by Brian Harmon
“Where’s Aiden? What did you do with him?”
The cowboy squinted at him in an ugly combination of puzzlement and snarling rage. “What are you talking about?”
Great. Now they were both being evasive. This was promising to be a long conversation and he was sure they didn’t have time for it.
He glanced back at the shadowy remains of the doorway again. It was so close. Too close. At any moment the old woman could emerge with those awful claws drawn, ready to spill the blood of anyone foolish enough to remain here for too long.
It was a miracle she hadn’t appeared already. He couldn’t help but wonder what she was waiting for.
“What’re you looking at?”
“Nothing.”
The gun came at Eric again. This time he dared to take two steps to the side. He wanted to keep that doorway in sight. Right now, at this exact moment in time, what mattered most was the shotgun. But if Granny stepped out onto the porch, he wasn’t entirely sure that weapon was going to be big enough to keep him from running.
The cowboy glared at him. But now his eyes also twitched toward the ruins. He was taking it all in, judging the situation. “What were you doing in there?”
“Looking for a place to go pee. Small bladder. It’s really embarrassing.”
For the third time, the gun was thrust at him. For the third time, he lurched backward and to the side.
The cowboy swore at him. He spit the words like venom, the hatred in his voice crystal clear. It was a colorfully constructed profanity, as well. In a single, vulgar sentence, he managed to suggest that Eric was cursed by a higher power, participated in specific homosexual activities, was a prostitute and that he was sexually active with somebody’s mother, although it wasn’t clear whose.
“That was beautiful, sir. Truly inspiring.”
“Shut. The. Fuck. Up.” With each word, he jabbed Eric firmly in the chest with the barrel of the shotgun, forcing him back a couple more steps.
Eric decided it was time to do as he was told.
“I should just shoot you right now.”
Eric shook his head. He didn’t care for that idea.
“Not in the head. Not in the heart. No. That’s not good enough.” He lowered the gun and pressed it against Eric’s belly. “Right there. Tear your filthy guts to ribbons inside you, let you die slow and screaming.”
Eric swallowed hard. This guy had the psycho turned way up.
“How does that sound?”
“Like it would really ruin my day.”
“I’m thinking it would, yeah.” Now some of the rage in the cowboy’s swollen eyes was replaced by a strangely unsettling gleam. “Do you have any idea how many hours it’ll take for you to die like that?”
Jesus! He’s really enjoying this! Eric felt sick. He recalled his first meeting with this lunatic in the empty restaurant and how he’d bragged about frightening people into committing suicide at the sight of his monstrous projections.
How many people had this man murdered over the years? How many of them had he tortured mercilessly?
“Now,” said the cowboy as he pressed the gun more firmly into Eric’s too-soft gut. “Why don’t you just give it to me?”
“Give you what? I still don’t know what you want.”
Eric wasn’t sure how far he could push this guy before he pulled the trigger. If he was telling the truth about how long it would take to die from a round in the belly, there was nothing to keep him from doing just that. But the fact that he hadn’t shot him already suggested that the cowboy still needed him for something.
The cowboy glared at him. The hatred in those bloodshot eyes was still clear, but there was also a smugness there. “Let’s start with whatever you’re holding in your hand.”
Eric’s eyes flittered down toward his right hand, still clenched at his side. “I don’t have anything in my hand.”
“Sure you don’t.”
He stared back at the man, not speaking.
“Now.”
Eric lifted his fists and held them up for the cowboy to see.
“Drop it.”
Eric hesitated. Then he opened his hands.
They were empty.
The cowboy looked from one empty hand to the other.
“Told you.”
While he was threatening to shoot him in the belly and doom him to a slow, agonizing death, Eric had taken advantage of the lunatic’s obvious and perverse enjoyment and slipped the shard of glass into his pocket unnoticed.
“Where is it?”
“I still don’t know what you’re talking about.”
The cowboy stepped forward, shoving the gun deeper into Eric’s belly and forcing him back another step. “Don’t fucking lie to me!”
Eric didn’t say anything.
“I saw you run out of there! I know you found something!”
“It was scary in there. I just had to get out.”
With a growl, the cowboy withdrew the gun from Eric’s belly and then thrust it forward hard, jabbing him in the gut and knocking the wind from him.
He staggered backward, gasping for breath, and fell to the ground. The back of his already aching head struck the trunk of a dead maple tree.
“Tell me!”
Eric rolled onto his side and coughed. “There’s nothing in there,” he managed. “It’s empty. Go see for yourself.”
The cowboy spat more vulgarities and kicked him hard in the back.
Eric cried out in pain.
This guy was seriously an asshole. Eric was definitely not adding him to his Christmas card list.
With even more creatively obscene curses, the cowboy seized a handful of Eric’s hair and hauled him painfully to his knees. He was then knocked back to the ground by a swift punch to the side of the head that left him sprawled face-down in the dirt.
“Obviously, this is getting us nowhere,” panted the overweight cowboy as he mopped the sweat from his vast forehead. “So here’s what we’re going to do. I’m going to start shooting holes in you, starting at your feet. And you can decide when you’re ready to tell me how to find that goddamn schoolhouse. What do you say to that?”
Eric said the only thing that came into his dazed mind: “Oh crap…”
A heavy foot crushed down on the back of his knee, forcing a grunt of pain from him. “Now hold still. This is going to hurt like a bitch.”
Eric struggled, his heart thundering. He couldn’t wrench his leg from under the fat cowboy’s boot. And any second now he was going to experience a new threshold of agony.
But the shotgun didn’t go off. Instead, he heard the cowboy shout, “Who the fuck are you?”
Eric’s eyes, squeezed shut in anticipation of the pain he expected, flashed open and darted to the remains of the house. There, standing in the doorway, just as he saw her the first time, was the old woman in her ragged housecoat and scarf. Like before, her face was hidden in unnatural darkness.
Oh crap.
“What is this?” bellowed the cowboy. “What’s going on?”
But the woman did not answer.
Still standing on the back of Eric’s knee, he lifted the shotgun and pointed it at the woman, threatening her. “Answer me, you bitch!”
The woman lifted her hands. Like the first time, long, gleaming blades protruded from her fingers.
The cowboy released Eric and took two steps toward the woman. He pulled the trigger. The gun boomed. And yet the woman did not even flinch.
Eric had seen enough. He lifted himself onto his hands and knees and began to crawl away.
The cowboy discharged the empty shell and reloaded a fresh one from his pocket with impressive speed. And yet his second shot was just as pointless as the first. A puff of dust kicked up behind the woman, yet she remained standing where she was, as if the shot had passed right through her.
Having withdrawn several yards from the confrontation, Eric rose to his feet and began to back away.
The cowboy ejected the second shell,
but as soon as he reached for a third, the woman dashed toward him, her claws raised.
He cursed bitterly and began to stumble backward, away from the horrible phantom.
Eric continued to back away, determined not to let them out of his sight, convinced that razor claws or buckshot would pierce his skin the moment he turned his back.
But neither seemed to notice him.
The cowboy dropped the shotgun and thrust his hand forward, as if throwing something at the woman. At the same instant, one of those large, pale monsters leapt out of thin air and darted toward the woman.
Without hesitation, she slashed the pathetic creature and reduced it to a splash of black goo.
The cowboy threw out a second creature, then a third. Both met the same fate and the woman drew ever closer.
Desperately, he hurled a fourth, a fifth, a sixth. To Eric, it looked as if these last three were deformed, as if in his panic, he was losing his concentration, unable to keep them whole. The seventh one lurched from his hand as if injured, grotesquely twisted and barely able to stand.
The woman dispatched it as easily as the rest and then she was upon him. Her claws moved almost too fast for Eric to see, slashing at the cowboy’s flabby belly.
Although he’d struck terror into him multiple times today, this man now let loose the most undignified scream Eric had ever heard uttered by a grown man in his life.
The woman carved him up like a machine, shredding his flesh and clothes alike, spraying blood high into the air. As Eric watched, horrified, he saw a terrible face emerge from the darkness beneath her scarf. Aiden had referred to this thing as a vengeful spirit, but if that was true, it had turned far from whatever old woman it may have once been. Screaming eyes, wide and hollow, bulged from the shadowy plane of her concealed skull and a wide, gaping mouth began to open, stretching impossibly wide and revealing row after row of gray and crooked teeth.
He took one more step back and tripped over a thorny thicket of brush, falling backward to the ground. He scrambled quickly back to his feet and looked back at the terrible scene before him just in time to see the cowboy’s lifeless body fall to the ground, leaving his bald, bandaged head in the woman’s taloned hands.
Then she turned her grotesque face on Eric.
Chapter Thirty-Six
Smart enough to know when it was time to leave, Eric turned and ran as hard as he could go toward the street.
He didn’t have to look over his shoulder to know the frightful woman was following him. He could feel her back there, like a cold, foul wind pressing at his back. Her claws were raised, ready to finish what she started that morning. This time, however, her talons were already dripping with blood.
Cursing loudly, he propelled himself across the weed-choked lawn and toward the sidewalk, forcing himself to keep his eyes forward.
There was nothing behind him but terror.
He didn’t understand this woman. If she was lurking inside the ruins all that time, then why did she wait so long to emerge? Why not rush out and slash him to pieces when he first arrived? And where were her vicious, black pets?
The sidewalk was right there. Just a few more seconds and he would reach it. On the other side, where the faded, dirty asphalt of the street began, the world was normal again. Over there, this lot did not exist. Over there were no murderous hags with kitchen knives for fingers. All he had to do was cross that sidewalk, just like he did that morning.
But a cold, bony hand seized his arm with unnatural strength and yanked him to a jarring stop. Cold blades bit into his flesh, wrenching from his lips a frightful cry. So close to freedom, he was wrenched back, away from the street, so that he was now gazing into that horrid darkness of the woman’s face.
The terrible visage he had seen as she shredded the cowboy had disappeared into that unnatural shadow again, but only inches away, he could see the faint outline of her face peering out at him. No longer shrieking and howling with unearthly rage, she again looked like the emaciated corpse he’d witnessed inside the ruined house through the glass shard.
She leaned close to him, her wicked claws digging deeper into his arm, pinching his flesh. He could feel warm blood dripping down to his elbow and wondered whether that blood was his or the cowboy’s.
Mere feet from where he stood, a white minivan drove by without pausing, its driver utterly unaware of him and his phantom assailant. It was a grim reminder that no one was going to help him. No one could even hear him scream.
And yet, somehow he was still alive.
With a breath that smelled of foul decay, the woman uttered a single, whispered word: “Evancurt…”
And with that, the spirit vanished.
Eric stood in the weeds near the sidewalk, trembling, his heart pounding in his chest, blood dripping down his arm, staring out at the empty, silent lot around him.
He couldn’t even see the cowboy’s mutilated body from here. It was as if none of it had ever happened.
Except for the cuts on his arm. Except for the swelling beneath his left eye where he’d been punched. Except for the bruises left on his body by the shotgun barrel and a cowboy boot. Those remained real. Those didn’t vanish into thin air.
Still trembling with the adrenaline of these experiences, he stepped onto the sidewalk and then turned and walked away.
He’d found no answers on Hosler Avenue today. Only more questions. What was the blue shard of glass? Why did the old woman spare him? And who was Evancurt? Why did the old woman utter that name instead of cutting him to pieces like she did the cowboy?
He was growing weary of all this mystery.
The Spice Girls informed him that he had a call on the iPhone. He withdrew the phone and saw without surprise that it was Isabelle.
“God, Eric, you’re going to give me a heart attack one of these days.”
“Me first, I’m sure. What the hell was that all about? Any idea?”
“No clue. That was epically weird.”
“Not just the pissed off old woman’s ghost,” agreed Eric.
“No. The cowboy too.”
“I know. What was he even doing there?” He’d been spying on them all day. But he didn’t know how dangerous Hosler Avenue was? Had he overheard nothing about the vengeful spirit that lurked there? It wasn’t just a dangerous amount of cockiness. He acted like he knew nothing about the ghost when he saw her standing in that doorway.
“And he didn’t exactly put up much of a fight,” added Isabelle.
Eric nodded. “He threw those projections at her and she just walked right through them.”
“Why didn’t he use the aura plasma?”
Eric thought about this for a moment and then offered a suggestion. “Maybe he couldn’t. It happened so fast. Maybe it requires more concentration than he had time to muster.”
“Maybe. But it all seems too convenient to me.”
“I know.” He pulled the blue shard of glass from his pocket and turned it over in his fingers.
“And what’s the deal with that thing?”
Another good question. “It showed me the old woman when I looked through it. She was just standing in the corner, watching me. Then she was right in my face.”
“I know. I almost peed myself.”
Bracing himself for a repeat of that nightmare experience, Eric lifted it to his eye and peered through it again. But all he saw was the street as it was without the glass, except tinted blue.
“Well, we know it’s not just an ordinary piece of broken glass if it allowed you to see that ghost.”
“I guess…”
“It must be what Glen hid there.”
It certainly seemed so. Eric studied the strange, blue shard. The spirit clearly chose to reveal herself to them in the doorway. Had she intended for him to see her standing in the corner? Or had the glass revealed her against her will?
Was that what this thing did? Did it reveal what was hidden?
Because he could have used something like that earlier in th
e day.
“Aiden said the schoolhouse might be a kind of alpha structure,” she reminded him. “He said it might have created all the other unseen places in town. Wasn’t it you who suggested that such a place might be even more unseen than the others?”
Eric nodded. He did, in fact, pose that question back in the library.
“Maybe it’s too far hidden for even him to see. Maybe you need something to help reveal it.”
Eric stared at the shard. “A key of sorts.”
“Exactly.”
The key to the secret lies in ruins.
This was that key.
But how did he use it? “I still don’t know where the schoolhouse is. Aiden’s measurements didn’t add up. It’s showing him six different locations.”
Isabelle didn’t have an answer for that. She fell quiet.
Speaking of Aiden, Eric still had no idea where he was. The cowboy refused to say what he’d done with him. And he certainly wouldn’t be telling now.
What the hell was he supposed to do?
He looked down at his arm. The cuts weren’t that deep, but he was still bleeding a little. He could use some bandages.
“I sent Kevin a message. He’s on his way back to pick you up.”
“Thanks.”
“Sure.”
Eric received another call on the phone. Fumbling with the call waiting, he switched it over and heard the mysterious old man’s voice rasping in his ear: “Where are you? Time is running out!”
“I don’t know what you want me to do! I have the glass. Is that what you want?”
“Spiral down! Turn back the clock! Sixteen! You have to hurry!”
“I’m sorry, but I just don’t understand.”
“Twisted! Everything gets twisted when you go deeper!”
“Twisted how? What are you saying?”
But the line fell dead again.
Eric stared at the phone. He felt more lost than ever. Where was Aiden? Was he dead? Had he failed him utterly?
The phone sang in his hand. This time it was Karen. It seemed everybody wanted some attention.
“Are you okay? Where are you?”
“I’m over on Hosler again.”
“Hosler? Tell me you’re not going back to see that devil woman again.”
