He turned in his chair to see Linda leaning in the doorway. The sight of her made him smile, and it was almost enough to take the sad edge off.
Almost.
She came to sit in his lap, throwing her arms around his neck. Marlowe lifted his big head and studied her momentarily before dropping it back down to the deck, snoring again in seconds.
“Where is it again?” she asked, taking the smallest of sips from his glass of scotch.
“The new star? Right there.” He raised his hand and pointed to a particular place in the heavens. “It burns just a little bit brighter than all the rest; can you see it?”
“Yeah,” she said. “Now I can.”
The world wasn’t that much different since Unification had come to pass. Those more sensitive to the preternatural could feel that something wonderful had occurred somewhere out there in the ether, but just about everybody else simply went on with their lives as they had before.
Even though Heaven was watching more closely now.
Linda had some more of his scotch before giving the glass back to Remy. “There weren’t any stories about him on the news tonight,” she said.
He knew exactly what she was talking about. Law enforcement was still on the hunt for a killer, or killers, who’d slain Boston Police detective Steven Mulvehill in his Somerville home. The search had been relentless, and even Remy had been questioned repeatedly. He wished that he could have shared the truth with them, but the truth was just too much.
Even with the Unification, the world was just not ready to know the reality of what existed around them, and Remy wasn’t really sure if they ever would be.
“It’s old news now,” he said, sadly swirling the golden liquid around in his glass. “Eventually, it’ll even be forgotten.”
“Steven will never be forgotten,” Linda said, leaning her cheek against his head.
“No, never.”
“I think I’m going to bed,” she said, and kissed him gently on the cheek. “Are you coming down?”
“I think I’m going to sit here a little bit longer, if that’s all right.”
“That’s fine,” she said getting up from his lap. “Feel free to wake me when you get in.”
He held her hand and kissed it before letting go.
She smiled at him, and he felt that oh-so-human flutter in the pit of his belly that reminded him how lucky he had been to find her.
“Come on, Marlowe,” she said to the dog. “Let’s go to bed.”
The dog looked at him first.
“Go on,” he told the beast. “I’m just going to sit here, think for a while, and drink.”
The Labrador climbed to his feet and stretched before trotting off to join Linda.
Alone, Remy closed his eyes and listened to the prayers of the world. The voices were much clearer since Unification, and he allowed them to wash over him.
But one prayer seemed to separate itself from all the others. It wasn’t that it was more important, it just stood out, as if it wanted to make sure that he heard it.
To know of it.
Curious, Remy focused on the pleas of a young woman in the throes of childbirth. She was praying to the Holy Father for her child—her son—to be healthy, and brave, and smart, and a leader whom others would look up to in times of need.
That he would be a good person.
Remy thought that was a lovely sentiment for her to want for her newborn child, but he could not understand why this plea—this prayer—was coming across so very strong, nearly drowning out all the other prayers of the world.
As if he was being told to pay attention.
Used to the mysterious machinations of his Holy Father, Remy did what he thought he should, putting all his focus on this new mother as she was about to bring life into the world.
Maybe she was in danger of some kind, he thought.
He set his glass down upon the table and stood, tilting his head in such a way as to listen beyond the woman’s silent pleas for her child’s future.
The screams of childbirth were bloodcurdling, but nothing out of the ordinary, soon followed by the wails of the newly born.
Satisfied that mother and child were safe, he attempted to pull away, to disconnect from the moment and return his hearing to normal, but he found that he couldn’t.
He became focused on the cries of the child as the baby became acclimated to the world, hearing something in those noises, a language that only an angel could understand.
Normally, they were purely instinctual—
I’m hungry, I’m cold, I’m afraid
—but this baby’s cries . . . this baby’s voice . . .
Remy gasped, stumbling back and bumping into the table. And then he realized that he wasn’t alone, catching a glimpse of a familiar old man standing at the other end of the rooftop, looking out over the city. The old man turned and smiled. But before Remy could ask what it was that He wanted, He was gone.
The baby continued to cry, and it called to Remy.
It took only a moment to unfurl his wings, and he was soaring through the Boston sky, touching down upon the rooftop of Brigham and Women’s Hospital, in the center of the helipad.
Not wanting to be seen, he wished himself invisible as he crossed the rooftop, going to the door that would take him down into the hospital.
The prayers of the sick, dying, and thankful were particularly loud here, but a baby’s cries—
this baby’s cries
—were all that Remy could focus upon.
It did not take him long to find them: mother, child, and father. They were all together in a recovery room, overjoyed with the moment, overjoyed that they were now a family.
The baby was silent now upon his mother’s breast, lulled to sleep by the familiar sound of her beating heart.
Remy slowly approached the young family, stopping beside the bed as the new parents huddled together lovingly. They could not stop looking at their child.
Their new baby boy.
And neither could Remy.
He leaned in close to the mother to see the child’s face.
“Is that you?” he asked the sleeping babe. The child yawned, his tiny hands fussing at his face before disappearing beneath the blankets. And in that moment, taking in the sight of him, taking in the smell of his newness, Remy knew the answer.
He’d known it as soon as he’d heard the newborn baby boy proclaim through his cries,
I am an old soul.
Remy could only surmise why the old man had come to him on the rooftop, that perhaps this was His way of saying thanks. But who really knew?
“What should we name him?” the baby’s father asked, reaching out to lovingly stroke the child’s ruddy cheek with his finger.
He did most certainly move in mysterious ways.
The mother did not answer, and Remy knew that she was thinking—searching for that sudden inspiration that would tell her what her son should be called.
Remy could not resist, leaning in close to whisper in her ear, knowing that no other name would be right for the old soul she held in her arms.
“Steven.”
It would be comforting to have this soul in the world again.
The woman smiled. “I have just the name,” she said, leaning down to kiss the top of the baby boy’s head.
“His name is Steven.”
Read on for a special preview of the first book in a new series from
New York Times
bestselling author Thomas E Sniegoski,
THE DEMONISTS
Coming in April 2016 from Roc
A
t first glance, the house at 145 Westview Lane in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania, was nothing special. It was a typical ranch-style home built in the early seventies on a plot of land where an old farmhouse once stood before it burned down in 1961.
“Got anything?” John asked his wife.
Theodora stood silently beside him in the near darkness of the living room, using her special gift—her enhanced senses—to find and touch any residual spirit energies left by the home’s previous occupants.
“Nope, same as the last time you asked me—nada. The place is strangely, pardon the expression, dead.”
“Nice,” John said dryly. “I’m surprised you didn’t save that one for the viewers.”
“Only the best for you, snookums,” she gushed, and although it was too dark to see it, John imagined that special twinkle in her icy blue eyes accompanied by a smile that could melt the stoutest of hearts.
“Hey, Jackson, how are we doing for time?” John asked the cameraman behind them. They were in the midst of a commercial break on their live show on the Spirit Network.
Jackson touched his earpiece and listened for a moment. “Two minutes twenty,” the man replied, hefting the night-vision camera back onto his shoulder.
“Think we’ll take a look at the stain next,” John said. He clicked on his flashlight and moved the beam over the hardwood floor. They’d seen it earlier when they were doing their prebroadcast walk-through. Supposedly it was blood, but John had his doubts.
“That stain is gross,” Theodora said.
“Gross is good for Halloween,” John answered.
“We’re back in ten,” Jackson warned. “Nine . . . eight . . . seven . . .”
John and Theodora positioned themselves near the stain and waited to be told they were live.
“Showtime,” the cameraman whispered, and John launched into his spiel.
“We’re back with this special live Halloween broadcast of
Spirit Chasers
,” he said, staring at the tiny red light on the night-vision camera that Jackson was pointing directly at him. “For those of you just tuning in, I’m John Fogg, and I’m here with my wife, Theodora Knight, and members of my
Spirit Chaser
team, investigating a home in rural Pennsylvania. We’ve dubbed it the House of Torment, because throughout its history, its many residents have almost all been victims of troubled lives.”
John moved through the inky black, flicking his penlight across the floor as he walked. “Right now Theo and I are checking out a strange stain that, according to the current owner, Fritz, grows more pronounced when paranormal events in the home begin to escalate.”
He shined the beam of the flashlight on the living room floor, illuminating a dark stain shaped like the state of Florida. “Jackson, can you show this to the folks at home, please?”
John continued as he watched the red light on the infrared camera turn away from him and down toward the floor. “If you remember, Fritz believes this is a bloodstain left when the previous owner murdered his wife, supposedly on this very spot.”
“Just one of the many disturbing events that have transpired in this seemingly accursed home, and part of the reason why Fritz refuses to live here anymore,” added Theodora as the couple knelt to examine the darkened spot.
“Right,” John agreed. “Once he began renovating the place, he began to notice strange sounds and smells, and he reports seeing shadow figures from the corners of his eyes.”
“John, why don’t you get some EMF readings while I get out the blood test kit?”
The sound of Theo going through her things could be heard, and the red light on the camera again faced John. He removed a cell phone–sized device from his pocket and held it over the spot, slowly moving it around the area of the stain. As he did so, he reminded the folks at home that he was looking for high electromagnetic fields supposedly emitted by ghostly beings, and expressed disappointment that the device remained perfectly silent, as it had throughout the evening’s investigation.
John felt his wife poke his arm in the darkness.
“Here’s the kit, hon.”
He reached for the offered items and again knelt before the stain. “In this bottle is a hydrogen peroxide mixture that will react to a chemical found in blood called catalase. If this really is blood,” John said as he removed the cover on the plastic bottle and squirted some solution onto the tip of a cotton swab, “then the liquid should start to bubble.”
He knew it wouldn’t, but he had to go through the motions for the live show. Again the camera panned down to the stain. He could imagine the viewers at home, sitting on the edges of their seats, eyes glued to the screen, hoping that John would confirm a bloodstain.
“And as you can see,” he said, rubbing the saturated swab across the stain, “no bubbles, indicating that this stain is definitely not blood.”
“I’m guessing some sort of petroleum product, maybe,” Theo said as she squatted next to her husband. She placed the tip of a well-manicured finger on the center of the dark spot and gently rubbed at it. “Whatever it is, it’s saturated the wood. It could be that it reacts differently to the temperature in the house during the change of seasons, and that’s what leads the homeowner to believe that it’s indicating paranormal activity.”
John’s walkie-talkie squawked and he removed it from his belt, hoping that it was something good to save the show—maybe some disembodied footsteps, or better yet, a creepy voice recording from the EVP session Phil Carnagin and Becky were conducting in the basement.
“Go for John,” he said into the device.
“John, it’s Phil. Think we might’ve found something you’re going to want to see.”
“We’ll be right down,” John said, forcing himself not to sigh in relief. “How we doing for time?” he asked Jackson.
“Commercial coming up,” the cameraman replied.
“Excellent,” John said. “We’ll take a little break, and when we return—”
“The basement, with Phil and Becky,” Theodora finished.
“And we’re into commercial,” Jackson announced, lowering the camera.
“To the basement, then,” John said, clicking on his flashlight to illuminate their way.
“Where our ratings are going to be if something doesn’t happen soon,” Theodora replied, turning on her own flashlight.
“You’ve done it now,” John warned, already heading toward the kitchen, where the door to the basement awaited them. “Now all hell is going to break loose.”
“We can only hope,” Theodora said.
John chuckled. He had to agree with her. They’d researched this place pretty thoroughly, even sending in a preinvestigation team that had garnered good results—EMF spikes, interesting electronic voice phenomena, or EVP, and shadow entities. The place had seemed perfect for their Halloween broadcast. Hell, it had won out over a Scottish castle!
So why is it now so silent?
John wondered as they crossed the kitchen and headed down the stairs. “Let’s hope for something good,” he said aloud. “Or next Halloween, we’ll be at home, handing out candy.”
“Full-size?” Theo asked.
“Excuse me?”
“Will we be the house that gives out full-size candy bars, or the minibites?”
“If we lose the Halloween show, we’ll have no choice but to go cheap—bite-size all the way.”
• • •
Theodora descended into the basement carefully, following the beam from her flashlight. She again attempted to reach out to the home, to rouse dormant energies of those who had once resided there.
But still there was nothing.
It wasn’t unusual to come up dry in newer homes, as the more recent structures often did not yet have the ability to collect the residuals of life and death. Although sometimes the land would hold something.
Something that would want to communicate with her.
But this place, a genuinely old house, built upon land that had seen a lot of living and dying, offered nothing.
It just wasn’t right.
“We’re back in one and a half,” Jackson announced from behind them, clumping heavily down the wooden stairs.
John had reached the bottom, where some old apple crates had been stacked, and his flashlight beam played over the dirty, cobwebbed surface of the containers.
“Phil!” he called, walking around the crates. “Becky!”
“Back here!” Phil yelled.
The cellar went farther back than Theodora had expected, probably extending beyond the house and under the backyard. She followed her husband, hearing Jackson behind her, as they negotiated the darkness, skirting rusted old bikes and farm tools. She allowed her defenses to remain down, hoping to pick up on anything the house could offer.
And still there was nothing.
They finally came upon Phil and Becky in a tiny room where the products of fall canning probably had been stored on shelves for the winter. Now the shelves were empty of everything but a thick coating of dust, as was the rest of the room. All except for a sealed jar on the floor in the center of the room.
“What is it?” Theodora asked from the doorway, feeling Jackson trying to move around her for a better shot.
“Less than a minute,” he announced as he pushed past her.
“We’ll pick up with a discussion of this,” John said, his flashlight beam on the jar.
Theodora couldn’t take her eyes from the object. There was something about it that didn’t seem right.
Jackson gave John the signal to begin.
“Welcome back to the live
Spirit Chasers
Halloween show,” he said. “Thanks again for joining us. Just before the break, Phil and Becky called, asking us to join them in the basement, where they found this.” He squatted and moved the light across the bronzed surface of the jar, revealing fine cracks in the glass.
He continued to talk, but Theodora was only vaguely aware of the words leaving his mouth. Her eyes were transfixed by the surface of the container.
The sound was faint, like that of ice cracking as it was warmed by the afternoon sun, and that was when she saw it. As the flashlight beam caressed the rounded contours of the jar, it began to appear upon the jar’s smooth surface.
Theodora’s breath caught in her throat as her highly attuned preternatural senses were suddenly bombarded. Her head was filled with staccato images—images of heinous acts committed here in this house, in this basement.
“Where did you find it?” she gasped, interrupting her husband’s monologue. She felt the eyes of the team fall upon her, but she couldn’t take hers from the jar on the floor. More spiderweb cracks appeared on its surface.
“Tell me!” she screamed. “Where did you find it?”
Jackson was pointing the night-vision camera in her direction. It was a live show and this kind of thing was great for ratings, but ratings were the farthest thing from Theodora’s mind.
“Theo, are you—,” John began.
“In here,” Phil said quickly. “It was over in that corner, on its side.”
“So you touched it?” Theodora asked. “You touched it to place it here?”
She saw the image of a small girl falling on a staircase, and felt her pain as her baby teeth smacked the edge of a step, gouging the wood as they were knocked from her mouth. Theodora’s stomach roiled as she struggled to raise her psychic defenses against whatever was seeping from the container.
“Something’s happening,” she heard Becky say from across the room. Theo had always suspected that Becky was a bit psychic as well.
“Would someone care to fill me in?” John asked cheerily, although his wife could hear the edge to his voice.
“Did you drop it?” she asked Phil and Becky, ignoring her husband’s question.
“No. We just moved it to the center of the room so we could see it better. What—”
Phil was interrupted by a louder crack. Another wave of images poured over Theodora as their EMF detectors began to beep frantically.
Theodora was witness to more pain. She tried desperately to block it out, but the events were coming so fast and furious now that she could barely discern what she was seeing. All she knew was that it was horrible and that death was always the outcome.
“You touched it,” she said breathlessly. “You shouldn’t have—”
More, even louder cracks came from the jar, and she pushed back the surge of panic that threatened to overtake her. “We need to leave,” she managed, her eyes still glued to the object. “We have to get out of here before—”
“Theo, what’s going on?” John demanded, reaching out to grasp her arms.
The container shuddered; then, with a whiplike snap, a dense mist began to seep from the growing fissures.
“I know why the house was so quiet,” Theo said. She gazed at the vapor filling the small room, and at the glowing white sigils that were beginning to manifest on the walls. “How stupid could I be?” She tried to pull away from John. “It wasn’t that they weren’t here. . . . They were silenced.”
The beeping of the EMF detector suddenly stopped, its batteries drained by . . .
“This,” Theo said, pointing to the cracking jar. Images were pounding at her skull, demanding that she look at them.
. . . To see what was about to be released into the world.
“Oh God,” she cried, a new image worming its way onto the screen of her mind’s eye. She saw Fritz. . . . She saw Fritz as well as others dressed in bloodred robes, painting the symbols upon the walls.
Symbols that would silence the voices of the home.
Silence the spirits so they could not warn the investigators.
Theo fell against her husband.
“That’s enough,” John said, holding her tightly. “Go to commercial,” he ordered Jackson, but the man kept right on filming.
Theodora managed to focus her eyes on Jackson, and what she saw filled her with absolute dread. He had not done what was asked of him because he was no longer in control. She could see the spirits around him manipulating him, bending him to their will.
While at first the small room had been empty, it was now filled—filled with the dead, and with something more.
“It’s too late,” Theo said as the atmosphere in the room became even more oppressive.
“That’s it for me,” Phil suddenly announced. “I’m getting the fuck out of here while—”
Before he could utter another word or take a step, Phil’s body was blown apart. Shreds of clothing, blood, and skin covered the ceiling and walls of the tiny room.