Jake's Wake (27 page)

She tugged the chain between their cuffs because she could not bring herself to touch his body, and her cuff had gouged bloody ruts in her wrists, fringed with ruffles of shredded skin.

But even as she pitied herself, she felt boiling self-hatred scald her from the inside out.

She couldn’t even bear to look at what Jake had done to Eddie’s face and scalp, the patchwork of flayed muscle and exposed bone that had smiled at her and promised to protect her from her husband.

He had given his life for her, and she’d failed him. She could do nothing for him now, but she could try to honor his sacrifice.

But she couldn’t do it like this.

Esther gripped Eddie’s lukewarm forearm. It was slick with blood, but she dug her nails into the meat of his arm to get traction and slide him a little farther down the path that led to the side yard.

The chopping block was there.

And the ax.

Evangeline kicked Gray in the balls so hard he threw up and dropped his gun, then brought his head down into her ascending knee, smashing his nose. He bellowed as he tumbled, but kicked her legs out from under her. She hit the dirt on the flat of her back, utterly out of breath.

Gray crawled on top of her and brought the bubbling ruin of his nose in close enough to drip on her. For one, terrifying, breathless moment, she thought he was going to kiss her, or bite her lips off.

He brought his head down blindingly fast and hard, smashing his forehead into the bridge of her nose. Fireworks burst, supernovae exploded and somewhere, a
band was playing. Laughing crazily, Gray kept time by knocking his skull into hers, again and again.

The world went wavy, but instinct made her fight back with all she had. She lashed out with her jaws and caught Gray’s broken nose in her teeth. Feeling broken bone and cartilage gritting between her teeth, she bit down.

Jake entered the studio, did not see Emmy. But at the far end, behind Mathias and the cross,
the blackness had swallowed the green screen wall entirely.

This was a very good sign indeed.

“I am sooooooo ready,” he said, addressing the void. “So ready to take command. So ready to show what I can do. What I
will
do, now that I know who I am.”

He threw his arms wide, emulating Christ on the cross; and not for the first time, he thought how fucking easy it was to look like you wanted to give the
whole wide world a hug
when your hands were nailed as far apart as they could possibly go, to either side.

His lovely model, Mathias, was also demonstrating the pose. Only he was just dead. Not resurrected.

And frankly, Jake didn’t know if
anybody
else was getting back up. But he sure as hell had. And that made him kinda special.

The most special person on earth.

The human race had waited over 2,000 years for someone to come back from the dead. Millions of them had their bet on Jesus, and a couple of other billion were probably hedging their bets, just in case their own personal choices might turn out to be wrong.

There were maybe four, five hundred people in the Inland Empire, tops, who had their bet on Jake.

And they would be rewarded now.

His innermost circle, expanding outward in glory.

Gray and LeGrange were the first line of defense—one utterly loyal, the other utterly faithful—and the
fact that they hated each other could not be more convenient.

But there would be more, as cable access led to CNN, and CNN led to Al Jazeera, and Al Jazeera led to whatever the fuck they watched in Russia, or China, or Japan.

Once his show was back up on the air, it would just be a matter of hours before everyone, everywhere knew his name. All over the world, they would fall to their knees.

For this was the message the blackness brought him: that he was born to lead, to carry that dark torch, put an end to the false light forever and ever. That he had been right about this all along, and that Christ had
always
been wrong.

That virtue was not turning the other cheek, but banging it from behind, then making it beg for more.

Two thousand years of wishful thinking on the part of the useless and meek, finally getting put right to night.

And he was just the man to do it.

“You’re welcome,” he said. “My will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”

It was at that moment that Jake came up even with the two-way mirror, saw a sight that both surprised and delighted him. Like a treat from the psychotic God that truly ran the show.

He saw little Emmy cowering in his bedroom. Turning this way and that, in search of non ex is tent refuge. And then finally, like a child playing hide-and-seek, lying down and sliding under the bed.

Jake laughed, blew a kiss to the billowing blackness. “Oh, this is gonna be great,” he said.

There was a special camera on this side of the mirror, reserved for such special occasions. He turned it on, hit record, and adjusted the angle to his total satisfaction.

He wasn’t gonna want to miss a second of this in playback.

Time to convert his first Christian, and show itsy-bitsy Emmy what life was really all about.

Gray and Evangeline grappled in the dirt, pounding the shit out of each other, both fighting for their lives, neither of them coherent enough to remember their own names.

She gave as good as she got, socking him in the throat and kidneys where he slapped and scratched her neck and her breasts, clawing at the wounds on his back and face when he let down his guard to hit her. Long after they lost the strength to land punches, they rolled across the lawn with their hands battling, hers to get at his face, his to get around her neck.

The outcome was anything but certain until Gray pinned her down and punched her square in the face, then took two handfuls of her wild red hair and bashed her head into the ground so hard that her eyes shook like dice in a cup.

He had beaten her down. She was too groggy to do more than wave her hands in the air and moan, “Fuh-fuh-fuck you.” Gray retrieved his gun and tried to lever her upright by her hair, but they were both way too fucked up to stand.

Esther was just angry enough, just crazy enough with pain and frustration, to go through with it.

With her own cuffed arm, she dragged Eddie’s wrist onto the block. The chain was just a little more than four inches long, too short to trust to her aim. Her hand shook when she picked up the small hand ax, tears streaming down her face. This would be easier with the big ax; but only, of course, if she had two hands free…

That was why she always let men do everything for her, she suddenly knew, why she could only resist Jake when
someone else agreed to be her crutch. She was terrified of taking her life in her own hands, of screwing it up.

“I am so sorry…” she said.

Then she brought the ax down, again and again.

From under the bed, Emmy watched Jake’s boots slowly walk into the room, felt the gentle brush of trapped air as he closed the door. She was holding her breath.

“Oh, Emmy, Emmy, Emmy,” he crooned. “Little bundle of faith. What will it take to make you mine again?”

She was utterly still, completely terrified, watching the boots keep walking.

“You think I don’t know how you feel. What you need. But you’re wrong. I know.”

The boots stopped in front of her face. Pointed toward her. She almost swallowed her hands, trying to hold the scream in.

“Time to know you like God knows you. From the inside out.”

All at once, Jake rolled the bed out of the way, leaving her exposed on the floor. She shrieked.

He laughed, and moved toward her.

Eddie’s severed hand lay on the chopping block. The bloody handcuff dangled from her wrist.

No one was watching. She was free to run, to save herself, like Eddie had told her to.

She thought about it for a moment.

From inside, she could hear Emmy screaming.

She watched the racing black clouds in the tortured night sky, wondered where she could run to. And how she would face herself when she got there.

Esther dropped the little ax.

And picked up the big one.

Jake pulled Emmy from the floor. She came up clawing and screaming, ripping meat off his cheek.

“AUGH! NOT THE FACE, YOU BITCH!”

He whipped her around, drove her back, and
slammed her into the two-way mirror:
the back of her head shattering the glass and leaving a jagged hole.

She went blank as a rag doll, and Jake spun her around: facing the mirror, her ass to him.

She could see it all, horribly reflected in the shattered glass.

Gray manhandled a punch-drunk Evangeline into the studio by her hair, prodding her and spanking her ass with his gun.

“JAKE!” he called out, but got no response. He thought he heard one of his master’s bitches whining somewhere nearby, but he didn’t want to know.

Something had gone sour with their little miracle, and Gray had a sinking feeling that the worst was yet to come. One thing was for certain: this party was a fucking bust.

All he could do was guarantee that nobody was leaving.

“Jake! I’m gonna punch this bitch’s ticket…”

He had to grab the doorknob with his gun hand.
Evangeline barely knew where she was, but he kept an eye on her as he threw open the door.

A towering shadow fell across the threshold. Before he even turned to look, Gray gagged at the stink of blood and excrement: outhouse-foul, but so much fresher than Jake that he figured his friend must’ve taken a shower.

“Jake, where do you want this bi—”

Gray swallowed his tongue.

It wasn’t Jake.

It was Jasper Ellis. Grinning. No longer dead.

Or maybe still dead. But no longer down.

“Shhh…” Jasper hissed, holding one mischievous finger up.

Then he punched Gray’s front teeth all the way down his throat, threw a wink at the stunned Evangeline, and kicked Gray’s inert body out of the studio doorway.

“You comin’?” he said.

Jake heard the commotion in the hallway, but couldn’t see. It pissed him off.

“KEEP IT DOWN OUT THERE, GODDAMIT!”

Through her shock, through the hole in the mirror, Emmy saw the camera aimed at her face. Also saw Mathias, still dangling lifeless on the cross behind it. She noted the jagged shards of mirror, razored stalagmites directly below her throat.

Behind her, Jake lifted up her skirt, pulled down her panties, and bared her ass.

Very softly, through the brain-fog and terror, she began to pray.

As effortlessly as taking out the trash, Jasper dragged Gray out to the middle of the studio floor by his limp arms; then, dropping the left like a dead catfish on the concrete, he took hold of the right and bent it backward at the elbow till it snapped.

Gray awakened and wailed. His legs kicked spastically and his other arm came up to fend off Jasper, but the dead man caught it and trapped it.

Evangeline stared, unbelieving, uncertain who was the greater threat. Jake’s baseball bat jutted from the umbrella stand to her left, and she scooped it up instinctively, swaying.

“Jasper…?”

He smiled warmly at her, caught her staring at the gaping hole in his chest, the ruptured lobe of lung hanging down the front of this shirt like a fleshy necktie.

“Gimme a second, honey,” he said. “I wanna make sure this fuck stays down.”

Snapping Gray’s left arm with the same clinical detachment, Jasper shook his head at Gray’s tactless mix of begging and cursing to get him to stop. Gray’s pulse practically jumped out of his neck; he banged his head on the floor and gnashed his teeth on his tongue to fight off unconsciousness, but every movement only drove him to more outrageous fits of agony.

“I’m sorry, man.” Jasper took Gray’s left hand in both of his, gently shaking the arm like a masseuse does, to work out the tension, but wringing tortured howls from Gray. “This isn’t about hurting you, honest to God it’s not.”

Beginning with his trigger finger, Jasper broke each finger at the second knuckle. Still smiling as he did it: not with evil, but with anger and purpose. “We can’t solve our problems by killing each other anymore. We have to find a new way…”

Evangeline looked away. “Jasper, what happened to you?”

“Well, fuck,” he muttered, oddly low and thin. No breath. Louder, he added, “I guess I got killed.”

“What…what was it—?”

“It hurt.” Jasper dropped the ruined hand, a curled-up
claw the hue of an eggplant. “But you know what? Right now,
it’s not so bad!
”

Gray fainted dead away; only labored breathing escaped his devastated grill.

Evangeline used the bat as a cane, to steady herself, trying not to step in any of the lakes of blood. Her eyes crept up the cross, bearing unwilling witness to the worst thing she’d ever seen. Repulsion and awe battled for her sanity.

There was nothing she would not put past Jake, nothing he would not do to satisfy his titanic ego, and his endless appetite. When he came back, she was the least surprised: it was only natural that he would ignore the laws of nature, just like he flouted all the others.

But looking at Mathias, she had to adjust her idea of Jake, and what he was capable of.

While the skinny boy was flayed and mangled to a degree that would have made the Romans puke, the extremity was of a ritual nature that betrayed a sense of purpose. He was not just trying to wallow in his own cruel whims one last time, or even to drag his victims back to hell with him.

Jake did not seem to totally understand it, himself, but she had no doubt that he must have succumbed to his own bullshit. Having come back from the grave, he must really think he could raise the dead.

But he could not have meant to bring Jasper back, could he?

She passed Mathias and looked at the sliding glass door, still ajar from when Gray dragged her in here by her hair.

Nothing was holding her here. She could run away, but she would never escape, unless she saw it through. She tried to take her own life to night. Out of her mind at the time, but the thought of what he almost made her do shook her to her core.