by James Hunt
Sarah snapped out of her daze and found that Faye had dropped her magazine, all of her attention focused on Sarah. She chewed on her lower lip, and Faye gave her a look up and down.
“Do you need help?” Faye asked.
“My name is Sarah Pembrooke.”
The gum smacking ended when Faye’s jaw hung loose. “Oh my god.” Faye placed her palm over her chest and she breathed heavily, her cheeks growing even brighter from the combination of her flush and the rouge. “You’re the girl Dell told me about.” She looked toward the door. “Is he with you? I haven’t been able to reach him on the radio and—"
“Faye.” Sarah slowly approached the counter, making sure she kept both hands up so Faye could see. Sarah wasn’t sure what the receptionist might be packing behind the counter, and Sarah wasn’t in the mood to have her day end with a chest full of lead. “I don’t know what people told you. I don’t know how I’m even alive, but I need to know what Dell knew, and I need to figure out what’s happening at the Bell mansion. Dell told me that I could trust you.”
Faye was quiet for a while and then nodded. “You can.” She shuffled around a pile of notes on her desk, and then picked one up. “Uh, the state troopers arrived on scene a few hours ago, but I haven’t gotten an update from them.” She looked at Sarah, her face concerned. “Dell’s desk is over there if you want to sit down. I’ll be just a minute.”
Sarah sat down in Dell’s cracked leather chair. The bottom was well worn, and she thought she would fall straight through after she sat down.
From Dell’s desk, Sarah could see Faye’s back as she sat hunched over the desk, phone to her ear. She spoke quietly, but quickly. Sarah drifted her eyes from Faye’s back to the rest of Dell’s desk.
Aside from the monitor, keyboard, and mouse, there wasn’t much decoration. Not that she expected to find much personality. Dell never struck her as someone who had tons of flair. And while after her first encounter with Dell, she didn’t want to know anything about him, Sarah found her curiosity piqued about the man who had sacrificed himself so Sarah could live.
“Hey,” Faye said, walking over to the desk. “The troopers finished their scan at the house. They didn’t find anything.”
“What?” Sarah asked, standing. “That’s impossible.”
“Dell had called in a report that Pat was shot,” Faye replied. “But when the troopers showed up, they said that Pat was there and completely fine. Do you know anything about that?”
Sarah shut her eyes, turning away from Faye. “Son of a bitch.” The witch was clever. She must have returned to Pat’s form, which meant that any evidence of wrongdoing on Brent’s part had been erased. She spun back around at that thought. “Brent.”
“The detective?” Faye glanced down at her notes. “Dell told me that he was in the back of his squad car, but the troopers said he wasn’t in there either.” She lifted her eyes. “And, um, the troopers are considering you a suspect.”
“What?” Sarah asked.
“They think something is going on between you and Dell, and after Dell reported all of those things with Pat being shot, and bodies at the house, and nothing being true, it’s not painting a pretty picture.” She hesitated and then stiffened with courage. “Sarah, what happened?”
Three quick steps and Sarah was able to grab hold of Faye’s shoulders. She was tall, made even taller by the heels she wore. “I need to speak with Dennis. I need to know what he knows about the house.”
Faye hesitated. “Are you sure about that?” She looked down a hallway and shivered. “He gives me the creeps.”
Sarah’s cheeks went pale, and when she saw that Faye had noticed, they flushed red again from embarrassment. “Talking to the guy who stripped me down to my underwear and then tied me to a chair in a basement isn’t exactly on the top of my list right now either. But I don’t have a lot of options.”
“Right,” Faye said.
Sarah followed Faye down the hallway and toward the interrogation room. Sarah remained three or four hesitant steps behind and crept up to the window that Faye was looking through.
Dennis lay across the table, feet hanging off the side, with his arms folded over his chest and his eyes closed. He looked like he was sleeping.
“You’re positive you want to do this?” Faye asked, fiddling with the key in her hand.
“He might know something, and if the troopers think that me and Dell are working some kind of conspiracy, then I need all the information I can get. And besides, I might get lucky with something he knows.” Something that could help him figure out how to get Dell back.
Faye walked over, fumbling with the keys in her hand, and slid the brass key into the lock. Before she turned it, she looked to Sarah. “Do you want a gun?”
Sarah spouted nervous laughter. “Maybe. No. No, I’ll be fine.”
“I’ll stay out in the window to watch. If anything goes wrong, you come out, and I’ll shoot him.”
“That works for me.”
Sarah’s heart rate spiked at the turn of the lock, and when the door opened, Dennis lifted his head from the table, squinting as Sarah stepped inside, and the door quickly shut behind her.
Dennis just stared at her in silence, and Sarah remained close by the door. She was glad to see that he was still wearing his cuffs, but she would have preferred to have him shackled to the floor.
“That’s not possible.” Dennis slowly sat up, shaking his head. It was like he was staring at a ghost. “You’re supposed to be dead.”
“Seems to be a popular opinion lately.” Sarah skirted the front wall, tossing a quick glance to the one-way glass where she knew Faye was watching. The fact that she knew she wasn’t alone boosted her confidence.
Sarah and Dennis circled the table, Sarah making sure the table remained a physical barrier between the two of them, and Dennis growing angrier in the silence.
“Why aren’t you with Mrs. Bell? Why aren’t you at the house!” Dennis screamed at her, spit dribbling down his chin, his cheeks flushing red.
Sarah did her best to remain calm. The last thing she wanted to do was trigger Dennis into an unstoppable rage. Even with the cuffs on, he was formidable, and Sarah wasn’t in the mood to relive her previous encounter with the groundskeeper.
“It’s not going to happen,” Sarah said, keeping her voice calm, which only agitated Dennis. “Your sacrifice escaped, and she’s not going back.”
“You have no idea what you’ve done,” Dennis said. “There will be a reckoning for this, oh, yes. You will know what it feels to be tortured by demons. You will finally see.” He opened his eyes wide and exposed his yellow teeth as he smiled. “You will burn.”
Sarah pivoted to the left as Dennis started to walk around the table, mirroring his movements. “And how did you think it was going to work? What did you expect to happen?” Sarah knew that trying to ask Dennis directly wouldn’t get anywhere, but if she egged him on, tricked him into telling her what she wanted, then she might be able to pull some useful information out of him.
Dennis pulled his chin inward, and the crease of his lips grew thinner as the smile widened. “It would have been glorious. You would have been a piece of history, and your story would have been told through the ages.” He closed his eyes and tilted his face toward the ceiling, slowly swaying back and forth as if there was a melody stuck in his head. “The screams. The pain. The fire.”
It was like he was drunk on some sort of evil. Whatever poison that the Bells and that witch had funneled down his throat had rotted away reason and control, if he had any to begin with, but Sarah was hoping to use that to her advantage. “And this would have happened in the basement where you tied me up?”
“The house is sacred ground,” Dennis said as he continued to circle the table. “It is destined to be the fortress of the unholy and the damned.”
“What about the room?” Sarah asked, still mirroring Dennis’s movements. “Allister’s room.”
Dennis inhaled quickly and d
eep, a breath of excitement. “He is the surrogate father of the children he has helped set free and will be honored for eternity as the man who set the foundation for this future. His room shall act as the throne for the dark lord’s arrival.”
Sarah stepped around the end of the table, watching the expressions of elation spread over Dennis’s face. Just talking about the end of the world propelled him into euphoria. “And when does it happen? This opening of the portal?”
“When Satan’s connection is strongest to this world,” Dennis answered. “The Devil’s hour.” He stopped pacing, and so did Sarah. The joy ran from his face and his expression grew stoic as he slowly turned his head, that pair of dead eyes setting on Sarah and sending a piercing cold through her heart. “You have seen him.”
“How do you protect the portal?” Sarah asked, hoping to learn a weakness through one of its strengths.
“Mrs. Bell protects it.”
“What does the phrase ‘Blood is the beginning. Blood is the end’ mean to you?”
Dennis tilted his head to the side and then gave it a gentle shake. “You think you’re clever, don’t you?”
Sarah looked toward the glass window and then gestured toward the door. But before Sarah even had a chance to turn around, Dennis was up and over the table, and then he smashed her up against the wall.
Sarah’s head knocked viciously against the wall, turning her vision black, and when it faded, Dennis was less than an inch from her face. She caught the stench of his breath as he snarled like a rabid animal.
“You haven’t escaped,” Dennis said, the words spilling out of him quickly as if a wound had opened and blood was pouring out of him and he had to speak his truth before he died. “You’re tied to that house just like me, and you’ll go back, and when you do, you’ll burn like the rest of them. You will die.” Excited laughter smacked Sarah in the face, and the door to the room opened and Faye burst inside, gun in hand, shaking as she tried to aim it at Dennis’s body.
“Let her go!” Faye shouted, but kept her distance. “I will shoot you, Dennis, I swear to God.”
Dennis peeled his gaze from Sarah and set his eyes on Faye, though he didn’t move his body, which he used to pin Sarah down. But the distraction gave Sarah enough time and space to fight back.
Sarah thrust her knee up and connected with his crotch, which forced Dennis backward, and he smacked against the table. Sarah spun toward the door, following Faye on their escape outside, and then slammed the door shut before Dennis could make a move toward it.
“You can’t escape it, Sarah!” Dennis positioned himself at the one-way glass, pressing his face and body up against it as he screamed and pounded his forehead against the glass. “It won’t stop following you!”
Sarah struggled to catch her breath as Faye squeezed her shoulder, groping it and repeating the same question over and over.
“Are you okay?”
Sarah nodded, but while she managed to regain control of her breathing, she couldn’t bring her heartrate down. It beat wildly in her chest and continued to pound faster as Dennis’s outburst escalated.
“The fires are coming!” Dennis continued to pound his head against the glass, which buckled with every contact, until the skin broke and blood trickled down his forehead. “Blood, and fire, and death will consume you! It follows you like a shadow, Sarah! It won’t stop! It’ll never stop! You hear me? It’ll come! He will come!”
Faye eventually forced Sarah out of the hall, nearly having to use the gun to get her along. But Dennis didn’t stop screaming, and he repeated the last phrase over and over until Sarah was convinced that she was saying it herself.
“He will come,” Sarah said, whispering softly to herself. “Can I borrow a jacket?”
“Um, yeah.”
Sarah followed Faye toward the reception area, and Faye handed Sarah a lumpy black pullover.
“Listen, Sarah, I don’t know what’s going on, but I think we need to tell the troopers. I mean, this is getting out of hand.”
“No,” Sarah said, her answer quick. “It’s beyond them.” She stared down at the gun in Faye’s hand. “But there is one more thing that you can help me with.”
28
On the trip back to Bell, Sarah again stayed to the woods, and she repeatedly rubbed her thumb over the cross, the motion like an addiction that soothed her nerves. She would have preferred a smoke, but she had to make do.
Sarah pocketed the cross and then removed one of the tubes of holy water, and she was surprised to find it still liquid. It had to have been below freezing, and yet the glass felt the same temperature as when she got it. She pulled the jacket she wore tighter, thankful that Faye let her borrow it, then pocketed the water.
But the pistol that Faye gave her provided the most confidence. It was a more tangible weapon, one that she knew would work. She hoped that she wouldn’t have to use anything, but the tools provided security.
The lights from the police cars gave Sarah a check marker of how close she was getting to Bell, and it also alerted her to the authorities still in the area. She approached cautiously, her senses heightened. It was like sneaking around the houses when she was a little kid in foster care. Except if she got caught now, it would be a hell of a lot worse than being thrown back into the system.
Keeping to the tree line on the west side of Bell, Sarah struggled to keep her attention ahead with all of the commotion in the streets. She counted eight highway trooper vehicles, plus Dell’s cruiser.
With the sun still high in the sky, Sarah knew she had time, but she didn’t want to wait longer than she had to. The quicker that she could get in and destroy the orb, the faster all of this would be over. But she needed to wait until the place was cleared.
So Sarah lingered at the tree line and waited, remembering what Faye had said before she left. “Just stay alive, okay, girl?”
Sarah wanted nothing more than to oblige Faye’s request, but this was uncharted territory. Had she previously foiled an apocalypse before all of this, she would have felt better about her chances. The advice was better than what most therapists had given her growing up.
During Sarah’s journey through the system that was foster care in the United States, she had been questioned by hundreds of adults, all of them asking the same types of questions over and over, expecting some type of life-changing effect on a troubled young girl.
The counseling wasn’t unwarranted. She had stolen a car and crashed it into a United States postal box before quickly fleeing the scene. She did some time in juvie, and part of her rehabilitation was weekly visits with a court-appointed therapist.
Sarah kept quiet for most of the sessions, just nodding and only answering questions when the therapist threatened to tell the judge that she wasn’t cooperating. But she never truly opened up, and the therapist was smart enough to cut through the bullshit.
“You’re weak, you know that?” The question had come after nearly three minutes of dead silence, and Sarah felt her cheeks redden from both anger and surprise.
“Excuse me?” Sarah straightened in her chair and resisted the sudden urge to strangle the bitch in front of her. “Well, why don’t we step outside so you can find out for yourself.”
The therapist raised her hand and worked it like a puppet. “Talk, talk, talk, talk, talk. That’s all you do. And what little action you do perform is nothing more than a cry for help.” She leaned forward, matching Sarah’s intensity instead of shying away from it like every other adult that had tried to intervene in her life. “So you got hit a few times, and your parents are dead, and you had a really hard life growing up. You know who cares?” She leaned closer, so close that Sarah could see the hole from the nose piercing she had in her right nostril. “No one. Zero people give zero shits about you and your troubled past.”
“Fuck you.” Sarah retreated into her chair and crossed her arms. She bounced her leg nervously and impatiently, staring up at the clock and wishing that their thirty minutes would pass quic
ker. “I don’t need to hear this shit from—”
“From someone who doesn’t understand?” The therapist feigned sympathy and batted her eyelids as she puffed out her lip. “You’ve been giving that excuse since the day you figured out it worked.” She pointed to the closed door of her office. “You know how many kids I see every month? Every year? Hundreds. And every single one of them has a sob story, sister, so don’t sit in that chair where so many have sat and tell me that your story is worse than theirs.”
Sarah lowered her head, picking at her fingernails, which she always did when she was nervous. “Maybe it is.”
The therapist scoffed and shifted the papers on her legs as she fidgeted in her chair. “I can promise you that it’s not.” She huffed a little longer, and then finally settled down. “You keep heading down this path and it’s going to cost you more than you think.”
“And what’s that?” Sarah focused in on her left index cuticle, scratching harder.
“Your life.”
Sarah stopped her scratching and looked up.
“You could do a lot of things, Sarah.” She flipped through the papers on her lap and lifted one up for Sarah to see. “You scored through the roof on your assessment test, which means that your failing grades aren’t due to a lack of ability, it’s due to a lack of effort.”
“Where did you get those?” Sarah asked.
“And in my experience, kids with ability who choose not to flex them end up applying their time to more unsavory deeds, and that’s not a road that I want to see you walk down.” She set the test scores aside and folded her hands in her lap. “You can either come to these sessions and listen to what I have to say, which will help you, or you can just sit there like you have been for the past two weeks, do your time, and when you’re released, go and fall into whatever routine that you want.” She leaned forward and this time placed her hand on Sarah’s knee, squeezing hard. “But if you don’t change what you’re doing, you won’t be doing it for very long.”
