Chapter 11
CHAPTER
ELEVEN
“Anybody gone missing around here lately?” Jack asked the gas station clerk as he handed over the money for his hot dog. This time, it was extra wrinkly and smelled like battery acid and salt.
The clerk paused, change clinking into the drawer as he slowly raised his gaze to meet Jack’s. “That’s an odd question.”
“I thought I heard a rumor. Just wondering if I should keep an eye out while I’m here.”
The clerk rubbed his greying sideburns thoughtfully. “Check the bulletin board back by the bathrooms. Anyone missing’ll be posted there.”
“Thanks,” said Jack, who had no intention of taking his hot dog any closer to the bathroom than necessary. He’d seen the horrors congealing beyond that steel door and had no desire to revisit them.
The next morning, he returned to the gas station. For once, cars lined up at the pump.
Oh. Business was much improved in the morning. Anyone who worked outside of town would need to leave around this time. Anyone headed home after a vacation would seek an early start.
He walked slowly, watching as people stopped to fuel their cars, taking stock of all the individuals he’d never seen.
Mostly businessmen who probably worked in the neighboring city.
A station wagon towing a boat pulled in behind a truck loaded with lumber.
A woman waited beside a cherry-red convertible.
Blonde-haired and well-dressed, she reminded him of someone who might introduce a case in Staring Down the Barrel—theft or embezzlement, probably.
Her gaze followed him into the gas station.
The hair on the back of his neck prickled uncomfortably.
Jack had carefully counted his money last night and determined that he had enough to buy a cup of coffee, a second muffin, and still have change leftover for his nightly hot dog.
At some point, he should probably look into alternative dining options. A hot dog a day couldn’t be good for him, even if this day had no lasting consequences. Besides, he was tired of the sensation of old rubber between his teeth.
But right now, he had other plans.
He spent a long time perusing the bulletin board by the bathroom, stepping out of the way and apologizing profusely every time someone tried to get in line behind him. Missing pets, babysitting services, lawn aeration companies, a nail salon… No missing persons.
Odd. What poor bastard ended up buried in the woods?
Maybe not a local.
Then who? A tourist? A drifter? Or someone held hostage for so long that the case had gone cold?
Maybe the library would have answers. Or maybe he’d missed something in the news.
On the way back to the hotel, Jack snatched a discarded newspaper from a bench and carried it under his arm.
Boris stopped him on his way through the lobby. “Some lady called for you,” he said. “I patched her through, but you weren’t here.”
“Oh,” said Jack, startled. Someone called. For him. But that couldn’t be right. “Did she leave a name?”
“Nope,” said Boris, flipping a page in his magazine. A column of text, a photo of a woman in a bikini holding a surfboard. “Declined.”
“Oh,” said Jack, suddenly worried. “Um, could you tell me the date?”
Boris sighed, groaned, and turned to the calendar. “It’s the seventeenth.”
“Thanks,” said Jack. “Um, did she ask for me by name?”
Boris scowled. “Nope. She asked if there was a pale, dark-haired guy in a blue suit staying here. You’re the only one I see matching that description, so I sent her through.”
“Can you try to get her number if she calls again?”
“Maybe,” said Boris with a noncommittal shrug. “Can you fuck off?”
“Sure,” said Jack reflexively. A burst of shame followed. He was always too eager to accommodate. Too quick to try to remove himself from any unpleasant situation. Too fast to assume that he was the problem when he clearly wasn’t.
He knew all of this, but he couldn’t stop fucking doing it.
But there was no point in standing up to Boris. He wouldn’t remember tomorrow. Probably wouldn’t change even if he did. To Boris, Jack was just another loser in a revolving door of people he’d never see again.
A loser that he wanted to fuck, apparently.
“Are there other guests here?” asked Jack abruptly, rapping his knuckles on the edge of the counter.
Boris made a face. “Yeah, of course.”
“It’s just that I haven’t seen very many.”
“You just got here last night,” Boris pointed out.
“Still, though,” mused Jack.
“You spent all of ten minutes in the lobby.”
“Does anyone else work here?” Jack demanded, too annoyed to be polite any longer.
“Yeah,” said Boris. “Owner and cleaning staff. And Louey, but he only comes in on weekends.” He leaned onto his elbows. “You wanna see the manager? Think that’s gonna go well for you?”
“No,” Jack said. “I was just curious if one existed.”
“I am the manager,” said Boris, a little too pleased with himself. “Can’t help you, won’t help you.”
“That’s really reassuring,” scoffed Jack. “Who works nights?”
“Me,” said Boris, eyebrows drawing together.
“And you work mornings?”
“Yup.”
“Sounds exhausting. Do you ever go home?”
“Uhhh…” said Boris in lieu of an answer.
“Right. Doesn’t sound like it, honestly.”
Boris’s eyes narrowed. “What’s it to you?”
“I just think it’s a little odd, that’s all.”
“Uh-huh,” said Boris, lifting his magazine, then folding it like he was about to swat away a pesky persistent fly. “Like I said earlier, fuck off.”
Jack exhaled. “Gladly.”
The phone didn’t ring. He waited for hours, chewing on his lip, thinking of at least a dozen better things he could be doing. Still, he stayed, with only the newspaper for company.
Who was looking for him? Boris said the caller was a woman. Jack’s mother would’ve asked after him by name. So would the neighbor. Or Kathy. Or anyone who would call for him, really.
Had this person called before? Vaguely, he recalled an afternoon when the phone rang and he’d ignored it, assuming it must be Dan, ready to berate him.
Well, if it happened again, he’d be sure to answer.
Later that afternoon, he returned to the woods, driven by free lobby coffee and desperation. If he stayed busy, he couldn’t worry about the reality of his situation, which grew more hopeless with every passing day. How long had it been October seventeenth? At least ten days, he thought. Maybe more.
It wasn’t as if he could write anything down permanently. Even his carefully drawn map had disappeared.
This time, he scrawled a rudimentary map at the trailhead and located the trampled bushes in minutes.
How fresh was the grave? What would happen if he returned in the morning? Would he spy the culprits, or would he only encounter more joggers eager to side-eye him?
Did he want to know who did this?
Jack pushed through heavy branches and broken foliage and emerged at the mound.
He took his time examining the scene, noting a depression in the grass, and chunks of tree bark that looked like they’d been scraped off the nearby aspens.
He spotted an indent in the dirt shaped like the spade of a shovel.
He tried to identify individual footprints but found he wasn’t very good at that.
Multiple people had passed through here, but they all wore similar shoes.
Only one set of footprints was easily identifiable, as it was significantly smaller than the others.
Probably three people, he decided. There were too many tracks for anything less.
He found nothing else of note. No bullet casings, no discarded jewelry or weapons, not even a button that might’ve popped off a jacket.
For a long time, he sat before the mound. Who (or what) was buried here? Did someone miss them? Was a manhunt only a single day away from breaking out? If the eighteenth of October never came, would anyone initiate a search?
“I’m sorry,” Jack told the mound. “If you’re a person.
I—I can’t tell, and I’m afraid to check, honestly.
I just—I’m really sorry you’re stuck down there.
You deserved better. A real burial.” He frowned.
“Well, you know, I suppose this is technically a burial. I’m sorry, I’m rambling.
I’m sure this isn’t what you wanted. The rambling, and everything else.
” Knees creaking, he got to his feet. “I—I’m sorry. Again.”
He hadn’t expected the weight of grief and anxiety to be so crushing.
Death was something of a stranger to him.
Only once had he attended a funeral, and that was for a grandparent he barely knew.
He’d lost pets and grieved them, seen the mourning that his friends went through whenever their family members finally succumbed to old age or disease or injury, but he hadn’t expected to feel this way for a complete stranger.
There was an unfamiliar sense of finality to this mound.
Whoever was buried here deserved more. A proper headstone. A better send off.
Words were useless. The corpse rotting beside him couldn’t hear them, and Jack could do nothing to fix the situation. Reporting his findings to the police wouldn’t do much good. He’d have to call in every single day until the loop snapped. If it ever did.
But maybe the police knew something. Maybe he should call.
Tomorrow, he thought, reluctantly. If he called very early, then maybe there would be a report in the evening paper. Maybe he could pretend to stumble onto the scene and ask some questions.
No, the cops would probably just chase him off. Might even investigate him as a potential suspect.
This gave him pause. As always, the niggling fear of the eighteenth ate at him.
What if the body was the key to ending the loop?
What if he was always meant to stumble upon it?
What if there was no other way to right the universe but to repeat the same day over and over until the crime was solved, or at least reported?
Excitement pierced the measured, muddled dread of the last few days.
Was this… the solution? Could it be so simple as one phone call?
Only one way to find out, Jack decided. First thing in the morning, he’d report the body. The crime scene would be fresh, undisturbed by today’s investigation.
The parking lot was empty save for an idling sedan, polished and expensive, painted such a dark blue that it was nearly black.
Jack could’ve sworn it was sparkling, as though the night sky was reflected in its paint.
Then he blinked and the stars were gone.
The paint job was dull and uninteresting.
Jack tore his gaze from the car to the figure lounging against it.
Half-obscured by cigarette smoke, he wore a loose-fitting pin-striped suit, not terribly unlike Jack’s own, but black instead of navy. A bowler hat was tilted just so over blond hair, long and loose. There was an odd greenish tint to it. Perhaps he’d been swimming recently?
Something unpleasant twisted in Jack’s stomach. For all of one second, he considered retreating to the woods. But the figure had already started toward him, moving in a cloud of cigarette smoke. Mist swirled across the asphalt.
Barely visible through the smoke were strange yellow eyes. Milky white skin stretched over blue veins.
Shit, thought Jack. The world dipped and reeled around him. He was going to die. This was the killer. Had to be. Shit shit shit.
Thin lips grinned around the cigarette. “Congratulations,” rumbled a deep voice. There was an unnatural reverberation to it. Jack’s bones rattled. Saliva pooled in his mouth as panic constricted his throat.
“For w-what?” he stammered. His knees were locked, his legs frozen.
Those strange eyes narrowed in something like amusement. “Normally, no one notices. You’re very self-aware.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Jack, barely able to keep his voice steady.
Catlike eyes watched him with intensity. “You’re observant. The first I’ve seen changing their routine every day.” The cigarette dropped the to the asphalt with a pitiful curl of grey smoke. Then it was ground under a heel, yellow filter smashed into the road beside the slanted parking line.
There was no one else here. Hands shaking, Jack said, “I-I’ve only been here one day.”
A knowing smile. Yellow, pointed teeth.
The man raised his eyebrows, tipped his hat, and turned on his heel.
The sedan roared from the parking lot in a plume of exhaust. The sound barely registered over the pounding of his heart.