Confessions of the Dead

by James Patterson, J. D. Barker

Genres: Horror; Supernatural suspense; Mystery

Synopsis

In this chilling mystery from a #1 New York Times bestselling author, a small New England town is hit with a wave of crimes after the arrival of a mysterious stranger who brings more questions than answers.
 
Hollows Bend, New Hampshire, is a picture-perfect New England town where weekend tourists flock to see fall leaves and eat breakfast at the Stairway Diner. The crime rate—zero--is a point of pride for Sheriff Ellie Pritchett.
 
The day the stranger shows up is when the trouble starts. The sheriff and her deputy investigate the mysterious teenage girl. None of the locals can place her. She can’t—or won’t¾answer any questions. She won’t even tell them her name. 
 
While the girl is in protective custody, the officers are called to multiple crime scenes leading them closer and closer to a lake outside of town that doesn’t appear on any map…   

Release date: July 9, 2024

Publisher: Grand Central Publishing

Print pages: 400

Sample

Analysis Note: My name is X​X​X​X​X​X​X​X​X​X assistant director and special agent in charge with X​X​X​X​X​X​X​X​X of X​X​X​X​X​X​X​X​X​X. I’ve been tasked with making sense of the events that occurred between the hours of 6:37 GMT-4 on 10/15/23 and 22:16 GMT-4 10/16/2023 at 43.9792° N, 71.1203° W, an area now defined as “Hollows Bend, NH.” This report is preliminary. These events are still ongoing. I imagine this text and these happenings will be picked over by many people far more qualified than me in the days and weeks to come, and I hope that action will bring more clarity than I have at this time. That in mind, I need to preface what you are about to read with one simple statement, words spoken by a man far wiser than me:

Midway upon the journey of our life

I found myself within a forest dark,

For the straightforward pathway had been lost.

Let me be clear: I don’t know what all this means for the rest of us. If you’re looking for those answers, you won’t find them here. I also know that if you continue beyond this page, all you thought you understood will unravel and once you tug that string, there’s no putting it back.

 

Chapter 1

LOG 10/16/2023 20:17 GMT-4
TRANSCRIPT: AUDIO/VIDEO RECORDING

Sordello: For the record, this is Special Agent Beatrice Sordello. We have yet to determine if quarantine is necessary, so until told otherwise, I’m in a Manfred booth, which is a double isolation chamber best described as two sealed Plexiglas cubes positioned against each other. Both have their own self-contained atmosphere, which is being monitored remotely not only to ensure the air remains viable, but also for unknown pathogens. Until cleared, I will remain in my chamber and the interview subject will remain confined in his. Anyone entering either chamber is wearing a full hazmat suit and will undergo decontamination protocols upon entry and exit. It’s important to note that we haven’t found any sign of an airborne contaminant. This is strictly a precaution. My interview subject appears to be in good health aside from signs of recent physical trauma—primarily cuts and abrasions, which have been treated. At this point, I am switching on my secondary microphone so he can hear me.

[Audible click]

Sordello: Can you state your name?

Subject 1: Seriously? You know my name.

Sordello: For the record.

Subject 1: Deputy Matthew Maro.

Sordello: Your full name.

Maro: Deputy Virgil Matthew Maro, but nobody calls me that.

Sordello: What should I call you?

Maro: Matt is fine.

Sordello: Matt. The woman who just entered your chamber is going to apply several sensors to your chest, right arm, and your forehead. These will allow us to record not only your vitals but also your brain wave patterns in sync with this recording. Are you okay with that?

Maro: What, like a lie detector?

Sordello: Strictly for observational purposes.

Maro: Sure. Go ahead. Whatever helps.

Sordello: Okay. I have a vital feed coming in. Transmission seems to be okay. For the record, Deputy Maro has a resting heart rate of 102 beats per minute, blood pressure is 132 over 81. While these appear to be slightly elevated, this is understandable considering… recent events. Blood oxygen and brain patterns are normal.

Maro: You said you were a special agent, but you didn’t say with who.

Sordello: We’ll get to that. Would you like me to have them administer something

to help you calm down?

Maro: No. I’ll be fine. I’m just, you know, trying to wrap my head around everything.

Sordello: I’m hoping to help you with that.

Maro: If you want to help, how about telling those guys to lower their guns. I’m not going to do anything.

Sordello: I’m afraid I can’t. We need to follow protocols.

Maro: You have protocols for this? Has it happened before?

Sordello: Your blood pressure is rising. Are you sure you don’t want a mild sedative?

Maro: I understand the guns, but why is there a priest here?

Sordello: I need you to focus, Deputy. I don’t know how much time we have. We need to get everything on the record while we still can.

Maro: Okay. Okay.

Sordello: Walk me through it. Start with yesterday morning. Try not to leave out any details, even if they seem minor to you.

Maro: [No response]

Sordello: Deputy?

Maro: With her, right? When she first showed up?

Sordello: [Subject muted—Audible to technician only] Can you check his heart rate monitor? He dropped off for thirty seconds, then came back.

[Audible click—Subject unmuted]

Sordello: Yes. Start with her.

 

Chapter 2

Matt

 

Earlier

BEING SUNDAY MORNING, SHORTLY after the last of the crisp night fog burnt away, Hollows Bend, New Hampshire, had a buzz to it. Streets deserted twenty minutes earlier were now bustling with vehicles. Most were tourists heading home after a weekend in the mountains or behind the business end of some expensive camera taking photographs of the New England leaves—leaves that by the second week of October were well on their way to deep shades of red and gold and thick enough on the grass of the commons to blot out the green.

The Stairway Diner on Main was the final stop for those tourists. It was also the starting point for many of the Bend’s locals, who enjoyed watching them depart, and by ten there wasn’t an empty chair in the place.

Deputy Matt Maro sat on his favorite stool at the far end of the counter, his back against the wall, watching Gabby Sanchez zip from table to table in comfortable shoes. With steaming breakfast plates balanced precariously down the length of her slender arm, she moved with this practiced elegance, twisting and bending like a dancer. Even when a customer complained, the smile never left her face. Matt envied her that she never let her anger slip. It was just one of the many reasons he’d fallen for her.

Gabby caught him watching, gave him a quick wink, twisted with a flirty cock of her hip, and turned to the corner booth holding the sizable Lockwood family, all eight of them, paying extra attention to Libby Lockwood, who recently turned four and insisted on placing her own order.

A grunt came from Matt’s left, followed by a phlegm-filled cough, and Matt swiveled back around on his stool. The man slouched on the stool beside him would have passed for dead if not for the way he was shoveling in his eggs.

Roy Buxton (Buck to everyone but bill collectors and the nuns back at Saint Mary’s) might have weighed 140 on a good day, and for Buck, today was far from one of those. His hair was greased back and smelled like a wet cellar. The filth on his skin and clothing was thick enough to flake off, if not for the layer of sweat holding it in place.

To the amusement of several out-of-towners, Matt had found him last night on Main Street at a little after eleven, bottle of Jack in one hand, shoes in the other, shuffling along barefoot two sheets deep into an argument with himself that might have been about politics or might have been about Game of Thrones. Matt’d walked Buck back to the small sheriff’s office and set him up in the single cell with a blanket, a pillow, and two bottles of water. It was not his first time in that bunk, and Matt was certain it wouldn’t be his last. That particular dance had become ritual, as had breakfast on the county at the Stairway the morning after.

“Pass the ketchup?” Buck held his hand out but didn’t look Matt in the eye. He rarely did.

Matt slid the bottle toward him.

Buck worked the cap and held the bottle wobbly over his plate, dribbling his eggs, home fries, even the bacon. When he set the bottle off the edge of the counter—Matt snagged it mid-drop and replaced it safely. “When was the last time you saw a doctor, Buck? Got yourself checked out?”

He dug back into the eggs. “How ’bout we postpone the banter for another thirty? Bacon and lecture don’t mix well, tends to give me gas.” 

“I’m just worried about you.”

Buck leaned to his left, lifted his leg off the stool, and let out a fart loud enough to turn several of the closest heads. “You brought that upon yourself, Deputy.”

Two stools over, Mr. Wheeler from the deli was staring at them both, his face twisted in a grimace. Matt paused a beat before saying, “You don’t let up on the drinking, and your body’s gonna give up on you.”

“Ain’t nothing givin’ up. I’m fine.” Even as Buck said this, sweat trickled down from his brow, streaking the dirt with salty lines.

“You don’t look fine.”

Buck stabbed at a potato wedge, missed, and tried again. “I slipped up last night, is all. Won’t happen again.” He managed to impale a slice and carefully maneuvered it to his mouth. “Didn’t mean to burden you with my shortcomings, Deputy.”

Matt took a sip of his coffee. They’d had variations of this conversation more times than he could count. Sheriff Ellie Pritchet had taken her share of failed runs at getting Buck some help, and her father before her when he’d been sheriff. The best they could all come up with was to put Buck on the town’s payroll doing odd jobs. Try to keep him busy. The truth was, Buck had been putting away his share of drink for the entirety of Matt’s twenty-nine years on the planet, and then some, but that didn’t mean Matt couldn’t try to get Buck to stay sober. “Tell you what. I’m barbecuing tonight at Gabby’s place. Burgers, hot dogs, couple of nice sirloins she handpicked down at McKinnon’s. Why don’t I pick you up, drop you off after? Get another meal into you, maybe watch some football. Between Gabby and her daughter, Riley, I’m outnumbered over there. The place could use a little more testosterone.”

Buck choked deep in his throat and took a drink of water. “I don’t think your girlfriend wants the likes of me in her home. You best run that by Gabby.”

“Run what by Gabby?”

Gabby had slipped back behind the counter. She was scooping grounds into the large coffee maker with one hand while filling a glass with Coke from the soda fountain with the other.

“I invited Buck here over for dinner tonight.”

A lock of brown hair broke free from her ponytail and fell over Gabby’s right eye. She blew it to the side and grinned at the old man. “Absolutely! We’d love to have you.”

“You’re awfully kind, the two of you.” Buck ate a strip of bacon, then wiped the corners of his mouth with the back of his hand. “Excuse me a minute? I need to use the head.”

He eased off the stool, took a moment to steady his legs, then hobbled off. Matt watched as he walked right past the restroom and pushed through the kitchen door at the end of the hallway.

Gabby watched him, too. “He’s not coming back, is he?”

Matt shook his head. “He’ll sneak out the kitchen and up the mountain, head for home.”

Gabby frowned. “I don’t get it. He must be so lonely.”

Matt picked up his

fork and started on his own breakfast. He’d let it go cold. “I guess some people prefer their own company.”

“He always seems so, I don’t know, sad.” Gabby lowered her voice and nodded at a booth on the far side of the diner. “Henry Wilburt told his wife if Buck’s trying to drink himself to the grave, he’s doing a piss-poor job of it. Then she said someone should give him a gun and tell him to stop pussyfooting around.”

Matt fought the urge to twist around on the stool for a look. Henry Wilburt’s wife ran the bake sale at the elementary school, knitted winter scarves for the homeless, and volunteered two days a week at library story time. “Corine Wilburt said that?”

Gabby nodded. “Don’t let the gray hair fool you. That woman is malvada.”

Matt considered that. “Evil?”

Gabby beamed. “You’ve been practicing!”

He held up his thumb and index finger. “Un poquito.”

Addie Gallagher had come in while they were talking and managed to sidle up next to Matt and drop her purse on Buck’s empty stool. “Practicing what?”

At the sound of her voice, Matt twisted a little too fast—coffee spilled over the side of his mug and dripped down his shirt.

“I’m so sorry! I didn’t mean to startle you! Let me get that—”

Addie tugged a paper napkin from the dispenser, moistened it in Matt’s water glass, and blotted at the growing stain on his uniform. “You’ve got to get it while it’s wet, or it will never come out.” She looked over at Gabby. “Do you have any white vinegar?”

Her hand drifted to Matt’s shoulder and gave him a gentle squeeze.

Oh boy, Matt thought. Here we go. He really didn’t want to start the day with some kind of territorial pissing contest.

Back in high school, Addie had been the girl Matt called twenty minutes after dropping his real date off at home. Friends with benefits. Fuck buddies. Nothing more than an alcohol-fueled grab-and-go. When she started getting a little too clingy, he’d put an end to it. And when he found himself dialing her again after partying a little too much, he’d put an end to that, too. They’d completely lost touch when he went off to UNH and she went off to wherever. He hadn’t given her a second thought until she reappeared in Hollows Bend last summer, hoping to rekindle things. Matt had made it clear he was with Gabby and those days were in the past. Addie’s return had been the fuel behind his first real fight with Gabby and the spark behind the others that followed. Matt didn’t keep secrets from Gabby, but maybe that had been a mistake, because sometimes not knowing was better than knowing. Her relationship with her last boyfriend ended when she caught him 

cheating, and once that taste found its way into someone’s mouth, it didn’t wash out.

Although the smile was still on Gabby’s face, there was no hiding the vein pulsing on the left side of her temple like the thin wisp of steam that signaled a tea kettle whistling.

Matt shrugged out from under Addie’s hand. “It’s fine. I’ve got a spare at the station.”

Abbie grinned at Gabby. “It’s funny, I was gone for so long, but everyone here has just welcomed me back, arms wide open. Feels like I never left, the way we’re all picking right back up.” Her grin shifted to Matt and widened. “Good seeing you again. Real good.”

She retrieved her purse and wandered back through the dining room, her black bra fully visible through a sheer blouse worn over tight jeans. While Matt pretended not to look, Gabby glared at the other woman. “Pregnant women should not dress like that.”

It had been about a month since Addie dropped that particular bombshell. She was about twelve weeks along, and she’d yet to tell anyone who the father was. In a town as small as the Bend, it was a hot topic. Addie and Matt’s past wasn’t exactly a secret.

Matt took out his wallet and set a twenty on the counter. “I best be getting back to the station. Ellie is out on patrol, and Sally’s holding down the fort.”

Gabby didn’t answer. She was still looking out over the dining room, her flushed face gone white as a sheet. The voices behind Matt died away, the clink of silverware on plates vanished. There were several gasps, then silence.

One hand instinctively easing to his gun, Matt turned slowly on the stool and faced the front of the diner.

Standing in the open door, the sun bright at her back, was a girl of maybe sixteen. She wore not a stitch of clothing. Her long dark hair draped over her shoulder, partially covering her right breast. Her bare feet were  caked in mud.

 

Chapter 3

Matt

SHE DIDN’T MOVE.

Nobody did.

Gabby reached over the counter and clasped Matt’s hand.

Somewhere in the room, a throat cleared.

But nobody went to her.

Matt wasn’t proud of that fact, and it would haunt him until his dying day. He wasn’t the type of person who froze, never had been. Even back in his glory days when he played ball, standing back on his own twenty-yard line with linebackers sailing through the air about to unleash a world of hurt, he didn’t freeze. He got the ball off. He sidestepped. He reacted, he acted, but he never froze.

She looked ethereal.

Celestial.

Christ, she looked like a damned angel. There, he said it.

Not any angel, but a fallen angel, and for the briefest of seconds, he was absolutely certain if she turned around there would be tiny nubs at her shoulder blades where her wings had been clipped.

Matt knew how unbelievable that all sounded, hadn’t set foot in a church since he was a kid, but there it was. Looking around at the faces around the packed diner, he knew those thoughts weren’t solely his own. He even caught Peggy Lockwood crossing herself, and she did go to church. She went at least three times a week.

Matt didn’t recognize her. She wasn’t a local, and if she’d come in for the weekend with the rest of the tourists, he hadn’t seen her before. He would have remembered her.

Matt rose from his stool, and his legs were trembling as badly as Buck’s had been. In a fraction of a second, a buzzing in his ears was followed by a feeling like intense air or water pressure. His skin prickled all the way down to a momentary numbness at the tips of his fingers that then tingled with the pins-and-needles sensation of a sleeping limb. In the time it took for him to complete a single step, the world tilted and it was gone. Matt wasn’t alone in that, either. All around him, people were rubbing their arms, glancing at each other with a mix of fright and bewilderment.

Someone to his left said in a childlike voice, “I smell ozone. Anyone else smell ozone?” Sounded like Hershel Brown, but also didn’t because Hershel Brown was a six-foot-four Black man on the wrong side of fifty who weighed upward of three hundred pounds. His speaking voice was deep enough to rattle the windows, anything but childlike. When Matt glanced at him, the fear in the man’s eyes told him all he needed to know.

The girl still hadn’t moved. Naked as the day she was born, she stood at the mouth of the diner, one arm bracing the door open, the other hanging at her side. She opened her mouth as if to speak, but no sound came out.

Matt got his shit together.

He crossed the room to the coatrack where he’d hung his jacket when he first arrived with Buck. Snatching it with enough force to nearly tumble the rack, he draped it over the girl’s shoulders, quickly scanned her body for visible signs of trauma—cuts, bruises, abrasions—and found nothing except that she was in some form of shock.

With fumbling fingers, nothing but thumbs, Matt pulled the jacket closed and managed to get the zipper going, brought it up to the base of her neck. She wasn’t very tall, maybe five foot two; the jacket reached halfway down her thighs, offering her at least some sense of modesty.

“You’re going to be okay,” he told her softly, and the moment the words passed his 

 lips, he knew they were a lie.

She took a step forward, enough for the door to close, and Matt looked out over her shoulder at Main Street, the commons beyond that. Her feet were caked with mud, but it hadn’t rained in nearly a week.

Matt saw the dark shape rocket down from the sky an instant before it slammed into the diner’s glass door about a foot above the girl’s head with a thump loud enough to make him jump. It hovered there for a second, frozen on the other side of the glass, then slipped and fell lifeless to the sidewalk.

A black crow.

Its beak had cracked with the impact. One of the bird’s dark eyes had ruptured, tinging the surrounding feathers with a line of oily jelly.

Matt inched closer and then another hit—this one on the large picture window above the booth holding Mr. and Mrs. Tangway. Several of the women in the diner screamed with that one, a couple of the men, too, but not as loudly as they did when the third bird hit, or the others that followed.

 

Chapter 4

Lynn Tatum

 

LYNN TATUM STOOD IN the center of the cluttered home office (formerly back bedroom, pre-pandemic) of her house on Morning Glory Road, staring at the note taped to the center of her computer monitor:

Wasn’t sure if you were working today. Didn’t want to wake you. Went to grab juice—be right back. Kids playing in Gracie’s room. —J

She looked up at the clock on the far wall—quarter to eleven. She’d overslept, and yes, she was supposed to work today. Shit.

Goddamn dizzy spell got her out of bed. Yanked her from a half-pleasant dream about a vacation they’d taken to Club Med at Turks and Caicos a lifetime ago (before kids) when she was still happy (before marriage) and still had some semblance of a body (before daily double caramel macchiatos). She’d woke with the world tilting, nearly fell from the bed, then managed to get her shit remotely together.

Still half asleep, Lynn dropped down into her chair and squealed as something bit into the meaty part of her ass. She jumped back up again, glaring down at the wood seat—one of Oscar’s Matchbox cars. The silver Aston Martin with the missing hood and bent door. She swatted the small car across the room, watched it crack against the wall and vanish behind the white banker boxes stacked precariously in the corner. It left a mark in the drywall. Lynn didn’t much care. Let Josh add that to his Saturday project list, the one that never seemed to get started.

Josh’s desk sat back-to-back with Lynn’s, and while her workspace was relatively free of clutter (there was a coaster for her coffee mug, nothing else, because a coaster was far less unsightly than stains left by unprotected cups), Josh’s desktop was buried under accounting books, printouts of IRS code, knickknacks, and God knows what else he needed to keep his daily shit show of an accounting company running. How the man was able to function at all was a mystery. She’d given up picking up after him. Maybe she should hang a sheet across the room, divide the cramped space. Subtle enough hint, Joshy dear? Maybe.

Down the hall, Gracie yelped, Oscar laughed, then the sound of spilling trash. Lynn knew exactly what that was—they’d tipped Gracie’s toy chest and dumped the contents across her bedroom floor. Like their father, those two had mess making down to an art form.

Lynn groaned and closed her eyes. She drew in a deep breath and held it for a moment. The Ambien she took last night had filled her head with cobwebs, made her thoughts sticky. She didn’t want to work (Sunday, no less!). Lynn hated her job. She should go back to bed, sleep it off. Just this once, take the rest of the morning for herself. Let Josh figure out how to cover the mortgage payment. The utilities. Groceries. Gas in that beater he forced her to drive around. Let Josh deal with the kids. Let Josh—

Another crash from Gracie’s room.

She leaned back and shouted over her shoulder. “What are you two doing in there?!”

They didn’t answer. Of course not. Why would they?

Lynn tugged open her center drawer, took out the three pill bottles, and lined them up on the edge of the desk. She popped the tops and dry-swallowed one of each. The white pill would wipe away the last of the Ambien and help her focus. The blue one silenced the ugly thoughts. And the yellow pill… she wasn’t a hundred percent sure what that one did, but her doctor had prescribed it, and that was

good enough for her. She needed a shower, but there was no time for that.

Returning the bottles, Lynn leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes again.

Gracie screamed, a gut-wrenching, high-pitched shrill. Lynn felt the blade of it scrape down her spine. She kept her eyes closed. Whatever they were doing in there, Josh could deal with it.

Her computer dinged and a box popped up in the center of the screen, directly behind Josh’s note, like her asshole of a husband had purposely placed it in the most intrusive spot he could find. Maybe he did. A little fuck-you before abandoning his morning responsibilities. She didn’t for a second believe he’d gone to grab juice. More likely, he went to play a quick game of grab-ass with Nancy Buckley two streets over while her husband was out golfing. That’s where she’d found his car the last time he’d gone to get juice.

Gracie and Oscar were laughing again. She heard small feet run down the hallway, thud down the steps. So much for staying in Gracie’s room.

Not her problem.

Josh’s problem.

His turn to watch the kids while she worked.

Her computer dinged again with another text box. The sound of that ding cut nearly as deep as Gracie’s scream.

She pulled the note off of her monitor.

The box on the screen said:

Lanford Collection Services: 23 calls in queue.

Log in to earn big bucks on a bonus Sunday!

She couldn’t do it. Not yet. Not until the pills kicked in. And why was that taking so long? Because she’d taken them without water? No, that couldn’t be it. Maybe she needed to take more? She’d taken two Ambiens last night instead of one, maybe that was it.

Thumping footsteps again, like two small animals racing up the stairs. A moment later, Gracie’s door slammed shut. That was followed by shouting. Both Gracie and Oscar screaming over each other, the words so muffled they were meaningless.

Lynn reached over, slammed her own door, and immediately regretted it. The clutter in the confined space seemed to inch closer. They’d discovered mold in the house back when they first bought it. Josh swore he got it all out, but if he did, would she smell that? 

A new box appeared:

Lanford Collection Services: 29 calls in queue. You’re missing out! Lost seconds = lost opportunities!

Oscar yelled. Something about the color red.

Lynn closed her eyes again and pressed the palms of her hands against her ears.

Why weren’t the damn pills working?

She yanked open her drawer and eyed the bottles. Maybe one more of each.

Just one. ...