Fury by Steven James

Emily—the blurs—I don’t think my mind is making these things up from nowhere. I’m wondering if sometime in my past I might’ve been there. There’s this fuzzy memory I have of visiting the barn but I can’t say for sure if my mind is just creating it based on the dream or if I’m remembering it actually happening.”
    “So what are you suggesting?”
    “I want to go look for it. If I have been there before, that would be the most likely place to search for some answers about what’s really going on here. I say we drive around a little, see if any of the farms I’m thinking of around here end up being the one from my dream. We can always go to that movie later on if we don’t find anything.”
    Kyle nodded. “I’m game.”
    The girls were too.
    Daniel pulled out his keys. “Then let’s go. We only have a couple of hours before it gets dark.”

PART III
A BLADE IN
THE NIGHT

CHAPTER
NINETEEN
    While Daniel drove, Kyle helped with navigation and planning out the best route they should take for saving time so they could get their search done before dusk.
    Although they passed a few farms that looked promising at first, when Daniel concentrated on the one he’d dreamt about, he realized that none of the barns were quite right.
    Nicole had the idea that, if they found the property, they might be able to figure out who owned it by checking public access county courthouse land deeds. So, although cell coverage was spotty out here in the countryside, she and Mia went online with their phones and looked for a way to pull up the information.
    As the afternoon slipped away, Daniel became less and less convinced that this search was going to pay off.
    “Oka y. ” His e ye s were on the sun, low in the sk y. “There’s one other propert y out on Count y Highwa y N, over near where m y grandma used to live. We can check it out and if it’s nothing, we’ll just head to Superior. It’s on the wa y. ”
     
    When they arrived, they found a strip of farmland that lay beside a sprawling frozen-over marsh that separated it from the national forest.
    A desolate, partially dilapidated barn crouched at the far end of a snow-covered field. Sporadic dead stalks of corn poked through the snow, but other than that the field looked untouched.
    The barn’s wood was sun-bleached and weathered with the years. A section of the roof had collapsed. A crumbling silo stood nearby.
    All that remained of the farmhouse beside it was the charred shell of a home that, based on the tangled and knotty thorn bushes that appeared to sprout from its remains, must have burned down years ago.
    “You said your grandma used to live out here?” Kyle asked.
    Daniel pointed. “Her house was maybe a quarter mile away, just on the other side of those woods. My parents sold it after she died back when I was nine.”
    “I remember when that farmhouse burned down,” Mia said. “Or at least hearing about it. It was, like, five or six years ago. I don’t think I’ve ever been out here, though.”
    Daniel wondered if the burning girl in his blurs and the burnt-down house had anything to do with each other.
    Have yo u been here before? Think, Daniel.
    He traced his memories back, following them through flickering images of the past, and found that some of them did lead to this place. It’d been years, and he hadn’t thought of this barn in a long time, but he did recall it.
    Yes.
    He had been here.
    Back when he and his parents visited his grandma.
    Daniel parked the car. “This is the one.”
    “Are you sure?” Mia asked.
    “Yeah. This is the one from my dream.”
    “So do we know whose property it is?” Kyle said.
    Nicole checked the county records. “Someone named Hollister.”
    Daniel’s hand was on the door handle but he paused. “Hollister?”
    “Yeah. You heard of him?”
    “There was a Hollister who used to hang out with Ty Bell back in the day—he killed someone, I think. Went to prison.”
    “Prison? Wouldn’t he have been