by J. S. Bailey
“I still don’t remember it,” he said.
“And I don’t remember falling off that balcony,” Jess said. “Injuries like ours are traumatic. It’s normal to forget them. It makes it easier to cope.”
Bradley supposed she might be right.
“There is one way to prove you really are dead.”
Bradley turned. “What’s that?”
The wind tossed Jess’s long hair into tangles that she didn’t bother brushing aside. “Stand in the middle of the tracks and wait for the next train. It won’t be able to hurt you.”
The thought of doing such a thing made his skin crawl. “And if it does?”
“It can’t. I promise. Now go on and see for yourself. I’ll be right here waiting.”
Bradley let out a pent-up breath (could he really breathe if he were a ghost?) and stepped closer to the tracks. Jess had never led him astray, and he couldn’t see why she would start now. “Will you stand here with me?” he asked.
Jess’s smile lit up the night. “Of course.”
BOBBY ROLAND hurtled down a corridor as the corpse of a man named Farley shuffled after him like a zombie in some stupid horror flick. His heart pounded, and sweat dripped from every pore as Farley got closer and closer, and then cold hands latched around Bobby’s neck, and then Bobby was sitting upright on the couch in his tiny living room, no Farley in sight.
He rubbed his neck where the dream specter had touched it. Farley had been a real person once. Bobby had killed him to save himself and his mother.
Bobby survived, of course. His mother had died anyway, at the hand of another man on a different day.
Not wanting to think about those terrible days he’d endured the past summer, Bobby’s eyes went to the clock on the wall: 6:00 pm.
“Crap.”
He lurched to his feet in an instant, jamming them into a pair of gym shoes. He hadn’t meant to sleep so long after his weightlifting session earlier that afternoon, and now he was running late for an errand he’d promised to complete by the end of the day.
“Father Preston is going to kill me,” he muttered as he pulled on a hoodie and snatched up his keys and wallet. In reality, the priest probably wouldn’t be overly bothered by Bobby’s delay. All Bobby had promised to do was pick up boxes of canned goods from his church and deliver them to a church in Hillsdale.
He still hated disappointing people. He’d done plenty of that already.
Don’t be so hard on yourself, the Spirit murmured while Bobby dashed to his Nissan. You do fine.
Bobby had no comment.
Father Preston walked out the front of St. Paul’s Church when Bobby squealed into the lot minutes later. The middle-aged priest wore a long black coat and a blue scarf that covered the bottom portion of his face.
Bobby parked in the space next to Father Preston’s car and hopped out. “Sorry I’m late. Where are the boxes?”
Father Preston tugged his scarf down and offered Bobby a warm smile. “Just inside the door. And here I thought you’d finally found someone who would benefit from your—ahem—services.”
“I haven’t found one yet.” As the Servant, Bobby was tasked with exorcising demons from the possessed, whom he could detect via the aura that the evil spirits broadcast into his mind. “At least not since last summer,” he added with a frown.
Father Preston’s sigh formed a misty plume in front of his face. “I’m sure you’ll find someone eventually. Randy always seemed to find enough of them.” He paused to check his wristwatch. “See you around, Bobby. Don’t forget to lock up before you leave.”
He strode past Bobby and got into his car, then backed out of the parking space and was gone.
Bobby’s shoulders slumped. He had been on the lookout for the telltale black aura for months, going to shopping malls and even a few concerts to see if he could spot one in the crowd. He’d briefly encountered a possessed man at a bar called The Pink Rooster up in Hillsdale the week after he’d taken on the mantle of Servitude, but he’d been too terrified to act when the entity possessing the man caused Bobby to mentally relive some of his own lesser moments.
Bobby had fled the bar like a frightened kid.
Shaking his head, Bobby popped the trunk. Time to get down to business.
St. Paul’s had just concluded a food drive for the poor of Autumn Ridge and was sending some of the excess over to St. Augustine’s in Hillsdale. Bobby, St. Paul’s one and only maintenance man, had volunteered himself to make the delivery.
He arranged the boxes of food in his trunk, then set out.
Hillsdale was just a short jaunt up Interstate 5. Bobby took the second Hillsdale exit and swung onto a home-lined street called Columbia Boulevard. The somber brick façade of St. Augustine’s soon loomed on the right between two Victorian-style houses, and he pulled into the lot and popped the trunk once more.
He hefted the first box into his arms. Feeling his budding muscles bulge under the weight of canned goods, he made his way toward the church door.
It swung open before he had the chance to knock. Thirty-year-old Father Kurt, a close friend of Father Preston, held the door open while Bobby carried the box inside.
“Thanks,” Bobby panted. “Where do you want these?”
“You can set them right here by the wall,” the bespectacled young priest said, indicating an empty spot on the narthex floor. “Thanks again for sending it all over.”
“No problem.”
The moment Bobby plopped the heavy box onto the floor, a tidal wave of urgency crashed over him, rendering him immobile for long seconds.
Images tumbled through his head like windblown snapshots.
Train tracks. A man, waiting. The gate going down across the road as a locomotive rumbles through.
A terrified scream cut short.
Sweat broke out across his body.
Someone he knew was about to be mowed down by a train.
Father Kurt was saying something. “—all right?” The man’s face had become a mask of concern.
“Something, uh, just came up,” Bobby said lamely. “I’ll leave the other boxes here later.”
“But it’ll only take a—”
“I don’t have a minute!”
Hating that he had to appear rude, Bobby jogged outside, slammed the still-full trunk closed, and peeled out of the parking lot, leaving a very confused Father Kurt standing in front of the church with folded arms. He knew the place he’d seen in the vision. Tracks crossed Umpqua Street near an abandoned factory on the other side of Hillsdale.
If he wasn’t fast enough, someone would die there.
Bobby’s heart hammered as he zigzagged through residential streets and ran a red light at the intersection of Grapevine and Meadowview. If he failed someone else after all he’d been through…
“I will not fail,” he said through clenched teeth. “Not this time.”
Bobby screeched to a halt in the factory parking lot ten minutes later. The tracks ran parallel to the lot and building.
No train was in sight.
Yet.
Bobby grabbed a Maglite out of the glovebox and clicked it on before stepping out into the night.
He pointed the beam in the direction his premonition had indicated and sucked in a sharp breath. A man stood directly on top of the tracks a tenth of a mile away from him. His hands were jammed into the pockets of a light gray coat, and the wind tousled his platinum blond hair into wispy tangles.
An aura blacker than pitch flooded Bobby’s mind the moment he laid eyes on the man.
Well, then.
Not wanting to startle him into violence, Bobby approached on quiet feet, then remembered the guy must have seen the light, so he broke into a run.
He halted about ten yards from the man, who hadn’t budged.
“Will it come soon?” the man asked in a thin voice.
“I’d bet money on it,” Bobby said. He could feel a black tendril trying to slither through some gap in his mind, and he willed t
he Spirit to bar it. “Do you want to step over here and talk?”
The man whirled to face him. Bobby recognized him immediately: of all the people it could have been, this was the demoniac he’d abandoned at The Pink Rooster months previously.
Abandoned, because Bobby had been too scared and ashamed to help.
“How can you see me?” the man asked. “Are you dead, too?”
Bobby frowned. “I don’t think so.”
The man turned his head to the side as if he were looking at someone Bobby couldn’t see. “That’s what I thought,” he said.
Another tendril stroked at Bobby’s thoughts. You cannot help him.
Knowing he must tread with extreme caution, Bobby said, “What did you think?”
“That you don’t remember dying.”
“There’s sort of a good reason for that.”
The man made a weak gesture with his right hand. “Come stand on the tracks with us.”
“Why?”
“That way you’ll know.”
It may have been Bobby’s imagination, but he thought he heard a rumble in the distance. “Listen,” he said. “Can’t we figure out if we’re dead or not somewhere else?”
“Here is good enough.”
Bobby tried to keep his frustration at a minimum even though panic swelled inside of him at an alarming rate. If Blond Guy didn’t get off the tracks in the next thirty seconds, Bobby would have to try to body-slam him to the ground, and that was a hard thing to do when you only weighed a hundred and forty-five pounds.
Help me, Bobby prayed.
Then it came to him. “What’s your name?” he asked.
“Bradley. Never Brad.”
“Bradley what?”
“Does it matter?” Bradley gazed down the tracks with an expression bordering sickeningly on hope. “It should be here any minute.”
Okay, so that didn’t work. Bobby strained to think of a new tactic. The demon possessing him must have caused Bradley to think he was a ghost and convinced him to go stand on the tracks to prove it to himself.
“Why does it have to be a train?” Bobby asked.
Bradley’s brow creased. “That’s how I died.”
“Who told you that?”
Bradley pointed at the air next to him. “She did.”
“I don’t see anyone.”
“You don’t?” Bradley’s thin, blond eyebrows knit together. “I don’t under—” He broke off, listening, and Bobby heard it, too: the unmistakable rumble of an approaching locomotive.
“Bradley, get off the tracks and come here.”
“But I have to know!”
“Which means you aren’t sure if you’re dead or not, right?”
Lights from the train cut through the darkness. Bradley’s eyes widened, and before he could do anything even more rash, Bobby launched himself at him, shoved him as hard as he could in the chest, and sent them both toppling down an embankment.
The wind from the train’s passage ruffled Bobby’s dark hair as it clattered by. When the last car receded from them with a lonesome clack-clack on the tracks, Bradley sat up and stared after it.
“That would have hit me,” he said.
“Yes, and then you really would be dead. Come on, get up.” Somehow Bobby had managed to hang onto his flashlight, and he helped Bradley off the ground with his free hand.
Bradley’s hand felt clammy, and when Bobby let go, Bradley’s breathing thickened. “I—I’m alive. For real?”
“It looks that way to me. Um, can we talk somewhere warmer than this?”
Bradley’s brows knit together. “Talk?”
“Yeah, about anything you want.”
Bradley grew silent, then squinted and tilted his head. “Haven’t I seen you somewhere before?”
“Yeah—The Pink Rooster, back in July. I was looking for a woman and asked if you’d seen her.” Bobby tried not to shudder at the memory. He counted himself lucky to have blocked out any demonic attacks so far tonight. Mentally reliving the crimes of his youth had not made for an enjoyable pastime. “I’m Bobby, by the way. Bobby Roland.”
“Bradley Scholl.” Bradley stuck out a hand, and Bobby shook it. “I do sort of remember meeting you…did you ever find her?”
Bobby hesitated a moment, hoping Bradley wouldn’t try to delve any deeper. “I did.”
“Well, that’s good…I don’t know, maybe I should talk to someone. I—I think I might be going crazy.”
They started walking back to where Bobby had parked the Nissan.
“He’s going to kill you,” Bradley said, almost casually.
The question caught Bobby so off guard he stopped in his tracks. “What? Who is?”
“Thane.”
THANE, WHO’D arrived in the world thirty-nine years earlier as Nathaniel Bagdasarian, gazed out his apartment window and down at the empty street, his mind a flurry of thoughts.
It’s time to move, he thought. You’ve had your fun.
He drew away from the window and continued dressing himself.
He smiled as he pulled on his socks. After so many years of immobility, he could still hardly believe it. To be able to slip one’s arms into sleeves and fasten all the buttons without help was a miracle that few appreciated.
“Thanks again, Father,” he whispered, as he had every day since the being had made him well.
Thane stretched his limbs. He’d only just gotten back from a trip overseas, where he’d spent a few weeks in Paris and a few more in London. He’d dined in five-star restaurants, seen plays, and toured museums, paying for it all with money he’d caused several different bank tellers at various banks to relinquish into his possession.
As a teenager he’d longed to see Europe. His accident had swiftly brought those plans, and all others, to an end.
And now he was back in Oregon to finish the work he had to complete before 2015 came to an end. Three weeks remained in which he could do it. He’d given Bobby Roland enough of a break; the goal being to lower his defenses by not interfering in Bobby’s life for months. The boy was still young. He might be foolish enough to believe that Thane had decided to leave him alone.
The mere thought of Bobby Roland turned Thane’s stomach. The moment Thane had been healed he’d set out after the boy, then realized that’s precisely what Bobby would expect. Better to catch him unaware.
Since Thane had spent twenty years in a nursing home teeming with the feeble and dying, his possessions were few. He packed up all the clothing he’d purchased after his spiritual father had restored all of his body’s functions and packed them into two suitcases, then took them out to the compact silver Nissan he’d bought right before leaving the States.
He didn’t know why he’d chosen to buy the same model of car that Bobby Roland owned other than the fact it amused him to no end.
At least Bobby didn’t drive a Mustang Cobra.
Thane got into the car and set off.
Driving again had taken some getting used to (especially since he’d had to fight off flashbacks about the accident), but it was just like riding a bike when you got down to it. He’d even made it official by taking a driving test and having his license reissued. Since no one at the DMV had known him as a quadriplegic, no suspicions had been raised.
An hour later, he reached his destination: a sprawling house nestled at the foot of the mountains. He turned into the gated lane and rolled his window down to speak into the microphone mounted to the left of the car.
“It’s Leon,” he said to whoever might be listening on the other end. He and his younger brother had similar voices. “Would you let me in?”
The speaker crackled to life. “Leon!” said an unfamiliar man, obviously one of the Bagdasarians’ employees. “This is a surprise. We thought you were still in Toronto.”
“I decided to come back early,” Thane said, trying not to feel too irritated at the fact that he’d known nothing about his brother’s travel plans. “Since it’s almost Christmas, and all.” H
e sent out his thoughts and detected the man sitting in the security room in the mansion’s basement, eating Cheese Curls and watching a game on a muted television. The man’s name was…Vance. Vance Peterson.
“I hear you,” Vance said. “Hang on and I’ll let you in. That a new car you’ve got?”
Thane winced at his own stupidity. Of course Vance could see him on the security cameras monitoring the property. “It’s just a rental,” he lied. “The other one’s in the shop.”
“I know how that goes. Welcome back to Bag End.”
The black gate swung open, and Thane proceeded up the driveway. A door on the five-car garage off to the left slid upward, and Thane parked inside, then gathered up his suitcases and got out.
He stood in the mansion’s shadow for several minutes, staring up at the pale walls, columns, and long windows. Bag End had been his grandparents’ estate while they were still living. (They had been unashamed Tolkien fans, and enjoyed the play on their own name.) They’d made it big in real estate, becoming some of the wealthiest citizens in Southwest Oregon. Thane’s father, John—their only child—had inherited the estate upon their passing some ten years earlier.
As a boy, Thane had loved to visit his grandparents’ home.
With luck, it would soon be his home.
He gathered up his wits, ran a hand through his thick auburn hair to make sure it looked even, and pushed the doorbell.
While he waited for someone to greet him, he avoided the temptation to send out his thoughts to pick up on what good old Mom and Dad might be doing at that moment. Better to see for himself, in person.
A fiftyish blonde woman wearing black slacks and a blouse opened the door. “Leon! Vance just told us you were…” The words seemed to die on her tongue, and her face went white. “You’re not Leon.”
Thane probed the woman’s mind. “You’re right, Meryl,” he said, finding her name among her thoughts. Apparently Meryl was the Bagdasarians’ live-in housekeeper, acquired after he’d been interred at Arbor Villa. “It’s Nate.”
Her expression appeared blank. “Nate?”
“Some may refer to me as Nathaniel, if they refer to me at all.”
