Lance heard the creek before he saw it. Even with the windows closed and the driving rain outside, somehow he heard that familiar sound. He parked in a little pull-off that he remembered being a popular spot with fishermen and looked out at the stream. It was bigger than he remembered, more like a river than a creek. His memories of standing in ankle-deep water on a summer day didn’t seem to jibe with the raging torrent he saw before him. Could his memories be that off? But then he realized the stream’s transformation was probably due to the pouring rain.
Anyone who attempted to wade out in the water today would probably be swept right off their feet by the rushing water. For a split second an image flashed into his head. He saw a little girl lying in the stream water. He blinked, and it was gone.
The image frightened him. His heart raced. He closed his eyes and tried to summon the image. Then he saw it in the hazy, uncertain way of a half-remembered dream. Was that what he was looking at? Something he remembered from a dream? A nightmare. The word sent a shockwave down his spine, and he didn’t have to puzzle over why. Of course it made him think of Adam.
There was a tickle at the back of his head. He felt like there was something important he was forgetting. Caitlin. He felt like it was something important about Caitlin that he was forgetting. Had she said something? Done something? He puzzled over this confusion. Did it have to do with Adam? Could she have done something to hurt Adam? Was that what his subconscious was trying to tell him?
The memory of Caitlin feverishly ransacking Adam’s room came back to him, and he shuddered. It hadn’t been easy to see his wife in what seemed to be the midst of some sort of psychotic breakdown. Was that what was nagging him? Was his head trying to tell him that in some sort of psychotic episode, Caitlin had done something to hurt Adam? He didn’t want to believe it, but her behavior had been so strange and erratic. She said she had driven here yesterday, to Culver Creek. Wasn’t that such a strange coincidence?
Had she really driven all the way out here? Couldn’t she simply have imagined she did? He couldn’t shake that image of her ransacking Adam’s bedroom. He saw her frantically going through his doodles and drawings, and the shockwave hit him again.
That piece of paper Caitlin had been holding—one of Adam’s crayon drawings. Did it look just like the image that had flashed into his head? The little girl lying in the stream, and he remembered seeing it yesterday and having the queasy, sickening sensation that he recognized it.
He was being ridiculous. Adam was no Picasso. His crayon scribbles were barely recognizable. Half the time Lance couldn’t tell the difference between houses and rocket ships or dogs and people when he looked at one of Adam’s masterpieces. So wasn’t it a stretch to think one of his doodles, the one in Caitlin’s hand that she said had come from one of Adam’s nightmares, matched some picture in Lance’s head? And where had that picture come from? Was it his subconscious mind turning that glimpse of Adam’s drawing into something real? He had been under a tremendous amount of stress, and maybe this was his mind’s way of coping with it.
Was that all it was? Because now he felt sure that when he looked at that drawing clutched in Caitlin’s hand, he had felt a shockwave of recognition. Well, of course he had. Adam had drawn the picture from one of his nightmares. Lance had been there when Adam was telling the dream whisperer about his nightmare. It made Lance form a picture of what had happened in his head, and then he saw that picture yesterday and it was like everything was coming full circle. That was what it had to be. There could be no other explanation.
The police won’t understand.
His mother’s long-ago voice echoed in his head again. Won’t understand what? He thought of the afternoon the police had come over to ask them questions about Lily Esposito, his mother’s weird nervousness.
The shockwave struck again. Because he realized now that the vision he saw in his head was not just any little girl lying in the stream. It was Lily Esposito. He hadn’t seen her in nineteen years, but he knew without a doubt this was true. What he didn’t know was where this image had come from. Was it something he had imagined? Had he dreamt about it? Of course they all knew that was where they had found Lily, but the realness of the picture in his head frightened him because it felt more like something he had seen than something he had dreamed or imagined.
He felt like he was suffocating in the car, and he flung open the door and staggered outside into the pouring rain.
At the edge of the little parking area was a short path that led to the creek. He walked over to it and down the slick mud until he was standing at the very edge of the creek. The rushing water was brown and muddy. The sound was loud, almost deafening.
The kids in the neighborhood used to have a path they took to get down to the creek. If you stuck to sidewalks and paved roads, access to the creek was blocks away from his neighborhood, but all you had to do was cross the road and cut through a backyard and then follow a little dirt path to get to the water. It was as close as the school bus stop.
The backyard they cut through was a rental property, and the guy who lived there was mean and nasty. When he was home and he caught kids sneaking through his yard, he would shout and curse at them, but most of the time he wasn’t there.
If the mean guy was there, you had to run through a stand of trees where there were pricker bushes to get back to the road or incur his wrath. The pricker bushes were thick, and they snagged on clothing and tore exposed skin, but Lance considered them preferable to a run-in with the nasty guy.
He wondered if suspicion had ever fallen on that guy after Lily was killed. It must have. Where she was found was only feet away from that guy’s backyard. Yet Lance couldn’t remember anything happening to that guy after the murder. Could the police have overlooked such a likely suspect?
Lance recalled a feeling of pure terror as he and his childhood friend were walking back up from the creek one afternoon and were surprised by an angry shout. They looked up to see that nasty guy on his back deck. He hurled a beer can at them and began shouting. They scrambled back into the cover of the trees and took the treacherous pricker bush route back to the road.
Lance remembered his mother making tsking noises later as she cleaned all the scratches and scrapes on his arms and legs in their bathroom.
The police won’t understand.
Lance shook his head. He was confusing memories now, he knew it. He had the distinct feeling that when his mother had uttered the words that forever imprinted themselves on his brain, it had been nighttime. He could see the darkness outside the window. That couldn’t be the same time he and Allen had made their pricker bush getaway, but something nagged at him.
That night in the bathroom, an image, like his mother’s words, seemed to be forever burned into his mind. He remembered in a state of surprise staring at his reflection in the mirror. He was disoriented and confused, unsure of how he had come to be there in that room. It was a feeling he now knew all too well—the feeling of waking up in a strange or unexpected place after sleepwalking. That was the sense he had in the bathroom that night, and he was startled by his reflection. There was dirt and blood on his clothes and his face, but that wasn’t all. He remembered now seeing the scratches on his arms. A lacework of tiny scratches crisscrossed his forearms. He had seen such scratches before, the last time he had cut through those pricker bushes.
Had he been down by the creek and gotten yelled at by the nasty man? But it was pitch black outside. What would he have been doing by the creek at this hour? How would he have even found his way in the dark? Maybe that explained the scratches on his arms.
He felt strange and sad, but it was his mother who was the one crying. Tears ran down her face as she wiped dirt off him with a wet washcloth.
“The police won’t understand,” she said.
What won’t they understand? he wanted to ask his memory, but before the question was fully formed in his head, he knew the answer. The sleepwalking, the scratches, the mud, his mother’s distress and the late hour revealed a truth so horrifying that he must have locked it away in some vault in his mind all these years. Maybe he hadn’t even been totally aware of what happened. Not then, anyway, but now it was all too clear.
“Oh, God,” he said as horror gripped him, and he fell to his knees on the hard ground. He nearly toppled into the raging stream waters but steadied himself by clinging to a clump of dead weeds on the bank.
It wasn’t his mother who was a murderer, it was him. He had murdered his own father, and then seven years later, he had murdered a little girl. It hadn’t been deliberate. He hadn’t even been awake, but he must have taken a walk down to the creek in his sleep on the very same night Lily and her sister had gone down there to play in the water late one night. Perhaps Lily had tried to wake him or disturbed him in some way, and then his sleep self had lashed out violently.
It wasn’t cold-blooded murder, even though it looked that way, but what his mother had said was one hundred percent true. The police wouldn’t understand. How could they?
So she had done her best to protect him. She sent him away to school. She moved away from the neighborhood where the tragedy had occurred. Lance felt dizzy as he knelt on the creek bank. He had murdered at least two people, but were there more?
Where was Adam? The police seemed convinced he knew more than he was saying about his son’s disappearance. What if they were right? What if in a sleep state he had hurt or killed his son? It was something he couldn’t bear to think about, but he couldn’t ignore the possibility that he had done something to Adam.
The wet ground soaked through the knees of his pants, and as he looked down, he noticed that the water level was climbing. The bank was shrinking at a frightening rate. He scrambled to his feet, slipping on the muddy ground with his shaky legs.
He would turn himself in, he decided. He would go back to the police station and tell them what he now knew to be the truth: during a sleepwalking episode when he was twelve years old, he had murdered Lily Esposito. He would tell them about his father and his fears about Adam, and they would lock him up and throw away the key, and he would never be able to hurt anyone ever again. This plan frightened him but also brought him a sense of calm. For years he had been living in fear of his sleep disorder, but he would come clean, and he wouldn’t have to be afraid ever again.
He turned and started back up the path to the parking area, but he saw something out of the corner of his eye. He spun back around in surprise. Someone was out there in the middle of the creek. He stared at a child in a bright green jacket out in the middle of the water. Adam has a jacket that color.
Had he become delirious? Was his weary mind playing tricks on him? As he stared, though, he realized it wasn’t just a child. There was someone else out there, an adult, though they were too far away to really see. At first they looked like they were standing in the middle of the water, but now he realized this was not the case. The two figures stood on a small strip of land, an island in the midst of the surging creek, but like the bank where Lance stood, their island was rapidly shrinking.
He needed to do something. He felt instinctively for his phone before remembering he didn’t have it with him. The police. He could drive back to the police station and have them send help. He took another look at the fast-moving water. There was no time for that.
He stepped into the angry stream and gasped at the ice-cold water. Even with the water only up to his ankles, the current was so strong he almost lost his footing. Would he even be able to make it out to that little island? He had no other choice.
Lance took one deliberate step after another as he traversed the raging waters. It took every ounce of his strength to remain upright, but somehow he managed. He was thankful the water didn’t rise above his chest, because if he was forced to swim against the current, he would be swept too far downstream.
“Daddy!” The word was so faint when it reached Lance’s ears that he couldn’t tell if he had imagined it or not.
The treacherous walk through the flooded stream had left him panting with exertion, but now as he looked up from where he had collapsed on that shrinking strip of land, he saw a sight that filled him with joy.
“Adam,” he said with awe and wonder.
He forced himself up from the ground and wrapped his arms around his son. He hugged him tightly as he blinked back tears.
He still had his arms locked around Adam when he looked up at the other person on the island. It took him a moment to place the drenched figure in her hooded jacket, but with a jarring start he recognized Phelicity Green, the dream whisperer.
“I tried to call you,” she said.
He remembered blocking her number when her calls to reschedule Adam’s appointment had become borderline harassment. He had so many questions, but they had to wait. He needed to get Adam to safety.
“We have to get back to the shore!” he shouted at her over the roar of the rain and creek.
Worry etched itself across her brow as she looked over the rushing water to the shore. The water was still getting higher. They didn’t have much time.
Lance lifted Adam over his shoulder and held him tightly as he stepped back into the creek. “Hang on,” he told his son as much as himself as he struggled with the extra weight in the strong water. He turned back to see Phelicity Green nervously eyeing the rushing water. “Come on!” he shouted at her.
The current was strong, and she was small and slight, but he thought she should be able to make it.
His muscles trembled with the effort to wade across the stream while carrying Adam. He felt Adam shivering with the cold and looked forward to getting him back in the car where he could blast the heat to warm him back up.
“Just a little bit further,” he reassured Adam.
He forced his aching legs to keep moving as the water pushed against them. The brown water was full of sticks and debris that slammed into his legs. He pushed forward, but as he stepped down, his foot landed on a rock. The unexpected obstacle sent him teetering. He needed his arms to steady himself, but they were clutching Adam. He stumbled through the rough water as he fought to stay upright and get to the shore. A second later, he felt himself going down, but they were close enough to the shore. He flung Adam onto the solid land as he went down, landing on his chest on the rocky ground. It left him wheezing and gasping for air, but Adam was silent. Lance’s heart raced.
“Adam?” he said with what remained of his voice. He heard a murmur and looked up. Adam was sitting on the ground in front of him shivering, his eyes wide with fear. “Adam, are you okay?”
The boy nodded. He didn’t speak, but he pointed back out at the water, and Lance summoned the energy to turn around and look where he was pointing. Phelicity Green. In his desperation to get Adam to safety, he had almost forgotten about the woman.
He saw her, just midway across the raging creek. The water was nearly to her shoulders and she was struggling. Lance looked at Adam. He needed to get Adam to someplace warm and dry, but he couldn’t leave the woman out there.
“Climb up the bank,” Lance told his son. “Wait by the car.”
The boy just stared at him. Lance pointed up toward the little parking area and waved his hand. At last Adam rose and began to walk up the little path, but he kept looking over his shoulder. Lance nodded encouragement.
“Wait there for me,” Lance said. “I’ll be back.”
He turned back to the water in time to see Phelicity knocked off her feet. She went under, and he thought she was gone, but she bobbed back up, gasping, and managed to grab hold of a fallen tree that had been washed down the stream. She clung tightly to the tree, but the rushing creek water was strong and still rising.
Lance stepped back into the water on legs already shaky with exhaustion. The tree Phelicity clung to was closer to the shore, but further downstream than the little island. It shouldn’t have been as difficult to walk with the current, but with each step Lance felt like the water was going to push him right over. He made it to the tree, struggling to climb around branches to get to Phelicity. She stared up at him, her eyes large with fright. He reached his arm out to her.
“You have to let go of the tree!” he shouted.
She showed no signs of having heard him.
He struggled to maneuver through the tangle of branches to get to her. The wood scraped against his shredded pants. It reminded him of pricker bushes. He reached for her but tripped on a branch. He fell, and the side of his face smashed into the trunk of the tree. Numb from the cold and with his body full of adrenaline, he barely felt it. He shook off the injury and reached for the struggling woman. Phelicity finally let go of the tree, but the current was so strong it started to sweep her away. He splashed through the water after her and caught her when her jacket snagged on a tree branch.
He cradled her in his arms as he fought his way back to the shore.
“I’m sorry,” she said through chattering teeth. “I tried to call you.”
He gritted his own teeth as he carried her toward safety.
“When I found him in the car, I thought I was meant to find him,” she said. “I thought it was what the universe wanted.”
He really wasn’t in the mood to listen to her new-age mysticism right now, but he couldn’t tell her to shut up.
“The universe brought him to me,” she continued, “because he has the gift. He can see things. He knew about my sister.”
He didn’t have a clue what she was talking about. She was crazy. He knew that from his earlier dealings with her. She had kidnapped Adam because of voices in her head or the universe or whatever the hell she was babbling about. She could have killed him. If he hadn’t come out here and seen them on that island, they could have both drowned. Well, the police would take care of things, lock her up somewhere, maybe get her the help she clearly needed.
The police won’t understand.
No, not that again. He didn’t need to hear that anymore, but it was crazy that he was back in this creek, that his own son could have been killed here just like that little girl. They were almost back to the shore, but his arms were trembling with exertion and his mind felt woozy. He looked down at Phelicity Green in his arms, and with her wet hair plastered to her head and her face washed of makeup, she looked like a little girl, but not any girl. She looked like Lily Esposito.
“Lily,” the name left his lips as a hoarse whisper.
He saw a look of recognition in her eyes.
“Jade,” she said. “I’m Jade. I changed my name.”
It came back to him then. There had been two Esposito girls. Lily, who was killed, and her younger sister Jade, who had survived.
Lance froze in the water as the hazy dream memory of that awful night flickered in his consciousness. The full weight of what he had done pressed down on him.
“I’m sorry,” he said, his voice trembling with emotion as well as the cold. “I’m so sorry.” A slim metal pole came out of nowhere. Picked up and carried downstream by the floodwaters, it had cruised unseen beneath the muddy water until it collided with Lance’s legs. There was a look of shock on his face as his legs buckled. He let go of Phelicity/Jade as he toppled over backward. He watched her as she crawled through the last few feet of water onto the shore. The water carried him downstream, and he splashed around for something to catch hold of, but there was nothing but choppy water in his reach, and his legs did not seem to want to work.
He watched as first the shore and then the fallen tree shrank in the distance. His head seemed to be sliding lower and lower in the water, and then it washed over him. Dirty, metallic-tasting water filled his mouth. He sputtered and tried to stay above the surface, but he didn’t have the strength. As the water pulled him below the surface, he saw Lily’s face.