He’d read the entire paper, ads and all, and had seen nothing—felt nothing—about any of the articles that appeared to be cause for alarm. Of course, he knew that the workings of evil would often go undetected. It wasn’t as if he’d expected a headline to scream out BAD PERSON DOES BAD THING! PLEASE HELP US, LANCE! But he figured he had a better eye (and a better gut feeling) than most when it came to reading between the lines about these sorts of things. Plus, Leah had given him the paper for a reason. He knew that as well as he knew his name was Lancelot Brody, so the fact that this girl had seen something he hadn’t bothered him. Somewhere in these thousands of words on these sheets of paper was a starting point for him, and he was blind to it.
“Oh well,” he said out loud to the room, choosing not to dwell on the issue. Because he had another way to get his answer, you see. Lance was gifted, but he wasn’t too proud to admit needing help. “I’ll just ask her.” His voice was groggy and sounded weird bouncing off the motel’s walls. He cleared his throat and stood, stretching and giving off a big yawn. He ran his tongue across his teeth and the roof of his mouth, wished he could brush his teeth. He’d have to go shopping soon. He had nothing but what was in his pockets and his backpack, which didn’t amount to much in terms of daily living. He didn’t even have deodorant or a clean pair of boxer shorts.
He checked the time on his phone. Ten minutes till eight. He went to the bathroom, which was now thirty-three percent gloomier thanks to his lightbulb excavation, and ran the cold water from the tap. He splashed his face and then dried it with the small hand towel. He finally braved a look in the mirror and saw that he wasn’t too bad off. He could use a shave, and he had bedhead—both from the bus’s seat and the bed’s pillow—but otherwise he looked okay. He searched the countertop for a mini bottle of mouthwash but was disappointed. There was only the bar of soap and the hand towel. He supposed Leah and her father (Daddy works graveyard) could only stretch the budget but so far.
The two remaining bulbs above the sink flickered, once, twice, then remained fully lit. Lance stopped moving and looked ahead into the mirror, listened. He heard nothing but the weak hum of the bulbs and saw nothing but his own reflection staring back at him.
It’s nothing.
He switched off the bathroom light and went back to the bedroom, grabbing his backpack in one hand and the newspaper in the other. He swung the pack’s strap over one shoulder and made his way to the door, unlocked the handle and unlatched the chain. He pulled the door open a crack and peered out.
The sun had mostly set, and only the faintest traces of dusk still remained, the night air looking pallid and the deepest of grays. Single bulbs inside cracked plastic domes were mounted above the doorway of each of the motel’s rooms, but the light they offered was laughable. Lance could see the glow of light from the office’s door falling from his right and it cast long shadows on the sidewalk outside his door and into the parking lot. The lot itself was almost entirely deserted. The car from Alaska had moved on, and only two other vehicles remained, a battered green Ford pickup with a rusted-out bumper and a faded blue Jeep Cherokee with expired tags and a stuffed Garfield the cat clinging to its passenger-side window.
Lance looked through the crack and across the street, where a lone streetlight stood high like a sentinel, its branch-thin pole arching over the road and casting a dome of orange-yellow light. There was no traffic. Not a single car going either direction, nor any to be heard approaching.
Small town, Lance thought. Some good, some bad. Just like people.
He opened the door the remainder of the way and stepped outside. The air had cooled considerably, and he shivered once as his body adjusted to the temperature change. He pulled the door securely shut behind him and patted his pocket to verify he had the key. He turned right, about to take the two steps—two for Lance, three or four for average folks—needed to reach the motel’s office and get his question answered.
The streetlight across the road flickered.
The single bulb above his room’s door went out entirely with a loud crack!
And then a long gust of wind, strong and unexpected and unexplained, whooshed across the parking lot like a tidal wave, rocking the two cars on their axles before slamming into Lance. His body was flung backward like he weighed nearly nothing, and his head snapped back, smashing into his room’s door with the sound of a heavy knock. Stars peppered his vision before fading, fading along with everything else as the gray evening sky began to allow the blackness to creep in from the sides and swallow everything in sight.
Lance slid down the door and landed hard on his rear, toppled over onto his side.
The newspaper fell from his hand, its pages scattering like buckshot across the parking lot and out into the street and the field beyond.
Then the wind stopped completely and the night was as still as before. Not even a gentle breeze to rustle the leaves remained.
5
He was back at Annabelle’s Apron. He sat alone at the counter, no other stools occupied and none of the tables either. The music that’d played from the single speaker was no longer humming a tune, and the smell of bacon had been replaced with something rancid, spoiled. Something like rotting meat. The lights were dim, the air was still. He turned in his stool and tried to look out the windows but found nothing except a solid pane of static, like a television channel that refused to tune in correctly. He turned back around, and when his arms slid across the countertop, he saw that he’d smeared a thick layer of dust, creating one arm of an incomplete snow angel. It was if the diner had been deserted for years.
“Don’t let a little bump on the head scare you off.”
Lance spun back around and found Annabelle Winters sitting in one of the booths by the windows of static. She looked out, as if seeing everything Lance couldn’t, and then turned to face him. “It would only come after you if it thought you were a threat.”
“What is it?” Lance tried to say, but he was interrupted by a voice coming over the speaker above.
(Lance!)
He looked up, saw a black sky in place of the diner’s ceiling tiles.
(Lance!)
He looked back to the booth were Annabelle had been sitting and saw—
Leah grabbed him by the shoulders and did her best to sit him up. “Lance, can you hear me? Are you okay?”
He felt her fingers dig into the meat of his upper arms as she used all her strength to push him forward. His head swam at the change of direction, the parking lot going in and out of focus and the cars doing a little jitterbug on the asphalt. He closed his eyes and took two deep breaths. Opened them. The cars had stopped dancing and his vision was mostly back to normal. But the back of his head was throbbing and he had a headache that produced a sharp stab of pain at the base of his skull with each beat of his heart.
He looked to his right and painfully tilted his head up. Leah, same outfit from earlier, only now he noticed she was wearing black Nike sneakers. Maybe she’d been wearing them all day—a touch Lance liked—or maybe she’d changed out of dressier shoes once she knew peak hours were past and she was ready to slow things down for the day. Lance mentally scolded himself for so easily getting sidetracked. Leah’s choice of shoes was officially the least of his concerns at the moment.
“I assume you can hear me?” she said, hands now on her hips.
Lance nodded. “Yes.”
“So are you going to answer me? Are you okay, or do I need to call an ambulance?”
Lance took another deep breath and then slowly pushed himself off the sidewalk outside his room and stood. His surroundings did another half jitter but then remained focused. With him standing at his full six-six height, Leah looked very small so close to him. He took a step back so as to not intimidate her. “Yes. I’m okay.” He rolled his head on his shoulders, his neck making one sharp cracking sound. “I’ve got a headache, but otherwise I think I’m fine.”
Leah’s stature relaxed a little, and she blew a wisp of lo
ose hair out of her face. “Thank God. I really didn’t want to have to bring an ambulance out here. We get a bad enough rap as it is.” She leaned to the side and looked at the back of his head. “Yeah, nice goose egg back there. What happened, anyway?”
Lance reached a hand up and gingerly touched the back of his head, felt the lump that’d formed, and then looked across the street. The streetlight was glowing strong. A small coupe drove along the road and then was out of sight. Lance nodded toward the office. “Let’s go inside. Then we can talk.”
Leah glanced across the street. Something like fear flickered in her eyes and then it was gone. “Okay.” She turned and pulled open the door to the office. When they were both inside, she drew the blinds down across the glass and locked the deadbolt.
“What if somebody needs to check in?” Lance asked.
Leah walked to the window next to the door and flicked a switch attached to a small neon sign that advertised NO VACANCY. It burned a dull red behind the set of blinds she then pulled down over it.
“That’s false advertising,” Lance said. He tried to grin, but found the motion caused more pain in his head.
“Daddy’d be pissed to hell and back if he found out I did that,” Leah said. “But what he doesn’t know won’t hurt him. So long as I get it switched off by morning.”
“What if he gets sick on the job, decides to go home early and stops by here to check on things?”
Leah thought about it a moment, then continued, “Daddy hasn’t taken a sick day as long as I can remember. I don’t expect him to start now.”
Lance shrugged.
“Do you need some ice?” Leah was already moving toward the entertainment center with the wet bar on top. She looked around at what she had to work with, shook her head, and then said, “Be right back,” and disappeared through the door at the rear of the room. She was back a minute later with a dish towel. She pulled three ice cubes from the stainless-steel bucket beneath the television and wrapped them in the towel. Motioned for Lance to sit. He walked over to the leather couch and slowly eased himself onto it. This time everything in his sight stayed where it was supposed to. I guess that means no permanent damage done.
Leah stood in front of him and held out the homemade ice pack. “Might get a little wet, but it’s all I’ve got.”
Lance took it. “Thanks.” He leaned back into the couch’s leather and used his right hand to hold the ice against the back of his head. It was cold—too cold—but felt good all the same. Leah was still standing in front of him, watching his every move. They remained that way, looking at each other in silence for a full minute before she finally said, “Well?”
Lance glanced down to her sneakers. “I like your shoes,” he said.
“You wha…?” Leah looked down to her feet, then glanced at Lance’s basketball shoes, as if maybe he was making fun of her.
“I like it when girls wear nice-looking sneakers,” Lance said, reassuring her. “Makes them seem more laid-back, in my opinion.”
She looked at him for another moment, and Lance could see her trying to conjure up some sort of response. She finally settled on, “You were going to tell me what happened?”
Lance shifted in his seat. “Oh, yeah, sure. Can you sit down, please? You’re hovering over me and it’s making me nervous.”
“I’m making you nervous? I’m a small young girl all by myself with a big stranger of a man.”
Lance respected her caution but didn’t completely buy it. “If you thought I was dangerous, I wouldn't be here right now. And”—he pulled the ice pack from his head and showed it to her, melting ice dripping onto his cargo shorts—“I wouldn’t have this.”
Leah didn’t move.
“Face it,” Lance said, “you’ve got a special intuition about people. You know I’m one of the good guys. Just like I know that I can trust you.”
Then she smiled, and Lance was taken aback by how cute she really was. “How do you know you can trust me?”
Lance wanted to tell her that he could practically feel the good energy that came off her, touch the honesty she had in her heart. “When I asked if you thought anything bad was going on around here, you invited me back, and you gave me that newspaper. Which, I regret to inform you, I lost when I had my accident outside.”
Leah didn’t respond to his explanation of trust, but she did move and sit on the other end of the couch, leaning against the arm and pulling her knees up to her chin so she could face him. Apparently Bob’s Place wasn’t strict about no shoes on the furniture. “Which you still haven’t told me about. What happened to you out there? All the lights in here dimmed, and then I heard a bulb explode outside. When I looked out, you were on the ground and down for the count.”
Lance continued to hold the ice pack to the back of his head, water dripping down the back of his neck and down his shirt. He shivered as the icy droplets snaked down his spine. He tried to figure out how much of the truth he wanted to tell Leah. In his brief time with her, she seemed more levelheaded than most folks, but Lance’s hard-to-explain abilities were more than even the most open-minded and trusting types of people could usually accept. In fact, it was those who were, in society’s eyes, less deserving of respect and trust that usually found Lance’s gifts to be a matter of fact instead of fiction. Few people had ever learned the truth about him, but that small group had been diverse enough for him to be able to form this clear divide of understanding.
Which group did Leah fall into?
If she believed him—either completely, or partially—she could prove to be a valuable asset. He would never expect, nor want her to get involved if things had the potential to be dangerous—which, after the violent gust of wind, he was pretty sure things would be—but she could be helpful in other ways. She was a local, and a local would have the type of knowledge he might need, and would know where to go to find other answers. If she trusted him and they worked together, he might be able to cleanse—Cleanse? Who are you, that little woman from Poltergeist?—this town of whatever evil had found its way here more quickly than if he were at it alone, and then he could get back to—
Get back to what, Lance? What exactly are you going to do? Where are you going to go?
—figuring out what his next move would be. Figuring out the rest of his life. His life alone.
If Leah chose not to believe him, she would think he was just a kook. She would remove him from the safe harbor category of “normal” guests she’d so quickly placed him in and drop him right down into the pit of the “typical” guests Bob’s Place was accustomed to. She would understand why he was drifting. She would understand why he’d chosen to stay at Bob’s Place instead of making his way another twenty miles to the Holiday Inn. She’d think him a loser. Just another crazy person passing through who’d never amount to anything and should have an eye kept on them at all times. She’d might ask him to leave. Throw him out. And then he’d be all—
Where will I go?
—alone again with just his expensive backpack and his troubled mind and his dead mother’s voicemail greeting to keep him company.
She won’t do that. She’s more like you than not. She’s one of the good ones.
The ice was almost completely melted now, the dish towel just a soppy mess with a few small ice chips left over. Lance stood, his vision solid but his headache no better, and placed the wet towel inside one of the small glasses atop the entertainment center. Leah’s eyes never left him as he moved. He sat back down and turned to lean against the other arm of the couch, so that the two of them were able to face each other comfortably. He got situated, took a long, heavy breath, and said, “You can ask all the questions you want, but it might be easier if you just let me finish first before you do. Is that okay?”
Leah’s brow crinkled, apparently confused at the depths to which the conversation appeared to be diving. But there was no apprehension in her voice when she quickly answered, “Okay. I can do that. Promise.”
So he told her.<
br />
He told her the condensed version of why he was different. Told her a couple stories from the past—the less dangerous type of stories—showing her how his talents had been used to help people, and some humorous tales of how he’d used them to help himself. She’d laughed at these, but he could see the gears turning behind her eyes, could see her brain scrambling frantically, trying to decipher what exactly it was she was hearing, probably wondering if this was all a dream.
He did not tell her that he occasionally saw ghosts, or spirits, or worse. That part was always the kicker, always the part where even the ones who’d begun to trust him finally held up their hands and said they’d heard enough. If the time came, and it was needed, then he’d tell her.
He also did not tell her two mysterious and powerful men (Are they really men?) were after him. Hunting him.
He finished talking, and Leah was quiet for a moment. She looked absently around the office, eyes darting from place to place as she thought. Finally, her eyes found his again and she said, “So … you’re like a psychic?”
“A little.”
“Or maybe … clairvoyant?”
“Sort of.”
“You’ve got, like, a sixth sense?”
“Maybe more than six. I’m a lot of things, honestly. I don’t fully understand it myself.”
“How do you sleep at night?”
“In a bed, usually.” He knew the joke was dumb, and sure enough, it fell flat. Leah looked at him for a moment, not realizing at first he was attempting to be funny, lighten the mood a bit after his speech. Finally, a small grin twitched her lips, and she reiterated, “No, seriously, how do you sleep with all that going on?”
He nodded. “It’s not always easy … but … think of me like a radio, okay? I can sort of … switch on and off, or not tune into certain channels unless I want to. Sometimes things tune in for me, but that’s not an everyday thing.”
Leah nodded, trying desperately to understand.
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