“My baby,” she whispers.
“Let me go,” the voice repeats. “I … rest now. Please.”
“Did you hear him?” I ask. “He wants you to let him go. To let him rest. He asked you please.”
“My baby,” she continues, almost as if she didn’t hear me. “I don’t want to let you go. I don’t, Emma. Please don’t make me.”
“I’m not,” I say as compassionately as I can. “No one is. But Aaron is asking you to.”
“Why?” she says, her voice on the edge of a sob. “Why?”
“He needs to rest in peace,” I say.
“No,” cuts in Rodney. “It’s a lie. This is him, Mama. This is Aaron.”
“I heard his voice, Rodney!” she snaps, looking over at him. “I heard his voice.”
Rodney’s eyes flicker between us. I can see the madness just below the surface. He is dangerous. The knife flashes in the moonlight streaming through the window. Suddenly, he turns toward Dean. His jaw opens in a bellow, and his hands rise above his head. Laura drops him and rolls out of the way, screaming.
I am moving before I even can process what is happening. I tackle him with my bad shoulder. Pain shoots through me as we smash into the wall of the cabin. Hot, sharp pain fills my back, and I try to roll out of the way. A slash catches my forearm as I try to scramble back to the gun. I fall on my back, my fingers searching in the near darkness. I can feel him hover over me and see the glint of the metal as he raises the blade above his head.
My fingers clench around the gun, and I pull it into position, spraying bullets as I do. Rodney’s voice bellows out with mine as I empty the clip into the air above me. Suddenly, his body falls on top of me with a thud, and I feel my rib crack.
There is a moment of silence as I wait, taking stock of my breathing. Of the pain. I’ve been stabbed, I think, at least once in the back, and my arm has been slashed. My breathing is labored because when he fell, he landed directly on top of me. I try to wiggle him off, and a death rattle comes from deep in his chest. It’s the sound of a person with holes in his lungs trying to breathe.
It isn’t the first time I’ve heard it.
I get enough of my body out from under him to slide out, and I scoot to the wall beside Dean. His hunting knife is by my foot, and he’s still breathing, but it's slow and shallow. I take stock of my injuries, but it looks as if I’ll be okay. My shoulder is on fire, and my back hurts from the knife wound, but it must have grazed me, just missing stabbing into me. My body is covered in blood, but I know most of it isn’t mine. It’s the blood that is slowly pooling around Rodney’s body, lying face-down on the floor.
“Baby?” Laura’s voice says from the other end of the room.
I peer through the darkness and see her clutching the Spirit Box. I dropped it when I charged after Rodney. She doesn’t seem to even notice Rodney, just feet from her.
“Let me go,” the box says again.
“It’s okay, baby,” Laura says. “It’s all over now.”
Chapter Thirty-Six
Seconds later, I hear the scream of sirens and see the splash of blue and red lights through the broken door of the cabin. My head drops back against the wall, and I let out a breath of relief.
“Emma!” Sam calls from outside.
“I'm here!” I call.
He and Xavier push through the door and stop when they see Rodney on the ground with Laura in front of him, curled up around the Spirit Box, seeming not to notice her son's blood seeping into the wood.
"Are you okay?" Sam asks.
"I'll be fine. He cracked me on the head. Sprained shoulder and a cut on my back. Nothing. Dean needs help right now. He's going to need to be evacuated."
Sam takes my hand and pulls me up off the floor as other officers stream inside.
"Come on. Let's get you out of here."
"Elsie," I say. "Did you…"
"She's alive," he says.
"Thank God," I say. "How did you find her?"
"I didn't. Xavier did," he says.
"What?"
"Apparently when you tracked Dean, he was able to see your location."
"I still don't understand how I had the reception to do that. I wasn't close enough to the ranger's cabin. It shouldn't have worked," I say.
"Maybe it was…"
"It wasn't ghosts, Sam."
"A miracle."
I smile at him, tears building in my eyes as the paramedics rush for the cabin. I nod.
"I'll take that."
The helicopter arrives for Dean within minutes. I watch from the bumper of the ambulance, the emergency responders patching up my back, as the Life Flight carries him away. The officers have Xavier taking them through the woods back to the mine, where Elsie sat for days among the bones of those who hadn't yet been brought to the lake or the woods.
Maybe they were there for another reason. And maybe someday Laura will tell us. But for now, what matters is Elsie is alive, and Laura is in custody. The answers will come.
"Be gentle with her," I say to Sam as he goes to handle the formal arrest.
"I will," he says.
She's a broken woman. My heart aches for her. I can't imagine the pain she's suffered as she spiraled into madness after her son's death. What she has ahead of her won't be easy. But I'll do everything I can to make sure she gets the care she needs, so someday she may be whole again.
The sun has come up by the time Xavier comes back out of the woods. I'm sitting on one of the weathered old picnic tables in the campground, watching the excavation of the lake ahead of me. Divers come up out of the
