Rules Are Rules Page 4

  The deadly pattern

  The man didn’t have a name, not that Kevin could discern. He wouldn’t—or couldn’t—say what he was. Or where he came from. Or how he would do what he promised he could do.

  They’d pored over the wall of information, the man abruptly removing many elements of the things Kevin had gathered, some of which he’d questioned himself, but some that slashed at his confidence, because he’d believed so strongly that there was a connection.

  This had all happened wordlessly, with no communication other than tearing down the things the strange man discarded. What was left made more sense than Kevin could have credited. There were three other scenes that tied with Chloe, Emily, and Megan’s murders. They’d happened in different forest preserves and would have appeared random without the insanely gained knowledge Kevin held. The place the man was from. Once that was known, he mapped it, and the deaths all happened in a circle around that town. Cardinal points on a compass—this wasn’t some random spiral of locations. The killer had gone hunting to fulfill some deadly pattern only he could see.

  Hours later, Kevin brushed at his dry and burning eyes, staring at the wall of information, now pared down to the basics.

  “Can I save them all?” The first set of murders had happened two years before Chloe. “If I go back before there”—he pointed to the news article topped with the images of two young girls—“can I save everyone?”

  “There are rules.”

  “Yes,” Kevin barked out the word on a humorless laugh. “You keep saying that. ‘There are rules.’ But you won’t tell me what they are.” He shook his head. “I’ve read enough sci-fi to know time travel has pitfalls, places where I can get tripped up. The butterfly effect and all that. But what can I do that will keep my daughter alive?” He pointed at Chloe’s picture on the wall without looking at it, knowing where it was through memory alone, as if she were a magnet drawing his finger towards her face without trying. “Because that’s what I have to do.”

  “Rules bind the…” The man seemed to hesitate. Then a burst of that other language rattled through the air. “Aire sseccus. Eykwa lew eykwa. Vyr, fiubf ginw enyd? Tiy hyar qlbr ri veubf gwe ginw.” The same reverberating hum from before the man’s appearance shook Kevin’s feet and legs, burrowing up into him from where he came into contact with the floor. “Aire sseccus.”

  The burst of light knocked Kevin sideways into the wall, hitting with as much unexpected force as a concussive wave of air following a passing semi. He gasped in a lungful of hot breath, soft tissues of his mouth instantly drying until his tongue felt three sizes too large. Coughing, he tried to open his eyes, but his body rebelled, and all he could see were the faint red lines of veins in his eyelids.

  “Aire sseccus.”

  The light disappeared, and Kevin blinked through the tears left behind.

  “Rules are rules.”

  “Rules are meant to be broken.” He didn’t know where that came from and tried to clamp his mouth shut. A burst of sound came from the man, sharp-edged and angry. “No, no. I get it. There are rules and you can’t tell me everything.” He blinked again, eyes still watering fiercely. “Rules are rules.”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay. So I have to choose.” The man nodded, backlit by a source Kevin didn’t understand, because it didn’t correlate to anything that made sense. The light flickered and dimmed, then was gone a breath later. “And you can’t help me.” Another nod. “Okay.”

  He swiveled to look at the wall again, staring first at Chloe, Emily, and Megan’s pictures, then the ones of the other two girls. He could picture the place where they’d died, a bluff similar to where his daughter had been killed. He’d walked the trails around the location, mapped every inch he could, and was able to picture where he thought the killer had come from. He focused on that, building an anchoring point of reference he hoped this man would pick up on from his side of things.

  “How does this work? Do I just tell you when I’m ready?” No response, but Kevin didn’t want to look away from the image of the two girls to see if he was nodding. “And you’ll know where I want to go and when?” Still no response. Kevin focused intently for another few seconds, then turned to face him. “I’m ready.”

  The pain was instant.

  His body seized, back bowing until his rolled-up eyes could see the top edge of the far wall. It undulated, there and then gone, receding like a wave being pulled out from the shore. Every nerve fired at once and his vision shorted out, vanished in a moment, replaced by an unrelenting brilliance. The immense agony suffocated him, the weight too much for his lungs to fight against. Then the drawing sensation he’d felt earlier, when the man had first appeared, returned, stronger, pulling at him from all directions until he felt as if he’d blow apart in a maelstrom of torment.

  The light was replaced by darkness, thick and cloying, sticking to every exposed inch, smothering him as it swallowed him whole. There was no time; even the ever-present thud of his heartbeat in his ears was muted, coming at unpredictable intervals, fast as a drum’s tattoo one instant, then drawn out and resonating through him as a monk’s bell the next.

  It lasted forever, and no time at all, because without pause, he was on his feet, stumbling and coughing, arms waving out to the sides as he crashed headfirst into something solid. The ridged surface scraped his cheek and neck, pinpricks of pain swelling then diminishing, growing less and less, and then…gone.

  Kevin blinked at the light, sunshine streaming between bare branches of trees surrounding him. There was a path to his right, worn deep with the passage of innumerable boots. He reached up and felt his still-stinging face, finding it hot to the touch but the skin unbroken. “What the…”

  He turned in a circle, and slowly things began to slot into place. “I know this.”

  The trail beckoned, and he answered, laying first one foot and then the other on the giving earth. To the left was a distinctive tree, broken branches forming a cat’s cradle. “I know this.” He whirled and looked to the right, to the north, and there, as expected, he found the rock cairn set to the right of a narrow fork in the path, the blaze on the tree that stood in the center marking the left branch as a water source and the right as the main path. “He did it.”

  This was the forest where the first girls had died on a late December morning, where they’d been out for a post-Christmas hike. He glanced down, somehow more shocked to be appropriately clothed than to be there in the first place. Hiking boots emerged underneath what he remembered as his favorite cargo pants, lost years ago when he packed his single bag and walked out of the house he shared with Diane. A puffy jacket was zipped to his throat, and as he moved, he felt the comfortable slide of the combed cotton insulating shirts he always favored. Everything, down to the laces on the boots, were from his wardrobe. From five years ago. Chloe would have been twelve—

  His brain stuttered. Would have been swapped places with was, and in an instant, he was slapping at the pockets of his pants, his jacket, finding the familiar hard rectangle tucked away in an inside pocket. There was no signal, the disappointing words No Service hovering where the bars should have been. But on the screen were four notifications. Two from Diane, and two—ah God—two were from Chloe.

  He fumbled the unlock process from so long ago, palms sweaty when he finally remembered the sequence of numbers, knowing he was likely only one failure away from the phone resetting. With a tap on the text application, he ignored Diane’s texts for the moment, going straight to the ones from his daughter. Chloe, who in this world was living, breathing, laughing, and smiling. Alive. He closed his eyes and sagged backwards against a tree. Alive.

  I’m pouting. You went hiking without us.

  He smiled at the message, so like her to be honest about her emotions. One of her greatest strengths had been—was—owning whatever she felt. He and Diane had always said she’d carried her heart on her sleeve.

  The second was a voice message, and his finger hesitated ove
r the triangular-shaped button that would play the recording. “My God.” Kevin swallowed hard, listening to the silence in the woods around him. No voices, no footfalls, no crashing through the trees. Just him and this message from his dead daughter, not yet passed from the world. “My God,” he repeated, softer. His finger moved.

  “Soooo, I’m really, really mad at you, Daddy.” Her voice began with a drawn-out sibilance, trailing off and down a register by the time she addressed him formally. “You’ll be back at work before I go back to school, but you didn’t even ask me if I wanted to go hiking. Which I totally would have, you know. If you’d asked, you know. And just so you do know, you going out today doesn’t mean we aren’t going to do our normal first-day hike. No sir-ee. I hope you have a terrible time. It will give you a chance to think about what you’ve done, Daddy dearest.” She was laughing by the end, her tone at odds with the words, and he knew she’d already forgiven him in her mind. “Love you, Daddy. Hope you have a great hike.” A pause, but the timer hadn’t run to zero yet. Then she said in a half shout, “Alone.” The disconnect happened to the sound of her laughter, telling him she wasn’t mad. Not really. Annoyed that she’d been robbed of spending time with him, but not mad.

  He played it again.

  And again.

  After the fourth or fifth time, he was aware his cheeks felt chilled and reached up to find them wet.

  And again.

  A sound caught his attention, and he looked up from the phone to glimpse a young man walking towards him through the woods. Not an idle pace, but one intended to travel distances efficiently. He was covering ground. Head up, he stared straight ahead, and with a jolt, Kevin identified him. Recognized the barely faded bruises on his face, the split lip. This was the younger version of the man who would kill Chloe. Kevin glanced back at his phone, focused on the time: the first deaths would occur in less than fifteen minutes. With a final glare through the screening trees at the boy as he approached, Kevin took off in the opposite direction, towards the bluff where two girls would be hurled more than eighty feet to their deaths on the rocky riverbed, unless he could stop it.

  When he’d originally imagined this place in his mind, he’d seen himself taking on Chloe’s killer, reasoning with him, convincing him to not do these terrible things. But then he’d used too much time listening to the messages, captivated with hearing his daughter’s voice again, and now it was nearly too late. If he’d been waiting in the parking lot and struck up a conversation there as he’d planned, diverted the killer’s path until the girls were safe—but he was here, in the forest without a weapon, and no signal to call for help.

  The only thing he could think of was to get the girls to safety. To get between them and their fate, and prevent it from happening.

  The path split, and he took the track that would lead him to the girls, bursting from the forest only a few minutes later to see them sitting on the edge of the bluff. He didn’t speak, couldn’t have, panting for each breath as he whirled and stared back up the trail. He remained like that, attentive, waiting, long after he’d heard the worried buzz of the girls’ voices and knew he’d frightened them. The battered boy came into view minutes later, and as soon as he saw Kevin, he stopped in his tracks. Even from this distance Kevin could see how his eyes narrowed, read the calculations that ran through the boy’s mind, and saw the moment when he abandoned whatever plans he’d been carrying. The boy lifted one hand in a bizarre acknowledgment and turned, fading into the darkness between the trees.

  Kevin stood there and watched, not trusting that it could be this easy, that he could have altered things enough just by being here in this moment—but with every passing second, he came to believe it more.

  “My God.” He bent over, hands on his knees, huffing broken breaths as he tried to bring his heartbeat back under control. “My God. Oh my God.”

  “Mister?” The question came from behind him, and Kevin pushed up, straightening before he turned to face the girls. “Are you okay?”

  “Amber and Kaylee, right?” Their eyes went wide, and the taller of the two, Kaylee, nodded timidly. Teachers at her memorial had described her as quiet and reserved, studious. “You need to head back. Call your folks from the parking lot, and go home. Go home.”

  “How do you know who we are?” Amber, the one grieving parents had talked about as outgoing and sweet, never meeting a stranger, stared at him uncertainly.

  “It doesn’t matter. What matters is you’re safe, and you’re going to stay that way.” He stepped to one side, off the pathway and into the knee-high dry grass, weed stems crackling underfoot. “Head on back now. I’ll follow, but not close. I’m safe, girls. You’re safe with me. I’ve got a little girl about your age.” Today Chloe was only twelve to their fifteen, but she’d be fifteen in three years. She’d be fifteen and they were going to be eighteen. They were going to be eighteen. The gravity of what he’d accomplished hit him again, and he sucked in a breath, forcing a sob back down his tight throat. “I’ll make sure you get back safe.”

  It took almost two hours, but he trailed them the whole way, guarding their backs and alertly watching both to the sides and out in front. Nothing larger than a chipmunk broke cover as they passed, that tiny animal rustling through the leaves to one side of the path, round and fat, and ready for the rest of the winter season. Back at the parking lot, he checked to find his phone had picked up a signal again, as had the girls’ phones, and he listened in while they called for a ride earlier than expected.

  I did it.

  Kevin climbed into his car and sat, waiting, as the girls clambered on top of a nearby bench. They kept an eye on him and on the entrance, and a few minutes later, Amber stood and waved at him, then pointed to a car pulling into the lot. He waved back and watched the two girls climb into the vehicle, receiving hugs from the woman in the passenger seat. She, along with the two girls, waved at him as they pulled out and onto the highway.

  “Oh my God.”

  With a deep, deep breath, he started his car and turned towards home.

  Flawed

  The vehicle, the streets, the traffic—everything was familiar and right. Kevin wondered what he’d originally done this day, five years ago, but gave up thinking about it because the threads wove together in tangled ways. Everything seemed surreal, and he pinched the inside of his thigh at one point to verify he wasn’t dreaming.

  Through the gate and into their community, he thumbed the switch to raise the garage door, idling up the driveway. Diane’s SUV sat on her side of the garage, and he stared at it, remembering that last morning of happiness, piled on the hood with her as they watched the stars rotate overhead, Diane’s laughter the last thing he could recall being so right.

  Standing in front of the door that would lead him into the house, he sucked in a heavy breath. To Chloe, it would be as if nothing had happened, because it hadn’t yet. Diane wouldn’t have any memory of the hateful words spewed from both sides as their grief destroyed the relationship between them. Chloe was alive. Megan and Emily were alive, as were Amber and Kaylee. He and Diane were married and in love.

  Shaking out his hands, he rolled his neck as if preparing for a fight. He froze when he heard his daughter’s laughter from inside, Chloe’s words lost to distance but her joy evident. Her mirth was so free, so beautiful, he had to swallow hard to choke down the fear and grief.

  Okay.

  Finally ready, he reached for the doorknob—but just before he could make contact, he was jerked backwards, a painful constriction around his waist drawing him away. Through the wall and into the waning sunlight, it dragged him faster, trees and cars and buildings flashing past. He moved to the north at such speed that individual details were lost, only vague impressions of towns and roads, green and then blue marking where the forest gave way to a river, then back to green, then gray.

  The movement stopped abruptly and he was held in midair, feeling solid but knowing he couldn’t be what he imagined, because people couldn’t
just phase through walls or sheets of metal.

  He knew the building below him. Knew the car pulling to a halt in front of it. Knew the person jackknifing from the vehicle and glaring at everything in view. Chloe’s murderer. Emily and Megan’s murderer. Amber and Kaylee’s murderer.

  Kevin dropped towards the earth as if in an express elevator, the ground whooshing up at him at an alarming rate. Just before he struck, he stopped, that strand of whatever was wrapped around him not giving an inch, which meant instead of bouncing back up, he stopped dead, body folding around itself to compensate.

  Looking too old for his age, the teen strode past him, and a moment later, Kevin heard the shouting begin. Cursing and name-calling, everything was “Mark this,” and “Mark that,” and before long, he heard the same abusive words as before, telling Kevin the horrible woman was indeed this man’s mother. “I shoulda killed you before you were born. Taken care of it.”

  Silence then, so profound he feared he’d gone deaf, not even the creaking of branches or the faraway rumble of trucks on the freeway. A moment later, there was a burst of something emanating from the building, a boiling rage and hurt that went soul deep, breaking him apart, tearing his heart from his chest and burning it to ash.

  Before he could recover, he was moving again, backwards, rushing over the blurring landscape as the trees went from dark gray to bright green, then gray again. A cycle that repeated, and he could have sworn as he flashed over the river that the edges blurred, as if it were reseating itself in the crust of the earth.

  The pain started slowly this time, a feeling of density across his skin, his body tightening in on itself even as it grew elastic, a conundrum he would have spent years studying if he weren’t in the midst of experiencing it. His consciousness grew thin, until he could scarcely remember his name or the reason he was being sliced and dissected from the inside, great carving sweeps of his abdomen leaving a gaping hole that turned into a vacuum, turning him inside out as it sucked him in and through, the passage too horrific to think about for more than one nanosecond at a time. He didn’t understand, the grinding pressure rushing him along at such a great speed he felt like he was flying through space, if space were filled with deadly heat and pressure instead of cold and vacuum.