Stake
Page 5
‘Not all of it – in fact, most of it isn’t even worth a second look. But I’ve learned not to brush aside each incident because it seems hard to believe. One of these days, I’ll find the right one.’
She twirled her chopsticks, picked up a shrimp and popped it into her mouth. ‘Just about everything has a rational explanation if you look closely enough. Every so often, though, I come across things that I can’t debunk, no matter how hard I try.’
Blair listened with rapt attention, resting his elbows on the kitchen table.
‘I’m not interested in regular crimes or cover-ups, and certainly not political conspiracies. But sometimes …’ She paused and stared off into a blank place in her own thoughts. ‘I never told you this, Blair. In fact, I haven’t told many people at all, but two times in my life I’ve personally experienced real, inexplicable events that rocked my world. They weren’t tall tales from a friend of a friend – I experienced them myself. Me.’
Blair was intrigued. ‘Do tell.’
‘Each time I was a thousand per cent convinced that something genuinely unreal had occurred.’ She lowered her voice. ‘Turns out that one of them did have a rational explanation after all, but I would have sworn down to my marrow that I’d had a supernatural encounter.’
‘But you solved it?’
Lexi nodded. ‘I felt relieved and foolish when I did, but before that I would have bet everything I owned … See if you can figure it out.’
Blair set down his chopsticks so he could give her his full attention.
‘A few years ago after I moved from Iowa and started exploring Colorado, I collected stories of weird ghost sightings, local legends, haunted places. There’s a speck on the map called Alma in the middle of nowhere, an old mining town with a handful of leftover buildings – vacation homes, a general store, a saloon, coffee shop, and legal pot dispensaries.’
‘Ah, tourism,’ Blair said.
‘There was an old flophouse from the 1800s with a bunch of little rooms for rent, a shared bathroom at the end of the hall, a bar downstairs, antique furniture. One of the rooms at the Alma Inn was supposedly haunted, so I asked to stay in that one.’
‘Of course you did.’
‘The bed smelled like something had died in it. The room had one window with a roll-down shade, a wooden chair, a wobbly nightstand with a lamp. I had my overnight bag, my computer case, laptop, remote keyboard, and some notes. I thought I might write in the sitting room off the lobby, but it reeked of cigarette smoke. Instead, I worked in the cozy little room, even though it didn’t have a desk.
‘I took out my laptop, dumped the computer case in the corner, tossed my duffel up against it, and sat on the bed. I opened a new document to write down the details about Alma and the ghost. But before I could type anything, random letters started to scroll across the screen, gibberish. I lifted my fingers from the laptop. I wasn’t touching the keys at all, but the letters kept coming, nonsense and random, typing faster and faster.’
Blair remained silent, his brow furrowed, fascinated. ‘Were the keys stuck?’
‘I hit delete again and again. I hit return. I rubbed the keyboard, loosened the keys. But the letters kept coming all by themselves, pouring across my screen, line after line. They filled a whole screen.
‘I tried to figure out what the message meant. Was it a message from the ghost? What was it trying to say? My thoughts went cold. By now half of a second screen was filled with babbling keystrokes. I could not explain this.’ She looked down at her stir-fry, but didn’t feel hungry.
‘Finally, I forced Word to quit, then restarted and opened a new blank document – and the gibberish started spilling across the screen again. I shut down the laptop entirely, rebooted it. Same thing. Nonsense typing itself, line after line. My pulse was racing. I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t feel threatened, but it was disorienting, so detached from reality.’ She skewered Blair with her gaze. ‘I couldn’t stop the letters, no matter what I did.’
He rocked back in his chair at the table. ‘You just gave me a chill.’
‘I was willing to believe, Blair. I wanted to believe! I’d had an encounter in high school, something I couldn’t explain and still can’t. I’ll tell you about that in a minute. As I sat there in that musty, creepy room, I had no way to understand what was happening, no matter how hard I tried.’ Her eyes burned as she remembered the terror and fascination of that moment.
‘So I decided to leave. I snatched my duffel, grabbed my computer case from the floor, and threw it on the bed next to the laptop.’ She paused, looking at Blair.
He waited. ‘You said there was an explanation?’
Drawing out the moment, she took another bite with her chopsticks before she continued. ‘In my computer case, I’d stuffed a small wireless keyboard. I prefer using that if I have to type for long stretches, but since I didn’t have a desk, I had just taken out my laptop and tossed the computer case against the wall, then set my duffel against it.
‘And that squashed some of the keys. The Bluetooth connected automatically and sent signals from all those random keys being pressed. That’s what showed up on my screen.’ She laughed nervously. ‘Perfectly simple explanation, but under the circumstances my imagination went straight to a supernatural occurrence. If I hadn’t figured out what was going on with the separate keyboard, I’d be convinced to this day that some ghost was trying to communicate with me.’
Blair chuckled. ‘I can see how you’d be fooled. It would have creeped me out.’
Lexi nodded. ‘That’s why I’m always willing to admit there might be a normal explanation, whether or not I’ve found it yet. I really want to believe, but I maintain a healthy skepticism.’
Blair finished half of his stir-fry, as if to gain energy before she told her second story. ‘But your other experience was even more convincing than that?’
‘I’m not even sure I want to tell it.’ Her throat was dry, and Blair reached over to pat her forearm reassuringly. ‘My best friend in high school was Teresa Marillo. We had known each other since seventh grade, both nerds and we didn’t fit in with the usual social circles, didn’t really know much about fashion or flirting. No surprise, neither of us dated all that often.’
Blair laughed. ‘You just needed some coaching.’
‘We both did. I thought Teresa was prettier, and she insisted I was. In fall of our senior year, we tried to decide where we wanted to go to college after we graduated. We had dreams for our future to see new places, have some adventures. And we wanted to stick together. Dubuque was the biggest city either of us had ever seen, but Dubuque, Iowa, is still just a small town with bigger buildings. We swore we would get out of there, do something important with our lives, but the odds were against us.
‘Teresa had an older sister, Melanie, who had made the same kind of vow that she was going to leave as soon as she graduated, but she got pregnant, married the guy, and stayed in Dubuque. So many people were like that, and Teresa and I swore it wouldn’t happen to us.’
‘Small town tar pits.’ Blair shook his head. ‘You’re trapped and you just can’t pull yourself free.’
Lexi paused for a long moment, reliving that night in her mind, hearing every word of her last conversation with Teresa. She knew it had happened, even though it wasn’t possible.
‘We were supposed to go to a party, a big one. Teresa and I were thrilled to be invited with all the popular kids. But I got the flu with a bad fever. It broke my heart to cancel, but I insisted that Teresa go without me. All alone at home, feeling queasy and achy, I lay in bed for a miserable Friday night. I was going to watch Ghost Whisperer and Medium on TV in my room.’
She paused to gather her courage before continuing.
‘I went to the bathroom, and when I came back, Teresa was there in the chair by my desk, waiting for me. I was surprised to see her, but I figured my parents must have let her in. By now, the party should have been in full swing, so I thought she decided not to go. Teresa sa
id that she had to see me, that she had something important to say. She gave me this look, a really deep look.’ Lexi paused as her voice hitched. ‘We were best friends, remember. Teresa and I could talk about anything. No secrets.
‘She said she was worried about me, made me promise I wouldn’t throw my life away. The way she said it was really deep and serious, a little scary. She made me swear that after high school I would leave Dubuque and see the world, find work I was passionate about. She was so intense! I made the promise, laughing a little since she and I were going to do those things together anyway. I shooed her out of my room, told her to go to the party and have fun on my behalf. She got up and left. I never saw her again.’
She stared at Blair. ‘I looked right at her. I heard her words. I swear she was right in front of me!’ Tears stung Lexi’s eyes. ‘The phone rang fifteen minutes later, Teresa’s mom sobbing. She was sure that I’d been with her, that we’d both been …’ Her voice halted, and she had to force the words out past the lump in her throat. ‘That we’d both been killed in the accident. Teresa’s car was rammed by a truck when she was on her way to the party – an hour before.’ Lexi clenched her fist. ‘An hour before, Blair!
‘I remember Teresa there, and I know damn well what time it was. I remember Patricia Arquette on TV working on a murder mystery. I could probably even identify the episode of Medium if I had a list. I remember looking at my clock at the bedside.
‘But Teresa was already dead. The police knew the exact time of the accident. The ambulance records showed when they arrived at the scene – and Teresa came to my room after that.’
She heaved a deeper breath.
‘My parents said they never let Teresa in, that she hadn’t come to visit me. They thought the fever made me hallucinate. Was that it? I have no evidence that she was really there. Nobody else saw her, but I know she was with me.
‘I’ve tried and tried, stretched my imagination into every possible crackpot theory, but nothing makes sense. I just can’t explain it. Was it my heightened emotional state? My fever? Did that make me more susceptible?’
Lexi felt shaken and wrung out after she finished. ‘So, all those years later when I saw the letters appearing on my computer screen in the haunted room, I thought it was another ghost, maybe even Teresa trying to communicate with me. I wasn’t terrified so much as hopeful. I really wanted to believe!’ She wiped her eyes with the cloth napkin.
‘That’s the thing with the people on HideTruth. Some of them might be crazy, but they cling to that spark of hope, that desperate need for wonder and mystery in the world. I know something happened to me. I know I wasn’t imagining it.’
Blair got up from his chair and wrapped his arms around her shoulders, pulling her close to him. ‘Oh, Lex, I believe you.’
‘There’s got to be a chance, you know?’ She leaned against him. Blair felt solid and good and safe. ‘And I don’t care if other people think I’m a nutcase, because there’s that chance in a million. One of those stories is going to be proved true.’
EIGHT
After three days of resting and planning, Helsing left the Rambler Star Motel, not because he was no longer welcome, but because the Bastion members were only supposed to take what they needed and only for as long as necessary.
Outside, he waited among the down-on-their-luck homeless in front of the soup kitchen near St Mary’s Cathedral. Since it was a nice day – clear blue skies and a crisp autumn chill – many of his fellow misfits and outcasts chose to eat outside, lingering in the park under tall oak trees. Joggers ran the paved paths along Monument Creek.
Helsing held a paper bowl of split pea soup with a slice of white bread soaking up the broth. In his other hand he carried a Styrofoam cup of weak black coffee. He fit in among these people. He knew some personally, recognized others, but didn’t strike up a conversation. Most of the homeless caused little trouble, kept to themselves except for the occasional panhandling. Those who didn’t choose beds in the shelter found places to live outside in the marshy watershed around the creek.
Helsing visited the soup kitchen when he needed food or just wanted to be around other people who would not judge or threaten him. They wore old clothes in layers for all weather. Many were military vets, as he was, and some merely wore military surplus clothing. Some were hustlers who accosted pedestrians on the street corners. Helsing didn’t like those, because they ensured that the quiet homeless couldn’t be as invisible as they wanted to be.
Other unfortunates were genuinely disturbed, muttering to unseen companions, reliving ancient arguments in their heads, indignant about past injustices. Helsing had been that way for a while, still at war with the world after he left the California VA hospital, but that was years ago. Since then he had built up a lifetime of experiences, and he had adopted a real mission for his life.
From eye contact he knew that some of the homeless were also members of the Bastion, men or women who came briefly back to Colorado Springs to observe, scavenge, or just reminisce. Some wanted reminders of civilization and reaffirmation of their decision to leave it.
A middle-aged woman wandered close, obviously wanting his company, maybe quiet conversation, but Helsing turned away. Company and conversation were not what he needed.
Here among the homeless population, Helsing detected a general undertone of uneasiness. Rumors spread as swiftly as if they all had cell phones. He knew that some among them had been killed, the bodies found drained of blood, their throats mangled. Helsing himself had disposed of those bodies by quietly burning or dismembering them before they could transform into lampir. By now, dozens of victims had been quietly swept under the rug. The police were all too willing to write off missing persons, especially among the homeless.
But Helsing fought the enemy directly. Recently, he had decided not to hide anymore. He would kill vampires in plain view so that the public could understand the extent of the infestation, but it was a lonely battle. Even Lucius and the Bastion were unwilling to go on the offensive, and there was so much more going on than the sheep in the city understood.
Maybe they wanted to be unaware. These normal people had happy lives, families, careers, stable homes. He’d once imagined that was the life he wanted, back before it all changed.
He had tried to do the right thing, serving in the military because that was his duty. When he enlisted back in the 1990s, he had never even heard of Bosnia or Herzegovina and certainly couldn’t have found the country on a map of Eastern Europe. Then the complicated chaos of the Bosnian War broke out, small subdivisions of the country that had once been Yugoslavia splitting along historical and ethnic lines, boundaries so deep and so shrouded in obscure history that few could understand alliances, feuds, or shifting loyalties.
In 1995 NATO launched Operation Deliberate Force, and the United Nations sent peacekeeping troops into unknown territory – a blur of Bosnian, Serb, and Croat family lands, villages hammered by indiscriminate shelling, rebel forces engaged in ethnic cleansing, religious wars, and the mass rape of women who belonged to a different heritage.
Back then his name was David Grundy, according to his dog tags and his military service record, but that whole existence had been lost after the ordeal. He was just a young medical corpsman trying to follow a family tradition of military service, hoping to make his parents proud. He had no idea what he was stepping into.
Grundy had plenty of work helping injured villagers outside of Sarajevo, treating burns and cuts, brutal amputations. Although he didn’t speak the language, he fumbled to console women who had been sexually assaulted after seeing their husbands murdered in front of them. Each day was horrible.
One night under a full moon, he rode in a Red Cross ambulance truck on a winding road in the rugged mountains outside of Sarajevo. Rebel armed forces (he wasn’t even sure which army) had been shelling the outer villages. He accompanied a battlefield surgeon and their UN driver, a German man who believed he spoke English better than he actually did.
Grundy sat in the back seat behind the doctor. The German driver toiled along, downshifting as the road became steeper. Gravel spun under the wheels. No one heard the popping of the first sniper shots before starburst holes appeared in the windshield. One bullet smacked the driver in the center of his face, and in his dying spasms he twisted the wheel. The ambulance careened to the left.
The road had no guardrails, no dirt berms, nothing to keep the vehicle from plunging down the mountainside. Even though the ambulance was already falling down the steep rocky slope, the sniper fire continued.
Belted in, the surgeon – a man named David Lee – clawed at his shoulder as a bullet slashed through the meat of his upper chest. Grundy heard the shot impact the flesh and go all the way through into the seat just in front of him. Both he and the doctor were screaming as the vehicle struck rocks and rolled down the terrifying slope, smashing, tumbling. It slid down into the darkness until it slammed to a stop at the bottom of a ravine far below.
He lost consciousness for an unknown time and when he woke up he smelled blood and gasoline. The truck had crashed through trees, splintered pine boughs. The wall of the ambulance was crushed in. The windshield was smashed out, and the side windows lay in glittering debris all around. The full moon shone down like a cataract-covered eye. Grundy felt blood on his face.
His seatbelt held him like a straitjacket as he dangled. After silently inspecting himself, he guessed that some ribs were broken – he could feel it when he drew in a deep breath and coughed out blood. He flexed his fingers, left hand then right hand, then checked his legs, saw that they were not broken. He would have to crawl out of there.