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The Dark Reckoning

By Sarah Hamaker

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Chapter 1
Isana Thomas adjusted the focus on the Leica M-A Rangefinder, peering through the viewfinder at the glistening drop of water clinging to the cherry blossom petal. Fog swirled around her, creating an atmosphere much like the ones evoked in the 1940s noir films she loved. Blowing out a breath, she depressed the shutter, then lined up another shot. Thirty minutes later, satisfied she’d captured the photos she envisioned, she lowered her camera. The fog had intensified, shrouding the cherry trees in a thick, soupy mist as it rolled off the Potomac River and into the Tidal Basin.
Footsteps echoed, the weather shrouding their exact location. A bicyclist buzzed by on the paved pathway circling the basin, the bike’s taillight blinking rapidly. Isana shook her head at the folly of biking in this weather with its low visibility. She sure wouldn’t risk a tumble into the cold, dark Potomac. A car door slammed, then an engine started. Voices drifted in her direction, and she caught a glimpse of a pair of joggers moving through the fog, headlamps illuminating the predawn darkness. Something brushed against her sleeve. She stumbled back, her heel sliding on the wet grass and sending her careening into a cherry tree.
Wrapping her hand around one of its damp branches, Isana stood very still, sucking in deep breaths to calm her racing heart as panic clawed at her like a monster from a B movie. Get a hold of yourself. Don’t let your imagination run away with you. Not for the first time, she vowed to stop watching suspenseful movies before bed. No doubt last night’s viewing of the 1945 film “Escape in the Fog” contributed to her sense of unease this morning. Probably should have stayed in her nice, safe apartment rather than venturing out to take photos of the early cherry blossoms in the mist. But she’d awakened with a jolt at four and couldn’t chance a return to slumber—and the vivid dream that had haunted her since childhood.
A quick glance at her phone revealed she needed to pack up and head home to change for work. Her camera snug in its case, she slung it over her shoulder and paused to get her bearings in the thickening fog. She should walk to the right to catch a bus at the West Basin stop. Her Next Bus app showed the incoming bus would be going in the direction of her apartment and arrive at six-twelve. Five-fifty-eight. Plenty of time to make the short walk. Flipping up her jacket hood against the drizzle, she set out.
She’d only taken a few steps when the sound of an old-fashioned ringing telephone sent her heartrate back into the stratosphere. Her hand on her chest, she cocked her head as the ringing continued, then stopped. She strained to hear the voice of whoever answered the phone, but only the faint rustling of something in a nearby tree reached her ears. Shaking her head to clear it of fanciful imaginings, she turned, but the return of the ringing halted her progress. This time, the sound was louder, more insistent. After six rings, the sound ceased only to immediately start again.
Someone must have lost their cell. Turning on her phone’s flashlight, she shone the beam onto the pathway around her feet as the ringing continued. Nothing there. To the left, the Potomac slapped against the retaining wall of the Tidal Basin. No phone there. To the right, a line of stately cherry trees, their budding blossoms blobs of white in the mist. For once, the arborists had timed Washington, DC’s Cherry Blossom Festival perfectly. When the events kicked off in three days, the trees would be in full bloom.
The ringing persisted. The Next Bus app buzzed, reminding her the bus would arrive in five minutes. Drat. She’d miss it because she couldn’t abandon the phone. She’d lost hers once and had been so grateful when a Good Samaritan had recovered it. Stepping off the path, she directed the flashlight to the ground. No phone. The fog swirled, and the beam reflected off something shiny. There! She reached down and plucked the still trilling phone from the ground. The device immediately went quiet. Using the sleeve of her jacket, she wiped the muddied and cracked screen, nearly dropping the phone as it rang again in her hand. Hoping she could answer without unlocking the screen, she hit the accept button and raised the phone to her ear underneath the jacket hood.
“Hello?”
Silence, then a male voice said, “I’m sorry, I must have dialed the wrong number.”
“Wait!” She listened hard, hoping he hadn’t hung up. “Have you been calling this number over and over this morning?”
Another pause, then the man answered. “Yes. What’s going on?”
Isana shifted as the coolness of the late March morning sank into her bones. “I found the phone by a cherry tree.”
“Cherry tree?”
“By the Tidal Basin.” She frowned. Something about the man’s voice sounded familiar.
“Where exactly?”
“Near the Japanese Lantern.”
“And no one’s near?” The fear in the man’s voice registered.
“I don’t think so. I had been looking for it because it wouldn’t stop ringing.” She glanced around, using her phone’s flashlight to pierce the mist near where the other device had been.
“It’s my mother’s,” the man said, his voice catching. “I’ve just returned from being out of town and have been trying to reach her.”
“And you’re worried.” She ducked under a low-hanging branch to peer deeper into the stand of trees between the Tidal Basin and Independence Avenue.
“Yes.”
“I’m not finding anything or anyone in the vicinity of where I found the phone.” She turned back to the path, holding a tree branch out of her way as she passed.
“I should probably introduce myself. I’m—”
Isana sensed someone near her seconds before being shoved hard. The phone flew out of her hand as her knees hit the ground. She tried to get purchase on the wet grass, but something walloped her on the head, and she sank down into the fog.
# # #
Cyrus Hillam nearly dropped his phone when the woman grunted. He gripped his cell tighter. “What’s going on?”
The only answer was . . . nothing. His concern ratcheted up to nuclear when she didn’t speak. “Hello?”
The phone disconnected. Cy grabbed his car keys and hustled out the door. Little traffic clogged the roads as he drove from Arlington, Virginia, over the Roosevelt Bridge into DC. If only his mother hadn’t refused to activate the Find My Phone app on her device, he would have been able to locate her and her phone.
Turning onto the Rock Creek and Potomac Parkway, he slowed as thick fog blanketed the road. Flicking his hazard lights on, he checked that the crossover vehicle’s fog lights were on. As he inched his way slowly down the parkway at below the posted 25 mph speed limit, he again berated himself for going out of town for a bachelor party weekend with his former college roommate. His mom had insisted he go on the trip, even though his instincts said to stay. The anniversary of his father’s death had happened over the weekend, but Lillian Hillam had always determined to not let her grief interfere with her only child’s life.
When he hadn’t been able to reach his mother by phone upon his arrival back home yesterday evening, he’d driven to the small house in Falls Church she and his father had purchased on their return to the states from their final overseas assignment with the State Department. But the house had been empty, no sign of Mom and no clue as to her whereabouts. Her Mini Cooper sat in the garage. An empty bowl evidence she’d fed the cat that morning, which indicated she hadn’t been away from home long. Her purse and phone were the only things he could tell were missing.
He should have continued to live with her instead of getting his own condo in Clarendon. In the three months since he’d moved out, he had relished the independence. While he could have afforded his own place years ago, he’d stayed because his mother had appeared too fragile emotionally to survive without him. Only lately, she’d been more assertive and had actively encouraged him to move out, telling him thirty-five was much too old to be living with his mother.
His GPS directed him to turn onto Ohio Drive SW. Just past West Basin Drive SW, he swung into an empty parking space and cut the engine. Pocketing his keys, he crossed Ohio and jogged up West Basin Drive before leaving the road to cut through the cherry trees to reach the path circling the Tidal Basin. The woman on the phone had indicated she was near the Japanese Lantern. A jogger’s headlamp nearly blinded him as the man ran by. Using his phone’s flashlight, he slowed as he neared the location where he’d last spoken with the woman.
“Hello?” Cy stepped off the path and almost tripped over a tree root. “Ma’am? Are you okay?”
Silence greeted his questions. Moving deeper into the stand of cherry trees, the fog swirled around his body like a dancer. The unease hugging his shoulders now encased him like a straitjacket. His finger trembled so much it took him three tries to hit the right button to redial his mother’s phone. A ringing phone echoed around him. Lowering his own phone, he cautiously stepped forward until he spotted the device lying against a tree trunk.
He picked it up, his heart dropping to his stomach as he recognized his mother’s case, bright gold with the outline of a black cat. Dear God, let her be okay. The fog pressed around him tighter, disorienting him. Where was the woman who had answered his call? And more worrying, where was his mother?
Cy turned in a circle, shining his light around him, but could see nothing except the trunks and limbs of cherry trees. Moving at a snail’s pace, he headed back toward the path, his eyes downcast to avoid falling over the uneven ground. Then his foot bumped into something pliable. His pulse jumped as the beam revealed a figure lying on the ground.

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