by J. S. Bailey
His hope rested on Mary. And if not Mary, then whichever one came after her, or the one who came after that.
Crimson dripped onto the ground and ran in a snaking line toward the drain set in the smooth floor. The smell made his stomach churn. “Tell me what you see!”
Her words were muffled by a choked sob.
Graham leaned closer to her. “What?”
“Can’t you see him?”
“See who?”
“He’s watching you.”
Graham whipped his head to one side, half expecting to see someone else in the room with them, but all he saw was shelving on which he stored additional cloths and household cleaners. “Who’s watching?” he asked. “What does he look like?”
The air smelled like that in a slaughterhouse. Thick. Cloying.
To avoid getting sick, Graham started breathing through his mouth, even though it increased his likelihood of tasting the scent that lingered in the air.
“He’s watching you,” she whispered.
Her eyes closed. They did not open again.
RIDING ON the floor behind the front row of seats in Phil Mason’s car was every bit as uncomfortable as Bobby had anticipated, partly because every muscle in his body was tensed and ready to spring and partly because half a dozen first aid kits he’d shoved aside kept sliding around with each turn the car made.
His imagination conjured a dozen terrifying scenarios. Phil was going to tie him to a table in the “safe house” and harvest his organs to sell on the black market. Phil was going to lock him in a room and hold him for ransom. Phil was going to take him to a secluded mountain valley, tie his hands behind his back, and shoot him execution style before burying his bleeding body in a mass grave with other hapless victims.
You could never be disappointed when you always expected the worst.
At least Bobby still had his phone.
He had tried to determine their course when they left the library. Phil swung a right—north—out of the parking lot, traveled in that direction for several minutes in between stops at traffic lights, and turned right again. After that their route became more difficult to track. The road curved, lifted, dipped. A few different times Bobby had the sensation they were backtracking, and now by the whine of the transmission and tilt of the car, he knew they were headed uphill.
His empty stomach clenched into knots. They crested the rise, stayed level for a brief distance, and coasted downward to the left. Rose again. Dipped. Rose again. Dipped. If Bobby had taken the time to eat, the contents of his stomach would now be all over the floor.
At last the car slowed and turned right onto a gravel lane that jolted him more than he would have liked. “You all right back there?” Phil called over the sound of the radio.
The blindfold was making Bobby’s head itch. “Can I sit up?”
“Not yet. We’re almost there.”
“Almost there” took nearly five more minutes, placing their travel time at more than three quarters of an hour. The car rolled to a stop. Bobby sat up and pulled off the blindfold as the fleece blanket that covered him slid to the floor.
They had parked in front of a two-story house with cream-colored siding and blue trim that sat on a wide lawn. Wooded hills covered in conifers rose up on all sides behind it. The gravel driveway disappeared from view as it rounded the bottom of a hill a quarter-mile away in the direction from which they’d come. From his position Bobby could see neither the road nor any other houses.
The music cut out when Phil shut off the engine. “You can gawk at the scenery later,” he said, glancing in the rearview mirror before picking up his zippered bag. “Follow me.”
Bobby hesitated before stepping out of the car, his nerves still taut as wires. Was there any imminent danger here? He sensed none of the urgency he’d felt prior to the discovery of Randy’s severed brake line or the restaurant robbery. Surely if his own demise were to happen within the walls of this supposed sanctuary, he’d at least have some inkling of it ahead of time so he might be able to defend himself against an unexpected attack.
He would proceed with caution anyway. A little vigilance never hurt anyone.
Following Phil to the porch, he drank in the sights despite Phil’s admonition not to. The sky was the color of a robin’s egg—a stark contrast to the rainclouds that blanketed the heavens the day before. The sun hung almost directly overhead, making it impossible to judge east from west.
Two young women tossing a yellow Frisbee on the front lawn stopped and eyed the pair in silence as they neared the house. Bobby lifted a hand to wave at them. One continued to stare, but her friend glanced away with the shyness of a wild deer.
“Residents,” Phil said in a low voice. “Don’t pay them any mind.”
Phil pulled open the door, and Bobby followed him inside. “What kind of residents?” Bobby asked once the door latched behind them. A safe house was supposed to be where people could hide from whatever entities threatened them, but the term “residents” made Bobby think of psychiatric patients.
Like ones who imagined the existence of their roommates.
Sweat beaded up on Bobby’s brow. He wiped it away with the back of his hand.
“The kind that doesn’t concern you,” Phil said. To their left, a carpeted flight of stairs rose to the second floor and a doorway to the left of that opened into a spacious living room containing a bunch of plaid furniture and a piano. To their right was a dining area, and beyond it lay a kitchen.
“Randy?” Phil called. “Mr. Roland says he has something to tell us.”
Randy stood in the kitchen with his back to them, gazing out a window that comprised a large portion of the wall. He didn’t turn when they entered the room. “I hope he brings good news. I could use some.”
“You can ask him yourself. Bobby, you’re welcome to grab a bite to eat. It looks like there’s plenty left over.” Phil set his bag down and gestured at a tray of sandwiches cut into triangles sitting on the marble-topped island in the center of the room.
“Thanks.” Bobby took a seat at one of the barstools lining the island on two sides and selected two halves of a roast beef sandwich from among the triangles, though he was hungry enough to eat triple that.
The room was quiet save for the sound of Phil rummaging through a cabinet. Bobby wished someone would speak.
“So are you guys FBI, or something?” he asked, knowing full well they were not. If he pressed them for answers, they might let something slip.
Phil, who had been in the middle of setting a glass of ice water in front of Bobby, raised his eyebrows. “What gave you that idea?”
“You have a safe house. The FBI has safe houses. I didn’t think it would hurt to ask.”
“I did think about joining the FBI back when I was a kid,” Phil said as he took the stool next to Bobby. “But then I saw The Silence of the Lambs and decided I would rather be a nurse.”
Randy turned. His lips formed a thin smile. “So, Bobby, what brings you here this fine morning? You can’t have missed me.”
Bobby had to finish chewing before he could speak, knowing they would think he was insane.
“It started this morning when I got up,” he said. “My roommate was gone.”
At that moment the front door squeaked open and closed, and two female voices traveled across the entryway and up the stairs.
Bobby paused, not wanting to be overheard.
“Go on,” Randy said, looking intrigued. “If you keep your voice down, they won’t hear you.”
Bobby’s mind quickly retraced the first few moments of his morning. “He didn’t just leave. He vanished. All of his things, too.” He explained how Caleb’s missing furniture hadn’t even left marks on the floor and how his phone had been disconnected. “So then I called the bookstore where he works, and the girl on the phone said nobody by his name has ever worked there. Explain that.”
A strange light had been kindled in Randy’s hazel eyes. “What’s your roommate’s name ag
ain?”
“Caleb Young. I’ve known him for a year, so I know he’s not the type to just pack up and disappear.” Especially not when Caleb mentioned the need to study for an exam only half a day before. “You’re going to think this is nuts, but I’m afraid I might have imagined he existed.”
Phil put a hand over his mouth and started coughing.
Heat washed over Bobby’s face.
“If you don’t mind my asking,” Randy said, “what does this have to do with anything that happened last night?”
“Caleb said he worked at the campus bookstore at Autumn Ridge Community College. We knew Trish probably went there since the stapler in her purse had the college logo on it, so I asked the woman on the phone if she knew her. She did.”
Phil’s face became ashen. “We said not to do that.”
“I know what you said. But I was cool about it. I pretended to be a concerned classmate wondering why Trish hasn’t been in class.”
“Because people call bookstores all the time to find out about missing classmates, especially when it’s the middle of July and most of the students have the summer off.”
His words made Bobby feel stupid. “I didn’t know what else to do!”
Randy, who seemed to be taking this news much better than his friend, sighed. “I’m sure you didn’t. Now what did she say about Trish?”
Bobby strained to remember her exact words. “She said Trish had been acting odd for awhile. And she’d been sick. I know it isn’t much, but I thought you should know.”
“I suppose every little bit helps,” Randy said, “but what you described is typical for someone with her condition. Erratic behavior is usually one of the first signs that someone has been possessed by—”
Phil cut him off. “Loose lips, much?”
“It’s a little too late for me to worry about guarding my words.” Randy directed his attention to Bobby. “Did she say what was wrong with Trish? If it was something subtle I might have missed it. The combined strain of illness and possession might have been too much for her body to handle.”
Bobby wished Randy had heeded Phil’s advice. This talk of possession was giving him the creeps. “No. Like I said, that was it.”
“That’s too bad.” Randy fell silent for several moments. “Tell me more about your roommate.”
“How does that even pertain to the situation?” Phil interjected before Bobby could respond. “There’s a corpse lying in your basement, and if you don’t do anything about it soon you’re going to have a rather unfortunate mess on your hands.”
“I’ll get to that in a minute. Bobby, what was Caleb like?”
Bobby found himself agreeing with Phil. “I don’t think that’s as important as getting Trish out of your house.”
“She’ll be gone in due time. Was Caleb friendly?”
Bobby let out a terse breath. “Yeah. He’s quiet. Reads a lot. Weird stuff, too, like quantum physics and string theory. He says he’s getting a liberal arts degree. He’s helpful, too. Likes to shop for groceries. He found Randy’s job listing in the paper for me.”
“I like Caleb better already,” Randy commented with a smile. “Where do you think he got his money?”
“I don’t know. He never mentioned anything about a family giving him any. He never mentioned a family, period.”
“Drugs?”
It was as if Randy had read his mind from earlier in the day. “I wondered that too. Only I never found any lying around, and he never smelled like them.”
“A dealer would be careful.”
“I can’t see him doing that, though.”
“So no drugs, then.”
“I guess not.”
“Maybe he has wealthy parents and didn’t want to admit it,” Phil suggested, throwing a glance at the clock on the wall.
It was a nice theory, but it still didn’t work. “That doesn’t explain why there weren’t marks on the rug where his furniture had been. If I’d gone into his room and seen the places where his dresser and bed sat for the past year, I’d think he skipped out on me.”
“Let’s switch topics for just a second,” Randy said. “What would you have done if this had been a normal day?”
Again, Bobby couldn’t see what this had to do with anything. “You mean what would I have done if I got up and Caleb was there like always?”
“Yes.”
“That’s easy. I would have eaten breakfast, played around on my guitar for awhile, maybe gone for a walk. And then I would have gone to meet you at the church to start my new job. Then I would have done whatever I needed to do—mop floors and stuff—and then I would have gone home and gone to bed.”
“What about the next day?”
Bobby shrugged. “The same, I guess.”
“Don’t you ever hang out with anyone?”
“No. Only with Caleb.”
“That’s got to be lonely.”
He supposed it was. More lonely than he had ever realized if Caleb had been a figment of his imagination.
Randy continued. “But instead of going about your mundane life, Caleb’s disappearance inadvertently led you back to me and Grouchy here.”
“Yeah. I guess. Though I would have preferred to talk to you on the phone.”
Randy cleared his throat. “I understand that. Now about Trish. Phil, before you picked me up from Lupe’s apartment, I called Father Preston for advice, and if you hadn’t been so eager to go home for lunch and be rid of me, I would have had the chance to tell you all about it.”
“You should have called him last night.”
“I would have, if something quite a bit more important hadn’t come up.” A shadow passed over Randy’s face. “I said I’d meet him at my house at two o’clock and that I’ll call the police then. He said I’ll have his full support, and he’ll gladly be a character witness in a trial if things come to that.”
Bobby gaped at him. “Trial? But you didn’t do anything to her!”
“I did plenty. I took her into my home and into my care, and as a result, she died.” He drew a heavy sigh. “Father Preston says I need to be fully honest with the authorities and cooperate with them as best as I can.”
“I pray you’ll use some discretion in your honesty,” Phil said in a dark tone.
“Would you expect any less from me?”
“I’m just concerned. I thought last year’s fiasco was going to be the end of us.” Phil looked at the clock again. “We’d better leave now so we can get there in time.”
Bobby stood up, alarm bells ringing in his head. If Phil’s Taurus was the only available vehicle, that meant they would have to take Bobby with them when they left. “Wait a minute. I don’t want to have anything to do with this.”
“You already have something to do with this,” Phil said. “That’s why you’re here, right?”
“I didn’t know that coming here was going to get me involved in a police investigation!” Talking to the cops after the robbery had been bad enough. They asked him so many questions that he’d begun to harbor doubts about his recollection of events. By the end of the interrogation, he’d felt nearly as guilty as if he had committed the crime himself.
He could only imagine what sort of questions this investigation would entail.
Mr. Roland, what were the circumstances of your arrival in Mr. Bellison’s basement?
Well, you see, officer, I heard screaming inside the house and I thought someone was being hurt so I found the key under the mat and let myself in.
I see. And why were you on the premises in the first place?
Because a ghost was throwing rocks at my house, and I thought Randy could make it go away.
Bobby’s mouth had gone dry. “What am I supposed to do?”
Randy was already heading toward the door. “A: You can come with us. B: You can stay here.”
Neither prospect appealed to him. “What about C: You take me home right now?”
“I don’t think we’ll have time,” Randy said.
“Besides, if you stay here and we end up needing you anyway, we’ll know exactly where you can be found.”
Bobby followed them to the door. Since Option C wasn’t an option at all, he would have to pick B since it didn’t involve police officers and cars with flashing lights. “What am I supposed to do while you’re gone?”
Randy shrugged. “What you would have done if this had been an ordinary day at home. Absolutely nothing.”
“But—”
“I really don’t think this is a good idea,” Phil interjected as his eyes flicked to the ceiling.
You can say that again, Bobby thought.
Randy clearly wasn’t convinced. “Make yourself comfortable. We’ll be back as soon as we can.”
“DO YOU really think it’s wise leaving him there?” Phil asked as he tightened the bandanna over Randy’s eyes. It was strange that the skinny kid had latched onto Randy the way he had. No matter which way Phil looked at it, he could make no sense of the matter.
“Wise? No. Necessary for the time being? Yes.” Randy crouched down on the floor of the back seat and gathered the fleece blanket around himself. Phil thought Randy’s decision not to learn the location of the new safe house was extreme to say the least, though he did understand the reasoning behind it. If Graham, a righteous man, could turn on the One he had served, then what would prevent Randy from doing the same?
Phil had faith that Randy would never turn, but he took precautions anyway just to make Randy happy.
He started the engine, and the car lurched as he put it into gear. He cast a long look at the house before letting off the brake. “How can you know he won’t try to hurt Carly and . . . what’s her name?”
“Joanna.”
“Right.” Phil didn’t ordinarily know the names of those who had been sent to the safe house to recover since it wasn’t his business. “I don’t know why you trust him.”
