by J. S. Bailey
Bill snapped his fingers. “Nate,” he said.
Bobby whipped his head back to face the man. “What?”
“That’s the year Graham met somebody named Nate. He wouldn’t stop talking about him, like Nate was the best thing to ever come into his life. We used to tease him and ask if Nate was his new boyfriend.”
Bobby had no idea where this conversation would lead. “So, who was Nate?”
“Somebody Graham befriended. He had one of those funny Armenian last names, but I can’t remember what it was. Bag something. Bagdalasian? No, but it was something like that. I never met the guy. Graham was so fixated on him that it kind of felt like I did know him, which is strange because I don’t know what Nate looks like or even how old he is. Does that make sense?”
“No.”
“What I mean is he kept talking about things Nate said to him. Like, ‘Nate told me the funniest joke the other day’ and ‘You know what Nate said about the President?’ Things like that.”
“So what did Nate say?”
“I don’t remember. I guess I didn’t care enough to remember since Nate was nothing to me. Graham stopped mentioning him after a few months. We’d ask what Nate was up to and Graham would just shrug.”
“Didn’t you think that was strange?”
“Of course I did! But life went on and I didn’t think much of it.”
Bobby wondered if Nate was Graham’s first victim. He shivered.
“Do you believe in demons?” Bill asked.
Goosebumps rose on Bobby’s arms. “Why do you ask?”
Bill sighed. “It’s just something I wonder now and again. I know that God Almighty put us on this earth and that forces are out there trying to screw everything up, which brings me back to Graham. Yes, it’s possible he went crazy from a tumor or dementia or something. But sometimes when I lie awake at night I can’t help but wonder if his murder attempt on that boy was caused by something else.”
“Graham wasn’t possessed,” Bobby said. “I’m pretty sure of that.”
Bill raised an eyebrow. “Are you, now?”
The faces of Trish, the woman who’d died in Randy’s basement last week; and the nameless demoniac at The Pink Rooster flitted through Bobby’s mind. “Let’s just say I’ve run into some people who are, well, you know.”
A look of understanding dawned on Bill’s face. “Ah. You’re one of them.”
Bobby’s pulse quickened. “One of who?”
“Let’s just say I know a thing or two about Graham’s old crowd. Not much, mind you, because what I learned was by mistake and it wasn’t my place to pry any deeper into it than I had to.” He gave Bobby a piercing stare. “You best be careful. If you are one of them, you know what’s out there.”
CARLY LET herself into the house feeling like the biggest hypocrite who’d ever walked the earth. “What are you going to do with your pain, Bobby?” she asked when she set her purse down on the kitchen table. “Heck, Carly, what are you going to do with yours?”
She tugged the crockpot out of a bottom cabinet and plopped it on the marble countertop between the sink and stove. She just needed to let it go. Cassandra, the woman who’d so drastically altered her family’s life, couldn’t hurt her anymore. What she’d done was long ago, in the past. The past was not now. Now was today, and today her parents were coming home from another Frankie Jovingo Mission Trip, and she was going to get dinner ready for them even though it wasn’t even noon yet.
Carly swung the freezer door open to rummage for vegetables to toss into the pot. Corn, peas, carrots, beans. She found a package of frozen steak chunks and decided it would be good to add that, too.
She tore the packages open and dumped the contents into the pot. She could understand why Bobby was so upset to learn that Mystery Woman was his own mother, but if he was going to be a good Servant, he would have to let it go.
It wouldn’t be easy for him. But the important things in life never were.
“Face it,” a voice said behind her. “You want Cassandra dead.”
Carly’s body went rigid and her chest tightened like a giant had just enclosed her in its fist. Someone had broken into the house while she visited Bobby, and now he was in her kitchen standing right behind her.
She forced herself to face the intruder, hoping against hope he didn’t have a weapon.
Her heart skipped a beat when she laid eyes on the male figure standing in front of the fridge. He had auburn hair like hers. Plain clothing. A winning smile.
It was the same man who’d appeared at the top of the privacy fence and then behind the bench the day before. Carly was certain he hadn’t been in the kitchen when she first walked in.
“Who are you?” she croaked.
He went on as if he hadn’t heard her. “Cassandra ruined you. Don’t you remember what it was like? You and Jackie, as happy as could be. The birthday girls. You both were at an age when you thought you’d live forever.”
Carly’s pulse pounded in her ears. This man couldn’t be real, yet here he was, standing before her as clearly as the rest of her surroundings.
“And then Cassandra came along. She wanted to kill her husband but dear, sweet Jackie got in the way of things. I suppose every war has collateral damage.”
Tears filled Carly’s eyes as his words conjured forth memories of that terrible day. The excitement. The laughter. Moments before it all ended.
“How do you really feel about Cassandra?” the man asked.
It was madness, hearing these words from a stranger’s mouth.
“Who are you?” she repeated, wishing he would make some reply instead of going on about Jackie and Cassandra.
The man tilted his head to the side. “Cassandra is free now. Doesn’t it make you angry knowing she’s alive while your sister rots in the ground feeding the worms, forever a child, while you’ve grown into a woman?”
Carly’s legs went weak beneath her. She reached for a red plastic ladle sitting in the dish strainer and brandished it in front of her, knowing she looked about as dangerous as a kitten. “Get out of here.”
“It won’t be that hard to find Cassandra, you know. Autumn Ridge isn’t that big of a city. You could track her down, wait until nightfall, slowly creep up to her door with a gun in hand, and pay her back in kind for what she did. And it’ll feel so good.”
Her purse sat on the table between her and the man. She considered lunging for it and digging out her phone, but the man might try to attack her before she was able to dial 911.
The image of Carly standing above Cassandra’s bleeding corpse filled her mind with such abruptness that she let out a startled “Oh!”
Cassandra lay sprawled on her back in a doorway, her spill of dark hair doing little to mask the new hole in the center of her forehead. You want this, Carly. Oh, yes, you do.
Carly blinked. She still stood in the kitchen between the sink and the table, only now the auburn-haired intruder had come around to her side and towered over her, his triumphant grin so wide she could see almost all of his gleaming white teeth. “If you kill her, you’ll be ridding the earth of a monster. What’s going to stop her from killing another child? You, Carly. Only you.”
Carly swung the ladle at his head. It passed through him as if he were made of air.
He winked.
Something snapped inside her. She swung again and again, and each time the ladle made no impact because nothing was there but the image of an auburn-haired man who was either a figment of Carly’s frazzled mind or a ghost.
The man darted past her, and by the time she turned, he was gone.
Then something fell over up in her bedroom on the second floor.
Carly ran, taking the stairs two at a time. She braked in her bedroom doorway, feeling the color bleed out of her face.
The framed photograph of her and Jackie on their tenth birthday that had sat on her dresser for years now lay in the middle of the floor, the glass cracked in a jagged line right down the middle, separatin
g her from Jackie: a foreshadowing of the more permanent separation they would undergo three years later.
Well, it wasn’t exactly permanent. Carly would die someday too, either today or sixty years from now, and then she and Jackie would be together once again.
Then Jackie’s favorite stuffed bear, a red furry thing she’d named Valentino, flew off a shelf and landed next to the broken frame, a seam down its back unraveling and spewing stuffing all over the carpet and braided rug.
At the same instant the crucifix hanging over the bedroom window jumped from its nail and went smashing into the dresser mirror, shattering it into hundreds of glimmering shards, the weight of the ladle changed in Carly’s hand. She found herself holding a Taurus Model 605 snubnosed revolver—the same one her father kept locked in the gun cabinet in his study.
This can’t be happening. I don’t even know the combination to get into the cabinet.
Her hand slowly brought the nose of the revolver to her right temple.
It’s you or Cassandra. Cassandra or you.
Something warm rolled down Carly’s cheek as Cassandra’s dead face swam in her mind’s eye.
IN THE morning Jack headed westward into the mountains to the place where Troy—thanks to Vincent—had opened his newest enterprise. Jack didn’t officially work there, but he’d visited enough times that everyone there knew him.
Troy called it the Domus. Latin for “house,” it was technically a country club with highly select membership. Membership was granted by invitation only, and Troy had one of his most trusted employees (unfortunately not Jack) carefully screen each new member before granting them entry.
The Domus sat at the end of a two-mile-long gravel lane accessible only by a winding logging road that saw little traffic. Hidden among thousands of square acres of evergreen forest, the nearest human dwellings were easily five miles away. The building that became the Domus had been a spiritual retreat back in the seventies, long before the owners went bankrupt and foreclosed on the property. Troy had snatched it up when he got into the logging business, knowing that the building could someday be of use to him.
It had needed some obvious upgrades, and he’d completely remodeled some of the floors to better suit his needs. Jack suspected that some of the workers Troy hired had probably never been seen again once reconstruction was complete.
At least that’s what he’d have done if he were Troy. It paid to cover one’s tracks.
Jack’s car jolted as he turned into the lane, which was blocked by a plain white gate but no “No Trespassing” sign, as the latter often tempted people to do just the opposite. He put the car in park, climbed out, and walked up to a log post jutting from the ground beside the lane.
He pushed a brown button embedded near the top and eyed the tiny black pinprick where a camera had been hidden in the post.
A voice squawked out of an unseen speaker. “Password?”
Jack rolled his eyes. “Inkblot.” The password changed on a weekly basis. Farley, the man in charge of Domus security, said he chose the passwords by using a random word generator online.
Jack personally found the whole idea of passwords absurd.
Farley coughed a few times through the speaker. Then, “Name and purpose.”
“Jack Willard, and I work for Troy, which you very well know. It’s not like I haven’t been here several dozen times before.”
“Hey, man, I’m just following orders.”
The white gate swung open, and Jack got back in the car.
It was a long, bumpy ride back to the Domus. The lane finally opened out into a wide gravel lot that fronted the great log structure. The Domus boasted two upper floors, a basement, and a subbasement and could accommodate up to fifty guests at a time.
An in-ground swimming pool and tennis court were visible off to the left of the building. A middle-aged woman in a black swimsuit and giant sunglasses lounged in one of the chairs beside the pool while paging through a novel. Jack knew her as Carol, but it wasn’t necessarily her true name. Many members signed up under aliases. Only Troy and the employee who screened them knew their true identities.
Jack strode up to the massive wooden doors. Cool air washed over him as he entered the tile-floored lobby where the ceiling extended up to the second floor.
Giselle, the young receptionist, stood up behind the counter. Today she wore a skin-tight black top, a faux-pearl necklace, and blood red lipstick that stood out sharply against her pale skin and curly platinum blonde hair. “Jack!” she exclaimed with a blush. “We weren’t expecting you today.”
“I’m just full of surprises, aren’t I?”
Giselle let out a giggle as he approached the counter. Jack knew she’d had a crush on him from the moment she’d started working there. “So what can I do for you today? Looking for a little voyeurism or something dirtier?”
“I wanted to know if Vincent was busy right now. I’d like to talk to him.”
Giselle’s expression soured. “Good. Maybe you can talk some sense into him. I assume you heard what he did?”
“Troy said he wants to take a vacation.”
“Then you haven’t heard the latest. Vincent got out last night.”
Jack’s stomach flipped. “What?”
“He disappeared after the evening show, and his chip must be malfunctioning because they couldn’t track him. Farley and the others combed the woods, and at eleven o’clock they found Vincent blundering his way back to the building. Apparently he got scared and came back.”
Interesting. “Where is he now?”
“As far as I know, he’s waiting for the morning show to let out.” Her lip curled. “I hope you convince him not to do anything rash again. If he escapes, I’m out of a job.”
Unless Orin and Theo find another like him. “I’ll see what I can do.”
Jack strode toward the western corridor and descended the first flight of stairs he came to. As he traversed the carpeted lower hallway, he could hear the faint sound of excited voices coming from the room that was his destination.
He pushed open the door and slipped into the darkened theater-style room. Ten or so men and women occupied the descending tiers of seats. Jack recognized the Staffords, a gray-haired couple in their sixties who traveled the country in their free time; a brunette twentysomething named Ella who claimed to be working on a psychology degree; and a thirty-year-old maintenance man in overalls named Louis. The others were strangers to Jack, though one man appeared to be dressed like a banker and another woman wore a summer dress and too many bracelets.
All stared enraptured at the spectacle unfolding behind the six-inch-thick layer of Plexiglas positioned in the place of a movie screen.
Jack took a seat in the back row to watch.
Behind the Plexiglas lay a small room that was empty save for two individuals: a muscular man and a boy of perhaps ten. Blood flowed from the boy’s nose and over his lips and one of his eyes had swelled shut, but the man continued to pound him relentlessly in the face. The boy’s eyes were dead, and he took the beating without so much as lifting a hand to stop it.
One final swing and the boy crumpled to the floor.
There came a smattering of applause as curtains drew themselves shut over the Plexiglas. The exhilarated audience stood up, commenting to each other about the highlights of the display before filing out of the room.
Jack’s gaze lingered on the curtains. He’d never been able to understand the voyeurs even though he’d sat here among their number time after time. They wouldn’t dare lay a hand on a child themselves, yet they had no problem watching someone else beat one into unconsciousness. Jack attributed it to cowardice.
The voyeurs would probably deny it.
Jack followed them out and went to the next door down the hallway, where he punched in a code on a keypad. The door beeped and unlocked, and Jack let himself in.
Two assistants were laying the unconscious boy out on a table while Vincent—dressed in a plain white t-shirt and blac
k skinny jeans—stood nearby, wringing his slender hands together. The eyeliner he’d put on that morning had run. Looked like sissy boy had been crying. Again.
The man who had knocked the boy out would have been taken to a different room so he could shower and put on clean clothes.
“All right,” Larry, one of the assistants, said. “He’s all yours.” Heavy bags hung under Larry’s eyes. Jack suspected he was one of the employees who’d stayed up late looking for Vincent.
Larry and the other assistant, Joe, stepped back while Vincent came up to the table and placed a hand over the boy’s black eye. When he removed it, the swelling and discoloration had vanished, and the trickle of blood coming from the boy’s nose drew to a stop. “It’s finished,” he whispered before shrinking back against the wall.
Larry proceeded to wipe the blood off the boy’s face. His eyes fluttered open, and Larry spoke to him in soothing tones: “It’s okay, buddy. You’re all back to normal so you can be ready for tomorrow’s show.”
The boy made no response.
Jack cleared his throat. “Vincent?”
Vincent jerked his head toward Jack, and his face paled. “Oh. I didn’t see you come in. What are you doing here?”
Jack noted that Larry and Joe made a point of not acknowledging Jack’s presence. “I wanted to talk to you,” Jack said, ignoring them in turn. “You do have time for that, right? Or are you going to spend the next few hours sobbing like a baby?”
Vincent glared at him. Then his expression softened. “If you want to talk, let’s go outside.”
“So you have a better chance of running away? That bimbo at the front desk told me what you did.”
“Jack, you don’t understand.”
“Then enlighten me.”
MINUTES LATER, Jack found himself sitting next to Vincent out by the swimming pool, Carol having gone inside. “So you wanted to run away,” Jack said.
Vincent put his head in his hands. “You don’t know what it’s like not being allowed to leave because you can go anywhere you want. It’s eating me up. I—I don’t think I’ll survive much longer if I stay.”
