“I’ve waited too long for this,” he said, flipping on the light and rounding on her. “There’s no way I’m doing it in the dark.”
“Troy, please, I don’t know—”
“Yes you do know,” he said. “You just don’t wanna believe it.”
Jessie shook her head, told herself it simply wasn’t possible, but with every word Castillo confirmed it.
“Yours was the first family we did,” he said. “The only family we did.”
Jessie’s gorge leaped. “What are you talking about?”
“‘What are you talking about?’” he mimicked in a childish singsong. “You know exactly what I’m talking about, you stupid bitch.”
“You bet with Marvin, didn’t you?”
Something dangerous glimmered in his eyes. He grinned a virulent grin, white teeth showing. “That’s what I hate most about you, Jessie. You’re a clever girl, I’ll give you that. But being clever is more than just figuring out a problem.” He stalked closer. “It’s knowing when the hell to keep your mouth shut.”
The gun was aimed at her abdomen. She imagined him squeezing the trigger, her entrails vaporizing in a body-racking crash of pain.
Down the hallway outside, she heard a door open, someone calling out in a harsh whisper.
Teddy Brooks.
If she could stall Castillo long enough, Brooks might just help her get out of this. “What do you want from me?”
“First of all, I want you to take off your clothes.”
“I won’t do that.”
“Your sister did,” Castillo said.
Jessie knees threatened to unhinge. “You’re lying.”
“Am I? Wanna know what your dad said before I shot him, Jessie?”
Footsteps padding down the hall. Another door creaking open, the room right next to them.
Castillo went on. “He said, ‘You can take me with you, but leave my wife and daughters alone.’”
And the tears came then. Because Jessie remembered her father’s voice that night, her father’s exact words. At that point she’d been near her door, listening. Her father had been weeping, but he’d been brave nevertheless. He’d faced the intruders and done his best to protect his family.
He’d been the opposite of Jessie.
And now she was back in her secret place, the hidden door in the back of her closet. It was just large enough to accommodate her curled seventeen-year-old body. She’d hidden there often as a small child, and when her father had been murdered it was the only place she could think to take refuge. Yet afterward, she’d still been able to hear her mother’s and her sister’s wails, the laughter of the three assailants.
Troy Castillo’s laughter.
“Your dad’s head splattered when I shot him, Jessie.” Castillo chuckled. “That actually surprised me. I’d killed by then. Killed plenty. But I’d never seen a head just…explode like that. It was like some sci-fi movie. Or like that old comedian, Gallagher? His head just blew apart all like one of those watermelons under the sledgehammer. I hear you out there, Brooks!”—Castillo continued without stopping—“And then your mommy, she was wearing these white cotton panties. I’ll never forget it because as strange as this sounds, they sort of turned me on. My friends, the two guys who were with me, they laughed at her—”
“Let me in there!” Brooks shouted.
“—but they didn’t laugh when they got to take their turn on her. And your big sister…aw, man was she something. She screamed through the whole thing, but I think she secretly enjoyed it.”
“You got five seconds, Castillo!” Brooks said.
Jessie glanced left and right, searching desperately for some kind of weapon.
“But what I’ve always wondered,” Castillo went on, seemingly oblivious of Brooks’s shouting, “is where you were that whole time. I found out later—”
“One!” Brooks yelled.
“—you were in the house. And everybody knows how you became an agent so you could make amends for being such a coward and letting your family get slaughtered like a bunch of pigs.”
“Two!”
“But what I don’t get is where you hid. I mean, we scoured your room. You weren’t under the bed—”
“Three!”
“—or in the closet. It wasn’t like it was an oversight. Hell, Jessie, you were the whole reason we were there. My buddy David Rasmussen dated you—”
Jessie felt like puking.
“Four!”
“—and we even scoped you out at the drive-thru. You were the reason we showed up—” And without pause Castillo whirled and fired three shots at the door, the wood there splintering in a line at about waist level. She waited for the wail from the other side of the door, waited to hear Teddy Brooks baying in agony, but he must not have been hit.
Or if he had been hit, the wound was fatal.
Castillo had his back turned.
Jessie leaped on him.
Though Castillo was a large man, he’d clearly not been expecting Jessie to attack him because upon contact they both went stumbling toward the door. Castillo hit head first, Jessie clinging to his waist like a parasite. He heaved an elbow back that, had it connected, would have knocked her unconscious. But Jessie anticipated it and jerked aside just in time. He gathered himself, made to spin at her with the gun, but before he could do that she swiped at the back of his neck with her fingernails. Morton had often joked that she kept them far too long for a federal agent, but Jessie knew, deep down, they could be used for protection in a pinch.
No, she thought. Not for protection.
For attack.
Castillo slapped a hand over the back of his neck, which had already begun to seep blood, and as he turned, Jessie balled her hand into a fist and cracked him as hard as she could in the nose.
Castillo’s head snapped back, knocked a glancing blow against the door. She tore loose with her fingernails again in a vicious sideswipe, and when her nails furrowed Castillo’s throat he finally relinquished his hold on the gun. The gashes were deep, Castillo clamping both hands over his throat now as if the whole thing would unzip and splash out on the floor. Jessie dropped and retrieved the gun, but as she started to turn in order to blow the miserable son of a bitch away, Castillo fell on her. His entire weight bore down, crushing her, and Jessie knew if he got her all the way to the ground it would be over. He could strangle her three times before Teddy ever got the door locks blown off. She could hear Teddy asking if she was away from the door, but she had to block out that noise now, had to focus on Castillo.
When the agent’s big body had first landed on her, it had draped limply over her back like a still-warm corpse. Now, though, that limpness had been replaced by a twitchy energy that chilled her, the muscles hardening as the big body drove her down. Jessie had the gun in her right hand, but one of Castillo’s hands was clamped over hers. She braced herself in a sort of push-up on the floor, but her elbow gave and they both crumpled. They grappled for the gun; Castillo was stronger, but Jessie had a better angle. She muscled the gun up. Castillo brought up a hand to stop her and she squeezed the trigger. Three of Castillo’s fingers were vaporized by the slug. Blood jetted out of the pulpy wound. Castillo flopped off of Jessie and shrieked like a man who’d been set on fire. Jessie spun around, jammed the gun in his crotch, and squeezed the trigger again. Castillo let loose with a buzzing hailstorm of screaming that threatened to shatter Jessie’s eardrums. Castillo convulsed on the floor, his face a livid red, every tendon in his neck straining with the raw-throated shrieks. He looked like some heavy metal headbanger in the thrall of a great mosh, his eyes bugging out and the blood sluicing over his remaining fingers.
“Jessie!” Brooks yelled. “You okay in there? Don’t tell me that son of a bitch shot—”
“I’m fine,” she said.
Castillo’s legs scissored
like a dog chasing rabbits in a dream.
“Jessie?” Brooks called.
“I’m fine,” she repeated.
“Oooo ooo oooooo-oo-oo-oo-oo-ooo!” Castillo howled. Standing over him, Jessie watched Castillo’s thrashing without pity. He sounded like a basset hound in heat.
“Jesus,” Brooks said, “is that Castillo I hear?”
Castillo’s voice became a hoarse, breathy groan. A long drip of bloody slaver drooled out of the side of his mouth and pooled on the floor.
“That was for my family,” she said.
She raised the Glock to put him out of his misery, but a voice behind her spoke up.
“Bring him in here,” the voice said.
Jessie’s breath caught in her throat. Now she knew she was cracking up because there was absolutely no way that voice had been real. Because the owner of the voice had died last night, had been shot and killed before her very eyes, though it had taken several minutes longer for the bleeding to end his life.
“Now, Jessie,” the voice said, not unkindly.
Jessie turned and stared through the bathroom doorway and beheld, sitting on a small wooden chair, Agent Sean Morton. His face was bleached of color, the hollows of his eyes a doleful purple. But absent of that he seemed the same man she’d counted as a friend and a mentor.
“Quickly,” Morton said, “before Brooks comes in.”
Heart whamming, Jessie pocketed Castillo’s gun, moved around to grab hold of his feet, but they were kicking so rapidly she found grasping them difficult. Finally, she snagged them, and though Castillo thrashed in her grip, she began the job of hauling him to the bathroom.
“He hurt you at all?” Brooks called.
Jessie didn’t answer, only continued towing the jittering, frothing agent toward the bathroom. When she passed through the door, she paused, sure the spectral version of Sean Morton would be gone. So when she glanced backward and discovered him sitting there, she nearly wet her pants.
“A little farther,” Morton instructed.
Jessie pulled on Castillo’s legs until the agent’s maroon-colored face was well inside the bathroom.
“Now leave him,” Morton said.
Brooks was beating on the door and bellowing her name. She wanted to go to him before he ruined his hands, but she had to ask Morton something.
“What are you going to do?”
“Supervise,” Morton said.
He had risen and was looming over Castillo now, a grim look on Morton’s ghastly, pallid face.
Jessie shook her head. “What do you mean, ‘supervise’?”
At that moment something moved within the glass block shower. She hadn’t been aware of the figure’s presence until now, but there was undoubtedly someone in there, someone who was now emerging from the shower. The figure moved jerkily, like a marionette controlled by a drunk, and Jessie caught a whiff of something terrible, something that reminded her of the underside of a dock at low tide.
“Who…” Jessie began but was unable to finish. Because the gagging fish odor had grown indescribable, the figure smelling of something left rotting on the ocean floor for weeks, maybe years. The odor of something that had been chewed on but not devoured by the bottom feeders in the sunless depths.
“In life her name was Genevieve Cariaga.” Morton’s dark eyes fastened onto Castillo’s writhing form. “But Agent Castillo here referred to her as Bubble Gum Girl.”
The figure shambled into view. The hair was swamp black, rotten skeins of seaweed threading through it like vomit-colored extensions. The skin was so devoid of color it looked ashen, the lips a deep purple that verged on black. The body was naked, though it was so mutilated by the depredations of marine life that it scarcely resembled a human being. The flesh along her left hip had peeled open like a bouquet of flowers, the breasts so chewed up they resembled scalloped potatoes. There were no eyes, only tendrils of wormy flesh dangling over pits as dark and shiny as caviar. The woman turned to Jessie and favored her with a green, scummy grin. Gagging, Jessie clapped a hand over her mouth, reeled toward the bathroom wall. The woman’s grin broadened and something that looked like a plump brown centipede wriggled out of the corner of her mouth and disappeared into her noxious forest of hair.
“He’s here,” Morton said.
Genevieve Cariaga—aka Bubble Gum Girl—regarded Morton with an unreadable expression, her glittering eyeholes almost accusing. Then she followed Morton’s gaze down to the prone form of Agent Castillo, who by now had inclined his head to stare up at the rotting woman.
Castillo’s eyes were huge with something far deeper than mere physical pain, his mouth stretched so wide Jessie believed his lips might just split from the pressure. A rictus of absolute horror took hold of Castillo’s handsome features as the rotting woman shambled forward to stand over him. The dead woman straddled Castillo’s head, her fulsome juices dripping onto his upturned face. Jessie watched the dead woman’s labia opening wider, wider, and then something that looked half like a human baby and half like a carnivorous fish began to slide out of her vagina. Castillo gaped up at it in an ecstasy of terror. The thing dropped out, snarling, and had just begun to tear apart Castillo’s face when Jessie stumbled out of the bathroom and lurched to the bedroom door. Brooks hadn’t ceased his hammering, and when Jessie slid back the deadbolt and ripped the door open he nearly punched her in the chest. Then she was weeping in his arms, her legs driving both of them out of the room and into the hall. And though she knew there was no safe place in Castle Blackwood, she’d never been more grateful to be anywhere as she was to be in this dreary corridor.
Brooks held her, but he had his gun up and leveled at the open doorway of the bedroom. “He still alive, Jessie?” Brooks asked.
Against her, Brooks’s body went rigid. She realized why a moment later, the wet smacking sounds and the muffled screaming becoming audible beneath her sobs.
She pulled away, looked at Brooks’s sweaty forehead, his frightened eyes.
He took a step toward the bedroom, but she seized his shirtfront with both hands. “Don’t, Teddy.”
He cringed as the noises grew louder, messier, something plopping on the floor with a wet smack. “What’s going on in there?” he asked.
“Let’s find Ben,” she said. “Please, Teddy. I can’t stand here a moment longer. Anyway, Castillo’s dead.”
She heard a meaty gasp, then another one of those wet plopping noises. “Or at least he’ll be dead in a few moments,” she added.
Brooks looked at her. Then, without further delay, he moved with her toward the stairs.
Part Five
The Dead
Chapter One
Teddy had never needed a drink more in his life.
It was a few minutes before ten a.m. After Teddy and Jessie had run into Ben on the fifth floor landing—Teddy damn near shooting Ben in the face out of sheer jumpiness—they had decided to confirm that the gangsters were all dead. Before showering the blood off their bodies, Elena and Christina had assured Ben that Rubio was in fact dead, but Ben insisted on checking the body to be sure.
Teddy and Ben had checked it, and then they’d been sure.
In fact, Teddy had never seen a body deader.
Soon after that, they’d checked on Marvin’s corpse too. He was as dead as Rubio and Toomey.
Then Ben had suggested they head down to the great hall. So they arranged themselves on the antique furniture that formed a semicircle around the vast stone fireplace, Jessie having supplied them each with bottles of water.
“Okay,” Jessie said, “let’s talk about our options.”
“What options?” Elena said. “We take the yacht back to the mainland as soon as possible, right?”
Ben and Teddy exchanged a glance.
Teddy said, “That’s not gonna happen.”
“And why not?
”
“The Blackie sank,” Teddy said.
Christina opened her mouth in surprise, but Ben headed her off. “We saw it at dawn. Someone put a good-sized crater in its hull. It hadn’t gone completely under at that point, but there’s no way it’ll get us home. Besides, I’m not leaving without my daughter.”
“You’re still convinced she’s here,” Jessie said wonderingly.
“Toomey confirmed it,” Ben said.
“If he knew where Julia was, why did you—”
“He changed,” Ben said, glowering.
“I don’t doubt that. But—”
“I didn’t have a choice,” Ben said. “The beast’s powers have grown since last summer. I think…” He shook his head. “…I think because it had been dormant for so long, last summer was just its awakening.”
Teddy said, “Like a warm-up lap?”
Ben nodded. “The beast…it was incredibly strong when I faced it, but I was still able to survive. Maybe in the back of my mind I knew I’d need help. Maybe that’s why I let everyone come.”
“You wanted to put warm bodies between yourself and the beast,” Elena said.
Ben didn’t argue.
“You’re stronger than you were last summer though,” Teddy reminded him. “Tougher. You’ve gotten in shape, learned—”
“But I’m still just a man,” Ben said. “This thing is…well, something far stronger. It can do more than influence now. Earlier, it…it was controlling Toomey.”
Christina’s voice was low but firm. “Peter believed the same thing. It was his life’s work. He told me we would find things here that would make us doubt our sanity.”
“That pretty much describes me,” Teddy said.
“That’s another reason we can’t leave,” Ben said. “We don’t even know Professor Grant is dead.”
Elena scowled. “You’re just trying to keep us here.”
“So what if I am?” Ben said, voice rising. “You’re going to abandon an infant on this island? Sentence her to death?”
Castle of Sorrows Page 32
