an' done the job myself. The strike was rich, you see. A uranium strike. An' it was bigger than anythin' we'd ever found. I knew it could make a man rich, but I knew it could only make one man rich. I wanted that man to be me.' He shifted his gaze back to the wall. 'So I killed him, an' he didn't die. Thirty years, he's been waitin' to get back at me.'
Isabel wanted to speak but was afraid to interrupt
Wilkins's dream sequence. The answers were here; she just had to wait for them.
'Swanson's heartbeats got louder,' Wilkins said, walking as if in a daze across the basement. 'I heard 'em for days. Just listened to 'em. Couldn't turn the TV or radio up loud enough to get rid of them. Couldn't get drunk enough to forget them. They just stayed right there, an' wasn't nobody could hear them but me.'
'I hear them,' Isabel stated quietly.
'Swanson ain't comin' after you, girl,' Wilkins said. 'It's me he wants. He wants to drag me into that grave with him. But I ain't gonna let him.' His face turned hard, but the fear remained intact. 'I'm gonna take him outta that wall, show him I ain't afraid of him. Then I'm gonna bust him up into kindlin'.'
Isabel stared at the wall. Despite the fact that she knew this was only Wilkins's memory, anxiety still tingled within her. She couldn't be hurt here, but that knowledge didn't seem as convincing as she'd hoped.
Wilkins took up a pickax from the basement floor and attacked the wall with a vengeance. Concrete chips spun free of the wall and shot in all directions.
Pain fired through Isabel as one of the chips slammed into her left cheek. When she touched her face, her fingers came away wet with blood. Nothing like that had ever happened. Suddenly the journey back to Michael's house seemed like an impossible distance. She turned and walked to the door. Her hand slid around the doorknob, and she twisted. The knob turned, but the lock didn't disengage.
She was trapped.
Max sat by Michael's couch and watched Isabel sleeping. His stomach knotted into a ball.
'Hey.'
Looking up, Max saw Liz standing beside him. She'd come over to him and he hadn't even noticed.
'She'll be fine,' Liz said. 'Isabel knows what she's doing.'
Max looked at Liz. 'Do you really think so?'
Hesitation showed on Liz's face. 'I don't know what to think anymore. All of this, Max'… she took a deep breath and let it out… 'all of this is so far over our heads, I don't even know when the last time was that I felt like we could deal.'
Glancing around the room, Max saw Michael and Maria talking quietly in the kitchen, picking pepperoni slices from the leftover pizza. Valenti stood by the door, like he was just about to go out and do something, but his attention was riveted on the television. News stories of people who had seen ghosts in Roswell continued to interrupt television programming. Kyle sat nearby on the floor, his injured arm elevated as he dozed.
'I know,' Max said. 'It's always been kind of complicated.' He shook his head. 'I had no right bringing you into this.'
'You didn't bring me into this,' Liz said. 'You saved me that day in the Crashdown.'
'I should have stopped there,' Max said. 'When you came back around asking questions, I should have just walked away.'
'You couldn't do that,' Liz told him.
Max looked into her eyes and felt as if he were standing on the edge of a cliff. 'No. I tried.'
'Life's complicated,' Liz said. 'Maybe yours is a little more complicated than others', but I'm sure it could be worse.'
'I don't know. Roswell seems to be full of ghosts because of us.'
'No. The ghosts were coming. You… we… may be able to help.' Liz nodded toward the television. 'Those people out there don't have a clue, Max. River Dog doesn't know what to do. He told you that. But you and Michael and Isabel, maybe you three can do something about this. Maybe you were meant to.'
'I hope so,' Max said. There was a lot more that he hoped for, but he didn't dare put those thoughts into words.
'No matter how complicated your life gets,' Liz said, putting her hand inside his, 'I'll be there for you.'
Max looked at her, elation pushing up through him and overpowering the hopelessness and fatigue that had been dogging him. 'You will?'
'Yes,' Liz said. 'That's what friends do.'
Friends. The word dropped like an anvil through Max's stomach. Sour bile rose to the back of his throat, but he managed to swallow it back down. Friends. Could he just be friends when he wanted so much more? Then he felt guilty. After the way he had treated Liz, he had no reason to expect anything more. In fact, he should be grateful that she was still willing to be his friend.
Max tried to speak but couldn't. The effort hurt, and he knew his words would come out strained. Instead he squeezed her hand reassuringly.
'Max,' Liz said, her voice soft and low.
Max turned his attention to her, but before she could continue, Isabel jerked violently on the couch. A low moan escaped her lips.
Releasing Liz's hand, Max leaned up on his knees and searched Isabel's face. Her features contorted in fear or pain, Max wasn't sure.
'Isabel,' Max called softly, not wanting to wake her too abruptly. 'Isabel.'
Isabel moaned again, then jerked and tried to roll. Max caught his sister before she tumbled from the couch.
'What's wrong?' Valenti asked, suddenly at Max's side.
'I don't know,' Max said.
Isabel jerked and convulsed, moaning again.
'Isabel,' Max said. 'Come on. Come on back. Isabel!'
Isabel stood with her back to the locked basement door. She wanted to go back to Michael's house, but she knew she might not get another chance to dreamwalk Leroy Wilkins. The answer to some of what faced them lay in this room. She was certain of that.
Wilkins hauled back the pickax again, then threw the gleaming point forward, digging the pick into the wall. Concrete shattered and broke. Sparks leaped from the contact, buzzing out like burning embers. The old man gasped for breath, sounding like a bellows in the enclosed space.
But the maddening thump of the heartbeat continued.
Isabel forced herself to stay when everything in her wanted to go.
The pick passed through the concrete wall with a metallic crunch. Wilkins gave an insane whoop of glee. 'I got you now, Swanson. I got you now. You ain't gonna crawl out of that grave an' come for me some night. I'm gonna finish the job I started all those years ago. Gonna put you back in the ground, an' you're gonna stay there.'
Fractures spread across the concrete surface, marking out the roughly rectangular shape the body had been hidden behind. Chunks of rock fell onto the basement floor at Wilkins's feet. Once the hole was made, Wilkins dropped the pickax and seized the sledgehammer. He beat at the opening in the wall, smashing it wider and taller.
The battery-powered camp lantern threw a golden glow over the skeleton dressed in rags within the makeshift tomb. The thumping of the monstrous heartbeat reached a crescendo, and the deafening noise vibrated inside Isabel.
'It wasn't him!' Wilkins cried. Dropping the sledgehammer, the old man reached into the hole and hauled the corpse out. The weight was too much for Wilkins, though, and the dead man slipped free of his grip. The corpse clattered to the basement floor, raising a small gust of dust that eddied in the illumination given off by the camp lantern.
Isabel watched as Wilkins backed away from the dead man.
'That heartbeat wasn't him,' Wilkins shouted over the thundering thump. 'Heartbeat wasn't him at all. I thought it was, but you can see for yourself: He ain't got no heart.'
Through the ragged shirt that was stained with old blood, Isabel looked at Swanson's empty rib cage. It was true: The man had no heart. Where was the heartbeat coming from? Was the noise just Wilkins's guilt finally catching up to him?
