The bedspread dropped back into place.
Scrabbling from under the bed, she lurched to her feet and threw a scared glance at the flashlight. It was right where she had left it, pointing exactly where she had aimed it.
"What's going on here?" she whispered.
She steadied herself with one hand against the dresser, her eyes drawn to the far end of the bed.
"Sam, come on out."
Nothing moved.
She forced herself to walk around the bed. The space on the other side was empty—no sign that anyone had been there, except for a faint layer of dust that had been disturbed. A trail of clean floor disappeared under the bed.
She crouched low and peeked underneath.
There was only one thing there.
The gun.
It glinted in the dim light, menacing in its deadly promise.
She waited, expecting Sam's eyes to peek at her from the other side. When nothing happened, she warily reached for the gun and withdrew it, its cool metal reassuring. She was about to stand when a disturbance in the air made her chest tighten. Holding her breath, she straightened slowly, the gun in hand.
Someone or something had moved the flashlight. It was now pointing to the open bedroom door.
She frowned and shuffled toward it, but saw nothing out of place. Then, as a last thought, she pushed the door closed.
"Oh, Jesus!"
Behind the door, someone had carved an infinity symbol.
She slumped against the dresser. "Stop it!"
A sob ripped from her throat, followed by another. She wanted to pound her head against the wall.
She glared at Sam's photo and fury rose from the very depths of her soul. "Why are you haunting me?" She rubbed her face, smearing hot tears over her cheeks. "Why, Sam?"
There was no answer. But then, she didn't really expect one.
Staggering into the living room, she shone the flashlight on every surface. As the beam grazed the kitchen counter, her hand trembled. Everything she had tossed in the garbage was once again arranged in a line on the counter.
In an uncomprehending daze, she stepped closer.
On the envelope someone had drawn an infinity symbol. The licorice was twisted in the same shape.
That's when her mind shattered, completely.
In the small room, her pained howl echoed, raw and savage.
"No more! I can't do this anymore. God!" She shook her head, weeping and laughing hysterically. "Wait, what am I saying? There is no God. Because if there is, he's taken everyone I've ever loved away from me." Sobs wracked her body and she caved in to her misery. "No…I let a monster take my baby. I let him torture Sam—kill Sam. It's my fault. I admit it. But I'm done with this! Do you hear me? It's over!"
She had no idea if she was talking to Sam, the ghost children or God. It didn't matter anyway. No one heard her. No one cared. She was alone, dead inside.
"Just do it!" she screamed, gritting her teeth. "Kill me now or let me die. I…don't…care!"
An hour later, Sadie sat at the kitchen table.
She was ready. Ready to die.
She had downed two handfuls of assorted pills and most of the Screaming Eagle Cabernet. Her mind swirled with random thoughts, while the gun with its single bullet waited on the table.
On the mantle above the fireplace, an envelope addressed to Leah mocked her, an account of the madness that had gripped her like a noose crushing the air from her lungs. Next to the portfolio with Sam's completed book was a letter for Philip. It was a will of sorts, although she wasn't sure a judge wouldn't contest her sanity. She had left Going Batty to Philip, to do with whatever he pleased—get it published or burn it. It was out of her hands.
"I loved you, Philip," she said numbly. "But you're right. I loved Sam more. He was a part of me that you never understood. The best part of me. He kept me whole. Sober. Sane."
The grandfather clock emitted another garbled gong.
Almost time.
She turned half-glazed eyes toward the newspaper on the table. She cringed at the sight of the man on the front page. His face had haunted her nightmares and ravaged her sanity. This fiend had crept into her house, abducted her son, then viciously butchered him and burned him alive.
"Monster!"
She ripped off the front page and shredded The Fog's face, tearing at the newspaper until her hands were black. In a fury her arm swept across the table, sending the paper bits into the air. As the freak snowstorm of dead gray flakes floated to the floor, she gave voice to her rage.
"I hope you rot in hell!"
Tears slid down her cheeks as she gazed at the sparsely furnished cabin. What she saw instead was Sam's empty bed, the gaping window in his room and the police officer holding the clown's shoe. She closed her eyes and when she opened them, she saw Sam in the car, bound and gagged. The entire explosion played itself out like a horror film that had been incorrectly fed into the projector, jerking and skipping until it froze on a shot of the scorched baseball cap.
Sadie picked up the gun. It was as if a stranger held it.
"I'm sorry I couldn't save you, Sam," she wept.
Through the kitchen window, she saw them. Six small bodies.
"One fine day, in the middle of the night…"
Outside, a pale hand reached for the window.
"You're not real," she cried, even as her hand pressed against the icy glass. "You don't exist."
She looked down at the gun in her hand and caressed it.
"No!" the ghost children screamed.
A final gong echoed in the small room. Midnight had arrived.
"Happy Mother's Day."
She took a steadying breath, pressed the gun to her head and flicked back the safety, shuddering at the soft click.
"Mommy's coming, Sam."
Against her will, her eyes settled on the gifts on the counter.
Why are they always arranged in the same order?
In the nanosecond before she pulled the trigger, the answer became crystal clear.
28
Sadie's death didn't go according to plan.
She expected to hear a deafening roar, maybe feel a twinge of heat and then sink into a black abyss. However, there was only silence. No booming blast, no pain, no blood spatter. Just a faint click.
She jerked the trigger again, this time with more force.
Nothing.
She batted away a stray tear. "You can't do anything right, Sadie. Not even kill yourself with a fucking loaded gun."
If it weren't so tragic, she would have laughed.
With a trembling hand, she dropped the gun on the table, hoping it would go off and finish the job she hadn't been able to. She glared at it, wondering why she felt sober all of a sudden. The overdose of drugs and alcohol should have knocked her out at the very least.
Maybe I'm unconscious. Or in a coma.
But she knew she wasn't.
"Maybe I am dead," she rasped, hopeful.
The sound of her voice assured her this wasn't true either.
Sensing that she was being watched, she turned toward the window. Outside, the children had ceased their chanting. With the shifting veil of fog behind them, they stood motionless, watching her…waiting.
She flicked a look at the counter, at the message—for that's what it was. She could see it so clearly now.
Hershey, envelope, licorice, pen, onion.
"H…E…L…P." Seeing the onion, she frowned. "One of you needs to learn how to spell. Un-yun. U. And I ate the Smarties. S."
HELP US.
In a shocked trance, she walked to the back door. When she opened it, three nearly identical boys and three almost identical girls silently stepped inside. None spoke a word, but moved as one, almost gliding toward the warmth of the fire. She surveyed each child, noting the close shaved dark hair of the boys and the butchered blond of the girls. The boys wore two-piece pajama sets in gray, yellow and navy blue, while the girls wore matching nightgowns in mauve, aqua and pink.
The girl wearing mauve stepped forward. "I'm Ashley."
"No, you aren't." Sadie pointed to the girl in pink. "She is."
The girl in aqua smiled. "We're all Ashley."
"And we're all Adam," said the boy in gray.
"Adam and Ashley are dead," Sadie said in a dull tone.
"We know, Thadie," Gray Adam said.
The boy who likes marshmallows!
She groaned in confusion. "Why would your parents name you after dead children? And why would they give you all the same names?"
"Father named us," Pink Ashley said tightly.
"I don't under—"
"Come with uth!" Blue Adam pleaded. "But you have to hurry."
Without hesitation, she snatched up a flashlight and followed them out into the tempest. The winds raged and the clouds released a torrential downpour, but the canopy of evergreens sheltered them somewhat from the storm. The single beam from her flashlight lit the ground as they picked their way through the woods and down to the river's edge.
Sadie noticed the rock bridge. Before she knew what they were planning, two of the girls began to file across the slippery surface, arms outstretched for balance. They were followed by two of the boys.
"Wait!" she yelled.
"What's wrong?" Blue Adam asked, reaching for her hand.
"It's too dangerous. Someone might fall in."
"We won't."
"We should stay on this side," she argued. "The river's going to flood."
She shone her flashlight on the boulder on the far shore. The water level had almost risen to the orange line.
"Trust me," he said, tugging her hand.
She sucked in a breath and followed him onto the first rock. It was dry and ridged, making for easy footing. The next slab was damp and covered with a thin slime of algae. She made her way across, praying that she wouldn't drop the flashlight or plunge into the turbulent river. Minutes later, she was on the other side, racing along the shore, winded and trying to keep up. She was nearly sober—nearly sane—for the first time in weeks.
Maybe months.
"This way," Gray Adam called, waving her on.
She moaned. "Can't you slow down a bit?"
Pink Ashley took pity on her and waited. "We don't have a lotta time. C'mon."
Sadie shot her a brief smile. "I'm not as young as you. And I'm a bit out of shape."
"No, you're not," the girl said. "It's the booze and drugs."
Sadie stumbled. How'd she know?
"I just do," Pink Ashley said.
"So you're a mind reader now, are you?" Sadie said, slightly amused. "What am I thinking now?"
Pink Ashley took a few steps away, then hesitated. "You're thinking that you should've bought more bullets."
As the girl disappeared into the heavy brush, Sadie plodded behind, pondering her words. Ashley was right about the bullets.
Soon, the babbling of the river faded. When the trees parted, an icy field stretched out before them. A few yards to the left stood a rusted utility shed with metal sides and a corrugated tin roof. As the rain clanged down, a strange humming sound emanated from within the shed.
Sadie started toward it, but something drew her attention.
At the far end of the field, the blackened hull of what was once a two-story house created a sharp contrast to the opalescent ice around it. The house resembled a false front in a ghost town, its empty window frames scorched by a previous fire that had trailed its way up to the roof. A collapsed doorway revealed a deteriorated stairway that climbed to a non-existent second floor. The back wall had buckled and was mostly gone.
Sadie shuddered. "Sarge's house."
Mauve Ashley nodded. "Yeah."
"So Sarge is your neighbor?"
"Not quite," Pink Ashley replied softly. "Follow me."
Sadie followed her back into the bushes, away from the field. The others trailed close behind. Once they had climbed over an uprooted tree trunk and up a steep incline, Ashley stopped in a heavily wooded area. The children crowded around her, watching her expectantly while she wrestled with a tree stump. It would have been comical, except that it was the middle of the night and the rain was chilling everyone to the bone.
Sadie stared at her, baffled. "What are you—?"
Pink Ashley grunted and tugged on the stump. "Help me!"
The desperation in the girl's voice made Sadie react fast. She handed her flashlight to the nearest Adam, then joined Ashley.
"Pull on it!" the girl ordered.
Sadie yanked on the stump with all her might. To her surprise, it flipped over, taking a perfect rectangle of sod with it—along with a hinged metal door.
She gasped, stunned. "An underground bunker."
Retrieving her flashlight, she moved forward and shone the light into the hole. A wooden stairway led down into the musty depths and ended at a dirt floor several yards below.
God only knows where that leads.
"It's our back door," Aqua Ashley said.
Sadie's jaw dropped. "You can't be serious. You don't really expect me to believe that you live down there. That's ridiculous."
"But we do," Yellow Adam insisted.
Bewildered and dismayed, she looked at the children.
Nothing was making any sense. Nothing except the fact that she had gone around the bend and was standing outside in the middle of the night, staring into a pit that led underground.
I can't go down there.
"You have to follow us," Pink Ashley begged. "If you do, you'll understand everything."
Sadie let out a frazzled groan. "Why can't you just tell me what this is all about?"
"We tried," Blue Adam said. "But we made a promise and we can't break it."
"Then what good is it if I go down there?" she asked him.
He tugged on her hand. "We can show you."
"Trust us," Pink Ashley said before disappearing into the pit.
Sadie hesitated near the edge, confronted by a sudden image of Sam's casket being lowered into the earth. Gathering her courage, she swung the flashlight toward the hole and moved forward, cautious and alert to the texture of the ground beneath her feet. Her boots hit a clump of moist dirt and she watched it tumble into the void. She didn't hear it land.
Prodding the top step with her foot, she eased onto it, fearful that it would collapse beneath her weight and send her plummeting to her death. When the step held, she said a silent prayer and began the descent.
Blue Adam followed. "You don't got claustrophobia, do you?"
"Not until now." She tried to laugh, but it came out a moan.
Suck it up, princess. If they can do this, so can I.
For balance, she held onto the railing that someone had anchored to the smooth wood walls. As the sides closed in around her, she tried not to think of how far underground they were going, concentrating instead on the pungent scent of moist earth and plywood that hung in the air, trapped by the stillness and dark. By about the tenth step, she lost count and was beginning to relax—until a sudden bout of vertigo made her miss a step.
Blue Adam grabbed her arm. "Careful."
She glanced over her shoulder, up past the children, and saw the faintest glimmer of moonlight. For a second, she panicked.
Oh God, what am I getting into?
"I can't do this."
"It's okay," Blue Adam lisped. "As long as Father doesn't find you here, you're safe."
"Great," she muttered. "That makes me feel so much better."
"Just a few more steps," he promised.
When she finally connected with solid ground, she released a pent-up breath. The children gathered around her, while she took a final look at the light at the top of the stairs.
"Well, that wasn't too bad," she said. "Now what?"
"That," Blue Adam said, pointing.
A metal door barred their way.
"It's locked," she said, indicating the card-swipe security system above the ha
ndle.
"No it's not," Pink Ashley said. "Father had no reason to."
"Well, here goes nothing then."
Sadie opened the door and sudden light blinded her.
29
"Oh…my…God."
However, it had been human hands—not divine ones—that had built the underground bunker. Someone had spent a lot of time, energy and money to fashion it with all the necessities of life, including electricity, running water and pumped in air. Why someone would want to live underground, away from sunlight and fresh air, was beyond Sadie's comprehension.
With a sinking heart, she took a step forward, leaned against a cubicle divider and surveyed the strange sight. Wood paneling covered every wall of the bunker, and soft lighting gave the room a warm, cozy feeling that clashed with the scarcity of furniture and lack of any color other than brown or gray tones. At the opposite end of the room, another metal door glinted. Near it, a card table and three padded chairs sat in an open kitchen area. In the middle of the room, a camel brown leather recliner with pieces of duct tape across the armrests faced a television and microwave. They sat side-by-side on a picnic table bench.
She frowned. "What shall we watch? TV or microwave?"
Moving further inside, she noticed a desk, chair, computer and other electronic devices behind the cubicle divider. An open doorway beside it led to a small washroom with a shower stall.
"All the comforts of home," she said in disbelief.
Except something was missing.
There was not one single toy, not one picture book, nothing to indicate the existence of the children.
Guardedly, she approached the door at the end of the room. She stopped and sniffed, wrinkling her nose at the acrid scent of smoke.
"That's our front door," Pink Ashley said.
Sadie spotted another door, a narrow one that blended into the wall by the kitchen. Beside it was an alphabetical keypad.
Awful lot of security for a home.
"What's in there?" she asked.
"The dungeon," Blue Adam said. "Where we thleep. You—"
"That's father's bedroom," Pink Ashley interrupted, pointing to another door half-hidden between two shelves.
Sadie turned in a slow circle, taking in the eccentricities of the bunker. It was far more intricate and spacious than she had first thought.
Children of the Fog Page 20
