40
There was a sudden jolt, and then the darkness gained a faint gleam of light, like the early-morning sun rising behind closed bedroom curtains. Lance’s eyes opened this time, slowly, and he found himself in the rear cargo area of an SUV. The rear hatch had been opened, and Glenn Strang stood in its mouth, staring down at Lance with a look not of anger or hate or frustration, but of a man who’d been broken and was fulfilling an obligation. He wore the same clothes Lance had seen him in earlier at the football game, but his face held none of the enthusiasm.
Lance was just regaining his full consciousness, the dull ache at the back of his head growing in intensity the closer he swam back to the surface, but even in his weakened state, he could pick up the slow trickle of sorrow from Glenn Strang.
Lance recalled the voice he’d heard earlier when he’d briefly come up for air. The one-sided conversation.
(This has to end tonight. You see that, right? No more. It’s done.)
And from earlier….
(My dad calls her the Voodoo Bitch Doctor.)
It became even clearer to Lance than before. Melissa McGuire was running the show. She was in charge—at least among the mortals. Glenn Strang was only a pawn in a game he wanted no part of. Bobby, likely the same.
(She won’t say anything … Because she’s my wife and we can trust her.)
Allison Strang had been oblivious to her husband’s role in the town’s tragedy. She’d thought at first he’d been having an affair and had then debunked the theory, failing to ever consider he was a part of something much, much worse. She was innocent and had ended up being a gift to Lance, the town’s only way of pointing him toward the truth he’d been searching for. Lance smiled, the tape over his mouth pulling at his skin, as he remembered the warmth and happiness he’d felt from her, the way her soul had been so closely aligned with his own mother’s. However things turned out for Lance—and right now things weren’t looking so good—he hoped Allison Strang would walk away unscathed. He hoped she always burned as brightly as she had when Lance had met her.
But the reality was, a line had been crossed for her tonight, more than likely. She was now on a side she could not turn away from, whether it had been voluntary or not.
Lance looked up and focused his vision on what was behind Glenn Strang. It was the back of a house. Dark brick. A walkout basement with steps leading up to a rear deck. Beneath the deck was a slab of concrete forming a patio, a respectable John Deere parked there along with a set of wicker furniture. There was a door leading inside. Behind it, the light was on, and Lance knew it was waiting.
Glenn Strang lifted his right hand, and Lance saw the baseball bat. Wooden, scuffed and well worn with use. The back of Lance’s head thump-thump-thumped with his heartbeat.
“You shouldn’t have come here,” Glenn said, his voice dripping with empathy. Then he motioned with his free hand for Lance to get out. “Slowly and carefully,” he said. “I don’t want to make this worse than it’ll already be. Just get out, and walk straight toward the door over there.” He nodded over his shoulder to the basement door. “You look like an athlete, so I don’t have to tell you how damaging a blow from this bat to one of your knees will be. Don’t make me do it, okay? Please … just don’t.”
Lance tried to speak, his voice muffled behind the tape.
Glenn just looked at him.
Lance tried again.
Glenn Strang sighed. “If you scream, I’ll bash you.” Then, more to himself than Lance, “God, I just want this all to be over.”
Lance nodded, and Glenn reached down with his free hand and peeled the tape away from Lance’s lips, a quick rip with only minimal pain.
“Thank you,” Lance said. “Why are you doing this for her?”
Glenn Strang said nothing, just stood back and again motioned for Lance to step out of the back of the SUV. Lance struggled to sit up, his bound hands behind his back making the task difficult and awkward, his sprained wrist perking up and making itself known. Glenn Strang smacked at a bug buzzing around his head.
“I can help you stop her,” Lance said. “We don’t have to do it like this. I’m on your side.”
Glenn looked at the ground, then back to the house, back to the light burning inside the basement door. He looked at it for what felt like a very long time, then shook his head. “She’ll ruin my son. She’ll ruin Bobby’s life if I don’t do what she says. It’ll ruin our whole family.”
Glenn Strang’s head jerked up to the darkened sky, startled. His eyes darted around briefly, then he shook his head and looked back to Lance. “Come on, let’s go.”
Lance tried again. “What happened with Bobby?” Though he thought he already knew, the picture was now becoming clearer. Another misinterpretation realigning itself with the truth.
Glenn Strang thumped the rear of the SUV with the bat, just to the right of Lance’s knee. “Enough. Get out. Now.”
Lance threw his legs over the edge and hopped out. Standing straight, looking down on Glenn Strang and feeling sorry for the man. Lance didn’t believe Glenn Strang was a bad person. Just a man who’d been trapped in a bad situation.
“Walk,” Glenn said, pointing with the bat toward the basement door.
Lance walked, his long strides carrying him quickly across the grass and then the concrete patio until he was inches from the door. He heard Glenn walking quickly to keep up behind him.
Lance stared at the small pane of glass in the basement door, the light burning behind it blurring out all chances of seeing in. Lance only looked in on his own reflection, and the image of Glenn Strang standing behind him. Glenn looked much more afraid than Lance did.
Lance stood tall and waited for further instructions, wondering if he stood any sort of chance with what waited behind the door. He tried to adjust his hands behind his back and was greeted by a pleasant surprise. Something jagged and rough digging into the small of his back. Samuel Senior’s pistol. Glenn Strang—ex-football player, successful businessman, respected philanthropist, proud father and husband—was no expert in apprehending another human being. He’d done a rough job of knocking Lance out and then quickly securing him with the tape, but he’d never stopped to check for any weapons. Lance was suddenly very thankful his pants fit him correctly.
But if he was being honest with himself, his opinion on the weapon hadn’t changed much since the moment he’d grabbed it in the Strangs’ driveway. It probably wasn’t going to do him much good. Especially with his hands taped behind his back.
“I’ll open the door, and I want you to walk straight ahead,” Glenn said.
Lance met the man’s eyes in the reflection. He thought about trying to reach him again and quickly decided it wasn’t worth it. Glenn’s eyes said it all. He was numb; he was spaced out. He was going through the motions in hopes of getting the task at hand over with as quickly as possible so that he could maybe return to a normal life.
Lance said, “Okay.”
Glenn reached cautiously around Lance, as if Lance were a viper that would suddenly strike out with a poisonous bite. He grabbed the doorknob and turned it quickly, shoving the door open.
Lance stepped inside. One step, then two. He heard Glenn bring up the rear and close the door.
Lance’s eyes adjusted, and he found himself in what he assumed was the man cave Allison Strang had alluded to earlier. There were a large leather sofa and recliner facing a moderate-sized flat-screen mounted on the wall. Surround sound speakers and lots of cords and electronic boxes stashed in a cabinet beneath the TV. Movie posters hung on the wall—Hoosiers, and Rudy, and Miracle, and Remember the Titans—all sports films. There was a small wet bar to the side, just beneath a set of stairs that must have led to the first floor. A Westhaven pennant hung on the wall by the stairs.
But in a room you’d expect to smell of beer or whisky and peanuts and maybe cigars, Lance was practically nauseated with the wave of flowery perfume that hung thickly in the air. It made his eyes water, and
he tried to breathe only through his mouth.
Coach Kenny McGuire was asleep on the couch. He was fully clothed and stretched out with his feet dangling over one end. A pair of Bose wireless headphones were on his head. His chest rose and fell in slow, deep breaths.
“Poor bastard,” Glenn said. “I don’t know what she does to him, but it works. He’s oblivious.”
Lance’s head started to swim, just a small bit, but enough for him to notice something was off. He shook his head, trying to clear the cobwebs.
“Through there,” Glenn said, nudging Lance with the end of the baseball bat. Lance looked to his left and saw another door, slightly ajar. More dim light seeped through the crack.
If you go in there, you’re going to die.
He stared at the door and wondered where he’d gone wrong. Wondered why he’d been so arrogant. Why had he come here alone? Why had he thought he could win? Did he truly believe he could beat an evil force that had already killed three boys simply by sitting down and having a chat?
You’ve overestimated yourself, Lance. You were stupid, and now this is the end.
You’ve failed.
Glenn nudged him again with the bat. “Hurry up. I’ve got to get out of here before this smell makes me yak up my dinner.”
Lance looked once more around the room, searching for anything, any sign, any help, any warning. In return, he got nothing but a choked-off snore from Kenny McGuire on the sofa.
How fitting, Lance thought. I’m going to die just over forty-eight hours after my mother. How very Where the Red Fern Grows. Or maybe The Notebook.
He smiled, thinking how much his mother would have hated that joke. She loathed Nicholas Sparks.
Lance walked forward, his head held high. He supposed he’d always known that because of his gifts, his life, he would likely die by very unusual means. He just hadn’t woken this morning expecting today to be the day. And really, who does? Death is an illusion to most, until the day it shows up at your doorstep and rings the bell.
Lance pushed the door open and stepped across the threshold.
41
The room was unfinished, a large open storage space with studs showing and electrical wires snaking through them. Two banks of overhead fluorescents hummed, echoing off the concrete floor. Boxes were piled everywhere, some labeled auspicious titles such as KITCHENWARE and CHRISTMAS ORNAMENTS. Others were more vague and mysterious, like KENNY’S STUFF or KNICKKNACKS.
But what drew Lance’s attention was the heat. He felt as if he’d just stepped outside the airport in Phoenix after flying in from Maine, a shock of heat slamming into him like a wave in choppy waters.
The source of the heat was a large wood stove burning near the rear of the room, a black cast-iron thing with a grated front door for feeding wood and stoking the flames. Orange and yellow light flickered and bounced from inside the stove’s belly. A large pipe went up from the top of the stove and into the ceiling. Another, smaller pipe came out of back and went halfway up the wall before making a hard right angle and feeding into the wall. A pile of cut wood was neatly stacked next to the stove, a pair of gloves tossed atop it, a black fire poker resting against the wall.
All around the stove and along the edges of the walls were what seemed like hundreds of candles and incense burners glowing. The heat, combined with the nearly knockout strength of the perfume aroma, caused Lance’s head to do another jiggle, his vision blurring and his knees weakening. He shook his head again, breathed in deeply through his mouth. He squeezed his eyes shut and tried to focus. When he opened them, Melissa McGuire was standing directly in front of him.
Like Allison Strang, Melissa McGuire was wearing a robe, only hers wasn’t heavy and plush and meant for comfort. Hers was thin and silky and short. It fell just to the middle of her thighs, and the sash was cinched loosely, the robe falling open around her neck and midway down her chest, her bare breasts just barely concealed. Her hair was up in a ponytail, the same golden hair that Lance had seen in his vision from Bobby Strang and had mistaken for Allison Strang’s. Up close, Melissa McGuire’s face was smooth and appeared much more natural than Allison Strang’s, but this didn’t equate to beauty. Up close, Melissa McGuire’s face was plain, normal. But her body … Lance glanced down to the open robe, the slim legs … her body was a surprise.
She was staring directly at Lance, and he met her gaze with a conviction to stay strong till the very end. He would not give this woman, this thing, the satisfaction of making him cower. When Lance looked into her eyes, he felt…
Nothing.
He reached out, bored deeper into her unflinching stare, searched for any feeling. He found an emptiness that rocked him, confused him. He knew he wasn’t always able to reach into people and get a sense of them—one of the many things about his gifts he could not explain—but previously it had always been a very binary result. It was either ON or it was OFF. It worked, or it didn’t. In Melissa McGuire’s case, the switch was ON, he was able to see inside, could feel himself poking around in the drawers of her consciousness, but all he found was cobwebs.
It was as if she were empty, not even alive. Her soul was made of stone, impenetrable and dark and hard and cold. There was no emotion, no feeling. No sense of being human. She carried with her zero sense of meaning.
(I’m keeping you out.)
Lance flinched, Melissa McGuire’s voice booming in his head as if through a megaphone.
(You’ve never been rejected before, have you? How does it feel? How does it feel to know you’re not as special as you thought you were? You’re nothing, Lance. You’re puny compared to what I am, what I’m doing.)
Lance looked into the woman’s face, feeling true terror for the first time. She grinned at him, and suddenly the heat and the smell and the realization of just how scared Lance truly was collided in his mind, and the room began to spin again and stars peppered his vision and blackness crept in from the sides.
“Glenn,” Melissa McGuire said, “get him in place, please. Then get the hell out of here. I’ll call you when I’m ready.”
Lance felt himself shoved forward as his vision continued to darken. He stumbled, felt his left knee hit one of the boxes. The heavy aroma in the room seemed to be seeping into him through his pores. He tried to hold his breath but felt as if the scent was still making its way in, still doing its job.
He was certain he was going to vomit. He blacked out before he could.
He snapped back to consciousness, jerking his head up and taking in a gasping breath. The storage room was darkened, the fluorescents turned off, and only the light from the candles and burners and wood stove lit the place. It had a cozy appearance, soothing and relaxing. He breathed in deeply again and found the flowery aroma had dissipated some, or maybe his body had just adjusted to it.
The problem was no longer the aroma. Lance’s arms were no longer bound behind his back. Instead, he was standing upright against one of the exposed studs along the wall, his arms raised above his head and secured by a set of handcuffs to a hook that’d been drilled into the wooden beam. He tugged once, twice, and instantly knew he wasn’t getting out of this.
To his left, a piece of wood popped in the stove, the sound resembling a gunshot. Lance jumped, his back rubbing uncomfortably against the stud. And that was when another realization hit him: his gun was gone.
“Did you really think it would do you any good?”
Melissa McGuire appeared from the shadows on his right. Her robe was gone, and she padded barefoot and naked across the room to him. She must have seen Lance’s surprise. “Don’t you see, Lance? I’m in your head now. I’m buried deep and you’ll never get rid of me.” She laughed, and the sound was like nails on a chalkboard. “You’re weak, Lance. I think the good ones almost always are, in the end.”
Lance said nothing.
The golden light from the fire bounced off Melissa McGuire’s flesh. Her skin appeared warm, reddened. Her breasts swayed as she walked, her nipples hard despite
the heat. Lance felt a stirring in his groin and was instantly disgusted with himself.
Melissa laughed again. “Oh, come now, Lance. Enjoy it while you can.” She reached up and grabbed her own left breast, gave it a small squeeze and laughed again when Lance looked away. “None of the others have been able to resist me. Why should you be any different?”
She took a step closer.
“All but one were virgins. Can you believe that, in this day and age? It was so easy. A little flirting at first, then a little teasing. Eighteen-year-old boys care about one thing and one thing only. And here’s a hint: it ain’t football.” She laughed again. “And let me tell you, I love my husband, but he just can’t compete with an eighteen-year-old’s cock anymore. Eager and hard as oak.” She shook her head. “It’s almost a shame they all had to die. I was quite enjoying myself.”
Lance felt his stomach churn, his revulsion growing stronger the more he understood. He needed to snap out of it. He needed to steady himself. He had to fight back.
“You’re lovely and all,” he said, trying his best to sound confident, “but I’m saving myself for marriage.”
She ignored him. “So easy,” she said again. “They walked right into it.”
Lance stood on his toes, creating some slack in the chain holding his arms up. “So you seduce young men and then murder them? Your parents must be so proud. But, hey, everybody needs a hobby, right?”
He was stalling, obviously, but Melissa McGuire appeared to be in no hurry. Lance couldn’t blame her. She had the definitive advantage. He flexed his arms and pulled down on the chain as hard as he could without appearing to visibly struggle. His sprained wrist screamed. He thought he felt the hook give a little, but it might have been wishful thinking—his brain playing a cruel trick.
Melissa walked up to him and stroked his face with her fingertips. They were electric, fiery hot. Lance held her gaze and refused to pull away. “Big boy like you …” She shook her head. “I’d have liked to see what you have under those shorts.”
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