“What? Why?”
“We’re not opening. There’s been . . . a family emergency.”
“What the hell are you talking about? Is this about Melissa?”
He wished it was that simple. “No. Yes. I don’t know. Just take the day off, okay? I won’t even dock your pay.” Of course you won’t. Even when the world is falling apart, you’re still the same old Josh. A pushover for all the pretty girls.
“If you can’t make it in, why don’t you have me take care of it?”
Fat chance of that. He wasn’t sure any more Angie merchandise could fit within the walls of the store but he wasn’t about to find out. “No. We’re closing today and tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow is Halloween.”
“I know.”
“Why did you bail on me? I thought we had a good night.”
Earlier she’d been playful and dare he say it: normal. But now she was losing control. And that scared her. Infuriated her.
Good. Let her be scared. He imagined those boxes in her apartment, wondered how long she’d been working for them.
“Sure, we had fun. But it was just a one-night thing. Let’s not make a habit out of this.” A week ago, he would’ve given his left testicle to be with Trish. Now the thought repulsed him.
“You’re making a mistake,” she said.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” The shop was dark despite the sunlight shining against the windows. Though he was alone, he felt otherwise. He studied the shadows for movement.
She hung up, a dial tone replacing her voice.
He set down the phone, wiped sweat from his face. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been alone in the shop. Probably when he’d first opened the place. Two years next month. Hard to believe. In the beginning, he hadn’t expected to hire other employees. Business had been slow to pick up. Melissa had promised to help him, had putzed around the front room for the first month or so. Then she’d gone back to lying on the couch with a pile of adult coloring books on the coffee table.
Back then, she’d still used crayons.
He didn’t want to stop seeing Trish. She’d been on his mind ever since she came in to interview. But she was no longer the too-cool-for-school girl with the nose ring and purple hair. She was a glitter critter.
He’d been telling the truth about closing, but he’d neglected to mention they were closing for good. Sure, he was giving up on his dream but that dream had turned into a nightmare.
And it was time to wake up.
“Okay,” he said, rubbing his hands together. “Let’s throw some shit away.”
He tossed CDs. Records and stickers and posters. Next came the cardboard cutouts, except putting them in the trash didn’t seem final enough. He set them in a pile in the alley out back, searched the office until he found the lighter fluid. On slow summer days, he treated the employees to burgers and dogs from a discount grill he’d won at a Yankee swap.
He drizzled the lighter fluid onto the pile of cardboard. From his pocket he retrieved a book of matches, lit one, flicked it.
The cardboard crinkled, grew black, turned to ash. Bits of Angie drifted into the air. The wind took them.
The cutout on the bottom of the pile gave him the most trouble. He thought there was something symbolic about that but he was too tired to mull it over. Instead he tore off a still-burning section that could’ve been an elbow or knee and held it over the surviving Angie’s face.
“Sing about this,” he said as she began to catch. Her eyes and nose grew deformed from the heat. Her fake skin crumpled but did not crumble. Not at first.
The flame burned through the middle of her lips so they seemed to part. He knew it was a coincidence, a trick of the eyes, but he felt certain he’d hear her voice.
To speed up the process, he stepped on her face. It broke apart beneath his feet and part of him wished it had been the real thing.
The other part of him, though, the part below his belt line, had a different opinion on the matter.
By the time he was done, it was nearly three o’clock. He did not want to be near this place come nightfall. He surveyed his progress. Every bit of glittery bullshit was gone. The metal and punk records were proudly on display again. Venom and Bathory and Napalm Death posters took precedence.
He shut the lights off, grabbed his keys, and locked the place up. It felt final.
Until he saw the envelope on his windshield. Until he lifted the wiper and opened the flap and stared at the contents inside.
Tickets to Angie’s Halloween Homecoming show.
VIP tickets.
He tore them into slivers, tossed them like confetti. “You see that, you bastards? That’s what I think of you and your fucking queen.”
He half expected one of her little followers to appear. But Derby Street lay still and quiet. Not a tourist to be found. He was alone.
His phone rang. Trish, he thought. Luring him back to her apartment.
He answered without looking at the screen, ready to tell her off, except it wasn’t Trish on the other line.
“Mr. Meyers?” Male. Familiar.
“Yes?”
“This is Dr. Girard form Salem Hospital. We met briefly yesterday when your wife was admitted.”
“Is she okay?
“I’m afraid I was going to ask you the same question.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
NOTHING IS NORMAL
“DOES IT HURT?” MIKE SAID.
“What do you think?” Shawna hissed through her teeth as he cleaned the wound. The RV was not stocked with medical supplies. They made do with hand sanitizer that felt like lava as it sterilized her new brand. The flesh was red, raised. A pentagram that wasn’t quite a pentagram. The same symbol that rested beneath her bureau, carved into the floorboards as if they too were skin.
Mike folded two slips of paper towels, pressed them against her forearm. He sealed the makeshift bandage in place with Scotch tape. The center grew moist with blood, tiny beads peeking from beneath.
“Where were you?” She pulled her arm away and hugged herself. Childish maybe, but she didn’t much care. “Didn’t you say you’d be stalking me? If you planned on being late, you should’ve at least given me your phone number.”
“He was getting us,” Foster said, adjusting his glasses. They drooped down his nose as Curtis, driving recklessly, avoided potholes that would not be filled until spring. “And he couldn’t give you his phone number. It’s too dangerous.”
“Dangerous how?” she said, though she already knew the answer.
“Because we’re on their radar,” Mike said, cutting in. “They’ve been watching us, keeping tabs. I’m almost positive they’d listen in to any phone call we were stupid enough to make.”
“You really think their reach is that wide?”
“I think it’s wider than we can imagine.” He nodded toward the paper towels, growing soggy by the second. “I’m sorry about that.”
“It’s not your fault, I guess.” He couldn’t have predicted her favorite English teacher would abduct and brand her. Mike was doing the best he could with the resources he’d been given. Which were slim to say the least. “Thank you, by the way. For saving me.”
He nodded and she could tell he was in that house with the girl without eyes. Watching the bullets in slow motion as they pierced her rib cage.
“They’ll be watching us even closer now,” Foster said. He sat at the kitchen table, barely big enough for the three of them. He looked out the tinted windows. Salem was alive with visitors. The traffic was deadly. There were too many onlookers to keep track of.
Everyone was in costume. Halloween started weeks early in her hometown. Vampires and zombies roamed the streets. Princesses and pirates held their parents’ hands as they visited witch museums and brushed up on their history of public execution.
“What now?” she said when the RV had grown too quiet.
“We kill that bitch,” Curtis said from up front. He plugged his iPod
into the dash and hip-hop beats shook the interior. Probably something he’d recorded.
“What he said.” Mike took a sip of ginger ale that was likely as warm and flat as the one he’d given her.
“I know that much,” she said. “But what’s the plan? We can’t just go in guns blazing, right?”
“Afraid not.” He belched under his breath. “Not after today.”
“Your sister is staying at the Hawthorne Hotel for the time being,” Foster said. “In the honeymoon suite. It’s on the top floor—takes up the entire floor—and if what Mike says is true, her team will be guarding the place like it’s the pentagon.”
Pentagram, her mind corrected without her permission.
“But we can’t wait much longer, right?” she said, wondering why Angie wasn’t staying at home. But it made sense, didn’t it? Money was no issue to her, so why sleep in a house that had been falling apart for a decade?
“Tomorrow,” Mike finished his soda and crumpled the can. “We do it tomorrow.”
“Isn’t tomorrow too late?”
“It might already be too late,” he answered. “And stop picking at it. It’ll only get worse.”
She fingered the paper towel. “I always wanted a tattoo. A skull or a monster or something with flames. Something that would shock my mom. Never thought I’d get branded first.”
“Use it.”
“Use it for what?”
“A reminder.” He turned his leg to the side and rolled up the cuff of his pants. On the back of his calf was a long, jagged scar. The white flesh reminded her of a worm. “I look at this every morning and think: you tried your best but you didn’t kill me.”
“Is it from . . . that night?”
He shook his head. “Not quite. I was riding a bike.”
“A bike tried to kill you?”
“I was seeing this girl—Jill. She was the love of my life. Still is, the more I think of it. We were together almost four years. The first two were great. The last two, I’d joined the force and brought it home with me every night. Sometimes it can’t be avoided. You either internalize it, drive them mad with cold shoulders, or you get mad yourself. Get violent too sometimes. I did a little of both.” He rolled down the cuff as if he didn’t want to finish the story, though he did anyway. “Jill had a daughter. Sweet girl named Katie. Katie didn’t know her father but from what she and I heard about him, he was a real asshole. He never taught her to ride a bike and she was getting to that age, so I took it upon myself. We were riding together on the sidewalk one day. She went up ahead, way too fast, just like I’d told her not to. A car came around the corner. Couple of teenagers blaring shitty music like this stuff.” He pointed to Curtis. Curtis flipped him off. “Kids didn’t see Katie when they came up on the curb, so I pulled her aside, fell on my ass and caught the fender on my leg. I had a cast for six months. I yelled at her that night—Katie—and she cried for hours. I apologized but the damage was already done. Next day, I made it my life’s mission to cheer her up but it didn’t matter much. Jill got smart a few months later and left.”
“Is this supposed to be inspirational? Because it’s not working.”
“Not at all. I would’ve been better off getting run over. At least then I wouldn’t have seen my two favorite girls backing out of the driveway for the last time. I wouldn’t have seen a girl with her eyes torn out because some witch or whatever the hell she is decided to take over the world. But you do the best with what you’re given.”
“You’re not very good at cheering people up.” But in a strange sort of way, he’d done just that. She felt something new. If not hope, then something like it. It had been a long time since she’d been this close to anyone. Family had always been a touchy subject but maybe families didn’t have to be conventional. Didn’t have to be blood.
“It’s got to be during the concert.”
“What?” She tensed. The tender moment passed quickly.
Foster nodded. “Mike’s right.” He’d taken his glasses off, either to clean the lenses or he’d grown tired of adjusting them. His eyes seemed foreign without the frames. “It’s the last place they’ll think to find us.”
“What if it’s already too late? That signal has been floating around for six months. It’s already infected most of us. You said so yourself.”
“We’ll cross that bridge if and when we come to it. There are ways to block radio broadcasts. Hackers do it all the time. But first things first: we need to remove the source before the source removes us.”
She nodded, trying not to think of the specifics, trying not to imagine slitting her sister’s throat or putting a bullet through her temple. Being torn apart by an angry mob of glitter critters.
She looked outside, at the Halloween fanatics. They pranced around the cobblestone street as if everything were normal but the longer she stared, the more she realized nothing was normal.
A grown man dressed as a ballerina lay on the ground while a German Shepherd lifted its leg and pissed onto his face.
A miniature Frankenstein laughed and pointed while a woman, presumably his mother, punched herself in the face over and over.
An impossibly tall Graf Orlock passed out brochures for a local haunted house, except whenever passersby accepted the pamphlets, he held their hands, spread their fingers, and sliced the in-between flesh with the paper edges.
Maybe Mike had been right earlier.
Maybe it might already be too late.
Angie Everstein’s Ye Old Magic Shoppe.
Esmeralda read the sign and thought: This is a bad dream and you’ll wake up and be your hopeless fat self again but at least you’ll be safe.
Simple things like high cholesterol, like looming strokes and heart attacks—those could kill you, sure, but at least they were natural. Rational.
Her fingertips grew numb. Wouldn’t that be something? Falling down and having a coronary just before she could make her great escape. But she knew she wouldn’t be so lucky as she crossed the street and stepped into her old place of business.
It was not the same shop she remembered. Dark shades blocked any sunlight brave enough to cast toward the windows. The walls had been painted black. As had the ceiling and front counter and every other surface. The lights had been replaced with torches—actual torches—that burned slowly in sconces.
The managers knew how to draw in business. She’d give them that much. A barricade had been set up on the sidewalk, a crowd already forming outside. Hard to believe she’d spent so much time here, explaining to tourists that magic was mostly harmless.
Mostly.
Outside, she could just make out the cheers from fans, screaming Angie’s lyrics, excited for tomorrow’s concert. A mound of tickets on the front counter threatened to topple over. They looked like a professional job, with Angie’s face and a holographic pentagram superimposed over her features.
“You won’t be needing those,” said a voice from behind.
Glenda. Couldn’t forget a voice like that. A voice that made your heart want to stop whenever it spoke.
“You were supplied with a VIP pass, were you not?”
Esmeralda turned. “Mine's at home. Wouldn’t miss it for anything.”
“Good to hear. The meeting is about to begin. It’s right this way.” She headed toward the hall and melted into the darkness.
Esmeralda’s eyes still hadn’t adjusted. She held the walls for support. The torches didn’t help much. They made the shadows seem like living, breathing things. By the time she reached the back room, she felt nauseous.
What she saw when she got there didn’t help matters.
The stock room had grown in size. She scanned the area, did the math, realized the dimensions were impossible. The paint smelled fresher back here, toxic. It dawned on her then. This room was larger because it was two rooms. The business next door, a failed frozen yogurt shop, had been vacant for nearly a year. Rents were rising in Salem and sometimes empty buildings remained that way. Angie’s t
eam had bought the place, torn down the neighboring walls for more space.
Not for the first time, she wondered how so much work had been completed in such a short time.
She didn’t think on it too long, though. Her attention was drawn elsewhere.
Toward the gathering of Robes in front of her.
And the figure that stood among them.
Angie was naked and holding her hands toward the black ceiling. The girl shimmered like the air around her was liquid. Her eyes matched the walls, all pupils and no color. The pentagram from the tickets had been drawn onto her forehead, only the star and circle looked red, dripping down her face and into her mouth.
Her mouth.
Something seemed off about the way her lips were pushed out at odd angles. She whispered something so Esmeralda saw what her nerves already confirmed.
Fangs.
Her teeth had been replaced with knifelike fangs.
Someone grabbed Esmeralda’s arm. Glenda again.
“Put this on.”
If she had any chance of escaping, Esmeralda had to make them think she was on their side, feign complacency. She slid the robe over her massive frame.
Her skin itched and burned. The fabric smelled of mold and must and, she supposed, dead things. Underneath, her body broke out in a cold sweat.
Glenda smiled. “It suits you.” She turned her attention to her shimmering queen and spoke words too soft to make out. Words that sounded more like chants. The others repeated the lines in unison. Voices low and raspy, sandpaper to Esmeralda's ears.
She wondered only for a moment what this gathering meant, what purpose it served, but she was given her answer in the form of a vision.
For a long time she saw only darkness. She had the distinct feeling of walking down a spiral staircase that did not end. She could keep descending for eons and never reach whatever was down there.
Then there was bright light in the distance, racing toward her like a train. Only the engine was not a low rumble. It was a long, panicked screech.
When the light reached her she was back in Salem, albeit across town. Gallows Hill. She hadn’t visited the stage but she’d heard plenty about it. Her regulars said it was a massive eyesore but there was something else about it, some indescribable feeling.
A Voice So Soft Page 17
