Servant

by J. S. Bailey

  Another minute passed. Some birds were twittering up in a branch. The sound of a lawnmower echoed through the trees somewhere to his left.

  Then, somewhere, a stick snapped.

  “Bobby.”

  The whispered voice nearly made his heart stop.

  He jerked his head up to see Randy squatting on his haunches at the top of the gully; the ball cap jammed crookedly on his head. He glanced over his shoulder for a moment before climbing down beside Bobby and sitting Indian-style in the dirt.

  Randy ran his hands over his face. Bobby noticed he had the shakes.

  “Where’s Phil?” Bobby whispered. “I thought he’d be with you.”

  “I don’t know.” Randy’s mouth formed a straight line and he made a visible effort to compose himself. “When I saw you take off all I thought about was following you.”

  Bobby risked sticking his head over the edge of the gully for a few moments. A couple of squirrels raced their way up a tree trunk chattering at each other, but other than that, the forest was still.

  He ducked back down. “I called 911.”

  “How intelligent of you.”

  The sarcasm in Randy’s voice hit a raw nerve inside of him. “Look. What’s it going to hurt if the police get involved in this?”

  “For all I know, one of Graham’s hired hands is a cop. He had some buddies on the force years ago, so it wouldn’t surprise me. At this point, not much will.”

  “But you don’t know he’s still got friends who are cops.”

  Randy rubbed at the stubble on his chin. “I don’t trust the police. They’re no different from anyone else, and if you think otherwise, you’ve got a lot to learn.”

  “But they can hunt people down and arrest them. I’m pretty sure we can’t do that.”

  “We might not be able to arrest anyone, but nobody’s going to stop me from hunting Graham down.”

  Bobby shivered a little. “You’re a Servant. Doesn’t that mean you should love one another, or something? You make it sound like you’re going to find Graham and get revenge on him.”

  “Not revenge.”

  “Then what?”

  “I don’t know. I do know I’ll need to meet with him face to face. It’s the only way to bring this to an end.”

  Bobby swiped a marauding ant off of his pants leg. “He’ll kill you, though. And you said if you die without a replacement, evil will have free reign or something like that.”

  Randy closed his eyes for a moment. “It almost does now.”

  “Oh, I get it.” Bobby didn’t bother masking his irritation. “There’s a lot of evil now, so what’s the problem if there’s a little more?”

  “That’s not what I meant.”

  “That’s what it sounded like. ‘Oh, I’ll just let myself be killed because I’m too stubborn to call the cops, and never mind if demons take over the whole planet when I’m gone.’”

  Randy’s face turned the color of a beet. “Shut up.”

  But Bobby couldn’t shut up. “If you’re really that concerned about keeping evil in check, why don’t you call the police about Graham and then hole up somewhere safe in the meantime? That’s what I’d do.”

  Randy didn’t say anything.

  “How do you keep evil in check, anyway? You’re only one guy compared to what, seven billion people?”

  Randy seemed to count off several seconds in his head before speaking. “Even the tiniest flame can create light. Freeing people from the clutches of evil spirits may not seem like much in the grand scheme of things, but for those people, it means the whole world. It weakens Satan’s power when people are freed, just as prayer weakens it. But here’s something you need to remember—Satan only has power when we let him. It’s just an illusion. Because God is infinitely more powerful than he is.”

  “Then why is it bad if you die without a replacement?”

  Randy shrugged. “Who aside from a few clergymen is going to drive out spirits? It might take months for them to drive a spirit out of a victim. Generally I don’t need any more than a week. And Jesus and his disciples could do it in a matter of seconds. They’re my forefathers, you know. He gave them authority over spirits—almost the same authority that I have. When there’s no one else on earth with that authority . . .” He shrugged again.

  “How many people have you freed?”

  “About a hundred and twenty-five. That’s just over twenty a year.”

  “And they’re all in Autumn Ridge?”

  “No. Some live here, but other times I’m encouraged to leave in search of others who need me. I’ve been to California, Washington, Idaho, Nevada—even all the way to New York, as a matter of fact. Once I gain their trust, we make arrangements to come back here for the cleansing. Then they’re sent to the safe house, and once they’ve recovered and healed from their ordeal, we send them home. I call on all of them from time to time just to check up on how they’re doing.” His expression faltered. “Some of them reverted. Maybe only four or five. The rest have turned their lives around, and a lot of them are paying it forward by helping other people with their problems.”

  “Are there other Servants anywhere else? Like in other countries?”

  “I don’t know. We don’t have written records. It’s possible there were other lineages of Servants that died out. For all I know, I’m the only one left.”

  When Randy fell into brooding silence, Bobby said, “If you die, could one of the former Servants take your place until a new one is found?”

  “That’s not how it works. A person can only hold that honor once. And what an honor it is to be chosen.”

  “I can imagine,” Bobby said, even though he didn’t. He stuck his head over the edge of the gully again. Still no sign of Phil. Bobby felt a growing concern for the man’s safety. He had led them this way. If Phil had gotten hurt out here, it would have been Bobby’s fault.

  “What’s the real reason you don’t trust the police?” Bobby asked when he’d crouched back down again.

  “You don’t give up, do you?”

  “Not if I can help it.”

  Randy became silent once more and nodded to himself a few times. “Let me tell you a little story,” he said at last. “There was this kid I used to know. His daddy was a cop, and his mother was a pathetic waif who waited on her husband hand and foot even though he drank too much and liked to knock her around. Daddy got it into his head that it might be fun to do certain things to his son that he did to his wife—yes, those things—and when his son worked up the courage to tell his mother about it, she laughed and told him to stop making up stories. So the boy told the other police instead, and they didn’t believe him either because the boy’s daddy was a good cop and an upstanding member of the community and would never do anything like that to a child.

  “It went on for years. And when the boy was finally nine years old, a neighbor caught sight of something he wasn’t supposed to see through a back window and reported the boy’s daddy to the authorities. The man went to prison and the boy got taken away from his mother because she’d failed to protect him from the creep even though they all lived under the same roof. If the cops had believed the boy the first time, he’d have been spared years of needless suffering.”

  Bobby hardly knew what to say. If he knew someone who had gone through that, he might not hold much faith in law enforcement, either. “Then what happened to him?”

  “To the boy? He grew up.”

  “Was it you?”

  Randy didn’t answer. His eyes took on a faraway look, and Bobby knew then to drop the issue.

  THE HAMMER struck the window so hard that Lupe’s arm throbbed in protest, yet the glass remained undamaged. “¡Me voy de aquí!” she exclaimed, reverting to her native tongue. “¡Me voy de—”

  A car door slammed outside.

  She whirled around, holding the hammer behind her back in an instinctive effort to hide it. From her current position she couldn’t see the front window or what lay beyond it, but s
he knew without a doubt that the owner of the vehicle was by no means here to save her.

  Tears threatened to spill from her eyes not for the first time that day. Graham’s return could mean only one thing.

  Randy was dead.

  Because of her.

  The memory of the day Randy proposed to her popped into her head unbidden. They had gone to picnic at the beach at Roads End State Park, which was several hours north just off the Oregon Coast Highway. After they finished eating their sandwiches and chips and packed the basket back into the car, they walked barefoot down the beach hand in hand as the gulls swooped overhead and some children played beach volleyball a short distance down the strand.

  Even though she and Randy had both been twenty-four, she’d felt as giddy as a teenager on her first date. The brightness of the day enabled her to forget the woes of everyday life, and she knew that as long as she stayed with Randy, she would be safe not only from the past but from herself as well.

  At last Randy let go of her hand and pointed out at the water. “Hey, see that?” he said.

  She’d squinted, unable to detect anything out of the ordinary on the lapping waves. “No.”

  “Look a little closer.”

  She did. But try as she might, she couldn’t see anything that would have caught Randy’s attention.

  It occurred to her then that something was on her left ring finger that had not been there previously. Startled, she looked down and blinked at a bright sparkling thing set in a band of white gold.

  She let out an involuntary gasp and held it closer to her face. Randy had slipped it onto her finger while she was distracted by their conversation. “Oh, Randy, it’s beautiful!”

  “Now you see it,” he said with a wink.

  “I . . . does this mean . . . ?”

  He took her hand again, brought it to his lips, and gave her fingers a delicate kiss. “Lupe, will you marry me?”

  She’d been praying for months that he would finally ask her. They had been together for about three years at that point, and while they’d tried to remain as chaste with each other as possible, they had difficulty remaining that way.

  Their marriage would finally make everything complete.

  “Of course I will!” she exclaimed, knowing that for the first time in her life all would be well.

  They had embraced each other in full view of all the houses along the beach, and some other beachgoers who had been watching them began to cheer.

  That day had been the best of Lupe’s life. July 13, 2013. She would never forget it.

  But now the day that had brought her such great joy would only be a bittersweet memory. Lupe choked back a moan. She couldn’t think about it. Wouldn’t think about it. Knowing that she and Randy would someday be one was one of the few things that had kept her going in her darkest moments.

  And now she didn’t even have that.

  She straightened her shoulders and emerged into the kitchen. She laid the hammer on the table and took a seat in one of the chairs.

  The front door swung open, admitting a flustered Graham Willard. Mud covered his shoes, his dyed hair was ruffled like he’d been running his hands through it, and one corner of his shirt’s collar poked upward at an odd angle.

  That, combined with the fevered glint in his eyes, made him look like a madman.

  Madman or not, she decided she had never hated another human being as much as he.

  Graham froze when he saw her, and his eyes grew round when he spotted the hammer lying on the table in front of her. She realized they were blue again. He hadn’t put in the brown contacts today.

  “I tried to escape,” she said before he could speak, even though that would have been obvious judging from the fact he had left her locked in the upstairs bedroom. “But I realize it isn’t meant to be. Please kill me now so I won’t have to suffer anymore.”

  The old man blinked.

  “I’m not trying to fool you,” she said. “You’ve already killed Randy. I don’t want to live anymore now that he’s gone.”

  He worked the muscles in his jaw. The manic glint shined in his eyes again. “You think you know everything, don’t you?”

  “I’m not stupid. You left to kill Randy. Now you’re back to set me free if you’ve kept your end of the promise. Well, I don’t want you to keep it. Shoot me. I pray you’ve perfected your aim.”

  Color rose in his cheeks for a moment but they quickly returned to their normal pallid state. “I don’t know why I bother listening to you. You’re worse than my daughter Kimberly when it comes to making unnecessary noise.”

  She didn’t let the insult faze her. “I found your notebook downstairs when I was looking for a hammer,” she said, having nothing better to say while she waited for Graham to fulfill her request.

  This seemed to surprise him. “You looked in it?”

  She didn’t feel like telling him that the notebook was currently tucked inside her shirt. “Some. I thought it was interesting how you wrote down all those little details about the people you’ve . . . you’ve killed. I just wondered if Randy and I would get a page toward the end of it.”

  He snorted. “The end of it.”

  “What?”

  “You think this is the end? I’m not going to stop doing what I do just because you and Randy are gone. With Randy out of the way, I’ll be a free man. I can never be free if he’s still out there trying to find me.” He grimaced. “And trying to change me.”

  Lupe tried not to let her fear show. He’d practically just admitted that he’d intended to kill her all along.

  Instead of shooting her, Graham strode past her and grabbed a bottle of Smirnoff vodka, Worcestershire sauce, lemon juice, and a stick of celery out of the refrigerator and tomato juice and hot sauce out of a cabinet. He set about mixing the ingredients together in one of the tall glasses he kept lined up on one of the counters.

  “What are you doing?” she asked. It was very much in character for him to not do as she requested, unless he planned on doing her in with a drink.

  “You’ve got eyes. What does it look like?”

  Lupe just stared at him, unbelieving. The man was making himself a Bloody Mary.

  “Would you like one, too?” he asked, accidentally knocking the hot sauce onto its side and splashing it onto the counter.

  He didn’t bother cleaning it up, and the smell of it made her eyes water. “No thank you.”

  He gave a nonchalant shrug and continued working. When he finished mixing his drink, he put the bottles away and stabbed the stalk of celery into the red liquid, then took a seat opposite her at the table. He slid a box of Pall Malls out of a pocket, stuck a cigarette between his lips, and lit it up.

  If he had been agitated upon his arrival, he was now calm and collected. He took sporadic sips between puffs on the cigarette, and his wrinkled expression softened into a dreamy grin of contentment.

  “Why don’t you just do it now and get it over with?” she asked, not bothering to mask the hard edge that had entered her voice. Graham’s leisurely actions unnerved her more than anything he’d done to date. Was this his way of celebrating Randy’s demise?

  He breathed out a cloud of smoke that caught in her throat and made her cough. “I’m not ready yet. Preparations are currently being made, and in the meantime the two of us will sit here and wait.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Do you need me to write it out for you in crayon so your little-girl brain can understand it better?” He leaned forward. A droplet of the Bloody Mary glistened on his chin. “If I were to go fishing, what would I need to ensure that I caught something?”

  Lupe narrowed her eyes. “A worm?”

  “Try again.”

  Oh. She knew what he meant now. What was the English word? “Bait,” she said, remembering a second later.

  “Not just any bait. Live bait.”

  The words and their implication nearly made her heart stop. A faint spark of hope glimmered inside her. “I t
hought you’d already killed him!”

  “Not quite. My grandson has a little bit of work to do first.”

  “Your grandson?” Surely Kimberly’s sons wouldn’t have anything to do with him. She’d only met them a few times, but overall they seemed to be upstanding members of society who would gladly turn their grandfather over to the law if they knew where he was.

  “Yes. Jack. He’s got a good head on his shoulders. If you’re lucky, you’ll be meeting him soon.”

  She had never heard him mention a Jack before. “He’s coming here?”

  “No. We’re going there. You didn’t think this was my only property, did you?” He paused to down more of his Bloody Mary and made a show of smacking his lips, which made more of it get on his chin. “Lisa and I owned many properties over the years, if you’ll recall. After she died I purchased other properties under a different name.”

  That made sense. Graham would have wanted to hide his sick hobby from everyone he knew, and the only way he would have been able to do that was if he could do it in a location that none of his acquaintances knew about. Plus, using a different name would have been smart. Undoubtedly all of the properties in his own name had been searched once he became a wanted man. In order to hide from those searching for him, all he would have needed to do was move into one of the other houses he had already prepared.

  But how many were there? Two, at least. The man had to have been making money somehow during the past year, and rental income would have been one way to do it.

  “You don’t need to know how many there are,” he said, reading her thoughts.

  He was right. If she was to be killed before the day’s end, it wouldn’t make a difference if he owned two properties or a hundred.

  Her newfound hope began to falter like a broken-winged moth. She couldn’t let that hope give out. But she couldn’t see what she could do to save either Randy or herself. As much as she hated to admit after her escape from the bedroom, she was more helpless than a newborn child, completely at the mercy of the one who had imprisoned her.

  In contrast to Lupe’s anguish, Graham kept puffing on his cigarette like the most carefree man in the world. And why shouldn’t he be? Everything was going according to his plans.