Shadow of the Past (35 page)

The blackness muffled everything. All
he could feel was searing heat as what felt like dozens of tiny,
burning fingers dug into him, trying to pull him back. The rest of
his senses were reduced to a dull, underwater roar as he pushed
forward hoping he was still going in the right
direction.

The roar and pain intensified, and then
there was a burst of light so bright that he couldn’t make out
anything. He could feel his body shaking as his mind took control
again. His eyes began refocusing as the light faded away, only to
be replaced by a smoky haze that hung in the air in front of him.
There was a clap of thunder and then he could hear
again.

Steve was in front of him, and he
wasn’t pleading anymore, just looking at Mark with surprise. He
backed up, mouth moving, but all Mark could hear was a high-pitched
shrieking. Steve bumped into the furnace behind him, and then
raised his hands to cover the ragged hole in his throat that was
pouring blood all down his shirt.

The shrieking was Christine, and the
smoke was coming from the gun in his hand.

Chapter
Thirty-Two

“Fucking sweet,” Jack said.

The kid kept shifting his gaze away
from David to Steve, who slid down the front of the furnace blood
seeping around the hands at his throat.

Christine’s scream trailed off into a
choked sob as she backed away from the puddle of blood forming
around the floor where Steve now sat. Jack was too absorbed to
notice Mark backing away from the spreading blood, the viciousness
in his face replaced with shock. He lowered David’s gun and then
the blade in his hand fell out of his trembling hand.

“Oh god,” Mark said.

It’s him,
David realized.

David opened his mouth to say
something, but Steve gave a deep, ragged gasp and then stopped
breathing. “My turn,” Jack said, turning his full attention to
David now that his entertainment was over.

Before he could pull the trigger, Mark
dropped to his knees and let loose a deep retching sound. Jack
turned and Mark retched again, his whole body doubling up and his
mouth strained as wide as possible. What came out of his mouth
wasn’t vomit but thick black smoke. It tumbled to the ground,
piling up like fog and drifting towards the furnace and the puddle
of blood. There was a burning hiss as it hit the blood, and the
fire in the furnace began to roar higher.

“What the fuck?” Jack said, and David
charged, ducking under the gun that had drifted away from his
center mass and tackling Jack squarely in the midsection. They fell
to the ground in a pile, the boy thrashing as David forced Jack’s
gun hand up towards the ceiling and grabbed for it. Their hands
tangled together but David managed to slap the pistol out of the
boy's hands and send it clattering to the floor.

Jack slipped a hand from David’s grip
and punched up with enough crazy teenager strength to push him just
enough to bring a leg up between them. Jack scrambled out from
underneath him, legs kicking frantically as he crawled away towards
the pistol. David tried to grab the boy’s leg, but before he could
he took a kick to the temple.

David rolled backwards, trying to blink
away the pain clouding his vision and hopefully crawling towards
where Mark dropped his gun.

“Freeze you son of a bitch.”

David stopped, vision coming back into
focus. Jack was up on one knee, both hands gripping his pistol and
one eye squeezed shut as he took careful aim.

There was a roar of anger and the open
eye disappeared with a burst of gunfire.

The gun in Jack’s hand went off and
David felt the breeze of the bullet’s passing as it just missed him
and ricocheted off the floor. Mark let out another scream and fired
again, putting another hole in Jack’s face. The suddenly cyclopean
teenage psycho fell backwards against the basement wall. Mark kept
screaming and pulling the trigger until there was a fist sized hole
where Jack’s eye and nose used to be and the room echoed with the
metallic clicks of the dry-firing Glock.

When Jack’s body fell face-first onto
the ground Mark realized he was still pulling the trigger on the
empty gun. He dropped it and sat back, pushing himself away from
it. He stopped when the gravel behind him went warm and sticky in
his hands.

“Mark?” Christine said from behind him.
“Is that you?”

He couldn’t speak, and he couldn’t
bring himself to turn around to look at her. He just
nodded.

“What the fuck?” she said, walking
around in front of him. “What the fuck just happened? Was that . .
. what the fuck was that, Mark?”

He didn’t want her to see him. He knew
that if she looked at him, she’d see that twisted, psychotic face
that Cor . . . that Darren had given him; the face of the crazed,
ghostly lunatic that killed his best friend. He raised his hands to
his face to cover it, but stopped when he saw the red on his
fingers.

“I’m sorry,” Mark said, putting his
hands on the dry ground and trying to rub the color off them. “It
wasn’t me. It was . . . I can’t even begin to explain.”

“It was the ghost, wasn’t it?”
Detective Prescott said.

He nodded. His hands were still wet,
and all he was doing was scratching the hell out of them on the
gravel and concrete. Defeated, he just let them hang limply in his
lap.

“Is he . . .” Christine asked, looking
behind Mark. He turned and saw David standing at the edge of the
pool of blood, leaning in and checking Steve for a pulse. For a
brief second of stupid optimism, Mark thought David would shout
that Steve was okay, and that if they hurried he’d survive and it’d
be like this whole thing never happened.

Instead, David shook his head and
stepped away from the body.

“Jesus Christ,” Mark said, resting his
head on the top of hands.

“Are you two hurt at all?” David
said.

Christine shook her head, and Mark just
shrugged. David crouched down next him. “Mark, I know this is hard,
but we have to get out here. I have to call this in, and then we
can figure out what to tell them.”

“What’s to tell?” Mark said. “It was me
the whole time. He used me like a fucking puppet, and I don’t think
there’s anything that we can say that’s going to make people
believe that.”

“We’ll come up with something,” David
said. “Come on, we need to get out of here first,
alright?”

Mark nodded, and with David’s help he
got to his feet. He made it a couple of steps before everything
went gray and hazy. David grabbed him before he fell over, and with
an arm under him to keep him upright, David walked Mark up the
stairs.

Mark shook his head to clear it of its
sudden heat and weight but it didn’t help. Everything was fuzzy,
but before they made it up the stairs he looked back down into the
basement at the two bodies laying in puddles of blood and the fire
in the furnace raging on.

David and Christine got Mark upstairs
and seated in one of the old kitchen chairs. He was completely
white, aside from the smears of blood on his hands and drops of it
on his face. Christine knew that Mark wasn’t the snarling savage
that had held her hostage but it was hard to look at him and not
feel the edge of the blade pressing against her throat.

Or realize that her brother’s killer
was sitting in front of her muttering for forgiveness.

“Mark, can you hear me?” David said,
squatting down in front of Mark.

Mark nodded, and then with a deep gulp,
said “Yeah . . . I just needed some air. It’s so hot down
there.”

“I know,” David said. “Can you
stand?”

Mark nodded and then got halfway out of
his chair before falling right back down in it.

“I guess not,” he said.

“That’s okay,” David said. “Just take
your time.” He reached down to his belt, unclipped his cell phone
and flipped it open. He frowned, put the phone to his ear, and then
flipped it shut.

“I’m not getting any signal in
here.”

“Let me try,” Christine said, welcoming
the excuse to look away from the blood on Mark’s hands. She checked
her phone and shook her head. “I’m not getting anything
either.”

“Okay,” David said. “I’m going to go
and try from outside, I want the two of you to stay here,
okay?”

“Sure,” she said, and Mark just
nodded.

David headed down the hallway for the
front door and Christine tucked her phone back into her pocket.
Mark leaned forward, elbows on his knees and moving to rest his
head in his hands. He pulled up at the last second when he
remembered what they were covered with.

“Jesus Christ,” he muttered, sitting
back upright.

“Let me see if there’s something you
can wipe your hands with,” Christine said, turning away and
scanning the dust laden counters for something even remotely
clean.

“Don’t worry about it,” Mark
said.

“Dammit!” Christine whirled around,
expecting to see the blade and the wicked gleam in Mark’s eye
coming at her again. The yell hadn’t come from Mark or the
basement, but towards the front of the house where Detective
Prescott had gone.

Mark had staggered to his feet, but
Christine pushed him back into the chair as she passed on the way
to the front door. “Stay here,” she said. Once she was in the
hallway she could see Detective Prescott gripping the door handle
and pulling with all of his strength.

“What is it?” she said as she came up
behind him.

“The door was open when I came in here
with Steve. I don’t know if that Jack kid closed it and found some
way to lock it, but it’s not moving now.”

“Let me help,” she said, coming around
him and wrapping her hands over his and helping twist. All their
combined might achieved was two pairs of sore hands, deep breaths
and muttered curses.

“Dammit!” David said, shaking his
hands. “There has to be some other way out of here. C’mon, let’s
check around back,” he said, but before Christine could follow, he
stopped. “Oh shit.”

“What?”

He pointed down the hall and into the
kitchen and the empty chair where Mark had been sitting.

“Where’d he go?”

Mark watched them struggling at the
door and the guilt in his stomach turned to cold
clarity.

Whatever was trapped in the fire in the
basement was burning merrily along, waiting for them to exhaust
themselves trying to get out before whatever remained of Darren
flowed back up the steps to finish them off. If it was going to
end, Mark was going to have to stop it. He got up, the
uncharacteristic bravery chasing most of the light-headedness away.
He would’ve let them know what he was doing, but they’d probably
just try to argue. Once he was sure of his footing, he headed back
down the stairs.

When he got to the base of the stairs
he tried to focus only on the furnace and the flames in front of
him. Not the hole through Jack’s head that seemed to follow him as
he walked. Not Steve’s body, staring off into infinity in a pool of
his own blood.

Mark stepped around the blood and
squatted down as close as he could to his dead friend. He wanted to
touch him and close his eyes, but he couldn’t bring himself to do
it. He’d done enough already.

“I’m so sorry, Steve.”

From where he was kneeling, Mark could
stare directly into the open furnace. The heat from the flames was
oppressive, and he could feel it pulsing in his head. In the fire
he could just make out something moving with the flames.

“I’m going to kill you,” Mark said to
it. “I’m going to find out how and I’m going to end you, you
demonic piece of shit.”

He got to his feet, breaking his gaze
with more effort than he would’ve liked. The closest he could find
to an “off” switch on the furnace was a temperature control. He
hoped something as simple as turning the flame down to nothing
would at least stall whatever was powering Darren long enough to .
. . to what? Darren had said he’d had enough power to live on in
the house for decades, presumably with the furnace turned down to
non-demonic levels. If anything, snuffing the flames would be
satisfying enough for now. He could come back later with a priest
and a bulldozer.

As he reached out for the gauge a hand
clamped down on his.

“Not so fast,” a ragged voice whispered
in his ear. “I’m not done with you yet.” Before he could turn, Mark
was hurled forward. His head hit the front of the furnace, the
impact knocking him off his feet and down onto the
floor.

“I’m honestly sorry it’s come to this,”
the voice said, coming closer. “But you brought it on
yourself.”

He tried to push himself back up to his
feet, but everything was wet and slippery and he couldn’t find his
balance. Over the roar of flames and throb of pain in his head he
heard the familiar sound of metal scraping home and the tiny click
as the blade was locked into place. Something smashed into the back
of his head, causing his arms to buckle and dropping him flat onto
his stomach.