He charged headlong past the guest house, hurtled a small bush, and skidded to a halt.
There, situated against a backdrop of towering evergreen trees, was a rusted swing set with two swings and one occupant.
“Dani?” Jake asked.
Dani kicked her legs out, swinging high into the air, almost getting the rusted chain of the swing parallel to the ground. It let out a screech and swung her back. She laughed and leaned back at the peak of the back swing.
“Dani!” Jake shouted, running to the base of the swing set.
Dani went zooming past Jake, peaking at a ridiculous height. Jake wanted to reach out and snag her as she shot past again, but he couldn’t risk hurting her. And he couldn’t get his arms to move.
“What does it feel like to break a bone?” Dani asked at the peak of her back swing.
Jake couldn’t speak.
Dani swung by in a blur, and at the top of her forward swing, asked, “What does it feel like to bleed?”
Jake managed to shake his head and feebly reach one of his hands out for Dani as she swung past. He grabbed nothing but air.
“Daddy, watch this!” Dani shouted as her descent began.
Jake again swiped weakly at the empty air as Dani swung past. Near the top of her swing, Dani launched herself from the harness. She spun once, half-somersaulted, and landed on her arm and face with a heavy thud.
“Dani!” Jake dove for her, landing at her side and clawing for her.
Dani screamed as Jake cradled her in his arms. Her arm was clearly broken; Jake could see the bone jutting through torn flesh. Blood ran openly from it as well as from a wide gash along her brow.
“Dani, it’s okay,” Jake said. “I’m here. I’m here.”
Something brushed against Jake’s shoulder. Someone breathed into his ear.
“What is it that scares you, DS Anderson?” Aza’s voice asked.
Jake froze, not daring to look away from Dani. Not daring to admit what part of him knew. He might never get this close to Dani again.
A finger ran along the back of Jake’s neck, and Aza laughed softly into his other ear. “Who do you care about the most? It’s certainly not Peter. You left him to die alone in a hospital bed. Is it this one?”
Dani stopped screaming. She kept bleeding. She was bleeding too much. It coated Jake’s arms. It soaked into the long grass. He could feel it seeping from her body. No one had that much blood.
“Dani,” he said. “Hold on. I can get help.”
He didn’t have a phone. It would have been a liability. So he shouted for Jaina as loudly as he could, still keeping his eyes on Dani. Jaina had been right behind him. Where the fuck was she now?
A slender shape passed into Jake’s view. He couldn’t look at her directly as she sat cross-legged on the grass on the other side of Dani from him. Jake didn’t need to look up to know who it was that had joined him. Aza picked a dandelion and plucked at the petals.
“What will you miss the most about her?” Aza asked.
“Fuck you,” Jake said. “You’re not going to die, Dani. You’re not going to die.”
Aza laughed raucously, throwing her head back and howling in merriment.
“Jake!”
Jaina’s voice fractured the moment as if it were glass, sending shards raining down around Jake until he was left with nothing of what had been.
Jaina knelt at Jake’s side and wrestled his head so he had to look at her. “Jake,” she said softly.
Jake stared back for several moments, then twisted away and vomited into the grass. Jaina rubbed his back.
“What’s going on?” she asked. “Are you all right? Maybe you’ve been pushing yourself too hard.”
Jake wiped at his mouth and surveyed his surroundings. Dani and Aza were gone. As was the swing set. An old gazebo sat a few feet away, surrounded by weeds and untamed bushes. Even the pine trees were gone, replaced by a line of crab apple trees.
“Yeah, I’m fine,” he said, climbing to his feet. He could feel Dani’s blood on his arms. He could still feel the dead weight of her. But, more than that, he could feel Aza’s breath on his neck.
“You sure?” Jaina asked. “You were yelling for me.”
Jake looked at her, forced a smile, and nodded. “Yeah, I…I just thought I saw something.” He looked at the yard again and made a show of shrugging. “Just a play of light and wind.”
“You sure you’re all right?”
“I’m fine!” Jake said.
“Okay, good, because there’s something you need to see.”
Jaina took Jake’s hand, hers shaking, his clammy with sweat, and led him back to the front of the guest house. The front door was open and a foul odor was in the air. Jake knew it well.
“Dani,” he said, racing up to the threshold.
There, the scent of death was stronger, nearly a physical force fighting to keep Jake from entering the small building. And he didn’t. He didn’t need to. From the doorway, he could see all he needed to.
“I think that’s Ruthie,” Jake said. “Paul’s wife. Aza’s grandmother. Aza wasn’t particularly close with her.”
“Not particularly close to her?! Is that a joke?” Jaina asked. “She’s crucified to the wall!”
Jake was just relieved it wasn’t Dani. “Properly crucified,” he said.
“Excuse me?”
Jake pointed to the rotted corpse, still mostly attached to the opposing wall with all manner of metal spikes and wire. A real cob job. “She’s upside down,” he said. “Like Peter.”
“Peter was burned… Jake, what’s with you?”
“No, I meant Simon Peter, from the Bible. It’s said he chose to be crucified upside down as a sign of humility. Jesus was crucified upright. Peter didn’t think he was worthy of the same treatment.”
“Since when are you religious?” Jaina asked.
Jake took a step back and turned to find a bit of fresh air. His head was swimming and his ears itched like mad. “I…I’m not,” Jake said. “Must be something I picked up from my mother. She was Catholic.”
“Oh,” Jaina said. “Does that mean something, then? That Paul or Aza or whoever did…that to Ruthie?”
Jake shook his head. His mother wasn’t Catholic. She’d been a devout atheist her entire life. Jake as well. DS Grimly liked to spout religious mumbo-jumbo on occasion—one more thing about her he detested—but he didn’t know the back cover from the front cover of the Bible. He didn’t even celebrate Christmas.
“I have to make sure Dani’s not here,” Jake said, walking into the guest house.
“But—” Jaina said.
Jake held his breath as he quickly scanned the bedroom. Aside from the body nailed to the wall, it held nothing of note. He heard Jaina gag and set to coughing, but Jake pushed onward, kicking open the bathroom door.
There was a mess of pills and bottles scattered all over the floor, but no Dani. No Aza.
“What are those?” Jaina asked.
Jake didn’t know or care. Without answering, he pushed past Jaina back into the bedroom and moved for the door on the far side of the room.
“When her family was staying here, Aza slept in the second bedroom,” Jake said, tapping a finger on the closed door.
He twisted the knob and surged forward, fully expecting to find Dani and Aza.
Jake stood, rooted in place until Jaina nudged him and they both took a step into the small bedroom. There was a single bed, one dresser, and a small chair.
“She really likes writing creepy shit on walls, huh?” Jaina asked.
Jake didn’t answer. He was too busy reading the replicated message that was scrawled onto every inch of bare wall space, this time written in blood.
My name is your name. Your name is my name.
“Still don’t think it has anything to do with religion?” Jaina asked, pointing at the bed.
It took a moment for Jake to realize what he was looking at. A Bible.
Jake picked it up and a w
ealth of gray and black ash fell from the empty covers, coating the front of him and creating a haze in the room. Jake shook the covers, realizing that every last page had been removed. However, written inside the covers was another message.
When religion has crumbled to dust and fallen from memory, I will remain.
Jaina sneezed and backed up. “Ugh. You don’t think that the ash is like…burned victims?”
Jake’s senses snapped back into place at that. “What’d you say?” he asked.
Jaina waved a hand in front of her face, wrinkling her nose in a way that under any other circumstances Jake would have found adorable. “The ash. I mean, Aza likes burning people, right? And the trail in the hallway was ash. And all the writing in that room with the outlines. Also ash, by the way. And now an empty Bible filled with ash. It’s like a fetish with her. Or Paul. Or it. Or whatever.”
Jake smiled and practically ran for the door. “Come on, I think I know where Aza and Dani are.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
Sunday 5:55 p.m.
“Dad!” Dani screamed.
The shout startled Aza. She hadn’t meant to fall asleep again—in fact, she was sure she hadn’t.
Dani jumped up and started racing around the cramped room of concrete and supplies. There was a small sliver of a window, high against the ceiling. Dani vaulted onto an upturned crate and pressed her face into the gap.
“You’ll have to stop eating all our food if you ever hope to squeeze through that gap,” Aza said.
“Screw you,” Dani said. “I saw my dad.”
Aza perked up. “Oh, you did, did you?” she asked, trying to remain as calm as possible despite the sudden appearance of the shadowy thing.
Dani pulled back from the window and turned to face Aza. “I…I think so.”
The thing that was so dark as to almost not exist moved. It was difficult to discern the movement, for it had no shape or form, but even so, Aza could sense it with something beyond sight. It was very near Dani, almost draped over her shoulders if it were capable of such a thing. Aza couldn’t deny how it had intervened to achieve Peter’s demise. And she couldn’t forget how it was there to kill that goody-two-shoes nurse. And though she’d seen it apart from Dani, Aza couldn’t deny the thing’s infatuation with the girl.
“I… No, I definitely saw him,” Dani said, hopping down from the crate. She opted to sit on it, still facing Aza, which she hadn’t rightly done since Aza made it clear that Dani was more prisoner than ally. “He was… No, I was…swinging? Like on a swing set.”
Aza’s pulse quickened. She’d dreamed the same thing. The same exact thing. Swinging on her old swing set, the night she’d purposely hurt herself. But she remembered DS Anderson as well. In fact, it was why she’d been on the swing. To torture him.
“When I was eight,” Aza said aloud, though she didn’t care if Dani was listening or not. “I spent a lot of time as my father. I looked through his eyes and felt what he felt. Sometimes, I could make him do things, see things, feel things. I thought I’d lost that ability when I killed him.”
“Holy crap. You killed your dad?”
“You’re missing the point,” Aza said, now making damn sure Dani was listening. “I didn’t lose it. I just forgot about it or something. I don’t know. But the point is, I can still look through another person’s eyes…and so can you.”
Dani shook her head. “No. You were right the first time; it was just a dream. I’m not like—”
Dani froze, eyes wide, mouth slack.
Aza cocked her head to the side, but then felt a familiar presence at her back. Both hot and cold, lashing at her skin. “You see it, don’t you?” Aza asked, looking deep into Dani’s eyes. Maybe Aza was too arrogant to have noticed it before. It wasn’t Dani that was special. Or even Aza herself. It was the…thing.
Dani flinched and pulled her legs up to her chest, scooting backward on the small crate until her back was against the wall. The thing moved to the wall around her, covering it in welcoming nothingness.
“You can’t describe it,” Aza said. “It’s too dark to be called dark. Too formless to be called a thing—though that is how I’ve taken to calling it. It fills you with dread, but also calls to you like a mother’s lullaby. It says nothing and yet you understand.”
Dani shook her head violently. “I’m not like you.”
Aza moved to a kneeling position in front of Dani. She grabbed Dani’s hands tightly. “Do not trust me, but trust…it.”
Dani shut her eyes and buried her head against her knees. The dark things—for Aza supposed it couldn’t be limited to just one—filled the room, slowly obscuring everything. If Aza and Dani didn’t fall into the abyss, the abyss would come for them.
Aza pulled sharply on Dani’s hands, almost pulling her from her perch. “Look at me!” Aza screamed.
Dani’s eyes shot open and locked on Aza’s. “I can feel your fear,” Aza said. “Do not resist. Let them in, just as you let me in. Forget your dad and forget your mom. Forget Peter and that bitch, April. Forget everything. Fuck everything. We are more than them. We are more than each other. I told you my name was Tragedy, but that is only the name they gave me a long time ago. It’s what my father was and it’s what I am.”
Aza could see and feel Dani trying to resist, but she squeezed Dani’s hands tighter and the darkness wrapped tighter around both of them.
“Remember what it felt like to cave in April’s face,” Aza said. “Remember what it was like to force Peter into a bed of flames. What it felt like to watch him burn.”
Dani twitched, one last futile act of defiance. But then Aza knew she’d gotten in. She could sense it in the darkness as well. Whatever it was. Whatever they were. Dani was theirs.
“I want to do it again,” Dani said with cool indifference.
Aza stood and pulled Dani to her feet. The dark receded, but Aza could feel it closer than ever. “Maybe I was wrong, after all,” Aza said. “I think you and me can be friends.”
Dani smiled and embraced Aza. At Aza’s ear, Dani said, “I want to feel it again.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
Sunday 7:46 p.m.
The Regency Motel had been closed since the fire four years prior. About half the rooms went up that night with Aza watching from the parking lot. Jake often fought with his memories, but that was one that was just as vivid as when it had occurred. More might have been destroyed if not for the pouring rain that night, but he didn’t think Aza cared. Her goal had been accomplished.
“Took the better part of a week to gather up the remains of Aza’s parents,” Jake said.
Jaina leaned forward in the passenger seat of Paul’s SUV, squinting against the twilight. They’d parked on a side street, within view of the charred section of the motel. Jake wanted to watch for a time before moving in. It took all of his self-control not to run into the ruins, shouting for Dani. He was relying on his experience to keep her safe. He had to be cool and calculated now. He was a wanted man, after all, and not just by the Seaside City Police.
“And no one has done anything with the place since then? Not even to knock it down?” Jaina asked.
Jake shrugged. “I don’t know the full story, but no, no one’s touched it since. Aside from drug dealers and pimps, that is.”
“And you think Aza brought Dani here?”
Jake wrung the steering wheel with his hands. “Killers—especially psychotic ones—often return to the scene of their crimes. It’s a sort of nostalgia, I guess. For Aza, I can’t imagine there’s any more important place than the one in which she killed her parents.”
Jaina opened up the glove compartment and started rifling through the contents. Jake kept his gaze fix on the spot where room 13 used to be. Aza had been sitting on the trunk of a car, watching the same spot when Jake had first pulled into the Regency Motel lot that night. He’d been tracking Aza’s mother’s phone after she’d slipped away during questioning at her residence. The fire hadn’t been burning lo
ng when he’d skidded to a stop next to Aza’s perch.
The door to room 13 had been wide open. Jake could see the outlines of a man and woman between the tongues of angry orange.
“You’re too late,” Aza had said, not even looking at Jake as he ran toward her.
At the time, Jake had taken it as a sorrowful acceptance of her parents’ fate, but now he realized it to be the taunt that it was intended to be. Maybe she’d even smiled, but Jake would have chalked that up to the unimaginable trauma of the event. He’d made an attempt to rescue them, anyway, but the heat of the inferno forced him back, coughing and sputtering.
Aza had watched, unblinking, the entire time.
By the time the fire department showed up, along with Jake’s backup, there was little to do. The rain had turned into a downpour, eventually snuffing out the blaze before everything was destroyed. And through it all, Aza had watched the spot where room 13 had stood. Jake was sure now that she’d been smiling, though he had failed to see the nefarious meaning behind it at the time.
“You okay, kid?” Jake had asked Aza once things had settled down. Paul and Ruthie were on their way, but hadn’t arrived yet.
“I’m great,” she’d answered.
Again, Jake had chalked it up to trauma. There was no rational way for an eight-year-old to react to such a situation, so nothing she’d have done would have shocked Jake. He couldn’t fathom having witnessed the same thing.
“Everything will be all right,” Jake had said.
“Yes, for me,” Aza had said. Then she’d turned away from room 13 for the first time and locked eyes with Jake. He couldn’t imagine a larger smile than what she’d given him.
Jake shivered now at the thought of it.
“Found a flashlight,” Jaina said, dispersing the haunting memories. “And a…flare gun?”
Jake turned to see exactly that. He took the stocky pistol and opened it. One cartridge. Not exactly the snub-nosed revolver it resembled, but holding the grip of a pistol always settled Jake’s nerves.
“You don’t have to do this,” Jake said, looking at Jaina.
Dear Tragedy: A Dark Supernatural Thriller (House of Sand Book 2) Page 17
