
up understanding that like herself and some of her sisters, Justice
had his own special “gift,” what she considered a curse. While
others, people who had grown up outside the walls of Siren Song,
would find his heightened senses, his ability to communicate his
raging thoughts, outrageous and unbelievable, she knew in the
darkest part of her heart that he was hunting her down with the
guile and patience of a bloodthirsty predator. That he was
communicating with her was a gift. Yes, he did it to terrorize her,
and it did. Man, oh, man, she was scared to death. But it also gave
her a heads-up, made her aware, gave her a chance to be ready for
him, time to thwart him.
“Just try it, you bastard,” she
muttered under her breath as she wiped the condensation from the
medicine cabinet mirror over the sink and saw rage in her own eyes.
Before she’d known she was pregnant, she might have felt more
bone-numbing terror, but now it wasn’t just she who was in danger.
It was the tiny bit of life growing within her. Small as it was,
she would protect it.
Justice Turnbull be damned. She slung
her towel over the shower door and made her way to her
bedroom.
After slipping into jeans and a
sweater, she tossed on a Windbreaker, then slipped her feet into
socks and sneakers. At the bureau mirror, she combed her hair
straight down, seeing the thin line of light blondish brown at her
center part, her grow-out. Dyeing her hair had become almost an
obsession. As soon as she’d learned she and Byron were leaving
Portland for the area around Deception Bay, she’d panicked inside,
felt she had to do something, anything to hide her identity. She’d
left the coast years before, to forge a new life but also to
distance herself from her family in order to keep them all safe.
Justice was a real threat, though not the only one, but he was
definitely the most dangerous, the most immediate, the most
determined. She’d tried to disguise herself physically in an effort
to stay under the radar, but now she saw she’d underestimated his
methods of finding her.
She walked into the kitchen, undecided
about what her next move was, and snagged her keys from a hook near
the back door. She was off work until the following evening. She
thought of her family. The locals called them the Colony, and their
lodge Siren Song. She had lived with them until her teens and had
taken a job at a local market for a while, one foot in each world
as she determined what she wanted. Two of her sisters had been
adopted out when they were children. Another had simply wandered
away. Most were still at the lodge, younger than Laura, under
Catherine’s able, vigilant, and near paranoid care.
Maybe not so
paranoid, she thought now.
When Justice had gone on his rampage a
few years back, the gates, which had already been closed to the
outside world, were locked shut. Laura was on her own and with
Byron by then. She had sent Catherine a letter, asking if she
needed her to come back and batten down the hatches, and had
received a note in return that simply said: Stay
away.
Then Justice had been caught, and
Byron, never suspecting his wife had been in any kind of danger or
that her roots were centered here, on the Oregon coast, had taken
the position at Ocean Park. At first Laura had wondered if there
was some connection that had drawn him here, if he’d somehow
understood that she was from this part of the world, but she’d come
to realize it was just a twist of fate. And though she’d resisted
with all her might, driven by fear for her family, a part of her
had been seduced by the idea. She’d spun a fantasy to herself
whereby she could be part of her family and live a life with Byron
outside Siren Song as well. Why couldn’t she have that? she asked
herself. It wasn’t even a difficult request. Most everyone detached
from their nuclear family to create their own, and yet the new
family kept in contact with the old.
But “most everyone” wasn’t her family.
They didn’t share her secrets and history.
They weren’t gifted.
Now she gritted her teeth and headed
for the door and her Outback. Gifted. What a joke. Right now she
would do a lot to rid herself of this gift.
Except it might be all that stood
between her family and total destruction.