Sleepwalker

Stage 3

"Ow, Ms. D!" Kevin whined as he snatched his arm back.  "That totally hurts!"

Claire sighed, grabbed hold of his hand, and wrenched his forearm back over to her.  While the wound left by Stacy's nail file hadn't really been very serious, the deep gouges taken out of his arms just above the wrist were much nastier.  They had already washed the lacerations out in the small bathroom behind the office, but Claire insisted on treating them with iodine from the first aid kid they'd found under the front counter.

Despite being the Lawndale Lion's star quarterback and supposedly a grown boy, Kevin proved to be quite reticent about undergoing any amount of pain, even pain that was in the service of helping him heal properly.  Claire figured the only thing that kept him from running out the door to get away was Stacy.  The brunette obviously still didn't trust Kevin, and she stood near the door, glaring at him with her arms crossed and her nail file gripped tightly in one hand.

Claire had her own reservations, but she simply couldn't rationally place the whinging football player sitting in front of her in the same category as the man who had tried to choke her just a short time before.  She wasn't the superstitious sort by any means, but she felt that there was something more to what was going on.  The clerk perpetually sleeping with his boots propped up just a few feet away helped fuel that suspicion, as did the office phone, which was just as inexplicably unusable as the one at Nick's.

Or at least that was what Stacy had told her.  Claire hadn't been able to bring herself to pick up the phone again.

But if Kevin really wasn't responsible for what he had done, if he really didn't remember doing the things he did, then what was going on?  Eschewing the more unlikely possibilities, she was left with very few options.  But could she do away with those possibilities considering the other strange things that were happening around her?  He could have a sudden onset of multiple personality disorder, or he could have been possessed by a ghost that could control phone lines and make people stay asleep.

She pushed the questions out of her mind as she set the iodine aside and started bandaging Kevin's wrists.  There simply wasn't enough information to go on, so idle speculation wasn't going to get her or her two charges anywhere.

"Okay, I'm almost done here," she said out loud.  "In just a minute, we're going to go to each door in the motel and knock.  The three of us are awake, so maybe there are others.  Then . . . we start searching for Brittany."

"I know where she is," said Stacy.  Her voice wavered, but she was adamant.  "She's dead, and he killed her!"

Kevin's eyes grew wide.  "I what?!  No!  No way, Ms. D!  We were just . . . walking, right?  And all of a sudden she was gone and I was on the other side of the lot!  Ya gotta believe me!"

Claire gave Stacy a wounded look, then turned to Kevin and put her hands on his shoulders.  "It's okay, Kevin, it's okay," she said reassuringly.  "I believe you, but . . . the evidence that she's still alive . . . well, it isn't good, Kevin.  You have to accept the idea that she might be-"

"I can't believe I'm hearing this!" he shouted, swatting her hands away.  "We're gonna find her, and she's gonna be just fine!  You guys'll see!  My babe ain't dead, no way!"

"Yes, she is!" Stacy shouted, unable to contain herself.  She looked dangerously close to brandishing her file as she stepped forward and stamped her foot.  "The Goggle Eye-"

An angry scream flitted into the office from a short distance away.

"Oh my God . . . " Claire breathed, putting her hand up to her mouth.