Curse (Blur Trilogy Book 3)

by Steven James

  But how? Where?

  The boy stretches his arm out longer than it could ever go, all the way to the shelf, all the way to the key.

  But I can’t reach it.

  I can’t—

  Oh.

  Unless.

  Unless my shoulder was dislocated.

  Then I could get those extra few inches.

  He says to me, “This is going to hurt. But it’s going to help.”

  When I was at the hospital after getting hit by that truck, the doctor warned me that I ran the risk of pulling it out of socket again unless I was careful. Earlier today that almost happened at Little Bear Creek when Tane grabbed my arm.

  It’s been just over a week. It’s probably still loose enough.

  Propping my leg against the wall, I take a deep breath.

  Then push as hard as I can.

  Fire splinters across my shoulder.

  The drugs make it seem to last forever.

  Those flickering shadows open their hungry mouths to devour me.

  Like giant bats.

  The shoulder rages with pain, but stays in place.

  It’s not going to come out if I go slowly like this. I need to create enough force to pop it out of its socket.

  I scoot closer to the wall, scrunch up both legs, and then throw myself backward.

  The shoulder dislocates and a wash of dizziness spreads over me, through me, overwhelms me.

  The boy, the bats, they all slip into the background, fold back into the air.

  Stretching out as far as I can, I nudge the small picture aside to get to the key, and the photo tips off the shelf.

  I see it falling slower than it should through the air, a mountain vista angled and dropping to the floor. Then its glass shatters, and as it comes to rest I recognize it from Dr. Carrigan’s theater. A print of one of his photos.

  The key.

  Get the key.

  My fingers find it.

  I don’t want it to drop to the floor, so I pinch it carefully as I draw it off the shelf.

  Everything still seems slow and prolonged as I unlock the cuff and, with my left arm now hanging useless by my side, I start toward the general.

  As much as I’d like to get that shoulder back in place, it’s probably too messed up right now. I’m going to need help with it this time.

  Everything is bleary, dreamlike.

  I make it to her side. “If I help you, can you get to your feet?”

  She shakes her head weakly.

  “We need to go. He’s gonna burn this place down.”

  “I can’t.” She uncurls one of her hands and a USB drive drops to the floor.

  “I thought he took that?”

  “It was the wrong one.” She smiles faintly. “Everything’s on here. Post it online. Get the truth out.”

  I pick it up.

  She coughs and a thread of blood dribbles from her mouth.

  With my one good arm, I try to lift her, but she cringes and shakes her head so I stop.

  “Leave me.”

  Smoke begins curling out of the vents along the wall.

  This is happening.

  It’s happening now.

  Go, Daniel. You need to leave.

  “Listen,” I tell her urgently, “they locked my friends in one of the rooms. Do you know how to get the doors open?”

  “The security center on the first floor.” Her voice is soft now, barely audible. “Open all the doors. These men don’t deserve to die in here—but they can’t go free. Get the geo-tracker.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Looks like a tablet computer. It’ll find the ink in their eyeballs.”

  I don’t know what she’s talking about, but then she stares past me, her eyes glaze over, and her body goes limp.

  I shake her, call her name.

  No response.

  It’s too late.

  You have to go.

  More smoke seeps into the room.

  Poehlman said there’d be less than five minutes to get out after the fire started.

  Pocketing the thumb drive, I head to the hallway.

  The hall seems to waver somewhere between time and space. Taking an unsteady step forward, I lose my balance and lean my right arm against the wall for support, then stumble toward the stairs.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE

  Kyle was cornering a bend when he saw the pair of headlights cut through the storm.

  Maybe the driver had a phone that got reception up here.

  He took off the headlamp and waved the light to flag the car down.

  It stopped in the middle of the road.

  As he hurried toward it, the driver swung the passenger door open and Kyle took it as an invitation to climb in and get out of the rain.

  But before he did, he bent and looked inside.

  The man spoke first, “What are you doing out here? Are you okay?”

  “Yeah.” Kyle was still breathing heavily from his run. “I need your help. Can I use your phone?”

  “Sure. Yeah, yeah. Get in.”

  Kyle got into the car and tugged the door closed. “I’m Kyle.”

  “My name is Reginald Carrigan. Now, you were about to tell me what you’re doing out here in the middle of this storm.”

  It took Henrik a little longer than he anticipated to remotely open all the vents and start each of the conflagration units in the basement.

  Now, he was on his way toward the stairs when a figure emerged from the shadows near the fly room at the end of the hall.

  Zacharias.

  “So, there you are.” Henrik drew his gun.

  “You won’t shoot me.”

  “Oh? And why not?”

  “You’re not a coward. Come here. Come closer.”

  Henrik did.

  This place is burning down. Just kill him and get out.

  No, you’re not a coward. He’s right. You can’t just shoot him. Kill him. But do it with your hands.

  Henrik holstered the gun. “Okay, but I’m afraid even then this won’t be a fair fight. You can hardly stand.”

  “I’ll hardly need to.”

  Ten feet separated them.

  As Henrik approached him, Malcolm didn’t step aside, just drew his shirt up over his mouth.

  Henrik couldn’t help but scoff. “What are you doing?”

  “It’s so they don’t get in my mouth.”

  “What?”

  But then it was too late.

  A sudden dark realization.

  Malcolm threw open the door.

  Releasing the ten thousand Tabanidae into the hall.

  As the flies swarmed forward, Malcolm made his way to the stairs, breathing through the fabric.

  He heard a brief shriek, but it was cut short as a wave of flies poured into Henrik Poehlman’s mouth.

  Malcolm entered the stairwell and closed the door behind him.

  As the smoke creeping through the ventilation units thickened, rose, and gathered along the ceiling.

  I find the security center on the first floor.

  The console is easy enough to figure out, with numbered switches corresponding to each room.

  I flip them all.

  Open every door.

  The general said to get the geo-tracker.

  There’s only one thing in here that looks like what she described, so I grab it. Then I leave to find my friends.

  Nicole watched as Tane tried to smash the mirror.

  Ever since the smoke had started to invade the room, he’d become more desperate, but the glass didn’t break.

  However, all at once, she heard an electric click. The door’s lock.

  Curious, she pushed against the door and it opened.

  “Hurry!” she cried. “Let’s go!”

  Flames were licking up through narrow slits in the floor along the wall. Prisoners from the other rooms were venturing into the hallway. Some seemed disoriented—maybe from their torture and sleep deprivation, maybe from the smoke and the fu
mes. Some looked suspicious that all this was some type of trap or another one of Dr. Waxford’s twisted treatment strategies.

  Tane stood beside her. “We need to get these people out of here!”

  One of the prisoners rushes toward me.

  In slow motion, I can see him rearing back to take a swing at my face, but I’m able to lean to the side and get out of his path before he can land a punch.

  It doesn’t feel like my reaction time is faster than usual. It just seems like everything else is slowed down.

  The effects of the drug.

  Confused, he staggers past me.

  I don’t see the girls, but Tane yells and waves.

  The lights flicker like they did earlier and I’m not sure if it’s from the storm or from the fire destroying the wires.

  I start toward Tane.

  The smoke was in Nicole’s eyes and she wanted to help get people out, but she could barely see.

  She moved forward and ran into a wall.

  The overhead lights blinked out.

  All around her there was smoke and flames and confusion.

  “Over here!” Alysha yelled. “Walk toward my voice!”

  Nicole hobbled forward and almost ran into her.

  “Mia!” Alysha called. “Petra!”

  “Where are you?” Mia shouted.

  “Here! Hurry!”

  A moment later, they were all together.

  “I’ll get you out of here,” Alysha said to them.

  “How?” Nicole asked.

  “I remember how many steps it was. Grab my shoulder. I’ll be your eyes.”

  Tane finds me. “Your arm!”

  “I’m okay. Where are the girls?”

  “They were near the door when the lights went out.”

  A burning beam tilts from the ceiling and as it falls, I shove Tane to the side.

  With a burst of flame and sparks, it crashes to the floor where he’d been standing only a moment earlier.

  Ty joins us and we point prisoners toward the door.

  As we pass room 113, the one Waxford threatened to put my friends in, I see that it’s empty.

  Outside the hotel, Nicole watched flames shoot out the windows and claw at the night.

  The rain only managed to calm down the fire a little, and not fast enough to save the building.

  As the prisoners burst out the doors, she silently prayed that everyone would get out alive.

  Where’s Daniel? Where are the others?

  Please, please, please let them be okay.

  Please.

  Some of the men stopped near the hotel and stood staring at the blaze, mesmerized by it, as if they were caught in some bizarre dream and hadn’t woken up yet.

  Others fled into the storm, scattering and escaping into the night.

  Please!

  Then they appeared.

  Tane first. Then Ty.

  And, finally, Daniel.

  Oh, thank you. Thank you. Thank you!

  But when she saw that Daniel’s shoulder was out of socket, she gasped.

  Nicole hurries toward me and asks about my arm. I assure her that I’m okay, then confirm that the rest of our friends are out here too.

  All the cars are still in the parking lot and I wonder what happened to Dr. Waxford and his staff.

  Was there another way off the mountain?

  Since they took the keys from us earlier, we can’t drive out of here, but Poehlman said that cops were on their way up. We just need to hold out until they get here.

  As I’m thinking of that, headlights appear on the road.

  But then, all at once, from near the building, someone shouts my name.

  I turn.

  Dr. Waxford emerges from the shadows with his gun aimed at me, and stands between me and the hotel, his back to the blaze.

  I don’t know why he hasn’t left the area yet. It seems like he should have, like there was enough time.

  And then, behind him, the man from room 113 appears—the serial murderer who killed a boy in the same barn where I was playing when I was nine.

  Now he stands, hulking, in the doorway with the flames raging around him.

  He stalks forward.

  “Run,” I tell my friends. “Go, go, go.”

  They back up, but Dr. Waxford warns me to stay where I am. “Do not move.” He doesn’t see the killer that he’s been tormenting and torturing for months coming toward him. “I’ve only shot one person in my life up until now, but—”

  I hold up my hand to warn him. “Dr. Waxford, you need to—”

  “Quiet!”

  Then two giant bats appear to my left and begin to skirt along the ground.

  Follow the bats.

  The words resonate through my head. Call to me, won’t let me go.

  And my dad’s saying, “Nothing is mundane if everything matters.”

  Everything matters.

  Follow them.

  Ever since my dream when I first heard those words I’ve wondered what they mean.

  Maybe this is it.

  This is where everything was pointing.

  Leading.

  I trust the moment and take off after them.

  Dr. Waxford hollers at me, shoots.

  Misses.

  And is distracted enough by my movement that he doesn’t notice the killer.

  I glance back and see the man grab hold of Waxford’s hair, yank him backward off his feet, and start dragging him toward the hotel.

  “Come on, Doctor,” he says, his voice more of a snarl than anything. “Let me show you my room.”

  The bats disappear and I watch what’s happening with Waxford.

  He cries out and struggles to get free, but it does no good.

  As he’s pulled through the mud, he twists his arm and fires at the man.

  It looks like he hits him, but it doesn’t stop him, and the killer hauls Waxford into the blazing hotel.

  For a long moment I hear his screams echo out the door.

  And then I do not.

  This place where Waxford had handed out his own twisted form of justice had now handed it back to him.

  The only sound is the crackling flames devouring the building.

  As I’m standing there listening to the sizzle of the blaze in the rain, the car that was coming up the hill arrives.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-FOUR

  The drug that Dr. Waxford gave me still makes everything seem slower and more deliberate than it should be.

  Kyle leaps out of the passenger seat.

  Dr. Carrigan climbs out the driver’s side.

  “Are you guys okay?” Kyle shouts. “We called the cops, but they were already on their way up.”

  He’s right—beyond the sound of the rain and the fire, the echo of police sirens comes rolling up the mountain.

  Seeing Dr. Carrigan makes me think of the photograph I saw in Dr. Waxford’s office—the same print from the theater.

  Carrigan said he took all those pictures himself.

  He said he didn’t sell them, just gave copies to his friends.

  Does that mean that—

  “It’s you!” Petra shouts at Carrigan, then shudders and backs up.

  “Petra?” He looks shocked.

  “What are you doing up here?” I ask him suspiciously.

  “The helicopter pilot called me. The guy who likes apple pie. He told me that you needed help, so I cancelled my show. What’s all this about? What’s happening here?”

  “How did you get past the gate?”

  He doesn’t answer that. “What happened to your arm, Daniel?”

  “The gate. It was locked. How did you get past it?”

  He’s in on this.

  He’s part of it.

  The sirens are closer now.

  Kyle answers, “He tried it. It was unlocked. Someone from up here must have unlocked it.”

  “Did you see him?” I ask.

  “What?”

  “Did you see him try to unlock it?”
>
  “I—No.”

  He has a key.

  He has his own key to the gate.

  “You weren’t coming up here to help us,” I tell Dr. Carrigan. “You were coming up here to help the doctor.”

  “Why would I help Waxford?”

  “No.” I shake my head as the first police cruiser pulls up. “I never told you his name.”

  “What?”

  “Not here. Not at the theater. I never mentioned Waxford’s name.”

  “I didn’t either,” Kyle says. “How did you—?”

  The Great Carrigini begins easing back toward his car.

  Then, as an officer gets out of the squad car, Dr. Carrigan produces something from his waistband.

  A revolver.

  “Watch out!” I yell to the officer, who pulls his own gun and directs it at Dr. Carrigan.

  “Stop! Hands up!”

  A second cruiser arrives.

  Staring at me with cool, steely eyes, Dr. Carrigan slowly raises his hands.

  “Drop the gun!” the cop orders him. “Now!”

  He does.

  Then the officer comes forward, has him kneel, and handcuffs him.

  Excellent timing.

  When the prisoners who’d remained near the hotel see that the police are here, they all disperse into the woods. Although, in this storm I’m not sure how far they’re going to get.

  Mia is on her hands and knees near the hotel, searching for something in the mud.

  What is she doing?

  The officer from the second squad sees the way my arm is hanging from my shoulder and radios for an ambulance. Then he asks us what’s going on up here while the other cop takes care of Dr. Carrigan.

  “Do you have a way to make a phone call?” I ask him. “A satellite phone? Anything like that?”

  “No, but we can radio down to dispatch. Why?”

  “We need to get a message to Senator Amundsen from Georgia and let him know his daughter is alright.”

  I’m not sure who to trust, or if these officers will know what to do with the general’s USB drive. However, there’s one person in law enforcement who I know I can trust to do the right thing.

  My dad.

  As soon as I can, I’ll get it to him and we’ll let the world know what Dr. Waxford was really doing up here.

  We would get the truth out there. I would honor the general’s dying wish.

  “Aha!” Mia reaches into the mud and comes up with her butterfly knife. “There you are, Lucy!”