by H. D. Gordon
Once he’d hung up, Roo and I looked at him with raised brows.
“Well?” I said.
Sam gave a sheepish smirk. “They went to the police and told them they’d seen the Kane brothers change into hairy beasts at the cemetery. The police thought they were playing a prank, and threatened to charge them with trespassing unless they went home.”
Roo took my hand. “You hang out with real Einsteins, Prescott.”
She began to pull me into the high golden corn stalks.
“Where are you guys going?” Sam asked.
“Home,” Roo said. “You should, too.” She glanced up at the moon. “I don’t think it’s a good night to be roaming about.”
I was still in shock, so I didn’t protest as she pulled me deeper into the field, catching a final glance of Sam before we disappeared into the stalks.
“Good night, Rey,” he called.
“Good night, Sam,” I said.
But it wasn’t a good night. It was the night the world as I knew it changed.
And it wasn’t over just yet.
4
“Where the hell you two been?”
Roo and I stopped in our tracks on the porch steps, shoulders going rigid at the voice speaking from the shadows, at the familiar way the words slurred.
“Just out with some friends, daddy,” Roo said in her most innocent of tones.
The rocking chair in which he was sitting groaned when he leaned forward, haggard face coming into view as a sliver of moonlight touched it. “What friends?” he asked.
I tried to swallow past the lump that had formed in my throat as I stole a glance at the mostly drained whiskey bottle resting in his lap.
“Just a couple of girls from class,” I answered, squeezing my hands into fists to keep them from shaking.
The rocking chair groaned once more as he perched on the edge of it, eyes the same brown as mine pinning me where I stood. “You wouldn’t lie to me, would you?”
“Of course not,” Roo said. “Time just got away from us. We’re sorry. It won’t happen again.”
Silence. The kind in which one could feel their pulse at their temples, the slow draw of air into the lungs.
“Get inside,” Pa said at last.
Roo and I scurried in as quick as field mice escaping the clutches of a hawk.
We hardly dared draw breath until we were in our bedroom, the door closed behind us. We crawled into our beds, but after a moment, Roo joined me in mine.
“Move over,” she said.
I shifted and lifted the blanket to make space. Roo crawled in beside me, resting her head against my shoulder like she used to do when we were little.
“I knew I wasn’t the only one,” she whispered.
“What do you mean?”
She tilted her head and looked up at me with big hazel eyes. “The only one with gifts.”
I ran my fingers through her silky hair, sighing. “Gifts,” I repeated.
“Yes. I talk to the dead, and you apparently, can shoot glowing balls out of your fingers.”
I scoffed. “I don’t… What the hell was that?”
“Magic,” Roo answered simply, as if it were the most logical thing in the world.
“You realize how insane that sounds, right?”
“Is it any crazier than bringing a cat back to life? Or getting chased by werewolves?”
Before I could answer, there was a crash beyond our bedroom door, loud and abrupt. Roo and I jolted. We sat up in bed, glancing at each other, hearts sinking.
When nothing but silence answered, I pushed off the covers and stood. “Stay here,” I said.
Roo snatched my hand, holding me back. “Where are you going?” she whispered.
“To see what happened. Just stay here. I’m sure it’s fine. Pa probably dropped something, or tripped.”
Roo’s eyes were wide as saucers. “Don’t,” she said.
I kissed her forehead before pulling my hand from her grasp. “I’ll be right back,” I promised.
Heart thudding heavily in my chest, I made my way over to the bedroom door, drawing a deep breath before slowly pulling it open.
A breeze brushed by me, making me shiver as I peered out into the darkened hallway. Gathering my nerve, I snuck out into the hall and headed toward the kitchen—the direction from which the loud crash had sounded. I grabbed a heavy candelabra from the table against the wall and crept forward.
Another breeze brushed by me, making goosebumps rise on my arms. I rubbed at them as I blinked in the darkness, aware of the sound of my breathing in the dead silence. As I reached the open space leading to the kitchen, I swallowed a lump that had formed in my throat.
Raising the candelabra, I poked my head around the corner, peering into the shadows in the kitchen.
Then the candelabra slipped from my hand, striking the linoleum with a heavy thud. I rushed forward, dropping to my knees next to the prone figure on the kitchen floor. Blood pooled from his head, thick and still warm.
“Pa!” I said, shaking him but receiving no response.
“What happened to him?” Roo asked from behind me, jarring me with her appearance.
“I don’t know! Call nine-one-one,” I said. I shook him again. “Pa, wake up!”
No response.
I glanced back at my sister, tears welling in my eyes. “What are you doing? I said call nine-one-one!”
When she just stood there staring, I opened my mouth to shout the order again.
“There’s no need,” Roo said in a voice that was so calm it sent a shiver up my spine.
“What? Why?”
She was no longer looking at our father where he lay still on the floor, but rather, over my shoulder, where there was nothing save for the refrigerator and the magnets adorning it.
“Because he’s already dead,” she said.
“How—?”
“He’s standing right behind you, Rey.”
The temperature in the kitchen seemed to drop ten degrees as I slowly turned my head to look behind me.
Nothing.
There was nothing there.
“Roo, that’s not funny.”
She blinked once as she pulled her eyes away from the spot she was staring at, looking at me for the first time, her face as serious as an undertaker’s. “I’m not joking,” she replied.
“What happened?” she asked gently.
I was about to snap, asking how in the heck I was supposed to know, when I realized that she wasn’t talking to me. She was looking over my shoulder again. I looked down at where our father still lie on the floor, swallowed once, and put my fingers to his neck, checking for a pulse I already knew I wouldn’t find.
Standing, I moved away from our father, taking a spot beside Roo, looking again toward the place where she could apparently see something that I could not. She tilted her head as though she were listening. More tears burned in my eyes, and I wondered at the way Roo only stood stoically, as if our father were not lying dead before us on the kitchen floor.
“What’s—?” The words caught in my throat and I had to try again. “What’s he saying?”
This was madness. All of it. The entire night. Any moment now I would awake in my bed to find that it had all been a strange nightmare.
Another breeze brushed by me, prickling my skin, as if to assure me that this was no dream. I glanced at the window over the sink. It was shut tight.
Roo listened a while longer before answering. “He says we have to run,” she said, brow furrowing. “Says this… wasn’t an accident. That… he was murdered.”
If her face hadn’t gone starkly pale, her mouth pressing into a thin line that was a tell of her fear, I might have laughed at the absurdity of it all.
Words were still working their way up my throat when something cold and unyielding pressed against it. When I swallowed, the object dug in enough to cause a sharp pain. A raspy voice spoke in my ear as Roo let out a gasp beside me.
“Hold still, little pr
incess,” crooned the voice, rank breath filling my nostrils. “You wouldn’t want this blade to slip.”
I moved just my eyes, enough to see that there was a dirty looking man standing behind Roo, holding a knife to her throat as well. My first instinct was to beg, to plead with them not to hurt her, but Roo spoke before I could.
“What do you want?” she asked, voice as calm as the countryside moments before a storm.
“We’re going for a little trip,” answered the one holding her.
My stomach was in knots, my muscles seizing up with terror. I’d thought earlier tonight, while being chased by those beasts at the cemetery, was the most terrified I could ever be, that I’d reached peak horror, but as I held utterly still, my field of vision only allowing me to see the blade at my little sister’s throat, and to feel the one pressed against mine, I realized that this was the most afraid I had ever been.
“P-please,” I managed.
“Shut up,” said the one holding me, digging the knife in a little deeper for emphasis.
I hated myself for it, but more tears burned my eyes. I didn’t want to die like this, or to face whatever else these sickos had in mind for us.
I was shoved forward from behind, along with Roo, who was still eerily calm considering the situation. Our captors turned us until we faced the door that led to the outside. My mind raced, trying and failing to come up with some way out of this. I may not know much, but I knew that once kidnappers took their victims to a new location, the odds of escape or survival dropped dramatically. My eyes scanned the kitchen for some kind of weapon—something, anything—that might help us fight the men off, but we reached the door before I could locate anything and work up the nerve to make a grab for it.
The balls of light! Could I do that again? How had I done it the first time? I tried to summon that tingling sensation, to call back whatever magic had overcome me.
And got nothing.
Not even a single spark.
Luckily for us, Roo was way ahead of me.
Her hands twitched as the man leading her instructed her to open the door to the back yard, the movement so slight that had I not been paying such close attention, I would have missed it.
She opened the door, the moonlight spilling into the kitchen as she was shoved out it, the man holding the sharp blade to her lower back now.
My captor still had his knife pressed to my throat, his large, soft body held too close against my back. He was enjoying this, the pervert. I could tell in more ways than one.
“You sure are pretty,” he rasped in my ear as he shuffled me along after my sister. “We’re supposed to bring you straight to her, but maybe we can make a little stop fir—”
He never got to finish the words. I jumped as a metallic clang sounded right next to me, and a grunt of pain and surprise followed immediately after. His hold on me loosened, then dropped completely as the man slumped to the floor—knocked out cold.
I stood in shocked silence, staring down at him until my eyes swung up to see who had dealt the blow.
A gasp escaped me, and my heart stopped dead in my chest.
My father, who had been as dead as the cat on the road all those years before, now stood staring at me, a cast iron skillet in his hand.
5
I backed away from him, the sight causing me to forget about my sister and the man still holding her captive.
My father shambled past me, moving quickly for a dead man, and swung the cast iron skillet once more. The man holding Roo never stood a chance, likely as shocked to see the guy he’d just murdered get up and start swinging around a skillet as was I.
Another metallic clang sounded as the pan made contact with his skull, and he went down in the same fashion as had his partner. Roo, for all of this, stood looking as sturdy as an oak, unshaken while I shivered and grew my eyes so wide they surely bulged from my head.
I stumbled back another step, unable to find words or grab hold of a single coherent thought.
“Pa,” Roo said, the sadness in her voice wrenching at my heart. She moved to him and wrapped her arms around him.
Our father, blood still marring his thinning hair, face pale as a corpse, stood stone faced for several seconds before dropping the skillet to the floor and embracing his youngest daughter. They stood like that for long enough that I managed to locate some words.
Well, one word.
“What…?”
This drew their attention, and they finally pulled apart. I suppressed a shudder under the dead gaze of my father. If there was any question before about what he was, that gaze settled it. The thing before me might be wearing the body and face of my father, but it was not my father. Something essential was missing, some spark that represented life.
I was going to tell my sister to get away from it, but she looked so sad, so resigned.
“Say goodbye to him, Rey,” she told me calmly. “This will be the last chance.”
My feet moved forward as if directed by a mind other than my own, scooting over the linoleum until I stood before the thing that had once been my father. More for Roo’s sake than my own, I wrapped my arms around his waist, burying my head in his chest, breathing in the familiar scent of him.
More tears came now, warm and wet, spilling down my cheeks until they soaked his shirt. He said nothing, simply returned the embrace as if in a trance.
When I pulled away, he stared dully back at me.
“I have to let him go now,” Roo said. “Lay him to rest.”
I nodded. It was all I could manage.
Roo laid her hands on our father’s chest, a pulse in her neck thrumming as she closed her eyes. “Sit,” she told him.
He obeyed.
A moment later, he slumped to the floor, in much the same position I’d found him in less than a half hour earlier. His eyes stared wide and lifeless up at the ceiling. Roo gently closed them with her fingertips and placed a kiss on his forehead.
Blinking back more tears, I stared at my little sister. “What now?” I asked.
“We pack our things. We can’t stay here.”
“Where will we go?”
“To Aunt Meera’s house, I guess.”
“Aunt Meera? We haven’t heard from her in years.”
My sister nodded, loosing a slow sigh as she stared down at our father. “She’s the only family we have left.”
Aunt Meera was our mother’s sister.
The last time we’d seen her had been maybe ten years ago, when I was about seven, and Roo only six. She’d dropped by unannounced for Halloween, decked out in a witch costume, complete with a pointed hat and a straw broomstick.
Our father had not been pleased to see her, but Aunt Meera was not the type of woman who seemed to give too much a crap about what others thought of her. She’d left as swiftly as she’d come, disappearing before the sun had risen the following morning.
I stood in our bedroom, the night still holding strong beyond the window, shoving clothes into my backpack. “We can’t be sure she’s even still at that address,” I told Roo.
“I know, but we can’t stay here.”
“Why not? I mean, shouldn’t we call the police or something?”
“There’s no time.”
“Why? Why isn’t there time?”
“I don’t know. But Pa said we needed to run, so that’s what we’re going to do. He said we couldn’t stay here.”
We’d tied up the two men who’d tried to abduct us, and they still hadn’t roused. With how hard Pa had hit them with the iron skillet, I didn’t dare think about whether or not they would rouse.
“We can’t just leave,” I insisted.
“There will be more where they came from.”
“How do you know that?”
“Pa said.”
I threw my hands up. My nerves were frayed to their last thread. “Right. Pa’s ghost told you. I forgot.”
Roo finished tossing some toiletries into her backpack, zipped it up, and turned to face me. �
��Something is going on with us, Rey,” she said, as serious as she had been when addressing Sam Prescott earlier. “I know you don’t like to talk about it, that it makes you uncomfortable, but we can’t ignore it anymore. We need answers.”
I swallowed. “And you think Aunt Meera has those answers?”
“I think she’s a good place to start… Unless you have a better plan.”
“We could question those two goons we’ve got tied up in the kitchen when they wake up,” I suggested.
Roo’s chin raised a fraction. “They’re not going to wake up, Rey.”
So I’d been right about how hard Pa had hit them with that skillet. My face heated as I realized that there were three dead bodies currently lying in our kitchen.
“You ready?” Roo asked.
“I guess. But how are we going to get to Branson?”
“We’re gonna take Pa’s truck and you’re going to drive us, genius.”
“We don’t have any money.”
Roo fished in her pocket and pulled out a wad of cash.
“Where did you get that?”
“It’s my savings and what Pa had in his stash under the floorboard.”
I scoffed.
“What? It’s not like he needs it anymore.”
I stared at my little sister, thinking that though she was the closest person in the world to me, perhaps I didn’t know her very well at all.
“To Branson, then?”
Roo nodded. “To Branson.”
Branson, Missouri.
The small town laid about three hours to the south of the even smaller town of Peculiar. The Live Music Show Capital of the World, the place where people came for entertainment and vacation. We’d only ever been to Branson once, back before Pa started drinking heavily, and as far as childhood memories went, the trip was among the happiest I possessed.
I tried not to think about it now as we rolled into town, about how Pa had laughed when we’d shared a dinner down at Dolly’s Farmhouse, and Roo and I had fought over the orange gum-ball that we’d bought out of the quarter machine. I’d gotten a purple gum-ball. She’d gotten the orange. We both wanted orange. By the time she agreed to trade, we were both pissed, and I had stuck the purple ball in my armpit without her noticing.
