How had I missed it? How many times had I studied the EVPs and heard the whispered voice and not realized that it was my own mother?
As I made my way to Bliss’s house, I played the recordings. Even with the volume turned up all the way, it was difficult to hear. Mom’s words weren’t clear, and even though she spoke in a hoarse murmur, I knew it was her. The doctor had mentioned once that there had been an increase in her brain activity at night. She had been communicating with me. But how was that even possible?
I had too many questions and not nearly enough answers. I pulled up to Bliss’s house, where both she and Michael were waiting for me. Before I could count the gnomes, Bliss and Michael were getting into my car.
“Drive,” Michael instructed.
Bliss sat in the back. She rifled through an oversize canvas bag that appeared to be stuffed full of papers. “My house isn’t safe anymore. We have to get away from here.”
That was all I needed to know. “Where to?”
“Get on the highway,” Michael said. “We’re going to Potion.”
“Beth’s not there,” I said. “She’s with my mom right now.”
“I can get us in.”
As I navigated the familiar route to Potion, Bliss filled me in. They had been cleaning out the dining room, she said. Papers whirled around them as they hauled away boxes full of old wire hangers and empty medicine bottles. Bliss was carrying an armful of tattered sheets across the foyer when the front door slammed shut, preventing her from leaving the house. Then the dead bolt clicked into place.
“Michael tried to help me, but we couldn’t open the door,” she said. “Then we looked out the window and saw it.”
I didn’t ask what they’d seen. I was too busy trying to merge onto the highway without getting flattened by a semi-truck.
“It was the burgundy car,” Michael said. “It was right in front of Bliss’s house.”
“How do you know it was the same one I saw?”
“We knew,” Bliss said. “We both felt something at the exact same time. And it wasn’t good.”
“A man was behind the wheel, but we didn’t get a clear look at him,” Michael added.
“But you think it was the Watcher?” I asked. “That he’s some guy driving around town?”
“Yes,” Michael confirmed. “He’s our guy.”
“I thought you said there were two of them. Was he with anyone?”
“We have a new theory,” Bliss said. She seemed hesitant to share it with me, so Michael took over.
“There’s only one, but he’s strong enough that defeating him will require two of us.”
“So Bliss is also my Protector?”
“No.” She cleared her throat. “I’m here for Noah.”
I remembered her asking me for his number and how she had said she really needed to talk to him. “At first, I thought he could be the Watcher, but we’ve figured out that isn’t the case.”
“Then what’s happening to him?” I asked. We were approaching the exit that would take us to Potion. “He’s not right.”
An uncomfortable silence followed my question. Michael finally spoke. “Charlotte, do you understand why the Watcher has targeted your family?”
“He’s trying to punish me,” I replied. “He thinks I’ve seen too much of the other side.”
“Yes, but it was never only about you.” Michael’s voice was calm, like a kindergarten teacher’s as she patiently explained a story to her students. “It’s about your family and what they do. This thing has been monitoring your family for a long time, since before you were even born. It came after you as a way to hurt your parents, to make them stop their investigations.”
Bliss spoke up from the backseat. “And he was unsuccessful. So now he’s after Noah as a way to hurt you.”
I almost turned the car around. “So let’s go get Noah! We have to protect him!”
“He’s gone,” Bliss said softly. “I failed.”
“You didn’t fail,” Michael said. “Don’t say that. We still have a chance.”
“Where is he?” I yelled.
“We’re not sure.” Bliss sounded close to crying. “But we know the Watcher has him. We saw him get in the burgundy car.”
I was close to tears myself. Michael placed his hand over mine. “Just drive,” he said. “I have a plan.”
When we arrived at Potion, Michael pulled out a key and let us in. “Beth has some emergency stuff stored here for me,” he said as he turned on the lights. “Bliss, will you show Charlotte what we found?”
While Michael went to the back room, Bliss and I sat on the floor between racks of dresses. She opened up her canvas bag and pulled out a manila file folder.
“We figured out the name using old inmate records and cross-checking them with names from the prison you visited in Ohio last year,” she said. “Since the Watcher first came into power there, we figured there was a connection between the prison and the penitentiary here.” She opened the file. “We were right.”
“Was his name Marcus?”
“Marcus was his middle name.” She handed me a photocopy of an old newspaper article. “Meet Lloyd Marcus Greene.”
The article was a hundred years old, and it was a bad copy. The letters were smudged together into a blurry black mess. The only thing I could read clearly was the headline: Bloody Baker Convicted on Thirteen Counts.
“Bloody Baker? Please don’t tell me he stuffed his victims into an oven.”
“He didn’t.” Bliss took out another paper. “They called him that in reference to the thirteen murders. You know, a baker’s dozen?”
“That’s bad.” I took the next paper, which was an article announcing that Greene had been sentenced to death.
“Let me guess. The electric chair?”
“Yes,” Bliss confirmed. “But there was a problem.”
The night of Greene’s scheduled execution was also the night of one of the county’s worst thunderstorms. I could almost picture the flickering lights and slashes of lightning illuminating the dark interior of the penitentiary. Greene had been strapped into the electric chair, but when the switch was thrown, it didn’t work. Despite several attempts, the warden had been unable to execute the Bloody Baker.
Greene had escaped death and then had become a kind of cult figure among the other inmates. He’d said he couldn’t die, that he’d sold his soul to the devil. He’d cultivated a large following of men eager to escape death. But another inmate had taken Greene’s boasting as a challenge and stabbed him during lunch one day. Greene died on the floor.
“While he was on trial in South Carolina, he was also under investigation for murder in Ohio,” Bliss said. “He spent time at the prison there before being extradited.”
“This is our guy.” I handed back the proof to Bliss. “You did great work.”
“Thanks. But there’s something else you need to know.”
“Right.” It was time to get down to business. We had the name, but now what? How did we use that information to close the gate?
Bliss glanced toward the back room, where Michael was gathering materials. “The thing is, this Marcus connection? It’s more important than you might think.”
“What do you mean?”
She set aside her papers. “Tell me what you remember about him. Tell me about the Marcus you knew.”
It was a painful memory, one I had avoided for a long time. I had only met Marcus a few times. The first time had been on Christmas, when he was assisting his boss in a paranormal investigation at the same time as my family. The last time I’d seen him was when he had been fully taken over by the Watcher.
“His eyes were black,” I said. “A dull black, like someone had drawn over his eyes with permanent marker.”
He had tried to kill me. He had tried to kill my parents and almost succeeded. He had lifted Noah by the neck and left a permanent bruise. He had done all of these things, but it wasn’t really him. His body was basically a puppet for the Watcher. And I had ended it—temporarily, at least—with a blow to the chest.
“Before he died, his eyes went back to normal.” I had trouble getting out the words. “He was lying on the floor. He looked at me, and I knew it was him, not the Watcher.”
I hadn’t known what to do. Marcus was mortally wounded, and all I could do was watch as his life slipped away.
Bliss took my hands. “It wasn’t your fault. You know that, right?”
My friends had said the same thing after it had happened, but I needed to hear it again. Maybe I needed to hear it for the rest of my life.
“The Watcher attaches itself to a person,” Bliss said. “And once it does, that’s it. There is no way out. The person can’t live without the Watcher.”
I nodded. “Marcus said that he tried to fight it. Those were his last words, that he tried to fight it.”
I looked at Bliss, hoping she would offer more comforting words, but her eyes were looking beyond me. I turned my head and saw Michael standing a few feet away.
“Those were his last words?” His voice sounded strained and distant.
I turned around so I could face Michael. His eyes held tears. And that’s when it clicked. I understood the connection we shared, why he had seemed familiar to me.
Marcus was his brother.
“I’m so sorry.” I stood up, but I couldn’t look at Michael. “You have no idea how sorry I am.”
“You were the last person to see my brother alive.”
I bit my bottom lip and tried to keep from crumbling. Even if Marcus’s death wasn’t my fault, I felt diminished in the presence of such pure grief. They had been brothers. They had kept sleds in their bedroom so they could slide down the snowdrifts outside their window. Marcus had been loved, and he had taken his last breath on the floor of a strange house.
And my eyes were the last he’d seen.
Michael placed his hands on my shoulders. “I don’t blame you. Please don’t think that. I blame it. The thing that destroyed him.” He hugged me, and I felt a wave of calm pass through me. “Now it’s time to fight back,” he said.
I was done with living in fear. I would not allow it to chase me anymore.
It was time to close the gate. For good.