by James Hunt
“You must return.” Allister spoke louder, his tone throaty and his cadence slow, almost as if it were painful to speak. “You must find the orb.”
“I don’t understand,” Sarah said.
Allister wore a sad smile. “I cannot stop what has been started, but I will send you another to help. But you must hurry, Sarah. The orb moves but is always in the same place. There isn’t much time. Hurry!”
Sarah woke, gasping for breath.
Sweat beaded on her forehead, and she glanced down at her body, finding it covered in a hospital gown. Wires and tubes ran up her arm and down her chest. The room was empty save for the beeping hospital machinery, the rhythm growing faster and faster as she hyperventilated on the bed.
The door opened, and a nurse and doctor stepped inside, both of them with their hands up in a passive stance. “Ma’am, everything is all right. You just need to lie back down—ma’am, please!”
Sarah had flung the sheets off her and ripped off the wires that connected to her chest and arm, along with the tubes sticking into her veins, causing her to bleed. “I need to get out of here.” She made it three steps before the doctor and nurse caught her and kept her still.
“We need you to stay here,” the nurse said, her large, meaty hands easily wrapping around Sarah’s thin arm. “You’re safe now.”
“Let me go!” Sarah tossed her elbows, but she found that her strength still hadn’t returned, and she was lifted back onto the bed, legs kicking in protest.
“Everything all right in here?” Dell stepped into the room, and Sarah stopped her squirming. Dell took the doctor’s place at her bedside. “Hey, there isn’t any need for that, really.”
“You said she couldn’t leave,” the nurse said.
“Why can’t I leave?” Sarah asked.
“It’s fine. Please, if I could just have a minute to talk with her alone?”
The medical team plugged Sarah’s IV back into her, and then put sensors back on her fingers before stepping out of the door.
Sarah backed up to the head of the bed, pulling her knees into her chest as she formed a small, defensive ball. “What do you want? And why can’t I leave?” The words came out like those of a defiant child wanting to leave her room.
“I just have some questions,” Dell said, pulling up a chair next to her bedside. When he sat, he folded his hands in his lap. “Do you remember what happened before I found you?”
Sarah wasn’t sure she should tell him the truth, and even if she did, she wasn’t sure he’d believe her. After all, what had she seen? Ghosts? Demons? Some madman trying to sacrifice her to an evil spirit? And then she remembered the bodies.
“Are you all right? Do I need to bring the doctor back—”
“I’m fine,” Sarah said, head still down. “I just want to leave.”
Dell leaned back in his chair, unable to get comfortable. “Well, before you leave, I need to know what happened. I ran the license you gave me, and it turns out Maggie Swillford is a real person who hasn’t been seen by any of her friends for over a month. I need to know what you saw, Sarah.”
Sarah went cold, and her heart monitor spiked. “How do you know my name?” The words escaped her lips in a whisper.
Dell gestured to the table by the door. “Your backpack. Found your ID inside. The doctors wanted to check to see if you had any medical history they needed to be aware of.”
The color drained from Sarah’s face, and her stomach turned. “Oh, God, no.” She shook her head, her expression pained. “No, no, no, no, please, no.” She rocked from side to side.
“Sarah, what’s wrong?” Dell asked.
Sarah’s breaths grew shallow, and she looked at Dell. “Did you run my name through the DMV? Did you run my license?”
Dell fidgeted uneasily. “Well, yeah, but—”
“FUCK!” Sarah balled her fists by her head, the burst of fear and anger flushing her pale cheeks with color. “He’s going to find me. He’s going to fucking kill me.”
“Who’s going to find you? Who’s going to kill you?”
The sobs rolled out of her, and she shrugged her shoulders, knowing that it didn’t matter anymore. “My ex-boyfriend.” She sniffled, wiping her nose and forcing herself to regain some composure. “He killed a woman. Probably killed a lot of people. But I saw him do it one time, and he gave me these to keep quiet.” She pointed toward the bruises that still lingered on her neck, easily visible in her hospital gown.
“What was his name?” Dell asked.
“It doesn’t matter,” Sarah answered, her tone dismissive.
“Sarah, I can help. If he hurt you—”
“He’s a cop!” Sarah threw the words in his face. “He’s a detective, and he’s got a whole fucking crew around him. He’s got people everywhere. The DA’s office, Internal Affairs—he’s like a mob boss.” She turned away, looking toward her backpack on the table.
“Sarah, I can help you.” Dell reached out and placed his hand on her arm. “If this guy is a cop, I can protect you. I promise.”
Sarah scoffed, her eyes bloodshot from the tears, and from the exhaustion, and from spending an entire life fighting off trouble. “No. You can’t.”
Dell let her go and then leaned back in his chair. “Listen. I need to make a call. Just, hang on a second, okay?”
Dell left, and Sarah’s company dwindled to the beeping machines that were hooked up to her body. She lifted the blanket and peered down to examine her foot then grimaced at what she found.
The flesh was blue and icy, almost as if it were frosted. She lowered the blanket and shut her eyes, wondering what in the hell she was going to do next, but knew one thing that could help.
Slowly, Sarah crawled out of bed, wheeling the machines with her to avoid another attack from the nurses, and reached for her backpack. She removed her jeans from inside and sighed relief when she found the photograph still folded in the left pocket.
Sarah carefully unfolded the picture along the well-worn creases and smiled. It was the last picture taken of her parents. She didn’t know when or where it was taken, but her father had Sarah on his shoulders, and her mother was clutching his arm, looking up at Sarah.
All of them were smiling, even Sarah. It was a moment frozen in time, and it was proof that she could have had a better life if she’d never been orphaned. Never in her fifteen years in the system was she able to recreate the happiness that was in the photo.
As she grew older she noticed which physical features she’d inherited from her parents. She had her mother’s nose and eyes, but she had her dad’s smile and ears. It was the only connection that she had to them. She didn’t know if they smoked, or drank, or what foods they liked. She didn’t know if she got her love of music from either of them, or her irrational fear spiders. She knew nothing about them save for what the photograph offered.
Sarah folded the picture back up and then kissed it before sliding it back into the false bottom of her backpack, and then tell stepped back inside.
“All right,” Dell said, reaching into his pocket and removing a pen and paper. He returned to his chair and looked up at her. “Are you ready to tell me what happened?”
She doubted that he would really be able to keep her safe. He didn’t understand what was chasing her. And now, with whatever happened to her at the Bell Mansion, she had an entirely new stack of problems.
And whenever Sarah had faced these types of odds before, she always did the one thing that she knew best. She ran.
Iris Bell sat in her room on the fifth floor at her makeup table, running her brush through her white and silver hair. Some of her strength had returned, and she was finally able to climb out of bed.
Like Iris herself, the mirror had faded, losing most of its shine over the decades, but she could still catch her reflection, not that there was much to look at anymore.
The makeup she applied every morning had been wiped away, leaving a wrinkly old face and sagging skin that looked ready to drip from h
er skull. She was an old hag, and what was worse, she knew it. But things could change. She just had to right the ship that was her family’s destiny.
The knock at her door was expected. She’d heard the commotion downstairs and chosen to stay out of it. She was nearly ninety years old, and by the time she tried to make it down the stairs, the commotion would have been over with. But judging from the glass shattering and the sheepish knock on the door, Iris figured that whatever news was coming was bad.
“It’s open,” Iris said.
The doorknob turned, the latch disengaged, and the hinges groaned slowly as Iris caught Dennis’s reflection in the mirror. He kept his head down, shoulders slumped, like a child who knew the punishment for his failure. A bloodied bandage covered his arm, and crimson stained his clothes.
“She’s gone,” Dennis said.
Iris set the brush down and then turned, her old bones creaking like the hinges and the frame of her family’s house. “Has she been marked?”
Dennis nodded.
“Then she has nowhere else to go.” Iris returned to the mirror, the cloudy reflection scarred with black marks from chipped-away flecks of the mirror. “He’ll call her back to the house, and then it will be done.”
Dennis raised his head. “There’s something else.” He flexed his fingers nervously and shuffled another step toward her. “The letters are gone.”
The confidence from Iris’s face vanished, and the old woman forced her creaking joints up and out of her chair. “I told you to burn those.”
As Iris walked closer, Dennis refused to look her in the eye. “He wouldn’t have liked it.”
“I don’t care!” Iris thundered, the anger and violence in her voice mismatched against the frail body that spoke. “You’ve exposed us! Do you know what is in those letters? Do you have any idea what could happen if she shows those letters to anyone? Everything could be undone!” She grabbed hold of his chin, and Dennis finally looked her in the eye.
“I’m sorry.” Dennis’s eyes watered and reddened.
Iris calmed herself then patted his cheek with three hard slaps. “It won’t matter.” She returned to her seat and the mirror, picking up the brush again and continuing her grooming ritual. “We’re too close now. We only require one more. And he will make sure that she comes back to us.”
Dennis wiped his eyes, moving deeper into the room. “You really think that this will finish it? That this is the end?”
Iris gently grazed her weathered and aged cheek and then turned toward the family pictures on the table, her attention on a photograph that had one of the faces scratched off. “It will be. One way or the other.”
11
The late hour didn’t lessen the lights and sounds of the big city. From the air, New York’s skyline was beautiful, and the city was peaceful, the lights twinkling in the darkness and creating a brilliant brightness that challenged the night. But closer toward the city’s surface, the beauty faded.
The cracks and stains and smell of human shit and piss ran rampant along the streets. Homeless people begged for change and slept on the streets. Gangs roamed in small packs, defacing any piece of property they didn’t own.
Sirens screamed in the night, alerting the city to the crime that plagued the poor and broken neighborhoods on the island. Gunshots accentuated the anger behind the hands and people that wielded them, violence the only expression in their repertoire.
Authorities struggled with the violence and masses that flocked to the island of Manhattan every single day. The city was a living, breathing entity that required constant attention lest it choke on its own spit and die, killing the millions that clung to its back for survival.
And tonight, among the many that reveled in dark deeds, Brent Alvarez walked down the sidewalk, hands in the pockets of his black leather jacket, the bright silver zipper pulled all the way to the top, and his jet-black hair slicked back with gel.
He moved quickly and deliberately, his dark-brown eyes trained on the run-down apartment building ahead. Steam rose from the sewer grates behind him, and he exhaled his own icy breaths. He’d always loved the cold, ever since he was a kid. Winter brought death.
While everyone else grew weak in the cold, he grew stronger. He was drawn to death and violence like a fly to shit. Few other things gave him as much joy and excitement.
Brent ascended the front steps of the apartment building quickly, removed his gloved hand from his pocket, and twisted the doorknob, which he found locked.
He checked the street, ensuring he was alone, and then removed a small lock-pick set from his other pocket. He inserted the tiny metal prongs, blindly guiding them around the four-tumbler lock. Thirty seconds later, he was granted entrance at the sound of a light click.
Television chatter and screams penetrated the paper-thin apartment walls as he moved through the foyer. Keeping one hand in his pocket, Brent ascended the steps, the stairs groaning from the weight, but aside from the old wood giving its protest, he moved toward the third floor quietly and skillfully.
It had taken him a long time to obtain his status, and at thirty-five, he was finally captain of his own fate. No man or law could prevent him from accomplishing a goal. If he wanted something, he simply took it. He even had his own crew.
They had carved out their own section of the city, and nothing happened without their approval. But last week they had to make an unsavory, and unexpected visit. It should have been routine. His crew were well versed in shutting people up. But during the job an unforeseen complication had arisen, and it had been Brent who’d caused it.
He had tried to take care of the problem quickly, but in doing so, he had broken his one and only rule: don’t hesitate.
Brent examined the apartment numbers on the left that ended in odd numbers and stopped in front of door 417. He checked behind him, again finding himself alone in the hall, and then kicked the door down.
The door frame shattered, splinters of wood flying as the door swung inward, denting the adjacent drywall of the narrowed hallway entrance. Brent charged forward, gun already drawn and aimed at the man and woman on the living room couch, their arms in the air.
Brent passed the kitchen, finding it empty save for dirty dishes and trash. With the pair on the couch paralyzed in fear, Brent backtracked, keeping his attention on the couple, and shut the door.
Drug paraphernalia littered the coffee table. Needles, coke, pills, weed—it was a pharmaceutical smorgasbord. However, the pair on the couch looked more like dealers than like users.
Brent remained silent, gun still aimed at the couple, then pressed the barrel of his pistol against the man’s temple. The woman started to cry.
“Where did she go?” Brent asked.
The man was young, mid-twenties at the oldest, and had long blonde hair that had been crimped in what Brent assumed was an effort to detract attention from the large mole that clung to the side of his nose and his harelip. He wore a jacket, but Brent knew that underneath the clothes was nothing more than a skeleton covered in skin, and the bag of bones couldn’t stop shaking.
“I-I don’t know.” He shut his eyes, hands still in the air. “She just said she was leaving, man! I didn’t get a forward fucking address!”
The woman next to the skeleton had curled up into the fetal position. She was small like Sarah, though not as pretty.
Brent removed the gun from the skeleton’s head and then aimed it at the woman, which transformed her moaning sobs into a full-blown hysteria.
“NO! PLEASE!” She thrust her arms out as if she could block bullets with her hands. Tears streamed down her cheeks, and she pushed herself backward until she hit the couch’s armrest. “I don’t know what happened to her. Please, she didn’t tell us. She just wanted to be left alone.”
Brent tilted his head to the side. “Alone?” He stepped around the skeleton, the little shit too much of a pussy to protect the woman, as he cowered in his seat.
Brent’s shadow engulfed the tiny woman, her
tremors of fear shaking the pistol in his hand as he pressed it against her temple. “Why would she want to be alone?” He arched his eyebrows in surprise. “Because of me?”
The woman shook her head.
Brent lingered for a moment but then removed the pistol. He circled the coffee table and examined the drugs and needles, holding the weapon casually at his side. Large multicolored stains hardened the carpet that crunched beneath his boots.
The place was a dump. Hell, the whole neighborhood was a dump. And despite all his resources and all the eyes and ears he had working the streets, he still hadn’t been able to find her. One fucking woman had eluded him. He had tracked down every lead, spoken to all of her friends, and none of them knew where she’d gone. He was positive they were telling the truth. He needed to make sure that the bums in front of him were telling the truth too.
“So you don’t know where she went, huh?” Brent asked. “And you’re sure you don’t have anything else to tell me? Nothing you want to share before I leave?”
Skeleton shook his head, and the woman only trembled. “N-no. W-we don’t know. I-I promise.”
Brent smiled, revealing white but crooked teeth. “Well, then. I guess I don’t have anything left to worry about.” He paused for a minute and then raised the pistol, aimed it at the woman, and squeezed the trigger.
The bullet went straight through her head, spraying her skull and brains onto the back of the sofa, and sending a few bits onto the skeleton, who’d frozen in shock.
Brent aimed his pistol at the skeleton. “You know how long it’ll take for anyone to come and check on this apartment after that gunshot?” He stepped closer. “Thirty minutes, minimum. And do you want to know why?” He bent over at the waist, shoving his face close to the skeleton’s, where he caught a scent of the warm brain matter speckled on his cheek. “Because no one gives a shit what happens with the people around here, because people like you die in these fucking slums every single day. One more dead body is one less person the city has to support.”
