by Hixon, Wayne
“I thought you were the one who didn’t want to leave her.”
“Do we have any fucking choice? I mean, really, do we have any fucking choice when it comes to any of this?”
“If she was meant to be found then we would have found her.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Look, there’s no sense in us standing here and arguing. We can either continue to look for Rain or we can go back to the house. It’s up to you.”
“I don’t want it to be up to me. Then whatever happens becomes my fault.”
“Oh, you want it to be my fault?”
“Have I ever blamed you for any of this?”
“You just did.”
“What the hell do you mean?”
“Just that, if it wasn’t for me, you would have never come face to face with this.”
“If it wasn’t for you, I’d be dead.”
“And if it wasn’t for you, I’d be one of them.”
They looked at each other, reaching that silent understanding that had become inevitable.
“None of that matters now, anyway,” he said.
“Don’t you realize what we did last time? We did something very important. We stopped them from whatever it was they were trying to do. I did it and you did it. And that made them scared. Scared of me and scared of you. They came for me just as much as they came for you. So stop wallowing in your self-loathing and face the facts that we are in this together. That I couldn’t walk away from it, could never have walked away from it, no matter how much I might have wanted to. And I don’t know about you but I haven’t been the same person since the last time we dealt with these things.”
Jacob stopped. His last bit of argument was gone. He guessed there were a lot of things they hadn’t talked about over the past couple of years. Now was not the time to drag all of that out in the open but it was there, left in the back of his mind for him to meditate on.
He had never told her why he hated to leave his apartment or how, if he stared too long into a person’s eyes, he saw things. It overwhelmed him. Even people he had always thought were good were capable of some of the worst things imaginable. And he didn’t know if these things were true or if he saw these things as a result of the Devils trying to somehow trick him. Like maybe they wanted him to see the evil in people so when they came back for him he would be easier to take, easier to convert. And she had never really told him everything either. Even though he knew it was there. He saw it every time he looked into her eyes. He saw it. He saw her giving her first blowjob to a neighbor boy when she was thirteen. He saw her contemplating a bottle of her mother’s pills. But none of this had made him hate her. It only made him love her more. It made him fear for her. It made him want to keep her close to him so that nothing could ever happen to her again, so she would never have to look at a bottle of pills and think swallowing them would be better than waking up to the humiliation of another day.
He drew her close to him and hooked her hair behind her ear, bending down and giving her a slow kiss.
She pulled away from him, wanting more, desperately wanting there to be nothing more to do than stand there in the middle of the woods and kiss forever.
“So we’re leaving Rain to fend for herself?” he asked.
“Come on. No one dies in Lynchville. You know that. Sure, maybe a big bad wolf came along and ate her but we’ll probably see her walking down the block tomorrow. Or at least tomorrow night. I hear the dead are rather fond of the night.”
“I just feel so...”
“Mean? Cruel? Heartless?”
“Yeah. Something like that.”
“If we were to continue looking for her, you do realize we would just be looking for a corpse, right? I mean, there isn’t a chance in hell she’s still alive.”
“Yeah. I’ll tell myself that.”
“And this is what she would have wanted.”
“No. She would have wanted to live. That’s what she would have wanted.”
“Well, at least if we do this, then she can have a proper death with a heaven and a god and all of that stuff rather than coming back as a werewolf or a zombie or a vampire or whatever the fuck these things are.”
“A heaven and a god and all that stuff? Are you delusional?”
“No. Just hopeful.”
“Okay. Now is not the time to talk religion, I guess.”
They left the clearing, going back toward the hollow, Jacob wondering what part religion played in all of this. He had always thought of himself as an agnostic. He could see how a person who had a firm religion would be adamant about stopping the Devils, why the legends abounded in quite the way they did around Lynchville, spread, as they were, by its mostly Christian citizenship who thought the concept of earthly life after death was unholy. Jacob didn’t really know what he thought about holiness. Personally, he found the concept of life after death appealing. He didn’t really have any desire to leave the earth. Heaven was a gamble, he had always assumed. He wasn’t so ready to leave the world behind and head off to a promised land that might not be all it was promised to be. The thing that bothered him about the Devils was the evil they seemed to bring with them. But maybe he couldn’t think of them as being evil. Maybe they were just doing what they had to do. Like what he told Rain about them being parasites. Maybe he was closer to the truth than he thought.
Did they have religion? he wondered. And, if so, what kind of promises did that religion contain? Most of the Christianity he had been exposed to had centered around death—you lead the “cleanest” life possible in hopes that you will be accepted by God upon death so your soul can gain admittance to Heaven. But what would the religion of the dead be like?
He hoped he would have time to think about this later. Shifting the tire iron to his left hand, he grabbed Rachel’s hand with his right.
“Do you think it’s going to be there?” he asked her.
“The house?”
“Yeah.”
“I don’t know. I guess we’ll know when we get there.”
“Good answer.”
They walked through the woods that now seemed very dark, each of them wondering exactly how far into the woods they had wandered, when they reached the edge and stared down into the hollow and the house that had miraculously appeared there while they were away.
“Holy shit,” Jacob said.
“That’s right,” Rachel said. “I’m so happy we have something to burn.”
“I say we run for the van.”
“You okay to run?”
“I think so.”
“Go,” Rachel said and took off running toward the van.
He now realized things were happening faster than he wanted them to. He had wanted to douse the perimeter of the house in gasoline and then back the van into it so that, hopefully, the van exploded and the fire spread around the house but now that the house was actually there, he found that he wasn’t in the greatest of hurries to get very close to it.
But he knew he had to. They couldn’t come all this way to do an even more half-ass job than they already were.
Their quick sprint to the van left them both panting, out of breath.
“We need to make sure it isn’t going to turn off the path,” he said.
He opened the driver’s side door of the van and crept inside. The claustrophobic interior of the vehicle, coupled with the fact that he knew this was where Rachel was held captive, greatly disturbed Jacob. He wished he would have seen Bones. He wished he could have been there to help Rachel. He didn’t think Bones would still be alive if that were the case. Jacob would have done whatever he could have to destroy him. Being able to destroy the guy’s van was only a small consolation.
Between the two seats, he found a length of white rope that looked like the kind used for clotheslines. This was probably what they had tied Rachel up with. He created a tight knot around the bottom of the steering wheel, in the middle. He took the other end of the rope and wrapped it around one
of the mechanisms below the seat. He thought it was probably the lever that was used to slide the seat backward and forward. Tightening the slack, he wrapped the rope between the steering wheel and this device. Hopefully, this would keep the wheel from turning during the van’s descent. It was already on a hill so Jacob didn’t think he would need anything to hold the accelerator down like he had seen done in movies so many times. All he would have to do was put the van in neutral and hope it gained enough speed before it smacked into the house.
“Can you get the gas can?”
Rachel, who had been silently observing him, nodded her head and started for the Saab.
By the time he got the rope as tight as he wanted it, she had returned with the gas can.
“Okay, great,” he said. “Now, here’s what we’re going to do. I’m going to run down there and do a quick lap of the house with the gas can. Then I’m going to try and catch the gas on fire. When you see that it has caught fire you need to put this puppy into neutral and let it go. Is that simple enough?”
“You’re going down to the house?”
“I have to. I think it’s important that it burn as quickly as possible.”
“‘Kay,” she mumbled.
“I love you,” he said, leaning into her, putting his hand under her chin and angling her face toward his for a kiss.
“I love you too. Be careful. If you see anything strange come back up here. Okay?”
“I will. But I think we’ve already seen some pretty strange things so I’m not exactly sure what you’re classifying as strange these days.”
“You know what I mean.”
“Yes. If I sense danger, I will tuck my tail between my legs and come running back to you.”
“Good.”
“Let’s get this done.”
He took the gas can from her and started at a light trot down toward the house, dread creeping into his bones. He just wanted this to all be over.
Approaching the house, he looked in the windows.
He didn’t see how it was possible anything unsavory could be going on in there. It just looked empty and abandoned. With the pale moonlight shining down on it, it was a little creepy looking, but it didn’t seem to be dangerous.
He flipped open the air hole at the back of the can, took the cap off the spout and started a steady stream. It came out with just enough force so he was able to douse the actual boards of the house rather than the ground around it. Hopefully, this would ensure the structure itself actually caught fire and if the van exploded upon impact, that would be even better. Especially if those things were inside. He didn’t know if it would kill them or not but it would at least have to give them one hell of a shock.
He quickly scampered to his right, encircling the house with the gasoline.
The house wasn’t especially large and it took maybe a minute at most to get back around to the front of it. He decided to use the remainder of the gasoline on the porch. He bounded up the steps, emptying the can in front of the door. This would make sure the exit was blocked too. That was an idea he liked. Trapping those fuckers in there with nowhere to run.
He pulled his lighter out of his pocket and turned toward the hill to see if he could see Rachel. The night was relatively clear and the moon afforded a good amount of light. He could see all the way up to the road. Rachel’s pale face wavered in the darkness beside the black splotch of the van.
He struck the lighter and reached down, touching it to the damp gasoline, knowing this wasn’t the best idea in the world. He heard it sizzle and swoosh.
From the top of the hill, Rachel put the van into neutral, backing away from it as it began its descent.
He lingered on the porch for just a moment, making sure the gas had caught.
Adrenaline rushed through Rachel. It seemed like Jacob stood on the porch too long. What if he got hit by the van?
He probably hadn’t stood there that long. The van wasn’t even halfway down the hill yet.
Then she saw the door to the house open quickly, cutting through the fire, and a strange-looking something that wasn’t wearing much clothes grabbed Jacob and pulled him into the house, slamming the door behind him.
Rachel’s mouth dropped open. The van slammed into the house and everything else went according to the plan. It exploded on impact, partly due to the nearly rusted-through gas tank. And the house, so much old wood, burned at an alarming rate.
Alone, Rachel ran down the hill toward the house, half-thinking she could go in and pull Jacob back, but by the time she was anywhere close to the house, it was already completely engulfed in flames. Slowly, she backed away from the intense heat, wondering what she was going to do next.
Thirty-two
Rain lay in the darkness of the woods. The smell of molding, decayed leaves surrounded her. She smelled blood. In her nose. Coming from her arm. The wolf no longer had her by the wrist but it was close. She was afraid to move too much. She was afraid to angle herself so she could get a better view of it. She did not want to alarm it. She wanted to make it think she was going to be down for a while and, for all she knew, she probably would be down for a while.
It suddenly occurred to her that she might die out here in the woods. Alone. Stranded out in the backwoods of some rural town. She wanted her parents. She wanted to go back home to California. If she was going to die, she didn’t want it to be like this. The only reason she had left with Bones in the first place was to escape the pervasive banality of her suburban life which, in and of itself, was a kind of death to her. She didn’t think she would now be staring it face to face.
If she could manage to stand up, if she stayed conscious that much longer, she wasn’t sure she would be able to make a run for it. She knew she wouldn’t be able to outrun the wolf. It would be on her in a matter of seconds and then it would probably make her pay for trying to escape. She knew it wasn’t just a mindless wolf skulking around the perimeter of her body. If it had been a real wolf then it probably wouldn’t have attacked her in the first place and if it did it wouldn’t have just dragged her out here to the woods to sit and wait. It certainly wouldn’t have taken orders from that other guy. She had never seen him before but wondered if it was the Zack kid she’d heard Bones mention. It almost had to be.
This wasn’t as bad as it was going to get. Something else was going to happen. The wolf acted like it waited for something. Like it was guarding her.
Jacob and Rachel were her only real hopes for escape. Deep down, she knew that. She only hoped they would come looking for her. Sadly, she realized this was probably not the case. They were not here for her. They were here for themselves. They wanted something out of that house. For all Rain knew, Rachel and Jacob were the truly evil people. That was entirely possible. The whole thing between Rachel and Bones could have been a concoction. Bones could have been testing her faith toward him and Jacob and Rachel could have led her into this trap. After all, she didn’t see Rachel get hurt and Rain’s wolf seemed in an awfully big hurry to get her away from them.
No.
She knew none of that was true. Things were as they had been. She knew Jacob and Rachel were good as soon as she met them. Just like she knew, deep down, that Bones had been bad news. She was partly to blame for this. Not only was it stupid to come with Bones in the first place it was wrong to just sit by and watch as he embarked on atrocity after atrocity.
Her arm was really mangled. She could hardly move it. The blood pouring from it had dampened the ground beneath her. Her grasp on consciousness was no longer that strong. It seemed to waver in and out with each breath she took.
Thirty-three
From somewhere high above the woods, Bones could see everything. It was like he could see through the night and he could even see through the leaves hanging from the trees.
The house was burning. That was the first thing to catch his attention. That must have been why he was called back. Maybe Ilya and Ernst needed him although he hadn’t received any distressful feelings
coming from them. Rain was in the woods, somewhere behind the house, not that far from the perimeter of the valley. There was a large black wolf circling around her.
Bones knew he would have to go to her before going to the house. If Ilya and Ernst were in trouble, they could let Zack help them out of it, he thought ruefully. He had some business of his own to take care of. He didn’t really know if he would see Rain alone. He figured the other girl and her boyfriend had probably taken her somewhere out of town so the little bitch could flee back to her rich mommy and daddy. He couldn’t pass up the chance to stress his dissatisfaction with her. He couldn’t risk her getting away from all of this and telling the police or somebody about all the things he had done. Not that he really thought she would do that. Not that it would really matter if she did. She would come off looking just as guilty as he would. But, even if she tried to cover everything up, it would leave too many questions unanswered. Eventually, maybe, the right people would try answering those questions.
He brought himself toward the wolf, this vehicle of animation. The spirit that had occupied the wolf gladly left. Bones never realized there were all of these spirits everywhere. Most of them did not partake of the joys of actual flesh and blood like he planned on doing. The only time most of them did this was when Ilya or Ernst commanded them to do it. Like they had undoubtedly ordered this spirit into the wolf, ordering it to do the things it did to Rain.
Immediately upon entering the body of the wolf, Bones felt that hypersensitive rush of living flesh pass through him again.
He enjoyed using this new magic. He sniffed around Rain until she looked at him. Then he backed away.
It was time for some more magic.
He willed himself to take his old form. He realized he would end up looking just like he imagined in his head so he performed some minor alterations while still remaining, essentially, the same person. His hair was a little fuller. The acne scars were gone. He had maybe just a little more muscle mass than he had before.
