“I thought my father was the first,” Aza said, cocking her head to the side in that stupid fucking way she always did when she was trying to be clever.
“Your first victim,” Jake said.
Dani stood up and stepped in front of Aza. She crossed her arms.
“Interesting,” Peter said.
“Dani, move,” Jake said.
“No,” Dani said.
More gunfire from the hallway. Closer, Jake thought, but just as he’d learned to trust his gut, he’d also grown to doubt his senses.
“Tick, tick, tick,” Dani said.
“Those aren’t your words,” Jake said. “Dani, you have to trust me. Please, move aside. This has to end.”
“Nothing ends,” Peter said. “Least of all, your suffering. Dani, a good daughter listens to her father.”
Dani pouted, but immediately stepped aside. She eyed Jake. “Don’t you do it.”
Jake strengthened his grip on the pistol. His vision wavered and he had to fight to keep his aim true. “This ends with you, Aza.”
Aza looked down and stuck out her injured foot. “I thought you shot Dani, not me,” she said.
“Jaina—”
“Is dead,” Peter said.
“You shot her,” Aza said.
“But which her?” Peter asked.
Dani let out a yelp and fell to the floor, disappearing from Jake’s view. “You shot me in the foot!” she screamed.
Jake looked at the gun like a stranger. He hadn’t fired it. Hadn’t even pointed it at Dani.
“Oh yeah,” Aza said, leaning back and stretching out both feet. “That makes more sense, doesn’t it, DS Anderson?”
Jake stared across the bed at Aza’s feet. Both soles were filthy, nearly black, but neither had any trace of blood on them.
“My foot!” Dani wailed. Jake could only see the top of her head.
Jake jerked the pistol sights from Aza to Dani’s head to Peter.
“Decisions, decisions,” Peter said.
Dani pulled at the bed and stood. She was crying. Aza was grinning, kicking her feet back and forth. She might have even been humming, but Jake could only hear the pounding of his own heart, growing weaker with each beat.
“Why did you shoot me, Daddy?” Dani asked.
She hobbled around the bed toward him. At the corner, she stopped and held up her injured foot. Just out of Jake’s reach. “Look!” Dani screamed.
Jake flinched, and when he did, Dani became Aza.
“DS Anderson, you look confused,” Aza said.
“Maybe you need a nap,” Dani said from the chair on the opposite side of the bed.
“No,” Jake said, once more cycling through his targets. There had to be a way.
Aza shifted from side to side as she looked at her feet. “Squish, squish,” she said. “Or is it drip, drip?”
Jake squeezed the pistol tightly and pressed the barrel against his temple.
Everyone in the room fell still and silent. Even the echoes of delusions stopped dancing in Jake’s mind. The first moment of peace and clarity he’d had in perhaps forever.
“Whatever you are,” Jake said. “You’re wrong. This ends. Now.”
Jake was further from having answers than he’d been at the beginning of all this, and part of him felt like he was giving up. But if there was one thing everyone in the room had in common, it was Jake. Maybe he was the center point. The keystone to the whole crooked tower.
Aza and Dani both cocked their heads to the same side, but remained silent.
Jake closed his eyes. “I’m not strong,” he said. “But it’s over.”
Something warm brushed against Jake’s ear. “There are no heroes in this story,” someone said. Jake couldn’t even be sure it wasn’t his own voice.
In total darkness, with nothing left to say or give, Jake pulled the trigger.
Click.
Chapter Thirty-Three
It’s funny how one’s perspective can change at the drop of a pin, and with it, one’s reality. Gone are the absolutes. Nothing is certain or destined. It’s fluid, more akin to blood than to stone, though we like to tell ourselves otherwise. Anything to make it easier to sleep at night.
I hardly sleep anymore. But not for the reasons you think. I’m not afraid.
Bekah came to see me again today, dressed in her usual military attire, paired with her unmatchable frown. She found me on the terrace, overlooking what used to be a lovely garden behind the asylum that has been my home for an untold amount of time. It’d been nothing but a dirt patch for the last five years or so. Cutbacks or something. Short staffing or something. A change in the Federation or something.
“Jake,” DS Grimly said as way of greeting as she sat heavily on the chair next to me.
“Maybe I’ll take over the gardening,” I said, finding it hard to take my mind off it. Or unwilling. “Fresh vegetables. That’s what this place needs. Enough of this canned shit from the government.”
“So that’s what’s going to be spinning your mind today, huh, Jake?” she asked.
I shrugged. “It’s good to keep the mind active, I’m told.”
Bekah sighed in the way she always did when she needed to shift a conversation to more serious matters.
I looked at her, giving up on my hopes of bean sprouts and tomatoes for the moment. “Well, out with it.”
“I found Aza,” she said.
“Found?” I asked, raising an eyebrow. Most visits started this way. It was never the full story.
“I’ve been following reports of violent spikes throughout the Federation. Specifically incidents involving large groups of people. It was difficult at first to weed through the gang activity and the increased rebel activity, but then I started cross-checking for crimes involving religious overtones. Rituals, runes, weird chanting, anything out of the norm.”
“And?” I asked, already growing bored.
“I found a pattern. A continual spread of bizarre crimes across the whole Federation. Sacrifices, unexplained mass suicides, and more than one arson-related incident. All linked by strange symbols left behind at the scene. Or on corpses. The Feds have almost no leads, but then again, they still won’t admit what happened at Seaside City Hospital.”
“The world is falling apart around us, Bekah. That’s how it goes. Worlds come and go. That doesn’t mean it’s Aza. It’s been ten years,” I said, suddenly remembering my birthday last week. Somehow, it put things in a different perspective. “Ten long fucking years. She’s not just going to fall into your lap now.”
Bekah smiled. It was much more unnerving than her frown. She pulled a folded piece of paper from her pocket, looked around at the empty terrace, and handed it to me. “My contact sent me this last night. I drove straight here.”
“Your contact?” I asked. It was my usual response when Bekah would reference her oft-relied-upon mystery individual.
Bekah nodded emphatically at the paper. “Just look.”
I sighed and unfolded the paper. “Fuck me sideways. Where’s this from?” Another shift in perspective.
“Security footage from a Federation facility in North Vangod. Right before every single employee stripped naked and…mutilated each other.”
I couldn’t look away from the photograph of a lean, young woman standing on line among a dozen unsuspecting strangers. She wasn’t the same small, little girl I knew, but though taller and older, there was no mistaking the impossibly blue eyes that stared directly into the camera. I shivered, suddenly colder than the warm afternoon sun warranted.
“She won’t still be there,” I said.
“No, but it’s the first solid lead I’ve gotten in a decade. That means something. I can find her.”
I gritted my teeth—an old habit—and looked away.
Bekah grabbed my arms and pulled, forcing me to turn back around. Her bare arms were lined with a crude assortment of brands and tattoos. Symbols carved into her flesh in a variety of languages. And from a variety of
religions. She thought it kept her safe. I laughed.
Bekah scowled again and grabbed my chin. It was patronizing, but I didn’t bother fighting it. I don’t fight much of anything anymore. Except sleep. “I will find her,” she said. “I will find your daughter.”
I nodded and gently pushed her hands away. “That’s your mission, not mine. Far as I’m concerned, Dani died back in that godforsaken hospital. Peter, too.”
“You’re tired,” Bekah said. “I get that. It’s been a long time, but—”
“Then go,” I said. “Go and find my daughter, or what’s left of her. Bring her back. Put a bullet in her head. I don’t care. Just…go.” I never did have much patience, but we all have our crosses to bear.
Bekah stood up and folded her arms. “I thought you’d appreciate the update. It’s big, Jake. Really, really big. You of all people should appreciate as much.”
I turned back to visualize the nonexistent garden. “What time of year does one plant watermelon?”
Bekah stood and walked away. “I’ll call you in a couple days,” she said. “Take care of yourself.”
I lifted my hand to wave off the comment, but let it fall back into my lap.
And so I sat, surveying a garden of opulence that only my mind could see until the sun had nearly set. The change in the sky and twist of the wind brought me back to the present, and with a deep breath, I spun my wheelchair around and rolled back into the ancient building that was St. Margaret’s Home for the Criminally Insane, though it had once gone by a different name, back when it was under State control. The bygone relic of a century ago, but as fitting a place as any to house the mastermind behind the Slaughter at Seaside General. By all rights, the courts should have executed me, but the Federation didn’t like to kill those deemed mentally incapacitated. Bad press, perhaps.
“Oh, Mr. Anderson,” an orderly said as I rolled through the main lobby. “Just in time for meds. As always.”
“I may be mad,” I said, “but at least I’m punctual.” Another bit of repeated banter. It makes the days even more difficult to tell apart. Really, that is the only benefit I get out of Bekah’s visits. A break from my usual reality. Just a twist in perception is all it takes to be born anew.
I took the tiny paper cup from the administering nurse and dry-swallowed the lot. I showed an empty mouth, bid the nurses goodnight, and rolled off toward my room, in no particular hurry.
Once inside, I forced a finger down my throat and vomited up most of what I’d just swallowed. I stuffed the half-dissolved pills into a tissue and tossed it into a garbage can. It’s bad enough I have to spend the rest of my life surrounded by loons and over-caffeinated nurses without being drugged up myself.
“Mr. Anderson,” a voice said from my doorway. “Time for your sponge bath.”
“Oh, fuck off,” I said without turning to face the newcomer.
I listened to the woman’s soft footfalls as she crossed the room and sat on the edge of my bed, just behind my wheelchair.
“You’re in a ripe old mood tonight,” she said.
I spun my wheelchair a tight 180 degrees. “Just let me talk to her, you psychotic bitch.” Like I said, no patience. Life is too short.
A smile bled across the thing that wore Dani’s face. It looked like Dani, was dressed like a nurse, but was anything but either of those things. “Say the magic word,” it said.
I squeezed the armrests of my wheelchair. “Please.”
That elicited a finger wag. “Eh, eh, eh. And what’s my name?”
“Oh, for Christ’s sake. Please, Tragedy! Please!”
Dani’s body twitched violently and might have fallen off the bed if I hadn’t reached out a hand to steady her. Every time is worse than the last. I fear one of these days she’ll shake apart at the transition.
“Dani?” I asked.
Dani looked at me with heavily dilated eyes. They settled quickly and she took in a sharp breath. “Hi, Daddy,” she said.
I smiled and took her hand in mine. “Hi, baby. I’ve missed you.”
“I know,” she said. “Are you all right? You look terrible.”
I laughed and wiped a tear from my eye before it could fall. “Just getting old. How…” I looked away.
“It’s okay, Dad. You don’t have to dance around with small talk. You want to know what I’ve been doing. What Tragedy has been making me do.”
I turned back and shrugged. “Maybe we just sit here together for a time. We don’t need to talk.” I never know what to say when she shows up. It isn’t frequent, but it’s the only thing I look forward to. I know it’s not really her. At least not as I knew her. It’s an act, put on by a demonic force and a woman that used to be my little girl. Before I ruined her.
“Have you seen your police lady friend recently?” Dani asked with a smile.
I nodded. “Earlier today, actually. At least, I think it was today.”
“It’s good you have a friend,” Dani said. “You know, besides me.”
“It’s not the same. Bekah isn’t the same. She’s just…”
Dani scooted forward, getting close to me. “Anything new with her?”
“She had some news, sure.”
“Good news?” Dani’s eyes brightened. It took everything I had not to break down in joyous tears, just to see her smile. That I keep falling of a fucking charade is the real tragedy.
“Good news? Yeah, you could say that.”
“Well?” Dani asked. “Don’t hold a girl in suspense. You know I don’t have much time.”
My smile faded, knowing how my visit with her would end. “She thinks she’s found Aza.”
Dani gasped and covered her mouth. “Really?” she asked between her fingers.
I shook my head. “Doubtful, but she’s actually got some evidence this time. A surveillance photo of Aza at a Federation building in North Vangod. Pretty recent, too.”
“That’s freaking fantastic, but where’d she get access to a Federation security system?”
“No idea. Gotta be her contact. Still won’t let on to who it is, but it’s got to be someone pretty high up to get that kind of intel. Good thing too, I guess…”
“You guess?” Dani asked.
I looked deep into Dani’s eyes and let my tears run freely. “Oh, Dani. My sweet girl. Change is bullshit. Always has been. Nothing changes. I’m just trying to hang on to what I have. I’m just trying to enjoy this fucked-up situation we have because it’s all I have left. You’re all I have left. This fragment of you. It kills me to know what’s inside you. I can’t bear to think of the things you’ve done and seen. I’m barely hanging on here, Dani. I can’t get either of our hopes up that anything will ever change.”
Dani smiled wide, showing her teeth. She ran a finger along my ear. “You’re getting sentimental in your old age, Jakey-boy.”
I shoved her away and spun my wheelchair backward. It bumped against my dresser and a row of books tipped over and slid to the floor.
Tragedy laughed and stood. It stretched dramatically and strolled over to the window, showing me its back. There was nothing I could do. We both knew it.
“What a beautiful night,” it said.
“P-Please,” I said.
Tragedy looked over Dani’s shoulder like it was its own. “Really? Begging? This side of you is truly depressing. If I were a better person, I’d put you out of your misery. Save the whole world a bit of grief.”
“You’re not a person,” I said.
Tragedy turned around fully and slowly walked toward me. “Oh, sure I am. I’m Daddy’s little girl.” Tragedy pouted and batted Dani’s eyelashes.
I jabbed a finger at her. “Stay away from me, you fucking monster.”
Tragedy cornered me and leaned toward me, hands on my armrests. It breathed deeply, running Dani’s nose along my cheeks. It pressed her face against mine. It brushed against my ear with her lips, numbingly cold.
I stayed in place, not daring to move. Every bit of me wanted to beat
Tragedy to death with my own hands, but it would only serve in hurting Dani. Whatever Tragedy is, it has me by the balls. I’d have killed myself years ago if not for the momentary glimpses of Dani I receive from time to time. It’s not real. Any of it. But what choice do I have?
Tragedy purred and nibbled at my earlobe. “Of all the heartache in the world, yours is my favorite.”
Tragedy stood up and wiped at Dani’s mouth. “Mmm mmm,” it said.
“Are we done?” I asked.
“For now.”
“Then fuck off,” I said. “Leave me in peace.”
Tragedy bowed. “Your wish is my command. I have more pressing matters to attend to anyway. You really have become quite a distraction. Mmm. Not that I mind.”
I couldn’t look at Dani’s body any longer as that fucking thing danced it about in front of me. I turned away and closed my eyes. I felt it approach the back of my wheelchair and lean against my shoulders.
“It really is going to be something,” it said with Dani’s voice. “I truly hope that you live long enough to see it. It’s your legacy too, you know. Your destiny. We all have a part to play. But one way or another it ends. It all ends.”
A hand ruffled my hair and I heard footsteps lead away from me. From what sounded like the doorway, Dani’s voice called back. “You’ll have to forgive that bit of dramatic theater. Couldn’t resist. Truthfully, nothing ends. But, then again, you know that.”
Another bit of taunting drivel from the thing that holds my son and daughter captive. Another bit of rehearsed bullshit.
I hope it’s wrong about the end. It’s the one hope I have left in the world.
I used to want to protect people. I used to be a hero. Funny how a slight twist in perspective can change a man.
What I know is that it left a piece inside me, that night at Seaside General. And it made me something different entirely. But not what it thinks. I let it taunt me with my own daughter because it fuels my anger. My rage. My…
I hardly sleep anymore. But not for the reasons you think. I’m not afraid. I’m simply biding my time. I know what awaits me. I know what I will do. And as this body continues to rot in this fucking chair, I prepare for a new beginning. Maybe change is bullshit. Maybe nothing ends.
Dear Tragedy: A Dark Supernatural Thriller (House of Sand Book 2) Page 26
