by Dan Wells
I opened my eyes and saw the body lying on its face, a privacy towel draped over the buttocks. The back was dark and discolored, but that was common as the blood settled in a corpse. I poked at the back, ran my hands over it feeling for holes or cuts, but there was nothing. I sighed, leaning heavily on the table.
“Only one place left to check,” I said, “and I’m gonna bet you’ll want to do it yourself.”
Mom looked at me, her eyes wet and red. “You think she was raped?”
“I have no idea. Probably not.”
“Then we refuse,” said Mom. “And you’re not going to do it either.”
I looked up, calm and cold. “I’m giving you one chance. Do it, or I will do it for you. There’s probably nothing there, but I refuse to let any more people die because your sense of propriety made me miss a clue.” We stared at each other, each testing the other’s will, until finally she grumbled and stepped up to the table.
“What am I looking for?”
“Anything—damage, wounds, anything at all. Anything that might tell us who killed her, or why.”
“Fine. Close your eyes.”
I did, and listened for a few minutes as Mom and Margaret rustled the privacy towel, whispered quietly to each other, then rolled the body over and whispered more.
There’s nothing here. I thought. Maybe there really is no more evidence on the bodies—maybe it’s just pure mind control with no physical evidence. Maybe we can never catch her at all.
“Nothing,” said Mom. “There’s nothing there.”
I sighed and leaned against the wall, feeling my energy drain away. “Then we’ve lost. I don’t know what else to do.” I felt a hand on my shoulder, and opened my eyes to see Mom standing next to me.
“Just rest.” She pushed me gently toward a chair, and I collapsed into it. “Your girlfriend died—your best friend—and you need to deal with it. It’s completely understandable that you don’t know how.” She smiled—a thin, pained smile—and shook her head. “An amateur autopsy isn’t how most people would choose to do it, obviously, but I know your heart’s in the right place.”
“My heart has nothing to do with it.”
“Just rest,” she said again. “Take a minute, then we’ll go upstairs and eat. Margaret can finish this on her own. You left without any breakfast this morning, so it’s no wonder you’re feeling weak now.”
I stared at the body on the table, dull and lifeless, nearly bloodless, the embalming tubes hanging limply from her shoulder.
Nearly bloodless.… Yet its back is just as bruised and blackened as any other corpse.
I stood up abruptly. “Plug in the pump.” I crossed to the wall and pulled down the drain tube.
“It’s okay,” said Mom, “it can wait—”
“No it can’t.” I attached the drain pipe to the tube in Rachel’s neck. “The back is too bruised for how much blood she lost, and her limbs are stiff. There’s something inside and we need to get it out.” We normally dropped the tube down to a drain in the floor, but this time I put it in a bucket. I wanted to catch whatever dripped out.
“It’s just rigor mortis,” said Margaret.
“It’s been dead five days,” I said. “It’s not rigor mortis.” The two women looked at each other, and I walked to the shelf with the embalming chemicals. “You can stand there or you can help; either way I’m embalming her right now.”
They hesitated a moment longer, then moved slowly into action: connecting the pump, mixing the coagulants and dyes, measuring out the formaldehyde. We attached everything, sealed off the wrist wounds with tight bandages, and turned on the pump. It was designed to use the body’s own circulatory system, filling it with our chemical cocktail while pushing all the ichor out the other end. Mom adjusted it carefully, looking for a good rhythm to approximate the beating of a heart. She fiddled with it much longer than normal.
“There’s something wrong,” she said. “I can’t get it to push through.”
“The arteries are mostly empty after this much blood loss,” said Margaret. “They’ve probably collapsed.”
“There’s something blocking them,” I said, my eyes fixed on the bucket. “Just raise the pressure.” Mom twisted the dial and the pump hummed louder, its artificial heartbeats closer together. Soon the drain tube moved, twisting slightly to the side as it filled and pressurized, and then a thick, dark sludge began to drip out into the bucket.
Ashy and black, just like Crowley and Forman.
Mom gasped.
“What on earth is that?” muttered Margaret, leaning over the bucket with her jaw hanging open.
I looked up at Mom. She looked back silently, eyes wide. I breathed heavily, feeling suddenly exhausted. “We were right.”
She stared a moment longer, then shook her head feebly. “What do we do?”
Margaret scooped up a fingerful of the sludge with her gloved hand; it was burnt and greasy, like the charred residue from an uncleaned grill. “How did Ron not notice her body was filled with this crap?”
“Because they assumed it was a suicide and they never looked any deeper. You didn’t notice it with the other girls because you turned up the power and pumped it all straight into the sewer drain.”
“It looks like the stuff they used to find at all the Clayton Killer crime scenes,” said Margaret.
“Exactly,” I said.
She looked at me, then at Mom. “What’s going on?”
I reached down with my glove and dipped my finger in the muck, pulling it up and looking closer. Exactly like Crowley and Forman. “It’s a demon,” I said softly. “Or the remains of one. It was living inside of her. It was controlling her.”
“A demon?” asked Margaret. She opened her mouth to speak again, then shook her head and closed it. A moment later she spoke again. “What do we do?”
“We call the police,” said Mom, turning off the pump. “We call Agent Ostler—”
“We can’t,” I said.
“—and we get her over here,” she continued firmly, “and we show her everything.”
“We can’t,” I said. “I’ve told you before, we can’t trust anyone in the FBI. If Forman was a demon, who’s to say Ostler’s not?”
“We have to warn them.”
“Who?” asked Margaret.
“Everyone,” said Mom. “If we can’t go to the police we go to the news.”
“And get laughed out of town,” I said.
“We can’t just sit here!” Mom shouted.
I looked at the sludge again, imagining it inside of Marci’s veins, controlling her movements, cutting her own wrists while Marci tried in vain to fight it off. How did it get in there? And why? Forman’s confession rang in my mind: “we are defined by what we lack.” What does Nobody lack? A face, a name, an identity. A boyfriend. Cute clothes. She wants a normal life so she takes theirs, just like Crowley used to do, only Nobody doesn’t kill them—she takes them over mind, body, and soul.
I searched back through my memories of the last few weeks, trying to remember any clues about what the demon did or said. How long had it been there? What was really Marci and what was the demon? Was the kiss real? Was the dance? But Rachel hadn’t died until a few hours after the dance, so it hadn’t gotten to Marci until the next morning, at the earliest. And Rachel had been acting so weird that night, anyway, talking about … about Marci. She had talked about Marci all night, now that I thought about it, praising her and fawning over her. The last words I ever heard her speak were something about how she wanted to be … what? To be like Marci? To be Marci?
I froze. Marci had said the same thing just hours ago, before she died: “I wish I could be…”
She’d been talking about Brooke.
22
I ran for the door.
“John!”
“I have to go.”
“Look at yourself!”
I looked down. My finger was still covered in sludge, my gloves and apron were pink with blood. I stripped t
hem off and threw them in the trash.
“Where are you going?” Mom asked, but I ignored her and bolted out the door in a sprint to Brooke’s house.
Marci had been talking about Brooke ever since the dance: how brave she was, how strong she was, how close she was to me. When we’d seen Brooke at Friendly Burger Marci had almost fumed with jealousy; when I called her this morning and warned her about the demon, the first thing she’d thought of was Brooke.
How does it travel without being seen? How fast can it move? It’s been … four hours, maybe five, since Marci died. Am I too late?
I leapt up the steps to Brooke’s porch and hammered on the door. “Open up!” I heard footsteps inside, and banged again. Brooke’s mom opened the door.
“Hello, John—”
“Did Brooke go to school this morning?”
“I…” She stopped in surprise. “Um, no, no; she said she felt sick—”
I shoved her out of the way and ran through the door, charging down the hall and up the stairs to the second floor. The layout was different than the Crowleys’ house, but it was easy enough to guess which door led to the back corner room. I swung around the edge of the railing, Brooke’s mom shouting after me, and slammed my fist on the bedroom door. “Brooke! Brooke, open up, it’s John.”
“I don’t want to see anybody today.” Her voice was weak.
No, please no. I jiggled the knob, but it was locked. “This is important, you have to let me in.” I don’t know how to save you if it’s already inside.
“John Cleaver!” shouted her mother, pounding up the stairs after me. “What do you think you’re doing!”
“Please, Brooke, there might still be time—you’ve got to open the door!” I slammed my hand on it, nearly breaking it. “Open the door!”
Brooke’s mom grabbed me from behind, pulling me back, and I fought to push her away. “You don’t understand,” I shouted, “she’s in danger!”
The lock clicked, and the door cracked open. I lunged forward, dragging her mom with me. Brooke’s voice leaked through the open gap. “It’s okay, Mom.” The door swung wide, and there she was. The skin under her eyes was dark, like she hadn’t slept in days, and she moved slowly, stiffly, like a zombie back from the dead. I stopped struggling and stared, mouth hanging open.
“No.” I’m too late.
“You look horrible,” said her mom, letting go and pushing past me to Brooke. “Are you okay? I should call the doctor.”
“It’s nothing, Mom, I’m just … tired. I’ll be fine in a few hours.”
“No,” I said again, stumbling against the railing. “Please, no.”
“What’s going on?” asked her mother.
“It’s nothing, Mom,” said Brooke. “He just heard I was sick and came to check on me. I must look pretty terrible to get this kind of reaction out of him.” She smiled, stiff and weak.
Her mom frowned. “Whatever his problem is, I want him out of the house right now. I don’t know what you think you’re doing, John, but I have half a mind to call the police, the way you barged in here like that.”
I stared at Brooke, my mind numb. What do I do? How can I stop her? If it’s already inside, there’s nothing I can do at all.
“I’ll go,” I said. Her mom let go of me, and I took a step back toward the stairs. “I … I’m sorry.”
“I’m fine, John,” said Brooke. “Really. Things were bad before, but now I feel … perfect.”
* * *
It’s over.
I locked my bedroom door and flopped onto my bed, covering my eyes and gritting my teeth until my jaw hurt with the pain.
Nobody’s in Brooke now. Nobody is Brooke. I can’t kill one without killing the other.
The phone rang, but I ignored it; Mom could check the messages when she came upstairs later. I worked backward through my memory, tracing Nobody’s path from girl to girl. There’s got to be something I’m missing; some key piece that will unlock it and make it all work. The demon started in … I didn’t know. A body no one had found yet. From there she took over Jenny Zeller, spent some time in there, then in June she killed her and jumped to Allison Hill. She stayed in Allison for two months before jumping over to Rachel. What had Rachel said the morning Allison died? “She called me five times last night.” Then it was the same with Rachel, obsessing over Marci all night at the dance; now Marci had grown obsessed with Brooke. I pulled a notebook from my backpack and wrote it down:
Intense focus on a new host right before killing the current one.
What prompted the obsession? Was it simply a slow hunt, with me as the prey? But that didn’t make sense; if the demon knew who I was, it didn’t have to spend months jumping from one girl to the next—it could have just come straight for me. And in the morning, when I’d come straight out and told Marci about the demons, I was really talking to Nobody—I was telling the demon herself that I was the one she was looking for. The hunt was over and all she had to do was kill me, but instead she killed her host and jumped into Brooke. I wasn’t her target—it had to be something else.
The phone rang again, loud and insistent. I let it ring. What did I say to Marci this morning? I thought. What happened in our conversation that made her want to leave Marci and take over Brooke? I’d warned her about the killer; I’d told her I’d come over; I’d told her she’d be safe if she wasn’t alone. Was that it? Maybe she spooked and thought that if she didn’t leave Marci right then, she’d never be alone and thus never get the chance. Now that I’d visited Brooke, did she know that I’d figured her out? Had I just put Brooke in danger?
Who am I kidding? Brooke will never leave this alive.
Maybe it was something else—maybe it was the specific mention of the demons that prompted Nobody to kill Marci and take Brooke. I’d told her about the demons and her first response was … something about Brooke. She’d asked me if I had been in the house, I’d said yes, and she’d said “Brooke was in there too.” Maybe she wanted to be Brooke because of Brooke’s experience with Forman.
Or maybe it was our shared experience with Forman, Brooke and I together, that made it important. Even if she wasn’t trying to kill me, she was definitely drawing closer and closer to me. Did she have some other plan, completely unrelated to killing?
She told me she loved me—those were her final words. Was that Marci, breaking through for one last message?
Or was it Nobody?
The phone rang again. I felt a sudden pit in my stomach; a swerve and plunge of vertigo. Ring! I crawled off of my bed and opened my bedroom door. Ring! I walked down the hall, step by step, and looked at the phone. The caller ID said Watson—Brooke’s family. I picked it up. Ring! I hit the button.
“Hello?”
“Hey, John.” It was Brooke, her voice still soft and frail. “How’s it going?”
“Fine.” Why was she calling? Did she know I’d figured her out? What was she doing?
“Sorry about my mom,” said Brooke. “You know how parents can be sometimes. So, what you doing?”
I had no idea how to answer. I’m talking to a demon! I looked at the walls, the windows, anything to spark some kind of active thought, but my brain wouldn’t work. This is the thing that killed Marci.
“You there?” she asked.
I closed my eyes. “It’s you, isn’t it?”
She coughed. “Sorry about my voice, I’m kind of hoarse; it’s Brooke.”
“No it’s not. It’s Nobody, isn’t it? You’re Forman’s friend.”
Silence. The phone crackled, slightly static, the clock ticked. She inhaled, a tiny intake of breath, so soft I could barely hear it. I shifted my feet.
Her voice was the shadow of a whisper. “How did you know?”
“You killed Marci,” I said. “You killed all of them.”
“No.…”
“You’re going to kill Brooke too. How long does she have?”
“No,” she whispered, “never again.”
“What are you doin
g? Why are you killing these girls?”
“I didn’t mean to. I never wanted to hurt anybody, but … I couldn’t take it anymore. But it’s okay now—that’s all behind me.”
“What’s behind you? Killing? Why do you keep saying that?”
“I thought Marci would be the last one—I really did. She was prettier than Rachel, and smarter, and she had a boyfriend, and she looked so happy … but that wasn’t real at all. She was a slob. She was fat. She was dumb—”
“She was brilliant,” I cut in, “and she wasn’t remotely fat.”
“Oh come on,” she hissed. It was Brooke’s voice, but harsher and colder than Brooke had ever been. “Marci was a cow. Rachel was a loser, but at least she was skinny. Now, Brooke, on the other hand, is perfect. She’s tall, she’s thin, it’s like being … a tree, maybe, or a breeze. Her hair is long and flowing, not like Marci’s tangled rat hair. She’s clean, and her room is bright.”
“You’re insane.”
“You were the final piece,” she said. “I could tell, as soon as you saw Brooke in the Friendly Burger, that you loved her. I could—”
“I don’t love anyone.”
“I could see it in your eyes,” she said, “watching her, and in the things you’d shared together that Marci never had. I thought I could keep you, but it got worse and worse, and then this morning when you called to warn me, and you talked about her instead—”
“You talked about her, not me.”
“You talked about the demons,” said Brooke. “I’d started to wonder if it might be you, with all of Marci’s memories, but I wasn’t sure until you said it this morning. You’re the hunter, and that’s what I wanted more than anything—that’s why I came here.”
“To kill me?”
“No!” she insisted. “I came to join you. That’s why I knew it had to be Brooke, because she’d shared it all with you. They’re horrible, John; they’re evil and awful and we have to destroy them. I can help you, John—I can lead you to them, and you can kill them, and we can be together—”
