Booker spiraled through disorientation, trapped in some inscrutable centrifuge of data and dream. 

(“…Besides, 1979, 1993, 2020? If this is one killer escalating, he’d—or she’d or they’d—have to be, what? Sixty? Seventy?”

“What if it isn’t one killer?”)

When the Oceanrest Slasher had first struck in 1979, Bob would have been a mere child. Three years old? Four? Booker couldn’t remember Robert Robertson Jr.’s exact birth year. Too young to wield a knife in any case.

Witnesses had seen a tall man, athletic, wearing a mask. What kind of m-M-mask? What an unimportant detail.

In 1979, the Oceanrest Slasher (maskmaskmask) destroyed the faces of his victims, leaving behind crime scenes painted in carnage. With the exception of the first and fourth victims, however, virtually all the actual violence happened post-mortem. The majority of the murders, themselves, happened within seconds, often amounting to a mere two or three deep stab or slash wounds. After the victim had vacated the body, the Slasher went to work. In a book, later on, an author writing about the crimes described what the Slasher did as a ‘brutal erasure of a human’s personhood.’ All that remained was a scatter teeth and an unrecognizable pulp of bone and meat.

In 1993, the Oceanrest Slashmaskmask cut the faces off of his victims.

In 2020…

(“If this is one killer escalating—”)

(ascend/descending)

The list of suspects in the 1979 sequence indexed sixteen entries. Cross-referenced with the list of suspects from the 1993 sequence, seven names repeated. Neither line-up contained Robert Robertson, Jr. or his father. Robert Robertson, Sr., had moved the family back to Oceanrest in 1972 after a twelve year enterprise in Boston and New York City. Robert Robertson, Sr., had grown up in Oceanrest, Maine, and wanted his children to do the same.

Booker’s eyelids fluttered. He blinked awake at his eat-in table, his glasses folded in one hand, a small sputter of drool on the pages beneath his face. He sat up, donned his glasses, wiped his lips. and took a breath. An array of documentation spread before him. Why the hell had he done this? He peered down at his notebook and tried to interpret his own handwriting.

(signs and portents)

Robert Robertson, Jr., had gone through a messy divorce, the battle culminating in a court dispute the lasted six months. The final ruling fell in April, 2019. The fallout affected the man. He made several errors at work, mistakes that slipped through various cracks unnoticed until they compromised his clients’ assets. Though earnestly accidental, the actions proved both costly and legally unethical. Bob-Bob’s-son lost his license and job. At the bottom of the spiral, he hanged the judge who’d gavel’d his divorce. 

Why?

Booker fought through a muted mental detachment. He felt distant from his body, his arms moving at a significant delay from his commands to move them. He tried to push his chair away from the table and time seemed to twist around him. Everything stretched out.

Had he taken too many painkillers? He must have. He’d taken too many painkillers.

Nausea wound its grip through his guts.

Chair legs scraped the floor. He stumbled back from the table, from the splay of information bulbing as bubbles grew beneath the skin of reality. Something crawled around in his stomach. Sweat poured from his face. Fumbling through the tight intersection between dining room, bedroom, and restroom, he threw himself into the last. He flung open the toilet lid and knelt in front of the bowl, heaving with breath.

Everything surged out of him all-at-once. He saw bile spill out of him, pale yellow and viscous, but also sea water, salt-briney and foaming, and tangles of white and gray and black sludge knotted and tied together. He hadn’t eaten since breakfast the day before. Had he? Another gut-churn-flexion arched his back. Another burst of nonsense matter grossed into his mouth and tumbled out.

A hand caressed the space between his shoulder blades. “You’re okay,” Castellanos said, lips suddenly inches from his ear. “You’re going to be okay. Okay?”

“Wh-what the fuck?” he panted.

(Nobody was ever really okay.)

She reached an arm across his back and flushed. Hugged him by the shoulder, after. “It’s a lot to take in all at once.”

“What is?”

“I thought I’d have more time…”

He wanted to look away from the white ceramic but worried he might collapse if he did. “What are you talking about?”

“Just take a few deep breaths and let your senses settle.”

“My senses?”

“John, please.”

He took a deep breath. Another.

Castellanos leaned her forehead against his temple. “Just like that. Deep breaths. You’re going to be okay, okay?”

“Mm-hmm,” he muttered, focused on filling his lungs and emptying them again.

“Your sixth sense is stronger than most people’s,” she whispered. “But that doesn’t mean much in the face of what we’re doing.”

His heart rate slowed. Her fingernails traced circles along his back.

“Wait…” he chuckled, feeling better already. “Did you just say I had a ‘sixth sense?’”

“There’s the John I know,” she said. Standing, she turned back toward the door. “Now come on. I think we’re getting close.”

“Close to what?” he asked, following.

“The beginning,” she answered.