“Don’t know how smart this is,” Reuben said to the three who he now realized were Scouts. “All you need is somebody to come along not paying attention and . . .”
They didn’t even look in his direction, walking steadily, staring straight ahead as he kept pace with them. He noticed that they didn’t look quite right, their skin a flushed red.
“Are you guys all right?” he called out to them through the passenger-side window, which was partially rolled down since his air-conditioning was busted.
Still they kept on walking, as if he weren’t there.
Reuben drove his truck a little ahead of them and pulled around to block them.
“You three don’t look so good,” he said, sliding from his truck. Besides the flushed skin, their uniform shirts appeared to be burned in places, and one of the boys was missing a shoe.
“Why don’t you hop in,” he told them, gesturing to his truck. “I’ll give you a ride into town. How does that sound?”
They had come to a stop and were staring at him blankly.
“Yes? No? Maybe?” Reuben chided. “What’s it gonna be?”
The older man, who wore the badges of a Scout Leader on the arm of his short-sleeved shirt, slowly lifted a finger, his mouth starting to move strangely.
Reuben didn’t know if he was going to be sick or break out into friggin’ song.
“A . . . ride,” the Scout Leader said.
“That’s right,” Reuben agreed. “I can take you into town. Better than walkin’ in the middle of the road, quicker, and safer too!”
He smiled at them, trying for some kind of reaction from their blank expressions.
“Better than . . . walking,” one of the boys said, turning his blank stare to the other two.
“And . . . safer,” agreed the other boy, as the Scout Leader nodded awkwardly.
“Okay, that’s it then,” Reuben said. “Climb in, and we’ll hit the road.”
They followed him to the driver’s side door.
“You fellas need to go around to the other side to get in,” he informed them, pointing to the opposite side of the Ford.
At first they didn’t quite seem to understand, but they eventually caught on, walking around the front of the vehicle to the passenger-side door.
Reuben wondered if they might be foreign or something even though he hadn’t noticed any funny accents or anything. It was all a bit bizarre.
He climbed into the driver’s seat as they were coming in on the opposite side. It was almost as if they’d never ridden in a car before, never mind a truck.
“Are you boys from around here or . . .”
All three turned their blank gazes to him, and for the briefest of moments, for some reason he could not explain, he felt like a bug underneath a magnifying glass being observed by something . . .
Superior.
“We’ll just say out of state,” he said, putting the truck in drive and heading down the road.
The silence in the cab was deafening, and he was never good with awkward silences.
“So are you camping nearby or something?” he asked them. “I noticed that you don’t have packs, so I figured maybe your camp was nearby or . . .”
“We are to find the missing pieces,” the adult chimed in, staring straight ahead as they drove.
“Missing pieces?” Reuben asked. “Missing pieces of what?”
“The key,” the three said in unison, their voices like ice picks suddenly, violently, stabbing into his brain.
Reuben actually cried out, his hands reaching up to cover his ears. The truck swerved, tires screeching as it fishtailed across the road.
“What the fuck?” Reuben said, his hearing badly muffled, affected by the sound. He took his hands away from his ears and saw that they were stained red with blood. And that was before he felt the tickle of the drip coming from his right nostril.
He looked to the passengers again, fear in his gaze. He was going to order them out, no longer caring to be the good Samaritan.
“We are to find the pieces,” the Scout Leader told him. “We are to find the pieces of the key before . . .”
“Time is of the essence,” one of the boys said.
“Driving will be quicker,” the other said. “You will drive us quicker.”
“No,” Reuben said, responding to what he could barely hear. His ears were ringing as he shook his head. “You three are getting out of my truck and . . .”
“You will drive us,” the boy closest to him said, and reached up, placing a hand on the back of the man’s head.
Reuben attempted to swat it away, but the kid’s fingers seemed to stick to his skull, burrowing beneath the hair, skin, and finally—painfully—into bone.
Before worming their way into his brain.
• • •
Reuben Damaris was no longer in control.
The divine being that inhabited the body of the Scout was now in the driver’s seat.
The being flexed its fingers within the brain of the man.
“You will drive us,” he said, controlling Reuben Damaris’s actions.
“It will be quicker,” said the other.
“And safer,” the leader agreed.
And they all nodded in unison as the Ford continued down the road, taking them closer and closer still to their destination.
• • •
The drugs that had been injected into the chocolates that Elijah had given to Emma Rose had proven to be quite strong, lasting far longer than he had expected.
He sat in a chair by the girl’s bedside, waiting for her to awaken.
She moaned softly in her sleep, and he wondered what she dreamed of, if her prophetic visions assailed her even when she slept. It was something that he hoped to ask her when she awakened.
He’d just returned to her room with a cup of coffee when he saw that she was awake. There was fear growing in her eyes as she saw him and realized that she was no longer in the place that she called home.
“Elijah?” she questioned, her speech slightly slurred.
“It’s all right,” he told her in his most soothing of voices. “You’re safe.”
“Where am I?” she asked, eyes darting around the small, cinder-block room. “Where are the sisters?” Emma Rose sat up suddenly and groaned, her hands going to her head.
“Take it easy,” Elijah told her. “You’ve been unconscious for a while.”
“What happened to me? Where . . . ?”
“The convent was attacked,” he told her. He moved his chair closer to her bed, setting his mug of coffee down on the floor beside it. Before sitting down, he went to a sweating pitcher of water by the bedside and poured a large glass. He handed it to her.
“Thank you,” she said as she took it.
“Drink it slowly,” he said, watching her as she began to drink. He then sat down, retrieving his mug of coffee. “That’s it.”
“The sisters,” she said again, lowering the glass.
“I’m afraid I have some very bad news,” he told her. “When the convent was attacked, they were all killed.”
He watched the information sink in, her eyes welling, tears tumbling down her cheeks.
“All killed?” she asked, not wanting to believe.
“I know how hard this must be for you,” he told her.
“How did I get here?” she asked. “I don’t remember anything about an attack or . . .”
He could sense her frustration building.
“You were knocked unconscious,” he told her. “I managed to get you to safety, but . . .”
“But the sisters . . . the sisters were all . . .”
He nodded slowly, leaning over to place his coffee mug back upon the floor. Then he sat on the side of her bed, taking the young woman into his arms.
&nb
sp; “I’m so, so sorry,” he told her as he rocked her from side to side. He could feel that she was crying. “By the time my people reached us, it was too late.”
“Who would do this?” she asked, her face pressed to his chest. “Who would want to hurt the sisters?”
Elijah reached down, taking Emma Rose by the shoulders so that he could look her in the eyes.
“You’re a very special person, Emma,” Elijah told her. “And there are people . . . very dangerous people out in the world who serve a dark power, for an equally dark purpose, who would like nothing better than to remove you from the world.”
She looked even more distraught, face damp with tears, eyes overwrought with sadness.
“But what did I do?”
“It’s not what you did, but what you could do,” Elijah explained. “You have a unique gift, Emma.”
“My pictures . . . the pictures of my visions?”
“Exactly,” he told her. “And it’s that special gift that makes you very dangerous to these people.”
“I don’t understand,” she said. “I have visions of things that might or might not happen. Why would these people . . . ?”
“These people have plans for the world, Emma,” Elijah told her. “And if you saw these plans . . .”
“Then we would know, and they could be stopped.”
Elijah nodded, watching as her face went from utter despair to something harder. Determined.
“I want to stop them,” she said. “For what they did to the sisters, I want to make sure that they never do anything like that to anybody ever again.”
Elijah gave her a lopsided smile, only the unscarred part of his face responding.
“I was hoping you would say something like that,” he said.
“How should we do this?” she asked, wiping the tears from her face.
“There is something we must use your talents to find,” he told her. “First we need to find a key.”
15
The policeman looked them up and down, and John knew what was coming.
“I know you from someplace,” the cop said, wagging his finger as other police and detectives looked on. “I know you from television.”
“Yeah, I’ve been on television,” John admitted.
“You were on TV?” Nicole asked with sarcasm from behind him. “You are so awesome.”
John turned slightly, giving her a look before turning back to the policeman. “I believe we’re supposed to be given access to the scene here,” he said, gesturing to the nursing home.
The cop continued to eye him.
“I can’t quite remember the program,” the man said.
“Ghost Chasers,” Theo finally piped up. She was wearing a heavy sweatshirt with the hood pulled up over her head to hide the injuries that she’d sustained while dealing with the unruly demons inside her.
“That’s it,” the cop said, snapping his fingers. “I knew it was something weird like that.” The others around him were nodding now, the mystery of how they knew these people suddenly clear.
The cop then got very serious, thumbs going into his belt.
“Could you maybe explain to me why the FBI would turn an active homicide investigation over to the stars of a television show about ghosts?”
“We’re not obliged to say,” John said, smiling congenially. “Sorry.”
The cop in charge didn’t care for that answer. “These people from your show, too?” he asked, pointing to Griffin and Nicole.
“They’re our associates,” Theo piped up again. “Are you going to let us do our job, or should I make a call to our bosses?”
The cop looked as though he’d just smelled something bad.
“You’re not to touch anything inside,” he said with a snarl.
“We’re just here to look and to offer any assistance that we can,” John added. “Have all your officers been called out of the building?”
“They have,” the cop said. “They weren’t happy about it, but they have.”
“Thank you,” John said pleasantly .
Theo started to move around the man, going toward the stairs. He watched her with squinty eyes, and John could see that he wanted to say more.
“We really do appreciate your cooperation, Officer,” John said, stepping past the cop and taking his wife’s elbow. “We’ll be sure to let our superiors know how helpful you and your men have been.”
John hurried his wife along, making sure that the others were following.
“You are such a candy ass,” Nicole muttered beneath her breath. Griffin laughed.
The other cops were watching them as they reached the doors and pulled them open to go inside.
It was incredibly warm inside the lobby, and the television was still on playing America’s Funniest Home Videos. John wondered if anybody would be hit in the balls tonight, as his eyes darted around the lobby. There was a distinct smell of death lingering in the air.
He glanced over at Theo and saw that she was reacting as well.
“What have you got?” he asked her.
“They’re excited,” she said. “Whatever happened here, they wholeheartedly approve.”
“Of course they do,” John said. “They’re demons. Any situation that causes pain or sadness is like mother’s milk to them.”
“Where do we start?” Griffin asked.
John looked to Nicole. “Everybody is dead?” he asked.
“That’s what your Nana said,” she told him.
He looked to Griffin. “Everybody pick a room; let’s see what we find.”
• • •
John found his way to the nurses’ station as the others went toward resident rooms. Lying on the floor, there were three withered bodies that had already been outlined by police investigators. He was extra careful as he squatted beside one.
“You poor thing,” he muttered beneath his breath, studying the damage done. It was as if everything that had allowed this woman to function as a living thing had been drained away. She resembled a corpse that had been mummified.
A purse lay beside her, the contents strewn across the floor. The woman’s wallet had come open when it hit the ground, and he found himself looking at a perfectly lovely photo of a smiling husband and wife and three little kids.
John looked from the face of the withered corpse to that in the photograph and felt his heart sink, and he swore to the poor souls lying there, victims of the darkness, that he would do everything in his power to stop this from ever happening again.
• • •
Theo had moved on to another room. She had investigated three so far and found pretty much the same thing in all of them. Corpses, lying in bed, drained of all life. She allowed one of the lesser demons in residence to come to the forefront, this one with an incredible sense of smell. She wanted to know if there was anything demonic to be found.
The room had belonged to a man, and she found him just as she’d found the others. Theo stepped close to the bed and let the demon emerge. She could feel the insides of her nose begin to change, her olfactory senses practically exploding as the scents of this place, of the old, flowed in.
It was nearly overwhelming as the smells bombarded her, images appearing inside her head with each of the pungent odors, but one of them was different . . .
One of them made the demon go wild.
There was no identifying the aroma, for there was the stink of the demonic about it, but also of humanity.
The demon Theo had let come to the forefront paced like an anxious tiger in a cage; it didn’t know what it was seeing . . . what it was smelling.
And it was all over the room . . . all over the nursing home.
It had been responsible for what happened there.
• • •
Griffin was tired of looking at withered
bodies.
There really wasn’t anything that he could do. From the looks of them, they had all died in the same horrible way.
Stepping outside a room where the shrunken corpse of an old woman in a pretty lace nightgown lay on the floor, he attempted to collect himself. The body made him think of his own mother, gone for more than twenty years. She’d often worn fancy nightgowns like that. He was almost tempted to lift the body from the floor and place her back in bed.
But he knew that he couldn’t do such a thing.
Griffin was seriously considering heading outside for some fresh air when the screaming began.
• • •
The ghosts scared her.
They were all inside the room, crammed into every space and corner, and as she entered, they were all looking at her.
“Oh shit,” Nicole said, hand clamping over her mouth after the scream had already escaped.
Daisy reacted as well, the ghost cat rearing up on her shoulders, arching her spine and emitting a nasty hiss that only Nicole could hear.
“Hey,” she found herself saying to all of them gathered there. “Hope that I’m not interrupting anything important.”
The ghosts of the elderly patients, as well as nursing staff just stared at her. It was then that she noticed that they all appeared to be gathered around the room’s single bed.
Which was empty.
She quickly looked around for any signs of a corpse, which would have made it just like all the other rooms she’d seen so far.
Nothing. No mummy to be found.
She found that interesting.
The door flew open at her back, nearly knocking her onto the bed. Griffin stood there, eyes wide.
“What the hell are you screaming for?”
“Sorry,” she said. “The room’s full of ghosts.”
Griffin couldn’t see and began to look around. “Oh,” he said. “Are there a lot of them?”
Nicole looked about. “Yeah, probably everybody who died in this place yesterday.”
Griffin looked around the room. “Really?”
“Yeah,” Nicole said. “The gang’s all here.”
Theo and John came in behind Griffin.
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