Andi saw in the shadows behind the nurse a hunched form.
“Who’s there?”
Her voice was trembling, breathless.
All in a rush, the form leapt, sprang like a cat hopping up onto a windowsill. It went from behind the nurse to the foot of Ariel’s bed in a single leap and crouched there, glaring at her.
Andi had seen demons and demon-possessed people before. It was always horrible, but it didn’t shock her anymore. But she had not seen anything like what crouched before her on the foot of the bed. The figure was small, a black child—whether girl or boy she couldn’t tell. No, she could see the shorts were pink, with lace trim, had to be a girl. Maybe the little girl had been in some kind of accident. But Andi didn’t believe that was what had happened even though the figure in front of her could well have walked out of a five-car pileup on an expressway.
It was hard to tell the figure was human at all. And a thought suddenly struck Andi, the way they sometimes did, and she knew she was right even though it was only a guess. The little girl before her was possessed and she had fought back. She had tried to get free and the demon had punished her for it, had turned her on herself.
The face was a ruin. Great claw marks sliced across it, her nose was almost ripped off and the mouth below was full of blood—whether the child’s or…Andi didn’t know. But her teeth were broken and jagged. The child’s hair had been fixed in layers of beaded braids—her mother had gone to a lot of trouble to do that, Andi knew. She’d tried it once with a doll and quickly ran out of rubber bands, beads and patience. But hunks of the little girl’s hair were missing, leaving bloody bald spots where the braids should have been. Her arms and legs were bleeding from wounds both large and small and she was breathing funny, with a gurgling sound.
The creature that controlled the body of the little girl was not on her shoulders, riding her as the others Andi had seen had done. It grew out of the center of her chest, like a deformed dog’s head with a snout that twisted at the end, and had canine teeth—fangs on either side. Its tongue was lolling out one side and its lidless eyes had no whites at all—were black holes with red centers that glowed.
Then the creature pulled the little girl’s lips back in a horror of a broken-toothed smile. Even on the blood-drenched face, Andi could pick out dimples like her own.
“I’m not afraid of you,” the thing told her. It spoke to her. The little girl whose body it possessed said nothing. “You’re not strong enough by yourself, and if you’ve placed your chips on the Light coming to save you, you lose—crapped out, snake eyes. Let’s just say she’s…busy right now.”
The creature laughed, then turned and looked up into the face of the little girl it owned. When it did, the child reached up and took hold of one of the beaded braids above her forehead. In a swift motion that made a little sucking sound, she yanked the braid out and tossed it on the floor. Blood poured down over her face.
Andi felt vomit rear up in the back of her throat so suddenly she couldn’t control it. She barely had time to turn her head before the hot chocolate she’d had in the hospital cafeteria spewed out her mouth and nose.
“Sensitive stomach?” the creature asked in mock sympathy.
Billy Ray’d been summoned. Like somebody calling a dog. Was told he was to show up at an address in Cincinnati—an old warehouse down by the river—and collect two boxes that’d be lying next to a loading dock there. Didn’t say what to do with ’em, just to pick ’em up and put ’em in the back of his pickup truck and take them back to the boxcar with him. So he’d done as he was told. Hated the feeling of helplessness—that he couldn’t, didn’t dare refuse.
But it was his money! His. Didn’t matter. He still done whatever that voice said he was supposed to do.
The boxes were corrugated cardboard, sealed with wax to be waterproof.
One was almost as flat as a pizza box, but much bigger, maybe four feet square, lying with another box in the weeds beside the dock. It wasn’t particularly heavy, but awkward to lift, and he could feel something in there that was solid, one piece, like whatever it was didn’t come “assembly required.” The other box was bigger, not flat. It wasn’t heavy either, but whatever was inside wasn’t all one piece. He could hear and feel loose things inside. He’d been told to handle the big box with care, like maybe the contents was breakable, and he didn’t like to think what might happen to him if he broke something. Both boxes was taped shut and he didn’t make no effort to see what was in ’em, had an awful feeling he didn’t want to know what it was.
Then he’d got the call on his cell phone, saying not to go back to Caverna County yet—there was something else he needed to pick up and take back there with him.
And there had, indeed, been something else. Now, he couldn’t stop the quaking in his belly that sent trembles out his arms and legs so violent he feared he couldn’t keep his pickup truck from plunging into a ditch.
You got to get a grip, man!
Billy Ray’s mind was hopping around frantic as spit on a griddle and he couldn’t seem to grab hold of it long enough to think.
He had to think.
He had got in way over his head here. Waaaay over his head. And he might be able to think his way out if he could think at all, but every time he tried, images popped into his mind that sent him off in some other direction.
He’d been waiting where the voice on his cell phone had told him to wait, with his truck parked up close to the back side of a building in the alley between a dumpster and a long black car, a limousine. That limousine’d had tinted windows, so’s whoever was in there could see you, but you couldn’t see them. And the longer he sat there, the more certain Billy Ray was that there was somebody behind the tinted windows of that limousine. Watching every move he made. With eyes made of fire.
That was when he’d heard some sound above him, hopped out of his truck and looked up. He’d seen a man leaning out a window high above, the fourth or fifth floor maybe, and then the man had fallen, his body hurling down right at Billy Ray. Billy Ray’d leapt back—something big as a man falls on you from that high—it’d squash you flat as a fried egg.
But the body had stopped. Right there in midair, the body had pulled up short like it had got to the end of one of them bungee cords, only it hadn’t flown right back up where it come from. It had hung there, about four feet off the ground, right behind the pickup. Staring at it hanging there—a man in a suit, with his face bloody—Billy Ray’s mind had started to get squirrelly, thinking a hundred things and nothing at all.
His cell phone had rung, then. He’d let it ring and ring, knew who it was and didn’t want to answer it, but finally he’d reached into his pocket with a trembling hand. The voice on the other end of the line had been oily and slick, so smooth draining into his ear it’d soaked into his brain, a drop of food coloring in a glass of water.
No hello. Just said to put the man who was dangling there into the back of the truck with the boxes and take ’em all to where Billy Ray’d stashed Daniel Burke. Said he’d get a call later about the contents of the boxes he’d picked up. Nothing more than that. The phone had gone dead, and the man who’d been hanging suspended in the air had dropped like a sack of potatoes the final four feet to the ground and cracked his head a nasty blow on the asphalt.
When Billy Ray’d got down to lift the body into the bed of his truck, he’d recognized the man. It was Jeff Kendrick, the smart-ass lawyer who’d kicked Billy Ray in the face, broke his nose and—more important—deprived him of the privilege of killing Becca and that fat pig Theresa Washington. In a flash of rage at the memory, Billy Ray had slammed his fist into Kendrick’s face—let him see what a broken nose felt like! He’d punched him in the face another time or two, but wasn’t no fun hitting a man who couldn’t feel no pain.
Kendrick had been heavy, limp as he was. Dead weight.
Yep, dead weight all right, just like Daniel Burke.
Billy Ray Hawkins didn’t have no qualms ’bout killing a man. He’d killed many—he hadn’t kept track of how many, but a whole lot. He was looking forward to puttin’ a bullet in Daniel’s brain and now he’d have the satisfaction of offing that big-city lawyer, too. No, wasn’t killing that was makin’ him squirrelly. It was the voice, the man, the thing that was calling the shots and givin’ Billy Ray orders. His mind went skittering off again soon’s it went anywhere near the black shadow that had risen up behind Chapman Whitworth.
Had to think. Had to think. Had to get out of this somehow.
But he didn’t think. He merely covered the boxes and the body up with a big tarp and drove south down Interstate 71 away from Cincinnati. Once he was out of the city’s lights, an endless black sky opened above him. The stars were as big as ice chips and looked twice as cold. The vast emptiness of the night had never seemed scary before, but now he found himself hunkerin’ down behind the wheel, flinchin’ away. He knew now that the black was just a curtain. On the other side of darkness they was things that maybe you didn’t want to get a good look at. Things that was waitin’ to eat you alive.
He turned off the interstate and wound through narrow, twisting country roads toward the north end of Caverna County. As soon as he crossed the county line, the empty sky above him vanished and rain poured down. It was like steppin’ under a waterfall, so sudden he almost wrecked as he scrambled to turn on his windshield wipers. That tarp would keep everythin’ in the back of the truck dry for now, but if it was still rainin’ when he got home, it’d all get soaked when he carried it to the boxcar.
Billy Ray was a whole lot stronger’n he looked, but it was still no easy thing to get that smart-mouth lawyer into his hidden boxcar. He hadn’t been gentle. With Daniel, he’d hauled him in a fireman-carry to the Butt Cheek Rocks and left his limp body sprawled unconscious across the rocks while he climbed down behind ’em. Then he’d reached up and dragged Daniel off into his arms. But it hadn’t been raining then.
In the downpour, he’d just chucked Mr. Suit and Tie Man’s body down into the crevice behind the rocks. Coulda broke his fool neck. But he was moanin’, so he wasn’t hurt too bad.
Didn’t want him to wake up before Billy Ray got him all trussed up, though, so Billy Ray hurried to roll the rock away that hid the cave and the gate. The slab of rock was taller than a refrigerator, but only about six inches wide, rounded on one side. He rolled it on that edge away from the crack that opened into the cave and then jammed a chock in place to hold it there. After he dragged Kendrick’s limp body out of the downpour, through the crack in the rock into the cave, he dug around in his pocket for the key to unlock the padlock on the metal gate across the cave entrance. He’d built it decades ago when he’d buried the boxcar—fixed the gate hinges to the cave wall with iron spikes and hollowed out a trench on the cave floor so he could set the bottom bar of the gate frame into a base of five-inch-thick concrete.
Once inside the boxcar, Billy Ray quickly secured Kendrick’s hands and feet with duct tape.
Daniel Burke was watching his every move, not sayin’ nothin’.
“I thought you might like some company,” Billy Ray said. “Brought you a chum. Be nice, now, don’t want you to get no ‘unsatisfactory’ in that space on your report card where it says ‘plays well with others.’”
Daniel just looked at the wet, crumpled body.
“This fella’s a friend of yours, ain’t he?” Billy Ray said.
“He’s no friend of mine.”
“Now, why is it that I don’t hardly believe that? Seein’ as how he was the big-city lawyer kept you out of jail after you attacked that woman.”
“I didn’t say I didn’t know him. I said he wasn’t a friend of mine.”
“Oh, so that’s how it is, huh? You boys don’t get along, do ya?”
He stepped back and looked at them from a spot next to the bars of gold on the shelves.
“Well, whatever it is you got against each other, you best kiss and make up.” He grinned and watched with glee to see the effect his next words would have on Daniel. “’Cause it would be a shame for a fact to die alongside somebody you don’t like. Ain’t neither one of you ever gonna see another sunset.”
Then Billy Ray left the boxcar, banging its metal door shut behind him.
Won’t live to see another sunset.
Now there was a conversation stopper, pulled everything up short and into perspective. Daniel was stiff and hurt all over—especially his forearm and hand where the little girl had bitten him. His head throbbed in heartbeat bursts. He was so thirsty the roof of his mouth and his tongue came apart as reluctantly as two strips of Velcro and his legs ached from being cramped together by the duct-tape restraints.
None of that mattered now. One thought drove everything else off the stage and stood alone in the glaring spotlight.
Billy Ray Hawkins was going to kill him.
Jeff Kendrick began to moan. He was coming to. It was such a cosmic joke that it was laughable if you had that kind of sick sense of humor. Daniel was going to die alongside Jeff Kendrick, his wife’s lover.
“What is this?” Jeff muttered and tried to sit up, but couldn’t with his hands taped together in front of him and his arms taped down to his body from shoulder to elbow. “Where am…what…?” He continued to wiggle until Daniel spoke to him for the first time.
“Give up, Jeff. You’re tied up with duct tape. Can you see?”
Jeff’s nose was clearly broken, smashed over onto his left cheek in a puffy mass that was painful to look at. One eye was blacked and swollen almost shut; the other was crusted with blood that had drained into it from some wound on his head.
He quit struggling and lay still, then opened his eyes—eye, the one with blood on it. The lids stuck together at first, but he finally got the upper lid free. His gaze darted around and landed on Daniel. He stared, looking puzzled.
“Daniel?” His voice sounded like he had a cold.
Daniel realized then that he probably didn’t look a whole lot better than Jeff. He must have the mother of all lumps on his forehead where that little girl—beautiful until he saw the look in her eyes—had slammed a rock into it. Maybe the blow blacked his eyes, too.
“Where…?” Jeff looked around. “What is this place?”
“It’s a boxcar full of gold bricks—several million dollars’ worth—buried in a cave somewhere in Caverna County.”
Jeff’s face was as blank as the first page in a brand-new school notebook.
“Billy Ray Hawkins buried his money here. It’s his ‘secret fortress.’ You and I are probably the only people in the world who’ve ever seen it. And he doesn’t intend for us to live to tell about it.”
As if on cue, Billy Ray opened the door to the boxcar, pitched a flat cardboard box onto the floor, then reached down and picked up a square box, carried it into the boxcar, set it down and closed the door behind him. He didn’t turn around, just stood there facing the door, shaking his head.
Then he turned around slowly. His eyes clearly were not seeing the inside of a buried boxcar, and whatever they were seeing was not a good thing. Billy Ray’s face was a mask of such abject terror and revulsion Daniel instinctively shrank back from the sight. Jeff actually gasped, or maybe he was just trying to suck in a breath through the swollen ruin that was his nose.
Billy Ray did not acknowledge their presence, just cowered before whatever he imagined he saw on the wall above their heads.
Perhaps the image vanished then because he began to pace from one end of the boxcar to the other, talking to himself in nonsense, his wet boots tracing a trail of puddles behind him. “Not going to…see if he makes me…that’s crazy, sick crazy—” He stopped in the middle of the floor and shook his head violently from side to side. “No! Won’t do it. No! Can’t make…yes, he can. He can make anybody do…I gotta run, get away—find me, find me and…he’ll eat me alive.”
Back and forth he went, growing more and more agitated with every passing moment, walking faster and faster, mumbling and shaking his head.
Daniel had never actually seen a person have a psychotic episode, but it was obvious that was what this was. If there were any way at all to get free from the tape, he could escape and Billy Ray would never even notice. But the tape was secure.
Billy Ray stopped, panting, then went to the far corner away from Jeff and Daniel. He slid to the floor there and lay whimpering, curled up in something resembling a fetal position.
“Have a flat tire, did you?” Jeff called out and Daniel wanted to choke him. He whispered harshly, “Shut up, you idiot. Can’t you see he—”
But Jeff ignored him.
“Girlfriend dump you? No, wait, I know—your favorite M&M was the red one they discontinued.”
Billy Ray looked at them then, actually seemed to register the reality of them. He got slowly to his feet.
“He wants lots of blood, wants it everywhere—so folks can see it.”
Daniel didn’t have to ask who “he” was.
“Let’s come back to the spectators later,” Jeff said, in his stopped-up-nose voice. “I want to back up to the ‘your blood’ part.”
Billy Ray crossed the width of the boxcar to Jeff in a rush, drew back his foot and drove a savage blow with it into Jeff’s belly, buried the pointed toe of his boot there. Jeff curled up in a ball, unable to breathe at all.
Then Billy Ray started shouting, his voice high pitched and hysterical.
“Your blood!” he said to Daniel, then turned to Jeff. “Yours, too. Both of you.” He seemed to be speaking to himself again. “He don’t care how big a mess it makes ’cause he ain’t the one has to clean it up. But maybe it ain’t even gonna be here at all.”
“You’re going to take us somewhere else to shoot us?”
“Shoot? I didn’t say nothin’ about shootin’ you. Ain’t going to be no shootin’.”
Then the energy drained out of Billy Ray like water out the hole in the bottom of a bucket. He seemed to physically shrink. Pulling his cell phone out of his pocket, he looked at it as if it were a scorpion or poisonous snake. He held it out in front of him and began to talk to it as if someone were on speakerphone.
“Opened up them boxes, just like you said, and it was all there, the robe, the sword—everything…”
Sword? The word kicked Daniel in the gut as solidly as Billy Ray had kicked Jeff, and he could not draw in another breath.
“…be sure to shoot the video up close so you can see their faces, so you can tell who they are. I got that part, uh-huh.” He paused as if he were in a real conversation, listening to someone else speak. “Save Burke for last, he’s the main attraction—right.”
He listened, then set the phone down on a shelf and used both hands to pantomime as he repeated the instructions only he could hear from the cell phone.
“Grab a handful of his hair—get a good hold on it—then bring the sword down hard, slice across his throat, just one clean blow so you’re left holding his head in your hand.”