by J. S. Bailey
Jack watched in silent fascination as Tim popped the chunk of dirt into his mouth. His expression soured as he chewed, and Jack thought he’d throw up right there on the sidewalk. But then Tim shuddered and opened his mouth, revealing a brown tongue and bits of dirt stuck in his teeth. “That was nasty!”
Jack clapped him on the back. “The taste’ll go away in a minute. Now let’s get some ice cream!”
The feeling Jack had for the rest of that day was almost indescribable. He’d been able to convince someone to do something they never would have done otherwise. It was like he had a kind of power over Tim. For his entire short life, nothing had been under Jack’s control—the shady men his mother brought home, the new apartments to which they moved, the new schools Jack was forced to attend, the constant rules imposed on him by his teachers. Don’t talk in class, Jack. Don’t take Nicky’s toys. Don’t throw food at your classmates. Don’t don’t don’t.
Getting a taste of what it was like to take charge for once was a beautiful thing. And now that he’d tasted it, he wanted more.
After that he conducted similar experiments on other neighborhood children. He convinced a boy to run through the corner supermarket naked. He sweet-talked a girl into stealing a pack of cigarettes for him. He even got his own mother to buy him a brand-new video game system that he only played for a week before growing bored with it.
“Jack,” she said one day while folding laundry, “you sure have a way with words.”
Boy, did he.
In the present, Jack withdrew a quarter from his pocket and rolled it across his knuckles.
Five. How in the blazes am I supposed to get five?
I’M TRAPPED. I’m for sale. I’m trapped. I’m for sale.
Adrian’s thoughts were stuck on repeat, and she felt as though she’d be sick.
At one point the brown-skinned woman returned with sandwiches and water for the three occupants of the windowless room, but Adrian couldn’t eat. How could she in a place like this?
Marissa, the blonde, chided her in a low voice that wouldn’t carry beyond the walls of the concrete room. “Starving yourself isn’t going to help, you know.”
Adrian hugged her arms against her chest and kept rocking back and forth on her cot. “I never should have left him. I should have just stayed home.” Yuri had been right to advise her not to contact her children. If she’d stayed at his side like a good wife, she wouldn’t be here.
She didn’t even know where “here” was.
Neither did Marissa. She told Adrian she’d been there roughly three days, the Asian woman for two. When Marissa first awakened in the room, four teenage girls were there with her. None of them had spoken English. Illegal immigrants, Marissa guessed. They probably had either been restaurant workers or farmhands.
According to Marissa, two big men and a haughty-faced woman had come to the room and looked each of the women over. The woman had nodded and said, “I’ll take these four.”
The men had handcuffed the teenagers and led them sobbing from the room. Marissa never saw them again.
Adrian knew that the people who took the girls would be back. It was only a matter of time before they took her, too.
Adrian said, “Starving might be easier than whatever’s outside that door.”
Marissa shook her head. “It takes weeks of no food before you die. Besides, maybe it won’t be that bad. Whatever they’ll do to us, I mean.”
Adrian gave her a doleful stare. “Honey, how old are you?”
“I’ll be twenty-three next week. Some way to spend a birthday, huh?” Marissa shrugged. “The way I see it, the worst they could do is sell us to an illegal brothel. It might suck, but at least we won’t be dead.”
“You’re a very naïve girl.”
“Oh yeah?” Marissa stood up. “I’d rather have ten men a night than be murdered, and if they wanted that, we’d already be dead.”
“They could be holding us for ransom. My husband—”
Marissa shook her head. “They’d be out of their minds to hold me for ransom. My parents don’t have two cents to rub together. I haven’t even talked to them in three years.”
Adrian sighed. It was foolish to think someone in Oregon would have recognized her as Yuri’s wife and abducted her in order to collect ransom money. Even if she hadn’t run off, Yuri wouldn’t have parted with his beloved wealth just to save her.
She felt a little wistful at that realization. Wealth was Yuri’s one true love and had been all along. Adrian was simply a thing to be used for Yuri’s convenience. Should she really have expected any different after what she’d done to her children?
Adrian picked up the sandwich and bit off a corner. It consisted of bologna and cheese so dry she could hardly swallow. “There has to be a way out of here.”
“There is. Through that door. When they take you with them.”
Awhile later—one hour, two hours, Adrian couldn’t tell—the metal door swung open. Instead of the buyers Marissa described, a beady-eyed man and two with guns entered the cell.
Adrian averted her gaze and pretended to take great interest in the floor.
“This is all you’ve got?” the beady-eyed man asked.
Please just leave, Adrian prayed.
“Wait a few days, and we’ll have more,” one of the other men said.
“I don’t have a few days.” Beady Eyes let out a terse breath. “I was hoping for younger. A john blew my youngest one’s head off last night and I don’t like having empty rooms.”
“Maybe you should start screening your clientele before letting them into your establishment. What you see is what you get.”
Adrian found herself hoping against hope that the man would either leave empty handed or take the other women instead, which made her wonder if she was just as much of a monster as the people who had imprisoned them.
“Fine,” the buyer said. “I’ll take these two.”
Adrian refused to look up as Marissa and the Asian woman were cuffed and led from the room.
Her stomach turned. Please don’t hurt them. Please, please don’t hurt them.
The heavy door swung shut and locked her in.
For the first time since she’d come here, she was alone.
She would not remain that way for long.
BOBBY RAN his hands over his face.
He had failed. Miserably. It had been a mistake to take Randy’s place as the Servant, especially since Randy hadn’t died after all. Randy could have found someone else to follow in his footsteps, preferably someone who didn’t know the meaning of fear and had no past sins that could be thrown back in his face at inopportune moments.
At least the entity that called itself Thane didn’t greet him upon his return home. He had enough to deal with without angels or hallucinations dropping in unannounced.
Bobby sank onto the squashed second-hand couch.
Do you trust in me?
A lump rose in Bobby’s throat. He couldn’t lie to the Spirit. “I want to.”
You have no reason to doubt.
“I’m not good enough for this. You can’t expect me to drive demons out of people when I’ve got this…this little punk inside me wanting to hurt people.”
You have been forgiven.
Bobby blinked an embarrassing tear from his eye. “Okay. So what am I supposed to do?”
Relax your mind.
“Can you tell me who kidnapped that woman?”
You know it in your heart. Relax your mind.
Bobby understood now. Last week when he and Phil tried to figure out where Randy went to confront Graham, Phil helped Bobby move into an altered state of consciousness that helped Bobby determine where Randy could be found.
He supposed he could try a similar tactic now.
Bobby lay on his back across the cushions and took slow breaths. Blond guy. He needed to learn the identity of the blond guy.
He imagined he was walking along a sandy shoreline, and his consciousness wavered.
Relax, Bobby. Relax.
He put one foot in front of the other. Waves lapped against the sand to his left. The sun’s blazing orb hung in the sky and seagulls circled and wheeled through the air around him.
At first Bobby could still feel the cushions pressing into him at the same time he was walking down the beach, but then the former sensation ceased.
The sound of soft footsteps accompanying his alerted him to the fact that he wasn’t alone.
He jerked his head to the side, not quite surprised to see his father, the late Ken Roland, walking beside him. “You’re back,” Bobby blurted. “Just like when I did this before.”
“But the question is,” Ken said, “did I ever really leave?”
They continued walking.
“Dad?” Bobby asked after a time, casting his father a shy glance as his bare feet marked passage of their stroll through the sand. It felt like more than a decade had melted away and Bobby was a child again—albeit one whose mind was filled with very un-childlike thoughts. “Can I ask you something?”
Ken halted and planted his meaty hands on his hips. He looked just as he had in life. Thinning hair. A keg-like stomach that resulted from too many trays of late-night nachos. Eyes that twinkled even when he wasn’t smiling. “Sure thing. What’s on your mind?”
“Well, I was wondering.” He broke off, not certain how to put it without the words coming across the wrong way. “I know I didn’t hold up to your standards.”
Ken’s eyebrows rose in surprise. “What in the blue blazes are you talking about?”
Heat rose in Bobby’s face. “I mean, you always went on and on about car stuff and working hard to be—what was it? A ‘productive member of society,’ and I ignored you just so I could do my own thing. I know you thought my music was a waste of time.”
There. He said the words he’d wanted to say for years but couldn’t.
Ken studied him. “Playing that guitar of yours made you happy though, didn’t it? And that’s what mattered to me more than anything.”
Relief loosened some of the tightness in Bobby’s chest. “You mean you’re not mad at me?”
“Mad?” Ken laughed. “Course I’m not mad at you. Maybe I was worried about you becoming some sissy boy who couldn’t do a thing for himself, but I was wrong about that, wasn’t I?”
Bobby cast his gaze toward his feet. “I suppose so.”
“You suppose. Bobby, what you did for those people is the best I ever could have asked of you.” He was smiling now; his eyes twinkling more brightly than ever. “We’re all proud of you. Not many could have done it.”
“I was only doing what was right.”
“Bobby, people are faced with choices every day of their lives. If you count the number of them who do the right thing instead of the things that are best for themselves, well, let’s just say they won’t be leading many polls.”
Bobby remained silent, and they resumed their journey across the sand. The gentle waves lapping against the shore were almost hypnotic. “Have you always been watching me?” he asked after a length of time that could have been either a minute or a hundred years.
“Always.”
“Charlotte and Jonas, too?”
“Of course.”
“Can I ask you something else?”
“I’ll bet I know what it is.”
“Why is it that every time I try to meditate like this, I see you?”
A laugh. “Just because, son. Just because.”
“And are you really here, or is this just a dream?”
“That’s for you to decide. But does it matter?”
“I guess not.” Bobby sidestepped a scuttling crab. There was something else he needed to know, but it had fled his mind.
“You need to love your mother,” Ken said.
This was quite possibly the last thing he’d expected his father to say. “What?”
“I mean it. No matter what’s happened, and no matter what will happen, you need to love her if it’s the last thing you do.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Yeah, you do.”
The beach vanished, and Bobby was back in his living room.
In his mind he saw the face of Jack Willard, whose dishwater blond hair shined in the light spilling through the trees in the woods behind Graham Willard’s house.
His mind scrambled to make sense of it.
Mystery Woman. Blond guy. Kidnapping.
He began to sweat. How could he have not realized that Jack Willard was the one who’d taken the woman? And if Jack could be callous enough to work with Graham, there was no telling what he might do to the poor woman who came to Oregon all the way from the Midwest for reasons Bobby had yet to learn.
BOBBY HAD never gone in to clean St. Paul’s so early in the day. Voices interspersed with peals of laughter echoed down the hallways surrounding the inner sanctuary when he stepped into the entryway. A woman he didn’t recognize was busy rearranging flyers on a bulletin board. Not wanting to waste any time by engaging in what would amount to meaningless small talk, Bobby hurried past her down the left-hand hallway to clock in and get started.
A voice startled him as he passed an open doorway. “Bobby Roland?”
He backtracked a step or two and ran a hand over his hair before entering the room.
A thin, middle-aged priest sat behind a desk on which sat a cup of pens and a tiny model sailboat. His hair appeared to have once been charcoal-black but was now mostly gray, and it was parted so neatly on one side that Bobby wondered if the guy used a ruler to make sure the line stayed straight when he combed it.
The priest regarded him with a mixture of friendliness and curiosity. “If you’re Bobby,” he said, “then please close the door and take a seat.”
“What if I’m not?”
“Then I would have to ask why in the world you responded to Bobby’s name.”
Grinning, Bobby shut the door and sat in one of the chairs facing the desk. “So you’re Father Preston.”
A thin smile. “You’re an astute one, aren’t you?”
Bobby shifted to get more comfortable. Randy and Phil both liked the priest so he knew he’d be able to relax in his company. “Do you think I’ve been doing a good job cleaning the place so far?”
“I wouldn’t say you’re doing a bad job. You’re here, right?” Father Preston folded his hands together on top of the desk. “I’m glad you came in early today. I’ve been eager to talk to you.”
“You could have called me.”
“I much prefer speaking with individuals face to face, especially when the topic turns to more sensitive matters.” The priest cleared his throat. “Would you like some coffee? I just made some.”
“Sure. Thanks.” Bobby planned on staying up as late as possible tonight, so extra caffeine would be a blessing.
The priest rose and busied himself at a coffee maker sitting on a table by the window. “Creamer, sugar?”
“Just a little. Thanks.”
Father Preston resumed his chair when he’d handed Bobby the cup. Wisps of steam rose from the surface of the brew and dissipated into the air like departing spirits. “I’ve heard some interesting things about you,” he said, watching Bobby with the attentiveness of a scientist observing an experiment.
Bobby nodded, trying not to feel unnerved by the man’s intense stare. Father Preston was just trying to get a sense of him. He needed to stay calm and not say anything stupid. “I hope they were good interesting things.”
“Like leaving the church unattended to track down my assistant priest?” Father Preston laughed, but then his expression sobered. “I’m sorry about what Father Laubisch did to you. He’s taken a leave of absence while he tries to sort out his priorities.”
“I wouldn’t say it was me he did anything to.” Father Laubisch, a younger priest, had secretly been working with Graham Willard but sought to defy him by helping Lupe Sanchez. Bobby would never be able to trust him—not when Father Laubis
ch seemed to place his own wellbeing above everything else.
Father Preston folded his hands together again. “As they say, what’s done is done.” He sighed. “I understand you’ll require the use of one of our meeting rooms sometime soon.”
Bobby nodded and prayed that anxiety wouldn’t creep back into his veins. “That’s right.” He sipped at his coffee, relishing the sensation of warmth traveling through him.
“You’re frightened, aren’t you?”
“I’m not supposed to be.”
“But you are, and that’s completely understandable.”
“It feels wrong, though. Being afraid.”
“I think,” Father Preston said, “there’s a difference between healthy fear and abject terror. Which one do you feel?”
Bobby thought about his encounter with the demoniac at The Pink Rooster. Instead of answering, he said, “Earlier today I ran into somebody who was, well, you know. Possessed.”
Father Preston’s eyebrows rose, and his face grew paler. “Where?”
“It was at a bar up in Hillsdale. And all the sudden I had these flashbacks about bad stuff I did to people a long time ago. I don’t know how I could ever drive a demon out of anyone if I have those memories inside my head.”
The priest fell into brooding silence. Then, “I suppose the real question is what do you fear more: the evil that lives inside this person you met, or the potential for evil that lives inside you?”
Bobby felt cold despite the Spirit’s reassurances that everything would be fine. He took another sip of coffee. “I don’t know.”
FATHER PRESTON took a few minutes to show Bobby the empty room where he would eventually bring the possessed to be cleansed and then left Bobby alone so each could do their work without interruption.
Bobby fully intended to return to The Pink Rooster as soon as night fell so he could watch for Jack Willard. Unless the possessed man had lied to him, a man fitting Jack’s description frequented the bar, and Bobby didn’t see why Jack wouldn’t do the same tonight.
Father Preston’s words continued to haunt him as Bobby hauled a bag of garbage out to the dumpsters on the other side of the church building. What did Bobby really fear the most? Demons? Failure? His own inadequacies?
