by J. S. Bailey
His anger flared at his young friend. Bobby couldn’t consider any of this his fault, but it would have been awfully helpful if he’d stayed around. They still hadn’t even found Bradley, who’d been helping contribute to this chaos. And what had been the deal with Thane and the woman showing up on Randy’s doorstep, promising no harm but trying to strangle him instead? It was all becoming too much. Randy needed Bobby around to help him think.
You didn’t need him before you met him, he reminded himself. Bobby’s impulsive planning had come in handy at the end of Randy’s tenure as the Servant, but Randy had six years of Bobby-free Servant life before that. If he’d gotten by without Bobby’s input then, he could do it now.
Although, to be fair, Randy hadn’t had to deal with quite this much garbage back then. In those days, the extent of his problems were unruly demoniacs. Strange how that all seemed so insignificant now.
He stared at his phone a moment and sighed, then dialed Bobby’s number.
To his surprise, Bobby picked up on the second ring. “Hello?”
“Hey, Roberto,” Randy said, clearing his throat. “How goes it in parts unknown?”
“Not bad.” Was it Randy’s imagination, or did Bobby sound excited? “What about there?”
Randy gave a light cough. “You know, same old.”
“Any sign of Bradley?”
“Not currently.”
“Maybe you should go to his apartment and see if he’s holed up there.”
“What a splendid idea. Do you know where it is?”
“No, but you can probably look it up. Look, I’ve got to go—something amazing just came up this morning. Let me know if anything else happens.”
Randy grimaced as he said, “Will do.”
“Listen, Randy…I don’t want any of you to worry about me.”
“It’s not exactly you we’ve been worrying about, but sure. I won’t worry. You’ll be fine because you’re Bobby Roland, right?” Randy hated the snide tone of his own voice, but he couldn’t help it. Stress had been whittling his patience down to a nub.
“What was that?” Bobby asked. “You started breaking up for a second.”
“Nothing, Roberto. Enjoy the rest of your vacation.”
Randy ended the call and slammed the phone down onto his dresser with a bit too much force, then sank onto the end of his bed. He wanted to trust Bobby more than anything, but he couldn’t imagine what would have made Bobby leave town, if not cowardice. None of it made any sense. Bobby had acted so brave, so selfless. Could Randy really have read his friend completely wrong?
Carly went with him. Don’t forget that.
The soft sound of footsteps padded up the stairs, and Randy turned in time to see Lupe appear in the doorway.
“Did you finally get hold of Phil?” she inquired in a soft tone.
“Does it look like I got hold of him?”
Lupe blanched, and Randy immediately regretted his words.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “No, I didn’t talk to Phil. I did get to talk to Bobby finally, who sounds as happy as can be while we’re all stuck here watching the world implode.”
Lupe ventured into the room and sat down beside him. “You’re not the only one hurting, Randy. We all are, especially Ashley. We need to be strong for her.”
Randy just nodded. As if on cue, Ashley called out for Lupe, so she rose and went back downstairs.
Am I turning into a jerk? Randy wondered once she’d gone. He had been so patient with Lupe during the many years they’d spent together prior to their marriage, helping her work through the countless personal demons that haunted her life, and now he felt like it was all beginning to unravel, like they’d both end up back at square one as two broken, miserable people.
He didn’t want that to happen. He couldn’t let that happen.
“And maybe it won’t happen,” Randy muttered. After all, the demon that had attacked him in the guise of Bradley Scholl had said that Randy would be dead soon, and he supposed if that were true, then all his problems would soon be over.
BRADLEY SCHOLL stared at the house. Sitting on a corner lot, it had butter-yellow siding and a white picket fence all coated in a dusting of snow.
He was starting to like the cold—it hardly even bothered him anymore now that he knew he was truly dead. The cold could have no effect on him.
It had taken him too long to find this place, and he wasn’t even sure how he’d managed it. The voices inside him had told him where to go, of course, but he didn’t have a car and therefore had to travel on foot, keeping out of sight so neither the priest nor any of those other freaks could find him and take him back to that church to torture him.
He couldn’t believe he thought they could help him. He didn’t need help. It had all been a lie to hurt him.
Bradley continued to watch the house, noting that no cars occupied the driveway, though he supposed there could have been one in the garage. But how could he stop the woman from going to that conference if it turned out she wasn’t even here? He’d just have to find a way in and wait for her to come back.
He snuck around to the back of the house and tried the rear door. Locked, of course.
But no matter.
He punched a fist through one of the small panes and reached in to undo the lock and deadbolt. Funny how he’d never been this strong in life. Death had supercharged him, making him more powerful than any mere human.
Death had made him invincible.
He opened the door and crept inside.
It was quiet in the house save for the hum of the furnace and refrigerator. Bradley strode through the kitchen and into the living room, glancing at the family photographs on the walls and halting when he spotted one of a young couple and their three children: two boys and a girl.
His head immediately filled with the memory of him and Jess playing with their brother Dennis out in the creek behind their parents’ house near the Ochoco National Forest. Dennis was the oldest of the three of them, being two years Bradley’s senior, and liked to take charge whenever they went on outdoor adventures such as this one.
“Bradley, you can be the dragon, and Jess and I can hunt you down,” nine-year-old Dennis stated that summer day as Bradley stood barefoot in the middle of the creek, relishing the feeling of water rushing over his toes.
“I was the dragon last time,” Bradley pouted, crossing his arms.
“So?”
“It isn’t fair. Make Jess be the dragon.”
“She’d be too easy to catch. She’s too little.”
“Am not!” Jess said, glaring at Dennis. “Can I be the dragon this time? Pretty please?”
Dennis rolled his eyes. “Fine, I guess. You’d better get a head start, though, because Bradley and I are coming to get you!”
Jess splashed through the water, squealing, and clambered up the western bank and disappeared into the undergrowth. Dennis and Bradley launched after her together, and Bradley winced as he stepped on a stick with his bare foot, but that didn’t stop him. He had to get to Jess before Dennis did.
He had to win.
In the present, Bradley ran a hand over his cheek as something tickled it. A tear? Why not? He’d only seen Dennis once since Jess’s death. They’d had a terrible argument at the funeral, and Bradley hadn’t been able to bring himself to talk to his brother at all after that.
If only they could all be children again, and alive.
A sound caught Bradley’s attention, and he held his breath to listen. Was that the sound of an approaching engine?
He ran to the front window and peered toward the driveway just in time to see a white Toyota pull in and park in front of the garage. His pulse quickened. A woman sat behind the wheel—a woman who could only be Ellen Barkley, the one who would die if she attended that Interfaith Conference.
A sudden thought entered his mind: how would he, a fleshless ghost, be able to stop her?
Ellen took her time getting out of the car. She was a squat woman sha
ped vaguely like an egg with rosy, round cheeks. Bradley had had an aunt like her, once. Aunt Martha had been his father’s sister and baked cookies for Bradley and his siblings whenever they came by to visit.
Then she died of a heart attack at forty-five, and Bradley remembered staring at her lying so still in her coffin, her rosy cheeks painted on by a skilled mortician, sad that she’d never make him any cookies again.
Perhaps she was a ghost, too, now. Once he’d finished here with Ellen, he would have to go look for her.
Ellen had opened the back door of the Toyota and was hefting reusable grocery bags into her arms. She paused a moment to catch her breath, then slammed the car door and waddled up the walk toward the door.
Bradley stepped off to one side, not wanting her to see him immediately upon entering.
A key grated in the lock, and the door swung inward, admitting a gust of wind that fluttered some papers lying on the coffee table. Ellen panted as she crossed the threshold and kicked the door shut, then dropped her half-dozen grocery bags on the floor where she stood.
Then she looked up, right into Bradley’s eyes.
Her cheeks lost some of their rosy tint. “Who the hell are you?” she asked as one of her hands dipped into her purse.
“I—I came here to warn you,” Bradley said. “That conference. You can’t go to it.”
“Not that again.” She removed her hand from her purse. A small gun glinted in her hand.
Bradley’s heart skipped a beat as he momentarily forgot that a gun couldn’t harm him. “Ma’am, please. I heard people say they were planning an attempt on your life. You can’t go to the conference or you’ll die.”
Ellen glared at him. “You’re the second person who’s showed up here this week trying to scare me away from going, and you know what? It only makes me want to go more. So nice try. Now if you don’t get out of here in the next five seconds, I’ll make you sorely regret ever coming here.”
Bradley smiled at her. “But you can’t hurt me. I’m dead already.”
“Oh, so you’re a ghost!” Ellen’s tone oozed so much sarcasm it made Bradley’s nerves sting. “That’s funny, because the other day someone claiming to be a psychic stopped by here to convince me I’d die if I showed my face at the conference, and now someone claiming to be dead shows up? Maybe a few aliens will drop by here to warn me next. I’ll have to give Preston a call and tell him about all this. Maybe he’ll have a good laugh.” She shook the gun at Bradley. “Now scram.”
“Preston?” Bradley asked, shaken. “You mean Father Preston?”
Her eyes narrowed. “So you know him, too.”
“Please…please don’t tell him I’ve been here. I can’t let him find me.”
Ellen’s lips twitched. “Very well. If you leave right this second, I won’t tell him.”
“Do you promise?”
“I promise.”
Without another word, Bradley opened the front door and fled.
FATHER PRESTON sat at his desk in his at-home office, staring up at the crucifix on the wall while drumming his fingers on top of the wooden surface. “Father, please guide me,” he prayed. “Help us find Bradley Scholl before he hurts anyone else.”
Randy had called him last night to tell him of their suspicions in regard to Allison Mason’s stabbing. It was a miracle she’d survived the attack—if the knife entered her a fraction of an inch from where it had, she’d have bled out before the paramedics arrived to save her.
Father Preston could only blame himself for Bradley’s escape and Allison’s subsequent injury.
Well, he could blame Bobby, too, but that just made him feel guilty. Bradley had been entrusted to Father Preston’s care. He should have taken stronger measures to contain him.
His landline telephone rang, startling him so much he jumped several inches off the chair. He fumbled for the receiver and accepted the call. “Hello?”
“Preston, this is Ellen,” said an all-too-familiar voice. “We need to talk.”
THANE SAT cross-legged on the floor in the abandoned house across the street from the Roland residence, and Mia stood over him with folded arms, waiting for him to regain his senses. He’d been out of it since Bobby Roland’s friend had thwacked him with the frying pan. Probably needed medical attention. Wasn’t going to get any, because that would raise too many questions, and they didn’t have time for questions.
Mia’s cell phone rang, and she slipped it out of her skirt pocket. “Hey, Shona.”
“Girl, where are you?” Shona asked. “I’ve been trying to get a hold of you.”
“I’m with Nathaniel Bagdasarian, only he likes to call himself ‘Thane.’ He’s proving to be an interesting character.”
“Why are you still with him? Make him do the thing and then come by my place. I’ve found a couple new people you can hit up.”
“It’ll have to be a different day. I’m in Ohio.”
“What are you doing there?”
“Long story.” Mia smiled. Thane kept blinking at the floor as if he were trying to reassemble all his marbles. “I’ll call you when I get home.”
“Whatever. How much are you going to make him donate?”
“I haven’t decided yet. Maybe a couple hundred thousand. His folks have got it. Disgusting people. If you saw their mansion, you’d just vomit.” Though admittedly, it had been nice staying there. It put her own small apartment to shame. Too bad the Bagdasarians wouldn’t be able to afford the upkeep once she’d forced them to part with their dough. They’d have to live as paupers, just like everyone else.
Thane groaned as clarity entered his eyes for the first time in an hour. “What happened?”
“Sorry, Shona, gotta go.” Mia stuffed her phone away and planted her hands on her hips. “How are you feeling?”
Thane touched the back of his head and flinched. “Who did this to me?”
“It was the girl. Don’t you remember? That silly little fight got out of hand, and she beaned you with a frying pan. I told them both to forget about what happened, and then I walked you back over here. They have no idea they ever saw us.”
Thane’s eyes widened. So he remembered now—at least now Mia knew he hadn’t sustained any brain damage. “How long ago?”
“About an hour. I—”
Thane got to his feet in an instant but swayed as if he were about to keel over. “We’ve got to get back over there!”
“Not right now, we don’t. You need to rest. Besides, I just told you I made them forget what happened. They literally have no clue we were over there earlier. They won’t be running away just yet.”
“Like you’d know. They could be leaving right now.”
Thane made to move toward the window, but Mia put a hand on his shoulder and forced him to sit on the floor again. “If you’re so worried, why don’t you do your little mind-thing and see what their plans are? Then we can plan our next step accordingly.”
His jaw stiffened, but Thane did shut his eyes and concentrate for several moments.
Then his eyes snapped open.
“What is it?” Mia asked.
Thane’s face had gone white with alarm. “You’re not going to believe this. There’s two of them.”
“WE WERE actually on our way west when we got the flat tire,” Kaori said, “so I don’t see any problem in going back to Oregon with you. What all would you need me to do?”
Bobby sneezed three times in a row before saying, “You can cleanse Bradley Scholl while I go after Thane. I’d wait and help Bradley after Thane is taken care of, but I don’t trust him not to hurt himself. I mean, I stopped him from being flattened by a train the other night. Lord knows what he’ll do next.”
Kaori nodded. “I can do that. What say you, Matt?”
Matt shrugged and yawned. “You’re the boss.”
Bobby breathed a sigh of relief, which only made him cough more. Why couldn’t one of these people have been a healer? It would have made life easy for once. “We should head ou
t soon, but before we do, I want to go to the doctor and get some medicine for whatever it is that’s trying to kill me.” He sneezed again and grabbed a napkin to dab at his nose, then crumpled it up and took it to the garbage can sitting in the corner of the kitchen.
He saw the broken pieces of vase as soon as he lifted the lid. “What the heck?”
“What is it?” Carly asked, rising.
“Charlotte’s vase. The one from the entryway? It’s busted.”
Carly peered into the trash and frowned. “That’s odd. When did that happen?”
Bobby scrutinized the scrape on his arm—the one he didn’t remember receiving. What were the odds that two unexplainable things would happen to him in the same morning? “It was there last night when I came down here to get a drink. I walked right by it.” Almost walked into it.
“Maybe your brother knocked it over when he was getting ready for school. Aren’t those the flowers that were in it?” Carly pointed at the stack of artificial white roses lying beside the sink.
“We would have heard Charlotte having a conniption if he’d done that. Her dad bought it for her in China.” Bobby’s heart raced as he tried to figure this mystery out. He couldn’t help but feel the damage was in some way his fault, even though he hadn’t a clue as to what had happened.
He glanced back at Kaori and Matt, both of whom appeared skeptical. “Do you frequently suffer from memory loss?” Kaori asked.
Bobby let out a huff. “I wouldn’t know, would I? This is just weird.”
“Maybe we should just go ahead and leave,” Carly said.
Bobby knew she was right. The vase mystery was only delaying him from going back to the doctor’s office and then hitting the road. But how could he let something like this go? He had a fairly good track record of determining which things were important and which things were not, and this without a doubt struck him as the former.
“It’s a shame Charlotte doesn’t have security cameras down here so we can see how it broke,” Bobby said, replacing the garbage can lid. “That way I…”
