They moved from near the patio to back inside the house and away from the news helicopter that had arrived about an hour ago and was still buzzing overhead like a fat metal bee in the blue sky.
As he led her through the kitchen he remembered the odd behavior of the kids the night before—how Janie had nearly tripped herself and the policeman next to her up as she made a sharp, urgent attempt to avoid an old rusted lantern that was sitting on the kitchen counter. The policeman had caught her before she fell and tried to make a joke of it, totally clueless as to what had suddenly spooked her. But Parker had seen it, clear as day.
The second odd behavior manifested itself a few minutes later as the same poor policeman, Officer Wall, had naturally assumed that the kids might want to go to their bedrooms for pajamas or something. The kids had both stopped in the hall, frozen stiff and staring at the girl’s bedroom door, eyes wide, Janie clutching at Seth as the little boy clutched his stuffed animal.
Officer Wall had looked back at Parker with bewilderment in his eyes. Deciding to help, Parker simply asked the kids if they’d rather pass on pajamas. They did.
But it was all a bit odd. A lantern and a room, each separate from the foyer, where their mother had been attacked and taken from them. As they left the house for the ride to the shelter Parker couldn’t shake the feeling that something else was going on.
Now, as he led Ms. O’Hara back out to the front driveway he sensed an odd pressure in the house, as if a cloud or heavy fog had settled into the rafters and the walls. It didn’t give him an immediate sense of danger, but rather a permeating sense of unease. The place didn’t feel haunted or anything. It felt… occupied. Haunted houses were scary. This house was different. This one felt… threatening.
Ms. O’Hara was riding his hip out the front door and down the driveway, pissed that the kids were in a vehicle she’d just walked past on the way in, before she bypassed Parker entirely, nearly shoving him out of the way, her right hand pressing at his forearm with a strength that seemed beyond her size. Adrenaline. She advanced to the minivan, deliberate and determined.
She hesitated though, for just a split second, when she grabbed the door handle, and then she opened the door.
When the kids saw her it was as if an angel of heaven had descended into their midst. She nearly stumbled as they leapt into her embrace and the three of them clutched each other and broke into tears, which became sobs and then a series of garbled questions and concerns.
Parker only caught one of them, little Seth, begging for Trudy to tell him that his mother wasn’t dead. That’s when Parker decided that he could take no more. He motioned for one of the sheriffs to come watch over them and then, not having anything to do for a bit, Parker decided he might as well go to Janie’s bedroom and poke around.
CHAPTER 8
THEY WERE IN A ghost town, plain and simple. A dozen buildings, squat and dilapidated, in various stages of rot, stood like markers from a distant past, their wood exposed and almost moaning beneath yet another brutally hot day, after enduring thousands of days just like it.
To Kyle’s left were four buildings, only one of which still had faded signage to identify it as an old tack and feed shop. To his right were five more buildings and a monument made of an old stone and mortar block with wagon wheels affixed to either side. Walking over to investigate it closer, Kyle read the plaque on the monument that identified the place as an old watering hole, located next to the Carson River and used in the mid-1800s by settlers traveling west on the California trail. There was a sign mounted on a single wooden post at the entrance, giving the place a name: Ragtown.
Meanwhile, oddly, The Gray Man remained standing directly in the center of the old dirt road, frozen in place, as he had been since they’d arrived five minutes earlier.
Finally, Kyle couldn’t take it anymore. “Gray?”
“Many of them didn’t make it,” he replied.
Kyle was confused. “Who?”
“The settlers that came through this place. It was a forty-mile haul with no water holes just to get here. Many died along the way. Many took ill and were left behind. If we traveled east, we could see them still.”
“See what?”
“The shallow graves across the terrain, still visible after all this time.”
“How?”
“Some go into the ground more beaten than they could ever become after death,” The Gray Man said sadly. “As such, their graves seep with sorrow that no amount of dirt, no amount of time, could ever hide.”
“And those that did make it here?”
“A brief respite, at best, to pour water down their parched throats and to clean their dust-encrusted clothes. Hence the town’s name.”
Motioning Kyle to come closer, The Gray Man put his arm over his shoulder and leaned in. “Like I told you earlier: call on the blue. But do so softly, almost pleadingly. Demand nothing.”
Kyle was afraid. It didn’t matter how many times he called on the force now within him, he wasn’t getting used to it. It was a power that brought with it the heavy weight of responsibility. It also felt like a little bit of himself disappeared each time he used it.
Nonetheless, as per The Gray Man’s instructions, he called on it now. He breathed in softly through his nose and exhaled deeply through his mouth, almost trembling when the warmth arrived in his chest. But this time it did not spread to his arms and hands. It simply settled there, in his lungs, like menthol.
“Good,” The Gray Man encouraged softly. “Now, push it upwards this time, to your eyes, and beyond them to your mind.”
At first Kyle couldn’t get the warmth, the feeling of the blue, to move at all. It simply wouldn’t budge. Then it began to, with a wisp of energy that pulled behind it more of itself, working its way up through his throat and jaw. He’d closed his eyes, but when the blue reached them and then hopscotched to his mind, they were forced open again, and he caught his breath in wonder at what he saw.
“Keep calm,” The Gray Man said. “This is the power, manifested as awareness.”
Kyle blinked. The world around him was now an electric blue of various shades. The buildings and a nearby cactus were outlined in bold, and the day sky and night sky were no longer divorced but merely one blue template laid over another, so that the sun and moon were married with the clouds and stars. Again, Kyle became aware of just how limited human perception was. A sudden wave of panic hit him, as if a part of his mind were trying to revolt.
“Focus! Ignore your fears and ignore everything your mind is telling you right now. Focus on the blue. Don’t let go of it, let it spread.”
Kyle’s breathing was shallow but he did as he was instructed. “O-okay.”
“Pull the lens of your mind back. Your focus is too wide now.”
“How?”
“Do you feel it? That pressure just inside your forehead?”
Kyle did. Like a rubber band pulled tight, one end affixed just above his nose and the other end attached to somewhere in his brain. “Yes. I do.”
“Focus on releasing that tautness.”
Kyle obeyed and it almost felt as if something inside him, inside the blue, or perhaps whatever had sent the blue in the first place, was helping him. The Gray Man had used the perfect word: lens. As he took the picture of the world around him and pulled it in; the images became closer, more localized and more pertinent to the area around his body.
But the picture he was now presented with was no less overwhelming.
“Do you see them?” The Gray Man coaxed.
Kyle could barely speak. “Oh, God. Y-yes.”
All around them were shirts, pants, towels and tablecloths, strung out and over the surrounding bushes, trees and cacti. And Kyle understood. From a distance, to those parched and defeated souls on their way to whatever better life they were hoping for out west, it was a sea of rags, white and blue cottons, laundry as an oasis. A sign of life. A sign of water. Ragtown.
Stillness enveloped them, and Kyle
felt The Gray Man helping him now too. The rubber band in Kyle’s mind was rejiggered again.
Wagons materialized, followed by horses and donkeys. Signs appeared on the buildings and Kyle noticed the three nameless buildings to his left were once a market, a livery and a blacksmith shop. The buildings to his right were once a small hotel, a saloon, a post office, a stable and a warehouse.
With these images Kyle was fine, but when the people appeared, in soft hues of see-through blue, like human jellyfish, moving about and living their lives from an age past, he felt himself grow very dizzy.
“Hold on, it’ll pass,” The Gray Man said gently.
“Gray. Make it stop. Let’s just go find Tamara. This isn’t important.”
“Oh,” The Gray Man said, “but it is. Trust me. Focus.”
Black specks came over Kyle’s eyes, and then faded as he resumed breathing deeply. In and out, firm breaths, each one soothing him some.
Mothers in sleeveless dresses and sandals, their feet as worn as their faces, each of them with their hair pulled up to fend off the heat, were moving across the town. Some of them had children in tow, and some had infants or groceries in their arms. All of them were outlined in blue. The men, in their trousers and shirts, sleeves rolled up past their elbows, appeared next. Almost all of them wore hats, some of which were firmly affixed straight, others tilted to one side or the other. One man, coming up suddenly behind Kyle, walked right through him and on into the town, spitting tobacco along the way, his essence a lingering tingle over Kyle’s body.
But one thing was noticeably absent.
“Why is there no sound?”
“That’s a harder discipline,” The Gray Man answered. “Our eyes have seen a lot of things that our ears have never heard.”
Kyle nodded, still looking across the town with wonder, and furrowed his brow in confusion.
“With those we love, those we are closest to in our turn at existence, it is often just the opposite. You can almost always remember the voice—”
“Yeah,” Kyle said, “like with my dad. But it’s harder to remember his face.”
The Gray Man smiled. “Yes.”
“Why is that?”
The Gray Man shook his head gently. “Later. For now, I want you to focus: this time on your own. No help from the spirit or me. What you’re seeing is a fixed point in time, before your time. Look at the town and command it to now, to this day in your life, but don’t let go of the blue.”
It was harder than Kyle imagined. With no help, his mind kept overcompensating, back and forth, from the town to the horizon beyond and back again. Distractions and denials impeded his perception. Wagons rode into town and then out again. Occasionally he would advance the image but to the wrong decade; a 1972 Chevy truck, brand new, had once driven through here with a bed full of desert firewood.
But slowly, as he focused more and more, he began to feel as if he was getting the hang of it. When he looked harder with what felt like the outside of his eyes, he moved forwards in time, and when he strained with the bottom and center of his eyes, just the opposite.
Before long his mind, his eyes and the blue felt almost perfectly calibrated.
He felt himself shift back to the present day.
And that’s when he saw them: a teenage boy with a little girl off to his right, hiding between the feed shop and the livery, and an old man, crouching ominously to Kyle’s left, as if trying to approach him without being detected.
Kyle looked directly at him and the man seemed to realize that Kyle could see him, so he stood up straight.
“What’s going on, Gray?”
“Ghosts, Kyle. The ones left behind who’ve refused to leave, for over a century now.”
The kids suddenly came out of hiding as well. The boy jumped up on an old wooden container affixed to the livery, the container so old that one of its four sides had collapsed in on itself.
“Ghosts?”
“Yes.”
The man began to approach them now, his eyes fixed firmly on Kyle.
“Are they going to be a problem?” Kyle asked warily.
Removing his arm from around Kyle’s shoulder, The Gray Man returned to his spot in the middle of the street and replied, “That remains to be seen.”
NAPOLEON HAD WALKED east from the park and a good three miles up Boylston, determined to get to his apartment, where he could sort out a plan of action. A rent notice was on the door, which was ironic. In the hood they didn’t care if you were missing or presumed dead: rent day was rent day. He’d come inside to a wall of stale air, opened the windows, had a Dr Pepper and sat down on his couch, and was debating with himself on how to contact Parker on the down low when…
A horn outside blasted and he looked up, completely dumbfounded.
It was already morning. He’d fallen asleep. And from the feeling in his head it had been a long, solid sleep. His stomach was growling too.
After taking a piss he allowed himself a good, hot shower, which felt like heaven, before he changed clothes, shaved and made himself some coffee with toast, using bread a week past the expiration date, which he consumed while sitting in his boxer shorts and a t-shirt.
His iPhone was gone, lost somewhere in hell. He wondered if he opened his laptop and used Find My iPhone if it would actually come back with the location: “Hell. Tenth Level.” This made him laugh for the first time in ages. It was okay. He could be happy. He was back, alive, and with a chance to get his life right this time.
There was no one in the world he felt comfortable contacting right now besides Parker, but reaching him was going to be an issue. Napoleon had never bothered with a landline in his apartment, and didn’t know Parker’s number offhand. He couldn’t call him from a neighbor’s phone without word getting out that he was back.
And he sensed that this would be a very bad thing. Not necessarily for nefarious reasons, but for the simple facts that a chain of events would then unfold: being brought in, interviewed, debriefed, grilled… all so he could say what, exactly? He could never tell them the truth, and any story he concocted would need to be exhaustive to get them to leave him alone. Then? The press would be all over him.
In short, it was a mess he was going to have to deal with eventually, but not one he wanted to deal with when he was supposed to be getting to Parker and helping protect the Fasano kids.
So, he’d have to call the station and get to Parker that way. A pay phone would do. They were rare as Indian head nickels these days, but they were around. Still. If he were going to go down that route, he would need to call from a place where he could melt away afterwards, in case his cover was blown. Union Station would be perfect. Tourists, travelers and commuters, in and out, all day long, in hundreds of directions. With his car still at the police station, he’d have to walk the hour or so it would take to get there.
He finished his breakfast and downed two more cups of coffee, wanting to enjoy them more but feeling pressed to get moving. He threw on some jeans before sliding his feet into a pair of Nikes, a welcome change from the work outfit he’d worn to hell and back, which was now in the trash. Then he reloaded his 9 mm, strapped on his holster and threw on a windbreaker jacket to conceal it.
Then he cautiously stepped out of his apartment, dodged his way past the manager’s office and set out for Union Station.
Thirty minutes later he was deep in thought about what to do next and how, when he realized he was way off course.
He’d somehow walked the wrong way, miles further than planned, and stood now at 1812 Riggins Street, just north of Downtown Los Angeles, at an old beige apartment complex. The lawn out front was completely dead and the shrubs against the building were barely standing. In this way, the landscape outside was not unlike the lives of most of the tenants within. This was White Fence territory: a small, but vicious gang that had repeatedly fragmented and reformed over the years, leaving bodies here or there like so much discarded trash, and families grieving in the aftermath.
&
nbsp; But this address was more than that. It was, or had once been, the home of Joaquin Murietta.
What in the world was he doing here?
He’d entirely forgotten this place. At least he thought he had.
Just being here, standing in the memory of what this building meant, in such close proximity to where too many little girls were brought, for a snack of all things, before being taken off somewhere else to be raped and strangled to death, was eerie.
“Some places you leave behind for a reason,” he whispered to himself.
Napoleon was about to lash out in frustration. He didn’t have time for this, but something told him that he had to find the time. There was something here, a familiar feeling, something to solve.
A few kids jetted by on Razor scooters. Napoleon noticed they were already wearing gang attire: black pants, pure white t-shirts. All of ten years old, it wouldn’t be long now before they were indoctrinated into a way of life that could very well lead them to that dark realm of hell that Napoleon had just escaped. The thought pained him.
Napoleon followed behind them, fighting the urge to leave before forcing himself to take it all in: the weeds in the cracks of the sidewalks, the half-shredded rap concert poster stapled to the telephone pole, the smell of the oil-stained asphalt from all the leaking late-model cars, the beeping of a delivery truck in reverse. It all rooted him in this world as much as those dandelions were rooted in the ground, and it felt oddly reassuring.
But his comfort evaporated as soon as he entered the wrought iron gate of the apartment complex, which was still black, still creaky, and still corrupted with rust and foreboding.
Napoleon stopped in front of the wall of aluminum mailboxes in the lobby.
The first girl was the key. They had him, but they didn’t. No priors. No witnesses. Murietta had fairly decent alibis that checked out. His employer, a local marketing warehouse, had him in that neighborhood that day, hanging a double billing of Dominos and Subway flyers door by door. An old lady confirmed that after work he’d come by her house and mowed her lawn.
One Plus One (The Millionth Trilogy Book 3) Page 7
