Chapter 21
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
The ground slid out from beneath me.
“You can’t,” I said, shaking my head back and forth. “It’s not him. It can’t be him.”
This isn’t happening. This isn’t real. None of this is real.
“I’m so sorry, Reece.” Tate truly looked it.
I wanted to wake up in Charlie’s arms back in the lookout and find the last twenty-four hours had all been a horrible nightmare.
No one had interrupted what should’ve been a beautiful moment between us. That truck I saw belonged to a perfect stranger, and it was their life currently being flipped upside down, instead of my best friend’s.
Viola Morris had given Charlie and me an easy solution to being together. A simple incantation or ceremony, and poof.
Everything was fixed.
Charlie could stay, and we’d be happy. Forever.
Instead… My shoulders dropped, arms limp at my sides. All of my anger and fight fled. It washed away in those last fleeting, precious moments we’d spent together, leaving me raw and exposed.
Charlie took my hand, fingers cold against mine. “I want to remember,” he said, voice scratchy.
My heart seized. “Charlie, she said it would—”
“I’m doing this, Reece. I want to help your friend before it’s too late.”
Tate’s gaze darted between us. He nodded. “Okay. We have to do it now, though. I should already be at the station.”
Now.
Now.
Now.
It was happening now, and I wasn’t ready. There was so much left unsaid between us. So much life ahead of us, unlived. There was way too fucking much meaning in the way Charlie squeezed my hand before he released it.
He strode forward, confident and sure as he went with Tate back into the house.
Stumbling along, I could only follow. I refused to let him out of my sight. “Charlie, please,” I begged. “Please.”
He turned to face me and cupped my cheeks between his hands. “You’re not the only one allowed to give everything for the people you love.”
My chest cracked wide open.
“And this isn’t goodbye,” he continued, looking similarly dismantled. “I’ll try to come back before… Before that. But I need to do this for you.”
I felt like I was trapped inside a car that’d broken down across a set of railroad tracks. I could see the train quickly approaching and knew it would be the final blow to this horror of a day, but I was powerless to stop it.
Charlie kissed me once, hard and devastating. Then he pulled me through the door, back into that awful room to do the thing that could take him away from me forever.
It could also save my friend from a murder conviction.
I didn’t have room anymore to even hope for the best in either scenario. I just wanted it to never happen, and to already be over, all at once.
Still in the recliner, Viola and Sunshine were where we’d left them. Unfortunately, so was the sweat imprint of my ass and thighs on the sofa cover, which made it less sticky and more slippery when I sat back down.
Of all the tragedy today had wrought, that might’ve been the final fucking straw.
Charlie sat next to me on the squeaky couch, with his back straight, shoulders squared. “I’m ready. I want to remember.”
I’m not ready, I thought selfishly.
“Alright,” she said, voice soft. “I’m going to take you through a few calming exercises first, before we attempt to access those memories.”
She reached for a small remote and pointed it at a wireless speaker sitting on the table next to Charlie.
The soft pattering of rain began to play, accompanied by the slow, quiet musical cords I imagined one would find in a massage parlor.
“Close your eyes,” she said, “and breathe. Inhale,” she acted out her instructions along with Charlie, “and exhale.”
He did as she asked, stoic and dutiful in his mission, until a peacock cried out over the sound of the rain. His eyes popped open, looking around with concern. “What was that?”
“Just the music, dear. Focus on your breathing.”
If I felt less like the world was ending, I’d have commented that being lost in a jungle seemed like the complete opposite of relaxation. As it were, I could only concede this psychic, new-age bullshit was the appropriate soundtrack for the worst day of my life.
Once the breathing was done, she began coaching Charlie to visualize his mind and where those memories were stored.
I glanced at Tate, who stared at his feet, avoiding eye contact in a way that felt intentional to prevent us both from bursting into crazed, hysterical laughter.
“Now, find the day you wish to remember. Where were you when you woke up?”
“I was in the lookout,” Charlie answered, eyes closed and voice distant. “It had rained the night before, and the air was humid. I went to open the windows for a cross breeze, but… Someone was there. Someone was walking up to the lookout.”
Tate looked up, eyes narrowed. My attention honed in on Charlie’s words.
“He introduced himself as a police officer investigating the disappearances,” Charlie continued.
“Ted? Ned? I can’t remember his name. He was nice.
Polite. He asked if I’d seen anything unusual in the last few days, and if he could see my observation logs.
He said he had to stop off at the ranger station on his way back anyway, so he’d drop them off for me. ”
His fingers twitched where they rested on his lap.
“And then what?” Viola prompted.
“I was preparing to go to bed, but I hadn’t even finished taking my boots off yet. Something outside caught my eye.”
“What did you see, Charlie?” she asked quietly.
His eyes darted behind his eyelids, and his breathing picked up. “I saw something through the window, down below. Someone’s out there, with a flashlight. I think they need help.”
He began to flicker and tremble. I grabbed for his hand on instinct, and he clutched my fingers close, body solidifying again.
Now that I knew what was happening, I could feel his presence, his energy, gently tugging on my own. He wasn’t demanding or too much. It was more like a request, maybe?
Like someone holding out their hands over an open flame, he soaked in the warmth I freely gave him. If only I could convince him I’d happily burn for him for as long as he needed; I’d burn for him forever.
“I’m down there now, by the trees. I call out to them, but they aren’t responding. Why do they keep getting further away?”
His tone shifted. “I ju—ant to make sure you—okay!” he called out, voice echoing through time as if he were actually speaking with them, all those years ago.
I wasn’t sure if the shaking of our hands came from him or me.
“I think I’m lost now,” he whispered, his outline shifting and blinking. “It’s darker under the canopy than I thought, and my flashlight doesn’t carry as far as it did out in the open. I need to get back to the lookout.”
The genuine fear in his voice was hard to listen to. I wanted to pull him out of the recollection, to protect him from what was about to happen, but…
Charlie wanted to do this. He wanted to remember, to help.
I squeezed his hand tighter.
“Something’s there,” he said, voice a hushed warning.
His head turned sharply to the left, and I felt him pulling on that connection more forcefully, now, like he struggled to remain in the present.
“Someone’s running at me. I turn to get away, but…
” he gasped. “I—tripped. I d—t have m—light. It’s so dark—can’t see. ”
“It’s okay,” I whispered, taking his other hand in mine, too. “Stay here. Stay with me.”
He listened, and all of a sudden, I understood what Viola meant when she said our connection could be dangerous. My eyes grew heavy as he pulled energy from me, and my head throbbed. I wasn’t sure if my nausea was migraine-related or from the realization that Charlie could take too much.
“Do you see anyone, Charlie? Do you see their face?” Tate asked.
Charlie shook his head rapidly, eyes squeezed tight. “No. I can’t see anything. I just hear—behind me. Running. I can’t st—if they—catch me, and—AHH!”
He let out an inhuman scream and flinched, doubling over in pain. Tears rolled down his cheeks before disappearing completely, and nearly his entire body turned translucent.
I could feel how much of a struggle it was for him to hold on. He clung to me, both physically and through our shared connection, doing everything he could to stay.
“HELP!” He wailed. The knick-knacks on the table beside him shook and spun around, clinking against each other. “I can’t get up!”
“Charlie?” I called. The room tilted when I knelt in front of him and took him by the shoulders, shaking him. “Charlie! It’s okay. It’s just a memory. Please, baby, he can’t hurt you again. You’ve gotta let go of it. You can’t stay there anymore. We can’t stay there. Come back here, please.”
“I can’t,” he cried again, fighting me, fingers scrabbling at his lower body. His leg? Or his foot? “I—stuck—hurts.”
My heart broke. He was reliving the worst moments of his life, and I couldn’t help. I couldn’t stop it. No matter how hard I tugged, I couldn’t pull him back.
“H—lp! P—se! Wait—no—don’t!”
He inhaled sharply. His eyes flew open with a gasp, blinking rapidly and casting around the room until they landed on me. “R—ce,” he tried, words nearly inaudible, “you—n’t—go—ack. No—afe!”
Dread pooled in my gut at the stark terror and pain etched into his expression, but even more so at how pale he was. Barely there at all, wavering and patchy, nearly his entire lower half was gone.
“What happened?” Tate asked, voice urgent, probably sensing Charlie had seconds left before he let go. “Do you know who killed you?”
I didn’t want to know. I didn’t. As much as I longed for retribution, as desperately as I needed justice for what happened to him, the knowledge of how the man I loved had died would haunt me for the rest of my life.
Charlie gripped my hands tightly, truly hanging on by a thread, now.
He’d become entirely see-through, a hazy, shimmering suggestion of a person, at most. Only the vague outline of the man I’d held in my arms and made love with remained, and I was so exhausted from keeping him in the present that I could barely hold my own body upright.
He shook his head again, frustration and fear yanking him from me.
“I—uck—ap!”
“What?” Tate asked. “I can’t understand you.”
Another lightbulb popped behind Charlie when he tried to speak, dimming the room further. I couldn’t hold onto him anymore, my grip falling right through the pieces that were still there.
“It’s okay,” I whispered. I could feel that he needed to let go. “It’s okay, Charlie.”
He gritted his teeth, sheer determination pushing his final words through with a shout. The baubles surrounding him flew into the air, and glass shattered all around us. “—BEAR TRAP!”
And then Charlie was gone.