It was, they said, like the thing was alive.
Esmeralda couldn’t agree more. The way it jutted out of the park’s trees like some prehistoric beast rising from the ground, the way it seemed to expand in the corner of your eye like the steel itself had a pulse—yes, alive was right.
Hungry, too.
Angie stood atop the stage. The light came from the pyrotechnics, a miniature fireworks display that could not have been legal. The screeches—plural now—came from the crowd around her. Or what was left of it.
Much of what she saw didn’t make sense. Abstract in a way her mind couldn’t process. Nightmare logic. But she saw enough to know the crowd was in pain. The ground was wet but the night sky was cloudless. It hadn’t rained and, besides, rain wasn’t red.
From the dream stage, Angie stared toward Esmeralda.
You did this, her reptilian eyes said. You gave me the tools, taught me the tricks.
That it was, then. What she’d feared this whole time. What she’d kept in the back of her mind because the thought so terrified her. Angie’s songs were infecting people and tomorrow night, during the big show, the infection would spread. The ground would run red with blood. Salem would come alive with screams.
Minutes later, though it felt like years, the vision passed and she was back in the room with the Robes and the girl she’d once spoken with about invocation spells.
Esmeralda wiped her face. Her flesh felt cold and clammy and she thought she might vomit.
“It gets easier,” Glenda said. “The more you see through her eyes, the more you like it.”
The crowd began to scatter. The meeting was over. She followed the others as Glenda announced they would be given the rest of the day off. Tomorrow, after all, was their busiest day yet.
Esmeralda stepped outside and stopped listening.
She was too busy thinking about the storeroom back at her apartment. The boxes of overstock. Maybe it wasn’t too late. Maybe she could stop what she’d seen.
Assuming she lived long enough.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
THE MOTLEY CREW PREPARES
“YOU’VE GOT TO BE KIDDING me,” Shawna said as they pulled up to the storage unit.
Mike told Curtis to pull over and park. “Afraid not.”
“Is it even big enough to fit all of us?”
“You got a better plan? Your sister’s followers will be looking for us. It’s not safe for you at home. It’s not safe anywhere.”
She was too tired to argue. And besides, he had a point. Lack of space wasn’t what had her blood pumping. It was those posters within the unit. The pictures of Angie’s victims and the path of murders leading to her hometown. A history lesson she didn’t wish to revisit. Not to mention she’d been zip-tied to a chair the last time she’d been here.
Curtis parked and let them off. “That’ll be fifty even.” He held his hand out and pretended to take their money. She appreciated the humor but her funny bone was out of commission. He wasn’t laughing either.
The night had grown winter-like. In the distance she could hear the commotion of Salem proper. Crowds were growing. Hundreds had arrived today, hundreds more tomorrow. Halloween brought in a million pairs of feet to the city. How many would attend the concert? Surely not all of them, she thought, not feeling convinced.
The storage complex was on the other side of town, bordering Peabody and Route 114. In the distance, she could see the stage. It looked complete now. Complete and unnatural, like a tumor on the landscape.
A video screen had been erected, surrounded by what looked like strobe lights. She could make out movement around the construction site. Tiny black dots that reminded her of viruses under a microscope. The crew was putting on the finishing touches.
“Ugly thing, isn’t it?” Mike said from behind.
“The ugliest.”
She heard the storage unit door slide open. Curtis argued with Foster about something. The latter lectured the former but the former wasn’t having it.
“Ought to be an interesting night with those two.”
She shook her head. “What?”
He waved her off. “Nothing. Just talking out loud. Having second thoughts?”
She shrugged. “It’s a strange concept. She’s my sister, you know? She wasn’t always the antichrist.”
He nodded. “It’ll be the toughest thing you’ll ever do. Taking a life, I mean. There’s nothing that can prepare you for it. I hope you like nightmares.”
“You’re not exactly selling this to me. Besides, I don’t even know the plan yet.”
From his pocket he pulled out a flask and sipped.
“I didn’t take you for a drinker,” she said. “Too uptight. Too obsessive.”
“I don’t usually. Especially when I’m on the job. Back when I was on the force? Guys used to pound back a few cold ones on their lunch breaks like it was nothing. Can’t say I blame them.” He sipped again, wincing this time. “This isn’t exactly a job, though, so I figure why not?” He held the flask up, cocked his head.
“I don’t really drink.”
“What kind of teenager are you?”
She gave in, took it from him. After all, she might die tomorrow. Bleeding out on the ground, surrounded by the world’s newest and largest cult. Maybe they’d make her a sacrifice. Sliced open on stage while the world around her went to hell. What a way to go.
She threw her head back, took a large gulp, and spit it out immediately. Her tongue and throat burned. “What the hell is that?”
“Sambuca. Licorice flavored liquor.”
“Tastes like piss.”
“Close enough.” He took back the flask, sealed it, and turned around. “Come on. It’s time we discuss our plans.”
“Finally.” Not that she was in a rush. Hearing Mike discuss how she’d kill her sister, her own flesh and blood, wasn’t high on her bucket list. But it had to be done, she knew. One life in exchange for thousands. Hiroshima on a much smaller scale.
Hopefully.
Inside the storage unit she noticed some new additions. The photos were still there, curling at the edges from the humidity. The sign out front advertised a weather-proof complex but the smell of mold told her otherwise. The map, with its hundreds of tacks representing the trail of death, had been bloated, the corkboard warped beyond return.
The damage was not what concerned her, though.
It was the guns.
More of them than she could count. Pistols and rifles and what she assumed to be semi-automatics. She wasn’t an expert by any means but she’d played enough Grand Theft Auto to know this was militia material.
“Where the hell did you get all of this?”
“Don’t bother asking,” Foster said. “He won’t give a straight answer. My guess is that they’re stolen.”
“It doesn’t matter where they came from,” Mike said.
Curtis rummaged through a nearby box. He picked up what looked like an Uzi and stared directly into the barrel. All street credit left the building. Dollar sign tattoo or no dollar sign tattoo, the producer did not scream responsible gun owner.
She looked at them then. Studied the group in detail for the first time. An ex-cop who may have lost his mind. A professor who’d discovered a subliminal killing machine. A hip-hop engineer who might accidentally blow his brains out.
And then there was Shawna, a lowly eighteen-year-old with a hearing problem and a demon for a sister.
A motley crew if she’d ever seen one.
A motley crew that was expected to stop the end of the world.
“You gonna leave us hanging?” Curtis said, closing one eye and mock-aiming his gun. At least the barrel was pointed away from him.
“Put that down before you kill us,” Foster said. He cleaned his glasses and put them back on. The wire frames were bent, hung off his nose at an odd angle.
“It’s not just guns,” Mike said.
“How do you mean?” Foster shut the storeroom door. The dra
ft lessened but the interior suddenly felt like a prison cell.
“We’ll need to look the part. That’s why we’ll need these.” He threw them each a hulk of fabric. At first she thought they were blankets. Maybe they were calling it an early night. They’d iron out the details in the morning when their heads were clear. But when she unfolded the material she realized there would be no such luxury.
Robes.
Four matching robes that looked authentic. She peered inside hers, found the tag, expecting to see the brand name, the size, the made-in-China notice. But there was nothing of the sort. Instead, only a symbol: the pentagram-like image from her sister’s album cover. The same symbol that now graced Shawna’s forearm. Something told her this hadn’t been ordered through Redbubble.
“A disguise,” she said.
“Exactly.” Mike held his own up. “It’s our only chance of getting close enough.”
“You expect me to wear this thing?” Curtis said. “No chance in hell. I stopped trick-or-treating a long time ago.”
Mike ignored him. “The show starts at approximately eight o’clock tomorrow evening, weather permitting. There is no opening act.”
She pictured a goliath rainstorm blowing through Salem, ruining her sister’s plans. But she’d seen the weather that morning, the television muted in her living room. No rain in sight. The memory seemed eons away. Another life altogether. In a way, she thought, it was.
She stopped listening for a while, thought about normal things, like how her bandage was starting to come loose, like how she ought to call her mother, let her know she was safe.
Bad idea.
Kristen Everstein may have shown her maternal side during their last argument but she might be hiding something. A strange thing, not trusting your own family.
This is your family now, she thought as Mike went over the plan in more detail.
Outside, the wind howled against the unit like something wanted badly to get inside.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
LAST DAY OF THE OLD WORLD
KRISTEN HUNG UP THE PHONE and breathed a deep drag of her cigarette. She’d only recently taken up smoking. Just a few a day, at first, then a pack, then two, and so forth. She had an addictive personality. You’d get no arguments from her on that point. Take one look at her credit card bills and you had your proof. But she wasn’t about to argue bad habits tonight. There were more pressing issues.
Like one of her daughters going missing.
She paced the kitchen, waiting for a phone call that never came. She’d dialed Shawna a half dozen times, leaving as many messages. Each call took only one ring before her daughter’s monotonous voice spoke into her ear. Which meant her phone was turned off. Next she tried Angie, asked if she’d seen or heard from Shawna. No on both counts.
Kristen would have to try the police next.
Except Angie had told her otherwise.
“You can’t.”
“Why the hell not? Your sister’s missing. She skipped school and apparently had a fight with one of her teachers.” She’d called Salem High earlier and spoke with first a truancy officer, then the principal himself. Though he would not go into details, he’d mentioned an altercation. They’d speak about it next week, he insisted, once things had settled down, but the situation looked grim. As in getting-expelled grim.
“I’m sure she’ll come back soon enough,” Angie said through the phone, cool and collected. Usually her voice was enough to calm Kristen, make her believe everything would be okay. Tonight it had the opposite effect.
“Are you hearing yourself? What if she was kidnapped? What if she’s hurt?”
“Don’t do anything stupid. I’ll be over in a little while. Just wait for me, okay? I bet you anything Shawna will be back by the time I get there.”
That had been two hours ago.
How dare she tell Kristen not to worry. She was a mother. Not a good one by any means but a mother nonetheless. She’d been mostly absent from Shawna’s life since her father left the picture. Smart move on his part, she had to admit. She’d grown bitter with age. As a child, she’d dreamed of being a social worker, making a nice income and helping others to boot. But she’d dropped out of community college after learning of her pregnancy. Then came the news of twins. Their finances had been doomed from the start. A young mother, unprepared for the challenges of being a parent. She hadn’t always done her best, or even close to it, but now, faced with this crisis, she’d decided enough was enough.
She dialed the police despite Angie’s orders.
“I’d like to report a missing person.”
“Name and information,” said a voice that seemed entirely uninterested.
She listed the details, having to repeat several.
“How long has she been missing?”
She did the math. “Since about ten o’clock this morning.”
Then came the line the dispatcher had likely spewed a hundred times over. You couldn’t count someone as being missing until two days passed. Bullshit, Kristen thought. If Shawna had been taken against her will, she could be out of the state by now.
The voice droned on for another few minutes, reminding Kristen that her daughter was probably just hiding out at a friend’s house after the argument.
Kristen nodded, then frowned. “Argument?”
“Yes,” the voice said. “It’s common for girls of her age to do this. Act of rebellion.”
Her skin buzzed with a warning. “I didn’t mention any argument.”
A pause.
The line went dead.
“Son of a bitch.” She chalked it up to stress. Maybe she had mentioned the fight. Maybe she was too scared to notice. It seemed like a perfectly reasonable theory yet it didn’t feel right.
Kristen doubted Shawna was at a friend’s house since Shawna didn’t have any friends these days. As Angie’s fame grew, Shawna had drawn further and further into herself. Her behavior went beyond that of a normal teenager. Kristen should’ve spoken up sooner, called a psychiatrist.
It was a long shot, she thought, but perhaps Mia would know where Shawna was. Perhaps they’d rekindled their friendship (though something told her it was more than platonic, another aspect of her daughter’s life she’d chosen to neglect). Maybe Shawna was over at her house this very moment.
She dialed Mia. The girl picked up on the second ring and though her voice sounded slightly less robotic, it did nothing for Kristen’s nerves.
“I haven’t seen her,” Mia said.
“Are you sure? Were you at school today? I heard about an . . . altercation.”
Mia giggled.
“Is something funny? I must have missed the joke.”
“It’s just that . . . do you really think Shawna would ever fight anyone? She’s the least imposing person on the planet. Hearing aids don’t exactly scream tough.”
“Don’t you talk about her that way or I’ll . . .”
“Or you’ll what? Come over here and slap me on the wrist? Look, I’m not afraid of you and neither is Shawna, wherever she is. You know how many times she told me she hates you? She used to dream about running away. Said she’d hitchhike if she needed to.”
“She wouldn’t say that.” Of course she would.
“Think what you want but don’t hold your breath for her to come home. If she’s still alive.”
“What did you just say?”
Another giggle. “Can’t you feel it, Mrs. Everstein? It’s happening faster than we thought. Tomorrow is the last day of the old world. Queen Angie is coming.”
“What the hell happened to you? You used to be so . . .”
“Normal? Lady, you really do only care about yourself. If you’d taken one moment to listen to your daughter or anyone else, you would’ve noticed the change that’s happening. Try turning on the radio once in a while.”
Mia hung up.
Kristen hurled the phone across the room. It hit the wall with a crunch. The screen shattered and she could see her cr
edit card bill increase by the second.
“Was that necessary?”
Kristen nearly screamed as Angie stepped into the room. “You scared the shit out of me.”
“Language, Mother.”
She wrinkled her brow. “What?”
“Isn’t that what you always say? No swearing in the house. It’s the number one rule. You give Shawna shit for it all the time.” She covered her mouth, opened her eyes wide in mock shock. “Oops, there I go, defying you. Except you won’t say anything. Because I’m your favorite daughter, aren’t I?”
“Now isn’t the time for games.”
“It’s not a game. It’s a fact. I’m the pretty and talented one. I’m the one who can actually fucking hear. I bet those aids cost an arm and a leg, huh? And considering your past spending habits, it’s probably money you don’t have.”
Kristen cried. The tears were sudden and tickled her cheek on the way down. “What is wrong with you? You’ve . . . you’ve—”
Her daughter’s voice shifted as she finished the sentence. “Changed.” The high-pitched, slightly valley girl tone was replaced with something deeper, darker, something that bordered on demonic.
Kristen looked around the kitchen for . . . what? A weapon? Ridiculous. But her eyes didn’t find it so ridiculous when they settled on the rolling pin to her left. An expensive marble model three times the price of a standard one. She’d used it maybe twice. But tonight it might come in handy after all.
Listen to yourself. She’s your daughter, not a burglar.
Another shape stepped into the room. “You called the police,” Glenda said.
Kristen nodded. “Obviously.”
“Didn’t we advise against that?”
“You don’t control me.” She stepped back until her legs touched the counter. The rolling pin was within reach but she’d need to turn around. She didn’t like the idea of letting her guard down.
“That’s where you’re wrong, Mom.” Angie stepped farther into the kitchen. Her green eyes shimmered in the overhead light.
A Voice So Soft Page 18
