39. A Sign

It takes me half a second to realize where we are when we pull up.

I almost grab the guy’s keys and jam them back into the minivan and force him to take me back to Solitary.

What at first felt like a joke now feels like a mean prank.

Maybe that’s what this is, and this is Marsh showing me he’s still in control.

“Getting out?” Mounds asks.

The Chris Buckley who came here with Jocelyn ages ago was a different guy. The field is still the same, wild and overgrown with the abandoned skeleton of the church right next to it. It seems like the church has managed to fall apart even more, with more chunks of the wall missing than last time I was here.

Mounds opens the back door and hands me a suitcase. “Carry that, okay?” He grabs something that looks like a metal detector, and then we head to the church.

The church I remember Jocelyn telling me she was baptized in.

I remember her words to me.

I was only six years old when they died.

But now, knowing everything I know, I realize that her parents’ death wasn’t accidental.

But why her parents? And why Jocelyn?

I stand there next to the burnt-down church, holding the suitcase. The wind gusts and chills me.

“Come over here.”

I do as I’m told. I open the suitcase and take out a boxlike thing that I’m supposed to hold up in the air. It’s light and resembles a big speaker. I’m not even going to ask Mounds what all this stuff does.

I think back to something else Jocelyn said.

It’s amazing how memories work like this.

Sometimes I think the darkness has swallowed up the light.

If only she knew the entire truth.

You were an answer to prayer. That I know.

An answer to a prayer that never finished the job he came to do.

I did not guard her the way an angel might.

“Come ’ere, Rick!”

This goes on with Mounds for about half an hour, with him checking the grounds of the church and the walls.

After a while, he just shakes his head.

“Nothing.”

He’s still waving his long ghost-detector stick over the ground as I put the box back in the suitcase, then head out to find the gravestones for Jocelyn’s parents. I want to make sure the stone I brought is still there.

It takes me a few minutes to find the gravestones.

I find the stone I made with the marked-in J on it. I’m probably the only one who would know that was a J. That’s okay.

Then I notice something beside it.

No.

I don’t want to pick it up, but I have to.

It can’t be. I got rid of that.

I know that when I touch it, it will disappear.

But the brown leather wristband is real.

It’s the one Jocelyn gave me as a Christmas present a year ago. The one her mother had given to her father.

The same one I put in the backpack along with the Bible from my father and the color printout of a picture of Jocelyn and me. The backpack I tossed over Marsh Falls.

My hand is shaking as I hold the leather band.

Then I glance up to the cloudy gray sky.

Are you watching over me now? Are you there, Jocelyn?

I really hope so. Even if I did send her away in my dreams. Maybe, possibly, she’s still out there.

Maybe this is a sign.

I touch the gravestone I made for her and then stand up. When I do, I hear Mounds shout something.

I start to rush back to the church, thinking he needs something, but then I hear him tell me to stay put.

“What is it?” I ask, not listening very well.

I make it inside the remains of the church, and then I see Mounds looking in terror at something outside.

A wolf is standing near the doorway as if on watch.

Then I spot another wolf, this one lighter-colored and really long.

Then another. And another.

“There’s a pack of them,” Mounds says. “Gotta be like a dozen of ’em.”

I see them and then look back to the field I was just in. I see another one coming.

It’s the dark one I remember seeing when I was last here. Not very tall but almost black.

It watches us but doesn’t seem to be dangerous.

“I’ve seen it here before,” I tell Mounds.

“You’ve been here before?”

“Yeah.”

He curses and laughs at the same time. Then I hear a gurgling sound. He’s looking at the instrument in his hands.

“This thing is going haywire, man!”

The wolves watch us for a while, then the dark wolf goes over to the rest of the pack. It’s as if they were waiting on him.

Or her. You know it sure might be a her.

Mounds is blabbering about his meter picking up all these readings.

I just watch the wolves head into the nearby woods.

I look back at the leather band in my hand.

Nothing is accidental. Nothing is random.

I used to think things were, but not anymore.

I think that Jocelyn was waiting for me to come back here. To give me a gift.

And to give me a sign.

I’m not alone.