The few passengers began to stir and squirm now, repacking small bags and standing and stretching in the confined aisle. Lance, who had chosen a seat in the second row and was closest to the door, grabbed his backpack from the seat next to him, thanked the driver, and then walked carefully down the bus’s steps and out into the rain.
He stood for a moment in the downpour, his hair instantly matted to his head, and closed his eyes, breathing in deep.
He reached out with his mind, feeling the new town. He didn’t know quite what it was he was looking for, but so far he’d—
“Excuse me.” A woman’s voice startled him. He turned and saw a line of people waiting to come down the bus’s stairs. They looked at him warily and impatiently.
Lance gave a weak smile. “Sorry,” he said and then stepped out of the way.
A little over a month ago, Lance Brody had lived an ordinary life. As ordinary as a life could be for someone who could see the dead.
It was true. Since Lance’s birth, he’d been able to see lingering spirits walking among us mortals. All ages, all walks of life. He’d seen ghosts of those who’d died peacefully in their sleep, and he’d seen the tormented and still-mutilated souls of murder victims, car accident fatalities, and those whose physical bodies had succumbed to terminal illnesses. They almost never appeared to him without cause. Often, they showed themselves in an effort to help, or to be helped. To lead, or to be led. Though the spirits were not always the most straightforward and direct bunch of companions, their assistance, along with Lance’s other psychic tics—that was what he liked to call them now—had not only helped Lance guide them to whatever closure they might have been looking for but also allowed Lance to aid many people—including his local sheriff’s office—in solving a wide assortment of crimes, mysteries, and the all-around generally unexplainable.
It was Lance’s ability to help solve crimes that had created his relationship with the only person in his hometown who knew Lance’s secret other than his mother, since Lance had never known his own father. Marcus Johnston had been new on the job with the sheriff’s office when Lance had been only five years old and had helped find the body of a missing child, who had ended up wandering away from his own backyard and drowning in the small pond at the local park. Johnston had attended high school with Lance’s mother, and Pamela Brody had seen something in the man—or perhaps felt something about him—that had allowed her to trust him enough to slowly begin to reveal Lance’s extraordinary gifts. Looking back and examining his own history, Lance now often wondered just how many of his own gifts his mother might have also possessed, if only subconsciously.
Lance had grown to be a respectable student and had developed the height and quickness to become a superior basketball player for Hillston High School. Though the burden of his unnatural gifts kept Lance from accepting any of the athletic scholarships he’d been offered; instead, he had chosen to remain home, with his mother and with the familiar. Marcus Johnston had grown to become the town’s mayor. The bond and trust between the two men had never been broken.
Which was why Marcus Johnston was the first and only person Lance had called on the night his mother had died. The night Lance had been forced to flee his hometown. The night that had changed his life forever.
The night the Reverend and the Surfer had come for him and his mother had offered up her life in order for Lance to escape.
While most of the spirits that visited Lance were amicable enough, even if their visits were often ill-timed and inconvenient, the lingering dead were not all that Lance’s gifts allowed him to see.
He could also see into the darkness. He could see beyond the veil of this world and peer into the shadows of another—and what lurked there, what survived in a place where nothing should be able to survive, was more terrifying than anything you could imagine.
Evil was very real. And evil walked among us. Always present, always waiting.
Lance was still uncertain what exactly the Reverend and the Surfer were—while they appeared to be mortal men, the Reverend seemed to possess a similar flavor of telepathic powers to Lance, albeit much more powerful, and the Surfer … the Surfer seemed to be able to change himself, among whatever other talents he might possess. Shape-shifter was the word Lance wanted to use, but the term carried such a connection to fantasy novels that he found it ill-fitting. The Surfer was terrifying, if not unexplainable.
Whatever the Reverend and the Surfer were, one thing was certain; they knew exactly what Lance could do, and they wanted him. Lance didn’t know why, but it was clear their intent wasn’t one of friendship and jovial times around a campfire.
Lance had escaped them the night of his mother’s death, thanks only to her sacrifice and the quick thinking of Marcus Johnston, who had gotten him away from the scene of the accident before too many questions could be asked.
Lance had taken the first bus out of town that night and had ended up in the town of Westhaven, Virginia. There, he’d not only encountered and barely survived a battle with a demon of sickening power; he’d also met a new friend who had stolen his heart. A girl whose beauty lived both outward and deep inside. Her name was Leah, and leaving her had been one of the hardest things Lance had done in his twenty-two years of life. But he knew it was the right thing. He was a hunted man, after all. He could never jeopardize Leah’s life that way. So, on another bus, he’d left Leah and Westhaven behind.
Lance had been a vagabond ever since. Always moving forward, always looking over his shoulder and checking for an orange-and-white Volkswagen bus.
Or something much worse.
Evil was very real.
Lance stepped inside the bus station and watched as some of his fellow travelers greeted friends and family who’d been waiting, while others slumped off through the rain and stuffed themselves into cars, driving away toward home.
He’d give anything to be able to go home. To be able to walk down his neighborhood street, take the few steps up to his front door, and step into his living room where he’d be greeted by his mother’s smiling face and the smells of fresh pie cooling in the kitchen. They’d enjoy a slice together, her with tea and he with coffee, and they’d talk and laugh and…
Lance shook away the thought. Which, to his dismay, was becoming increasingly easier to do after only a bit over a month. Time heals all wounds—that was the saying, right? Lance marveled over the weight of its truth. The night of his mother’s sacrifice, he had felt an emptiness inside him that could surely never be filled. A sharp pain in his chest whose ache had almost become comforting in its regularity. But both had lessened. Meeting Leah and dealing with the trouble in Westhaven had helped him begin the healing process in ways he still didn’t quite understand. It was certainly cathartic, and as he’d helped that town overcome the evil that had been slowly devouring it, one of the last things his mother said to him reverberated in his head.
My sweet boy. Oh, what great things you’ll do.
He would not let her death become an empty sacrifice. He would go on and he would survive and he would wait until whatever purpose he was to serve presented himself.
He knew—if he stayed alive long enough, and out of the hands of those who hunted him—that he would discover what it was he was meant to do. Or rather, it would discover him. Lance always had a way of stumbling into the right spot at the right time. At times it was so ironically timed that he was certain whatever guiding forces of the Universe controlled his destiny were having a joke at his expense.
Lance watched out the window as the bus pulled away, chugging out a plume of black exhaust, and then glanced to the sky. Storm clouds still blanketed the horizon, and the rain still poured. Lance shifted his backpack off his shoulder and pulled out his cell phone, a no-frills flip phone that offered only the most basic of services. He smiled as he remembered Leah making fun of the phone. For the briefest of moments, he thought about selecting her contact info and sending her a text message. Something harmless, something simple. As
k her how she was doing. Or telling her that he was safe and well.
But then he also thought about deleting her info altogether. The temptation to reach out to her was too great. And what good would it do? It would only remind them both of something that could have been, but likely would never be.
Lance’s stomach grumbled, and instead of texting Leah, he sighed and checked the time and saw it was a little after two in the afternoon. He tossed his phone back into his backpack.
After confirming with a very friendly man behind the ticket window that there were places to eat well within walking distance, Lance bought a five-dollar umbrella from a small rack next to the counter and then headed outside, standing on the sidewalk beneath the concrete overhang and looking west toward the town, toward lights that looked friendly and inviting.
He pulled up the hood of his sweatshirt, opened his umbrella and started to walk.
With the steady rhythm of the rain falling, tapping atop his umbrella, and the cool fall air trying to nip at him through his hoodie, Lance felt strangely calm. Oddly relaxed.
It was a feeling he didn’t quite trust yet.
2
Two blocks from the bus station, a sign that was posted along the side of the road as Lance approached the heart of the town welcomed him to Ripton’s Grove, and a smaller sign below this encouraged him to “Eat at Mama’s.”
Even as Lance pondered why so many small-town restaurants in the country seemed to think “Mama’s” was a great name for a business establishment (so much for originality), he felt his stomach grumble again and assured the sign as he walked past that he would indeed eat at Mama’s, despite the generic name. He suddenly found himself so hungry he would happily eat at Toilet Bowl Bistro if presented with an opportunity, and hopefully a well-displayed certificate of passing from the local health inspector.
He stopped as the sidewalk ended at an intersection and tilted his umbrella back a bit to peer out beneath its flap and take in the town. Through the sheet of rain, he saw a small cluster of two-story brick buildings, industrial in design and scope, their fronts painted and repainted over many decades as shops and businesses came and went and came again. Awnings stretched over storefronts, lights glowed from most first-floor display windows. A few cars were parked along the sidewalk, and a single traffic light glowed from an intersection ahead. One car sat, waiting patiently for red to turn to green. It was a familiar scene in rural Virginia, or rural anywhere, really. An ill-preserved snapshot of a place that at one time would have a been bright and vibrant scene straight from a Norman Rockwell painting—soda fountains at the drugstore and all that feel-good mojo from long ago—but had now become grainy and drained of its vividness. It had decayed, yet survived.
Lance was starting to think that if he ever wanted to find himself in a larger city, he might need to start paying more attention to what buses he was taking. But honestly, he preferred the small towns. It reminded him of home … of the time before it had all come crashing down around him.
There was no traffic at the intersection where Lance stood, just two tired and faded stop signs standing guard at the side streets. Lance crossed the road and walked the next block, inserting himself into the cluster of buildings, scanning the storefronts and breathing in the air in search of an aroma that might indicate in which direction he could find Mama’s. A car came up from behind him and drove slowly by, not in a creepy way, but in a way that was respectful of the low speed limit. Cautious and courteous. Small-town driving. Its tires kicked up a small rooster tail of water as it navigated the wet road.
The car was a solid black Ford Crown Victoria, not an ancient one, but boring and nondescript except for the dual antennas growing from the trunk. Lance had no doubt it was an unmarked police car. Just as he had no doubt the vehicle’s driver had taken inventory of Lance as the car had passed. The sight made Lance slightly uneasy. The last time he’d ended up in the back of a police car, a man had lost his life. A wife had lost a husband. A son had lost a father.
Because of me.
No … because of it.
He pushed these thoughts away, a harsh past he could not change, and watched as the Crown Vic rolled through the green light ahead and turned left, disappearing from sight. Lance walked another block, and for a moment it took him a second to realize something was different. Something about him, some feeling had changed since before he’d stopped to watch the Crown Vic make its slow crawl up the street.
I’m not hungry anymore. He looked down at his stomach, as if awaiting an explanation, and it did not protest. Lance’s hunger pangs had stopped, his stomach’s grumbling silenced. He stood for a moment, still and confused, and as he was about to continue on in search of Mama’s despite his stomach’s change of opinion, a door burst open a little way in front of him, an overhead bell giving off a terribly loud ring-a-ding! as a woman spilled out onto the sidewalk carrying a large bouquet of flowers. She called back over her shoulder, “Thanks, Lynn! See you at church!” Then she crossed the street, tucking the bouquet beneath her jacket as she half-jogged to her car and got in.
Lance looked back to the door the woman had come through and saw a large glass display window full of flower arrangements and balloons and teddy bears. Obviously a florist. But it wasn’t the florist that was suddenly keeping Lance rooted in place. He turned to his right, toward the door he was standing directly in front of, and read the black block letters painted on the window. R.G. HOMES – REAL ESTATE. And then, stuck in the bottom left corner of the glass, he saw a hand-printed sheet of paper, badly faded by the sun, that read: Rentals Available.
Lance pulled open the door and went inside, his thoughts of food all but forgotten.
The space inside was warm, but not quite inviting. The hardwood floor, presumably the building’s original, was scuffed and aged and in desperate need of refinishing, but the only comforting bit of décor. The walls were gray and dull. A few cheap framed prints were hung here and there but did little to lift the mood. To Lance’s left was an old metal desk and chair, something that would look more at home in a prison than an office. Atop the desk was a beige desktop computer that had never known speeds greater than dial-up modems, a cup full of pens and pencils, and an opened day planner with a few appointments filled in. There was a fine film of dust covering everything. Two more chairs were in front of the desk, and just as Lance was beginning to think he’d made a mistake, a man emerged from a back office and said, “So sorry! My receptionist is at lunch and I never heard you come in. I really should get a bell like they have next door, but … between you and me, I hear that thing ringing all day long and I dream about going over there and ripping it off the wall and stomping it flat!”
Lance said nothing.
The man was average height and fairly thin, with the exception of the middle-aged stomach paunch drooping a bit over the belt holding up his khakis. His tie was crooked, but his shirt was clean and pressed. His hair was thinning, but he wore it well, neatly parted on the right side and held in place by—Oh no, is that hairspray?
The man gave Lance a quick once-over, just as Lance had done to him, and then, apparently not believing Lance to be any sort of threat, he took three quick strides across the room and shoved his hand into Lance’s. “Name’s Richard Bellows, but everyone calls me Rich. Pleasure to meet you, sir. What brings you into R.G. Homes today and how can I help?”
The man’s enthusiasm toward his potential customer was both amusing and annoying. To Lance, he seemed like a Chihuahua that’d been kept in a cage all day and was now running laps around the living room after being let out.
Business must be slow.
Lance said nothing. Instead he looked back over his shoulder, out the windows to the street. The rain was still falling. He looked down at this umbrella, which was dripping water onto the hardwood. Richard Bellows followed Lance’s eyes down and immediately jumped to action. “Oh! Right, right! Here, um, here let me take that for you.” He swooped in and snatched the wet umbrella from
Lance and then carried it over and put it into a metal trash can by the desk. Then with two quick strides, the man was back in front of Lance, a large smile plastered on his face.
“Let me guess, you got a new job in the big city and the folks there told you Ripton’s Grove was the place to live? Easy commute, beautiful scenery, friendly people. So, you came on down to check the place out and see what was available before bringing your family along. Am I right?”
Lance said nothing. Rich’s mention of family sent a pang of sadness through him. A twinge of pain that Lance quickly shoved aside. He wasn’t concerned about the past right now. He was focused on the present. Something had made him come into R.G. Homes today; his vanished hunger was all the evidence he needed to know that for certain. But why? He certainly didn’t need—or have the means—to buy a home, and so far he was picking up nothing remarkable from Richard Bellows, aside from his enthusiasm for customer service.
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