The Dark Ones Page 10

  Frank had checked them in, and they followed a pink stucco wall past a pop machine, to their room. Number 190 in tarnished brass on the pink door. David had expected a fleabag, but to his surprise, a pleasant vanilla smell filled the room, and the thick carpet appeared new. Two single beds were neatly made and a quick peek in the bathroom showed sparkling tiles and toilet. It wasn’t half bad.

  They set their suitcases on the beds, David closer to the window, Frank closer to the door. “Best lock up tight,” David said. The feeling of something closing in on him, the same one he’d had as he approached the church parking lot, crept over him again. Several times on the wooded highway that led up to the hotel he thought he saw movement in the brush. Then it would dart away. He removed the revolver from his suitcase and set it on the nightstand.

  Frank locked the door. As he returned to his bed and unzipped the suitcase, he said, “You think the gun is necessary?”

  “It makes me feel better.”

  “You may have to use the Light again, you know.”

  “Not until I have to.”

  “You will, Dave, or you’re putting us both at risk.”

  “For now it’s the gun,” Dave said.

  “You think they’re following us?”

  Wind spattered against the picture window. David got up and drew the curtain shut. “I couldn’t be sure, but while you were driving, I kept seeing things in the woods. Moving quick and then out of my view.”

  “We’d better keep watch,” Frank said.

  “I’ll go first.”

  Despite the weariness that had crept into his muscles, David felt wound up, spring-tight. If he went to bed now, he would toss and turn, stare at the ceiling. He thought of Sara. Were the Dark Ones on to her? Was she cold, hungry? He knew she probably had a little money saved, but it wouldn’t go far. And how would she find her way in a strange city? No, sleep would not come easy.

  “If they come, you have to use it. It’s the only way to destroy them for sure,” Frank said.

  “We’ll see,” David said, and eyed the revolver.

  David sat on the bed, flipped on the tube. A Seinfeld episode, then the local news. The storm had trailed off for a while, but now fresh thunderheads rumbled.

  On the other bed, Frank lay stretched out in a pair of sweats and a T-shirt that proclaimed him WORLD’S GREATEST GRANDPA. He held the Bible in front of him, reading glasses perched on his nose. “I talked to Charles.”

  “And?”

  Frank told him how the brewery building had come down and Charles wasn’t sure if it would hold its occupant.

  “I also called Chen from that rest stop on 81. While you were in the bathroom.”

  “She making preparations?”

  “She’s calling together the rest of our people, figuring out how to warn the rest of the town. Thinks maybe we can all hole up in the old armory if need be.”

  Hopefully it wouldn’t come to that. “Is Charles going to check the site?”

  “Are you kidding?” Frank said.

  “Right. The Gray Crusader. Of course he will.”

  Frank closed his Bible and turned off the light. They agreed to take two-hour shifts on watch. David got up and turned down the television. He eyed Frank’s Bible and wished he were more of a reader, but he had always been good with his hands. Carpentry, electrical, and plumbing just came to him. It was good to know, and drywall jobs brought in extra money, but it would be nice to be a bookworm at times, too.

  He took a seat at the table, ran his thumb over the handle of the revolver. He would have to use the Light if it came to it. But could he?

  Dave had not seen battle the way Frank or Charles had. His sole experience with his power had come by accident. He remembered freshman year, Taft Senior High School. He had been a skinny kid whose backpack had seemed to outweigh him. None of his friends from St. Edmund’s had gone to Taft, and he felt a little like a new inmate arriving in the state pen. The summer before freshman year, he had begun to feel different. He found himself thinking of warm days at the beach, sun-kissed wheatfields, sunbeams cutting dust motes through the living room windows. Images of light, flooding his mind, a comforting warmth running through him and not from the eighty-five-degree heat. It wasn’t unlike slipping into a warm bath and feeling calm and relaxed.

  In the first week at Taft, navigating the green-tiled hallways, he had caught the attention of Garrett Garvey. Garvey, he came to find out, dealt hash and coke to select students at Taft. Garvey also had a connection that could get him beer, vodka, anything. For fifty bucks he’d score you a case of beer or a bottle of your choice. Apparently Dave’s fellow freshmen made good use of Garvey’s services, pooling paper-route and lawn-mowing money and getting drunk down at Cooley Field on the weekends. Dave preferred to stay away. One day he was approached by Garrett in the hall, offering him a small bag of weed. Dave turned it down. Garvey kept it up. He offered Dave a snootful of coke in the bathroom, told him he could score Hustler or Cheri, or if Dave wanted some freaky shit, he could get Japanese porn. Dave had turned him down.

  This had gone on a couple times a week, from September up until mid-December. The week before break, Dave had excused himself from class, taking the wood block that functioned as a lav pass and hitting the bathroom. Upon entering, he saw Garvey, all six feet four inches of him, standing in the stall, door open. His nose was chafed and red. He rubbed his nose with a slim index finger, and Dave saw little white granules stuck to his upper lip. His eyes were glazed and he jittered out of the stall.

  “Hey, Dresser,” he said, sniffing. “You want to join me?” He held up a silver cylinder with a twist-off cap. “Blow your brains out?”

  “I don’t do that shit. You shouldn’t, either.”

  This seemed to set Garvey off and in two quick strides he had grabbed Dave by the shirt and pressed him against the wall. The lav pass clattered on the floor.

  “What’s wrong with you, Dresser?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Not what I heard. Must be a fag to pass up porn.”

  “Let me go.”

  “Take a hit. Come on.”

  Dave struggled and the grip grew tighter on his shirt. His bladder felt hot and full. He really needed to go. Garvey was creeping him out.

  “Come on, pussy,” Garvey said, and thunked Dave’s head against the wall.

  That had been it, a trigger for the release. Dave managed to slip one arm up and push, and when he pushed he felt a surge of heat race through his arm and a flash lit up the bathroom. Garvey screamed and turned away. He let go of Dave and dropped to one knee. One hand covered the side of his face. His white button-down had a scorch on the chest and Dave saw the side of Garvey’s face. It had turned into a mess of pink skin and fresh blisters had popped up.

  To his surprise, Garvey began to weep. “You burned me, why did you burn me? Oh God, it hurts, it hurts.”

  Garvey had run from the bathroom and in a matter of minutes, Dave had been sent to see Mr. Wiggins, the principal. After interrogating Dave, and calling in his parents, Wiggins arrived at the conclusion that Dave had burned Garvey with a lighter and some sort of chemical igniter. Never mind that they didn’t find a lighter or any type of flammable material. Not on Dave’s person, in his locker, in the john, or even in the bathroom garbage cans. He got suspended for a week, and Garvey wound up having plastic surgery, which left the side of his face a puckered pink mess. He never offered Dave drugs again, and gave Dave a wide berth in the halls. Last Dave heard, Garvey was serving a sentence up in Michigan City for dealing heroin.

  So he hadn’t wanted to use the Light, even with their enemy on the loose and the stories Frank and Charles had told him, how the Dark Ones preferred to capture and torture rather than kill outright. How they sometimes roasted captives alive and consumed the flesh. He hoped when the time came he could use his power on them.

  Dave caught himself dozing off. His head snapped back and he awoke. The clock on the wall said two thirty. Time to turn in an
d get some sleep. He rubbed his neck, massaging out the kink that had settled in, stood up and stretched.

  Outside, he heard a bang. Something being tipped over. Maybe just a cat or a wayward raccoon in the trash can, but maybe not.

  Picking up the revolver, he slipped over to the door, killed the overhead light, and peeked out the curtain. Outside he saw only the rain-slicked pavement and a few lights burning outside each hotel room across the way. He watched, squinted, thinking that something might move, the very darkness itself, take form and move toward the window.

  A moment later, he heard a scream. A man, but high pitched. It was with dread that he realized the Enemy was here. He could stop Them. The poor bastard outside could not.

  He unlocked the door, hands shaking from the fear of something waiting just outside. Throwing open the door, he pointed the revolver and let in the rain-soaked air, which was bitter and acrid.

  He heard Frank sit up, the rustle of sheets behind him, and then Frank saying, “Where are you going?”

  David didn’t stop, but instead went outside and looked around. To his left were a few parked SUVs and to his right the soda machine, maybe forty feet away. He heard the victim now, soft whimpers carrying down the alley, punctuated by crying and “Oh, Jesus.”

  Now David moved toward the sound of the whimpering man, his heart rabbiting in his chest, thinking he might get jumped at any second. He passed the soda machine and found a door bashed open. He moved inside and flipped on the light and saw the man staked to the wall.

  He had been pinned like an insect on display for an entomologist, a black stake through his gut and a spreading stain on his pajamas. He looked at David with pleading, wet eyes and then lowered his head and tugged at the stake. David put a hand over his mouth and nose to block out the metallic smell of blood and the odor of ripe shit coming from the room. He stifled a gag.

  David raised his hand. “Don’t pull it out, you’ll rip out your insides. I’ll call for help.”

  The man responded with a hacking cough, a rope of blood coming from his mouth and spattering the bed. The brutality of the attack stunned David.

  The Reverend came up behind, bumped into David, and David moved out of the way to give Frank a good look. Frank gasped, started forward, and then, perhaps realizing he could do nothing, stopped.

  “I’ll call the paramedics,” Frank said. “God help him.”

  David approached the man, whose head sank down. The front of his pajama pants were saturated black, and the man’s hands, which had gripped the stake, now hung at his side. David reached up, felt the man’s neck, checking for a pulse, but found none. There was no helping this one, so he went to the door and scanned the parking lot. Something caught his eye on the opposite roof, something black and deformed, crawling along the ridgeline.

  He raised the revolver to fire. He never heard Frank approach. The Reverend slapped his arm down and, frowning, said, “We’ve got to go.”

  David saw that Frank had dressed, or at least thrown on a pair of khakis with his T-shirt.

  “But they’re attacking the hotel. Look,” David said, and pointed.

  Frank looked over at the roof. “We’ll do no good dead. We have to move. And if the cops come, we’ll only be held up,” Frank said.

  “What about the rest of the people? And using the Light?”

  “They’re looking for us, David. The people will have to fend for themselves. This is too important.”

  He couldn’t believe what he was hearing from the Reverend. What about all the people in those rooms? And what if some of them had kids? Would they all be gutted and hung on walls like some sick trophy?

  “I can’t believe you,” David said.

  Frank gripped him by the shoulders. “I know it’s horrible, but this is one hotel, maybe thirty or forty people. If we don’t get where we’re going, it could be thirty or forty million. Probably more. Now I’ve called for help and an ambulance is on the way and the cops will follow. Okay?”

  He didn’t like Frank explaining things to him as if he were a thickheaded five-year-old who had attempted crossing the street on his own. But Frank was right. If they stayed, they would be questioned, and it was either fight this small battle now, or be around to fight the big one later. Hopefully once they left, the Enemy would follow and leave the innocents sleeping in rented beds alone. But damn it, he thought of that thing slinking over the roof, probably the one that impaled the unwary traveler in the other room. I could have plugged him, taken one with me.

  “We’ll go,” David said. “Maybe they’ll follow us, leave these people be.”

  Frank took his hands from David’s shoulders. “I’m sorry.”

  David glanced over his shoulder. “Not half as sorry as I am.”

  He prayed Sara was faring better than the people at the motel.

  They snatched their bags from the room and after piling into the truck, tore out of the parking lot. On the highway, a shroud of fog had fallen and misted in front of the headlights. David checked the rearview mirror and saw nothing. There were no cars in front, no comforting glow of taillights to ensure him that they were not the only car out here. He suddenly missed Sara very badly and wanted to give her a hug and know she was up in her room studying. Hell, right now the stereo blasting Danzig through the floor would be welcome. David would at least know she was safe and they were together. He wouldn’t complain. And the night and the shadows would seem far away.

  “He was dead. Right after you left the room, he died,” David said.

  “I’m not surprised. That was a horrific wound.”

  “Why that guy? Do you think they couldn’t find us?”

  “I’m guessing they decided to go room by room until they did.”

  David watched the road. Mile markers whizzed past. The fog rolled over the windshield. “How many you think there were?”

  “May have just been the one you saw, maybe more.”

  “Frank?”

  “Yes?”

  “You hear the screaming? As we pulled away?”

  Frank remained silent.

  “You heard, right?”

  “I did.”

  “I thought so.”

  CHAPTER 10

  Sara persuaded Randall Powers to drop her off six blocks from the hospital. She began the walk, feeling like it was six miles instead.

  Laura stood in the hospital cafeteria line, aware that she was going to zone out again. The tray she held felt distant, the BLT and apple on the plate seemed like someone else’s. The low hiss of the fryer and the squeak of shoes on the tile floor were muffled. She had been thinking of Megan again, and the world around her seemed to exist through a filter of gauze.

  A cold October day, she remembered. She wasn’t quite twenty. She wore a heavy turtleneck and cords; the temperature was in the thirties. She had bundled Megan in a heavy snowsuit for their trip to the Great Pumpkin Farm. It had been one of their first official outings. Just Laura and her plump little six-month-old.

  They strolled through rows of pumpkins, around kiddie roller coasters and miniature cars that whipped around and incited squeals of joy from the riders. The crisp smell of fall hung in the air and she was looking forward to starting some Christmas shopping. It was Megan’s first, and she meant it to be the best.

  They came up to a stand selling hot cider, and despite the bitter day, a throng of people in winter coats and long scarves and mittens crowded the table, their breath rising in plumes. She looked for an opening to reach the table. Stroller in front of her, she hoped to slip through and get herself a cider. No one budged, but she thought she could slip through by herself. The baby would be okay for a second, and she was only a few feet away.

  She put the brakes on the stroller, then bent down and tugged Megan’s hat, making sure her ears were covered. Megan’s cheeks were pink, and Laura pressed her hand to the skin. They wouldn’t be able to stay out too much longer. She would get the cider, and she would head back to the car. Laura stroked her cheek and
the baby giggled. That alone was enough to warm her.

  “Be right back, sweetie.”

  Laura slipped between a heavyset woman in a parka and her teenage son. She asked for a cup of cider and the clerk served her and she paid. She turned back toward the stroller. The heavyset woman cut in front of her and Laura stopped. The woman gave her a frown.

  The crowd had thickened and she brushed through, feeling the scrape of a tall man’s wool scarf against her cheek, hearing a chorus of coughs and sniffles and wondering how many of these folks would be in bed with colds by next week.

  She slipped through the crowd and Megan was gone. Maybe she had become disoriented in the crowd. She looked left, then right, started to make her way back into the crowd when someone plowed into her. She went down, banging her elbow on a rock. She scrambled to her feet, shoving and clawing to stand up and drawing angry looks from people.

  Panic set in. The stroller and her daughter were not misplaced. She hadn’t gone far. Her daughter was gone.

  She had been nineteen, young, stupid. Guilty of turning her back for a moment, but in that moment, the absolute worst had happened. The state police and the FBI had found nothing, and Laura spent the next fifteen years wondering. They never found a body, and she never received a ransom note. Her only hope was that someone had given Megan a good life. God knew Laura hadn’t. Or at least that was how she felt after the abduction.

  She was jolted out of the memory by the clatter of a plastic tray on the floor. Over to her left, between a cooler and the food line, the cashier gripped a teenage girl by the arm. The girl had an apple in her opposite hand. She waved it in the air, playing keep-away with the cashier. The girl dug her feet in. The cashier pulled harder, then looked around for help. A nurse wearing a flowered shirt and blue scrubs ran out, presumably to fetch security.