A Million to One: (The Millionth Trilogy Book 2)

by Tony Faggioli

  Trying to maintain control of the situation as best she could, she’d done a horrible thing on the way here: she made both kids swear not to say a word of what had happened because, and this was the part that made her loathe herself as a mother, it might hurt Dad if they did.

  Shame was draped over her as a result, but also, as their mom, she told herself that it had to be done, for their own good.

  A few minutes later the kids were off in a side room with Amanda, who was setting them up to watch a SpongeBob video, and Tamara was seated opposite Pastor Williams’ desk, which was remarkably organized.

  “How are you, Tamara?” he said softly.

  Without hesitating, Tamara answered, “Not good.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” he replied.

  He had a warm face and gentle eyes, which had no doubt served him well as a pastor over the years, but they were also eyes tipped at the edges with weariness, and not for lack of sleep. Tamara imagined that it wasn’t easy being the one that everyone came to for answers—when their mother was dying, or their kid was caught doing heroine, or their marriage was disintegrating.

  Tamara was fidgeting with her hands in her lap. “Yeah. Me too.”

  “How can I help?”

  She took a deep breath. The only safe way to do this was to speak hypothetically.

  “Pastor, we’ve been through a lot, the kids and I…”

  “Yes. You certainly have.”

  “And here’s the thing: I’ve been wondering… what if evil is at work here, in all that we’re going through?”

  He was quiet for a second, as though he hadn’t quite seen this turn in the road.

  “Well. With what’s happened with Kyle, with what you’re going through with the kids, bad things happen to—”

  “No. That’s not what I mean. I know this is going to sound strange but…”

  She stopped short for a second.

  You don’t have to tell him everything.

  “Go on…” Pastor Williams encouraged.

  “I really feel like evil itself is… at work… trying to”—she felt her voice shake a bit—“harm us.”

  To her surprise he didn’t even hesitate. “Hmm. Yes. Well. I think that evil is at work all the time, Tamara.”

  “You do?”

  “Well, most certainly. The Bible tells us that there are forces all around us trying to bring us down, trying to harm us.”

  “Wh-what do we do then?”

  “You must always be on your guard.”

  Tamara felt a cup of cool relief spill over her. “Really?” Her eyes begin to swell, but she steadied herself.

  Pastor Williams sat up in his chair, which was a little small for his frame, and after putting on his reading glasses, he reached for an old black leather-bound Bible that was sitting near his desk calendar.

  “Look, here, Ephesians 6:10–12, ‘Finally, be strong in the Lord and his mighty power. Put on the full armor of God so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world, and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.’”

  Tamara had read these words before, but now, having them read to her seemed to make all the difference in the world, as if a part of her needed to hear them spoken, in another person’s voice, to remind her of the bond the words offered, within her faith and with God.

  For a split second she felt a glimmer of hope, and then, simultaneously, the image of the creature under her daughter’s bed came to her mind and robbed her of it. The room grew heavy around her. There was a sense of “realness” to the words her pastor was saying now. It was the simple difference between speaking of a reality, and actually experiencing it.

  She looked at Pastor Williams as he continued on, flipping through the pages of his Bible.

  “Or here, in 1st Peter 5:8, ‘Be alert and of sober mind. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour.’”

  She noticed a clock ticking on the wall across the room, perched on the top of a row of bookshelves. Before he jumped to another section, she interrupted him. “But. What do we do if these things are actually happening to us?”

  It was a simple question, but the look that came across Pastor Williams’ face, the earnestness with which he stopped to study her, seemed to make the room tilt, ever so slightly.

  Tamara felt a shiver and a stillness. Something had come in here to join them for a moment, she felt it, as real as anything could ever be, and she knew, to her core and across her now swiftly beating heart, that this time it was nothing that she needed to fear.

  “Tamara… are you saying…”

  “I’m not saying anything,” she said, her voice shaking.

  He nodded for a moment and then took off his glasses. “I see. Okay then. I want you to listen to me very carefully,” he said, clearing his throat.

  She imagined what was coming next.

  I’m sorry, Tamara, but I think you may be ill…

  We should probably get you some help…

  Perhaps we should call the authorities…

  Please. You’ve been through a lot, you poor woman, it’s completely understandable… I mean, who wouldn’t be seeing demons by this point, right?

  But he said none of these things. Instead he did what her mother, on the wistful Sundays of her childhood in Bolivia, would’ve called “witnessing.” He didn’t judge, but perhaps also feeling that God, or the Holy Spirit, had also joined the two of them in the room, a look of love and deep concern filled his face as he spoke in a firm voice, “There is darkness all around us, as real as anything else in the world, but remember 2nd Thessalonians 3, Tamara. Cling to it. For it says it very clearly, ‘But the Lord is faithful. He will establish you and guard you against the evil one.’ Do you understand?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you believe it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then you have nothing – absolutely nothing – to fear.”

  She pressed her lips against her teeth to maintain her composure before offering a tight smile and standing.

  He stood as well, too quickly, actually, his knee hitting the desktop and spilling a mostly empty can of coke. A small brown puddle began to form there, but he completely ignored it.

  “Thank you.” She hesitated before adding, “So much.”

  “I will pray for you and the children, and please, don’t hesitate to call or come by for any reason, Tamara. Like I said before, you’re not alone in this.”

  Tamara nodded. “Thank you, Pastor.” They hugged and then she made her way out to the side room to gather up the kids. Seeing them thoroughly distracted by the cartoon, SpongeBob and Patrick lost in the depths of some undersea cavern, she sat with them a few minutes until it ended, thinking all the while that going home wouldn’t be so bad now.

  Because she wasn’t alone in this. She never had been.

  God was watching.

  She just had to hold firm in her faith.

  PARKER SIGHED. The day had not gone well.

  He and Kendall had been unable to track down the O’Connells, who hadn’t answered their door. The one car in the driveway looked like it had been there quite a while and the mailbox was stuffed. It wasn’t until a neighbor, Delores Clapburn, noticed them and called them over to talk that they learned that the O’Connells had divorced. Mr. O’Connell was now in Arlington, Virginia, and Mrs. O’Connell had gone to stay with family in Salt Lake City, Utah. The home was in bankruptcy.

  Now, with the usual introductions and pleasantries aside, they were standing on Delores’ old wooden porch while she stood just outside her screen door.

  “They just never recovered, you know, when Melissa ran off. They fought and fought. Henry, that’s Mr. O’Connell, started drinking more and more. That girl was the apple of his eye.”

  “What did they fight over, exactly?” Kendall asked.

  “Oh. Whose
fault it was mostly. Karen was a tough mom to please, and Henry blamed her for it. On the flip-side, Karen thought Henry was way too lenient with Melissa growing up and that’s why she went wild.”

  “Wild?” Parker asked.

  “Yeah. I’ll never forget. It started with a tattoo of all things,” Delores said with a sad chuckle. “A Betty Boop tattoo, on her hip. She came over and showed it to me one day, said her mom was livid about it. Seemed to be happy about that fact.”

  “Yeah?”

  “At first I thought it was just the normal tortures that a daughter puts her mother through, same as all the rest. But no. She was about sixteen, and before long, she started breaking curfew and running around town with the boys.”

  “Any boys in particular?”

  “Sadly, no. Just anyone with a backseat in their car.”

  “So she became promiscuous?” Parker asked.

  “Oh, these days, the way things are, I don’t even know if that word has any meaning anymore. Let’s just say she got around. Henry even caught her one day, in the house, with one boy. She’d ditched school and brought him home. Broke Henry’s heart to pieces.”

  “After that?”

  “The boozing started. Then she started coming home high. Got real skinny. What’s that drug that sounds all chemically?”

  “Meth?” Kendall guessed.

  “Yes. That’s the one. She fell into that stuff bad. Her parents went broke trying to get her counseling and a little rehab, but Karen worked in grocery retail and Henry traded between handyman work and construction, hanging drywall and the like.”

  Kendall shot Parker a look, and Parker shot it right back.

  “You said that Mrs. O’Connell worked in grocery retail?” Kendall asked.

  Delores shifted her weight from one leg to the next, the screen door creaking against her arm. “Yes. Well. For a while anyways, then she just worked at the market.”

  Bingo.

  “Which market was that?”

  Daisy’s, up off Crescent Road. Closed now. But when things got real bad with Melissa it was the perfect job.”

  “Oh? Why’s that?” Parker asked.

  “She got Melissa a job there and could take her with her to work, after she was expelled.”

  “Expelled?”

  “Yep. Drugs again. Selling this time.”

  “Whoops.”

  Delores nodded. “Yes. Whoops indeed. Anyway, that worked for a while, but the two of them chafed at each other almost constantly, and next thing ya’know, Melissa started causing trouble at the market on purpose.”

  “Like what?”

  “Karen said she would break stuff on purpose, or take money out of the till that her mother would have to cover at the end of the shift.”

  “Mrs. O’Connell had a very understanding boss, I take it?”

  “Well. Even back then, Daisy’s was a dying business. The owner, Hal, was sick. Karen was the only real employee there, six days a week. I’m not even sure Hal knew she was bringing Melissa in with her, and even if he did, he was past caring by that point.”

  “Hmm.”

  “The final straw was when Melissa started deliberately hitting on all the men that came into the market, right in front of her mother. Sorta acting the hussy, I think.”

  “Then what?”

  “Her mother kinda gave up. I mean, the way she was acting and dressing, it was great for business. Any guy in town past thirty made an excuse to go by there for a Pepsi or a pack of cigarettes, even if it was outta his way. Melissa wasn’t even eighteen yet. Karen got disgusted with the whole thing.”

  “Then what happened?”

  “Melissa eked out her GED, kept mostly to herself, and then one night after work she just never came home.”

  After work, Parker thought. He was willing to bet money that Kendall was thinking the same.

  “Anybody have any idea where she went?”

  “No. She talked about running away all the time. Different places.”

  “Did the O’Connells ever call us, do you know?” Kendall queried.

  “I don’t know. Eventually I think they did. By then, it was all a mess. I mean, she was eighteen, she left. They were disgraced and embarrassed, could hardly look anyone in the neighborhood in the eye. I really felt most then for Karen.”

  Parker scratched his jaw. At some point a mosquito had scored a bite on him. “Why?”

  “I dunno. I was talking to her one day—she’d just come home from the gas station, where she’d run into one of the other AYSO moms from the soccer team, from when Melissa was little. Karen was just fixated on how the other lady’s daughter was now off at nursing school and her daughter was doing—”

  Kendall was on it first. “Doing what?”

  “Well. Whatever she was doing. No one really knew. The path she was on, Karen was sure her baby was drugged out in a corner somewhere. Henry was terrified she would turn to stripping or worse.”

  “Man.”

  Delores nodded. “That’s why, as I said, the divorce was inevitable. They were down to that, you know, either thinking their only child was dead or a whore.”

  “By any chance, Mrs. Clapburn, did you ever hear of anybody ever hassling Melissa?” Parker asked.

  Delores seemed surprised a bit by the question. “Why. No. No, I don’t think so.”

  For a moment Delores was quiet, and then something seemed to click in her head. “You think something happened to her, don’t you, Detective?” The question was set firmly between her hard, wise eyes.

  Parker and Kendall looked at each other, then back at Delores, without replying.

  The old woman nodded, her lips bent together in a sudden look of sadness. “Well then, it’s best they aren’t here anymore, that Karen and Henry are gone. Such news would surely kill one, or both, of them. I’m almost sure of it.”

  “I don’t suppose you—” Kendall began, then stopped himself.

  Delores, probably sensing what he wanted, finished for him, “Have any contact information for them?”

  Kendall nodded.

  “Oh, Officer Kendall. Maybe. In case Melissa ever came back around. But I think the odds are pretty good that I’ve misplaced it now, don’t you think?”

  The porch grew quiet. She was a tough old goat.

  “I suppose they are,” Kendall finally replied.

  “Now. I’m sure you have other ways of tracking them down, but please”—and with this she looked directly at Parker, as if, being the city boy here, he was the one most inclined to be pushy—“don’t.”

  Parker nodded respectfully. “We’re just trying to get to the bottom of some things, Mrs. Clapburn.”

  “Yes. I know,” Delores said, her words chilly. “And some things need to stay at the bottom, Detective. They’ve moved on now. It took years, but they’re off building new lives in their old age. Their only child is gone. And really, they only left because they came to the conclusion that’s she’s dead now anyways.”

  “I understand but—”

  “Nothing you can bring up from the bottom will do anything but drag them back down with it, Detective, and I will have no part in it.”

  With that, Delores Clapburn stepped back into her house and gently shut the door.

  They walked in silence down the steps of her porch and down the footpath to Kendall’s cruiser.

  “So? We check with the bank that has the house title now?” Kendall said glumly.

  Parker looked at the old O’Connell house; it looked sad. Four walls around a bunch of boxed-up misery, a yard full of dead grass and weeds, a car in the driveway as abandoned as the hope the O’Connells probably once had that their little girl would come home.

  “Nah. Screw it,” Parker said. “Let’s leave it be, unless we end up having no choice.”

  Kendall exhaled, seeming relieved, and nodded.

  “So? We’re off to Route 14 and Jennifer Clark’s home?”

  “Yep. Still plenty of daylight left in the day,” Kendall answere
d, looking up at sky.

  Parker said nothing as they got into the car. As they began to drive off, he glanced one last time at the O’Connell house.

  Yes. Kendall was right: there was plenty of daylight left in the day.

  But it still felt dark.

  CHAPTER 28

  KYLE SPED PAST THE blank, downtrodden faces of those ahead of him in line, through a large metal door, painted black. Beyond it was a hallway, the floor covered in a slick gray material, the red brick walls on either side wet with something. Whatever had carried him forwards suddenly let him go, and he careened off one wall and over to the next, barely managing to keep from falling by using his hands to steady himself.

  The wetness of the walls was on his palms and fingers now. He looked down; it was blood.

  Screams emanated from beyond the plush, maroon drapes that hung at the end of the hall, echoing and rising in a kaleidoscope of sound.

  He turned and tried to run, back the way he came, and discovered the hard way that the floor was slippery too. His feet spun and he fell hard on his side. Looking up, he realized that it didn’t matter anyway: the door he’d come through was now almost gone as the bricks along the walls multiplied themselves, like a living organism, and closed it off.

  Knowing he had no choice now, he stood and moved cautiously forwards. A heavy iron smell in the hall filled his nostrils, making him dizzy. Nausea hit him as he realized that it was the smell of all the blood.

  There were torches on the wall every ten feet, on either side, that lit the hall and worsened the smell by warming it. As he neared the drapes he heard a sizzling sound, and by the light of a nearby torch, he looked closely at the wall next to the flame; the grout between the bricks was burning and popping, like bacon in a hot pan. Repulsed, he realized that the grout was made of flesh and skin. In a few spots he could clearly make out strands of hair and fingernails poking out in tiny curves.

  His stomach buckled and he puked on the floor, the acid burning his windpipe.

  Then it hit him like nothing had ever hit him in his entire life: he was now a man under a fear that had squared itself. He was now even afraid of being afraid.

  Here, of all places, it was probably a bad idea to pray. He didn’t care.