REVAMPED AS OF APRIL 2014

"Carmen, you need to come back – you need to come back now, please."

Carmen blinked groggily – she wasn't sure why she had deigned it wise to answer her phone when it lit up on the bedside table, shining light into her face at two in the morning when she was supposed to be getting away from everything. When she did, however, she was met by Rob's voice sounding even more frantic than before.

"It's Mel – she tried to kill herself. She overdosed on the pain medication they gave her," Rob said, trying to get through the entire explanation. "I – I left to go pick up a few things from the office, I had her staying in my place, and when I came back she was on the bathroom floor. Carmen – Carmen, they just carted her away in an ambulance –"

"What?" Carmen finally managed to interrupt, making no attempts to hide her shock. Mort sat up in bed as well, able to hear the conversation from the phone. She looked over her shoulder at him, looking for some kind of reassurance, and he shrugged miserably when he had none to offer.

"Rob – tell me everything –"

"I'm trying to!" he said angrily. "She left a note – she said she couldn't handle it. The hospital bills, losing the baby – and she felt like shit because – because you wouldn't come back. She felt like shit from blaming Mort and – and – Carmen, you've gotta come back right now. They've got Mel on a hold, I can't even see her for seventy-two hours because they said she's a danger to herself-"

"I'm not going to come back – I'm going to get to the bottom of this," Carmen said, her voice filled with a certain dark determination that Mort admittedly found a little scary. "Rob – you never threw away those papers, did you? You know the ones."

"No."

"Give me Timothy Haley's address."

"What about Melanie?"

"She needs to be where she is right now. She's safe there - if I come home now, nothing will be any different," Carmen said, her throat tight as she fought hard to keep from showing weakness. She let out a heavy breath and shut her eyes, trying to piece together some kind of strategy - but how could you strategize in this situation? What tactics did you use to fight someone who you couldn't even see? Someone who was already dead? "I don't think I can do this over the phone. Can you meet us in Boston?"

"When?"

"Soon. I don't know - whenever I have what I need," Carmen said in frustration. "Just get me the address and I'll figure this out before Melanie gets to home, okay?"

"Ipswich - there's nothing out here," Mort said as they drove down the country road farther upstate. Carmen had insisted that he should just stay at the Blue Fox, maybe explore town a little more, but he couldn't stand the idea of letting Carmen go off on her own to confront some stranger who had run a man over with a tractor. An innocent man. It was strange to think of John Shooter as an innocent man, but in Mort's mind, he was slowly coming to accept that at some point, decades ago, that's what he had been.

Truth be told, Mort hated himself for this - he had brought Shooter upon all of them, and now they were here in the middle of nowhere, trying to find a stranger's farm so they could figure out how to exorcise a dead man from their lives.

Carmen, on the other hand, had no witty retort. She looked pale and tired, and she wrapped her large sweater tightly around herself, always looking moments away from being sick. As he drove, Mort reached out with his free hand to grab hers, only to find that her hands felt cold. He'd done this to her.

"This is it - the white house down that road," Carmen said, looking up ahead of them and pointing shakily. Haley's farmland had clearly seen better days. He had a horse in a pen up front, a chicken coop, and a rusty old Chevy parked down the way. The screens on the windows were crooked and in shambles, and the weather vane on the roof was hanging halfway off. The old man in the window spotted them approaching from a distance and immediately stepped onto the porch to meet their arrival - though it was clear their visit was far from welcome.

For a short while, Carmen and Mort simply sat in the car staring, while the old man stared back at them - and Mort felt a strange connection to the man. Knowing that this man could say for certain that he'd lived through the same things Mort had lived through - the hallucinations, the threats, the deaths - was chilling. Haunting. He glanced over at Carmen and said shakily. "I - I think I'll stay in the car. But if you need me, I can -"

"No, I can do this," she said resolutely, her eyes still locked onto the old man's. She opened her door, stepping out of the passenger side and clearing her throat. "Mister Haley, I'm Carmen... Carmen Allen. We spoke months ago -"

"I figured as much," he said shortly. "I could tell by lookin' at you."

Carmen glanced back at Mort for a moment, and he froze when he saw a glimmer of fear in her eyes. He had half the mind to stop her and call all of this off, but couldn't bring himself to speak up. She turned and walked up to the porch, and Timothy Haley saw her inside, shutting the door behind him.

Look what you've done, Mort.

"What are you talking about?" he answered, staring straight forward. It took him a moment to realize that he was talking to himself. The Voice was back.

I go away for awhile and you propose to her?

"Because I love her, and I thought this was finally over!"

How is that working out for you, Mort? What if it's never over? Are you just going to drag her and everyone in her life down with you?

Mort leaned forward and buried his face in his hands, shaking his head. Why was this happening? Why now, when they'd just had one perfect day? They were going to get married in Cape Cod and run away here from everything, and everything was going to be fine.

I know what you wanted to happen, but maybe some people aren't meant for those things. Maybe some people aren't meant for that kind of ending.

"She deserves that -"

Yes. She does. She's gone to hell and back to deal with all of your crazies, and she deserves the happy ending more than anyone. And she can still have it. But you can't, not like this.

"What are you saying?"

You know what I'm saying, Mort.

"Is that him, Miss Allen?" Mr. Haley said as he shut the door behind her. "Is that the friend you told me about, back in the car?"

"That's him," she nodded quietly. "Mister Haley, I'm sorry to disturb you -"

"I knew who you was, the moment I looked at ya," he said vaguely, walking over to his own mantelpiece and picking up a photo - Carmen knew from her own investigations that it was a photo of his wife and children. "You can see it when you look at a person, even if you've never met 'em. Loss. You lost your parents -"

"How do you know that?" Carmen snapped abruptly, striding over so that she was standing right behind him. "Mr. Haley -"

He turned around and looked at her with scrutiny for a moment, as though he didn't believe. When he'd finally seemed satisfied that her words were genuine, he raised his greying eyebrows and shook his head. "Lucky guess, I wager, Miss Allen. What did you come here for?"

"We got rid of what we had of John Shooter's," Carmen said, unable to stop a hint of anger from entering her voice. "You told me that was the answer. But ever since then, it's gotten bigger. One of my best friends nearly died last night, Mister Haley, and if you have even the tiniest amount of decency, you'll tell me why this is happening -"

"Think hard, Miss Allen," he said, glaring down at her.

"I don't have time for riddles, Mister Haley!" she said shrilly, refusing to back down and instead raising herself to whatever height she could manage. "People are getting hurt, and I need to stop it -"

"It'll only stop when Shooter gets back everything he lost. Every last thing," he said, striding away from Carmen and towards his dining room - Carmen quickly pursued, directly on his heels as he went to pick up the plate he had just been eating off of and bringing it to the kitchen to clear off. "I took Shooter's land. He made my life hell until I gave it up - it's in the trust of the Town of Dellacourt because I signed it back to his name, and ain't no one's claimed it," he rambled. "It took me years. It cost me my family, my freedom, but I'm at peace now."

"All we had a was a goddamn hat!" Carmen said, throwing her arms out in exasperation. "And we got rid of it, we don't have it! We have nothing else for John Shooter to take back!"

"I told you, Miss Allen. Think hard," he said darkly. "I have something to show ya."

He turned abruptly and moved to walk up the stairs and Carmen hesitated to follow him - the wooden stairs creaked, and Carmen realized it was probably the first time it had taken the weight of two people at once, as Mister Haley appeared to have been alone for a very long time now. Everything in the house was old - old photos, old furniture, old things. Mister Haley was a man who had never moved on. He opened a small closet situated at the top of the stairs and removed an old metal box that resembled a tacklebox, though when he opened it, it was filled not with hooks and lures like a regular old man would have, but newspaper clippings and photographs.

"Arby was a good woman once - and John was a stand-up sort of man. Good people," he said distantly. "And I paid the price because I done 'em wrong. They was good people." Carmen bristled slightly at the idea of John Shooter being good - it hardly seemed possible.

"What happened to her, then?" Carmen asked, still frowning down at the photograph. "They said she killed herself -"

"Not right away," Mr. Haley interrupted, shutting his eyes as though it were a painful memory to recount. "She was desperate. Ain't never loved no one but ol' John. She was desperate to find a way to keep 'im around somehow, so she packed up her things - packed up everything - and ran off someplace. She heard about those folks out there who thought they was some kind of witch doctors. New Orleans, or somethin' or other down there, I heard. Tried everythin' and it didn't work. She gave up - took 'er own life. Then they brought her body back to Mississippi -"

"From Louisiana?" Carmen asked, her face suddenly drained of color as connections slowly started forming in her head.

Noting her adamant skepticism, Haley pulled out one photograph in particular and held it out to Carmen. "This is from the corn festival - the year before John Shooter signed his land over to me. The last evidence left of the times he was my friend. I think you oughta keep it."

Carmen reached out and took the photo from his old, age-spotted hand and looked down at it. Sure enough, there was a younger Timothy Haley, smiling with his wife Amelia as his children danced in circles around them. It seemed like they were surrounded by other children playing as well. They were outside amidst the stalls at the festival, and next to them was another couple. While there was a clear age difference, she recognized John Shooter right away. There was something scary about the way he smiled - not because there appeared to be anything sinister about it, but the precise opposite. He simply looked like a happy man, clad in a plaid shirt, clean jeans, and his hat. His arm was wrapped around the waist of a woman who Carmen could only surmise was his wife, Arby. When Carmen took a good look at this woman, however, and one of the children lingering around her, she froze.

"Keep the photo," Mr. Haley repeated. Carmen looked up at him, her eyes wide in shock,and she made a few futile attempts at stammering a response before letting out a choked noise of a restrained sob and running back down the stairs, out to the car with such desperation to get out of the place that she left the screen door swinging creakily behind her. Mort flinched at her sudden emergence from the old house and looked at her terrified expression as she ran back into the car, shutting the door behind her.

"Babe?" Mort stammered, looking at her and hardly able to get the words out. "Are you okay?" He knew, of course, that she wasn't, and just this knowledge was enough to keep the words echoing in his head - he brought this on her, and he had no right. He suddenly felt like this was gnawing at his insides. He didn't feel guilty for Amy, for Ted, for any of it. As terrible as it sounded, he still felt able to shirk liability for those things. But this?

"Let's get to Boston, okay?" Carmen said. Mort barely heard her right, as her face was covered by her hands. This drive - less than an hour - was silent and morose as Carmen couldn't bring herself to even pretend to be okay. And she certainly couldn't bring herself to tell Mort what had gone so wrong.

It's because she wants to protect you. It's killing her, whatever it is.

Mort clenched his teeth to resist the urge to respond to the Voice right now - he couldn't do that in front of Carmen. He couldn't give her even more to beat herself up over, and knowing that he was back to hearing voices again would do exactly that. He flinched when he suddenly heard Carmen's voice again, only to realize that she had picked up her phone and called Rob. Eavesdropping, Mort picked up from their conversation that the designated meeting place was the bandstand in Boston Common, somewhere out in the open because Carmen was for some reason now terrified of being alone. They arrived at the gazebo in the large park - Boston's equivalent of Central Park in New York - before Rob, and stood in silence for a while.

It was a complete reversal, what Carmen had turned into in the past half-day. Yesterday, she had been vibrant, full of vigor, and now Mort finally saw the wearing caused by the past months. The months she had been with him. He exhaled, his breath crystallizing lightly in the cold autumn air, and he took a few more breaths, simply watching as each exhalation swirled in the air in front of him - it was calming, and he needed to be calm for what he was about to do. Unsure of the conversation he was starting, he took a deep breath and reached out to place his hand on her shoulder as she looked out over the rest of the park, waiting for her friend. "Babe?"

"Hmm?"

"I... I don't think this is fair for you anymore," he said, looking down at his feet until he could finally bear to meet her eyes. "I'm not being fair to you."

Carmen wheeled around, her pale face and tired eyes weary with confusion at the statement. She cocked her head to one side, tucking her hands into her pockets to guard from the cold. A small sliver of her mind in the deepest corners knew what this conversation was, though. She knew because many times - with all of the ones who turned out not to be The One - she was the one who started this conversation. "What are you talking about?" she asked fearfully.

"You shouldn't have to be doing all this. All of this mess with Shooter started with me, and all of a sudden, I'm relying on you to fix it. Everyone's relying on you to fix it," Mort said, suddenly sounding defeated. He waited for the Voice in his head to pop in, to give him some kind of guidance on this, but it was no use. He was already doing as the Voice had told him, and he wouldn't get any more help. He was on his own. "And I'm no good to you! There is literally nothing I can do, and I hate that. I don't feel like I can put you through this anymore -"

"You're breaking up with me," Carmen said in confirmation - it was not a question. There was no lilt of surprise, because from the instant Mort had opened his mouth, she had seen this coming. Her eyes became bleary with tears, and Mort felt like he was being stabbed over and over again with every little twitch of the corner of her eyes while she tried not to cry. "You - you don't -"

"I love you," Mort explained, reaching out and pulling Carmen's hands from her pockets, squeezing them like a man hanging from a cliff, clinging to life. "But - Carmen, maybe we shouldn't be thinking about getting married. Not until this is fixed. Maybe it's safer if we stay away from each other -"

"Stay away from each other?" she repeated shrilly, yanking her hands away from his. "Are you kidding me, Mort? You wait until I'm in it this deep to say that maybe it's a little too dangerous for you? Are you joking right now?"

Mort suddenly felt it too - he was about to cry. He hadn't cried over Amy. He'd been furious, he'd gotten drunk, he'd done plenty of other things, but he hadn't cried. He realized now that as much as he felt like his life was over after Amy, this was a hundred times worse. It was so much worse, letting go of someone who had done nothing but good for you. He wanted nothing more than to take it all back and pretend he had never said it, but for once, he wasn't going to be scared-Mort. He was going to do the right thing. He wasn't going to be passive - he was going to do what needed to be done, and it was going to suck.

It appeared that Carmen didn't need any more explanation from him - she shook her head and started wringing her hands for a moment before finally curling her fingertips around her engagement ring.

"No - please, Carmen, don't give that back," Mort interrupted, pulling her hands apart before she could take it off. "I'm not calling everything off, I just - I'm trying to -"

"I know what you're trying to do," she said in a weak voice, looking down at the ground and pulling her hands away again. "I understand. But dammit, Mort, you should have thought about this before you let us get this far - because I know you're doing this now because you're scared and you think I'm not -"

"I wanted to believe that everything could be okay, but it's obviously not!"

"If we're calling off the wedding indefinitely, we're not engaged," Carmen continued, throwing her hands up before quickly pulling off the ring as she intended before Mort could stop her again. She reached out and grabbed Mort's hand, placing it inside and closing his fist around it. "If we're not going to see each other, if we're not going to be together until God knows when, we're not engaged and I have no place wearing an engagement ring."

Now, the silence that fell between them was suddenly not refreshing at all. They were both standing in the middle of a park, crying - after fighting for this for seven months, they were calling it. Unable to help himself, Mort practically lurched forward and wrapped his arms around Carmen, who finally broke down in earnest, sobbing into his shoulder. "Hey," he said, running a hand gently over her hair. "We - we're gonna get to the bottom of this whole Shooter thing, for sure this time, and after that..."

Carmen let out another sob and stiffened at the lack of confidence in Mort's voice and with reluctance, she pulled away shakily. She didn't even really believe they could get to the bottom either - maybe there was no bottom - so how could she expect him to feel otherwise? "So that's... that's it then?"

Mort opened his mouth to speak, but could find nothing. He stammered a few times until a voice in the distance called out Carmen's name - they both turned to see Rob approaching, practically sprinting over to them. He froze when he came close enough to see Carmen's face - she never cried like that. Ever. He walked up to the gazebo and approached the pair of them, but before he could ask any questions, Mort reached over and clapped him on the shoulder like he had before.

"Make sure she gets home safe. I know you'll look out for her," he said in a choked voice, running off back to the car before he lost his nerve and decided he couldn't go through with this. Now alone with Carmen, Rob turned to her in confusion.

"We called it off," she said in a quiet voice, holding up her bare left hand in confirmation. "All of this Shooter bullshit - it was too much."

"You - you and Mort? Cam..." Rob moved forward and hugged his best friend tightly. Neither even noticed at that moment that he had called her Cam - the nickname he'd used for her when they were together. Instead, Carmen continued crying into Rob's shoulder until she was finally spent and he walked her over to a park bench, taking a seat with her and sitting in silence until she finally seemed to catch her breath.

"God," she said, forcing a laugh and shaking her head - Rob fought the urge to roll his eyes at Carmen's need to always be fine in front of other people. He knew she wasn't. He knew she was a wreck. "Stop babying me, Rob, we've got work to do."

Carmen's efforts at normalcy, Rob had to admit, were valiant as they walked to a nearby coffee shop and she recounted some of her encounter with Timothy Haley, though as she neared the end of the story, Rob picked up the obvious rush that meant she was leaving something out. What he gathered, however, was that the visit with Haley succeeded in confirming only one thing: they had to still have something Shooter wanted, and there was no way to be really safe until they managed to get rid of it. Neither seemed to have any answers for what this meant for them, so naturally, their conversation wandered as Carmen sipped at her coffee - her third. She went through them like water when she was a complete wreck, Rob remembered.

"I need you to tell me more about - about what happened to you, and what happened to Mel," Carmen said carefully. "Mr. Haley tried to - to do what Mel did too. It's not a coincidence."

"Maybe you need to give this a rest. Just for a day - you and Mort just -"

"I know what just happened between me and Mort, Robert," Carmen said, clenching her eyes shut. "And I'm not going to give it a rest -"

"Just so you two can get back together?"

"No, Rob, not just so Mort and I can get back together - because I want some peace of mind for the first time in a very long time." Carmen's eyes were filled with a certain fury that convinced Rob to drop the subject, and she exhaled, taking another drink from her coffee. "This is way over my head now," she admitted, shaking her head. "And - and -"

"Come back to New York with me," Rob interrupted. "You talked to Haley, you heard what he had to say - there's nothing left to do out here. Everyone who needs you is back in New York."

"I can't go back up to Tashmore Lake -"

"Then stay with me. Just a night - two nights - whatever," Rob interrupted. "I'll set you up on the couch if it makes you feel more at home, just come back."

Carmen looked down at her coffee and suddenly, sadness settled back onto her features as she gave a small, choked laugh. She didn't have a fiance who would be angry anymore, no matter where she decided to stay the night, so what excuse did she have? She shrugged in defeat. "Fine."