Legion

by Robert Swartwood

  Legion

  Robert Swartwood

  RMS Press (2014)

  * * *

  Rating: ****

  Tags: Horror

  THEY ARE EVERYWHERE

  An estranged father shoots himself in the head.

  THEY KNOW EVERYTHING

  A message courier is pushed in front of an oncoming subway train.

  THEY WILL NOT BE STOPPED

  A young woman kills her family before jumping off the roof of her apartment building.

  THEY ARE LEGION

  Your name is John Smith. The Legion is coming for you. They want you dead, because you have a secret.

  You just don't know what it is.

  praise for USA TODAY bestselling author ROBERT SWARTWOOD

  “Robert Swartwood is the next F. Paul Wilson—if F. Paul Wilson’s DNA was spliced with Michael Marshall Smith. If you haven’t yet read Swartwood, you’re missing out.”

  —Brian Keene

  “Robert Swartwood is a sharp writer, his prose lean and mean as a razor blade. He notches up the tension from chapter to chapter like a master story-teller, keeping you reading long into the night.”

  —The Man Eating Bookworm

  “An exceptional novelist.”

  —Douglas Clegg

  LEGION

  ROBERT SWARTWOOD

  Contents

  Legion

  About the Author

  Excerpt from Man of Wax

  Also by Robert Swartwood

  Copyright

  For Blake Crouch

  LEGION

  Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!

  —“Ozymandias,” Percy Bysshe Shelley

  part one

  ______________

  ASHES TO ASHES

  one

  My father has died.

  Melissa emails me about it, but I rarely check my email. Somehow, she manages to get hold of my cell number and sends me a text to call her ASAP. I don’t. She calls an hour later and I send the call to voicemail, which I later listen to and hear about his death and how the viewing will be Friday night and the funeral Saturday morning and Mom would really like it if we could all be there so please, John, please do try to make it if you can. She even offers to let me ride along with her and her family—her Wall Street husband and two adorable kids—but she probably knows I’ll decline anyway, not wanting to be a tagalong but also dreading the idea of spending hours imprisoned in their SUV (that’s what I picture they have, anyway, some big Mercedes or BMW that they only take out of storage the few times they leave the city each year) with a sister and brother-in-law and a duo of nephews I never talk to despite the fact we both live within ten miles of each other.

  When I don’t call her back, she tries once more, leaving the same voicemail, almost word for word.

  I delete that message, just like the first.

  My father has died and I don’t have much opinion on the matter one way or another. My father was a cold son of a bitch and the world will be better off without him. Even how he went out seems fitting enough, though I’m sure the rest of my family wouldn’t agree. And attending his funeral? No thanks. I think I’d rather bash my head into a brick wall than force myself to participate in that circus.

  But then later that Friday night—after the rest of my family, two hundred miles away, sat through my father’s viewing—I can’t sleep. I stare up at my bedroom ceiling, listening to the city sounds through the window. I turn on my right side, then on my left side. I pop in my earbuds, but music doesn’t help. Finally, after two hours of restlessness, I get up and log onto my laptop and pull up the Amtrak website.

  I take the first train of the morning out of Penn Station to Hartford. A woman sits beside me playing Words With Friends on her iPad. She smells of cinnamon. At first she tries to engage me in conversation, and I give low, monosyllabic answers until she gets the hint and leaves me alone. My earbuds in place, I stare out my window and tell myself that once the train stops, I will get off and head back to New York.

  When the train does finally stop, I don’t head back to New York. Instead I hail a taxi. I tell the driver where I’m headed. He gives me a look, says that it will be nearly two hours to get there and do I have that kind of cash. I pass him my credit card, then sit back and watch the houses and trees slide by as he drives.

  And then, before I know it, we’ve arrived. I ask the driver if he minds waiting a half hour or so to take me back. He glances out over the small cemetery, the numerous tombstones, the few mausoleums, the drooping willow trees, and asks, “Family or friend?”

  Family, I tell him.

  “Old man or old lady?”

  Old man, I say.

  He nods, chewing this over. “I never much cared for my old man. Used to beat the shit out of me. That why you’re late?”

  Outside, down the grassy slope, a small group of mourners is clustered around a tent. The sky is overcast but doesn’t look like rain, though that hasn’t kept a few from carrying umbrellas. There looks to be about a dozen people, all said, and from what I can tell, they’re almost all family.

  “Just stay here,” I tell the driver, and open my door.

  I head down the stone walkway toward the tent. I take my time. Melissa’s email said the funeral started at ten. It’s now almost ten thirty, which means this thing should be wrapping up. The way the tent is positioned, almost everyone has his or her back to me. They’re all wearing black, either suits or dresses, which goes starkly with my jeans and hoodie.

  I glance back over my shoulder to make sure the taxi—my only form of escape—hasn’t left. It’s still there, the driver now leaning against the hood, puffing on a cigarette, enjoying the melancholy view.

  In many ways, my timing is perfect. When I’m less than fifty yards from the tent, the reverend finishes his prayer or eulogy or whatever, doing the whole ashes to ashes bit. Everyone who had their heads bowed now raises them. The deep silence that momentarily enveloped the group lifts. A soft and hushed murmur begins.

  I spot Melissa and her husband and their boys. I spot Valerie and her husband. I spot Paul and his wife and their little girl. I spot David, who—last I remember—was married, but he appears to be alone today, so maybe his wife couldn’t make it or they’ve divorced.

  Finally, I spot our mother. She’s sitting at the front, right near the casket, the usual spot they place the widow or widower. She hasn’t seen me yet, which I take as a blessing. In fact, none of them have seen me yet, surprisingly, which makes me think I can easily turn back around and hightail it out of here without having to converse with anyone. Truth is, I’m still not sure why I’m here. I’ve been trying to come up with a reason all morning, on the train next to Ms. Words With Friends, then on the nearly two-hour taxi ride, and I still haven’t figured it out.

  But I have come, against my better judgment. I have come to my father’s funeral because, despite what I may think of the man, what feelings (or rather lack of feelings) I have toward him, he was my father, and if I owe him anything, it’s to at least show up when he dies.

  “John?”

  I blink. I must have zoned out there for a moment or two, staring at the closed casket nestled in between all those bouquets, because David is now standing in front of me.

  “Glad you finally made it,” he says. He wears a gray suit that probably costs more than I make in a month. He extends his hand. “I was worried you might not.”

  We shake, and it feels weird, because I don’t remember the last time I shook my brother’s hand. Was it at his wedding? Possibly, because I don’t think I’ve seen him since.

  “A shame you couldn’t attend the wake last night,” he says, taking his hand back. It disappears into his suit jacket only to reappear a moment later with a small bottle of
Purell hand sanitizer. He squirts a dollop of clear gel in his hand, snaps the cap shut, returns the bottle to his suit jacket, and then begins rubbing his hands together, the entire process so standard and droll he probably doesn’t even realize he’s doing it.

  “I was working.”

  David’s mysophobia (a pathological fear of germs) doesn’t surprise me. He’s a surgeon—either cardiac or neuro, I can’t remember which—so it makes sense he doesn’t want to contract any harmful germs. But I also know it goes deeper than that. It goes way back to when we were in boarding school, the bullies picking on him, holding him to the ground, forcing him to eat gobs of spit, until finally his younger brother stepped in and made them stop.

  “Oh yeah? What’s keeping you busy these days? Still riding your bike?”

  He says it with sincerity, but I can sense the exasperation just beneath the surface. Saying without saying that it’s a shame I turned out the way I did, what with everything I had been given, all the potential, and wasting it unlike my brothers and sisters who managed to make something of themselves, to use the money our parents gave us to better our lives instead of spoiling it.

  Or at least that’s the sense I get, but the truth is I’m probably wrong.

  Instead of answering his question, I ask, “How was the wake?”

  Nearly everyone else is on their feet now, everyone except our mother who sits on the metal folding chair and stares up at the reverend as he speaks to her, clasping her hands between his. The reverend wears a dark blue suit, probably taken off the rack at Sears, and his hair is as white as snow. He has a rose pinned to his jacket, right on the lapel, and for a moment I wonder whether or not it’s real.

  My other siblings have all noticed me by now, but none have waved or nodded or even given me the finger, though I guess in this setting flashing the bird wouldn’t be proper funereal etiquette.

  David’s face tenses briefly. “It was as nice as a wake can be.”

  “Who was there?”

  “Just us. Family.”

  “So even until the end, our dad didn’t have any friends.”

  I say this expecting to elicit a reaction, to make my brother flinch, but he only smiles and shrugs.

  “You could say that, sure.”

  This isn’t quite the response I expected. Except, now that I think about it, this is the typical response David is apt to give. At least the David I remember, the one I grew up with, the one who always had a dirty joke ready to make me laugh.

  Now David looks past me, up the slope at the taxi, before scanning the road leading into the cemetery, as if he’s expecting someone else to show up.

  An uneasy silence passes, and while oftentimes I revel in uneasy silences, I want to say something. Before I can, though, David asks, “Are you coming back to the house?”

  “Whose house?”

  “Mom’s. That’s where we’re having the reception. You know, finger sandwiches and macaroni salad. Hopefully there’ll be some alcohol, too.”

  “I’m not sure I can. I have to head back soon.”

  “But you just got here.”

  Past my brother, Melissa has moved away from her husband and sons, weaving in and out of the chairs, so she can stand by our mother and lean down and whisper something in her ear. Our mother listens, a forced smile on her face, and then, little by little, the smile fades. She blinks and looks up at Melissa, then turns her face just enough so she’s looking at me.

  Wrinkles on her forehead, crow’s-feet underneath her eyes, a little too much makeup—those are the details I take in for the half second or so before I instruct my body to take a quarter-step to the right, just enough so David blocks my mother’s gaze.

  David glances over his shoulder, then turns back to me, shaking his head. “Seriously?”

  “What?”

  “You thought you could make an appearance and not have to talk to Mom?”

  “Did anyone look inside?”

  Again, I expect to elicit some kind of reaction, but my brother only gives me a bored look.

  “Yeah,” he says, “last night we had the casket open and were tossing in pennies like it was a wishing well. What the hell do you think? Of course nobody looked inside.”

  I can’t help it, I start to smile, realizing that I have missed my brother. Maybe my own morbid sense of humor comes from him, I don’t know, but it seems whatever I throw at him, he throws it right back without missing a beat.

  Beyond him, my mother struggles to her feet. Melissa and the reverend with the fake-or-real rose need to help her, each supporting an elbow, and I notice she’s now gripping a metal cane. My mother, barely sixty years old, needs a cane to move around and I have no idea why.

  “Why does she need the cane?”

  “Stroke.”

  “When did that happen?”

  “I don’t know. Pretty recently. It was only a minor stroke, from what I understand. You know, you could check in every once in a while so you would be in the loop.”

  “What fun would that be?”

  They’re coming this way now, our mother and Melissa, both of their gazes intent on my location.

  “I should go.”

  David glances over his shoulder again, seems to think something over, then nods. “If you feel you must.”

  “Give everyone my best.”

  “Sure,” David says. Then: “You know you’re an asshole, right?”

  “What can I say? I am my father’s son.”

  I turn and start back up the walkway, withdrawing the earbuds from my pocket and popping them in place, so that if anyone calls my name, I won’t hear them. I barely even hear the driver when I return to the taxi. He’s discarded his cigarette and again sits behind the wheel. He says something to me as I slide into the backseat. I take out the earbuds, ask him to say that again.

  “I said that was fast.”

  “Let’s go,” I say, and glance out the window.

  David hasn’t moved, his hands now in the pockets of his thousand-dollar suit. Melissa and our mother have reached him, Melissa saying something to David, David shrugging and giving her some kind of bullshit to my sudden departure. Or, who knows, maybe he’s telling her the truth. We might be brothers, but it’s not like we owe each other anything, even though when we were kids I always stuck up for him when the bullies wanted to pick a fight.

  Our mother, though, she stands off to the side, leaning on her cane, watching the taxi as we glide away down the drive.

  I close my eyes and lean my head back against the seat.

  I think about my father in that closed casket.

  I wonder what thoughts were racing through his mind moments before he put that gun in his mouth and pulled the trigger.

  two

  Ashley pegged the guy as a cop the second she saw him.

  It was mostly in the way he carried himself, his broad shoulders squeezed into a suit that was one size too small—probably something grabbed off the rack at the last minute—the man looking uncomfortable in the plainclothes, because clearly this man was used to a uniform, loved the order and simplicity of wearing the same thing every day. Even his tie didn’t match, the shade of blue not quite going right with the jacket. He definitely looked like he was in the wrong place, the restaurant filled with the stuffy noontime regulars, those who made over six figures a year and didn’t mind paying for a glass of water. Ashley knew exactly what kind of clientele this place brought in, so it was no surprise the undercover cop caught her attention the way he did, entering the room, pausing briefly, scanning the tables, as if he was purposely looking for trouble.

  Behind him then, a second or two later, Melissa appeared, dressed in a smart business suit, her golden brown hair pulled back into a bun. She had her glasses on today, the ones with the black frames, the kind men referred to as a naughty librarian look, a good look, Ashley thought, especially for someone like Melissa who could pull off sexy without really trying.

  Melissa stepped up to the cop, whispered something
to him, pointed vaguely in Ashley’s direction, then pointed over to the bar. The cop gave Ashley a long, measuring look, before he nodded slightly and weaved his way past the tables to the bar. He took up position at the far end, which gave him a good view of the entire room, the tables and booths, almost all of them occupied by men and women completely oblivious to his existence.

  What they weren’t oblivious to, of course, was Melissa Baxter. If there was one thing Ashley knew, it was that her friend knew how to make an appearance. Even if she wasn’t trying it, like today, people instantly noticed her. She turned heads, as the saying went, both men and women alike. It also didn’t help that nearly everyone in the room knew her, or knew who she was, some even waving as Melissa made her way toward Ashley, smiling and returning hellos like it was just another day at the racquetball club.

  “Sorry I’m late,” Melissa said, sliding into the booth, absently glancing at the menu even though she knew what she was getting—they always got the same thing, always, the two of them meeting here for lunch once a month, if not twice a month, a ritual they’d worked hard to keep going these past few years. “Did you get my text?”

  “I did,” Ashley said, double-checking that her phone was on vibrate and setting it aside, “and it’s okay. Who’s the muscle?”

  Melissa sighed, shaking her head. “Don’t even get me started.”

  “I have to say, I’m impressed. Not everyone gets their own bodyguard.”

  “For starters, he’s not a bodyguard. At least, not a real bodyguard. He’s just a uni they plucked from the street and threw a suit on him and told him to never let me out of his sight.”

  “That must be real awkward when you have to use the bathroom.”