“Listen to me very carefully, Rebecca. My name is Stew Taylor. I am the gym teacher here at Pinewood. I taught at Highland for several years before that. We have actually met before, but only briefly. Do you remember?”
Rebecca stopped struggling, stopped screaming, clearly realizing the futility of trying to escape Stew’s hold on her. She eventually nodded, Stew’s hand still covering her mouth.
“Good. I don’t have time for small talk, so I’m afraid I’ll have to be very curt with you. I ask for your forgiveness in advance. Ryan is hurt. He’s unconscious in his classroom. The man lying on the cot in the nurse’s office is Karl Sandford, the janitor at Pinewood. I believe you know him too. He is also hurt and unconscious. Your mother is responsible for this. She is not who she appears to be. We are not here to hurt you or her; we’re only here to stop her and save future lives.”
Rebecca remained quiet and still. This concerned Stew, made him feel as though she may be playing possum, lulling him into a false sense of security so that he might let go of her so she could make her escape.
“I don’t expect you to buy this right away, Rebecca, but I will ask you to use common sense. Why do you think your mother wanted that urn so badly?”
Rebecca finally spoke, mumbling into Stew’s palm. He immediately pulled his hand away but kept a firm grip around her waist.
“Those are my father’s ashes,” she said. “My mother said you and Ryan wanted to destroy them.”
“We did not want to destroy your father’s ashes,” Stew said. “In fact, we couldn’t destroy his ashes, and do you know why?”
Rebecca shook her head.
“Because your father’s ashes aren’t inside that urn.”
Rebecca tried looking over her shoulder at Stew. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“Bear with me here, all right? There’s something else inside that urn—something that means a heck of a lot more to your mother than your father’s remains.”
“What?”
“A heart.”
“A heart?”
“Yes.”
“Like a real heart? A person’s heart?”
“Yes.”
“You’re crazy.”
“Have you ever looked inside the urn?”
“Of course not. Who looks at the ashes of a loved one?”
Stew instantly flashed on Ryan’s similar sentiment: Much as it pains me to say, it’s freaking brilliant. Who peeks in on the ashes of a loved one? The damn thing is literally hiding in plain sight. And it was a damned good point. Stew made up a quick lie on the spot.
“Lots of people. Many request that their ashes be sprinkled somewhere important to them after they’ve passed on.” And this was also a damned good point, one he hadn’t thought of when Ryan had expressed his. Stew was proud of the lie, in spite of the situation’s gravity.
“Well, my father didn’t want his ashes sprinkled anywhere, at least as far as I know.”
“Nevertheless…”
“So what are you saying? Are you saying my mother has a human heart in my father’s urn?” She snorted. “Why the hell—”
“It’s the preserved heart of a very bad person from hundreds of years ago. It’s a source of strength for your mother. She uses it to…” To what? How to say it? “…to get people to do things…to commit suicide…to make children murder children.”
“This is ludicrous. You’re trying to tell me my mother is some kind of witch?”
“I don’t know what to call her. But she is responsible for multiple murders…including your father’s.”
Rebecca started struggling again. “Let me go! You’re fucking crazy!”
Stew placed a hand over her mouth and tightened his hold on her waist again. He put his lips to her ear and in that loud whisper again: “Stop it and use your head, child!” He then dragged her into the nurse’s office and hit the lights. Walked into the cot room on the left and hit those lights. Pointed down at a still very unconscious and chalk-white Karl. “Who did that to Karl?” Rebecca gaped down at Karl. Stew then released his hold on her waist and took her by the wrist, dragging her back out into the lobby. He pulled her close so she could see the severity in his eyes, pointed towards the fifth-grade wing. “Go on down and check out your boyfriend in his classroom—it looks like he’s being cooked from the inside out. I tried everything to wake him. Who did that to him, you think?”
Rebecca started to say something, but Stew went on.
“Your mother knows why we’re here, and she’s trying to stop us. She stops anyone who is a threat to her. Is it a coincidence that your father died when he became born again? He was a threat to her, Rebecca. He knew what she was into, and he wanted her to stop.”
Rebecca had closed her eyes, was shaking her head with every word Stew spoke. Stew’s frustration grew. He tightened his hold on her wrist enough to cause her to wince from the pressure and open her eyes.
“Figure it out for yourself then, goddammit! Go find your mother! Ask her where the urn is. Ask her why it was so important for you to bring it here.”
“It’s her husband’s remains,” Rebecca protested. “She didn’t want them to be destroyed.”
“Then bluff her!” Stew yelled. He immediately caught himself and went back to a loud whisper. “Tell her you already looked inside the damn urn. Ask her why there was a fucking heart in there instead of your father’s remains.”
“I’m not going to lie to my mother.”
Stew gritted his teeth. She’s in the boiler room. In her altar. She has to be. It would be the only place she felt safe to take the heart. Drag her daughter down there and demand she show herself. End this shit now.
Stew started to drag Rebecca down the hall, towards the boiler room. “You and I are going for a little walk, child. You need to see for yourself.”
78
Carol Lawrence was on all fours, crawling out of the small square entrance behind the great boiler that led to her altar, when she suddenly froze halfway. The basement lights had come on; someone was coming down the stairs. Before Carol could get to her feet, she spotted Stew Taylor and her daughter roughly ten feet away, watching her. Stew gripped Rebecca’s arm, but she was not struggling. She was transfixed by her mother, by the mysterious hole in the wall she was crawling out of.
“Mom?” Rebecca said, eyes going from her mother to the square hole in the wall, then back to her mother again. Carol did not appear to have the urn with her.
My God, Stew thought. That’s it. That’s the entrance to her chamber, her altar. The whole damn time, that seemingly innocuous steel panel in the wall was the entrance to her altar the whole damn time.
Stew knew in his bones that she had just placed the urn safely inside and was now exiting, hopefully unobserved. Well, tough shit, lady. You’ve been observed. You’ve been observed. Try talking your way out of this one. He contemplated rushing forward, subduing Carol, and then crawling inside that chamber to grab the urn himself. Only he stopped when he noticed the bewildered look on Rebecca’s face, the myriad of questions it held. This needed playing out first.
Carol got to her feet. “My God, sweetheart, are you all right?”
Rebecca nodded, but could not take her eyes off the square opening, its passage, at the base of the wall her mother had just emerged from.
“Take your hands off my daughter, Stew—the police will be here any minute,” Carol said.
“You didn’t call the police,” Stew said. “Not yet anyway. I’m sure you would have called them after you were finished with us—but not now. Not when there are so many loose ends to tie up first.”
“Mom?” Rebecca said again. It seemed all she was capable of for the moment.
“It’s okay, Becks. Let my daughter go, Stew. Becks, come over here.”
“I’ll let her go, Carol. But I’ve got one little condition first. Let her look inside her father’s urn. Better yet—let her take a good long look inside that little cubbyhole you’ve got there. I’m sure s
he’ll find it all very enlightening.”
Carol’s face darkened. “There’s nothing in there. I’m trying to hide my husband’s remains, which you sick bastards are trying to take from me.”
Stew actually smiled. “Okay then, you’ve got my word—I won’t touch those remains. Just show your daughter. Let her see those remains for herself.”
Carol’s nostrils flared, her eyes like daggers on Stew. “My daughter doesn’t want to look at her father’s ashes. And I’m certainly not going to force her to look now because a crazy man like you is making her—”
“I already looked,” Rebecca said.
Carol’s eyes snapped onto her daughter, wide and intense. “You looked?”
Hot damn, she’s taking my advice. She’s bluffing her mother.
“Yes.”
Carol started inching towards them. “When did you look?”
“On the drive over here.”
“And yet you never mentioned it earlier.”
“No.”
“You looked inside on the way over here, and yet you never mentioned it. I see.”
“I was…I was scared…confused.”
“And why was that?”
“Because I didn’t see Daddy’s ashes…”
“No? What did you see?”
Rebecca hesitated.
Say it, child.
“What did you see, Rebecca?” Carol said again.
“A heart.”
Fucking hallelujah.
Carol was eerily composed. Stew didn’t like it.
“A heart?”
“Yes. An old one. It was preserved.”
“Are you sure that’s what you saw, Rebecca?”
“I—yes.”
“I see. Well, perhaps you better look again.”
Stew frowned. It was the very last thing he had expected Carol to say.
“Come over here, Rebecca—it’s time we put this nonsense to rest once and for all. Oh, and might I add,” she said to Stew, “that when this is all over, I suggest you and your friends find a very good lawyer.”
“My friends are likely dead,” Stew said. “As I’m sure you know.”
Carol ignored his comment, kept her gaze on Rebecca.
“Come over here, Rebecca,” she said again. “You want to see for yourself, don’t you? Come on over here; I’ll show you what’s inside the urn myself. I’ll show you that what you think you saw was nothing more than your mind playing tricks on you, fueled by the nonsense this crazy man and your boyfriend have been poisoning it with.”
“It’s a trick,” Stew said to Rebecca. “She has the ability to alter perception. She’ll make you see the goddam Easter bunny inside that urn if she wants to. Don’t do it.”
Rebecca ignored him. “Where is it?” she asked her mother.
Carol pointed to the square opening at the base of the wall, the narrow passage beyond. “In there. A safe place I happened to discover years ago at Highland. It survived the fire. The urn is in there. Your father’s remains are in there.”
Rebecca looked at Stew. Stew shook his head at her.
This is playing out all sorts of wrong.
“Come on, sweetheart,” Carol beckoned. “Let’s get this over with.” She pointed at Stew. “You stay put. If you have any decency in your body, you’ll stay put. This is strictly a family matter.”
Let her go and see for herself. The crazy bitch may be able to alter perception of what’s inside that urn, but the entire contents of her lair that Ryan spoke of?
(Why not? There’s no guidebook for how this insanity works.)
Okay, fine then—let her go. Let the girl see Disneyland inside that lair if that’s what Carol is capable of managing. You know the truth, and if she alters Rebecca’s perception of that truth, it doesn’t change a damn thing. In fact, better Rebecca not be here when you rush the bitch.
Stew released his hold on Rebecca’s arm. She slid slowly out of his grasp and started towards her mother. Carol smiled and gestured towards the square entrance at the base of the wall. “Go on, sweetheart,” she said lovingly. “It’s all right; you’ll see.”
Rebecca got down on all fours and poked her head inside the opening, pausing there. “It’s dark,” she said. “I can’t see anything.”
“Go on, Becks—it’s a straight shot all the way through. The passage opens up after ten feet or so. You’ll be in a room. In that room there will be a flashlight to your immediate left along the wall.”
Rebecca looked up at her mother. Her face was a frightened child’s.
“It’ll be okay, sweetheart,” Carol said.
Without further delay, Rebecca began to crawl into darkness.
“I heard what you said upstairs in the lobby earlier,” Carol said to Stew. “About feeding me a heart?”
“That’s right. I hope you’re hungry.”
“I’m afraid I’m not.” Calmly, Carol bent, retrieved the steel panel, and then clicked it into place, sealing her daughter inside the chamber. If she had made any sudden movements, Stew would have pounced. But she hadn’t; she’d simply bent and secured the panel back in place as casually as you please.
Rebecca’s scream from within was instantaneous. Her only source of light on her journey deeper into the wall had been the square of light behind her from the boiler room. Now it had been sealed off.
Stew rushed towards Carol—and then stopped on a dime. The boiler room was suddenly black, all source of light gone. The faint laughter of Carol nearby.
All two hundred and sixty pounds of Stew Taylor was terrified.
79
Stew crept forward, arms outstretched and waving in all directions so as not to collide with anything in the blackness of the boiler room, chief of them Carol. Or maybe it would be good to collide with her. He was confident that if he could get his hands on her, he could choke her right out, even in the dark…assuming she didn’t have a weapon.
And you know she does.
Stew’s terror climbed a notch. He continued to carefully shuffle forward, Rebecca’s muffled screams from within Carol’s chamber his guide to the precise spot behind the boiler. He soon found the boiler and then, beyond that, the wall. He ran both hands down the wall until they settled on the steel panel, his fingers locating the edges, working furiously on those edges in a bid to rip the panel free. Rebecca’s screams grew louder, and Stew worked faster. Even with his considerable strength, it was a futile task. He would need a crowbar or something similar to pry the damn thing off.
Look for one?
(In the dark?)
All of Stew’s attention was momentarily focused on freeing Rebecca. None of it was on Carol. This revelation came a second too late. Stew felt her presence behind him, an icy feeling of dread that tickled his very soul. He leapt to his feet and spun. His eyes, growing somewhat accustomed to the dark, spotted Carol’s silhouette before him, but he did not react. Could not react. The red eyes
(they’re red. RED!)
that burned like embers held him whole, paralyzing him with terror he did not think capable of being surpassed until now.
An angry hiss, not unlike a cat’s, and the red eyes jumped with movement, a searing pain following as something sliced into Stew’s abdomen. He cried out and clutched his stomach with both hands, felt the immediate dampening of his shirt from his own blood. He looked down at his stomach but of course could see nothing. He looked up again, and the red eyes—the only absolute in the cruel darkness—were gone.
A second angry hiss from behind him now. Waist level. He spun towards it. The red eyes were there. He went for them and got nothing. Felt the blade slice into his hamstring a second after, bringing him down to one knee. He cried out again.
Laughter echoing all around him now, as though coming from multiple spots at once. He looked up, desperate to spot the red eyes. They were gone again. But the laughter was still there. She was still there.
***
Rebecca—who until now had been curled into a tight ball while s
he cried for help—slowly uncoiled herself within the walls of the chamber. She could hear Stew’s cry of pain. And then a second cry, this one more intense. Something was happening to him. Someone was hurting him. A reluctant logic: who else could it be besides her mother? She had been the one to wall her in. Was it to protect her from Stew? He had been no immediate threat. Did, in fact, seem keen on having Rebecca venture into the wall to retrieve the urn—it had all been his idea from the start. So why had her mother walled her in? Why was she now attacking Stew? And how could she attack Stew with any measure of success? She stood no chance against such a man. None of it made sense.
Rebecca crawled throughout the cramped confines of the chamber, went to the wall where her mother had assured her a flashlight would be. It was not there. She continued to search blindly on her hands and knees, searching for something, anything that might be a source of light.
She felt many things, all of them unfamiliar, and released them immediately to continue her search. Her hands soon stumbled upon something that was familiar, and as she snatched what felt like a very small cardboard box and felt the rough strip on one side, shook the contents and heard the rattle of wooden matches therein, she knew she had found her source of light.
Rebecca immediately slid open the box and removed a match, blindly fingering the side of the box with the rough strip with one hand to guide her other in lighting the match.
There were plenty of things within those walls that Rebecca could have illuminated with that first match. She happened to illuminate her father’s picture. Her father’s picture with a necklace of small needles encircling his throat. The word “stroke” written on his torso in something red. Rebecca could only stare at the picture in disbelief, the flickering light from the match adding ominous impact to a moment that needed none.
The match died, and she lit another, and her father was there again in that wavering light of the match. The needles. The word “stroke” written on his torso in something
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