The realization hit me with the force of a physical blow, knocking the wind out of my lungs before I even reached the truck.
Fire.
Elias loved fire. He used it to cleanse. He used it to destroy. But mostly, he used it to make people look the other way.
The bonfire roaring in the town square wasn’t a threat; it was a magic trick. “Look at the hand holding the flame,” he was saying, “so you don’t see what the other hand is doing.”
And the other hand was reaching for Julian.
I threw myself into the cab of the truck, the engine roaring to life with a desperate whine. I slammed it into gear, spinning the tires on the wet pavement as I peeled away from the festival. In the rearview mirror, the orange glow of the bonfire lit up the fog like a second, angry sun. The drums were still beating, a rhythmic, primal pulse that masked the sound of my screaming engine.
“Pick up,” I hissed at the phone, hitting redial on Julian’s number.
Ring… Ring… Ring…
Nothing. Just the hollow void of an unanswered line.
“Come on, Julian. Answer the damn phone.”
I tore through the streets of Oakhaven. The town was deserted, every soul drawn to the fire like moths. The storefronts were dark, their windows reflecting my headlights like dead eyes.
The hospital was on the other side of the valley, a fortress of white brick isolated on a hill. As I crested the bridge, I saw it.
It looked peaceful. No flashing lights. No sirens. Just a quiet building glowing softly in the night.
That was worse.
If Elias was there, he wasn’t making a scene. He was being the ghost in the wall. He was sliding through the vents, moving with the silence of a predator who knows the sheepdog is asleep.
I skidded into the parking lot, abandoning the truck in the ambulance bay. I didn’t bother with the front entrance. I ran for the side door, the one near the loading dock where I had broken in before.
The door was propped open with a brick.
My stomach dropped.
“No,” I whispered. “No, no, no.”
I drew the revolver. My hand was shaking, not from cold, but from a terror so pure it felt like ice water in my veins.
I slipped inside. The corridor was silent. The hum of the ventilation system was the only sound, a low, steady breath that masked the beating of my own heart.
I moved fast, checking the corners.
A janitor’s cart was overturned near the elevators. Mop water pooled on the linoleum, smelling of bleach and dirty gray suds.
I hit the stairwell, taking the steps two at a time. Julian was on the third floor. Room 304.
I burst onto the landing.
The hallway was empty. The nurses’ station was unmanned—Miller had pulled the detail, and the skeleton crew remaining must have been drawn away. Or silenced.
I saw a shoe in the middle of the hallway. A white nursing clog.
I ran toward it.
Just beyond the clog, a nurse was slumped against the wall. She was young, maybe twenty-two. Her eyes were closed, her head lolling on her shoulder.
I dropped to my knees, checking for a pulse.
Strong. Slow.
I lifted her eyelid. The pupil was pinprick small.
“Dust,” I whispered.
He had drugged her. Just like he drugged Officer Miller. The Sandman sprinkling his magic dust to make the world sleep while he worked.
I stood up, my gaze snapping to the door of Room 304.
It was closed.
I approached it, the gun raised. The silence behind that wood was heavy, pressurized.
I reached for the handle. It was slick with sweat? No.
I looked at my hand. It was slick with grease. Heavy, industrial lubricant.
He had greased the latch so it wouldn’t click. Just like he greased the balcony rail for Richard.
I pushed the door open with my foot, leveling the gun at the bed.
“Julian!”
The room was dim, lit only by the streetlights filtering through the blinds.
The bed was a mess of tangled sheets. The IV stand was overturned, the bag of saline leaking onto the floor in a steady drip, drip, drip.
But the bed was empty.
“Julian?” I checked the bathroom. Empty. The closet. Empty.
He was gone.
A grown man, six-foot-two, injured but strong, had been taken from a hospital bed without a sound.
I spun around, scanning the room for clues, for a sign of a struggle.
And then I saw it.
On the wall opposite the bed.
I hadn’t seen it at first because the shadows hid it. But as my eyes adjusted, the message leaped out at me.
It wasn’t written in marker this time. It wasn’t crayon.
It was wet. It was red. And it was dripping down the white paint in long, jagged rivulets.
TAG.
YOU’RE IT.
I stared at the words, the metallic smell of blood filling my nose.
It wasn’t a threat. It was an invitation.
Tag.
I remembered the game. We used to play it in the junkyard. It was brutal. There were no bases. No safe zones. You ran until you couldn’t breathe, and if you got tagged, you had to chase the monster.
But Elias had changed the rules. He wasn’t the one chasing anymore.
He had taken Julian to make me chase him.
I walked to the wall, mesmerized by the horror of it. I touched the letters. The blood was tacky, drying fast in the dry hospital air.
Whose blood?
Julian’s?
Or did he bring a bucket of it, just for the theatricality?
I looked down at the floor beneath the writing. There was something resting against the baseboard.
A single, pristine playing card.
I picked it up.
It was from a deck of “Old Maid.” A children’s card game.
The card was The Knight.
But he had drawn over it. He had taken a black marker and scribbled out the knight’s face, replacing it with a question mark.
And on the back of the card, a map coordinate.
47°N, 123°W.
I knew those numbers. I didn’t need a GPS. We had learned latitude and longitude in Mrs. Albright’s class. We had mapped the entire valley.
I closed my eyes, visualizing the grid.
The coordinates didn’t point to the woods. They didn’t point to the Glass House.
They pointed to the river. Specifically, to the old spillway where the runoff from the mill used to dump toxic sludge into the water.
It was a dead zone. A place of concrete and rust and rushing water.
“He’s not hiding,” I whispered to the empty room.
I gripped the card, crumpling it in my fist.
Elias had Julian. He had my heart. And he had just told me exactly where he was going to break it.
I turned and ran.
I didn’t check on the nurse again. I didn’t call for help. The police were useless. Miller was guarding a pile of burning straw while the devil walked out the back door.
This wasn’t a police matter anymore.
It was just me and the boy in the walls.
And I was “It.”