Mark tossed a feeble smile his way and stood away from the table. His voice was hardly even a whisper, as he walked towards the front door. “Yeah, I understand. I’m goin’ for a walk. I’ll talk to you later.”
He walked calmly out the front door, trying his best not to let the rage and fear inside of him show itself. He truly hated losing control of his personal demons, but the thought of going back into the house and ripping Joe’s throat out with his own teeth was running through him, and he liked the visual image it conjured.
It was his own fault, for daring to tempt the Powers That Be and allowing himself to think the dreaded words that had destroyed him before: “Life’s been good lately.” Mark had once again cursed himself, by making the fates look down, snap their fingers and exclaim, “THAT’S WHO WE FORGOT!!!”
He didn’t know if he should scream, laugh, or just break into tears; his body trembled violently, with the indecision.
When Mark reached his special place, They showed Themselves immediately, chattering with concern, trying to understand why he was so distraught. He explained, as best he could, that he loved the town and Them and his friends in town. And Cassie. He explained that he would have to leave soon and They bristled with rage, Their silky hair thrashing about Their delicate bodies, demanding to know the cause of his forced move.
He explained in detail. When They promised to find away to help him, he sensed the threat to Joe and made Them swear that no harm would come to the man. Reluctantly, the Folk gave Their word, which he knew was as good as gold.
They comforted him in silence, stroking his flesh and kissing his eyes with feathery lips. In time, he slept.
Cassie came to him again, holding him closely, that he could weep his sorrows upon her breast. She comforted him as well and promised that they would always be together. They made love a thousand times, furiously, passionately, sadly, each fearing that it might be the last time.
When he awoke, the sun was hiding just beyond the horizon. He ran all the way to the house he so desperately wanted to think of as home and dressed with a wild urgency. He made the bus with minutes to spare, never knowing that his special friends had already made arrangements to keep him in town, near the woods with Them. Forever.
5
Robert Carter lived in Denver and had all of his life. Had you asked him directions to Summitville, the best he could have told you was that it was at least an hour’s drive to the town. He had no idea where the town was located. It didn’t show on many maps and even when it did, it was hidden by its tiny size.
Rob couldn’t have cared less about Summitville. He had more important things to worry about on this particular night. Joe Howell was giving serious consideration to leaving the agency, moving to New York in the hopes of building a better life. He suspected that Joe could have a million dollars in his bank account and continue looking for that legendary treasure sought after by people the world over: The Better Life.
He didn’t want to lose Joe. The man was a hell of a good worker. Unfortunately, Sonny Martin did not look at things in the same light.
Sonny was one of those men who couldn’t find the trees for the forest in his way. He couldn’t look at anything but the Big Picture. Details were not important to him as long as the work got done. He was, in short, a prick of monumental proportions. Rob fervently wished that he would just drop of a stroke and let the real world get on with its life.
He said so, aloud. And when his wife, Amy, asked him to repeat himself, he did so with a relish. Amy knew the situation and had met both Sonny and Joe, she couldn’t have agreed with him more. While sipping Budweiser number seven, they toasted the thought of the old fart passing away and, unknowingly, saved their lives.
The Folk could move like lightning when the need arose. They could leave the area where They lived for short times, if They needed to. They had run all the way to Denver intent on ripping the one called “Rob” apart. He had given Them an idea that would end with the same result and prove much more amusing. It had been a very long time, since They had actually scared a human to death. Oh, this would be a fine night. They needed the distraction; working to protect the Chosen was hard work.
6
Sonny Martin hated women. He felt they had exactly one use in the world and that he could just as easily use his hand to take care of that little problem.
The only things he hated more than women, were men who didn’t agree with his philosophy on the aforementioned. Not surprisingly, most men felt him just a tad too vocal to agree with him. On anything, with women right near the top of that list.
That was okay with Sonny. He didn’t really care what any of them thought or felt as long as they didn’t cross his path. The only thing Sonny ever really cared about was power. Power to do as he felt, say as he felt and get away with both, was the most important thing in Sonny’s life.
He’d left the orphanage in Tulsa when he was sixteen and never once looked back. He’d started working only a week later, when he reached Denver, and he had managed, as the years went past, to win his way to the top. If a few people got crushed underneath his feet in the process, all the better. It made those left standing realize that he was not a person to be taken lightly.
No one ever took Sonny lightly. At least no one who was still around. Oh, he’d never killed anyone, or caused them any actual physical harm; he’d just arranged for them to have incredible difficulty finding employment anywhere north of Florida. For all of his very obvious faults, Sonny had managed to make enough friends in the business to assure that. Sonny had a great deal of power.
Had Sonny heard of Joseph Howell’s desire to leave the company, he would simply have laughed; a quick phone call would have destroyed the job opportunity and assured that Joe knew his place in the industry forever more. Not because Sonny really cared one way or the other, but because Sonny liked to flaunt his power as often as he could.
To look at the man, you wouldn’t know any of these things. He was of average height, a little heavy and as plain as the day was long. His hair was a dirty blond color and fading from the crown of his head like a tide that refused to raise itself back up to the high mark. He even dressed in average clothes, all the better to fool people into a false sense that Sonny was an Okay Kind of Guy. That way, when the stomp of his foot came down, the sense of being crushed was all the greater.
The proudest moment in Sonny’s life had been when he took the title of Executive Editor away from old man Carmody. He’d cackled happily for weeks, remembering how the bastard had squirmed under the knowledge that a man who didn’t even have a high school diploma had pulled the red carpet out from under his Harvard Graduate, loafer enclosed feet.
Not surprisingly, Sonny didn’t have any friends away from the industry. Nor did the friends he had ever bother to associate with him when he was away from the business. But Sonny honestly didn’t care. He had Power and The Respect of His Peers. Well, at least he had Power.
Take away Sonny’s Power and you had nothing. That was something that Sonny learned the hard way, some twenty minutes later. That was how long it took Them, to find his house in the hills. Even by Their standards, it was a beautiful building; very modern, with its huge bay windows of tinted glass and its lovely manicured lawn. It rested majestically in the cleft of two small hills, situated so that the sun rose to its front and set to its back, thus giving Sonny the ability to have the light of day on him for as long as possible. (He could then convince himself that the sun did indeed rise and fall to his beck and call. It enhanced his sense of Power.) The house was crowned by four stone chimneys, which burned constantly throughout the latter part of autumn and all the way through the cold Colorado winters. They were heated by gas, thus allowing Sonny to believe that he had power over that most powerful of the four elements, fire.
They planned to change all that. They could read Sonny as if he were a book. Take away his illusions of control…
7
Sonny sat, as he always did, in his recline
r watching the television. At the present time, he was staring at Vanna. Lord, but wouldn’t he like to spin her wheels. He listened to her honey coated voice and actually thought that a woman who looked like that might make him change his mind about the weaker sex. Then again, he thought, maybe he could make her his personal little love-toy and use her as often as he liked. If she gave him any lip, he’d just slap her to the around and go about his business with the next good lookin’ bimbo he ran across.
He was watching her spin the letters on a puzzle that he knew he could have gotten, when the power went out in the house. Vanna was gone and so was his ability to see. He didn’t like to be in the dark, about anything. Grumbling to himself, he stood and walked, fumbling his way towards the cellar door.
The wind outside his house made him remember why he didn’t much like the dark. It sounded too much like his mother’s wheezing breaths in the last weeks of her life. He’d hated those sounds, they made him realize that he was losing control of the situation; his mother couldn’t very well take him to the store for ice cream if she couldn’t even get out of bed. And, she didn’t have any money for him to go by himself, it had all gone into the various drugs she had to take just to stay alive. For all the good they had done her.
He found the doorknob on his seventh try and walked carefully down the stairs. The wooden steps creaked as he walked and he could feel the flesh on his body pull into bumps of chilled flesh. Suddenly he wasn’t so sure about going down to the fuse box; what if there was something waiting for him at the bottom?
His mind flashed back to the punishment center in the orphanage. It too was in the cellar, far toward the back. The punishment for any crime against the orphanage had been silence and darkness, theoretically to teach you the error of your ways by giving you time to reflect on the horrid crime of wetting your bed or talking too loudly or just catching the attention of Sister Maria, the prune faced hag who liked to carry a ruler at all times, the kind made of metal for that extra torque when it slapped across your butt or hands.
The memory sent terror through his heart and he tried not to think of
Jose Rodriguez
the janitor, the only living soul other than those being punished, who ever went down to the cellar. Jose always took the guilty down there to be punished and Jose had his own special punishments that he eagerly added to those handed down by the nuns.
Take down them pants, Sonny Boy, I want to make you shiiiine.
He quickly shrugged the thoughts away and forced himself to continue on. He was In Control! He didn’t have to think of that fat old slob
You tell anyone, boy and I’ll think of something reeeall special, just for you.
anymore. The man was long dead: he’d killed himself when the nuns had caught him with Billy Parker, an eight-year-old habitual bed wetter. He couldn’t bother Sonny anymore. He couldn’t bother anyone anymore.
Sonny found himself unable to step away from the memories, try as he might. Some things exist, that make a person powerless, no choice, no way around it. Some things just were.
That was when he first heard the whispers: “Sonny…Sonnnnny…Where arrre youuuu boyyyyy…It’s darrrk in here.”
Sonny Martin thought his heart would stop, actually felt his eyes grow larger in his head. That sounded just like…But no, he was dead. Dead and hopefully rotting in his own private hell.
“Don’t you worrrry, IIII’llll find you. You know I couldn’t forget youuuuu, you’re my Ffffaaaavooooorrrrite…I like the way you mooaaan, when I put it to you.”
Sonny Martin felt his bowels go watery, heard himself whimper like a six-year-old boy. The whispers sounded closer and Sonny wasn’t surprised to find that he’d wet himself, warmth run down his leg like a lightening stroke.
Jose always had that effect on him when he was coming closer in the darkened room. He half expected to smell the tobacco scented stench of the old man’s breath.
Something caressed his inner thigh, in the darkened cellar. “Feels like yer already goood and wet, boyyyy…Guessssss yer as ready as yer gonnna get.” The whisper was right next to his ear and it was carried on a Red Man scented breeze.
Sonny couldn’t move. His body refused to obey his frantic, whimpering thoughts. The only sound he could make, was a high pitched wheeze, that feebly tried to become a scream, lodged deep in his throat. “That ain’t all you’ll get lodged in yer throat, boy, iff’n you don’t get them pants down, right now.” Cold sweat stung at his eyes and he flinched, breaking the paralysis that locked him in place.
With a shriek of fear that tore his throat like glass, he started flailing his arms, trying desperately to knock Jose away from him.
His hands encountered nothing, no resistance. He staggered towards where his memory told him the fuse-box was and whined like a whipped dog.
There! Victory! Now he could put the power back on, force the world to obey his commands again. He desperately flipped every switch back to the “On” position and felt relief wash through him, as sweet, warm light flashed through the room.
He was back In Control and the cellar he owned revealed itself to him, just exactly as he remembered it. Shaken, but In Control, he made his way back towards the stairs. Filled with the wild shaky energy of a full-scale adrenaline rush, he took the stairs three at a time and pulled the door open, the door to freedom, Power, Control.
The Wheel’s credits were rolling, by the time he’d changed his pants and gone back to his seat. He didn’t care. He was In Control. That was all that mattered. He reached for the TV Guide, wondering what he would watch. Don’t Be Afraid of The Dark, was playing on TBS, that actually got a nervous chuckle out of him.
The lights went out.
Sonny threw himself out of the chair, furious. God damn, but the power company would pay for this! He did not want to go back down there, nossiree Bob. But, if he wanted to watch the TV and be In Control, he had to move now.
He was most of the way to the cellar stairs, pulse blasting his temples and bladder threatening another mutiny, when the voice came from behind him, accented by the firm, thick fingered hand that grabbed his crotch and stroked lightly. “Therrre you are, I been lookin’ forward ta this, Sonny Boy. Lookin’ forward ta this fer a long time.”
Terror took over and Sonny’s mind went blank as he sailed towards the cellar door. Possibly he should have wondered why the door that he had closed firmly was now wide open. It never crossed his mind. The last thing that Sonny Martin ever felt was sweet relief as his neck snapped on the last stair, with his feet never having touched the first one. His last coherent thought, Never get me again, you sonuvabitch. Never again, ’cause I am In Control, of this situation.
8
At eight o’clock the next morning, Joe Howell was promoted to Managing Editor by Rob, who had just been promoted to Executive Editor and really didn’t want to lose Joe. The raise, while not quite what he could have managed in New York, was substantial.
At seven o’clock the same night, Joe Howell came home with the news that he had been promoted. He never explained why he had been promoted and neither of the people he loved ever asked. He was grateful for that, he felt like enough of a ghoul as it was.
As he went to sleep that night, Mark Howell said “Thank you,” aloud, in the quiet privacy of his room. He was well asleep before the answering “You’re welcome,” was whispered in his ear.
CHAPTER FIVE
1
The following night, the first storm of the season hit without so much as a flurry of snows to herald its coming. It slammed into the town, carried by the force of the first Siberian Express to kiss the Rockies since the winter before. For most of the town this was easy enough to accept, they had all seen them a dozen or more times before and the blinding winter’s rage was nothing of great import, save for the possible need to leave for work at an earlier hour.
For some, it meant pulling out the snow-chains and prepping their vehicles for the long trek to Denver. For a few, it meant setting th
eir snow plows into motion, in the endless and sedate fashion that they used every year, when the powdery white and seemingly innocent threat to motor safety fell from the heavens.
For Mark Howell, it was a wondrous dream come true. A part of him always longed to see the snow’s fall, that part of him that lamented the need to move from the northern regions, inevitably, before the first real snow of the year. To hell with Dallas, Texas and New Orleans, Louisiana and Atlanta, Georgia, where the best you could hope for was a light frosting on the ground and the panicky screech of tires, as drivers who had absolutely no concept of how dangerous even that gentle touch of winter could be, tried to force their cars into high speed races to the office, instead of trying to avoid the inevitable game of bumper cars that most inexperienced drivers seemed intent on playing. He reveled in the knowledge that he was once again where real snow fell and the people knew, by God, how to drive through it safely. It had been years since he’d had the simple joy of making a snowball, instead of a slush ball.
He watched the flakes of ice drift lazily to the ground with the eyes of a five-year-old child and thrilled to think of how clean the world would look when the sun rose tomorrow. It sometimes seemed like the fat boy who had run so fast and hard to escape Tony and Pete, had blundered into the woods and had his face cleaved open by gravity, had existed only in the far distant past. He turned away from the window and looked at himself in the mirror on the back of his bedroom door. For the first time, he really noticed all of the changes in his body: he was thinner, taller, than he could ever remember being. And had muscle definition for the first time in his life. He could actually count his ribs without using his finger to probe under the flabby sides of his chest.
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