Dinner ended calmly enough, but when the man at the head of the table instructed Donnie to clear the table, things quickly took a turn for the worst.
The boy dropped a fork, and the entire house went silent while the tines rang out in prolonged vibration. Donnie cringed as he stared at his father’s face, watching as the man closed his eyes and then took a deep breath in through his nose.
Then he shot out of his chair with such speed that it toppled loudly behind him. The boys watched as their mother bowed her head and began to move her lips silently.
Perhaps this was her turn to pray.
Donnie started to whimper.
‘What’s wrong with you, boy?’ the man shouted. He reached over and grabbed the boy by his long blond hair.
Donnie screamed.
For some reason—for an unknown reason that even many years later would still remain unresolved—Walter also rose from his chair.
‘Don’t,” Walter whispered, tears streaming down his face now.
The man in the overalls turned, his thick fingers still twisted in the younger boy’s hair. He seemed to tighten his grip as he eyed his eldest son. Donnie cried out again, and twisted to look at his brother.
‘Please,’ Donnie mouthed, but it wasn’t clear if he meant ‘Please, stop him,’ or if altruism had sunk in its often dulled teethed and he meant, ‘Please, don’t anger him further; don’t let you become the focus of his rage as well.’
But the thin, balding man would never challenge his eldest son, for reasons that would never become clear.
Why not me?
That was another question that would forever rack his brain.
‘Don’t,’ Walter repeated.
‘What did you say to me, boy?’
He let go of his youngest son, and Donnie fell to the ground in a heap.
‘What—did—you—say?’
Walter held his ground.
‘Leave him alone.’ His voice was still but a whisper, but his words were powerful enough.
His father clenched and unclenched his fists, but the anger in his face was already fading.
The man turned to watch Donnie clamber to his feet, and almost reached out to grab him as he hurried past. But Walter held his gaze until his brother was safely behind him.
‘Go, Donnie,’ Walter said over his shoulder to his brother. ‘Run and don’t ever come back.’
Something flicked across his father’s eyes, but neither brother was sure what it was.
Shame. It had to be shame. After all, it couldn’t be satisfaction, could it?
21.
There was a mask on his face, and although it only covered his nose and mouth, it pushed up against his bottom eyelids, blurring his vision.
Help me, he tried to say, but the only thing that he could manage was a weak gasp that fogged the mask.
His throat burned, and his mouth tasted is if he had lunched on ashtray full of cigar butts. The man blinked hard, trying to clear the clouds that drifted across his vision.
The last thing he remembered was running into a burning house, searching for his…
“Kent!” he shouted, and this time he managed to force the words out in a throaty gasp. The mask fogged, and he suddenly reached up to tear it off.
He only got as far as pulling the left side away before someone grabbed his hand and stayed his progress.
“Kent!” he shouted again. He was suddenly overcome by a coughing fit, and his body was racked with shudders. The mask slipped back down over his nose and mouth, and he breathed deeply, trying desperately to catch his breath.
When the feeling finally passed, he brought his hands to the mask again, but this time he remained outwardly in control.
On the inside, though, his mind was as frantic as ever.
Please. Please tell me that they got Kent out!
He blinked hard again, trying to stem the tears that threatened to once again cloud his vision.
This time he managed to slip the mask down off his face, and breathed in slowly through his nose.
“Kent?” he whispered.
A face suddenly filled his vision, one that he recognized, one that he had first seen what seemed like months ago when he and Kent had made their way to the police department to tell what then seemed a fantastical story.
After what they had seen since, however, it now seemed almost benign.
A dead girl, a cellar full of ghosts.
“I’m sorry,” Sheriff White said, shaking his head slowly.
The man started to cry.
“I’m sorry,” the sheriff repeated. “I’m so sorry, Greg—your son didn’t make it.”
“No,” Greg moaned. “Nooooo!”
His mind, like his vision, started to narrow into a black void. His hands started shake, and the rest of his body followed suit.
As Greg Griddle faded into unconsciousness, he heard Sheriff White shout.
“Help! He’s seizing! Let’s get some help over here!”
22.
Greg knew that he was in a hospital room. He knew not only because of the ubiquitous beeps and boops, or because of the fact that there was a respirator on his face and a crisp white sheet pulled up to his armpits. He knew because of the smell—the slightly aseptic, rubbing alcohol scent tinged with a pureness that only meant one thing: hospital.
He heard another sound, and his eyes snapped open, half expecting a cracker to be at the foot of his bed, staring up at him with that horrible, oscillating mouth.
But the room was empty, a white void of which he was the only inhabitant, save, of course, the box of medical machinery and the IV bag jammed into the back of his hand.
Kent. My boy, my champ.
Greg started to cry. He remembered the fire and running back into the burning house after pulling the girl with the fake leg out of the basement. And he remembered ignoring the deputy’s pleas, his words shouting that Kent was gone, that he was dead.
And then he remembered waking up, being pulled from the soot and ash, rising like a phoenix.
He had conceded his death.
And he had lost.
“Kent,” he whispered. Then he brought a hand to his face and wiped the tears away.
The door to his room suddenly opened, and a woman stepped through. She was attractive, with short blonde hair tucked behind her ears and round red lips. She looked tired, though, with dark circles beneath her eyes. For a second, Greg didn’t recognize her—the last time he had seen Nancy Whitaker, she had been filthy, her face and hair smeared with grease and grime, her once yellow dress covered in cracker blood or guts, or whatever the white stuff was that oozed out of them when they were shot.
Crackers—where did they come from? And… and… did they get Kent? Is that what happened to him?
Greg closed his eyes again, and when he opened them, Nancy was hovering over him, a sad expression on her pretty face.
“Do you remember me?” she asked softly.
Greg nodded and wiped away more tears.
“I’m very sorry to hear about your son, Greg, about Kent. So, so sorry.”
Just hearing his late son’s name brought about another bout of tears.
Kent—my champ. Dead before his sixteenth birthday. Dead before he went to college, had his first bender, and probably fucked his first girl. Christ, I don’t even know if he even got a chance to kiss a girl.
His mind wandered to his son’s round face, his freckles, his short red hair. He thought about the way Kent had a hard time making decisions, how he was still finding out who he was, but despite this, he always had a half smirk on his face.
His smirk.
The Griddle Grin.
Nancy leaned down and hugged him as best she could given that he was lying in the hospital bed.
But the Griddle Grin was gone now, vanished—gone when Kent had disappeared, after an Askergan police cruiser had come to pick him up.
Gone now that Kent was dead.
Greg kept sobbing, and reached up to hug Nanc
y back.
It was all his fault, of course; after all, he had been the one that had taken Kent fishing, and then he had taken him to the Askergan Police Station to tell his story.
And Tyler—he’d also taken Tyler.
“What about Tyler?” he managed, and Nancy pulled back a few inches.
She shook her head slowly, and Greg’s tears returned.
It was all his fault.
“What happened?” Nancy asked when they finally let go of each other. Greg thought that she had been crying too, but wasn’t completely certain.
“I don’t know,” Greg replied, turning to look out the hospital window. Rays of sunlight leaked through the double-paned glass, but he couldn’t tell if it was dawn or dusk outside.
“What do you remember?” Nancy prodded.
Greg continued to stare out the window, contemplating, for a moment, what she meant by the question. Nancy had been there when the crackers had attacked the police station—she knew about them, as did most Askergan residents, provided they had eyes at the front of their heads.
No, it was clear that she wanted to know about something else; she wanted to know what had happened at the abandoned house. The one that Greg knew was at the center of all of this shit…
“The crackers,” he whispered at last. “They were everywhere. They seemed to be either coming from the house or coming to the house.” He swallowed hard. “We tried to burn the house down—wanted to burn it down, to put an end to it all—but then we heard a voice… there was a girl and she was shouting at us, ‘down here, down here’, or something like that. And we got her, pulled her out of the basement. But Kent—Kent, he—”
Greg shut his eyes, unable to continue.
Nancy nodded as if she understood his plight, as if anyone could, and then she reached for his hand.
“Do you know what happened to your son? To Kent?”
Greg shook his head.
“Maybe, maybe—no, not maybe, she knows. The girl from the basement knows. Crackers, maybe? Probably.”
“Corina,” Nancy whispered abjectly.
“Corina?” he repeated.
In his mind, he had always referred to her as the girl. He might have heard her name once, from Jared or Coggins, or someone else, but the smoke and fumes from the burning Estate had done something to his memory. Either way, the name was new to him now.
Nancy looked at him, her expression confused. Evidently, she had assumed Greg had known her name, maybe even knew her.
“She knows what happened to Kent,” he said. “What’s her last name?”
Nancy tried to withdraw her hand and step away from the bed, but Greg grabbed her, holding her fast.
“What’s her name?” he asked again, anger creeping into his voice.
A pained expression fell over Nancy’s face, but Greg refused to let go.
“What’s her name?” he demanded.
“You’re hurting me.”
Kent was hurting too, most likely, before he died—and so what’s a little pain to you? Why should you get to live, while he dies?
Greg ground his teeth and squeezed Nancy’s hand even harder. Tears formed in her eyes, but he knew they weren’t from pain—it would take more than a sore hand to make this woman cry. No, the tears were from something else.
Reality suddenly hit him like a ton of bricks.
What am I doing?
Greg immediately let go of her hand, and Nancy promptly pulled it to her side and stepped back from the gurney.
“I’m sorry,” Greg grumbled, averting his eyes. “I’m sorry.”
It finally dawned on him how strange it was that she was here. After all, she wasn’t ACPD or from the sheriff’s department, although Greg was beginning to think that they might somehow be one and the same here in Askergan. And she wasn’t a friend—they had only met a few nights ago. They had been through a lot together, but she must have had family to attend to, somewhere better to be than here with a near stranger.
Nancy Whitaker—a name he only knew because he had overheard the sheriff or deputies use it when referring to her.
So why was she here?
Greg opened his mouth to ask her as much, when her eyes suddenly went soft.
“Lawrence,” she whispered.
“Pardon?”
“Her name is Corina Lawrence,” she repeated, and then quickly turned and left the room before Greg could ask her anything else.
For a moment, he just stared at the door as it swung back and forth before coming to a rest.
What a strange visit.
“Lawrence,” he whispered into the empty room. One of the machines to his left answered with a beep.
Greg’s eyes slowly closed, and he breathed long and deep, trying to bring on sleep. He tried to picture his son’s face, but the only thing that came to him was the girl’s dirt-smeared face as he pulled her out of the basement.
Corina Lawrence.
Large green eyes, scared, but also somehow guilty.
Corina Lawrence knows what happened to my son.
Greg’s eyes snapped open.
He yanked the IV out of the back of his hand and removed the monitor from his index finger. As he swung his legs over the side of the bed, his head spun a little, and he paused.
The machines around him were beeping more frantically than usual, drawing a portly nurse through the door a split second later.
“Mr. Griddle, you need to lie back down!”
Corina Lawrence, you know what happened to my son, don’t you?
“Mr. Griddle?”
You know, and you are going to tell me. I need to know.
Greg stood, putting a hand on the bed for support. He spied his clothes, all covered in smoke and ash, in the corner, and he hobbled over to them and began getting dressed, completely ignoring the nurse.
His throat burned and his head was still spinning, but he thought he could manage, that passing out was not imminent.
He would find Corina Lawrence, but first he would find his son. He would find Kent’s body, and then he would find the girl.
“Mr. Griddle?”
The nurse wasn’t really there of course, no one was there.
Only Greg and Kent were real.
Only Greg and his champ.
Greg left the hospital room without looking back, knowing that there was one place that he could go to find some answers.
23.
Carter Duke brought the bottle of beer to his lips and leaned back in his lawn chair so that he didn’t actually have to expend the effort to raise his arm further and tilt his head back.
Naw, this was better; this was easier. And God, did that beer taste good—cold, bubbly, and fucking good.
He licked his lips and spoke to Pike, who sat quietly beside him.
“You think this’ll work?”
Carter stared out at the barren expanse in front the church. A slight wind picked up some loose dirt and tossed it into the air like confetti.
Carter chuckled.
And I bringeth the wind, he thought, fingering his white collar.
He took another sip of beer and then pulled on his cigarette, watching the dirt as it swirled and then dissipated. Only after the dirt was completely gone did Pike answer him.
“This is a dangerous place, Carter.”
Carter turned to his friend and partner.
“You clairvoyant now?”
The smirk was still on Carter’s face, but the man’s words were troubling. After all, nothing scared Pike.
Nothing.
When Pike continued to stare off into the distance, Carter took pause. He wondered briefly if his reaction had something to do with the priest—the fact that he had been attacked by those crab-things, whatever the fuck they were.
He shook the silliness from his head.
That wasn’t it; no matter how strange the creatures were, they were gone now. And the priest? Well, fuck him, he got what he deserved. Less than he deserved.
So what was it
, then?
Carter observed the man’s face. It was surprisingly free of nicks and scars, given that Carter had first “rescued” the man from the underground fighting circuit nearly two decades ago. Pike had been but a boy back then, a young ruffian, untrained, undisciplined, but my God even back then he could fight. Back then, there was no one that could take Pike in hand-to-hand combat, and like a fine wine, or in this case like a wine soured, more vinegar than nectar, he was even tougher with years gone by.
Carter was happy to have someone as loyal as Pike by his side, irrespective of his skills. Still, he wasn’t deluded enough to think that they didn’t come in handy, that they weren’t an amazing bonus. After all, in their line of work, they had many an opportunity to put his particular talents to use. And it went without saying that his skills would be needed again in Askergan.
Maybe even soon, because whatever Pike felt, whatever had inspired his comment, Carter felt something too. Maybe not danger, as Pike had proclaimed, but something. Good or bad, something was about to descend on this place, something that, despite what the townsfolk had already seen and experienced, would be eye-opening to say the least. It was the dirt in the air, the charged atmosphere, the heat, the tension; something was coming.
Carter turned away from Pike and joined him in staring at the swirling dust. He took a final drag from his cigarette and then flicked the butt.
Becoming the priest incumbent in Askergan had been easy, just as Carter had predicted. It was human nature: tragedy, especially the kind that was difficult to describe or understand, pushed people to institutions that were born of secrecy and the supernatural.
In this case, it was religion, but Carter had also seen people turn to the dark arts, the occult, and other clandestine disciplines that could only be found with some serious internet digging.
Others still resorted to revenge, which was another human trait that he planned on exploiting, and sooner rather than later. In his experience, Carter had found that most people were intrinsically primed for revenge; they just needed some direction, a person or place to focus their rage. And after what Pike had found out about Askergan, the drug problem, Sabra’s near ubiquitous influence, and the cracker invasion, it was baby games for Carter to define the best target. Still, even one as silver-tongued as himself would need the support and backing of someone who was known to these people, who was in a positon of authority, who was respected.
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