Chapter 16 – Through the Sandglass

The streets were a blur as Audrey floored the gas pedal of the rusty old Bronco. Above her the sirens wailed and painted the area around her in flashes of red and blue lights. Duke was in the seat beside her, because he'd insisted on coming along and she hadn't wanted to waste the time arguing with him, and he had a white-knuckled grip on the door handle. Adrenaline was pumping through Audrey's veins and she could hear her heart beating in her ears. This was it.

The brakes whined as Audrey skidded to a hard stop in the wide drive outside the Sunnyside Haven Hospice Centre. It looked colder and less welcoming than she remembered, the lawns vacant with the bleak weather and the windows curtained against the autumn chill that had set in early this year. Audrey hurled herself out of the cab of the truck, slamming the door shut behind her in the haste. As she jogged around the truck, Duke caught up with her and fell into step.

"What're we gonna do?" he asked.

Audrey didn't answer, not knowing exactly what she was going to do. All she knew was that she needed to get to this man and make him fix things, fix Nathan, no matter what she had to do to make it happen. Duke seemed to read her mind because he made a loud exasperated noise. "No plan. Of course. So same as usual then." And from there his incredulous complaints dissolved into muttering.

They burst through the hospice centre doors, most likely startling anyone that might have been in the lobby, not that they stopped to check. Duke tailed Audrey as she all but sprinted down the wide hall to the door she'd entered just days ago. In one fluid motion she drew her sidearm, ushered Duke behind her, and opened the door.

"Hands in the air," she shouted, wheeling around the doorframe and then coming to an abrupt stop. "No."

The room was empty. The bed was neatly made, the pictures had been taken off the walls, the medical equipment sat silently in the corners, and, worst of all, the armchair was vacant. "No," Audrey said again, lowering her sidearm and looking around frantically. "Where are they?"

"Agent Parker!" Ginger the black-haired hospice nurse came into the room, panting heavily and looking alarmed. "Agent Parker, what is going on here?"

"Where are they?" Audrey asked, gesturing behind her to the empty room. Ginger seemed much more focused on the 9mm in Audrey's hand.

"They're gone," Ginger said, her wide eyes still tracking the progress of the gun. "She's getting better; it's like some kind of miracle. Calvin took her home last night."

"The address," Audrey demanded. "I need the address. Where are they at?"

"What is all of this about?" Ginger asked, her voice slipping up an octave in her fear. "What's going on?"

"Calvin Demarcio, I need his address," Audrey said sharply. She could feel the countdown, the way that time was slipping away from them, and she didn't want to waste any more of it.

"Alright, okay," Ginger said, nervously eyeing Audrey's gun and then turning around. "I'll check my files." Audrey and Duke followed her back to the main desk, ignoring the gathering that was bustling around them in morbid curiosity. Ginger rifled through a large filing cabinet, shooting sporadic glances over her shoulder at them and tsking under her breath. Audrey tapped a fingernail against the barrel of her sidearm impatiently.

"Here it is," Ginger announced, pulling out a stack of paperwork and consulting it. "Calvin's address is 14 Mariner Avenue."

"Let's go," Audrey said to Duke quickly and then without another word she charged straight back out of the building. She'd thank Ginger for her help when this was all over, but at the moment there were much more pressing matters than things like manners. Not when Nathan's life was on the line.

She hardly even waited long enough for Duke to slam the truck door closed behind him before she gunned the engine and they were off again. "Audrey, you're not going to just put a bullet in this guy's brain when we get there, are you?" Duke asked anxiously from the passenger seat, grunting as her sharp turn tossed him against the door.

"Of course not," Audrey answered curtly but it wasn't an entirely honest answer; she had no idea what she was going to do, but if her only option was to shoot Calvin Demarcio, she was scared to admit even to herself that she would most likely do it without a second's hesitation. She didn't have to look to know that Duke didn't exactly believe her either.

Mariner Avenue was a narrow residential road near the coastline, with a great view of the ocean and the lighthouse in the distance. All of the great scenic aspects were lost on Audrey as she counted house numbers and then jerked the Bronco into the front drive of a squat house with a brass 14 tacked to the front porch railing. There was an old luxury car parked in the drive and Audrey let out a breath of relief that she hadn't realized she was holding; at least she knew Calvin hadn't fled the state or something.

"Stay back," Audrey hissed to Duke as they jumped out of the truck and headed for the porch. "Try to stay out of the way and don't do anything unless I tell you."

"Why?" Duke asked indignantly.

"Because I'm the one with the gun," Audrey replied, clicking off the safety and tightening her grip. Duke didn't say anything after that, but he did fall into place behind her as she reached for the door handle. It was unlocked, and she cautiously opened the door to peer inside.

The living room was tiny and just shy of being cramped, with mismatched floral printed armchairs and a sofa that all looked as though they must have been upholstered sometime during the nineteen-fifties. Photo frames dotted the walls, all holding faded sepia tone or black-and-white photographs, and there were a few artistically carved wooden statues and knick-knacks placed on shelves or resting on the end tables. Still, despite its simple appearance, there was something about the deceptive comfort that made the hairs on the back of Audrey's neck stand on end. Or perhaps that was just because she still had very little idea about what she'd be facing inside that cosy house.

Gesturing over her shoulder for Duke to stay quiet, to which he replied by rolling his eyes and giving her a look that all too plainly said 'duh,' Audrey slipped into the living room. There was only one way leading out of it, a narrow hallway that curved immediately and blocked their view of the next room. Audrey stepped carefully, trying to make as little sound as possible, to the hallway entrance and looked down. It was nothing more than a short, wood-panelled hall that ended in yet another abrupt turn that stopped her from seeing anything more. She couldn't help but wonder if this house had been built with the intent to look like a maze or if the architect was just an idiot.

Down the hall and then around the corner, and Audrey froze with a gasp. The next room was large, much larger than the entry room had been, and wide open. A small dining table set with two chairs up against the nearest wall was the only furniture, but that wasn't what had stunned Audrey. The wall facing them was comprised entirely of shelves, and the shelves were lined with dozens upon dozens of sandglasses. There had to be at least a hundred of them and no two sandglasses looked the same.

"Whoa," Duke breathed from behind her. "Someone needs a new hobby." Audrey distractedly nodded her agreement and crossed the room to examine the glasses. They came in all sizes and different styles of wood; some had coloured glass while others had bulbs that were wider or narrower; each had small designs carved into the wood around the rims. There was only one thing that every single sandglass had in common: each was filled with fine, snowy white sand.

"This is it," Audrey said, gingerly tracing a finger down the bulb of one of the glasses. "This is how he's doing it. The sand… it's got to be."

"So you think these sandglasses, that's how he's been killing people?" Duke asked and she could hear the scepticism.

Audrey didn't answer, her eyes catching onto something else peculiar about the glasses. "Duke, look at this," she whispered, staring at where her finger was resting against the bulb. There was a small hillock of sand in the bottom bulb, and a shallow pool of it in the top, but no sand was falling through the funnel. As she moved on to examine others, she noticed that they all were the same way; there were varying amounts of sand in each of them, some with a great deal in the bottom bulb and some with hardly any at all, but the sand didn't move.

"They're all broken," Duke said, tapping one of the sandglasses with his fingertip experimentally and furrowing his brow when nothing happened. "It's like they're all frozen or something." Audrey brushed her fingers over a dark wooded one, following the sweeping spirals etched into it. "Except these ones."

"What?" Audrey asked, spinning around to see what he meant. He was kneeling to look at the sandglasses on the lowest row of shelves and Audrey dropped down to her knees beside him. There, in the middle of the row, were two sandglasses with the sand trickling steadily from the top bulb onto the mounds below. One of the sandglasses was smaller, with a glossy cherry wood finish and the outer beams holding it together were shaped in wide, spiralling curves. The other was built in a standard, straight-lined style, all smooth contours and steady designs. It was several inches taller than the first, and the wood was soft and brightly coloured, sharply contrasted by the dark stain that emphasized the grain and knots of the wood. And there was something strikingly familiar about the bluish hue of the glass on the bulbs, fading into a light, transparent gray near the funnel.

"It's Nathan," Audrey said breathlessly, her fingertips hovering millimetres away from the wood. "This glass, it's Nathan. I can feel it."

"This is insane," Duke said but without a trace of disbelief in his voice.

"What are you doing here?" Audrey and Duke both straightened up, spinning on their heels to face the voice. Calvin Demarcio was standing in a doorway to their right, his knuckles white as he gripped his cane and his eyes narrowed angrily. "What are you doing in my house? Get out of here."

"Calvin, you've got to stop what you're doing," Audrey said firmly, raising her gun and levelling it with the old man's chest.

"I don't know what you're talking about," Calvin replied, speaking in a cool, emotionless voice and taking up a defensive posture.

"People are dying," Audrey said. "People have already died. Good people. You can't keep doing this; you've got to fix this."

"Good people," Calvin echoed incredulously. "Good people don't tell you to kill your mother. Good people don't tell you to just sit by and watch the only person you've ever loved die a horrible death. Not when you have the power to fix it."

"The sandglasses," Audrey said and the old man smiled, a smile so calm and normal that it was completely at odds with the situation. "That's how you do it, isn't it?"

"I always was a great sculptor," Calvin said knowingly. "I was good at taking things and making them take the shape that I wanted them to. Mother, she said I was gifted. An artistic prodigy. I've made thousands of things, but my favourite things to make were always sandglasses. Such simple little things, but they control time. When it's slipping away from you, you just flip it over and your time has begun anew. Fascinating, isn't it?

"But your sandglasses, they aren't normal," Audrey said. She needed to get the information from him, to find out how the sandglasses worked so she could save Nathan. Already the sand left in the top bulb of his glass was dwindling and she wasn't sure how much longer she had before it would be gone. She didn't want to think about what would happen then.

"I first found it out when I was eleven," Calvin continued conversationally. It was completely unnerving how calm and rational he was being about this as he sucked the life out of people. "It was only Mother and I by then, my father had died in the war when I was much younger. I made a sandglass, and there's this girl at school that I fancied, so I decorated it with things she liked. I brought it home, and turned it over. The sand, it ran so slowly. The next day, I felt great, like I was on top of the world, but the girl I fancied wasn't at school. She died the next day of a brain haemorrhage and no one could explain how it happened.

"It took me a while to figure out the connection between her and the sandglass, but I experimented with it a bit and got it down. My sandglasses, they don't just measure time, they control a person's time. When I make a sandglass, I can run their time out of their bodies and into mine. And with a little work, I figured out how to move that time into anyone that I want."

"And that's how you make your mother better," Audrey concluded in awe. "She's running out of time, so you steal it from other people to keep her alive a while longer. But these glasses, they're all frozen. They aren't giving her more time anymore, are they?"

"I can only take life from people while it's still in them," Calvin explained. "When they die, the sand stops. It's so hard to make it work. When people feel their lives leaving them, they panic and do stupid things to get themselves killed."

"Jeffrey Halter," Audrey said, putting the pieces together in her mind. "He really did just stumble in front of that car. He must have been walking to work and lost his sight. That's why he never saw the car coming. And Nurse Waters, she must have woken up without hers and then fallen down the stairs. That's why her bedroom was trashed; she couldn't see what she was doing."

"If they had only had the sense to stay still, to stay out of danger, it could have given her just a few more years," Calvin said mournfully. "I needed to find someone who could really help her, someone with a real strength of spirit that could sustain her for years. That's why I chose you." Audrey's eyes widened and she felt Duke move closer to her from behind, a protective hand on her back. "That day when you came to the Centre, I thought it must have been fate. The great Lucy Ripley coming to me in my hour of need. But it didn't work. I tried to make a sandglass for you, but it wouldn't work. The images, the power, it always slipped from my grasp. So I settled for your partner, for Garland's boy."

The mention of Nathan made molten heat boil in Audrey's stomach and she stiffened, her eyes narrowing as she sighted the gun to the old man's heart. "You're killing people," Audrey said coldly. "You are taking people's lives, Calvin, and that makes you a murderer."

"Taking lives to sustain another," Calvin said, his voice taking on a hint of pleading, as though begging her to understand. "My mother, she is everything to me. What kind of son would I be to stand by and let her die when I have the power to keep her clock running? That would be like murdering my own mother. You can't ask me to do that."

"Innocent people are dying to keep her alive," Audrey shouted.

"They aren't innocent, none of them are," Calvin retorted fiercely. "Not that cruel insurance man, the one without compassion or hope. He lived alone, he never knew love, never knew family. He couldn't possibly understand. He never did. And the nurse, the one who told me that it I was making my mother suffer. And Garland's boy, he was the same. He lived a cruel life, cursed the way he was. We all knew he was a cursed one from birth, we all know what he really was. Killing him was an act of mercy, to save him and to save us all from his fate."

"What about Marcus?" Audrey yelled angrily, her heart hammering so hard in her ears that she was struggling to hear what he was saying. How dare he say so many horrible things about Nathan? Kind, compassionate Nathan who understood her when no one else did and who stood by her side through everything. But most frightening of all, she hated the way that he spoke of Nathan in the past tense. "What about Marcus Cates? What did he do wrong?"

For the briefest moment, the determination on Calvin's face flickered. "It was a necessary sacrifice," he said resolutely but some of the passion had left his voice.

"He's a child," Audrey said. "He's just a kid and he looks up to you. He worships you and loves you, and you are killing him."

"To save her," Calvin screamed. "It's all to save her. I have to do it."

"Cal, what's going on here?" Audrey broke her staring contest with Calvin as they both looked back at the door that he'd come in through. The withered old woman from the Centre was standing in the doorframe in a white nightgown, but she looked younger and fresher than Audrey remembered. The wrinkles in her face had shrunk, and there was light and life in her eyes as she looked around the room with curiosity and alarm.

"It's nothing, Mother, go back to bed," Calvin said gently. "You need your rest; you're not all better yet."

"What is this?" Lillian Demarcio asked, staring at Audrey with wide gray eyes.

"Mrs. Demarcio, I know this will sound insane, but your son is using these sandglasses to drain the life out of people and feed it back into you," Audrey said in a rush. "There are two people dying in the hospital at this very moment. That's how you're getting better."

"That's ridiculous," Lillian said. "It's a new medication, something they gave me at the Centre, that's why I'm better. Cal told me so. Right, Cal?"

"Of course, Mother," Calvin said. "This woman is mad."

"Please, Mrs. Demarcio, you have to understand," Audrey said desperately. "My partner is dying, and so is a young boy that took lessons from your son. Calvin has a special ability but he is using it for the wrong reasons."

"That isn't true," Lillian said firmly. "My Cal, he would never hurt people. I can solve this, easily. A mother can always see the truth. Calvin, look me in the eye and tell me it's not the truth."

"Mother, you're being ridiculous," Calvin said never taking his eyes off of Audrey. "This woman won't just take your word."

"I will," Audrey said abruptly and Calvin glared at her in horror. "If your mother tells me you're telling the truth, then I'll believe it."

"See, she understands," Lillian said. "So do it Cal, look at me and tell me the truth."

Calvin looked torn as he kept his gaze levelled at Audrey for several long seconds, and then he slowly turned to look at his mother. "I'm not doing it," he said in a flat voice.

Lillian scrutinized him, something suspicious in the lines of her eyes. "Tell me, Calvin; tell me that you're not hurting people," she said and it almost sounded like she was pleading with him. "Tell me it's not true."

Calvin's expression crumbled. "It's all for you, Mother," he said breathlessly. "I'm doing it for you. To make you better. I can't lose you, Mom, I just can't do it. Not after everything you've done for me. I just wanted to make you better, so we could be happy again."

"Calvin!" Lillian covered her heart with a hand, looking horrified. "Calvin, this can't be true. You told me that the ability never came back after Lucy went away. You told me you would never hurt anyone again, not after what happened to Emily. How could you?"

"To save you!" Calvin yelled, tears on his cheeks as he stared at her imploringly. "I did it for you, Mother. You told me that you wanted us to have more time together, that you wanted us to be a family again."

"Not like this," Lillian said, shaking her head. "Never like this, Cal."

"Mother, please!" Calvin shouted so loudly that his voice cracked, but Lillian simply shook her head and turned away, disappearing back into the other room. Calvin wheeled on Audrey, his face flushed and his eyes burning. "This is your fault!" he shrieked. "This is all your fault. If you hadn't come, we would've been happy. She would've understood. This is your fault!"

"Audrey!" Duke yelled from somewhere off to the right and Audrey turned to look. A split second later Calvin's cane connected with the side of her head and she crumpled. Her grip went slack as she hit the floor and she rolled to soften the impact, clambering unsteadily back to her feet several feet away. As she regained her bearings, she realized that her sidearm had fallen at Calvin's feet and he had grabbed it, turning to point it at her.

"No!" Duke had shouted again, his voice nearly drowned in the clap of the gunshot. He collided with Calvin at the same moment that the bullet struck Audrey, and she buckled backwards into the wall while they fell against the shelves holding the sandglasses.

"NO!" This time it was Audrey who'd screamed it, because through the haze in her vision she watched as Nathan's sandglass teetered ominously. Then, as though in slow motion, it revolved three times before hitting the floor and shattering in an explosion of glass and wood splinters, and as the sand spread across the carpet it turned blood red.