Authors: Christopher Ransom
Darren was relieved to see that Beth’s wagon was not in the driveway. Chad’s used gray Saab wasn’t here either, which meant Raya and he were still out. Good. He needed some time to prepare for them to meet ‘Patrick’ and, he supposed, for the boy to meet them. It was a little after 2 p.m. Beth said she’d be down at Fresh Starts all day, but Raya could be home at any moment. He’d worry about that when the time came.
He nudged the Acura into the garage, beside the Firebird, hoping to conceal the damage to his car, though of course he would have to explain that to Beth sooner or later. He would have to explain it all, though he had no explanations.
Darren led him inside, to the kitchen, where Patrick shucked off his backpack and set it on the counter.
‘I need to use your bathroom.’
‘Down that hall, by the front door.’
Patrick headed that way, then paused, looking back. ‘Are you sure we’re safe?’
‘Whoever’s chasing you can’t get to you here,’ Darren said.
‘You don’t know what they’re capable of.’
Darren wondered what that could mean, other than that the kid was paranoid. ‘Well, I have a gun in my office safe. It’s not like we’re at war here. It’s just another sunny Saturday afternoon, okay?’
Patrick frowned and shut himself in the bathroom.
While he was in there, Darren opened the backpack. A few clothes. A grocery bag with a bottle of water and some granola bar wrappers. Beneath the bag he unearthed a well-worn magazine with the title,
Questar
. Looked to be a science fiction & fantasy rag, long defunct. Darren remembered this too, a mildly cheesy version of
OMNI
for the fanboy set, back when
Star Wars
was new and comics featuring intergalactic babes with huge boobs and long, silver-booted thighs were as close as a boy could legally get to
Playboy
on the newsstand. He couldn’t be sure, but he thought he had a few copies of this magazine out in the shop, among the issues of
BMX Plus!
and
MAD Magazine
he had saved. Or maybe he just remembered it now because he had seen the magazine when he was a kid.
That was one of the weird things about collecting vintage goods. Sometimes what you had really owned back in the day got confused with stuff you had only seen. And sometimes the things you remembered weren’t really memories, but the hunger to claim more of your forgotten past, even the portions of it that belonged to someone else.
Darren flipped the pages, then checked the cover again for the newsstand date. November, 1980. What year had he ruined Adam’s bike? Later than 1980, but no later than ’83, when Darren was twelve and Adam would have been closer to eleven. How old was this boy using his bathroom? He looked eleven, acted a little older, but he could be twelve or thirteen. He had been carrying this magazine for two years. Or, in another way, for thirty.
Patrick. Adam. Patrick. Adam. Patrick. Adam…
He looked up to make sure Patrick was still in the bathroom, then quickly rifled through the rest of the pack. In one of the hidden pockets he felt a slender shank of metal with hollowed grooves, and when he took it out, he knew without opening it that it was a butterfly knife. A street knife, illegal in many states. Darren remembered being fascinated by these things when he was a kid, along with all the other martial arts stuff. Nunchakus, throwing stars. He had a few weapons of this sort boxed up somewhere in the shop’s attic, maybe even a butterfly knife or two.
He flipped the latch at the base of the handles and let the knife fall open. The smoke-steel blade swung down and dangled back and forth like a pendulum. Darren stared at the dried crust on one side. Blood? It sure looked like blood.
Jesus Christ. The kid’s been in some kind of trouble. What if he used this thing on someone? Whose blood is this, anyway?
The toilet at the front of the house flushed.
Darren shoved everything back into the pack and closed the top flap. He went to the kitchen and ran the faucet, filling two glasses of water. He was taking ice from the freezer when Patrick appeared, looking from Darren to the backpack and back to Darren with obvious suspicion.
‘Thirsty?’ Darren said.
Patrick nodded.
Darren set the water before him and the boy drank the entire glass in one long pull. Darren refilled it, and he drained another half-pint before setting the glass down with a gasp.
‘Hungry?’
‘Why are you doing this?’ Patrick said.
‘Offering you food and drink? You’re a guest. That’s what you do when people come over.’
‘Can I just get that bike and get out of here?’
‘Absolutely. Can I ask you one question first? You don’t have to answer if you don’t want to, but I need to ask.’
‘Sure.’
‘Do you know who you’re running from? The truck? What’s that all about?’
‘Why do you want to know?’
‘Maybe I can help.’
‘I don’t think so,’ Patrick said. ‘Safer for you if you don’t.’
Darren sighed, ran his hands through his hair. ‘Look, I don’t know how to say this, and maybe we don’t need to talk about it, but this is all just a little too… I’m just as confused as you are, okay? I don’t think it’s an accident I ran into you. You look familiar to me, and I think I look familiar to you. I don’t know how this is even… but we have to start somewhere, right?’
Patrick neither agreed nor disagreed.
‘Whatever you tell me will stay between us,’ Darren said. ‘I won’t tell a soul.’
‘You’ll laugh.’
‘No, I won’t. I’ve been experiencing my own little… problems, things I can’t explain and… whatever it is, I won’t laugh.’
The boy looked away. When he spoke, his words were all but mumbled. ‘Most people don’t believe in monsters.’
‘I know,’ Darren said. ‘I won’t lie to you. I don’t either, not in the literal sense. But I know people see things differently, and give different names to bad things. More importantly, you know what I do believe? I believe you, Patrick. So if you tell me you saw something, hey, I will take you seriously.’
Patrick opened his backpack and dug out the issue of
Questar.
He immediately turned to a bent-eared section in the middle and rotated the two-page spread so that Darren could read it from his side of the counter. He stepped away, flicking his hands as if he had come into contact with germs.
It was an ad for masks, dozens of them. Darren remembered these ads from back in the day. They were high-quality masks, not cheap toys. Priced from $29.99 to $59.99, even in 1980. He wondered how much they would be worth now. He should hunt down a few online, see if they were still in demand.
Patrick stabbed one finger down, to a picture of a mask that had been circled in faded marker. The Nocturnal. Something about its flat stare and human-but-wrong features sent a tingle of discord through Darren. He almost flinched, and he could not look at it for more than a few seconds.
‘They look like that,’ Patrick said. ‘There’s at least two of them, maybe three, and they already killed a bunch of people. Some not far from here.’
The calm conviction in the boy’s voice was unsettling.
Darren was careful with his response. ‘How do you know they killed people?’
Patrick looked him in the eyes. ‘I was there. A few days ago. I don’t know because my sense of time is all messed up. But it was real early.’
‘You saw it happen? Where was this?’
‘At their house. Some random house. I was hiding in the basement. Didn’t see it, but I heard it all.’ Again, the cold certainty with which he spoke gave Darren the chills. ‘Screams, the sound of their heads getting smashed on the floor. I think it was a family.’
‘What makes you think that?’
Patrick swallowed hard. His eyes glassed and shimmered but no tears rolled out. ‘I could hear the mom screaming. “Josh, no, Josh.” I think he was her son.’
Josh. Darren knew this name. He’d heard it recently. Who mentioned it to him? Chad. When they were talking about the school being locked down. Mrs Kavanaugh…
‘What?’ Patrick said, noticing Darren’s change of expression from puzzlement to what must have been pale shock.
‘One of my daughter’s teachers was killed Wednesday morning. At home. Her family members too. She had a son named Josh.’
Patrick’s lips trembled. His arms began to shake and he looked around as if searching for the nearest escape route.
‘Patrick?’
‘I have to go. What am I doing here?’ the boy wailed. ‘They’re gonna come for me again. They’ll get you, and your family.’
‘Then shouldn’t we call the police? If you’re so worried?’
Patrick stiffened. Did not answer.
‘Why are you afraid of the police?’ Darren prodded.
Patrick only blinked at him and looked away.
Either the boy had done something wrong and was guilty of something, or he was lying. Darren tried a different approach. He pointed to the magazine. ‘I understand you’re scared. I would be too. But whatever happened over there, it wasn’t your fault.’
‘Yes, it was.’
‘How could it be?’
‘They were after me. Everywhere I go, they find me. Don’t you get it?’
‘Why? I mean, no offense, but what’s so special about you?’
Patrick looked down at his hands. He clenched them into fists again and again.
‘I won’t call the police if you tell me,’ Darren said softly. ‘But if you won’t, then what choice do I have?’
Patrick grabbed the water and sipped, spilling on his shirt. His hands were shaking. ‘All I know is, something bad happened to me. Somebody cut off my past. I’m sure of that. I remember a few details, other things are familiar. Like your name. Things around town. But if I have a home somewhere, there is no family in it. No parents. No brothers or sisters. Whatever happened to me, it happened to them too, only they’re all gone. It’s like I’m an orphan, and I did something to piss those things off, and now they’re coming for me.’
‘But —’
‘I’m not like other kids. I touch things and I can tell things about the people who owned them. Something’s wrong with me, and I think that’s part of why they’re after me. They want to use it, use me, or kill me so I don’t find out.’
‘Find out what?’
‘I don’t want to talk anymore!’ Patrick shouted. ‘You owe me a bike, Darren. Are you going to give me a bike or not?’
Darren’s thoughts were reeling. He should call the police right now. If this kid knew something about what happened to the Kavanaughs… and then he thought of the knife in the backpack, the butterfly knife with dried blood on the blade. What did he know about this kid? Who was he really? What was more likely, that he was somehow a reincarnation of Adam Burkett, the boy from 1982, or some psychopath roaming around town worming his way into people’s lives and homes?
This could all be a set-up. A hoax, like the Cinelli. Someone had sent an anonymous kid here to mess with Darren, just like they had sent an anonymous bike. There was a connection here, there had to be. He could not let the kid slip away yet, not until he figured this out.
But it didn’t feel like a scam, and Patrick didn’t look like a killer. He believed everything he was saying. The kid needed help. Something had brought him into Darren’s life. He felt like he owed this kid a real debt, something more than a new bike. He wanted to help him, not turn him over to the police.
Be careful
, a voice inside him warned.
You are playing with fire here, the kind that can burn a house down.
‘Sure, we don’t have to talk about that other stuff. Come out back,’ Darren said, leading the boy out the sliding glass door, into the yard. ‘I think I have the perfect ride for you. We can see how it fits, and if you don’t like it, you can pick out something else.’
Patrick put the magazine away and followed Darren to the shop.
Sheila had not slept in almost four days. She did not know whether it was day or night. The blinds of her apartment had been drawn since Wednesday night, the doors locked. Every now and then, when the itch became unbearable, she pried one of the plastic vertical slats aside an inch or two. She did so now, and confirmed (in order of importance) that yes, the door was still locked, the police were not here, it was daytime, and no one had stolen her orange plastic Adirondack chairs, the ones she had bought on sale at Home Depot to spruce up her patio.
Satisfied, but still feeling like a death row inmate with about three hours to go, she closed the blind and examined the rest of the window to make sure no one could see in. Of course, she could no longer see out, either. This would be a problem if someone came creepin’ around, but she needed privacy, a sense of being hidden, until she could set this new jumble of reality planes in order and find her path forward.
Alanis and Teddy had become extremely agitated by her, but Sheila couldn’t help stomping around, looking at her face in the bathroom mirrors, chewing her nails, brewing cup after cup of her medicinal tea. She was very angry with herself. Losing control like that, waving a gun around in those idiots’ home like she’d been having a nervous breakdown, like she was some kind of thwarted duchess.
Then leaving them alive. That was not one bit smart.
Not to mention how many people had seen her talking to Steven pig at the bar before she went after him. If he had called the police – oh please, no ifs about this one, one look at that tight-assed wife of his, you damn well knew she had made him call the police – to file a report about an unstable woman who’d stalked him into his living room, pressed the barrel of a gun to his wife’s nose and promised her husband would join her in Hell soon enough, well, then Sheila was going to be in a real patch of trouble. Or was already. She would have to leave this place. Her home. Her apartment in Prana.
Any moment now she would go. Soon as she got her thoughts in order. But she had been telling herself this for three and a half days and she couldn’t bring herself to abandon the comfy nest she had made after so many years of strife.
She should have emptied the gun into the wife, reloaded, and emptied it again into Steven pig. Even after she received the signal. Even though the signal had hit her like a charging bull, paralyzing her for ten or twenty seconds that felt like an hour. There was no excuse for such a slip, no matter what the signal told her. She was losing her edge. In the old days, even as recent as two years ago, she would have never left a witness behind. Losing her edge, getting sloppy, yes, yes. But not soft, she had not gone soft. She hadn’t refrained from opening their skulls out of pity, because God knew she had wanted to. She had been furious with them, with the wife and her pregnant belly maybe more than Steven pig.
She was still furious, with them and with herself.
But there was nothing to do about it now, except think of a plan. She couldn’t go back and kill them. The real pigs in blue would have been all over the neighborhood by now, and probably were running security patrols in case she was dumb enough to come back. Lafayette was by no means a hotbed of criminal activity with the seasoned police force to respond to it, but it wasn’t a total sleeper like some of the ones she’d done her sapping in. Halfway between Boulder and Denver, surrounded by other towns of ten, twenty and thirty thousand, they’d have all the backup they needed once word went around the wagon train there was a raving hot bitch on the loose with a pistol.
Sheila opened her iPad mini and logged into WellsFargo.com. She was not surprised to see that she had only $1,743 in her checking account and $52.00 in her savings account, but the numbers looked much smaller now than they had three days ago. She wasn’t going to be able to go back to her job ever again, so there went her carefully scheduled direct deposits of $1,645 and change every two weeks. She would no longer be able to afford her car or the apartment (and the pool, spa, gym membership, coffee bar and other amenities that came with the Prana living experience) or her Nordstrom Rack charge card, with or without the 25 per cent employee discount.
She would have to burn everything, burn it all down, including her identity. She had nothing now. Nothing but the clothes she could pack into one bag, the remains of her bank accounts, and the pussies.
She looked at Teddy on the couch. His hind leg was aimed straight at the ceiling and he was bathing the inside of his thigh. He stopped and looked at her with his golden eyes and she wanted to skin him right now and take his pelt on the road with her, to save him the misery of living with someone else, complete strangers with some mongrel child who would pull his tail and shove Crayons up his butt.
The indignity of it all.
Four days of pent-up rage swept over her and (for the sixth or seven time in three days) Sheila could not contain a scream, which turned into a lot of screaming.
‘You worthless idiot! You stupid cow bitch! How could you do this to us!’ she wailed, screeching at the walls, not caring if her neighbors heard. She almost hoped one of them would come over and complain, so she could vent the black doom on somebody. She beseeched herself, shrieking until her throat felt torn to ribbons. ‘I hate you you stupid useless monster bitch, why don’t you kill yourself right now, you cowardly whore! Trash doll worthless trash doll whore!’
She took the coffee pot from the maker and swung it across the room, sending it into the wall where four of her beautiful precious paintings were hung. The coffee pot did not shatter but it did smash through the canvas of one of her favorite acrylics, the one with the coyotes gathered around the camp fire with the cactus and prairie sunset in the background. Four months she had spent on that painting. She hated it, she realized. It was not art but the work of a delusional mind too feeble to call itself an amateur. The coyotes looked about as realistic as fur-covered baked potatoes with button eyes.
Sheila went to the wall and tore down the other paintings and broke them over her knees, puncturing the canvas with her nails, imagining they were her brother’s eyes, his precious baby-skin face. She crumpled the torn canvases into balls and kicked them across the floor, stomping the gilt wood frames with her heels, chanting obscenities until she saw red and black and fell on the floor sobbing, breathing uncontrollably. If she had not thrown the gun out the window of her car on the way home, she would have stuffed it into her mouth right now and blow the top of her head off.
She cried herself out for almost fifteen minutes. Alanis found her on the floor and hunched over her belly, purring. Sheila petted the animal’s neck, tugging at the fur, thinking of the bones inside, the needle teeth.
But damn it, the signal had derailed her. Derailed everything. Not just the moment, ruining her concentration and taking any possible pleasure away from the double sapping she was about to serve up (two and a half if you counted the lump in the wife’s belly). The signal had ruined her whole life, or her entire… what was the word? Conception of life. Perception of it. It had royally pooched her entire place in the universe. Of course, that’s what signals did, especially when they were sent by a powerful force.
Adam is alive. Adam is close.
We almost had him, but he got away. We’re coming to bring you home.
Prepare to take all possible steps and serve the original order.
That’s what the signal said, though of course not in words. The signals never came in words, they arrived in colors, shapes, images, splinters of fierce emotion. It had been so long since she’d gotten one, she almost didn’t trust it. But it had come on strong, the green light in her sinuses making her eyes water and making her sneeze almost orgasmically, better than the rebound off a proper hoof of the amyl. A stab of pain between her eyes, behind her nose, and for a moment she had been blinded. His face, his life force, the cloud of their horrid past roiling into a cross-hatched symbol for now, today, here.
Adam is close. Adam is alive.
Sheila had nearly soiled herself as its meaning unfurled across her frontal lobes. How could it be possible? What could it mean? Adam had been gone for thirty years. Gone, forgotten. He was dead to them before he disappeared and all indications were that he was literally dead, dead as could be.
Her parents were dead along with him, Gaia rest their animal souls.
So then, who could have sent the signal? And where the hell was the next one?
‘There must be some mistake,’ she said to Alanis, who had left her and was scaling the chairs to the kitchen island, tail held high, purring gutturally. Hungry or just aroused by her mistress’s emanations? Was she emanating yet? If not, she would be soon.
Something had awoken in Sheila the moment the signal arrived, something she hadn’t felt in a long time, not even when she was finishing a particularly satisfying sap. Could be the cats sensed it now. They knew feline power when it was close.
She wished she could take the pussies with her, to help her find her brother.
To let them lap his artery blood from a saucer like so much milk.
Sheila ran to her walk-in closet, stripped out of her clothes, suddenly certain she needed to run, get out, right now. The question was, where to? To do what? They hadn’t sent instructions with the signal. Only,
Prepare to take all possible steps and serve the original order.
That could mean a lot of things.
She dressed in her preferred Crawling attire: black jeans, black long-sleeved shirt, her black hiking boots. Scooted into the bathroom and tied her hair up in a ponytail. Wiped away all traces of the make-up, which was frowned upon by her kind in general. She unclasped her bra and threw it in the laundry basket.
The original order, The Family of Many
. Were any of them really still alive? If so, where? In Colorado? But Sheila would have felt that by now. Unless her powers had diminished so much she could no longer sense her own kind right under her nose.
Adam is close.
Oh, God, she hoped so. She would give anything to see him again, to touch him, to hold him, to finish what he started thirty years ago. She would break his ribs with a hammer. Turn his lungs and intestines into a symbol, the real art she was capable of.
She wanted to leave now, withdraw as much cash as possible until the bank opened tomorrow morning, drive far away, steal another car, and wait for the next signal. But she didn’t dare leave yet. She couldn’t risk waking up in Nebraska, alone, out of reach, like some sad old black and white TV with a rabbit-ear antenna.
She picked up her car keys, set them down. She went to the cupboard and dug two scoops of cat food from the bag and set the bowls out. This could be Teddy and Alanis’s last meal. The clan would never allow them on the trip. She would have to drown them soon. She should get it over with now, in the tub, the way Momma had done to her first kitten Jezzie… She almost burst into tears again, stroking the feeding animals, but stopped herself. Be strong. Playtime, the waiting, is almost over.
There was a tapping at her door.
Not the front door. On the glass, at the patio’s sliding glass door.
Sheila turned and stared at the blinds, wishing she had not shut them. Now she had no idea who was there. Could be the police, or it could be her people.
Tap tap tap. Tap tap tap.
For a moment the thought of actually seeing them face to face after so much time filled her with such dread, she almost hoped it was the police.
What would she see when she twisted the blinds open? What did they look like now? If they had been without the power and resources, time would not have been kind to them. Who was she kidding? Time had never been kind to them.
Scrape scrape screeeeeeeeeeccchhhh
…
Nails now, squeaking and dragging against the glass.
It wasn’t the police.
But if it was them, shouldn’t she have felt them by now? Maybe they were still weak, weaker than she was. Maybe the signal they had sent had taken everything from them. They would need rest, shelter, sustenance. She would have to provide for them, to make them all strong again.
Sheila watched her cats feeding. This was her last chance to send them her love. She emanated for them with all she had, and said her goodbyes.
Then she crossed the living room and twisted the plastic stick.
And tried not to scream.