“Let me,” Kingsley said. He got her the drink, and she cupped it with both hands. She sipped slowly, and when she finished she handed the cup back to him. He set it on the tray, then sat in the stiff vinyl chair in the corner.
“Those are nice,” he said, admiring the modest bouquet of long-stemmed yellow roses on the window sill. There was a small card attached with a cartoonish Get Well Sooooon! on it. It was unsigned.
“From my son,” Rose said proudly. “He’s in California. Works with computers.”
“Computers. That’s good.”
“Don’t see him much. Three years now. Oh … maybe four. He called me back late last night, though. Said he wanted to come, but he’s got some big project. Big doin’s, I guess.”
Well, at least he called, right? Kingsley thought. Asshole.
Rose gave him a small smile. “Oh, look at you, Sheriff. No worries, now. He’s got a life to live. I’ve had mine.”
Kingsley noticed the hardcover book at her side. “Do you mind?”
“Not at all.”
Kingsley picked up the book. “Insanity,” he said. He flipped the book over and read the copy. Below, he saw a smiling—and what struck him as a disgustingly smug—Jared Cole. Yeah, you keep smilin’, Mr. Writer. If I drove a hundred-grand vehicle and had a buncha best-sellers, I’d be bendin’ over and crackin’ the world a big fat how-do-you-do, too.
He raised a brow to Rose Tillman. “You read this stuff, do you?”
“I do. He even signed it for me.”
Kingsley peeked inside. “Ah, yeah. That’s nice.”
“It’s good,” she said. “You should give it a boo.”
“Might do that,” Kingsley said. He set the book down and returned to his seat. “Doc tells me you had a pretty bad spill.”
“Well … broke my nails when that table hit me. My leg’s not so good. They brought me in and patched me up pretty good, though. Good enough to go home, that’s a fact. Can’t say I like hospitals much, anyhow. Too cold. Crummy food. Anyway, you can pretty much figure I wasn’t too careful—took another tumble upstairs. Lucky for me, I keep a phone near the bed. Got the 9-1-1 lady. But you know, Sheriff, even after all that, I’m not so bad off as some. They got me on happy pills.”
Kingsley echoed her small grin. “Did they say when you can go home?”
“Oh, you know doctors. Don’t know much about much.” She gave Kingsley a look. “Don’t know much myself. But I know why you’re here.”
“Oh?” Fact was, this wasn’t just a courtesy call. Fact was, the more people a cop talked to, dollars to donuts said cop would eventually pan some hidden nugget. The smallest detail could nail someone’s ass. And if that ass happened to belong to some smug rich writer type, so much the better.
Rose tapped the book.
“The book?” Kingsley said.
“Him.”
“Why do you think that?”
Rose looked at her flowers. “Can you bring them to me?”
Kingsley took the bouquet and set it beside her breakfast tray. He sat. The old woman had an odd sparkle in her eye.
“I’ve lived longer than most,” Rose said, admiring the flowers. “I’ve seen poor. Seen rich. I’ve seen the good in folk. And Lord, I’ve seen the bad. I remember it all like it was yesterday. Oh, I got my days when I can’t remember what I had for breakfast, or if I fed Amos—he’s my cat—but I remember most things pretty well. I’ve seen a lot. A lot, Sheriff.”
“What have you seen, Rose?”
“Would you be able to feed him? I could give you my house key.”
“Uh … of course,” Kingsley said. “I can send someone over.”
“You’re a good man.” She turned slightly to the window. Those lively emerald eyes seemed to darken.
“Rose?”
“I’ve seen so much,” she sighed.
“Rose, I don’t aim to be rude. But I don’t have a lotta time.”
“No … I suppose you don’t.”
“You said I was here for him. Mr. Colla—Mr. Cole.”
“I’ve seen so much,” she repeated. She sounded forlorn. Her eyes glistened.
Kingsley sat forward. “What have you seen?”
Rose turned to him. “There are monsters, Sheriff.”
Kingsley felt his heart skip. Felt his throat dry up.
“You see what you see,” Rose said.
“And what do you see?”
“Oh,” she said softly, “just more.”
“I’m not sure what you mean.”
“You weren’t there. At the doin’s yesterday.”
“No.”
She tapped the book gently. “He’s a good writer. A good man. But he’s rotting inside.”
“Rotting?”
“He needs your help. Not your law. He needs to close it. But he can’t.”
“Close what, Rose?”
“Yesterday … ohhh, Sheriff. It wasn’t his fault.”
“I didn’t say it was.”
She smiled, almost accusingly. Knowingly.
“Rose? What did you mean—”
“The shape.”
“Shape?”
“What the boy calls it. He saw it, too.”
“The Judge boy? What are you talkin’ about? Saw what?”
“I’m tired, Sheriff. So tired.”
“Please, Rose. I need you to tell me. I need to understand.”
Her eyes slowly shut, and just as he feared she might drift off—or worse—they blinked open.
“It wants to do that boy harm,” she said. “Harm is what it does.”
“What does harm? What are you tryin’ to tell me?”
Rose raised a hand. It tremored as she beckoned him.
Kingsley moved to her side. He placed a hand on the bed rail, and she stroked it gently.
“I know why you’re here, Wade Kingsley.”
How does she know my first name?
“Rose,” he said. “Why am I here?”
She motioned feebly to the window shade. “Could you raise that for me? I need to feel the sun.”
Kingsley did as he was asked. He turned back to her and stood before the window in silhouette. Just a shape.
“Rose?”
“You know,” she told him. “And I forgive you.”
Kingsley went to say something, but something snapped in his mind like a firecracker. A rush of pain swarmed through his chest in a scalding wave, rising higher and higher. It seemed to press the backs of his eyeballs to the point of agony, and blood streamed through the veins around them. He started to speak, yet the words that slid from his lips weren’t what he wanted to say. And yet they were.
He moved to the bed and pressed a hand to the old woman’s throat. With his free hand, he took the roses from the vase. He clenched the stems, ignoring the pricks from the thorns; ignoring the blood that seeped through his fingers.
Wade Kingsley looked down at Rose Tillman. A single tear slid along a seasoned fold in the side of her cheek. Her emerald eyes forgave him.
He squeezed her throat until her mouth shot open in a gasp for air. Again came the words. Those strange, strange words.
And then he jammed those thorny stems right down her throat.
~ 115
Burning pain struck Jared in his sleep. It drove through his heart and into his brain like an electric shock. He thrashed awake in his bed, and only through sheer will did he bite back a scream.
He rolled to his side in agony and clutched the side rail. His chest seized, and he feared this was it. Heart attack.
But no. What he felt was raw and pure.
Rage.
And what he heard, what pounded in his brain again and again, were those damnable words. They confounded like an unsolvable riddle.
He could barely move his throbbing fingers. Twice he tried to summon the nurse with the alarm, only to fumble the switch. He struggled to adjust the rail and managed to lower it, then flung his legs over the side of the mattress. Before he could steady hi
mself, he slipped off the bed and struck the floor like a rock.
Fighting the pain and the rage, he got to all fours. He put a hand on the rail and pulled himself up. His legs ached. He staggered around the end of the bed, then leaned against the wall for support. The room was spinning.
He groaned and nearly doubled over. The throbbing in his eyes felt like nails driving into them. He felt the veins around them thickening, snaking through his flesh.
His knees buckled as he called out for the nurse. He slipped to the floor and began to crawl. He reached the foot of the next bed, only to be stopped by the blood spilling from his nostrils. More came from his eyes, slipping down his face. His head dropped as the rage took him.
He couldn’t move. Every muscle, every bone succumbed to the fury that burned within him. Insane as they were, the words in his brain sprang from his lips, and he crumpled to the floor.
Whatever was happening—and he knew in his heart it was happening at this very moment—he couldn’t stop it. The monster had emerged in its hunger, and as it struck, pain exploded in his brain. He could barely breathe, choking on the rage that consumed him.
And then, inexplicably, it ebbed. It seemed to simmer, as if waiting for a dark hand to drive his fury beyond the edge at any moment.
The spinning room settled. The searing throb in his fingers eased, and he was able to steady himself. His mind cleared, if only a little. He could barely raise his head toward the open door.
Kingsley—
The man plodded past the room. He was more shape than sheriff, yet Jared saw the disturbing glaze in his eye. The simmering rage.
Jared rose to his knees, struggling to catch his breath. His chest still ached, but he was able to get to his feet and make his way to the corridor. Kingsley was a dozen steps ahead of him, moving slowly and deliberately around the corner. Jared followed, using the wall for support. When he reached the corner, he saw Kingsley come to a stop at the nurse’s station. The man stood cold, facing perpendicular to the on-duty nurse.
“Can I help you, Sheriff?” she said. She had a perfect smile.
Kingsley didn’t move. Didn’t speak.
“Sheriff? Can I help you?”
Kingsley turned to her slowly, mechanically, and she gasped in horror. His eyes were bloodshot, the veins around them pulsing, growing, spreading.
Jared stiffened as that shock stunned him again. That seething rage boiled over, ripping through every nerve. He was barely able to keep himself from collapsing as he leaned against the wall.
He tried to cry out, but nothing came.
Only the rage.
Only the words.
Those insane words … screaming in his brain.
Slowly, Kingsley raised his right hand. He held a single yellow rose.
“Una rosa de rose,” he said, in perfect Spanish. He uttered an odd, sinister chuckle.
The nurse shot out of her chair in fright. Again Jared tried to cry out, but the pain forced him to his knees.
“Una rosa de rose,” Kingsley echoed. Blood seeped between his bloodied fingers. He seemed to hesitate, seemed to struggle in his mind, and before the nurse began to scream, before Jared could, he drove the stem through his eye and into his brain.
~ 116
Jared stirred. He felt weak. His head swam from the fever. It had taken two nurses to get him cleaned up and back into bed, and he had drifted in and out of consciousness. He could scarcely recall the sounds of chaos as police and hospital staff had shuffled and shouted through the corridors.
The cop had finally left him. Officer Ridley had been pleasant enough, but Jared hadn’t been fooled. Ridley’s subtle stares had been one thing, but his questions had reached a whole new level of bullshit. The man had wrapped them in a calm, concerned manner, but his final one—just as he turned to leave—had been the most telling.
Oh! Just curious, Mr. Cole: What were you doing out of bed?
His response: Bleeding.
That might not have satisfied the suspicious prick, but it got him to leave.
“Kingsley,” he whispered. “What the fuck did you do?”
It all came back to him in a crushing wave. He felt sick to his gut. He could still see the big bastard dropping to his knees with that thick stem in his eye. Could still hear those blood-curdling screams from the nurse. And—
Una rosa de rose.
A rose for a rose.
What did that mean?
He knew exactly what it meant.
It meant Kit had had another seizure. Another premonition.
It meant Rose Tillman was dead—at the hand of Wade Kingsley. He hadn’t needed Ridley to tell him that.
A rose for a Rose.
He didn’t know how Rose Tillman had died. And yet, after what Kingsley had done to himself, he was certain of one thing: He didn’t want to.
~
As he dried his hands in the washroom, he saw that his fingers were darker still. Some of his nails were split, and the one on his left pinky looked strangely crooked. It came off when he tried to straighten it.
He cleaned what little blood there was with a tissue. After wrapping his fingernail inside it, he rolled the tissue into a ball before tossing it in the receptacle under the sink. When he looked up in the mirror, he nearly screamed at the sight of that dark, human-like shape standing behind him. He whirled about, his heart in his throat.
There was nothing there.
~
Back in bed he checked the time. He couldn’t believe it was barely noon. The last few hours felt like days.
He rolled over and faced the diffused light from the window. Curled up with his blanket.
“Rose,” he whispered. “I’m so sorry.”
He wept.
~
A nurse woke Jared around twelve-thirty. She set down his lunch tray, raised the shade a little, then lingered.
“Thanks, Christa,” he said. She looked all of twenty-five. Dark hair. Pretty. “Is there anything else?”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Cole. I know it’s not the right time, and I probably shouldn’t ask, but … oh, never mind.”
“What is it?”
She considered. “Would you sign Insanity for me? I was at the park yesterday, and—”
“You’re right,” he snapped. “You shouldn’t have asked.” He could hear his agent lecturing him. He didn’t care. Fuck the fans.
The young woman stood there, tongue-tied. She turned away, clearly embarrassed, and left.
Jared stared at the bowl. He was starving as usual.
He removed the plastic lid.
Pea soup. Naturally.
He shoved the tray from the swing table to the floor.
~
Jared nodded off, and when he awoke, it was just past one. His thoughts began to drift from one name to another. From Kyle Duncan to Rose Tillman.
On the surface, they all seemed victims of random acts of violence. But digging deeper, he wondered if that were true. Certainly Kyle Duncan didn’t belong in the list. Tom Greenwood? Artie Fisher? Random, yes—they had no obvious connection to any of the others. They’d simply been swept up in all the madness. All the rage.
Sonia Wheaton wasn’t so random. She had had something on him, something dangerous.
Kingsley? Suspicious. Relentless. Like Sonia, he’d been a threat.
Threat to what?
The more he thought about it, the more he felt he was right. They were a threat to the shape. A threat to the monster.
Yes. It had taken them and turned them against themselves.
It had protected itself.
But why Rose? Why did Kingsley kill her?
He remembered the first time they’d met. The first time she’d spooked him.
Sometimes things come to me.
She had known about Judd. Had known a lot of things she had no business knowing. Maybe she’d known about the shape. Known enough to get her killed.
There was more. The shape—the monster—wanted Kit dead.
/> Kill the boy … kill the threat.
Kill the gateway.
That’s it, he thought. Kit was the key. Without him, there was no way to close the gateway. No way to send this dark demon back to hell.
~ 117
Jared slept most of the afternoon, and it was half past five when the same nurse woke him for dinner. He apologized again for the mess he had made of his lunch, and humbly promised her a signed copy of Insanity, and to anyone on staff who might want one. She apologized as well, but left him, clearly unimpressed, muttering “Asshole” as she stepped into the corridor.
In the washroom, he found another tooth had come loose, and he buried it in the receptacle beside his balled-up fingernail. He stood at the mirror, head down, afraid to look up. Instead, he turned to the door and headed back to his bed.
His legs and his hands were numb, just enough to make him uncomfortable. He rubbed his hands together to get the feeling back, but it did little good. His fingers hurt when he flexed them, and it took a painful effort to get them to extend to their fullest. If he didn’t know any better, he would swear he was growing arthritic.
He powered up his smartphone. Two missed calls from his agent. One from his editor. None from Marisa.
He wanted to call, God, he did. But the fact that she hadn’t was telling enough. She wanted to hear from him about as much as he wanted to hear from Officer Ridley.
He tore into his dinner, devouring his ham and cheese sandwich, side dish of pickles, tomatoes, and mashed potatoes, and a surprisingly tasty peach cobbler. He chased it with the worst fruit punch he’d ever tasted, and after a rather rude belch, found himself longing for a juicy New York hot dog from Gray’s Papaya on 72nd Street. What he wouldn’t give for a stack of them.
New York. He’d only been gone a short while, but now, with all of this, he found himself missing the anonymity of the city. Even a big-name author in the Big Apple could turn invisible, losing himself in the bustle and noise. But in Torch Falls? Not a chance. Not any more. The real bitch was, it was exactly what Marisa had said. All of this was his fault, brought down from Jared Cole the Great and Powerful and his brain-fucked life. His curse.
Gateway Page 27
