Dead Echo

by C.G. Banks

  Chapter 23: Erasure

  Tomas Lopez put down the binoculars and stared through the window as the car went out of sight. He’d already written down the license plate and make, the color. Everything he might need. His balls had drawn up into a tight knot in his belly and his flesh crawled.

  He didn’t like that car one goddamn bit. No sir.

  Of course it could have been anyone, anyone at all; a relative, a salesman, a welcoming neighbor, an old boyfriend. Anyone. But he knew it wasn’t. What he’d just seen was Bad News and it had the hair standing up along the back of his neck. Because the dream last night had warned him, had put him on the lookout against his wishes. But he’d done it and he’d just seen confirmation. He pounded a fist down into his naked thigh. His erection had long since dwindled; as soon as the man had gotten out of the car it had flown away and that was something Tomas Lopez didn’t take kindly to either. He tried to forget it by going back to the dream. It had been no more than a set of images, really, that and an overwhelming sense of danger. In it he’d seen the car, that same fucking Volvo, the man inside. Even as he’d watched him disappear into the carport, Tomas had known what business he was on: he’d seen the note (that damned blurred note!) placed in the crack between the casement and screen door in the dream. And the rest was yet to come, the last few bits and pieces: her face when reading it, the phone call, several meetings with this strange prick, and finally, worst of all, the For Sale sign stuck in the front yard by the ditch. All of these things were on the way if the premonition had been correct, and as far as Tomas was concerned, why should he pretend they were not? He still wasn’t sure about the existence of a god or devil, a heaven or hell, but he knew the cult of which he was a member of had great, unknown power. He’d seen things that didn’t make sense before, that paled the imagination to think on. Things that could steal a person’s soul whether you believed in one or not.

  That brought his eye back to the coffee table.

  On it sat a thick, banded stack of welcoming brochures from the Baptist church up Simmon’s Road. He’d seen the picture on the front and thought he recognized the place, but he could, of course, be wrong. Not that it would make any difference in the long run. He’d had the dream last night and all the attendant dread it brought, and when he walked into the living room this morning all the brochures had been sitting right here in their nice little banded stack.

  With every problem, a solution.

  That was it, wasn’t it?

  He walked over and picked up the stack. It was Thursday and most people would be at work (he on the other hand had dropped his job like a hot potato less than a week ago), and he figured he’d be largely unnoticed in going about his real business. He had to get that goddamn note. That had been the key in the dream, the key from the pure fact that it’d been the only thing hidden from him. And he knew from the top of his head to the bottom of his feet whatever the man had left on that piece of paper did have the power to stop what was beginning to move. He’d felt the Great Beast heave and knew the time was nigh. And this thick stack of welcome from the Baptist church? Why that was the greatest irony. Even though the congregation might be a might swelled this coming Sunday, it would have nothing whatsoever to do with the intent of Whatever had given him these things. He placed the brochures back on the coffee table and walked down the hall to his bedroom to get some clothes.