I reached for my pack of cigarettes and slipped one into my mouth. “Mind if I smoke?”
She waved a hand. “Not at all.”
I took a deep drag and exhaled as she pressed a button which opened the sunroof. Blue smoke drifted into the air and out of the Suburban.
“Listen, Barbie,” I said, leaning forward. “You don’t need to know about her and you don’t need to know about me. This is a simple exercise in debt repayment and after a couple of days you’ll never see me or my friends in the SUV parked beside us again.”
She sipped at her drink and ran a finger along the rim of the glass. I got the distinct impression that she was sizing me up because everything about her screamed that Barbie Ross was a calculating woman. Was she measuring the odds of her getting swept away by angels and demons for providing sanctuary? I stared deep into her dark brown eyes and wondered if she’d wind up telling me to go pound salt up my ass. Of course, should that happen, her debt to Dave wouldn’t be repaid and would she be the one with a target on her back?
At some point, I need to ask Dave just how an average Joe with no aspirations in life other than to manage a convenience store winds up as the middleman for supernatural craziness.
After a few moments of mutual risk analysis, Barbie raised a finger. “Life Anchor Bible Camp near Bridgewater, about an hour and a half from town. It’s just past the main exit into town. You can’t miss it as there are signs all over the place featuring yours truly surrounded by children. I do so love children, Mister Richter, don’t you?”
“Yeah, they’re fabulous. I love ‘em,” I smirked as I tossed my cigarette out the window and onto the asphalt. “Quick question, though.”
“What’s that?”
“How is this place going to protect the girl from the things that are after her?”
Barbie pulled a crucifix out from underneath her blouse. “Well, it’s protected by God. And a few other things.”
“Such as?”
“Protective wards and the like. Numerous items containing sprigs of Thistle which have been blessed by a Wiccan high priestess. You see, Mister Richter, there is nothing to fear from anything at all when you have faith. I have faith in the protections I purchased for the children’s camp, many of which are secular. It is my faith in the almighty which gives me the strength to continue this ministry. Faith is a shield against all manner of evil. I’m in the business of saving souls – I’ll use whatever I need to if it’s going to protect my flock.”
I swept a shock of my host’s blonde hair out of my eyes. “While clad in a string bikini and ministering from your bubbling hot tub.”
She flashed me an angry glare. “Don’t be so quick to judge me, Mister Richter. God gave me these … assets. I’m going to use them to the best of my ability. And who knows? If you play your cards right, you might be allowed to share some quality time with me in my hot tub. Of course, I won’t be posting that encounter on my YouTube channel.”
There was something about the good Reverend Barbie Ross that just wasn’t sitting well with me. Yes, she was on that debt ledger, but I didn’t trust her fear of the repercussions of not fulfilling her obligation because I didn’t believe the woman feared anything, and that’s just plain stupid. Even I, a nameless and faceless ancient entity living inside a deceased and now resurrected human host experienced fear. Not necessarily fear of my own demise, but that of those close to me. I feared for Carol Sparks’ safety now that she’d been introduced to the truth of all things and the danger it presented. I feared for my landlady because she was a kind old biddy and deserved to die in her sleep in her bed rather than being among the potential casualties if supernatural bad guys decided to attack where I lived. Mostly, though, I feared for Charlotte. The child had witnessed more bloody violence in the last twelve hours than what most people will experience in their entire lifetimes. She could see the future. She could visualize terrible consequences if we couldn’t keep her safe.
And she spoke from two points in her timeline. One moment she was an eight-year-old girl and then in another breath, she talked like a woman in her thirties. Clearly, the girl was a vessel for some unknown higher power because of her ability to see the base code of everything that exists and everything that must be to come from up on high or down below. There simply could be no other explanation for it. You know, unless she was playing host herself to some alien intelligence that just decided one day to hop a ride in a girl who should be playing hopscotch.
“Do kids even play hopscotch anymore?” I asked aloud.
Barbie blinked a few times. “Goodness, that was a random question. I don’t think they do, Mister Richter. Young people seem tethered to their hand-held devices these days. It’s a bit sad, really.”
I glanced at my watch. It was nearly five in the morning. We needed to hit the road and get into whatever sanctuary Barbie Ross could provide. All that was necessary would be to stay safely hidden for two days and then maybe the girl would be allowed to become a kid again. God was coming for a visit and with my luck, he was coming to kick ass and take names.
“We have to move,” I said as I gripped the door handle and pulled. The heavy passenger door of the Suburban opened and Alvin the goon didn’t bother getting out of the front seat to assist. Good help is hard to find these days.
Barbie nodded and waved me out of the limousine. As I stepped onto the pavement she held out a set of keys. “These will open the main gate. Lock it behind you. The rest of the keys are for … well, they’re for whatever is at the camp. I only make a visit once a year at the start of bible camp season and then I am back to the city. I don’t like ticks and I don’t care to become infected with Lyme disease. I’m sure you’d understand.”
I decided at that moment I didn’t particularly care for Barbie Ross. I didn’t trust her one little bit, but I trusted Dave Exner. Surely, she wouldn’t play both sides of the street knowing the shit storm of bad juju that would fly her way if she didn’t pay off her debt. I glanced at the keys dangling from a key ring and made the decision to give Barbie a reason not to double-cross me. I grabbed her wrist in a quick, fluid motion. I leaned over and stared deep into her eyes as I sent the tiniest fragment of my essence into her mind. The vision took shape within a second and Barbie gasped.
“I-I can’t see,” she whispered shakily. “Darkness. Oh, God, I can’t stand the darkness … wait!”
I squeezed a little harder and my ethereal visage appeared next to Barbie Ross in her mind’s eye. We stood together in a snow-covered field. Overhead a full moon shone brightly bathing the snow with magical blue-grey light. A sharp gust of icy wind rolled across the land and Barbie shifted where she stood; her feet crunching in the snow.
She looked out and pointed. There in the distance was a bump in the snow.
“What is that?” she simpered. “Where are we? What is this?”
“It’s the future, Barbie,” I revealed, my voice taking on an edge as sharp as the bite of that icy wind.
She turned to face me. “What are you? How can we be here? What am I seeing in front of me?”
“Go take a look,” my voice echoed.
And so, she did.
I followed an arm’s length behind as Barbie stepped gingerly through ankle-deep snow. The cold wind drifted across the ground and kicked up tiny snow squalls that twisted and churned into a wood line about a hundred meters ahead. Within seconds we stood before the small bump. Barbie knelt to see a human hand poking out of the snow. On the ring finger was the same emerald ring that Barbie wore.
“What is this!” she hissed. “What are you?”
Her goon’s claw-like fingers dug into my left shoulder. I opened my eyes and immediately drove the heel of my boot into his groin. He emitted a choking sound and his grip loosened so I drove my heel into his groin a second time before turning my attention back to Barbie Ross. The last thing I saw before closing my eyes again was the image of Alvin the chauffeur dropping onto the pavement like a stone.
Sa
tisfied, I shut my eyes tight and pushed forward through Barbie’s mind again. Once more I appeared next to her on that snowy field in the darkness. She trudged forward as another gust of wind blew across the mound and brushed away enough freshly fallen snow to reveal Barbie Ross’s face. Her tongue hung out of her mouth like a dog’s only this one was as black as the night sky. A thick black and blue ring around her neck showed that Barbie Ross had been garrotted to death.
Only she wasn’t dead. Yet.
I squeezed her wrist harder. “You have been given a great gift, Barbie. You have received a glimpse into your future, only this future is just a short three years from now. January the ninth, to be precise.”
“H-How did you do this? Did you give me some kind of hallucinogen in my drink?”
I spun her around to face me. “You are looking at a shadow in time brought to you by the grim reaper. We’re real. I’m real. This glimpse into your future is real. Do you understand?”
She nodded. All the colour had drained out of her face.
“I am death. I’m not the one who kills you but it is my kind who come and claim your soul once you’ve breathed your last.”
“Who are you?”
“My name is Tim Reaper,” I said menacingly. “What we are looking at is your future. You can change this outcome if you play your cards right. I might even help you prevent this from happening, but let me make one thing very clear.”
She blinked hard and made an audible gulping sound. “W-what’s that?”
“This is fixed. This will happen unless you come to me to stop it from happening. You will die horribly on January the ninth in three years’ time. If you screw with me. If you double-cross me as I try to protect that little girl, I won’t lift a finger to help you. Got it? You’ll be fucking dead. Kaput. Finished.”
She nodded quickly as another gust of cold wind blew across that open field. “P-Please, take be back. Take me away from here. I won’t do anything to harm you or the little girl.”
I gave her wrist a hard shake.
“Swear it,” I rumbled.
“I swear,” she said, a tremor of stone cold terror in her voice.
I let go of her wrist and the shadow vision of ice and snow dissolved like a lump of sugar in a cup of hot tea. A moment later, Barbie Ross opened her eyes within the soft orange glow of the Suburban’s interior lights.
“See?” I said easily. “Now we can be best buds. Do I need to warn you again about what will happen if you double cross me?”
She shook her head quickly as Alvin the goon groaned from the asphalt beside the limo.
“I won’t,” she whispered. The vixen-like quality of her voice had disappeared entirely. She glanced at her enforcer who was lying on the ground with both meaty paws covering his groin. I stepped over the meat slab and bent down to face him.
“The bigger they are, Alvin, the harder they fall. Sorry about your nut sack but you did invade my personal space when you grabbed my shoulder. You had better not have left a bruise because I have sensitive skin. Pray there isn’t a mark, yeah?”
“Fuck you,” he groaned through a face that was twisted into a tight knot of excruciating pain. I do so love it when you bring down people who think they’re untouchable because they’re big and scary. I drove my boot into his balls one last time for good measure and the meathead passed out.
The passenger window of Sparks’ SUV slid down and she said, “Are you done playing? We have to get moving, right?”
I nodded. “Just had to sort out a few things, is all. We’ve got sanctuary thanks to the good reverend.”
“Well hurry up then,” Sparks snapped as the passenger window slid back up.
I grabbed the handle of the SUV and pulled a business card out of my back pocket. I tossed it onto the seat. “There’s my number. You can call me when we get closer to your best-before date. I’ll fix it so that you won’t wind up dead and then maybe I might even take you up on your offer of hot tubbing and sex. I like sex. It’s one of the things He got right.”
I pointed to the early morning sky for effect.
As I closed the door Barbie Ross threw me a look that could melt iron bars. “You’re a fucking asshole,” she hissed.
I nodded. “The biggest. Be seeing you, Barbie.”
12
We pulled into a 24-hour grocery store in Bayer’s Lake, just on the outskirts of Halifax. Sparks decided she’d pick up supplies because she didn’t want to eat canned beans for the next couple of days until He showed up. Me? I’d have been fine with beans. Or canned ravioli or even Spam for that matter. I’d have loved to have grabbed my food stores from Das Bunker but everything was under a ton of rubble.
And seriously, how can you not like canned beans? After thousands of years of watching human beings expand the definition of cuisine from plain old unleavened spelt bread to the flavour sensation that can only come from a truly decent deep dish pizza, the very act of tasting food was a gift. For a guy like me, a can of baked beans or even a lowly tin of Campbell’s vegetable soup is one hundred percent flavour town.
Charlotte woke up as Sparks strolled across the empty parking lot and into the grocery store. “Where are we?” she asked through a yawn.
“Grocery store,” I said. “The good detective is picking up some supplies and then we’re going to head out to a safe place.”
“Safer than your safe house?”
I cringed a little as a vision of the crumbled ruin that was Das Bunker flashed through my mind. I loved that place. Until I hated it. Until I lost Amy. I doubted now if I would ever go back to rebuild it.
“Yeah, kid. Safer than my safe house. I already lost someone there. I won’t be losing you.”
I checked my watch, it was shortly past six in the morning. There wasn’t much traffic on nearby streets and the parking lot was empty save for a handful of vehicles. Charlotte and I sat in silence for a few more minutes when she asked me a difficult question.
“Did you love her?” the little girl asked.
“Who?”
“The person you lost. Did you love her?”
I turned around and looked at Charlotte. She was leaning forward, her hands on her knees. Her icy-blue eyes were wide open and there wasn’t even a glint of anything more than genuine concern. I’d seen that look before in Amy’s eyes when she held me close and told me that I was a good man in spite of my opening up about my shady past.
“Yeah, kid. I did love her but I didn’t know what love was until she happened, you know? I’d never been close to someone before and it was just dumb luck that I met her in the first place. Anyway, you’re too young to be having this discussion with me and besides, I’m not entirely human so this whole talk is a little bit weird.”
“Want to know something?” Charlotte asked. “It’s a secret.”
“Sure, kiddo. Hit me.”
The little girl leaned over and whispered in my ear. “Love is the most powerful thing there is. But sometimes love hurts you. I know that you are hurting, Mister R. I think this is the first time you’ve ever been hurt.”
The kid wasn’t wrong.
“Maybe I’m in mourning,” I whispered back. “Maybe we both have lost someone we loved and maybe together we can get through this. What do you think?”
She flashed a bright warm smile and could have lit up the parking lot. “I think you’re right. And I think you are a good man, Mister R. A really good man.”
My throat tightened and my eyes started to burn. A single tear formed in my right eye and dribbled down my cheek. It was the first time I’d ever cried, in so much as a single tear counts as crying. I’d have bust out bawling but I spotted Sparks heading out of the entrance to the grocery store; she was pushing a small cart with one hand while carrying a steaming cup of coffee in the other. I popped the hatch on the SUV and threw her a wave.
“Where is this safe house?” asked Charlotte.
“The south shore,” I said as I continued scanning the parking lot for any threats. S
parks pushed the shopping cart up to the rear bumper and started placing groceries in the back.
“Hi, Miss Sparks,” Charlotte said, leaning over the back seat.
“Good morning, sweetheart,” Sparks said tenderly. “Did you get a bit of sleep?”
Charlotte nodded. “I guess so. Mister R says we’re going to hide at the south shore. I wonder if we’ll be okay for two days. I told Mommy that He was coming and then she died. I told you both the same thing and I don’t want either of you to die. I don’t want anyone to die. I just want to be a kid is all.”
In the distance, I spotted a van pulling off Bayer’s Road and into the parking lot. It flew over the curb and bounced hard amid a haze of burned rubber.
“Sparks, we’ve got company!” I shouted as I reached over and started up the SUV. The detective threw all the rest of the groceries into the back of the vehicle and slammed the hatch shut. She dashed around to the driver’s side and hopped in.
“Buckle up, Charlotte,” she snarled. “They’re coming after us again.”
The little girl did as she was told as I watched the van tear across the parking lot. I reached for one of my guns and pressed the button to open the sunroof. I reclined the passenger seat all the way back and wedged my body through the opening as Sparks tromped down on the accelerator. Her SUV took off, tires squealing just as a series of bullets slammed into the pavement behind the vehicle. I couldn’t see the driver’s face, everything was happening too fast, but I did see the face of the man hanging out the passenger window spraying the air with a submachine gun.
“Are they human?” Sparks yelled as she manoeuvred her SUV around the side of the grocery store.
“Who knows? The guy shooting looks the part but that can change!” I shouted as my ribs slammed into the roof with a crunch. “Damn it, Sparks, easy does it!”
“Stop pissing and moaning and shoot out their tires!” she roared.
Another burst from the submachine gun and the SUV’s rear window exploded in a spray of tiny glass cubes. “I’d be all over that if you’d drive straight!” I badgered.
The Girl On Victoria Road: A Tim Reaper Novel Page 11
