What was going to happen next?
He nursed his drink. He looked at his hands, then looked at his hands again, as though this time he might see something different. As though this time they might hold answers; might tell him where his life had gone and how everything had turned to crap so very quickly.
For the briefest instant it seemed like he was on the edge of an epiphany. An understanding that would shift not merely his perception but his existence.
“I’ll read your palm one time,” said a voice. “One time.”
Evan froze. Then turned his head. Slowly.
A man was at the end of the bar. A big guy, dressed in flannels and jeans that had seen lots of wear. Maybe a dock worker. “Can you really do this?” he said, every other word nearly a mumble.
The girl holding his hand nodded. “I’ve always seen the truth,” she said in a tone that was too bright to belong in this bar. Her rainbow hair shimmered like a dream in a dark place.
The drunk laughed. “Tell me a lie. Lies are better.”
“No worries,” laughed Tuyen. “Whenever people see the truth, they always forget.”
Evan’s cell rang. The ring tone was one Val had picked. He hadn’t changed it yet.
(Or had he? When did this happen? What is happening?)
“White,” he said into the phone.
“Anything?” said Geist’s voice. The voice of a dead man.
Evan sensed motion at the bar’s entrance. He spun on his seat. His free hand fell to his belt, brushing past the badge clipped there and circling the grip of the handgun holstered directly behind it.
There was no blood there. No cuts. His shirt was whole.
Why would there be blood? Why cuts?
Rainbow Hair was leaving. Tuyen was leaving.
His thoughts swirled. He was in two places at once. Ending and beginning, beginning and end.
“Nothing,” he said into the phone. “Haven’t seen anything.” He didn’t know why he was saying it, but felt he must. He had no choice. He sipped at his drink again.
“Well, it was a long shot,” said Geist. He sighed. “Don’t stay up too late.” And then he hung up. He didn’t say goodbye.
Evan realized that music was playing on a juke box. “You Spin Me Round” by Dead or Alive. The music ended.
Quarters clinked.
Everything slowed down and became small, like Evan was looking into the wrong end of a pair of binoculars, staring into a portion of space-time that operated at a slower pace.
He could see too much. Too much and at the same time not enough.
He could see.
He could understand.
He heard Tuyen speaking.
“The saddest are the ones who are stuck in a loop….”
And, hearing her, he saw Geist, watching the strange security footage from Mystix. “Over and over,” said the captain with the strange look of someone trying to convey a concept for which there were no words. “The tape loops. It loops.”
Listings, looking into the evidence boxes: “All these crimes, repeated over and over.”
And in the bar, in the here/there and now/then, Evan was still turning, turning. So slow, so far. But faster than he wanted. Closer than he could stand. Understanding at his feet.
Tuyen’s voice pushed into his brain, slashed through his thoughts. The voice of a woman who saw. “… never able to influence the world….”
Evan was still turning. Turning.
The women in Mystix. The two old ladies who had ignored him and Tuyen. Because the two old ladies were alive, and never saw the dead walking among them.
Tuyen even said, “They never buy anything from me.” And the shadow in the back of the store wasn’t another customer, it was the day clerk, the one who ignored him and Listings.
Then they went through the curtain and Tuyen told him, “Some Hmong believe the spirits can’t pass through doors. They can appear anywhere, but places with no doors invite them.”
Evan realized he couldn’t remember actually going anywhere since the night at the bar. He could remember being places – the street, the church, his house. But he couldn’t remember going in or out.
The only places he could remember entering had no doors.
And the one door he had tried to open – the front door of the church – had remained closed and impassable to him.
Evan’s world spun around him, turning in counterpoint as he spun on his barstool.
But what about the killer? The things he did? The things he knew?
And he understood. For a moment he understood. What might happen to a man who wanted vengeance? A man so devastated that he was willing to follow others into a loop. Knowing the truth, knowing the end from the beginning. Knowing his own doom and willing to follow it for the chance to inflict suffering on those who had harmed him. What might such a man be able to do, even as spirit?
There was a ghost of vengeance among them. The killer was different. Stuck in the same turning track, following the same paces, but alone of all of them able to touch the real beyond the lie, alone of all of them knowing their world for what it was.
Only the killer had found it more than he wished. The agony of killing, of dying, of living again had driven him mad.
Evan heard Tuyen’s voice one more time.
“To be a ghost is to be locked in a lie.”
Then he had completed his turn. He had spun around, and was facing back again.
Listings was there.
Evan smiled. He felt something falling away from him. Maybe it was worry, maybe it was fear. For a moment, a single elemental instant, he understood everything. He knew his doom, but knew also that he would at least not be alone. He was fated always to lose everything… but at least what was lost would then be found once more.
“How many times you gonna listen to that?” he said.
The woman at the jukebox didn’t even look at him. “How many times you gonna keep listening to cranks?” she said. Her tones were clipped, almost harsh. Angela Listings, alive once more – or what passed for alive in this existence she shared with Evan and Geist and Tuyen and the killer – punched in the code to start the song again.
“As many times as I have to,” said Evan.
The song began, and at the same time it faded. Both there and not, playing in one place, but silent in another. For a few seconds Evan saw reality.
“The saddest are the ones who are stuck in a loop…”
The drunk attacked Listings. Evan watched.
“… replaying the last scenes of their lives over and over…”
Listings never touched her attacker. She couldn’t. He was already dead and she didn’t know his name.
“… never quite understanding what’s going on.”
And the killer came. Evan tried to remember his name. He could stop this if he could say the man’s name.
But it was gone.
The man wounded both Evan and Listings, and for a single second Evan realized that he had been wounded in the same place at the end. Or was it the beginning?
When did I die? In the bar? In Mystix?
When did the killer die? Here, when I shoot/shot/will shoot him – or in Mystix when I do/did/will do the same thing?
It was all mixed up. All confused.
When your existence is played out on a circle – when you were chasing and being chased by a man on a never-ending track – where is the beginning and where is the end?
Evan shot the killer. Shots that found their marks but did nothing. The killer fled out the open door, into the night.
Evan and Listings ran after him. The blood already gone from their shirts, the wounds knit in their flesh. The end had started, and the beginning was at an end.
They ran through the open door.
And as they followed, Evan thought, strangely, that they were running into a darkness that would never end.
If you would like to be notified of new releases, sales, and other special deals on books by Michaelbren
t Collings, please sign up for his mailing list at http://eepurl.com/VHuvX.
And if you liked this book, please leave a review on your favorite book review site… and tell your friends!
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Michaelbrent Collings is a full-time screenwriter and novelist. He has written numerous bestselling horror, thriller, sci-fi, and fantasy novels, including The Colony Saga, Strangers, Darkbound, Apparition, The Haunted, Hooked: A True Faerie Tale, and the bestselling YA series The Billy Saga.
Follow him through Twitter @mbcollings or on Facebook at facebook.com/MichaelbrentCollings.
NOVELS BY MICHAELBRENT COLLINGS
THE COLONY SAGA:
THE COLONY: GENESIS (The Colony, Vol. 1)
THE COLONY: RENEGADES (The Colony, Vol. 2)
THE COLONY: DESCENT (The Colony, Vol. 3)
THE COLONY: VELOCITY (The Colony, Vol. 4)
THE COLONY: SHIFT (The Colony, Vol. 5)
THE COLONY OMNIBUS
CRIME SEEN
STRANGERS
DARKBOUND
BLOOD RELATIONS:
A GOOD MORMON GIRL MYSTERY
THE HAUNTED
APPARITION
THE LOON
MR. GRAY (aka THE MERIDIANS)
RUN
RISING FEARS
YOUNG ADULT AND
MIDDLE GRADE FICTION:
THE BILLY SAGA
BILLY: MESSENGER OF POWERS (BOOK 1)
BILLY: SEEKER OF POWERS (BOOK 2)
BILLY: DESTROYER OF POWERS (BOOK 3)
HOOKED: A TRUE FAERIE TALE
KILLING TIME
CrimeSeen2014.06.09 Page 17
