by Brian Harmon
“And what about Sylvia? How did she get mixed up in all this?”
Holly’s smile melted away. “Sylvia was a foster kid, too. But she wasn’t as lucky as me. She couldn’t see the bad in people. She was abused. In every way imaginable. By the time Del found her, she was pretty broken.”
“She couldn’t defend herself? Didn’t she have any powers?”
“She didn’t know how. Her talents didn’t manifest themselves clearly. She didn’t know she was special until Del showed her what she could do.”
“What could she do?”
“She could make things move.”
“What, like telekinesis?”
“Something like that.”
“Like Delphinium can do?”
Holly puckered her lips to one side as she considered this. The face she made was adorable. “Not quite. Del can make lots of things happen. Like, she can make the lights go out, without flipping the switch. Or she can change the temperature in a room. We once had a mouse in the kitchen and she made it leave. She just opened the front door and it ran out from under the refrigerator, out the door and was gone. It never came back.”
“Handy.”
“I know. But Sylvia can only make things move. And when Del first met her, she could barely do that. It was only little things. She never even knew what she was doing. She’d invented an imaginary friend to explain all the weird things that happened to her. She called her Sissy.”
Eric considered this. Telekinesis was a mind power. Mental. Psychic. He’d read about it. He’d watched some television programs about such things. He was no expert, not by a long shot, but he was pretty sure it wasn’t magic.
“She also has these dreams.”
“Dreams?”
“They’re like premonitions, but they usually come in garbled riddles that she can’t make sense out of. She even dreamed that something bad was going to happen the day before the magic man came. But it didn’t help us much.”
“As long as I’ve known her,” continued Holly, “she’s been deathly shy. She rarely talks to anyone. Even Del. She mostly stays in her room, hiding from the world. Wherever she is right now, she’s alone. I’m sure of it.”
Eric glanced over and met her eyes. “Let’s hope she stays that way until we get there.”
Holly nodded. “I hope that for everyone.”
He studied her for a moment. “Regina and Marie… You’re taking it pretty well.”
She shrugged. “I’m not sure I am, really. It’s like this dark cloud hanging over me. But I can’t lose it now. Del said I have to be strong and she’s right.”
“How close were you to them? Jude told me he wasn’t very close to Regina.”
“No one was. Not really. She’d only been with us about a year. And she had some serious trust issues. She wouldn’t open up to any of us. She wouldn’t even talk to anyone except Del. If anyone else tried, she’d just walk away. If we kept trying, she’d turn mean. She’d been through a lot. More than most of us. And she refused to talk about it, even to Del.” She stared off into the passing fields. “She was already nineteen when Del found her. Most of us were between twelve and sixteen. I think it was just too late. She was afraid to get close to anyone.”
“That’s sad.”
“I know. Marie, though… She was only fifteen.”
“Fifteen?” It was sad that she had died, that anyone had died. That she was even younger than Jude… It was heartbreaking.
Holly nodded. “Del found her when she was only nine. She’d run away from her disturbed mother who was convinced she was possessed by some kind of demon because she knew things about people.”
Eric shook his head. That was terrible. “What kinds of things did she know?”
“Just little things, mostly. She could kind of read minds, but only in little snippets.”
“You’re quite a talented bunch of girls.”
She gave him a little smile, but it faded quickly. “We were.” She shook her head. “She was such a gentle girl. I can’t imagine anyone wanting to hurt her.”
“How many of the girls are minors?”
Holly was staring off into space and chewing on her nails. Now she looked up at him, distracted. “What?”
“Under eighteen,” Eric specified.
“Oh. Um. Except for Marie, only Alicia. She’s seventeen.”
“How does a seventeen-year-old and a fifteen-year-old go off on their own?”
“Alicia just lies about her age.”
That made sense.
“And Marie had a talent for hiding. When Del first found her she was living in the basement of a retirement home near Kansas City. She’d been there for six months and no one had ever even seen her.”
“Wow. That’s impressive for a nine-year-old.”
Holly smiled sadly and stared out the window. “She was very talented.”
“Was it like that thing Jude does? Where he makes people distracted so they don’t notice him?”
She glanced up at him. “Similar, yeah.”
Eric nodded. A kid could probably do pretty well for herself with that kind of talent. And yet the magic man had still been able to find her…
“We have to find them,” Holly said. “We have to bring them all back.”
“Well, we’re off to a good start. We’ve already saved you.”
She smiled at him. “That’s true. And we’ll find the others, too. One at a time.”
“That’s right.” But Eric wasn’t as confident as he was pretending to be. Whoever this magic man was, he was more than a match for Grandpa. He still had no idea how he was supposed to fight something like that.
Chapter Eleven
Dacksey wasn’t much of a town. There was about a half-mile stretch of loosely gathered, mismatched buildings along a narrow stretch of two-lane road in desperate need of fresh paving. There were two small gas stations, a post office, a lot filled with dozens of large, colorful farm machinery and a hodgepodge of mixed businesses. Here and there were noble attempts at landscaping, but for the most part it looked like the sort of grimy town where the police bullied passers-through with barely-legal speed traps to pay the expenses.
And indeed Eric glimpsed an utterly inexplicable twenty-five-mile-per-hour sign half-hidden behind an oversized historical marker.
On the far side of town, they found the lone motel. A long, ugly building long overdue for renovation, it looked like precisely the kind of place where a disturbed man just might put on his dead mother’s clothes and murder the guests in the shower.
Holly told him that this girl was painfully shy, but as Eric pulled into the small parking lot, he thought that she must have nerves of steel to be staying all alone in a place like this.
“She wouldn’t stay in one place for long,” Holly said. “I hope she hasn’t moved on.”
There were no cars parked in the lot and only one window was illuminated.
Eric parked the van in front of the sole, occupied room and scanned the rest of the motel. No “Do Not Disturb” signs were hanging from the handles on any of the other doors.
He pulled out his phone and looked at the screen. Immediately, it chimed at him and Isabelle told him what he wanted to know without needing to be asked.
I DON’T FEEL ANYTHING SPECIAL ABOUT THIS PLACE. IT’S JUST AN OLD MOTEL
Eric nodded. He didn’t expect her to know everything. But sometimes her feelings about places like these could be valuable. “Any sign of the girl?”
NO. BUT I CAN’T REALLY FEEL HOLLY, EITHER. SHE HAS A STRONG PRESENCE, BUT IT’S NOT LIKE THERE’S ANY KIND OF ENERGY COMING OFF OF HER
Eric glanced at Holly, who was watching him, her bright eyes curious.
“What about the magic man? Any sign of him?”
NOT THAT I CAN TELL
“Good.” Lowering the phone, he turned and looked at Holly. “Should we see if anyone’s home?”
Holly nodded and opened her door.
It was quiet out for this early in
the night. The sun was just beginning to set and traffic was almost nonexistent.
He stepped out of the van and walked toward the building. But as he approached the door, Holly gripped his arm and halted him. “Something’s wrong,” she said.
Eric’s eyes swept the scene, but he saw nothing out of place. “What?”
“The light in the window…”
Eric looked at the glowing curtains. She was right. There was something wrong there. The light seemed to ebb and wane, growing brighter and then fading, not at all like lamplight, but like…
“Fire…” breathed Holly.
She was right. Something inside was burning. And he was willing to bet that these rooms didn’t have fireplaces.
He hurried to the door and knocked loudly. “Hello?” he said. “Is anyone in there?”
No answer.
“Sylvia?”
Holly shouted through the door, “Sylvia! It’s Holly. Are you in there?”
But still no one answered.
“Stand back,” said Eric, backing away from the door and bracing himself. He’d seen people do this on television a million times. The trick was to kick it with the bottom of your foot, like a battering ram. He’d also known an angry, overweight cowboy who kicked in a motel door not unlike this one once. How hard could it be?
Not as hard as he feared it would be, but not as easy, either. His first kick splintered the door, but it took a second attempt to force it entirely open.
The room was engulfed in flames. Smoke poured from the open doorway and the heat hit them with surprising intensity.
Holly cried out for her friend, but Eric could already see that they were too late. The bed was in flames. He could smell the smoldering flesh of the dead girl.
He turned and pushed Holly from the doorway, trying to shield her from the awful sight, but it was too late. She’d already seen the dark, frail shape lying atop the burning bed. He could see the horror in her eyes.
“There’s nothing we can do,” said Eric. “Get back in the van.”
Holly didn’t move. Tears streamed down her face.
“Go! This fire hasn’t been burning long. He might still be around.”
This seemed to get her attention. She turned and searched the parking lot around them, her eyes wide with fear.
Eric gave her a gentle push, urging her to return to the van. That was three dead girls now. He felt a crippling heaviness filling his heart. The only thing that kept his mind moving was the thought that there weren’t four of them. At least he wasn’t too late to save Holly.
The question now was, what did they do next? Did they call 911? Could they afford the time that would take? He didn’t like the idea of fleeing the scene and just leaving the poor girl in that inferno, but if they remained here, they wouldn’t be able to reach the next girl ahead of this maniac.
The question was answered for him when he took one last look into the burning motel room and found two pairs of unnaturally large eyes staring back at him from the flames.
Imps. Just like the one that attacked them as they fled the scene of the strip club fire, except there were two of them.
He was sure they weren’t there a moment ago.
One was sitting on the floor near the foot of the bed. The second was in the far corner, perched on the nightstand. Both appeared to be unaffected by the heat and flames.
He turned and ran for the minivan.
The one at the foot of the bed rushed out the door after him. The other leapt over the bed and hurled itself through the window.
Holly screamed and took shelter inside the van.
Eric only made it as far as the driver’s door when one of the creatures seized his leg and sank its nasty little teeth into his thigh. He uttered a panicked curse as pain shot through his body.
Inside the vehicle, Holly was still screaming, but at least she was safe. He, on the other hand…
He couldn’t shake the imp off, so he turned and threw his weight into the side of the van, trying to crush the little beast, but it didn’t even seem to notice. Setting its claws into his leg, it scrambled upward, biting him again and again. Thankfully, his shorts were providing a little bit of protection against its tiny teeth, probably preventing it from tearing out chunks of his flesh, but it still hurt like hell.
He seized the ugly creature by one oversized ear and pulled on it. It snarled viciously, but refused to let go. It only sunk its claws in deeper and held on even tighter.
Then the second creature was on him, too, leaping at him, snapping its tiny jaws, shrieking.
They weren’t going to let him climb into the van. If he opened the door, one or both would only leap in and attack Holly.
Eric tried to run away, but he made it only a few steps before the second imp tangled itself around his ankles and tripped him. He sprawled onto the ground with both of them clawing and biting at him.
This was definitely one of the more dire situations he’d found himself in.
Curling himself up to shield his face and throat from the little monsters, he tried to think through the panic and the pain. These things were small, but they were fast and strong, not to mention frightfully persistent.
He was bitten on both legs, his butt, his waist, his back, his side, his left arm. They scrambled over his body so quickly it felt as if there were a dozen of them.
He was out in the open, with nowhere to run except into the burning motel, and that would do nothing but speed up his demise since that was where these hellish creatures came from in the first place.
It seemed he was all out of options. There was no way out of this mess. But at least Holly was safe inside the van. At least there was one person he hadn’t failed tonight.
But then something quite unusual happened.
He heard a shout over the chaos of snarls and growls.
A warm wind washed across him.
And suddenly the creatures were no longer on top of him.
Feeling strangely as if a strong, static charge had suddenly built up in the air all around him, Eric lifted his head and looked out at the parking lot. There, before him, both of the imps were sprawled on the pavement.
No. That wasn’t quite right.
One of the imps was lying sprawled on the pavement. Only half of the other one was there.
From its legs up, it was nothing but a bloody stain on the asphalt.
Startled by this gruesome revelation, Eric scrambled backward and rose to his knees.
The second imp rolled onto its belly and then stood shakily to its feet. It looked around, dazed and confused, clearly unable to grasp what had happened.
Eric knew exactly how it felt. He turned and looked behind him.
Holly was standing beside the van, the driver’s door wide open. She looked exhausted, as if she’d just spent a great deal of energy, although she couldn’t have done more than crawl across the seat and step out onto the asphalt.
When he looked back at the remaining imp, it was staring at its companion’s body, which was now emitting a crude, black smoke.
It looked up at Eric, and then at Holly, then back at its dead brother. There was genuine fear in its huge eyes.
Eric felt no sympathy for the little monster. He lunged forward, seizing the creature around its spindly neck, and squeezed with all his strength, strangling the life out of it.
It wriggled in his grip, clawing at his arms, kicking at him, struggling to get free, but Eric refused to let go.
Delphinium said this thing was an imp. She suggested that it had been created using magic. If that was true, then it wasn’t really a creature at all. It was an abomination. And it clearly would have killed him if not for whatever Holly had done just now.
A long, black tongue lolled from its little mouth. Its hideous eyes rolled back into its head. Its struggling became weaker.
Finally, its arms fell away and its huge, ugly head rolled back.
It was dead.
Eric refused to let up, though. He held on until
he saw the smoke begin to rise from its ears and eyes.
Then he tossed it away, disgusted, and rose to his feet.
The first one was almost gone, dissolving into that foul, black smoke. Within minutes, both strange corpses would be gone completely, which meant nobody would ever believe this happened.
“Are you okay?” asked Holly.
Eric nodded, his eyes drifting to the fire again. They needed to get out of here. It was a wonder they hadn’t drawn any attention already. He turned and hurried back to her. “Inside. Quick. We have to go.”
“What about Sylvia?”
“Nothing we can do for her now. And if anyone catches us here, we won’t be able to help anyone else.”
Holly hesitated, her gaze drifting again to the burning motel.
“Now,” Eric urged.
Finally, she turned and climbed back into the van, returning to her seat the way she’d exited it, crawling over the center console and flashing him a generous view of her panties in the process. After what he’d just experienced, with his heart still racing and the pain of the little creatures’ teeth and claw marks still fresh in his flesh, he found that he didn’t even care enough to be annoyed by it.
He took the time to take one last look back at the motel room. It weighed heavily on him that he hadn’t arrived here in time to save the poor girl.
Out, out brief candle, he thought, then tore his eyes away from the flames and put the van in gear.
Somehow, Eric managed to drive away without being seen. Soon, someone would notice the building in flames and call the fire department. Hopefully, no one would ever know they’d been there.
“I’m sorry about your friend,” he said after they’d cleared the city limits.
She wiped her eyes. “My sister,” she said.
Eric glanced over at her. “What?”
“They’re my sisters. We’re family. Even if we’re not related.”
He recalled Delphinium saying the same thing. The girls she collected were her family. They were all sisters. “I’m so sorry.”
She sniffled and wiped at her eye with the heel of her palm, smearing her makeup a little more in the process. “She was afraid of fires.”
Eric felt these words right in his heart. “Oh…” was all he could think to say.
