Nightfall ✓

Chapter 16

  • chapter sixteen • 

My phone rang the moment I stepped out of my art class. I picked it up, and before I could say hello, Zack's voice said, "Reddie? Are you free?"

"What? Um. I don't know. I was just going—"

"Great. I'm right outside that art centre of yours. 'Window to the Soul', right?"

"Yeah, but wh—"

"Meet me there immediately. I'm waiting."

"Can't you just tell—"

He hung up. I frowned at the phone. What was that about? I thought angrily. I wanted to ignore him, but his tone had sounded...urgent. Serious. Like he really wanted to talk about something.

I shoved the phone in my pocket and walked quickly towards the exit, and just like he'd said, his car was standing there. I opened the door and got in, putting my bag in the footwell. "Everything okay?"

"Yeah. I'm sorry I talked like that. I was just afraid that you'd ask too many questions and then say no."

I couldn't understand anything. "Say no to what?"

"Actually I— um, I want you to go somewhere with me," he said. I looked at him and started to say something, but he said, "please?" in such a beseeching tone that I couldn't refuse.

So he started the car. "Where are you taking me?"

He sat quietly, his lips pursed, as if wondering how to begin a long story. "I know you'll think I'm crazy, but...I've been searching for this William guy."

I tried to process this piece of information. "You do realize that he can't possibly be alive, right? He was in his twenties when he killed Mary. And now it's 2009." My hair lashed around me as the car picked up speed. "He must be more than hundred if he's still alive."

"Yeah, but it's not impossible, right?"

I exhaled. "Why are you looking for him, Zack? It's useless."

"At least I'm doing something," he said quietly. "So...you remember that dream you had some time ago, in which you saw how Mary died?"

"I remember."

"Well, I had the same dream a few weeks ago. It felt like I was inside Mary's mind, you know? I could hear what she was thinking. I could feel her anger. And when I woke up, it felt like some info from her brain had come into mine. It must've been because she touched me—" he shuddered, "Like, whenever I think of William, the name 'William Robinson' just keeps popping into my mind. I had a hunch that his full name must be that. So I got the Directory. There were around twenty Robinsons, none of them William. Maybe he changed his name after committing the crime. Then I noted down the details of all people named William. I... I stalked them a bit. All of them."

I blinked. "But if there's no William Robinson there, then he must have died."

"Oh my God, he's not dead! Do you really think she would be bothering us if he weren't alive?" he asked, frustrated. "Besides, she said that he's here. In this city. So his name has to be in the Directory. And if the name William Robinson is not there, then he must've changed his name after killing her to live safely. Maybe the whole name, in which case, we don't know how to find him, but we'll try."

"And what will we do then?"

"I don't know. Talk to him maybe?"

"And what good will that do?"

He swerved to the right abruptly, angrily, stopped the car, and slapped the steering wheel before glaring at me. "Can you stop being so discouraging? At least I'm doing something."