Lance felt a bit of strength returning. Was able to regain his footing and stand upright.
Melissa McGuire stood slack-jawed, her eyes following her monster as it flung itself through the air. Her eyes never left the beast, and her face told Lance everything he needed to know.
She can’t see her. She can’t see Annabelle. The colors and heat and sound regained their presence, and Lance chuckled. Looked like he still had one advantage over Melissa McGuire and her Bulgarian demon.
The hala’s head came back together, the two smoking halves resealing and re-forming. Even in the darkness, even with the creature’s vague and shifting features, Lance could make out the snarl as the beast hurled through the air and slammed itself into Annabelle Winters’s chest.
The two of them toppled to the ground. The rolling pin left Annabelle’s hand and vanished into nothing as she lost her grip on it. She swatted at the creature with her hands, pounding her small fists into its neck and face. Its mouth snapped and bit at her assault.
“What is happening!” Melissa McGuire yelled. Her head turned and she bored an enraged stare into Lance. “What are you doing to him? What are you doing to my baby?”
And then she was moving, coming at Lance like a defensive tackle ready to spear an opponent into the earth. He tried to shift out of the way, but with his arms bound, he could only move so much, and her weight hit him hard, his back ramming into the stud behind him. Lance let out a soft cry at the pain and was then choked off as Melissa McGuire’s fiery hands wrapped around his neck and squeezed. His Adam’s apple compressed and he gagged—or at least tried to. His airway was blocked and his head was slammed against the wall and his eyes felt as if they were about to pop from their sockets.
“I’ll kill you myself!” Melissa screamed, her grip tightening further. “And then I’ll feed your girlfriend to my baby!”
And then a shadow darkened the right side of Lance’s vision, right before a fist slammed into the side of Melissa McGuire’s face hard enough to send a tooth through the air, clacking on the cement floor as it landed. Her body collapsed in a naked, sweaty heap. Lance looked up toward the stove just in time to see the hala dissipate, clearing from the air like a fog evaporating, until there was nothing left at all. Its puppet master had been disarmed, rendered useless.
Annabelle Winters’s ghost was gone, too, the battle over as quickly as it had started.
Lance looked to his right. Found Samuel Senior standing next to him. The man’s face looked haggard, but he reached out a hand and gripped Lance’s shoulder. “Are you okay? Are you with me?”
Lance’s breath was rapid, irregular. But he sucked in a deep breath and nodded.
Samuel Senior said, “Let’s get you down. Police’ll be here soon.”
Lance heard the words. Nodded again.
And then he passed out.
43
There was only darkness.
No dreams. No visions or visits from lingering spirits. There was nothing. It was as if Lance had been powered off, as if somebody had hit the shutdown button.
And then all at once he gasped, choking on the fresh air filling his lungs and squinting against a dull light as he opened his eyes.
He was staring straight up through treetops, gazing at the night sky, the moon large and bulbous and bright. The cloud cover had cleared away, and stars seemed to actually twinkle. Lance felt hard earth under his head and body, could feel blades of grass itching his ears.
“Thank God, you’re back.”
Lance jumped, was about to sit up before a gentle hand found his shoulder and pushed him down. “Easy,” Susan Goodman’s voice said. “Go slow at first.”
Lance obeyed and sat up gingerly. Blood flooded into his head and his vision did a momentary jiggle before settling. He took three deep breaths, his fingers digging at the ground, his ears listening to what sounded like many voices speaking in rapid, official conversation.
He was alive.
He was completely and fully alive.
He looked to his left and found Susan Goodman wearing a pair of Westhaven sweatpants and an Alf t-shirt that was two sizes too big, even for her. Her dark makeup was gone, her face washed. She looked much younger this way, more innocent. Her medical bag was on the ground next to her, and she zipped it quickly and stood, motioning for Lance to follow. “We need to go. Something tells me you don’t want to have to talk to them.” She nodded over Lance’s shoulder.
Lance turned and looked and found that the two of them were standing just inside the tree line that bordered the McGuires’ backyard. Fifty yards ahead, policemen and paramedics rushed in and out of the McGuires’ basement door. Beyond the house, Lance saw the flashing blue lights from the cruisers decorating the sky.
Samuel Senior was standing to the right of the house, halfway up a small hill that led to the front. He was talking to one of the policemen in wild, frantic gestures. But his hands were uncuffed, which Lance took to be a good sign.
“Where’s Leah?” Lance asked. But Susan was already moving, her large torso squeezing through the trees with a surprising agility. Lance took one last glance at the scene near the house, scanned the skyline for traces of … anything. Then he turned and followed.
They went maybe a hundred yards before Susan turned right and they were spat out onto a neighborhood street. Her 4Runner was parked along the sidewalk, and she hustled toward it and got in, tossing her bag into the backseat. Lance got in the passenger seat and buckled himself in.
“Cut on your neck wasn’t much of anything,” Susan said, starting the engine. “I put a bandage and some antiseptic on it.”
Lance reached up and felt the small piece of material on his neck, shuddering at the memory of the hala sucking there. “Thank you,” he said, wondering how much of him—the true, inside part of him—had been sacrificed. “Where’s Leah?”
Susan drove through the neighborhood and out onto the main road, heading toward downtown. “She called and told me to find you at the McGuires’,” Susan said. “Said something bad was happening and you might need help. She also said to keep it quiet and to make sure the police didn’t get to you first. She sounded absolutely desperate.” Susan looked over at Lance. “Are you some sort of fugitive or something?”
Lance shrugged. “Probably.”
Susan kept driving.
“Where is she?” Lance asked again.
Susan made a turn. “You did it, didn’t you? You figured out what happened to my brother?”
Lance stared straight ahead. “Yes.”
“And he’s dead?”
“Yes. I’m sorry.”
From the corner of his eye, Lance saw Susan nod twice, then reach up to wipe her cheek with the back of her hand. “Thank you,” she said. “It’s good to finally know.”
She drove through the downtown street, all the shops dark except a bakery. Lance looked at the clock on the radio and saw it was approaching five in the morning.
Up on the left, Annabelle’s Apron’s lights burned bright, and Lance’s stomach grumbled. He could go for some pie. As they passed the diner, Lance looked in through the large windows.
He smiled.
Annabelle Winters stood inside, her head and shoulders just rising above the windowsill, looking right back at him. She raised her hand in a wave. Lance waved back, hoping the woman could finally go and find her peace. He hoped she knew how eternally grateful he’d be to her for saving his life. Saving the town.
“Who are you waving to?” Susan asked.
Lance craned his neck and looked out the back of the 4Runner, back toward the diner. Annabelle Winters was gone.
“A friend,” Lance said.
Susan kept driving.
They were quiet, the two of them, nothing much more to be said. Lance knew if he closed his eyes, he’d fall asleep, so he kept them open, staring out the passenger window and watching Westhaven pass by for the last time.
He knew where Susan was taking him.
He knew it
was time.
Susan kept driving.
The bus station was right where Lance had left it two days ago. Tucked away at the end of a large parking lot on the outskirts of the town. Susan turned on her blinker and entered the lot, passing what might have been ten feet from the spot on the sidewalk where Lance had stood upon his arrival, readying his search for breakfast.
The lot was mostly empty, except for a few darkened cars scattered here and there, but buses lined up near the depot, some with their lights on and engines running. A couple sat still and silent, resting before the next journey. Susan pulled her 4Runner around them and stopped at the station’s main entrance. She didn’t put the car into Park, just held the brake and asked, “No more boys are going to die?”
Lance thought about it and shook his head. “No. I think it’s over.” And though he had no evidence this was the complete truth, his gut told him it was fact. What had happened in the McGuires’ basement tonight had disrupted things. Put a halt to Melissa McGuire’s schemes. Hopefully forever.
Just one of those feelings of his.
One of those things he couldn’t explain.
“Will Leah be able to tell me what happened? I mean, what really happened to Chuck?”
“Yes,” Lance said. Another feeling. “She’ll know the truth. If not now, soon. She’ll know everything.”
Susan Goodman nodded once more and said, “Okay, get out of here before I get arrested for aiding and abetting.”
Lance forced a smile and opened the door, cool air rushing in and feeling good on his face, his neck. He got out and said, “Thank you, again. For everything.”
Susan winked. “Anytime, slick. Now get going.”
Lance closed the door, and Susan drove away. He watched the taillights until they were out of sight, leaving just him and the idling buses alone outside.
He turned and pulled open the door to the bus station’s lobby, stepping inside to the tune of classical piano. An old-timey music choice for an old-timey mode of transportation. The ticket counter was directly to his left, across a scuffed and scarred linoleum floor that might have been attractive a decade before Lance was born.
To his right, there were three rows of benches, old wooden things that had probably held thousands of travelers over the years—businessmen, Army husbands on furlough, and drifters, like Lance, who just needed to move on.
Leah sat alone on the first bench, her crutches on the floor at her feet, Lance’s backpack at her side.
At the sight of him, she leapt from her seat and hopped on one foot, covering the ten or so feet between them. Then she sprang and jumped toward him, her arms outspread and reaching. Lance lurched forward, his long arms sliding under hers and swooping her up, catching her and holding on tight.
She buried her head in his neck, and he breathed in deep the smell of her, inhaled until his lungs felt they’d explode. He never wanted that smell to go away. He wanted to bottle it and keep it safe and have it forever.
She squeezed him hard and then pulled away and kissed him on the lips, long and meaningful and full of the words Don’t let me go yet.
He didn’t. At least not then. They kissed and hugged and laughed and carried on oblivious to the rest of the world until finally, regrettably, Lance set her down, gently.
She smiled up at him, and Lance felt his heart melt.
But they knew … they both knew the unspoken truth.
“How did you know?” Lance asked, taking Leah’s hand and leading her back toward the bench. She hopped alongside him and then turned and sat. Lance did the same. “How did you know it was her? Melissa McGuire?”
Leah grinned at him. “It was because of you, actually. You had the right idea the very first night.”
Lance’s head still felt a little scrambled. “What do you mean? What grand idea did I have and then obviously ignore?”
“When I told you about the football team suddenly having a winning record, you asked me if Coach McGuire had been successful at his previous school.”
Lance nodded. “Right.”
“Well, after you decided to run off and leave me alone with nothing but a shotgun and my thoughts, I got bored and started thinking and remembered you asking that. So I looked it up on my phone.”
“So Kenny McGuire coached a winning football team before coming to Westhaven?”
“Nope,” Leah said. “And that’s what threw me at first. When I Googled his name, the other school that came up had a terrible football team. Not as bad as Westhaven’s was, but not much better.”
Lance didn’t understand.
“He was the basketball coach,” Leah said, sounding proud. “And guess what?”
“They won a state title?”
“Yep!” Leah sounded almost giddy. Pleased with her sleuthing. “But just one. The McGuires came to Westhaven the next year. So I called Daddy’s cell and told him what I thought and that we had to get to you.”
“Why didn’t you call me?”
“I did! You didn’t answer.”
Lance remembered the hail, the way it had appeared so suddenly. A trick from the hala. He again remembered the image of his cell phone sliding to the floorboard. He’d left it there when he’d gone into the Strangs’ home.
“So,” Leah said, “Daddy got the officer to bring him home, and we took my mom’s car up to the Strangs’. Thank God it actually started. We saw Daddy’s truck and I ran up and pounded on the front door, but nobody answered. I rang the bell and pounded some more and just as I was about to turn and run around to the back of the house, the door cracked open just the tiniest bit, and I saw Allison Strang through the slit. Her face was red and puffy. I think she’d been crying. I didn’t even have to say anything. She just looked at me and said, ‘He’s not here.’”
Lance felt pity for Allison Strang. There was no turning back from what she’d been thrust into. Her entire life had been flipped upside down in a single night.
“I told Daddy we had to get to the McGuires’, and he said he’d go. I started to beg for him to let me come—I was determined to help—but he told me he’d rather die than risk losing his last living child.” She paused. “I couldn’t argue with him about that. No matter what I was feeling inside.” She took a breath. She’d been talking so fast Lance had trouble keeping up. “So I let him go, and then I called Susan and I came here. I’ve been waiting for hours, it feels like. Couldn’t you have gotten here quicker?”
Lance smiled and then leaned forward and kissed her forehead. “I almost didn’t get here at all.”
And then he thought about the McGuires moving on after only one basketball state title. He thought about Melissa McGuire’s speech in the basement. How she said four boys would probably be the number she’d stop with, before moving on to somewhere else. He remembered her talk of good fortune and keeping suspicion away. He remembered how heavily she relied on Glenn and Bobby Strang to play by her rules.
“Something happened,” Lance said, more to himself than Leah. “Something must have made her vulnerable. Only reason they would have left after just the one year.”
Leah looked at him, not following. “What do you mean?”
So Lance told her everything, the entire series of events from the basement. Everything he’d learned and seen and understood. He even told her about Annabelle Winters. All the way up to the moment Susan Goodman had dropped him off at the bus station. When he was finished, Leah said, “That’s the most unbelievable thing I’ve ever heard in my entire life. I can’t believe all that stuff is actually out there. Ghosts and spirits and demons.” She shivered. “I’m glad I don’t see it.”
Lance nodded. “It’s going to be hard to top, that’s for sure.” Then he added, “Your father was talking to the police when Susan got me out of there. I don’t know exactly how this is all going to play out, but I’m pretty sure Glenn Strang will crack and confess. He’d been strung along too long, I could feel it. He was begging to tell the truth. I think it was eating him alive.”
> “Good,” Leah said. “Bastard deserves to suffer.”
Lance couldn’t argue. Instead he said, “Your father saved me, you know. He kept Melissa from killing me and then must have gotten me out of there before the police showed up.”
Leah nodded her head. “Daddy’s not as bad as some people think. He just hasn’t been himself for a long time.”
Lance said, “Be sure and thank him for me.”
Leah nodded and said she would and then asked the question Lance had known would come. “Lance, you said you saw Samuel, right?”
Lance nodded.
She waited a beat, as if trying to figure out how to phrase the next part. “How was he? I mean, I know he’s … I guess what I’m asking is…” She sighed in frustration. “Why was he here?”
Lance thought back to the ghost in Leah’s television. He smiled. “Honestly, I think he was just keeping an eye on his little sister. If I had to guess, I’d say he’s moved on now. You’re safe, and he knows it.”
They were quiet for a long time then, both staring ahead at the ticket counter. A large clock hung above the window, slowly ticking off the seconds as the first morning light appeared outside, peeking through the lobby’s windows.
“How did you know this is where I would come?” Lance asked. “How did you know to tell Susan to take me here?”
Leah opened her mouth to speak, then stopped. Lance looked at her, and she refused to meet his gaze.
“Leah?”
Then she turned and he saw the tears. She sobbed, “Because I know you can’t stay. Not after what happened, and because …” Lance would have slit his wrists to make her crying stop; the pain inside him was almost unbearable. “Because somebody like you will always have to move on. You’re too valuable to the world to stay in one place. Too many people need help.”
Lance Brody Omnibus Page 34
