Red Heather

by Aly Noble

  “And, like the suspicious nature of those sage stubs and salt lines,” he admitted apologetically. “It will hopefully go away if I get my weapon back.”

  “Is that the source of all your power or something?” I asked, remembering my cigarette.

  “Mostly,” he murmured. “Some of it, as you’ve seen, still remains. I just can’t replenish what I use without it.”

  “Do you remember where you were when you lost it?” I asked.

  “In the house,” he said, “but I’ve looked everywhere. It’s not in there. Nor in the garden or on the lawn.”

  “What happened?” I asked and added at his blank look, “To make you let go of it long enough to lose it, I mean.”

  “I wish I could remember,” he admitted. “Something tells me that the entity in that house was part of it though. It feels too familiar, and I don’t remember it either.”

  “Weird how things work out,” I mumbled.

  “You could say that. Any other burning questions?”

  I gave that some thought. “Were you here when Price was killing those girls?”

  Jonah shook his head. “I wasn’t.”

  “Would you have stopped him?”

  He thought about that before replying honestly, “It wouldn’t have been my place.”

  I pursed my lips, somewhat disappointed in him. He just shrugged. “What made you save Bethaline?”

  “Sentiment,” he answered.

  I hesitated. “What made you save me?”

  “Don’t humanize me, Miri.”

  “It’s just a question.”

  Jonah rolled his eyes and held his hand out. I gave him my cigarette. He put it out in the grass. He smirked when I glowered at him. “I have a question for you,” he said instead, regarding me with a measuring look. “What are you going to do about Price?”

  The question put ice in my stomach. “I haven’t decided yet.”

  “Talk it out then,” he suggested. “You’re going to have to figure out something. He’s on the hunt now.” Jonah considered his own words. “For both of us, I’d wager. But you’re the easier target.”

  “I don’t really know what to do,” I said honestly. “Carla’s death isn’t even going to be investigated further because her body looked normal when I took the cops to her. It just looked like she fell and she had alcohol in her system from the night before. They almost laughed at me for telling them I thought someone killed her. Going to them now with a repeat of my claim and explaining to them that a man who supposedly killed himself years ago is actually a serial killer who used my now-residence as a slaughterhouse and is still alive just seems…”

  “Useless?”

  “Basically,” I conceded.

  He frowned. “So the police are out for now. Where have you been staying?”

  “With Estelle,” I murmured. “She practically made me—even after I explained everything.”

  “She believes you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good,” he sighed. “I wouldn’t stay in the same place for too long though.”

  “He really won’t stop, will he?” I asked, feeling a little shaky. “Isn’t he human now though? Why isn’t he dead?”

  “I wish I had those answers,” he admitted. “It would make this all a lot easier to handle. I can only imagine that he still contains some essence of the demonic entity he bonded with. Enough to hang on.”

  “How long was he sharing a body with that thing?”

  “I want to say he made the bond as he was dying, but I don’t know why I want to say that,” he murmured. “And that doesn't really designate how many years they've been bonded.”

  I frowned a little. “Do you remember that from something?” When he shrugged helplessly, I asked instead, “It’s a bit of a stretch, but you don’t remember quite how you lost your scythe, right?” He nodded. “Is it possible that you were here when he killed his wife?” I was still grappling with the knowledge that any reports on the incident being in Arizona were wrong. I was also still grappling with the fact that my Hollywood wannabe realtor had flat out lied to me about that fact. That would be handled, too.

  Jonah frowned at what I’d asked, but considered it. “I suppose it’s possible. I don’t see why it wouldn’t be.”

  “I had no idea they died here until he said something about it,” I said quietly. “Trevor said they died in Arizona.”

  “He probably thinks they did,” he reasoned. “All the reports say it was in Arizona.”

  “He said he did it here,” I murmured. “And he's been hanging around because of his weird murder room that’s attached to the basement.” I didn’t add that Price had mentioned paying Trevor off—I still had yet to find out exactly why.

  Jonah grimaced. “Maybe that’s why I never felt well near the basement door. I wonder how long he’s actually been here.”

  I shuddered at the thought and startled again as I got a text on the phone Estelle had loaned me after mine had exploded. I looked at the screen and saw her name next to an icon resembling a speech bubble. “It’s Estelle,” I murmured, putting my phone away after replying that I was indeed still alive and on my way back soon. “I’ve got to head out in a few minutes…”

  “Be thinking about what you can do to solve the Price problem,” he reminded me with a frown. “Find a method to protect yourself and your friend. This is a small town—it won’t take him long if you stay in the same place.”

  I knew this, of course. I didn’t like it, but I knew it. “Okay.”

  He nodded and stood, waiting while I did the same. After a beat of silence, he opted to say, “Sorry your ‘fresh start’ turned out this way.”

  I shrugged. “Who would’ve thought, right?”

  A smirk crossed his lips. “Take care, Miri.”

  “You, too,” I murmured. “Think you’ll ever tell me your real name?”

  “No,” he said. “And that’s nothing against you.”

  “That’s fair,” I said, knowing that if I had the power he did—or that he’d once had—I wouldn’t want to hand someone the key either. “Just thought I’d ask. Take care, Jonah.” I frowned at the house. “I have a tent in the upstairs guest bedroom you can use if you need something to camp outside in. Might be good for you to stay away from the house if you can.”

  That earned a smile. “Thanks. I can only stay out here for a few hours at a time though.”

  “Then I might stay out here for a few hours at a time if I were you.”

  “Touché.”

  I nodded. “See you.”

  He waved. I’d walked halfway down the grassy incline toward the road when I heard him say, “We’re a lot alike.” I glanced back at him. “That’s what made me save you.”

  Chapter 22

  I pulled into Estelle’s garage about an hour later than I’d originally planned to, thus the concerned text that surfaced while I was still sitting in my yard talking to someone who may or may not have been visible to onlookers. Luckily, there were no onlookers except for the house, and I doubted we were the strangest thing its empty eyes had seen in its lifetime.

  After cutting the engine, I got out of the car and shut the garage door, walking into the house through the adjoining door. “It’s me,” I called when I stepped in, closing and locking the door behind me.

  “Good talk with the ghost boy?” she wondered when I passed her in the kitchen. She was struggling with a jar of pasta sauce while a pot behind her on the stove threatened to boil over.

  I stirred it until the bubbles simmered down to an even boil. “How do you function by yourself?” I asked as I poked a noodle with the end of the wooden spoon to see how done they were.

  She glanced over her shoulder and saw the source of my question only to roll her eyes and let go of the jar lid to flex her fingers. “I don’t. Clearly. This is the first time I’ve almost eaten in ten years.”

  “Jesus,” I mumbled, taking the jar from her and twisting the lid. I had to fight it a little, but it ultimat
ely gave a defeated pop when the seal broke.

  “At last, I may taste marinara again,” she said sardonically as I handed the jar back to her. “I was going to make a vitamin deficiency joke, but I can’t remember what tomatoes are good for.”

  “Your soul,” I replied.

  “Valid. Also explains a lot,” she laughed softly, pouring some sauce into a pan to warm it up. There was already a skillet of ground beef keeping warm on the stove near the pot of noodles. “So, seriously, what’d your friend say?”

  “I love how casual you are about all this and yet you feel weird about calling him by name,” I pointed out, adding mentally that it wasn’t even his real name.

  “Fine. Jonah. What did Jonah say?”

  “I guess Price has been to the house since the police came,” I said. “And the demonic entity that he was paired with is stuck in the house with Jonah. Price is basically human now.”

  “How can he bebop around without a soul?”

  I shrugged. “Essences, apparently.”

  “Whatever that means,” she grumbled, echoing my begrudging acceptance of things for which we had no knowledge base.

  I nodded in agreement and grimaced at all the covered windows. We’d taken every possible precaution—from never leaving my Jeep outside the garage to locking the door from the garage to the house to drawing the curtains and blinds at all times. I didn’t know if it’d be enough, but it was something. As far as I knew, he’d glimpsed Estelle in the group but hopefully hadn’t focused on her. If that were accurate, that would at least make the search take longer.

  “Can you watch this while I do the pasta?”

  I glanced over in a daze to see Estelle tending to the sauce as she waited for my answer. I wondered if she was making me help because she saw me zoning out into an anxiety-fueled stupor. “Sure,” I said.

  It wasn’t the first time in the last two weeks that I’d felt guilty about Estelle being involved in this. She’d immediately volunteered to help me after the cops and coroner left, and I’d stumbled out of Red Heather House with a duffel bag and a plan to sleep in my car, but it wasn’t like she wanted any of this. It wasn’t like I’d wanted any of this. However, I’d been the one to sign the lease on the worst goddamn house to ever grace the continental United States. It shouldn’t have been her problem. I’d only been convinced that it was the safest option for me to stay with her because, if he knew about Carla, he probably knew about Estelle, too, and she’d pointed out that sticking together would give us a better chance to defend ourselves.

  She also owned a gun.

  I stirred the sauce absently as she dumped the pasta—way too much of it—into a colander and waited for the water to drain before rationing it across two plates. I added the meat to the sauce once it was warming up and noticed she’d left the burner for the noodles on. I turned it off and opted not to mention it.

  “It still freaks me out that he was in the grocery store when I ran into you,” she mumbled as she brought the plates of bare noodles over. “Do you think that was on purpose?”

  “I know it was,” I replied.

  “Christ,” she sighed.

  “I know. And that’s probably the least weird of all of it,” I said as I deemed the sauce warm enough and turned off the burner, stepping over and halving the contents of the pan onto one heap of pasta.

  “What are we going to do?” she asked. “When he shows up, I mean. Because he will show up, won’t he?”

  “Jonah thinks he will,” I said as I dumped the rest of the sauce onto the other plate. “And so do I.”

  “So, we just fight back?” she wondered. “I mean, obviously we fight back, but… How much?”

  I frowned to myself. I’d never completely understood the impulse to hold back on someone who was attacking you—it was societally ingrained not to hurt people, I supposed, but I’d always been under the impression that if someone were hurting me, I’d do what I had to to make them stop. Then again, those feelings of mine had never been put to an actual test. Still, Estelle’s question of what the stopping point was made me worry.

  “What do you mean?” I asked. “As much as we have to.”

  “But we also call the police,” she filled in, reassuring herself.

  “Of course,” I said. “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah, I just don’t know how to handle this. I haven’t known how to handle this. It was worse in the beginning and then I kind of talked myself off the ledge, but now it’s bad again. I think I thought for a while that this was over and we were worrying for nothing.”

  “I get it,” I murmured as I grabbed two beers from the fridge and picked up my plate to go to the living room. “I have moments where I think this is all a stupid dream, too. Or at least not as bad as I’m making it out to be.”

  “Maybe we’re going crazy,” Estelle suggested, only half joking.

  “At least then we’re on a level playing field with that sick fuck,” I mumbled as we sat down on the couch, which we’d maneuvered around to face every possible entry point in the house and away from nothing but a solid wall. We both settled in and began to eat—not looking at each other, but scouring the empty doorways and covered windows with wary eyes.

  “The good news is,” I began, pausing to take a bite of pasta after I broke the unsettling silence, “that the demony part of him is definitely all in my house. He can’t do the weird altered reality shit he pulled when he came after me the first time.”

  “Can I just say that it’s kind of weird how snarky we are about all this?” Estelle asked without really asking.

  “How else are we supposed to cope and not fall into a fetal position?”

  “I’m just saying,” she pointed out. “So he’d have to find a way in like we would? That’s good. I mean, I still don’t like it, but at least he has to play by human rules.”

  I made a mumble of an agreement, and we put down every last piece of the copious amounts of pasta before doing the dishes and heading to her bathroom to shower. She stood and then eventually sat with her back to the stall while I bathed, clutching her ex-husband’s rifle and waiting for the worst. I assumed her position afterward while she took her turn, wet hair sticking to the back of my neck and rivulets of water neglected by my quick towel-dry seeping into the collar of my T-shirt.

  Every sound I couldn’t put a reason to felt like a death sentence. I just wanted it to be over. So much so that there were distinct moments of complete clarity in which I wished he would show up. Then, at least, there would be a “definiteness” to all this.

  Then, at least, there would be some kind of ending.

  • • •

  I woke at two in the morning to the sound of falling glass.

  I jolted upright. Estelle woke beside me more slowly. One look at me, and she was on edge. “What’s wrong?” she whispered.

  “I heard something break,” I said softly. I unlocked my phone and handed it to her. “Call the police.”

  She took it, hesitating as she pulled up the number pad. “What if it’s nothing?”

  “Then it’s nothing,” I murmured as I slowly picked up the gun. “We’re not taking chances with this. Call them.”

  “Maybe I should look… I don’t want to call the cops out this way for—“

  “Estelle, sit down,” I demanded quietly but harshly enough that she sat back down immediately. “Do not go wandering around this house by yourself. We can see everything from right here, and we’ll stay here until something happens. Call the cops.”

  My heart was racing as I watched the doorways—namely the one leading to Estelle’s bedroom as it had sounded like the noise had come from that direction. While I wasn’t looking, Estelle dialed 911 without sending the call and got off the couch to look around.

  “Estelle, get back here!” I hissed.

  “I don’t want to make a false report, all right? If someone’s in here, I’ll hear it,” she muttered, compromising by stopping where I could still see her. I didn’t think that
was much of a compromise, but I didn’t want to step away from the couch and lose my vantage point.

  “It’s not a false report and, if it is, we’ll apologize and send a fruit basket—now get back over here!”

  “Shh!” she hissed. She’d sent the call and was starting to speak with a dispatcher, but she was still venturing further away from our designated safe spot. I warred with myself before moving until I was within an arm’s length of her and got a fistful of the back of her shirt. “I swear to god, Estelle, if you don’t—”

  There wasn’t an opportunity to finish. I’d barely let go of her when someone grabbed me instead and caused me to drop the gun. A hand wrenched my mouth open and I felt a blade begin to cut into my cheek, all before Estelle had time to turn around.

  I grabbed onto the wrist in front of my face and wrung it until it snapped. A shout erupted behind me, and the edge of the knife grazed roughly against the ridges of my teeth as it fell from my mouth. I disregarded Estelle and whirled on Price, kicking in his knee and immediately grappling for his throat as his leg buckled beneath the blow.

  He’d nearly wrestled me off of him before I took a blind shot and punched at where I’d seen his flesh rend apart just two weeks ago. Price cried out and, the next time my hand hit his shoulder, the hot, wet fabric stuck to my knuckles. Blood had filled my mouth from where he'd cut the inside of my cheek, and he laughed when I spit it into his face.

  I was yanked backward and felt Estelle’s manicured nails digging into my biceps as she tugged me off of Price and put some distance between us. He lurched unsteadily to his feet and had managed to take only one step when Estelle dropped me, cocked the rifle in her hands, and aimed it at his face.

  Remembering his newly regained mortality, he hesitated. Against the faint increments of moonlight that made it through the curtains nearby, I could make out his hulking silhouette and little else—it reminded me of the events leading up to my car accident. Finally, he relaxed, and I saw his hands raise in defeat. As the police cruiser pulled up outside, the siren lights flooded the living room from between the blinds on the window beside the front door and bathed Price in a rapid pulse of blue and red. His shirt was dark with blood and smudged in places with dirt and debris, and it was the same shirt he’d been wearing two weeks ago—there was a tear where Jonah had injured him and severed his tie to the entity. The wound was open and completely black at the edges.