There’s something funny about dusk in the Neverglades. Ever since I was a kid, I remember staring out my bedroom window and watching the sun dip lower and lower in the sky, until at last it came to rest just behind Mount Palmer. And then it would stick there. For a solid half hour, the sun would refuse to set any further, as if it had hit some unbreakable barrier on the horizon. Sometimes we wondered if it would just stop one day and leave us under an eternal sunset. But no matter how late it dawdled, there would always come a time when that sliver of light would slip below the mountain peaks, and night would finally sweep in around us like it was supposed to.
I'm in my forties now, and even though the setting sun doesn't amaze me like it used to, I still find myself staring at it sometimes. Take tonight for example. I strolled out into my backyard and found myself blinded by the little halo above the peaks of the distant mountains. Call me a poet, but it looked an awful lot like the yolk of a huge, molten egg.
As the sun hovered in its usual spot, I got to work building a fire. I'd retained a thing or two from my years in the Boy Scouts and it wasn't long before I had a little bed of flames burning in the fire pit. I blinked a few times - the sun had seared flashes of color into my eyes - and pulled the Inspector’s card from my pocket. The light shimmered off its mirrored surface and threw rainbows across the lawn.
Dubious, I flicked the card into the flames below. It caught right away, spitting purple sparks into the air and letting out a faint hiss as it did so. When I looked up, the Inspector was standing by our toolshed. A couple of months ago his sudden appearance would have scared the shit out of me, but I'd seen a lot since the Inspector had come to town, and these little magic tricks had long since ceased to faze me.
“Inspector,” I said. “How goes it?”
The tall man who wasn't really a man squinted at me through his cigar smoke. His trench coat and gray fedora looked muted in the orange sunlight.
“Mark,” he said. “You burned the card. Is there an emergency? Another body, or a strange disappearance, maybe? I didn't pick anything up on my usual networks.”
“Well,” I said, “you could say there's an emergency. Of sorts. My wife cooked a dinner for five people and we only have four people to share it with.”
The Inspector said nothing for what felt like a solid minute. His cigar smoke, a barometer for his ever-changing mood, had taken on a kind of acidic green.
“I don't understand,” he said. “There's no emergency? No trail of bodies to follow?”
“Jesus, you're morbid,” I said. “Everything isn’t always death and darkness, you know. It wouldn't hurt for you to lighten up every once in a while.”
“I still don't understand why you called me,” the Inspector said, frowning. His look of confusion was so convincingly human that I almost forgot he was an eldritch monstrosity from the world next door.
I leaned down and picked his card out of the dying embers. The surface was streaked with a little ash, but otherwise it looked clean and whole again.
“Just come inside, okay?” I said. “I’d like you to meet my family.”
* * * * *
“SO THIS IS THE FAMOUS federal agent,” Ruth said, pulling a tray out of the oven. She eyed the seven-foot-something gray skinned Inspector with the usual amount of incredulity, but her smile was warm, and I knew things would be okay here. Being a good host was in Ruth’s DNA.
“I'm still waiting on the pot roast, but please, make yourself at home,” she said. “There's a closet in the front hall if you want to drop off your jacket.”
“Thank you, but I'm quite alright,” the Inspector said in his gravelly voice. I noticed that his cigar had stopped spewing smoke, and in fact the cigar itself seemed to have flickered out of existence when I wasn't looking. I knew it was still there, though. The Inspector wasn't the Inspector without it. I could just barely make the thing out if I concentrated hard enough.
“Thanks hon,” I said, giving her a kiss on the cheek. Then I gestured for the Inspector to follow me into the dining room. Ruth and I had already laid out the plates and silverware, and I could hear Rory and Stephen arguing with each other through the ceiling, probably angry over some video game. The Inspector took a graceful seat and stared down at the tablecloth as if he'd never seen anything like it before.
“Thanks for doing this,” I said.
“It's highly unusual,” the Inspector replied. “But I appreciate you thinking of me.”
I nodded. The two of us fell into an awkward silence, broken only by the clatter of Ruth working in the kitchen.
“I’m glad you’re here,” I said at last. “Fighting this fight with us. Because you know we wouldn’t stand a fucking chance without you, right? We’d be like ants waging war on a boot. This is the least I can do.”
The Inspector nodded dimly, but didn't say anything; the boys had smelled the pot roast and were now wandering into the dining room, still bickering about quick scopes and hit points and other things that were surely outside the understanding of an old fart like me. They glanced at the Inspector but somehow seemed to find him less interesting than video games. They joined us at the table as Ruth walked in with a steaming platter of pot roast and green beans and mashed potatoes.
And so we ate. Or at least the puny mortals at the table ate; the Inspector would bring bits of food to his mouth, and the food would disappear, but I never saw him actually chewing. Probably shoving it all into a pocket dimension or something. Thank god no one else seemed to notice. I think most rational minds censor that sort of stuff to avoid the risk of going bonkers.
Ruth, bless her heart, spent most of the meal trying to engage the Inspector in conversation and learn more about his supposed job with the government. And even though he mumbled that most of it was classified, he spun some surprisingly detailed anecdotes about life in the “agency” and his many grueling years in Washington. I mean, don't get me wrong; I knew the Inspector was good. But I hadn't expected him to be such a fantastic bullshitter.
It wasn't the greatest of get-togethers, but it wasn't bad either, and eventually the Inspector settled into the closest thing he was going to get to comfortable. Even Rory and Stephen did their part to make him feel included, complimenting his fedora and passing him seconds on the pot roast. They tried to play it cool, but I knew they liked it when I brought coworkers over for dinner. The detective life isn’t exactly glamorous, but to twelve- and sixteen-year old boys, it’s the coolest thing on wheels.
I was halfway into my green beans when the police radio on the counter crackled to life. “Pursuit on Bear Street,” said the voice of the chief. “Suspect is tall, white, mid-30s, name of John Whedon. Last spotted leaving the Hanging Rock bar around 5:30. All officers in the area converge on Bear Street immediately.”
“Oh shit!” Rory said through a mouthful of mashed potatoes.
“Rory,” Ruth said in her warning voice. Rory's cheeks flushed and he hastily swallowed his food.
“Sorry Mom,” he said. “It's just, they're finally going to catch that son of a... that jerk.”
The Inspector looked around the table, his brow furrowed. I noticed he'd given up the pretense of eating his meal. The cigar was back in his mouth, and he was chewing thoughtfully on the tip.
“Turn on the TV,” Stephen said. “Maybe they've got it on the news.”
Under other circumstances I would never have left dinner half-eaten, but this was a big case, one of the biggest in years, and I could feel the buzz permeating the room. I got up and headed into the den. The rest of my family trailed behind me as I picked up the remote and flicked over to the local news. I was dimly aware of the Inspector joining us, his eyes hidden below his fedora.
“Look!” Rory exclaimed.
Lena Dashner, head anchor of Glade News 5, was in the process of outlining the Whedon chase. “The suspect was on trial last year for the murder of his longtime girlfriend, Pacific Glade sweetheart Marcy McKenna. Although he was acquitted, new evidence has come to light that has brought his guilt into question.” Two images flashed onto the screen: Whedon, a flat-faced man with blank eyes, and the poor dead Marcy. The picture they'd used showed her laughing at some celebrity gala, her teeth a gleaming white and her dark hair falling in a cascade over her shoulders.
“Police warn all citizens that Whedon is suspected to be armed and very dangerous,” Lena went on. “If you see him, do not approach him and call the police immediately.” The image shifted from Marcy’s face to an aerial view of Bear Street, where no less than seven cop cars were gathered around the Hanging Rock. They looked like a group of flashing mechanical lions surrounding their prey.
“They're finally going to get that bastard,” Rory blurted.
“Rory!” Ruth said again.
“What?” he said. “We all know he did it. It's about time he gets what's coming to him.”
I glanced at my oldest son. Stephen wasn't nearly as outspoken as Rory, but there was a hardness in his eyes, and I knew he agreed. We had all loved Marcy. No one had rested easily this past year knowing her killer had escaped justice. Honestly, it was about goddamn time for this asshole to get his just desserts.
“Mark?” the Inspector said quietly. “Can I speak with you in the kitchen?”
I tore my eyes away from the screen, where the squadron of cars had left the Hanging Rock and were now wailing down the length of Bear Street. “Sure,” I said. We met up by the kitchen counter, where the police radio still spat out details of the Whedon chase. The Inspector glared at the device and it instantly went quiet.
“This doesn't seem... off to you?” he asked.
“I'm not sure what you mean,” I replied.
The Inspector frowned. “That report said John Whedon was accused of murdering Marcy McKenna sometime last year. But Marcy is still alive. Or at least, she was two weeks ago. We spoke to her, don't you remember? At the radio station. When we were working our last case.”
“You must be thinking of someone else,” I said. “You weren't here when it happened, Inspector, but the McKenna case was big news last year. It was, like, JFK big for us. I think we all remember where we were when we heard what happened.” I lowered my voice and looked warily toward the den. “He stabbed her thirty-seven times, Inspector. With a pair of scissors. They almost couldn’t recognize her when they found the body.”
“I’m not mistaken,” the Inspector said, with a touch of irritation. “It was the same name, the same face. Do you really not remember?”
I tried to think back to that earlier case, to picture the woman we’d talked to at the radio station, but I only got as far as the hallway full of doors - everything past that made my head ache, like the throbbing of a potential migraine. I shook my head.
“I’m sorry, but my memory’s fuzzy,” I said. “I think I would remember talking to a dead person though.”
“Something strange is going on here,” the Inspector murmured, mostly to himself. “A thought specter? A doppelganger? But that doesn’t explain your memory lapse... hmm.” He began to pace the kitchen. “This is going to require some further investigation, I think.”
Lena Dashner was still talking about the Whedon case in the other room, and a dim part of me registered that as being weird; this was a big story, sure, but wouldn’t she have moved on by now? And yet another, stronger part of me wanted her to keep on going. I wanted to hear every detail of the chase, to watch as the police drew closer and closer to the fugitive, their lights flashing, their sirens blaring a warning across the Neverglades. Hell, I even wanted to be on the scene when they caught him. My fingers twitched, and I was struck by a sudden urge to jump in the car and join the hunt - an urge I did my best to suppress.
“For the record, I think this a wild goose chase,” I told the Inspector. “But if you think something fishy’s going on, I’ll help you look into it. For Marcy’s sake.”
The Inspector nodded, but he still looked perturbed. “I’ll wait outside,” he said. Then he was gone, out the door in a cloud of yellow smoke.
A real social butterfly, that one.
* * * * *
INSTEAD OF HEADING to the police station, the Inspector had me pull over next to the Pacific Glade community library. Getting there proved surprisingly difficult, because I kept having to stop to let streams of marching pedestrians past. They were swarming into the streets, most of them clutching blunt objects of some kind. I saw a lot of baseball bats and golf clubs and the occasional weed whacker. At one point I waited at an intersection for five minutes for the wave of walkers to let up.
“What on earth are they doing?” the Inspector asked.
“It’s Whedon,” I said. “Gotta be. He made a lot of people really angry and now that he’s being chased by police I think their tempers finally boiled over. They want to find him first.”
I paused as a burly man wandered past the windshield, clutching what was very clearly a rusty axe. The Inspector and I watched as he lumbered down the street and disappeared around the corner.
“This is insane,” the Inspector said. “I can understand people being angry, but this... this is a witch hunt. I think they truly intend to kill him.”
I said nothing. Murder wasn’t at the top of my list, of course, but I wanted Whedon punished as much as the next guy. And even though I was hardly going to take to the streets about it, I understood the impulse. People could only take so much injustice before they snapped.
The library parking lot was almost empty when we finally got there. I unbuckled and made a move to open the driver’s door, but the Inspector held me back.
“I have a feeling we may need to leave quickly, so keep the car running,” he said. “I won’t be long.”
“Okay,” I said warily, but he was already gone. I watched as he swept up the front steps and slipped through the front entrance. I’ll be honest - I wasn’t totally sold on this plan. The place would only be open for another hour or so and I wasn’t sure what he was expecting to find in there anyway. Plus the longer we idled here, the more time we were giving Whedon to get away.
I turned my eyes to the street and stared at the line of protesters as they passed. They marched with such purpose, such conviction, and I was struck by a sudden powerful impulse to leave the Inspector here and join the chase. My foot hovered above the gas pedal. It would be so easy to let it fall, to go tearing down the streets after the most hated man in the Glade.
But my thoughts were interrupted by the sudden reappearance of the Inspector in the passenger’s seat. His brow was furrowed darkly and the smoke issuing from his cigar curled around his ears in purple spirals.
“You said the Marcy McKenna case was the big news story of the past year?” the Inspector asked.
I nodded.
“Then explain to me why I can’t find a single newspaper article about the murder or the subsequent trial,” he said.
“That can’t be possible,” I said, frowning. “I remember waking up to the headline: LOCAL CELEBRITY BRUTALLY MURDERED. The newspapers had a field day with that one. Everywhere you went people were reading about the case. I don’t know how, but you must have missed something, Inspector.”
He visibly bristled. “I promise you, I haven’t,” he said. “And another thing. You say Marcy was a local celebrity. Can you tell me what she was famous for?”
“God, I forgot how culturally illiterate you must be,” I said. “Marcy did everything. She was Pacific Glade’s big breakout; she had a major role in Twin Peaks back in the 90s and she did a lot of stuff on Broadway when her career really took off. She did charities and benefit shows and even shook hands with the President. She’d just come back to the Glade for a movie tour when she was murdered.”
“Hmm,” the Inspector said. “Interesting. Because when I ran a search for Marcy McKenna online, I didn’t find anybody matching that description. There are a few people who share her name, of course - some of whom are moderately successful by human standards. But not Marcy herself. You’d think such a household name would be easy to find.”
“What?” None of this made any sense. “I clearly remember watching her in Twin Peaks. She was one of Laura Palmer’s friends from school - had a season long character arc and everything. There was a huge backlash when the network killed her off. Not that this means anything to you, of course.”
“There is no Marcy McKenna credited in Twin Peaks,” the Inspector said. “There is no Marcy McKenna on Broadway, either. And there is no record that Marcy McKenna was ever murdered in Pacific Glade.”
“What are you saying?”
“I’m saying, everyone in this town remembers a murder that never happened. They remember a celebrity who never was. There’s no evidence that any crime ever occurred except your own memories of the event. And memories are malleable things.”
“This is fucking absurd,” I blurted, feeling suddenly angry. “You’re telling me that the entire Glade has it wrong? That this whole thing is just a figment of our imaginations? I find it really fucking hard to believe that we’re all sharing some hallucination.”
“Two weeks ago the dead were rising,” the Inspector said. “Compared to what we’ve seen so far, this is hardly an unusual case.”
“I don’t believe you,” I said. It was hotheaded of me, granted, but I was seething inside for reasons I couldn’t quite define. “I’m not going to let you shit all over Marcy’s memory.”
The Inspector moved faster than my eye could track, and suddenly his hand was on my forehead, his ashen skin cold against mine. The rage I’d been feeling melted away like an icicle in the hot sun. As the Inspector withdrew his hand, I felt stirrings of the anger come back, but they were faint, subdued; in some ways they didn’t quite feel real. The emotion was artificial. It hadn’t come from inside me.
“What the hell is going on here?” I asked quietly.
“I don’t know,” the Inspector said. “But I intend to find out. Does Marcy have a house here in town?”
“She shared a place with Whedon, as far as I remember. A ritzy place overlooking Catamount State Forest. But,” I added, “as you’ve so helpfully pointed out, my memory’s not what it used to be.”
“You and half the town,” the Inspector muttered. “Let’s get going then. Whedon is running from a crime he didn’t commit, and we have to break this collective delusion before the police catch up with him.”
“Assuming the angry mob doesn’t get there first,” I said.
The Inspector looked grim. “Yes,” he said. “That too.”
* * * * *
SAID ANGRY MOB DIDN’T make the trip easy for us, but once we got on the backroads things cleared up a bit more and we were able to drive down the street without any pedestrians getting in our way. The sun still stubbornly refused to set, so our way was lit from behind by a swath of brilliant orange light. My cruiser cast an elongated shadow onto the road in front of us.
The sunlight grew scarce as we entered Catamount State Forest, and the shadows of a thousand scraggly trees brushed against our own, creating a patchwork pattern. We rocketed through the woods, climbing higher and higher, the trees giving way to clearings with picnic tables and fire pits, until at last we rounded a corner and found ourselves face to face with Marcy McKenna’s old house.
I had described the place as “ritzy,” but it was a lot simpler than I remembered - just a one-story cottage with a ring of rose bushes and blue painted shutters. Not quite sure where the memory of opulence had come from. I parked the car and the Inspector and I got out. The shutters were all closed, and it felt like nobody was home; there was no car in the driveway and no sound from inside. The Inspector strode to the front door and rapped sharply on the wood.
“John,” he said. “John Whedon. Are you in there?”
No response from inside. Unperturbed, the Inspector stepped down and circled around the house, sticking close to the line of rose bushes. I kept a hand on my holster and followed him. Halfway around the building we found a shutter that was hanging half open. The Inspector gingerly pried it all the way. The window behind it was blocked by a set of dark blinds that fluttered slightly, probably due to some inner ventilation system.
“Now what?” I whispered.
The Inspector gestured with one finger and the blinds slid upward. Purple light spilled through the opening, so bright I couldn’t look at it directly. I could make out the vague shape of it though. The light was streaming through a jagged gash in the air, a lightning bolt-shaped tear that floated impossibly in the middle of the living room. There were bookshelves and chairs and a solitary lamp, too, but the purple light gave them all a faded pallor, like it had sucked the color straight out.
The glow was so overwhelming I almost didn’t see the person standing directly behind it. She was a dark-skinned woman, a little younger than me, wearing a flowing white blouse. Wind from the rift whipped back her hair and brought goosebumps to her outstretched arms. Her eyes were wide, but vacant, and the light flickered in them like dots of purple fire.
I recognized her at once. It was Marcy McKenna.
“She’s alive?” I croaked.
The Inspector shot me a withering look and dropped the blinds again. “I’m not the type to say ‘I told you so,’ Mark, but honestly. What did you expect?”
“Not that!” I said, pointing at the window. “Jesus, I saw the crime photos after her murder and I still have nightmares about her hacked up face. I remember attending the funeral and watching her father break down sobbing in the middle of his speech. These things are real, don’t you get it? I don’t care if that really is Marcy in there. My memory tells me she’s dead, and if I can’t trust my own brain, what else do I have?”
“You have me,” he said.
He strode to the front door, reared back, and smashed through the frame with one mighty kick. I watched numbly as the door teetered on its broken hinges and went crashing into the foyer. I was still too in shock to move, but the Inspector strode inside on those silent footsteps of his. His trench coat billowed out behind him.
The Inspector clearly didn’t care about trivial human things like laws and property lines, but I did, and goddamn it - I couldn’t just keep breaking into people’s houses. Not even if the occupants of said houses were supposed to be dead. It took some serious effort to get my feet moving, but move them I did, and before long I was climbing over the busted door and into the front hall of Marcy’s house.
I caught a whiff of the Inspector’s cigar - it had a pungent, earthy smell - and traced the man himself to the room with all the light. He stood in the threshold and stared at the anomaly. It was even brighter in here than it was outside, and I could hear faint whispers for the first time: guttural words in some unknown language floating out of the rift. Marcy’s shadow stood between us and the light, although “stood” isn't quite the right word; her bare feet hovered a solid three inches above the carpet.
“Marcy,” the Inspector said, softly, the way you might speak to a dog that's been known to bite. “Marcy McKenna. Can you hear me?”
If Marcy heard, she gave no sign. The rift continued to whisper and the light continued to spill out of it, rippling like water.
“Don't!” I hissed, but the Inspector had already reached out and grabbed her arm. His grip was light, but her reaction was immediate and violent. She arched her back and let out a shriek that shook the glass in the windows. The waves of light took on a sharp, jagged quality and began to fire out of the rift like bullets. I ducked behind the closest bookshelf and winced as the light slammed solidly against the wood.
The Inspector was caught in the middle of the maelstrom, but he refused to let go of Marcy’s arm. The light bullets ripped through his gray skin and left little puckered scars that drew no blood. Now Marcy was flailing, swinging her limbs in an effort to break free, but the Inspector’s grip had tightened like a vise. He dragged her struggling, floating body away from the rift and into the front hallway.
“The door, Mark!” he shouted. “Get the door!”
I darted out from my cover and ducked as a bolt of light whizzed across my scalp. If those things could cut holes in the Inspector, I didn't want to think of how badly they could hurt a fragile little human like me. I ran into the hallway, gripped the door frame, and slammed it shut behind me. The light continued to pound against the other side but didn't break through.
Marcy had stopped flailing, and she wasn't floating anymore, either; cutting her off from the light seemed to have calmed her down. The Inspector loosened his hold but continued to keep her at arm’s length.
“Can you hear me, Marcy?” he asked in that same soft voice. “Do you know where you are?”
She raised her eyes to him, and I saw a glimmer of that purple light still embedded there, like a tiny jewel in each of her irises. She looked between the two of us like a sleeper coming out of a deep dream. Groaning, she lifted a hand and rubbed it against her temple.
“I'm... in my house,” she mumbled. “What... what are you doing here? Did you break in?”
“We only wanted to save you,” the Inspector said. “We saw you were in danger and came inside to help.”
I couldn't say a word; my tongue had glued itself to the roof of my mouth. Talking with her was like talking to a ghost. She was here, she was right in front of me, but a part of my brain that seemed just as sane and rational insisted that she was buried two miles away in Locklear Cemetery. I lifted a hand, as if to touch her, but couldn't bring myself to do it. The paradox was already straining my mind and I was afraid something critical would snap if I made physical contact with her.
“The whole town thinks you're dead, Marcy,” the Inspector went on. “They're marching in the streets to find your killer. Why are they doing that? Don't they know you're here, that you're alive and safe?”
Awareness was coming back into Marcy’s eyes, a cold soberness falling over her entire body. Her arm went limp in the Inspector’s grip. She looked at him, then at me, the purple light flashing in her corneas. She didn't smile. And suddenly I was struck with a memory: swimming in the lake as a young boy, sinking deep, far too deep, kicking my legs in every direction as I tried to rise back to the surface, but even the sun was dark down here and I couldn't see which way was up, couldn't hold my breath, and blackness swept over me as pressure squeezed my lungs...
It was my memory. But it wasn't at the same time. Even though I could distinctly remember that afternoon in the lake, I was aware, somehow, that Marcy had implanted it in my head. It was like the surge of anger I'd felt at the Inspector earlier. It was inside me, but it had come from outside me.
“The real question,” Marcy said quietly, “is if the whole town thinks I'm dead, then what the hell are you two doing here?”
The Inspector stiffened. Something dark had come into Marcy’s voice, a bitterness that I didn't like one bit. She looked at the Inspector’s hand like it was some sort of alien tentacle, but didn't try breaking free again.
“Is it you?” the Inspector asked. “Are you the one giving people these false memories?”
Marcy glared at him. The jewels of light spun in her eyes, and I got the sense that she was trying to broadcast some sort of nightmare into the Inspector’s brain; but if it worked, he didn't show it. He chewed the end of his cigar and blew a pink smoke ring down the hall.
“So you effectively faked your own death,” he said. “You turned yourself into a star and John into a pariah. But why? Why go to such extremes?”
In response, Marcy grabbed her arm and yanked back the sleeve of her blouse. The skin of her forearm was lined with thin horizontal scars. Some of them looked sore and fresh. I was struck with another memory that wasn't my own - dragging a razor blade across my skin, cutting ribbons into the flesh. The memory of the pain made my arm throb.
“Because John is an abusive fuck who deserves every second of this,” she hissed. “Because he brought me so low that I mutilated myself for him. Because I can't hit back, but this town can hit for me. I made them love me. I can make them kill for me too. All it takes is one person to throw the first stone.”
I felt chills run down my arms. The Inspector stared at her for a few long seconds, then pulled me aside so we could speak privately. He kept one eye on Marcy as he did so. She remained in her crouched position, in no apparent hurry to go anywhere.
“I’m the only one who stands any chance of closing that rift,” he said. “You need to head back into town and contain the mob before they kill John.”
“How?” I asked. “Christ, Inspector, there’s so many of them and I’m just one guy. And how can I change their minds? I can’t exactly tell them Marcy’s alive. I’m looking at her right now and I still don’t quite believe it.”
“Listen to me,” the Inspector said. “She may be controlling their thoughts and memories but she can’t control their actions. Every choice they make is still a choice. If you appeal to their better nature, convince them that they’re above such pointless violence, you might stall them long enough for me to do what needs to be done here. No one has to throw any stones today.”
“What needs to be done?” I repeated. I looked past him at Marcy’s slouching form, her eyes dark and wary.
“If we play our cards right, everybody survives the night,” he said. “But that doesn’t happen unless we act quickly. I can handle things here. You need to go - now.”
My mind was on edge and I was pretty sure it had nothing to do with Marcy’s mojo; this anxiety was one hundred percent home-brewed Hannigan. But I didn’t let it keep me from moving. I left the Inspector in the hallway, ran back to my cruiser, and revved the engine. The house’s front door was still knocked absurdly back on its hinges, and in the opening, I saw the Inspector’s shadow lean over Marcy and pass a hand over her forehead. He looked like a priest issuing last rites to a dying patient. Marcy shuddered and went limp.
I backed out of the driveway and spun the cruiser around, but the route back through the forest was suddenly a lot more treacherous than it had been ten minutes ago, because the mob had spread. People roamed across the street in large clusters, everyone clutching a makeshift weapon, everyone looking ahead with cold, grim resolve in their eyes. I could barely go ten feet without another swarm of them stepping out in front of my car. My headlights washed over them, but no one looked back at me. It was clear there was only one thing on their minds: Whedon.
As I watched their procession move steadily down the street, I pictured a cliff in my mind, and the crowd pushing forward to the lip of that precipice. They could see it coming. There was plenty of time to stop, to turn around and return to safety. But they wouldn’t stop. They would fling themselves gladly over the side, smiling as they plummeted to the bottom.
How could I talk that many people back from the edge?
* * * * *
I GOT MAYBE TEN MILES in before the crowd became so dense my cruiser had to stop in the middle of the road. I gave the siren a blare, lights flashing, but nobody spared me so much as a passing glance. I was dead in the water. Unless I was going to plow through this swarm of pedestrians, my car wasn't going anywhere.
“Fuck,” I said. I killed the engine and squeezed my way out of the cruiser. The crowd was packed so tight I could barely get the door open. Instinct told me to take out my gun, so I slipped it out of the holster and edged my way through the sea of people.
“Move aside!” I barked, as loudly and forcefully as I could. “Police coming through!”
Now people were looking at me, and there was an identical expression on all of their faces: anger, with a little bit of loathing. And I was struck by a sudden absurd thought: I don't want the cops to get him. I want to get him myself. Which made no sense, of course, since I was the cop here.
Marcy. It had to be. For a moment I had forgotten that she was alive in the first place, that Whedon hadn't killed her and she was broadcasting this anger into the town’s collective brain. I shook my head and tried to focus on what I had seen at Marcy's, what I had to do now.
Stop the crowd before they kill Whedon. Stop them from throwing that first stone.
I had a feeling the crowd’s anger would have devolved into violence if not for the gun in my hand. Still, they weren't going to make it easy for me. When I tried to push through the bodies closed in around me, blocking my way forward, leaving me just as stuck as the cruiser a few yards behind me. I swore again and craned my neck to stare over the crowd. Nothing but a thousand bobbing heads as far as the eye could see. With this kind of resistance there was no chance in hell of me making it to Whedon on time.
“Fuck this,” I muttered. I reared back and elbowed the person next to me in the ribs. He was a small guy who clutched a garden rake like it was some kind of pole arm. He let out a cry and fell into the woman beside him, and boom, just like that - domino effect. The crowd’s anger dissolved into sudden confusion. I took advantage of the opening and shoved my way through. The tree line was only a few yards away. If I could disappear into the forest, maybe I could bypass the worst of this mob.
The confusion lasted long enough for me to break through the edge of the crowd and plunge into the cover of the trees. To my dismay, dozens of other people had apparently gotten the same idea, because the woods were swarming with marchers. It wasn't nearly as packed as the road but getting through unseen was going to be impossible. And if Marcy was still broadcasting her hatred for all things police, any of these people could turn on me at any time.
None of them had brought guns, as far as I could see, but everyone had brought a weapon. Shovels, fireplace pokers, rolling pins. All sorts of household pain. If these people snapped, I'd be one messy corpse. And I wasn't sure I could shoot my own neighbors. Even if it was to save my own life.
I ducked behind a tree, stripped off my holster, and chucked it into a nearby bush. Thank god I was still dressed in civilian clothes - if I'd gone barging ahead in full police mode these people might have torn me apart. They didn't know I was a cop out here. Maybe, if I was careful, I could pass as one of them.
I kept my gun close to my side and moved quickly through the trees - not quite running, but close. Time was short and I was straddling a fine line between speed and secrecy. According to the radio in my cruiser Whedon’s current location was still unknown, but things could change at the drop of a dime, and the second someone spotted him this whole gig would go up in flames.
My phone buzzed suddenly in my pocket, making me jump. I pulled it out and found a text from an unknown number. I skimmed it over, my fingers growing tight around the phone.
Catamount Campgrounds. Sequoia Lodge. They'll know any second now. GO.
The Inspector. It had to be. He must have gotten Whedon’s location out of Marcy somehow. But if she knew where he was... then so did everyone else.
The crowd’s attention shifted to the left, into the deeper reaches of the forest. And I knew too, all of a sudden, and it was so obvious, because Marcy had always called Catamount her second home, it was where she had met Whedon and it was undoubtedly where he'd go to feel safe and alone.
The campgrounds were less than a mile away. If I booked it I could be the first one to find that son of a bitch.
I fought the incoming waves of anger, but it was hard. I knew Whedon was no killer. I knew Marcy was alive and safe in her home with the Inspector. But the narrative she'd woven was insistent, and now that I was so far away, it was creeping back in. How could I have thought I'd seen a dead woman? How could so many people be so wrong about something so obviously true? We'd all seen the crime scene photos. We'd all been numbed by her loss. And we all knew who had done it. We knew Whedon was a murdering scum who had escaped justice because of a fluke in the system.
Maybe I had seen Marcy today. Or maybe I hadn't. The Neverglades were a hotbed of strange activity, and was it really so hard to believe that some supernatural force was responsible for my memories of Marcy’s house? Hell, Whedon could have done it himself. I wouldn't put it past the motherfucker. He was no better than the things that lurked in the dark, no better than the monsters the Inspector and I had taken down.
I began to run. The people around me did the same, but they weren't chasing me; they were joining me. We moved with one mind, one purpose. I was suddenly leading the charge. Whedon was close by and we would be the ones to find him first. We would be the ones to bring justice to that piece of shit.
We ran for several minutes before the trees thinned out and gave way to log cabins and abandoned campsites. Catamount didn't get too many campers this time of year, so it would be perfect cover for a fugitive like Whedon. I'd taken Ruth and the boys here a few times over the last few summers, so I was roughly familiar with the layout. The grounds were deserted. Not a soul in sight.
The Sequoia Lodge was smack in the center of camp, and it would be closed right now. But I knew Whedon was somewhere inside. It was obvious, wasn't it? The place where he and Marcy had met, where they'd shared their first dance as a couple. Everyone knew the story. It only made sense that now, driven to desperation, he'd chosen here to make his final stand.
The Lodge was a sturdy building, with a mottled green roof and walls made of polished wood. The door was shut and presumably bolted from the inside, so I didn't bother trying to knock it down. Instead, I circled the building and looked for another way inside. I could feel the crowd behind me more than I could hear them: a buzzing energy, a surge of excitement threatening to spill over into bloodshed.
It didn't take long to find my in. There was a window on the side of the Lodge, maybe seven feet up, and small, but big enough to squeeze my body through if I tried. I looked around and found a large, smooth rock half buried in the dirt. I yanked it free, hefted it in my hand, and measured the arc from here to the window. I had played baseball a lifetime and a half ago, but I felt certain that if I let that stone fly, it would go soaring through that window in a spectacular shatter of glass.
All it takes is for one person to throw the first stone.
The words of a ghost.
I drew back my arm and flung the stone at the window. It broke through with a crash that echoed through the empty campgrounds. The crowd surged forward, and I found myself being hoisted up by hands I didn't know, until I was staring through the shattered pane at the dark interior of the Sequoia. I reached over the broken glass and unlocked the frame, then pushed it inward. Then I crawled through the opening and landed - less than gracefully - on the floorboards of the inner Lodge.
The room had once been filled with long wooden tables and folding chairs, but they'd all been pushed to the side for the season, and now the place was bare. A thin layer of dust covered most of the ground. Except - hang on. The coating wasn't quite even. There were patches where something had disturbed the dust, and not too long ago either. Patches that looked an awful lot like footprints. They stretched across the open floor and vanished up a flight of stairs into the upper Lodge.
“Whedon,” I breathed.
Others were trying to clamber in after me, but I didn't wait for them to squeeze through. I lifted my gun and followed the trail of footsteps. The stairwell was dark, and I couldn't hear anything from upstairs except the thumping of my own heart - blood rushing like a river through my body. But I knew Whedon was up there. I had never been more certain of anything in my life.
The upstairs was a game room, a wide space with a scratched pool table and a few outdated arcade machines. Aside from the stairs there was a single exit: a door leading out onto a balcony that overlooked the flagpole and basketball courts behind the Lodge. I'd never been up here in my life but I knew these facts clearly, with a certainty so strong I could feel it in my bones. There were no steps leading from the balcony to the ground, and it was a three-story drop. Whedon had no route of escape that didn't go through me.
I clicked my tongue like I was scolding a bad dog and took a few cautious steps into the room. “Whedon,” I whispered. “Come out, come out, you sick fuck.”
The words didn't feel like my own, but they felt right coming out of my mouth; they suited the rage that was building in every corner of my body, like gathering storm clouds. Below me I could hear the crowd struggling to get inside, but I registered them distantly. Up here it was only me and Whedon. A cop and a killer. And I knew, one way or another, that justice would be served tonight.
The floorboards creaked; a body shifted. I turned my gun toward the old Pac-Man machine. My eyes had started to adjust to the darkness, and now I saw a shape curled up behind the game: a pair of legs drawn up against a broad chest. Anger churned in my gut, but I approached the machine quietly, cautiously. When I looked around the side, I saw Whedon sitting there in the fetal position, a baseball bat in one limp hand and an expression of abject misery on his face.
I had no words left in me to express my hatred, so I lifted my gun instead, my finger drawing back the safety. The ensuing click made Whedon look up. He didn't look surprised to see me there, or scared, or angry; just defeated.
“Well?” he said. “If you're gonna do it, do it. It's better than what I deserve. After what I did to her.”
Tears leaked from his eyes, and I hesitated, but only for a fraction of a second. There were other footsteps coming up the stairs now. Soon the crowd would be on top of us, and if I didn't do this now, they would do it for me. And I couldn't have that. I didn't care about glory, or fame, but I knew had to be the one to set things right.
The gun was cold in my hands, but my aim had never been surer. One bullet and this would all be over. It would be easy. Hell, Whedon himself was begging for it. He'd put down the baseball bat and was staring up at me with despair in his watering eyes.
“Do it!” he yelled, his voice trembling. “END ME!”
My finger tightened around the trigger, I could feel the pressure as the bullet prepared to exit the chamber, and then it would be his brains against the wall, and the mob behind me could do what they pleased with his miserable corpse -
But something lifted my hand at the last second, and even though I pulled the trigger, the shot missed Whedon by miles. A tiny hole appeared in the wall, letting in a pinprick of the setting sunlight. I looked at the hole, then my gun, then the figure cowering, bewildered, underneath the Pac-Man machine. And I felt horror shoot through me, stronger than any surge of anger, and entirely my own.
I dropped the gun, my hands shaking. Whedon stared up at me like a coma patient waking up for the first time in decades. He wasn't the only one. There was a crowd of people standing behind me, but they looked confused, as if unsure of how they'd gotten here or why they had come in the first place.
As for me? The only word that came close to how I felt was “violated.” I felt like I'd just come out of a nightmare, but instead of fading, as dreams do, the details grew sharper with each passing second.
Every choice they make is still a choice.
Marcy had amplified the crowd's aggression - she'd removed inhibitions, made people more susceptible to mood swings and bitterness and fits of rage. But she couldn't force anyone to do anything. Which meant that my neighbors were capable of mob violence. It meant that I could put a bullet through a man's head in an act of vigilante justice and not bat an eye. I'd never seen that aspect of myself until tonight, and it scared the hell out of me.
What else was I capable of?
The mob had ceased to be a mob, and a few people had already drifted toward the stairs, breaking the group into several directionless blobs. I picked up my gun and tried to slide it into a holster that wasn't there anymore. Whedon got to his feet, wandered into the dissipating crowd, and vanished from my view. No one seemed to notice or care that he was there. Any animosity they'd felt toward him had evaporated like a puddle on a hot day.
I followed the stragglers outside and emerged into a forest cloaked in darkness. The sun had finally set while we were inside and Catamount had turned into a ghost camp. I thought of my abandoned cruiser, parked in the middle of the road, and the long, dark walk back to civilization that lay ahead. It made me want to cringe. Mostly, though, I just felt empty.
It had been a long sunset. But I had a feeling it was going to be an even longer night.
* * * * *
MY ENTIRE BODY WAS aching by the time I got back to the station, but I felt the tiniest twinge of relief when the Inspector greeted me in my office. It was strange - the last case we’d covered had left me with a scorched uniform and third-degree burns, and yet today I felt like I’d been through the worst wringer of my life, even though I hadn’t sustained a single injury this entire mission. I hadn’t even cut my hands on the broken glass in the Lodge.
“How did you call her off?” I asked. “You didn’t...”
“I didn’t kill her,” he said. “I talked her down.”
I blinked. I’m not sure what I had expected to come out of the Inspector’s mouth, but it certainly wasn’t that.
“We had a conversation,” he said. “About John. About what he’d done to her. I sympathized with her plight and told her that John would certainly be punished for what he’d done, but this wasn’t the way to do it. Humans have their own special brand of justice but they are not gods. They can’t just smite the people who oppress them, or they lose what makes them human in the first place.”
There was a long silence. “It’s funny, isn’t it?” I said. “That out of the two of us, you’re the one who understands humanity the most.”
The Inspector’s cigar puffed out a cloud of warning red. “Cruelty and abuse are not unique to your kind,” he said. “Neither is vengeance. Neither is hatred. These are not foreign concepts to someone like me. I may understand them better than you do, even with all your years on the force, even with all the things you’ve seen. I know humanity because on some baser level, we aren’t so different.”
He looked away and blew a single red ring toward the door. “But love. Devotion. Togetherness. These are things I only understand because I have observed them for so long, the same way your scientists understand atoms and molecules, and the subtler workings of the universe. But like them, I will never know everything. Some things will always be a mystery to me.”
I clapped him on the shoulder, surprising - I think - both of us. “And you'll always be a mystery to me too, buddy,” I said. “But we work well together. Don't you think?”
He actually smiled at that. “Yes,” he said. “I would have to agree.”
“I know I ask this a lot, but is it really over? I'm not going to wake up in the middle of the night and go on a sociopathic rampage?”
“If you do, it won't be Marcy’s fault,” he said. “I managed to close the rift that was feeding her. Her powers have already started to dwindle, and by this time tomorrow I suspect they'll be gone completely.”
“Finally, good news for once.” I took a seat at my desk and stretched back in my chair. The tips of my fingers were trembling, but I laced them together and placed them behind my head, hoping the Inspector wouldn't notice.
By all accounts tonight had been a victory. Everyone had survived the night, as the Inspector had promised. But it still felt like we'd lost the battle. If Marcy had held on a second longer, I had no doubt that I'd have placed a bullet between Whedon’s eyes. It didn't matter that I hadn't done it in the end. Something real, something dark and dangerous inside of me, had reared its head tonight. And you couldn't shove a thing like that back into the darkness.
“I know you must be exhausted,” the Inspector said, eyeing me suspiciously, “but I think you should write all this down. What happened tonight. If you wait too long, some of the important details might slip away.”
I eyed the stack of paperwork on my desk with some distaste. The idea of putting this night into words brought an unpleasant taste to my throat, like rancid bile - but maybe this was just what I needed. A chance to confront this ugly part of me, to get it down on the page where I could dissect it and define it and keep its hideous face from surfacing again. At least for now.
So that's what I'm doing. It's ten o'clock in the evening and I'm still here with my pen and this cheap pad of yellow paper. Ruth knows I'm safe at the station, so that's one less thing to worry about, and the Inspector has gone off to do whatever eldritch detectives do when there's no mystery to solve. It's just me. Me and this thing inside of me.
I haven't felt it stir since the game room at Sequoia Lodge, but I know it can't have gone far. These things never do. I thought writing about it would make this easier but it's only made me more paranoid. It reminds me of what I'd said to the Inspector back at Marcy’s: if I can't trust my own brain, what else do I have?
You have me, the Inspector had said.
And you know.... maybe that’s good enough.
* * * * *
I WOULD HAVE STOPPED writing there, but somewhere around four in the morning, after I'd headed home and kissed Ruth goodnight and slipped under the covers, I realized I couldn't sleep. So I snuck downstairs to get myself a glass of milk or something, and lo and behold, the Inspector was standing in my kitchen. It's a good thing I hadn't gotten the glass out yet or I probably would have dropped it right on my toe.
“Inspector,” I said, in a voice that was a little more than a whisper. “What the hell. Did somebody kill the pope or something? Why are you here?”
“I can't just drop by and visit?” he said, with a contorted half-smile. “Everything isn't always death and darkness, you know.”
I got the sense he was telling a joke - the Inspector? Surely not - but for the love of me I couldn't figure out the punchline. I shook my head and walked past him to the row of cabinets.
“Not that I don't appreciate your lovely mug and the cloud of pollution that comes with it, but you should really go,” I said. “If Ruth or one of the boys comes downstairs they're gonna flip.”
The Inspectors gave up all pretense of smiling and grew solemn. “I'm sorry to intrude in your home, Mark,” he said. “But I need you to tell me what happened tonight.”
“Tonight?” I asked. “I mean, tonight was tonight. Nothing fancy. Dinner with Ruth and the kids and an evening of garbage television. The usual stuff.”
The Inspector shook his head. “No. I want you to tell me about Marcy, and what happened when you caught up with John. I need to hear it from your own lips.”
“Marcy who?” I asked. “Honestly, Inspector, I have no idea what you're talking about.”
He sighed. “In your bag, Mark,” he said. “There's a pad of paper. I want you to read it.”
“There's nothing in there except a moldy banana,” I said, but I humored him, grabbing the bag from its perch on the counter. “Are you sure you haven't lost your marbles, Inspec...?”
But I trailed off. There was something else in the bag, all right. When I drew out my hand, I was holding a yellow notepad. The sheets were crammed with a tight scrawl that was unmistakably my handwriting. The only problem? I didn't remember writing it.
“What the hell?” I frowned.
“Read it,” the Inspector said, a smoky snake curling from his cigar. “Then we can talk.”
So I did. I read until the lip of the sun was poking its face above the mountain peaks on the horizon and my kitchen was lit up a garish pink. When I finally looked up, the Inspector was staring at me, his eyes focused and unclouded by smoke.
“This happened?” I asked. “All of this? But I don't remember any of it. I don't even remember writing this down.”
“It happened,” the Inspector said. “I suppose if you looked hard enough you could find proof. Clippings from the evening news. Video footage from a child on their cell phone. But no one will be looking for proof, because no one has a reason to. As far as Pacific Glade is concerned, the last twenty-four hours never happened.”
“But you remember, don't you?” I said. “You're not like the rest of us.”
He didn't answer me - at least not directly. He walked over to the patio window and placed a slender hand on the glass. “I went back to Marcy’s house early this morning,” he said. “Something felt off and I suspected it was because of her. But the place was empty. She'd packed her bags and left town within hours of the incident. But not before carefully using the last of her power to excise all memories of her from your heads.”
“But that's crazy,” I said. “A person can't just... erase themselves. Surely someone's gotta remember her.”
“On our last case,” he said suddenly, “with the being in the radio. Who helped us down at the station?”
“It was just the receptionist,” I said. “Hell, Inspector, I don't even know her name. She had glasses? Brown hair? She showed us the broadcast rooms and told us about the old station. Why are you asking?”
“Because your memory is wrong,” he said. “There was a receptionist, yes, but Marcy was the one who helped us. Marcy told us about the old station. You don't remember her because she doesn't want you to remember. She found the thread connecting you two and snipped it - along with all the other threads in town.”
I was starting to feel dizzy, so I took a seat. “There's no way a human being could do all that,” I said. “Even if she was juiced up on alien mojo.”
“She was very powerful,” the Inspector said lightly. “More powerful, I think, than she knew. But it's irrelevant now. The world has forgotten Marcy McKenna. I'd say she's dead, but even the dead are remembered.”
I looked out the patio window, blinded by the sunrise. “Why do you think she did it?” I asked. “She could have just made us forget this whole thing happened. Why did she completely erase herself?”
“I think,” the Inspector said, “she was looking for a fresh start. That's where our conversation veered last night. And what better way to start over than a clean break from everything or everyone you ever knew?”
I picked up the notepad and flicked through it absently. It disturbed me, honestly, how I couldn't remember a single shred of this - how detached I felt from the Mark Hannigan who wrote these words. The guy in these pages didn't feel like me at all. Never in a million years could I imagine myself in some act of vigilante justice. Hunting down monsters was one thing. Hunting down a disliked citizen and riddling him with bullets was another beast entirely.
“I ought to be going,” the Inspector said. “Your family will be awake any minute. But please, don't hesitate to call me again. Even if it is just for dinner.”
I managed a smile somehow. “Will do,” I said.
The Inspector tipped his fedora to me, ever so slightly. Then he strode to the patio door and disappeared back into the glaring sunlight. I watched his silhouette for as long as I could before the sheer brightness forced me to look away.
Sunrises in the Neverglades aren't weird like our sunsets; the sun follows a perfectly sensible path upward until it's hovering in the sky like it's supposed to. But that morning the sunrise seemed to stretch into one elastic moment, leaving the kitchen in shades of vivid pink and orange. I watched the light creep slowly up the wall, thumbing through the papers in my hand. Then I rose from my seat and dumped the entire notepad into the trash.
I didn't remember Marcy, and I probably never would, but I figured it was best to give her what she wanted in the end. Fresh starts weren't such a bad thing, really.