Jude ended up nodding off within minutes of letting me take the wheel, though he made me promise to wake him up when “In the Air Tonight” came on. Unfortunately, I hadn’t even gotten through “Another Day in Paradise” when red-and-blue police lights suddenly flashed in the rearview mirror.
I pulled over, keeping my eyes trained on the rearview and watching as the cop pulled in behind me. There was a female officer at the wheel and she was alone. It took me a moment to figure out what was off about her… The cop was wearing reflective shades even though it was well past dark by this point.
Not a moment after I noticed this, the cop pulled down her shades to reveal two gleaming eyes and I suddenly felt very calm and relaxed about everything. I was going to be absolutely fine. Everything was going to work out, just as long as I left the North Shore and never came back.
I was rocked by an intense feeling of deja vu as I recalled that night with the deer silhouette outside my grandparent’s bedroom window and all I knew…
…all I knew was I didn’t want to open that curtain and look outside. I knew this floating deer silhouette was a trap designed to trick me into looking outside. And I knew that if I did that, I wouldn’t like what I saw.
It seemed so obvious now that these had also been implanted thoughts. Only, they hadn’t come from the man in the woods. Something very similar maybe, but still somehow different. Something that had wanted to warn me of what was to come…