Across Acheron

Session 27

Everyone but Isaac believed what I had seen in the memory.

Keenan was in the room as soon as he heard the screaming, shutting me up before the housemothers came. It scared the hell out of Finn, let me tell you. He looked close to crapping his pants, not even arguing when Keenan kicked him out. I still feel bad for the kid. He never knew what kind of man he was hosting.

After a while of blubbering ‘I killed her, I killed her’, Keenan left in search for Isaac and Lorna. It took a while for me to calm down, to be honest. I think I even puked, but I can’t quite remember.

As soon as I could stop mumbling like a goddamn newborn, I debriefed what I remembered to the three. Lorna and Keenan listened patiently, but Isaac looked like he had come face to face with the devil himself.

Till this day, I can’t get that look on his face out of my head. He seemed so broken and shattered, staring at me as if I was the worst thing that ever crossed paths with him.

“You’re wrong,” he was like. “That doesn’t make sense. None of it does.” He kept telling me that I couldn’t prove it, since the cops never found the owners of the car. I couldn’t explain that either, which initially led him to believe that I was lying.

Lorna came up with the fantastic idea of finding the Mason we were so hung up over, so that’s where I’m starting at. Isaac admitted to knowing a Mason from a few years ago.

“He had some pretty messed up thoughts. I couldn’t deal with it,” Isaac said, but he still believed that Mason had nothing to do with Skye. That pissed Keenan off the most, and during that time, I didn’t blame him. We were both tired of the feeling of Rosebay; it was too near to death for our liking. But the more Isaac doubted, the longer we had to stay.

Anyway, we were all sitting in Lorna’s car, driving towards Mason’s house. It took her a day or two to sift through the school’s list of past students to find the right boy that fit Isaac’s description.

Keenan was at the front seat, looking out the window with furrowed eyebrows. Isaac was at the backseat with me, staring out into the distance. I didn’t bother trying to talk with him, so I looked out as well. It took me quite a while to notice that we were on the same road as the one in the memories. I never said anything about it, though, since I had no justification if it was the truth or not.

The long road ended up turning into a neighbourhood, introducing us to the front of those houses that lived on hills. I noticed Isaac’s body tense up as we rode past grand houses, but he never mentioned what was going through his mind. I never pushed the information out of him, though. I’m still not sure if I made the right choice or not.

We drove by a few houses until Lorna stopped at one. It was brown bricked with a beautiful garden sitting at the front that shielded the door. I saw the garden as some kind of barrier, separating those in the house from the rest of the world.

“Isaac will go up to the house with Jack. Mason will probably be more lenient to answer questions if he sees him,” Lorna instructed as she killed the engine. “Keep it nice and quick; I can’t keep you three out—”

Isaac was already out of the car before Lorna could even finish her goddamn sentence, forcing me to scramble after him. We passed by twisting vines along the house and ducked below dying sunflowers, all the way up to double doors made out of mahogany wood.

“You remember this place, don’t you?” I asked quietly as I pushed the doorbell. He stiffened. “I saw you in the car. You know this area too.”

“It doesn’t mean anything,” he snapped. “Coincidences happen in life.”

I couldn’t say anything else since the door opened by that point. We expected to see Mason, but instead there was a young woman standing before us. She wore expensive looking clothes, an apron tied at her waist, and dark hair in a failing bun. A huge grin crossed her face as soon as her eyes met Isaac, pulling him into a hug.