“Mine,” he said. The hunger in his voice was unmistakable. His voice was cultured and raw at the same time. He was tall and lithe, and he moved with an elegant economy of movement, almost like he was dancing. But he was ugly. Features that should have been handsome or powerful were merely greedy and sickening. He was hairless and naked, and John saw that he had no genitalia.
After all that had happened, John found that the most shocking thing of all. He’d thought maybe the rain would be recognisable. Something understandable. But it was alien to humans. It was humanoid in shape, but it wasn’t human. Not at all. It could wear a man’s skin, but it would never be a man.
John imagined the rage it must feel. He understood. At last he understood Rain’s giant rage. Rain’s wife had a child by a mortal lover. Something it could never do.
Rain was held back by the Lady’s power, but he wasn’t beaten. His face was full of idiot lust, sickening and grotesque in its force. Rain glanced to the box and back to the bed, where Karen lay. He stepped forward, pushing against the Lady’s power. Electricity crackled through the room. John felt his hair stand on end as he watched the silent struggle between forces he could never understand.
Rain was halfway across the room when Smiley leaped forward with a cry that broke John’s heart. Smiley punched Rain in the back of the head. The fury John felt pouring from Smiley should have felled a giant, but Rain just hunched his shoulders and took the blow, then he lashed out, and his punch sent Smiley head over heels through the air. John saw blood explode from Smiley’s nose and the drops hang on the air, like he was watching everything happen underwater. But if it had been underwater, the boy wouldn’t have landed with such a sickening thump. He didn’t get up.
“No!” Mandy rushed at Rain. John saw him close his eyes. This time, he didn’t even move. She fell to the floor like she’d been hit with a club.
Rain’s eyes were black and his skin paler than the moon. He didn’t know life. Why would something like him care how many he killed? He wasn’t insane. No more insane than a child who kicks a dog, not out of spite, but just because it is in the way.
“She was always mine, John,” he said.
“Give me back my wife.”
John heard the woman on the floor groan. Jane … Yes. Jane. He couldn’t worry about her. Mabel would have to do that. Right now, it came down to whether he lived or died. His life, his wife’s life, his friends, all were in his hands.
“She’s mine too. They’re both mine.”
“Karen was never yours. You couldn’t make something as beautiful as her. All you can do is destroy.”
“I will have them both.”
“You’re a bastard. No wonder your wife left you.”
Rain shook his head. There was no anger there. Maybe amusement.
“No, John. You’re wrong. I …”
But Rain didn’t finish the sentence. Jane rose and threw something at him. It was just an underhand toss, but it could just as easily have been fired from a gun. It hit his back and kept going, right through his chest.
Rain threw his head back and roared. The thing Jane had thrown dropped through the hole and to the carpet. It was a human finger.
Rain turned, in rage at last, and Jane threw another finger at him. He moved so fast that it seemed to John he was in one place and then another without ever being in between.
He reached down and grabbed Jane by the hair and pulled her to her feet. She cried out and tried to hit him with her hand. John saw that her fingers were missing. Rain grabbed her wrist and held her with no more effort than if she’d been a child.
John moved. Not as fast, but Rain wasn’t looking, and it was fast enough.
“Give her to me and I’ll let her live,” said Rain.
John felt cold calm settle over him.
“Fuck you and your wife,” he said and held the glass jar out at arm’s length, directly over the lockbox. “Let her go, or I drop it.”
Blood and bone and tooth and hair, thought John.
“Let’s see what happens when her blood hits the box.”
*
Chapter Fifty-Nine
The Lady was silent. John didn’t know if she was afraid. He didn’t know if she could feel fear. What was fear to something that was nigh on immortal?
John was sure Rain didn’t feel fear. Rage was boiling from him.
“You’d sacrifice your wife?”
John couldn’t blink. He couldn’t look away from Rain. His wife was right there, on the bed. She wasn’t moving, and he wanted nothing more than to give Rain whatever he wanted just so he would go away. But he held Jane Walker’s life in his hands.
On a whim, Rain could kill her. He could kill them all. There was more at stake than his wife. If he gave Rain his wife, would he leave? Could John let him leave? Rain had killed his town. How many deaths could be laid at Rain’s feet?
“I see you thinking, John. I don’t like it.”
“I’m half past giving a fuck what you think,” said John.
“John …”
“What, Mabel?”
“John … the water …”
“Wh-”
The water in the jar was boiling. There was a space in the jar at the top that had been full of air. Now it was full of steam. The water itself roiled within the jar, and the jar was getting hot.
“Put her down, John March. I’ll let you live.”
The jar was getting too hot to hold.
On the bed, Karen March, once the daughter of the Johns, but once, too, child of David and Bridget, gasped and sat up.
The jar exploded, sending shards into John’s hand, and the fluid, heavier than mere water, fell into the box along with the tooth.
*
Chapter Sixty
Mabel picked up the bone on the floor while Rain was transfixed by the woman rising from the box.
The room shone with blinding, stunning light. Pure as mist and dew. Deeper than the thickest fog. Lighter than the air.
Mabel swung the bone so hard her shoulder dislocated, but she didn’t feel it.
Rain screamed and dropped Jane. He hit Mabel with the back of his hand and pulled back his other hand to lash out again, but Jane gripped his arm with her ghost fingers, and he screamed again, a shrill scream of pure agony.
Mabel smiled at the sound of it, even through the pain of her shattered cheekbone. Then her knees gave way and she crumpled to the floor.
Jane’s dead hand burned the skin at Rain’s wrist. He shook from the pain, lost in it. It was driven by David Hill and all the unquiet dead. Jane took strength from them. She pressed down as hard as she could, as hard as the dead could squeeze. She felt whatever passed for Rain’s bones shatter under her grip. He punched her again and again in blind fury, punching her with his free hand, but even as her lips broke and her teeth shattered, she held on.
Eventually, his fist caught her in the temple and she fell to the floor. The room went white and cold … so cold.
The room was swimming. She felt like she was looking at the room through the bottom of a glass of water.
John was shouting out and holding his wife’s head in his hands. Jane struggled to rise. Mrs. March. That was why she was here. Mrs. March was convulsing. She needed help. But when Jane pushed herself to her knees, her arms gave way and she fell back down again.
Then a woman’s voice filled the room.
“No,” said the Lady, and as if by the force of her voice alone, everything stopped.
*
Chapter Sixty-One
Her voice was bigger than the sky.
She shone, but she was terrifying even as her rage was a thing of beauty.
“No!”
Rain backed away.
“You came back …”
On the bed, ignored by all, John March held his wife as she choked and shuddered and then stopped breathing.
“You would take my daughter in my place?”
“I …”
“You will not take my daugh
ter!”
“I’ll do whatever I please!” roared Rain.
John spoke, but his voice came out as a whisper. He knelt on the bed, his wife’s head cradled in his lap.
“She’s dying,” he said. But nobody heard him.
The Lady grew, and Rain shrank back. She grew within the confines of the room until the room was too small to hold her.
“You will not take my daughter!”
The ceiling cracked and fell around her, and still she grew. Rain blew apart and tried to flee, but she was too big. She broke through the roof, and the tiles and timbers were thrown up into the sky.
Rain cried out in frustration, but she shouted and the town shook. She opened her mouth and drew in a breath.
Everything was still but for one vast breath. It carried on until the sound was deafening. A roaring, raging tempest blackening the sky. Wind swirled and howled, and the rain drove at her, but she carried on breathing. Sucking it in. Taking the rain inside and holding it where it belonged until there wasn’t a drop left in the sky.
The Lady shrank down through the sky and swirled in the room, turned to the bed and John and her daughter.
John cradled Karen’s head in his hands. Tears poured down his face.
“My daughter …”
John kissed his wife’s forehead over and over.
“My daughter,” said the Lady. As with her rage, her grief was a thing to move deserts and crumble mountains.
“You killed her.”
“No, John, no …”
“You killed her! You and him, you killed her!”
“No, John,” said Jane as she walked shakily to the bed and took Karen’s hand in her own. She had no fingers on that hand, but somehow she held his wife’s wrist.
“No, John,” she said again, but her voice was strange. “Do you remember what I said in the letter?”
Even in his grief, John could still be shocked.
“How is this possible?”
“How can you ask that, after all this? Remember, John. What did I tell you?” “That I had to let go,” he sobbed through his heartbreak. He pulled his wife to his chest and cried into her hair. “You told me that she died when the car hit her. I have to … I’m not ready!”
Jane held John’s cheek tenderly in her whole hand as he stroked his wife’s hair and cried.
“You never got to say goodbye, John.”
The Lady stood beside Jane and put her hand on her shoulder. There was love in her eyes. Love for her daughter and love for her husband. John saw that she could love. Despite his anger and his grief, he was moved.
He was moved by a father’s love, because although Jane was still Jane, Mr. Hill’s features overlaid hers so that the two faces were there at once.
He was moved beyond words for a father’s love that could come back from the grave.
“I came back to give you what I could never leave you, John. I came back so that you could say goodbye.”
Mr. Hill’s ghost fingers put Karen’s hand down. He laid his hand on her cheek and placed a kiss on her forehead. Karen’s eyes opened, and she looked up at John. She blinked. Looked around the room. There was a moment of confusion in her eyes, but then the confusion was gone, and the intelligence that John had once loved so well was there, over everything, washing away everything.
There were people in the room, groaning, shifting. The smell of blood and rot and misty mornings, but none of that mattered. It didn’t matter at all, because the only thing John could see was the light of life in his wife’s eyes.
“John.”
He couldn’t speak. His throat was dry. He swallowed, working moisture into his mouth.
“Karen … Oh, Karen. I’ve missed you. I’ve missed you so much.”
“John,” she said. She smiled at him. The Lady was beautiful, but her daughter outshone her in every way.
John kissed his wife’s cheek. Put his mouth to her skin and left it there.
She reached around him and pulled him into an embrace.
“I’m dead, aren’t I?”
John could only nod. Karen looked at the Lady and Jane. She didn’t see Jane. She saw a tired old man with a loving smile on his face.
“Who are you?”
“I’m Mr. Hill,” he said.
Even from beyond the grave, he wasn’t brave enough to tell her who he was. John did it for him.
“Karen, this is David. David Hill. He’s your true father. And this is your mother.”
“You’re dead too, aren’t you?” she said to her father.
David Hill nodded. “I’m sorry, Karen. I’m sorry.”
Karen smiled at them and pushed John’s head up. She turned her gaze from John to her father, then her mother. She beamed at them all.
For a moment, John could almost forget that she was dead.
“You came for me? You all came for me?”
Mr. Hill nodded. “It’s time to go, daughter.”
“To the next place?”
He nodded again. “I came back for you. It’s glorious, Karen.”
She looked at her mother. “And you?”
“I can’t go there. But my love can. It will follow you wherever you go.”
“And mine,” said John. He couldn’t stop his tears. His last vision of his wife was swimming, and he wanted to see her clearly, but he couldn’t see.
“John. Please. Don’t cry. I’m happy. I had terrible dreams, and now they’ve gone. This was always how it was supposed to be. I loved you more than life, John. I clung to life because I wanted to see you, but I should have let you go.”
“No, don’t say that.”
“John. John.” She smiled at the taste of his name on her lips. “I have to go.”
“I love you, Karen.”
“I know,” she said. She kissed him. Her lips were still warm.
“John,” said Mr. Hill. “Say it. You need to say it.”
John shook his head. Tears dripped down his face.
“It’s OK, honey. I’m going to be OK. Tell me. Please. Let me go.”
“I … can’t.”
But he could. He was holding her here. No one else. She was ready to go. Mr. Hill’s letter to him was all true. She had died so long ago. She was dead the moment the car hit her, and she had stayed because he hadn’t been able to let go.
“Let go, John,” said the Lady softly.
Sometimes the dead have power over the living, he thought. But then he looked at his wife, and Mr. Hill. He thought the opposite could be just as true.
“Goodbye,” he said, and his final memory of his wife was her smile as the light left her eyes.
*
Chapter Sixty-Two
John closed his wife’s eyes with his fingertips. Only she wasn’t his wife. Not anymore. She was long gone. The face he looked at, peaceful at last, was just a memory.
“John.”
He looked up at the sound of the Lady’s voice. She was beautiful, but too beautiful to look on for long. How had David managed it?
“Our time has come.”
He nodded. Although he felt he should say something, he didn’t know where to start. Even in his grief and anger, he understood that they had done the best they could.
He tried to imagine what that must be like. How that must hurt. Being able to see the future but unable to touch it. Knowing you had to give your daughter up and that the only time you would ever see her again was when she was dead.
But in between, she’d loved, hadn’t she?
They’d seen the future. They’d seen him in their daughter’s life, and her inevitable death, and still they had set her free.
Any anger he felt fled. ‘Thank you’ didn’t seem right.
“Are you coming back again?”
What he really wanted to ask was if Rain was coming back again. He couldn’t face that. What good would it be to know the future?
“No, John. Our time has passed. David moves on. I return to the sky, where I belong.”
John
looked around the room. Smiley and Mandy had seated themselves against the wall. Smiley’s nose was broken. Mandy had an arm around Mabel’s shoulders. Mabel could be mistaken for one of the dead, but she caught John’s eye with a smile.
“Is … is the town dead?”
A look of infinite sadness passed the Lady’s eyes.
“Many are. Not everyone. If he had stayed longer, he would have taken them. I think he was insane, John …”
She shook her head. “No excuses. No reasons. There is nothing I can say. But …”
She raised her arms to the sky. Pulled the air down, fresh and clear. Pure air that was far sweeter than anything John had ever known. He closed his eyes and breathed it in. A soft breeze filled the room. The smell of the earth and the warmth of the sun suffused John. He closed his eyes and let the feeling cover him, envelop him.
He understood. This was the Lady’s way of saying thank you. Words weren’t her way. When she was happy she could affect the mood of all she touched. She was elemental, immortal, and so far beyond him he would never understand what she was trying to say, in the same way as he would never understand how it was that this planet, of all those among the stars, could contain a song within a smell, or an emotion in the rustle of the autumn leaves, or a memory in a raindrop.
His toes tingled in his shoes. His feet began to itch, and then the itch went away.
Something cracked in his chest, and the pain that had been present with every breath was no longer there. His cheek didn’t ache anymore. In fact, all his pains were gone, but it was more than that. He was alive when many were not. It was a terrible thing, an awful thing, but with the air in his lungs and the blue skies above, it was a wonderful thing too.
He felt like he’d been asleep for twelve hours in the most comfortable bed in the quietest place on earth and had woken up to find his belly full, his skin tight, and his head light.
John opened his eyes and looked at the Lady. He could meet her eye now. She didn’t need words. He smiled, and it felt good to do it.
Remember that, said the Lady, in his head. Remember, John. Through it all, life is ever sweet. Even immortals know that.
RAIN/Damned to Cold Fire (Two Supernatural Horror Novels): A RED LINE Horror Double: Supernatural Page 20
