Authors: Tim Waggoner
Joanne was puzzled by Ronnie’s question. “I don’t
have
to, but I’m
going
to. Why do you ask?”
“Just watch yourself. He’s not to be trusted.”
Before she could ask him to explain further, he turned and headed off to talk to the reporters who had crept even closer to the crime scene while Ronnie and she had been talking. She was definitely going to have to talk to Ronnie soon, and when she did, she’d insist that he take some time off, whether he liked it or not.
“Call me if you find anything,” she said, and then she turned and headed back toward Marshall. On the way, she looked for Dale and saw him standing on the same stretch of sidewalk he’d been so interested in a few moments earlier. She knew it was crazy, but it almost looked like he was listening to something … or someone.
• • •
After Ronnie finished shooing the reporters back to where they belonged, he watched one of the deputies taking photos of charred wood and melted wiring. Normally he would’ve been the one collecting the evidence, but he was glad he wasn’t today. It was a waste of time, for whatever evidence they gathered, Marshall Cross would just make it disappear. Make
Ronnie
make it disappear.
He hadn’t made it home from Columbus until well after midnight last night. When he got to his house, he walked inside, not bothering to wipe his feet on the doormat, not noticing let alone caring about the mud he tracked in on the carpeting. He went straight to the kitchen, pulled out a chair from the table, sat down, and waited until dispatch had called him in just after daybreak.
He’d reported for duty, not because he believed in his job anymore. Justice wasn’t possible as long as a man like Marshall Cross existed. He’d come to work because he didn’t want to let Sheriff Jo-Jo down. And because he knew that sooner or later, he’d get an opportunity to take out Cross.
That opportunity had come sooner than expected, and ever since the man — if indeed that’s what he truly was — had arrived, Ronnie had contemplated how best to kill the son-of-a-bitch. If Cross had been an ordinary man, it would be simple. Ronnie would just walk up to the bastard, draw his 9 mm, jam the muzzle to his temple and squeeze the trigger. From the moment he’d sat down in his kitchen last night, he’d practiced drawing his weapon — unloaded, of course — with his left hand and firing it. He was hardly ambidextrous, but he was confident he could get the job done. Sheriff Jo-Jo would then have no choice but to take Ronnie in and his career in law enforcement would be over. But he didn’t care. If the last act he performed as a deputy sheriff was to take out a monster like Marshall Cross, it would be worth the cost.
But Cross wasn’t an ordinary man, and Ronnie didn’t know if he’d be able to conceal his intentions from the man long enough to finish him off. If Cross had even an inkling of what Ronnie planned, he’d use his …
influence
to stop him. And then Ronnie would be arrested for attempted murder and Cross would still be alive.
Even so, his left hand itched to draw his 9 mm. He almost did it, too, but he resisted. He needed to wait until Cross was so distracted that he wouldn’t see death coming until it was too late for him to do anything about it, even with his goddamned powers.
He watched the sheriff get in her cruiser, while Cross took the front passenger seat. A moment later, they pulled away from the curb, the reporters shooting video of their departure. And then they were gone. Ronnie felt a stab of disappointment that he’d lost his chance to kill Cross, but he told himself to be patient and keep going through the motions of his job and wait for the perfect opportunity to blow Marshall Cross’s head off. And he’d start by doing as Jo-Jo had asked. He’d go out to the Deveraux Farm. Who knows? Maybe he’d find something sharp and nasty there to use on Cross instead of his 9 mm. Something more fun. Maybe something rusty.
Smiling, he headed off to let the other deputies know where he was going.
“I imagine you’re wondering if you’ve lost your mind,” Tyrone said.
“The thought had occurred to me,” Dale admitted.
Standing on the sidewalk in front of him, looking very much alive, was Tyrone Gantz. The flesh on his throat was smooth and unmarked, and Dale knew that if he asked Tyrone to lift his shirt and expose his abdomen, his stomach would also display no sign of injury.
“Can I touch you?” Dale asked.
Tyrone shrugged. “If you want.”
With a trembling hand, Dale reached out and touched Tyrone’s right cheek. He half expected his fingers to pass through the man’s face as if it were no more than an illusion, or perhaps to find the flesh hard and cold as marble. But it just felt like ordinary skin.
Dale lowered his hand, amused to find himself disappointed. “I’d ask if you somehow managed to survive the killer’s attack, but no one else sees you, do they? Only me.”
“That’s right. I had the strongest connection to you in life. That connection remains in death.”
It was eerie to hear Tyrone speak of his own ghostly state so matter-of-factly. Dale wanted to believe that he’d finally slipped over the edge into insanity, but he knew he couldn’t be so lucky. He’d come to accept so many bizarre things since moving to Cross County years ago that holding a conversation with a recently deceased acquaintance seemed relatively normal, all things considered.
“And before you ask, I don’t know who killed me. I have no insight to offer into the afterlife, and I can’t tell you anything about your wife and daughter.”
Dale hadn’t gotten over his surprise at seeing Tyrone’s ghost to even begin to formulate questions yet, but those were indeed the first ones he would’ve asked, though not necessarily in that order. He felt a pang of loss for something he’d never quite dared to hope for: a way to connect to the spirits of his lost loved ones.
“Why not?”
Tyrone frowned, as if he were trying to recall a long-forgotten memory. “I don’t know. One moment I was lying on the grass, looking up at the night sky, then everything went black and now I’m standing here. I know I’m dead, and I know only you can see me, but otherwise …” He shrugged again.
Dale sighed. “Nothing personal, but what’s the point of the spirit of a murdered man returning to the world of the living if he can’t help bring his killer to justice?”
“I can still bear witness,” Tyrone said. “That’s the most important thing to me.” He smiled. “And who said I can’t help? I may not possess otherworldly insight, but I can still think. Sadie wasn’t able to tell you the name of Carl Coulter’s father, but it occurs to me that there’s someone else who might be able to.”
“Don’t say Debbie. Even if she were inclined to reveal that information to me, she’s not in the clearest frame of mind after last night. I couldn’t be sure she was telling us the truth.”
“I’m not talking about Debbie Coulter. I think you should pay a visit to Eve. No one knows more about the secrets of Cross County, not even Althea — and supposedly they’re sisters. But be warned. Eve doesn’t reveal her secrets for free.”
Dale’s gut twisted with cold nausea. Over the years he’d heard rumors about the high price Eve charged for her favors, and as a result, he’d never sought her assistance. Quite frankly, he’d been scared to. But now it looked like he had nowhere else to turn. “Thanks for the suggestion. Will I … see you around?”
Tyrone grinned. “You’re the only one who ever will.” He turned and started to head down the sidewalk. Dale noticed Tyrone cast no shadow and his footfalls made no sound. Now
that
was more like it.
Tyrone stopped walking for a moment and looked back over his shoulder at Dale.
“By the way, your black-furred friend is hiding in the shadows under your Jeep. Be careful. He’s hungry.”
Dale cast a nervous glance toward his vehicle. The shadows were indeed thick beneath it, and though he could see nothing within the blackness, he didn’t doubt Tyrone’s word.
“I know you don’t have any otherworldly knowledge to share, but do you have any advice on what I can do about that thing?”
Tyrone considered.
“Get into your Jeep fast and pull in your legs before the damned thing catches hold of you.” With that, Tyrone resumed walking away.
“Thanks loads,” Dale muttered. He took a deep breath and started toward his Jeep.
• • •
Kneeling in the dark, eyes closed but still seeing — staring eyes in pale faces, bloody gashes in throats, designs carved into stomachs with a steady, loving hand. Four of them, and she knows their names as well as she does her own. Better, in fact, for she’s not quite sure who she is at the moment. But that’s okay. She’ll figure it out.
Each of the four was dead before he started in with his design work, but he heard their screams nevertheless. Screams of anger, hatred, and violation. Were they real or had they existed only in his mind? She decides it doesn’t matter. Either way, their cries are still the sweetest sounds she’d ever heard.
The smells were real, though, that’s for certain. The four were kept here for days upon days, closed up in the summer heat and allowed to ripen. She takes in a breath and nearly gags on the foulness as it passes into her nostrils, coils down her throat, and assaults her lungs. She read somewhere once that when you smell, you actually take tiny particles of the thing you’re smelling into your body. If that’s true, then she’s just drawn in a double lungful of Death.
Delicious.
There’s power here, different than dominating another’s mind with a push. Greater. For Death comes to all things, even those that aren’t what most people would think of as living — soil, water, air … creation itself. In the end, everything must surrender to the ultimate darkness and become Nothing. It’s so elegantly profound, so unimaginably beautiful. Why hasn’t she ever understood this before?
Because until last night
, a voice — a male voice — whispers in her mind,
you didn’t have me
.
She smiles in the dark. True.
She hears the sound of the barn door opening and light — harsh, glaring, hated light — penetrates the barn’s soothing gloom. She feels a wave of disappointment. She was having
such
a good time.
She grips the hunting knife lying on the ground beside her — a real beauty that she had recently purchased at a sports supply store at the Somerset Mall — and turns to see who has come to pay her a visit.
• • •
“Lenora? Honey, is that you?”
She looked up and saw Terry standing in the barn’s open doorway, backlit by daylight. He had to know it was her. Her car was parked nearby. She guessed his eyes hadn’t had enough time to adjust to the darkness inside the barn, and he wasn’t sure who the figure kneeling on the floor was.
“Hello, Doctor Birch,” she said. It was her voice, but something about it caused him to take a step back, as if he might turn and flee. She supposed there
was
something strange about the tone, rhythm, and cadence of her words. Something that struck Terry as
wrong
.
Not the Doctor Birch part, though. She often called him that, especially when they were in bed, but she always said it in a sexy, teasing way. Not like this, like she was mocking him.
She rose to her feet and started walking slowly toward Terry, moving in an awkward, stiff manner as if the neurons in her brain were randomly misfiring. It felt as if someone else was operating her body, someone who didn’t quite have the hang of it yet.
“Are you okay, Lenora? The way you’re walking… I don’t know a lot about your family’s psychic abilities. My professors didn’t exactly cover that sort of thing in medical school. Is it possible your powers have malfunctioned somehow and harmed you?”
He started forward, as if intending to examine her, but then his gaze fell to the knife gripped in her hand, and he stopped. Her mouth formed a smile. His vision had obviously adjusted to the barn’s gloom.
“Don’t worry,” her voice said. “You don’t have to be afraid of me.”
Terry didn’t respond to that, but he didn’t come any closer. “What are you doing here, baby? Why did you leave Sanctity? Did your father do something to you?”
A voice — a man’s voice — whispered in her mind.
That’s how the two of you bonded, isn’t it? I can see it in you memories
.
Lenora’s body kept walking toward Terry, knife held casually at her side, as if it were a natural extension of her hand.
You were both at the same bar one night. You liked his looks and gave him a little push to come over and talk with you. You intended just to use him for sex, but something unexpected happened. You found yourself telling him your life story, pouring out your feelings — especially about your father. Terry resented the Crosses, always had, ever since he learned that his grandfather was excommunicated from the family. His grandfather’s unfortunate choice of a bride assured that the Crosses would never accept him as one of them. You and Terry found common ground in your hatred of the family, and it didn’t take much pushing on your part to get him to start an affair with you
.
Lenora stopped when she was within three feet of Terry. Close, but not so close that she was in reach.
“You’re behaving very strangely, love,” Terry said. “I know the last couple of days have been stressful for you. Let me take you back to my place. You’ll be safe there and you can rest.”
He took a step toward her. Her body moved so swiftly she was almost unaware of it, and an instant later, the point of her hunting knife dimpled Terry’s throat.
“I could just push you to make you back off, but this is so much more fun.” It was her voice, but
his
words. The man who whispered in her thoughts. “Besides, she’s pushed you a lot over the last few weeks. Far more than you realize. It takes a toll on the mind, you know. Makes you unbalanced at best and insane at worst.” Her mouth smiled as she pressed the knife against his flesh hard enough to prick the skin. A line of blood trickled down his throat. “Which are you, I wonder?”
Terry gave her a leering half-smile. “Is this some kind of kinky role-playing? Do you want to do it here in the Deveraux Barn? You’re one sick bitch.” He said this last bit in a voice thick with both admiration and lust.