In fact, Cal doubted that his friend was thinking at all.
“Robbo!” he shouted, but Robert didn’t stop. There was no doubt in his mind that Robert would have kept running at Jonah, and likely would have found himself in a pool of blood on the floor in a matter of seconds. But before he could reach Jonah, the window behind the fat man shattered inward.
Robert dug his heels in and came to an abrupt halt as something passed directly through Mickey Mouse’s left ear before smashing into the brick fireplace on the other side of the room, sending shrapnel flying. Jonah blubbered something incoherent, then looked down at his chest in horror.
There was a watermelon-sized hole directly through the center of his belly—Cal could see Shelly’s terrifying expression right through Jonah. A silence that lasted nearly three full seconds came over the room, then as if time itself had restarted, blood spilled from Jonah’s mouth. His organs slipped down to fill the hole in his gut, before sliding out of him. A moment later, Jonah collapsed with a wet groan in a heap on the floor beside Allan.
“Robbo!” Cal shouted, and Robert finally turned to look at him.
The eleven dead had started to close in on him—he could smell their rotting flesh as they neared.
Startled, it took Robert a second before he acted. Cal leaned away from the woman with half a face as she reached for his chest and arm.
“Stop!” Robert shouted at the top of his lungs, while at the same time raising his hands as he had done in Seaforth. His shout drew their attention and all eleven pairs of black, coal-filled eyes turned toward Robert.
Cal watched as Robert appeared to bear down, his chest becoming concave, the crown of his head aimed toward the dead. His eyes were closed, his breathing rhythmic.
“Stop!” Robert ordered again, this time his words but a mere hiss through gritted teeth.
The dead fingers stopped moving mere inches from Cal. And yet, unlike in the prison, where the guard had been completely still, the fingers still twitched. Cal wasn’t sure what that meant, but was absolutely certain that he didn’t want to find out.
“Allan!” he shouted. “Allan, get the fuck up and untie me!”
The boy stirred.
“Allan! Get up!”
The woman in front of him snarled, and Cal felt his heart thump a mile a minute in his chest. A quick glance at Robert, and he knew that his friend wouldn’t be able to hold them indefinitely. His face was turning a deep crimson and his face was slick with sweat.
“Allan!”
The boy’s eyes flicked open, and for a few seconds he just blinked in the pool of blood, clearly not understanding what was happening.
“Allan!” he shouted again, trying to get his attention. “Allan!” This time Shelly joined in, and it seemed to shock the boy into full consciousness.
He rose to his feet, staggered, and then wiped the blood from his face with the back of his hand as he righted himself.
“Untie us!”
Cal was trying to keep the boy’s attention, but when he looked down at Jonah, who was lying in a pile of his own bloated intestines, he knew that he had lost him. Allan doubled over and vomited on the floor.
“Allan,” Robert hissed. “Please hurry—I can’t hold them much longer.”
Allan stood up straight, and started to whisper ‘oh god,’ over and over again, but finally understanding the magnitude of the situation, he started moving. Taking a wide berth around the frozen spirits, he went to Shelly first. The boy, doing his best to avoid looking at her exposed breasts, went to the ropes on her wrists. A couple of sharp tugs from behind and Shelly’s hands were free. Shelly leaned forward and grabbed the bra from the floor and put it back on before tending to the ropes around her ankles.
“Help Cal!” she instructed Allan.
As Allan, so pale that he was nearly translucent, headed his way, something flashed in his periphery.
A bare-chested man covered in tattoos rushed toward Robert from the kitchen.
“Robert!” he screamed as loud as he could manage.
Chapter 30
Aiden flushed the spent round from the rifle, and immediately set about replacing it. He was lying on his stomach on the grassy incline near the rear of the Harlop property, using the shadow of a large boulder to further disguise him.
There was another man inside the home; he had seen him upstairs rooting around, but after Robert had burst through the front door, Aiden hadn’t been able to track him.
The other one, the fat one in the Mickey Mouse t-shirt, was dead—shot through the stomach. A clean kill, nearly instant death. Aiden had wanted a head shot, but the man was so short that he was worried about dinging Shelly if he tried to shoot over top of her. The man’s gut, however, hung out to the side, making it a safer shot.
Aiden lay down again after the new round was in place, and peered through the rifle scope. He saw Robert in the center of the room, hands outstretched, his face pinched in either pain or concentration. He couldn’t see the kid or Cal through the window, but Shelly was there. He smirked when she walked up and kicked the dead man in the head, sending blood flying.
She was a tough one, that Shelly. He had seen her in action at Seaforth, and he was duly impressed.
The man with the tattoos suddenly appeared, sprinting at the unsuspecting Robert from behind. Aiden exhaled, and applied pressure to the trigger, waiting for the scope to focus on the man’s torso. A split second before firing, Aiden dropped the gun and rolled onto his left side.
The rock landed in the grass with a dull thud, embedding itself at least four inches in the dirt. Aiden sprang to his feet, while at the same time slipping his knife from the holster on his thigh.
“You’re dead,” he said simply, but the man with the Cheshire grin standing just three feet away laughed.
“Nope,” Carson said, his hands squeezing the fist-sized rocks held in each hand. “Alive and well. Can’t say the same for you, though.”
Aiden squinted at the thin man before him. He couldn’t tell if Carson was living or dead, but he wasn’t about to take any chances. He held the knife out in front of him, making sure that the other man got a good look at it.
“I don’t know how you got away from Seaforth, but I’m going to make sure you stay dead this time.”
Carson laughed.
“So Robert’s making friends everywhere he goes now, is that it? Got his boyfriends protecting him?”
“Drop the rocks,” Aiden instructed, his voice monotone. “Now.”
To his surprise, Carson’s thin fingers unfurled and both stones fell to the ground with successive thumps.
Aiden switched his grip on the knife.
“Good, now—”
But a blinding pain in his side stole the words from his throat. He cried out and spun around, slashing at air. Pain flared on his other side, just above his hip, and he whipped around that way, catching sight of a swirl of long, dark hair.
The next attack severed his Achilles, and Aiden dropped to one knee.
He kept swinging his blade, but he would miss the woman by mere inches.
How is she this fast?
Gasping, bleeding, the blade plunged into his back, puncturing his lung from behind. This time, however, instead of being removed and readied to stick him again, this time the blade remained embedded in his body.
“Please,” he croaked before his mouth filled with foam mixed with blood.
Then the blade was twisted and it nicked his heart. Aiden fell on his stomach. His eyes fluttering, he looked up to see that a woman had joined Carson at his side, his arm locked around her waist.
Carson gently guided her away, then came right up to Aiden, squatting on his haunches. Somewhere far away, he felt his head being pulled back, and then Carson was directly in his face, his breath sour with adrenaline.
“When you see my dad, tell him we’re going to get him out of there soon, okay?”
And then Aiden closed his eyes for the final time.
Chapter
31
The man struck Robert in his side, sending them both careening to the ground.
“Shel! The cameras!” he heard Cal yell. The tackle forced him to release the quiddity, and with it went the pain in his chest. Feeling rushed back to his hands and fingers, but that wasn’t necessarily a good thing.
Pain came with it.
But Robert wouldn’t let himself be overwhelmed, not when his friends were in trouble.
He rolled onto his back, trying to catch his bearings, but before he could even suck in a fresh breath, the man was on him again. The man was in full mount, and started raining down punches. Robert got his hands up to deflect the first few blows, but eventually his hands were knocked aside. The man’s knuckles cracked off his cheekbone, sending stars across his vision. Robert tried to buck him off him by thrusting his hips, but this only seemed to increase the ferocity of the blows.
A fist collided with his forehead and the back of Robert’s head banged off the floor. Darkness threatened to close in, but somehow he managed one last-ditch effort to turn his head.
What the hell?
Shelly and Cal and Allan were standing across from one another, forming a sort of triangle, their cameras all pointed at the quiddity, who—
The man on top of him took a deep breath and then leaned in close.
“I’m going to enjoy eating you,” he whispered.
—were still locked in place.
How? How is this possible
The man grabbed his injured wrist and Robert screamed. He tried to struggle some more, but he was winded and exhausted. The man put his index finger into his mouth and bit down hard.
There was an audible crunch, and Robert shrieked.
“Allan! No!” he heard Cal shouted.
Robert’s eyes rolled back in his head, but not before he saw Allan stride over to him. The tattooed freak was so engrossed in chewing off his finger that he never even saw the boy coming. And he definitely didn’t see the foot that collided with the side of his head, sending him sprawling.
“Allan!” It was Shelly’s voice this time.
Robert, dazed, tried to focus on the sound of her voice, to use it as an anchor to fend off the threat of unconsciousness. When he managed to open his eyes again, he was too late. Whatever was holding the quiddity in place broke from the one nearest Allan, a woman who was missing half of her face. She reached out and grabbed Allan by the shoulders. Her mouth, previously slack-jawed, had become a snarl.
“No!” Robert gasped. Somewhere far away, he heard Cal and Shelly screaming, too. He blinked hard and tried to right himself as Allan and the quiddity started to fade.
Somehow Robert managed to rotate toward Allan and hold a hand up, barely noticing that the index finger was now two inches shorter than it had been when he had arrived at the Harlop Estate.
“No!” he shouted, louder this time. He bore down, and something broke in his chest.
But despite his efforts, Allan’s eyes turned a pitch black and he continued to fade, all the while the dead woman started to become more solid.
No, he thought, not her. Bring Allan back!
But the harder he tried, the more real the dead woman became and the more ethereal Allan appeared.
“Robert! Do something!” Shelly shouted.
Robert lacked the energy to reply, to yell back ‘I am! I’m fucking trying!’ and instead focused all of his remaining strength.
It was no use; Allan was gone.
Robert let go then, feeling a great void inside.
The dead woman collapsed in a heap, but as he stared, she slowly raised her half-face and looked at him.
Her eyes weren’t black anymore, they were green. A vibrant, penetrating green that the dead shouldn’t have possessed.
She was alive.
The man with the tattoos had recovered from the kick to his temple and was about to pounce on Robert again, when a familiar voice spoke from near the front door.
“That’s enough, Michael. That’s enough!”
Chapter 32
“I never thought I would see you again so soon, Robert.” Carson shrugged. “But, Daddy wants to come out, you know? He wants to spread the word—time’s a-wasting.”
Robert couldn’t focus. Even after releasing the quiddity, and draining the dead woman with half a face, the pressure inside him had come back. Only now it wasn’t in his chest, but in his head. It was like he was buried under miles of water and all of his movements were labored, as if life was happening in slow motion.
It could have been from the blows to the face, but he didn’t think so. He had been through a lot today, and nothing had felt like this.
“Neat trick with the girl, by the way. You gotta teach me how you did that.”
Robert blinked, and time seemed to slow even more. He heard Shelly say something, but he couldn’t make out the words.
His head was just so damn tight.
“No, no, no, I wouldn’t do that if I were you, Shelly. Stay put. You may be tough, but you aren’t a match for Bella. Besides, I would probably think twice about lowering your camera, wouldn’t you? ‘Less I sick the big bad quiddity on ya. How ‘bout it?”
Carson paused, and Robert tried to clear his head by stretching his jaw. It didn’t help.
“Robert? You still with me? I’m sorry for Michael here, sometimes he just—ooooo—sometimes he just gets so excited. He didn’t mean it, I’m sure. Go on, tell him, Michael, tell him.”
Someone grumbled.
“And you, Shelly, sorry about Jonah. He too can, well, get excited. But we’re all friends here, aren’t we? And I think it’s about time that we finish with the pleasantries and get started.”
Robert tried to roll onto his side, but he couldn’t move.
“Robert? Robert? Time to get up, sweetheart. We have work to do. Daddy’s coming home.”
But instead of replying, Robert closed his eyes. He closed his eyes and started to breathe deeply.
Almost immediately, darkness pervaded his every sense; a deep, foreboding blackness that had an almost velvety texture to it. Only this time, instead of fighting it, instead of resisting the urge to fall in the Marrow, he embraced it.
But there were no specks of white, no frothing ocean, no Leland Black.
And no Amy.
Far away, he felt his heart sink into the pit that was his stomach. If nothing else, this foray to the Marrow as an observer would have allowed him to see Amy. After all, she was the only thing that was still real to him. Everything else had been taken away: his memories, his wife, his family, his life.
Only she was real. And he had to devise a way to get her back.
Words reverberated in the darkness; muffled voices—a woman’s voice he had never heard before.
“Please,” she pleaded, her voice gaining clarity with each word. “Please, don’t hit me again. I did nothing wrong!”
The layers of darkness started to peel back, and before he knew it, Robert was staring at a dark-haired man with close-set eyes and a bulbous nose. There was sweat on his forehead, and sauce staining the corners of his lips.
And he was some kind of angry.
“Please, it wasn’t my fault…it wasn’t my fault, Paul.”
It was the woman’s voice, but for some reason it felt to Robert that the words were coming out of his mouth. Robert tried to look down, to catch his bearings, but he was only an observer in this strange world.
And his view was limited to what the woman saw.
The man snarled and stepped forward, his fists knotting into boulders. The woman looked down at these hairy knuckles and Robert felt his heart flutter.
“Paul?” she wept. “Please, Paul. Please—I did nothing wrong.”
The man rushed at her. Hands, small hands, woman hands, went up in self-defense, but the man named Paul swatted them away with ease. And then he was upon her, punching her first in the stomach and then in the neck.
Robert felt as if he was the one being assaulted, and the air was
forced out of his lungs as his diaphragm was paralyzed. When the man’s knuckles hit his throat, he gasped.
The woman’s hands came up again, and this time, her nails were out. She scratched at his flesh, tearing thick, shoelace-sized pieces of skin.
Robert felt her anxiety, her fear, as if his own. His or her heart—he was no longer able to distinguish between the two—was racing.
“You dare scratch me, Helen? You fucking dare?” the man on top of her roared, spit and barbecue sauce flying from his lips.
The next punch obscured Robert’s vision, colliding directly in his right eye and immediately turning it dark. But her screams, her horrible, blood-curdling cries, seemed only to egg Paul on. He struck her eye again and again; every time his hand drew back for another blow, it became progressively more red with blood. Soon, it wasn’t just blood; there were bits of bone and brain clinging to the hairs on his hand.
Helen’s arms went slack. A few more direct blows to that side of her head, and Robert felt himself fading.
Less than a minute later, Robert was transported to the darkness again. Only this time, he wasn’t alone.
“Paul,” he whispered.
Chapter 33
“Don’t you fucking die on me, Robert!” Carson shouted. “Don’t you fucking die!” He quickly moved to Robert’s side, and tried to sit him up. His brother was seizing hard, his eyes rolled back in his head, his hands and feet erect and twitching.
“Paul,” Robert slurred.
Carson turned to Michael.
“For fuck’s sake, help me!”
Michael appeared frozen by the strangeness of the day’s events and just stood there, chewing something slowly, deliberately, blood dripping from his lips.
He looked to Bella next.
“Bella? Help me get—”
Robert’s body relaxed, and the lack of rigor caused him to slip in Carson’s arms. Staring down at his brother, Carson was shocked to see that his eyes were open and he was staring directly at him.
Carson let go completely and stumbled backward, but Robert’s hand, the one missing part of a finger, shot out before he could get out of reaching distance. It locked on his throat and windpipe.
Scarsdale Crematorium (The Haunted Book 4) Page 13
