He came down hard on a rock and felt the air fly from his lungs. His chest ached, but not so much as the shock shooting up his injured leg. He rolled onto his side, crying out in agony. He had no idea where he was, yet he knew he had cleared the cliff.
Shades of light and dark danced across his eyelids as the storm raged around him. He opened his eyes, his hand shielding them from the flickering sky.
“Kit!” Marisa screamed.
“Mom!”
He saw the shape; saw it hovering high above the gorge. It was a blurry black blob, a dark thing with monstrous thoughts and monstrous claws.
And now it was coming.
It swept through the storm like a ghost, its indistinct form growing clearer as it neared. It flew over him, and he risked the light as he followed its path.
Marisa grimaced as she crawled. “Kit! Cover your eyes! Cover your eyes!”
The shape hovered far above. It stared at Marisa. It swept its hulking left arm away from its body, as if thrusting an unseen force against her.
Marisa screamed as she rolled toward the cliff. She tumbled to the edge and nearly slipped over, saving herself by grabbing onto a rock.
“What do you want?” she shrieked. “What do you want, goddamn you!”
The shape clutched its right claw around an invisible throat. Marisa tried to scream, but nothing came. In the next moment, the shape raised its arm, and she rose with it.
“Mom!”
Kit closed his eyes and waited for the monster to take him.
~ 212
Jared reeled. He didn’t know if Kit was all right, didn’t know if Marisa was. He expected them to come flying over the edge of the cliff when the shape tossed them like rag dolls.
He tried to climb the ropes. His useless hands failed him, and he slipped down a few more feet. The roar of the falls drowned out the sound of the storm. He called out twice, but his cries were drowned, too. He couldn’t hold on much longer.
Weather the storm.
It was in his head. But it wasn’t his voice.
Wasn’t Kit’s.
All he knew was that it was there. Somehow, it was. He could not describe the incredible force that swept him at that moment, but to call it divine would be close. Perhaps it was the only word. Whatever it was, it gave him the will.
He started to climb. He made a foot, then another. Finally, spent, he reached the top. He pulled himself over, flopping onto the hard rock at the foot of the bridge. Kit lay beside him, and he feared he was dead. He held him, and Kit opened his eyes.
“Jared!”
Kit was ripped from Jared’s grasp as if some great hand snatched him away. Kit slid down the slope, crashing to a hard stop just before the cliff. Right next to the gun.
“Hang on, Kit!”
Kit was dazed. He turned onto his side, groaning. The sky brightened for an instant, and he turned his head down, clamping his eyes shut.
Jared got to his knees. He peered into the storm, searching for Marisa. When he put up a hand to shield his eyes, he could not believe the lies his eyes were telling.
“Marisa!”
She hovered ten feet above him, perilously close to the cliff. Her legs kicked. At her throat were her hands, as if she were struggling to free herself of an invisible claw that choked her.
He looked back and saw the shape. It was enormous and black, eclipsing a wide swath of the sky. It threw its head back with a screech, revealing fangs like daggers. Its eyes bore down on him, and it clenched its claw tighter.
Jared tried to rise, but his hand slipped out from under him. He slammed onto the rock and slid down, crumpling into Kit.
He looked up. Marisa was fading fast. He snatched up the smartphone, but it slipped from his slick fingers. It spun toward the cliff, and he snagged it just in time. He brought it close, shielding it from the elements. And then he froze.
His mind raced as he tried to summon his password; his broken brain misfired. He cursed it. It just wouldn’t come.
He looked up the slope. The eyes of the shape burned into him. He could feel its power growing as it sucked more of his essence, could not deny its unassailable sense of victory. Beaten and weak, he dropped the phone, powerless to stop the tide of evil flooding against them.
Marisa’s eyes rolled and shut. The shape released its grip and she dropped to the ground. She cried out in agony, half-screaming, half-gagging. Struggling to get to her knees, she crumpled onto her side.
“Marisa!” Jared screamed. She wasn’t moving. He screamed again, and she stirred.
He turned back to Kit. He didn’t know what to do … and then he did.
Rose Tillman’s words echoed in his mind.
The storm will come for you, as it has for us all. But if you have the will and hold faith in your heart, the storm will serve you. It will save you.
Jared looked at Marisa. If he could have, he would have told her how sorry he was. If he could have.
He grabbed Kit by the hair and pulled his head back hard. “Open your eyes, Kit. Open them now!”
Kit opened them wide. Bursts of lightning forked across the sky, illuminating the falls in glorious light. His eyes rolled and his body convulsed. The storm raged on, and when the seizure took him, Jared Collado stared into those frightened milky eyes, the precious eyes of his child … and with all the will he could summon, held faith in his heart.
~ 213
Jared stared into the darkest abyss. He could no more see into Kit’s soul than he could the blackest ocean. He felt no sadness. No happiness. No anger or joy. It was as if a steel wall had been thrust between them. The gateway was open, he knew, but as he had feared, something had blocked it. The seizure. And as he had also feared, he knew what he had to do.
He looked at Marisa. Words were his life. And yet now, in this moment, his words would mean nothing.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“Jared—?”
He looked down at his son. Looked at the .38.
He snatched it up and set the barrel to his temple.
“Jared!”
And pulled the trigger.
~ 214
At the instant the bullet struck Jared’s brain, time slowed.
His life did not flash before his eyes. There was no instant replay of the highs and lows of his existence on Earth. Perhaps his stubborn disbelief in such matters prevented him from experiencing it. Or, perhaps, it was just a bedtime story, one so grand in design that the fragile human mind could not help but believe. A sweet to help swallow the lie.
In the rain he saw Marisa, saw her clawing her way toward him. She was screaming, yet he heard nothing. She seemed more like a holographic projection, trapped in a soundless void. Trapped—as they all were, he now knew—in her own terrifying existence.
So, too, was Kit trapped. Trapped in his own time and space, trapped in the gateway. There was no sense of him still, and yet there was. Their otherworldly bond seemed stronger than ever. It was as if they stood at opposite ends of the universe … and at the same time, stood hand in hand. Inseparable. Unbreakable.
Of course, there was great pain—that debilitating crack at the back of his head. He may have screamed. His eyes bled as his body convulsed. His heart still beat, pumping blood through his thickening veins. A red river flowed from his nostrils.
In the storm he saw the shape. Already it had lost its grip on this world. Its form began to fade as it descended toward him, like a thick mist burning off the surface of a cold lake. It entered him, passing through flesh and bone, penetrating his soul.
It did not remain. Rage fell to Hope and to Wisdom. The shape had no choice but to return whence it came. Writhing and screeching in defeat, it left him. Its pathetic wails faded to silence. He felt the last of its darkness, a touch, and even that evaporated. His veins thinned. His skin waned. That deep burning in his eyes ebbed as the vile core of the shape finally slipped away.
Kit endured the transference, much as he had that first time. Still, his experience
was far more terrifying, far more crippling than Jared’s. To see this child—his son—succumb to such a perverse invasion was more than he could bear. Kit’s convulsions were so extreme that he feared the worst: that Kit’s death would be the final and most bitter price yet to be paid.
A rush swept through him. It was as if that steel wall collapsed, releasing a flood, drowning him in a sea of understanding. Far more than fact or insight took him; he felt as if he were stepping inside another soul, unlocking its deepest mystery. Its raw power held him in its grip, revealing the most basic of all human emotions: fear.
Kit did not fear his constitution, did not fear the tribulations of his physical maladies. Not the seizures, not the looks nor the laughter.
He loved his mother without condition, knew her love for him to be the same. But even that was not enough, for his greatest fear was to miss a love he so desperately needed, a love that he knew would never come. The love of a father.
Jared could not reach out—his body was a dying shell now, a wreck of a thing—but his mind could. Their connection was boundless, like the cosmos itself. Eternal, like love.
And love was what they shared. It was inseparable. Unbreakable.
And then it was over. Kit slumped to the ground. His eyes closed slowly, the creeping veins around them dissipating. A single tear bled down his cheek, swept away by the rain.
Jared saw light, brilliant and blinding. It held no shape, no depth, no color. It possessed none of these defining properties, but it had one unmistakable quality: warmth. It beckoned like no voice could, and if indeed the eyes were truly the window to the soul, this then, was a portal to them all—an everlasting gateway.
His essence stirred as the light touched him, and he gave himself to its grace. He soared, and soared higher when it took him … and when it did, time stopped.
~ epilogue
Summer turned to autumn, and the larch and the aspen turned to yellow and gold.
Like life, where one ended, another began. For the good people of Torch Falls, it was all they could ask. The madness had stopped as quickly as it had come, but like an earthquake, the town suffered its share of aftershocks.
Ina Krantz had always been a survivor. After Johnny Harris and Ted Scott had had their way in that dark hell of the Thrifty Mart, she kept on surviving. She never spoke of it to anyone. After Ted Scott butchered the butcher and slit his own throat, she didn’t have to.
On the Sunday after the storm—one of those divine days where it’s not too hot, not too humid, but perfect as God intended—a church-goer called police and they found Everett Horn. The good Father had missed his sermon, which he had never done before. He had a knife at his side and a screwdriver in his throat, but what police found just as disturbing were the gruesome and confessional notes in his personal log book, which dated back nearly fifty years.
Not long after dinner, Norah Wallace’s three boys succumbed to the Drano-tainted stew. She finished half a bowl herself, and died two days later throwing up black blood, in the same hospital room where Wade Kingsley had stuffed a handful of thorny stems down Rose Tillman’s throat.
On that blustery night at the Chop Shop, Bert Humphries lost more than his mind. He lost his way. For three months he deteriorated, screaming awake in the dark from the nastiest dreams. After he started talking to himself in the garage, he sold the place and moved to Bozeman. He never spoke of Jim Tate, never spoke to himself again … and never found that rat.
Speaking of rats, Nelson Kurtz nearly bled to death on the floor next to the paper cutter. Mr. Patasky, no stranger to cutter danger, found him, and the paramedics arrived just in time. All that blood—Patasky’s vomit, as well—ruined the carpet, but Ol’ Choppy shined up like a new penny. As for Nelson, he’s back in school, still learning to write with his right hand.
Blake Camden was arrested for the murder of Addison Brody. He pleaded not guilty, despite the overwhelming evidence against him. As it turned out, it wasn’t the blood on his beloved Taylor, nor the fact that Addison had been beaten to death in his basement, that sealed his fate. After police had seized his laptop, they discovered a deleted file. Blake’s webcam had recorded the entire murder.
Wan Li lost his right eye. He lives with his brother Han in Redmond now. He believes in ghosts.
Floyd Simmons impaled himself on a chain-link fence post at the base of the water tower. Sadly, his precious angels perished in a fire set by that kid with the gas can. No one ever knew who set the fires on Fir Street, but the boy who did it, consumed by guilt, would swallow a bottle of his mother’s Valium three years later and end his misery.
In what could only be taken as a miracle, Miles Bailey walked away from the wreckage when the train rammed into his CR-V. Claire Bailey never got her miracle, though, and couldn’t save the little miracle she had.
Ah, Miles Bailey. His next-door neighbor, Cooper Hudson—the man who ate his own finger—fingers, as it turned out—choked on a thumb bone. Coop died.
Elliot Flatley finished his new shed. He was off work for three weeks because of the nail in his foot, but he’s up and around. He submitted a claim to his insurance company for the injury, but investigators proved the wound was self-inflicted. Elliot’s court date on charges of insurance fraud is set for the first of December.
Sherry Dobbs almost snapped when her sister slit her throat—and then she got wise. She grew a pair and channeled Tammy’s rebel, telling police that her abusive son-of-a-bitch husband had killed her sister, moments after Tammy tried to stop him from beating Sherry to a pulp. Now the asshole’s doing ten to fifteen, but these days, Sherry’s got her life back, cruising the sunny roads of southern California in her sister’s yellow Jeep.
Sarah Coleman was found by her parents. If only they’d been home five minutes sooner.
Jack Henneman poured himself a cup of hot coffee not twenty minutes after his stable burned to the ground. Never a wasteful man, he finished his soup and salad and took his coffee out to the front deck. He emptied his cup and set it down, and as he took one last look at what he had done, stuck the barrel of his father’s Remington under his chin.
The Strand Theater finally reopened in October. Saul Friedman sold his old girl for a song and moved east to Vermont, just in time for the fall colors. It had been on his bucket list, Atarah’s too, and he spread his lost love’s ashes along the Appalachian Trail, a tear in his eye and fear in his heart. He still believed it was the Last Hour. He wasn’t deeply religious, but he feared. He feared.
Rose Tillman was buried alone. Edward had left her for another woman twenty-six years ago. She had known about the affair—sometimes things came to her—and she had also known about that holdup at the Exxon in west Bozeman in 1999, and that scared kid with the gun who was going to put a bullet in Edward’s chest on New Year’s Eve. She should have warned him, but she never did.
Of course, for some in this pretty little town, some things never changed—mostly, anyway. At the town landfill, Ernie Dobbs continued to jerk off, far more concerned about goofing and getting off than he was about the damn Sweepers, or even the fate of his sisters. That was, until that sunny day after Labor Day when he got caught with his pants down—literally—and got canned. Now he’s back at his old job pumping gas at the Conoco, and from time to time, he wonders what happened to his plum job with the county. But sometimes, mostly when a Nissan Sentra eases up to the pumps, usually an out-of-towner who has lost their way, he wonders what happened to his best friend in the whole wide world.
~
Marisa folded her umbrella when the soft drizzle eased. The brisk October wind chilled her.
She knelt down and set the pretty bouquet of flowers at the base of her parents’ headstone. She wept. It had been almost six months since the storm, and she feared that the tears would never stop.
Guilt swept over her. At first she had visited every week, but as the days had turned shorter, the nights longer, her goodbyes had come less frequent. It seemed all too possible, all too ea
sy, to succumb to the cold numbing of time.
She kissed the tips of her fingers and pressed them to the stone. She sniffled and dried her tears.
~
She passed Rose Tillman’s resting place, and for the first time, she stopped and doubled back. The stone was a simple one, with no epitaph. Marisa said a small prayer.
“Thank you, Rose,” she whispered. “Thank you for saving my child.”
~
The dreary drizzle returned as she walked up a rising gravel path and cut across the grounds. Colorful leaves littered the patchy grass. She stopped at Sarah Coleman’s stone and asked God to watch over her.
~
A strong wind slapped her as she crested another rise. Her umbrella nearly popped, and she turned her back to the elements until they calmed. She continued down the path, then made her way through some damp grass. She almost turned around, but then she stopped beside a sprawling maple that had lost nearly all of its leaves.
Mixed emotions took her as she stared at the pair of rings engraved on the headstone. She could never forgive Judd for what he had done, but had asked for the rings anyway. She figured Jared would have wanted them.
“Rest in peace,” she said. And walked away.
~
She stepped slowly along the path and took its softly sloping curve to a stand of tall firs. Taking that first step into the grass, she felt tears rise in her again. She didn’t know if she could keep doing this. It seemed that time healed no wounds.
She stopped at the third headstone and stood in the drizzle under her umbrella, not knowing what to say. There was so much she wanted to, but she could never find the words. Not like Jared.
“You’d be so proud of your son,” she said, fearing she might break. “He’s so strong, Jared. He’s so strong for both of us. If it weren’t for him, I don’t know what I’d do.”
Gateway Page 49
