"OK, calm the fuck down, drama queen," she says.
For, like, the seventh time.
She's driving. Away from Blackwell and that, which is enough for now.
"You've had flashbacks of shit that hasn't happened yet, shit that will not happen, shit that happened 3 years ago. You remember multiple versions of the same past event. Now you got a flashback of something you have no memory of, either living or hallucinating. Annoying, but you already knew your brain got scrambled by Frank Special. This is just another proof you're psychotic. No big deal."
Good pep talk, Price. Except, where is the fucking knife?
"A knife?" Rachel echoes.
"Yeah. My mom took mine."
The sun is hot, and Chloe is sweating. Her legs ache from the climb. Thankfully, there's a slight breeze blowing off the ocean. And then, of course, there's Rachel.
"No…" Rachel says. "How about a nail file?"
"I guess you could stab someone with a nail file…"
Rachel makes a face like "Good one, Chloe (but not really)."
"Oh yeah. Sure. Let's try it."
She's back in the truck. Rachel is gone. Some day that was.
Did mom actually take the knife?
She tries to remember when she saw it last. Like definitely saw it. Held it.
The only thing she can remember for certain is learning to throw it against the tree in the junkyard, in the small clearing behind the old school bus, not too far from… where she was excavating earlier. Both, Rachel and her were drunk, and high, laughing and screaming in horror, as the knife bounced every which way, and cheering and hugging and… kissing, when it stuck. It was a wonder no one got killed, or lost an eye, but then, that was a daily wonder with them.
This was on her 19th birthday, nearly two months earlier, so not very helpful.
Still, the memory makes her smile.
After that, after that.
She didn't lose it there, did she? No way. She would have noticed it missing in the two months that followed. Probably would have found it back since.
She thinks back to the Three Seals. There was no knife there. No need for one. The gun was going to be the ticket.
Before that, then? Went to see Frank to pick up the drugs… Keep going back…
I must have been at home, packing some stuff, right? Stealing the gun from the rack?
She knows those things happened, but after a minute or several of denial, she has to admit that she doesn't remember any of it.
Fucking drug. Fucking Frank.
Well, they did happen, though, so maybe the knife is chilling, unremembered, in its usual hiding place: the sheath taped to the underside of the desk. She visualizes it. Long hefty blade. A rectangular crossguard. Leather-cord-wrapped handle. She pulled it out of the wooden beam at the burned mill 3 years back. She sees the knife in her mind, in its sheath, and it seems as if she can almost remember leaving it there…
Until a voice inside her head says, "Or… you dropped it in the woods somewhere, at some point in the last 18 days. What was that sticky stuff, you think?"
The craziest part is the voice sounds like Max. The smartass Max.
"Shut up," Chloe says, out loud, catching herself before she said "Hippie."
Not going to start talking to imaginary Max now. Been there, done that.
Wouldn't mind some advice from imaginary dad, though.
She hasn't had one of those dreams in three years, give or take. Ever since she and Rachel began hanging out.
But Rachel is gone now, and Chloe needs help to find her. Should be good enough reason for any ghost to start showing up again. If the ghost cares, that is. If the ghost existed, and wasn't just the product of her psychosis, that is. Though with the way things are going, dad will probably start showing up during waking hours pretty soon. Wait, that hasn't happened yet, right?
It is with these thoughts that Chloe realizes that the sound she's been hearing for a good minute is her tires on a dirt road. She stops in front of a low gate. NO TRESPASSING, a sign says. PRIVATE PROPERTY. Which in itself is nothing a hop, skip and a double-middle-finger salute wouldn't fix, but Chloe keeps the engine running.
Past the gate, the dirt road diffuses into an old farmstead. There's a big, dilapidated barn, familiar as fuck. There's a rusted carcass of 1930's Ford in the corner of the yard and rusted wagon wheels leaning against the fence and the side of the barn. There are probably rusted horseshoes and nails everywhere. The woods surround the farm on all sides, except east, where in the distance Chloe can see a house.
Everything is quiet. Down here under the trees, it's getting pretty dark. There is no sign of animals or people. No lights in the windows. The place looks perfectly abandoned.
Except that, which makes Chloe want to turn around and drive away.
There are tracks in the dirt, going right through the closed gate towards the barn.
For a while she just sits here, her mind blank.
"How did I even come here?" she asks the dashboard King.
He shrugs.
It occurs to her that sitting there waiting for the night to fall and the owner of those tracks to show up is not a very good idea.
She opens the door and pushes off like she's about to luge. Then she reaches back into the hastily repacked duffel on the passenger seat, fishes out the gun and tucks it into the waistband of her jeans behind her back. She feels like a TV cop, and an idiot. But no amount of self-deprecation can make her turn around and leave at this point. She knows she can't physically get back in the truck and drive away.
No fucking way.
Gate hopped, she advances across the yard towards the barn.
"Nothing exciting ever happens to us," she mutters under her breath.
A different flashback leaps at her from every lengthening shadow.
There's the red folder with "RACHEL" written along the spine. There's Mark Jefferson, saying sneeringly that the room is under 24-hour surveillance. There's Chloe Price spinning around with her gun, and a shot, and the blood, and the hole to another universe between her surprised eyes.
She stops. Listens. There's no sound. No birds singing. Not even trees rustling. She kind of wishes she left the engine running still. It's too quiet. Then an invisible owl hoots like right on top of her head, making her duck.
A fucking owl.
The gun is in her hand now. The next time that fucker hoots is going to be its last.
She checks the barn gate. It's locked with a padlock the size of her face. A bullet would probably be useless against that.
Maybe there's a hole in the old wall somewhere, say covered with a metal sheet, oh, around the left side? It's worth a try.
She does. There's no sheet. Nothing there at all, but the wall, solid, aside from the peeled paint.
Figures.
She continues around the house, hopping the low fence to get to the back. The wall is unbroken there, too, but the ground slopes down towards a brook and in one spot the earth eroded from the rains, leaving the boards of the wall to hover in space. The resulting fissure is too small for your average obese American, but a scrawny 19-year-old woman might just be able to squeeze through.
It's mud again, but fuck it. She lies on her back under the hole, grabs the edge of the boards and pulls herself up and through, until her head and shoulders are inside. She freezes for a moment, because she thinks she hears a sound. Then she does hear it, but it doesn't sound human. A rat , most likely. Or that goddamn owl plucking its feathers.
She reaches out with her arms and elbows and pulls again, inch by painful inch, until she's sitting on the edge, with her legs in the hole. The floor under her hands is strewn with hay. It's poky, but dry and kind of warm. She gets to her feet and pulls the gun out again. In her other hand is the phone-flashlight. The beam of it sweeps the empty barn. She can see crap piled along the walls and in corners, but she's not about to search for ancestral Prescotts.
She goes straight to the spot.
And trips over something halfway way there, flailing and falling on her face with a ridiculous little scream, which reminds her, even as she succumbs to gravity, of playing pirates with Max.
"Motherfucker!"
Tasting salt on her lips, she scrambles up and confronts the offending obstacle, ready to eviscerate it. It's a padlocked latch, formerly concealed under a layer of hay. And there's a hatch. It's not where it's supposed to me - nothing ever seems to be - but it is a padlocked hatch in an abandoned barn with tracks leading up to it.
A shiver that runs through her is so violent, she almost drops the gun. Overcompensating, she grips the handle until her knuckles turn white. A flashback of Max using ropes and pulleys and hooks and time powers comes, but Chloe is not in the mood.
She points at the lock and pulls the trigger.
The gun kicks hard in her hands. The discharge makes her ears ring. She feels a shadow over her and spins, terrified that someone is behind her, but it's only that damned owl, spooked, flying out of the window under the roof, its wings blotting out the last rays of the setting sun.
Surprisingly, the bullet hit the lock and made a mess of it. To be free of the latch, all it requires is a little push. The hatch is harder work, but eventually she manages to lift it and drop it to the side.
There it is. The steps leading down. The tunnel. The door. There is even a keypad.
It's fucking surreal.
She advances, not quite believing it, not quite sure if this is a flashback or reality, thinking that Max should be in this tunnel with her. That it's all wrong.
At some point she finds herself in front of the keypad.
There's no way this opens with 1337, she thinks. But what if it does? What if it does?
She raises her hand.
"What the fuck?" a voice says behind her.