Company Town (Quinn Henaghan Chronicles Book 1)

by Paul Neuhaus

  “I won’t,” Quinn said, and she squeezed the older woman’s hand.

  Faber, having seen them arrive, was already on his front porch. “There they are,” he said. “My lovely ladies.” He smiled and held his huge hands wide like he was welcoming two long lost friends.

  Quinn looked the man up and down. Neither she nor Molly replied to Faber’s greeting. They trudged up the stairs to join him next to his open front door.

  “Oh, come on,” the man said with a laugh. “This isn’t a somber occasion.” He looked at Blank. “Molly, I’m sorry. That— That wasn’t me. I don’t do those kinda of things. I swear to God I’m gonna make it up to you.” He stood aside. “But let’s go in. It looks like it might rain. For once.”

  Both women moved past Faber. Her agent’s apology and offer of recompense didn't impress Molly. She’d reverted to the resigned silence of the car.

  Barry came in and shut the door. “Please, sit.” The front door led to a huge living room with two expensive sectionals facing one another. “I have wine. I have noshes.” Indeed, there was a large spread on the glass coffee table between the couches. Between a platter of food and a decanter of wine stood a heavy, sculpted candlestick holder. A dragon curled around a Greek column.

  Quinn and Molly sat on the couch nearest the door. Faber sat on the one opposite so he could face them. “Now—” he began.

  “Nuh-uh,” Henaghan said. “I talk.”

  The agent was taken aback but he smiled. “Go ahead.”

  “What is this?” Quinn said. “I don’t know you. Do you know me somehow?”

  “No, I don’t know you, but I was—”

  “I said I talk.”

  “Right. I forgot that,” Faber said, his tone full of forced levity.

  “Molly told me what you did. You wanted me up here; now I’m up here. What is this?”

  Molly leaned forward, pouring wine from the decanter into a glass. She took a sip as she waited for the scene to further unfold.

  Faber sat back. “I… we need to talk. About what happened in the flood channel the other night.”

  Quinn was confused, but only for a second. “The body…” she said.

  “Yes. But not just the body. The boy in the drainpipe. The boy who went straight to your apartment.” He grinned like a Great White. “We need to talk about Annabelle.”

  In a rush, her neurons firing all at once, Quinn knew exactly what was happening. She stood up with a jerk. “Come on,” she said, without looking down. “We’re going.” When she did look down, she saw the strangest thing.

  Molly was sleeping.

  When Henaghan raised her eyes again, all she saw was the dragon candlestick crashing into her face.

  That and the vague shape wielding it.

  When Quinn came to, she was cold. It took her a while to realize the bare flesh of her back, buttocks and legs rested on a metal table. Like a morgue table. Her wrists were strapped down as were her ankles. A leather harness held her head in place so she could only look up. She was staring into bright fluorescent lights and she squinted at the glare.

  She’d been here before. In a dream.

  Henaghan tried to move her wrists but couldn’t. A voice from her right. The voice from the dream. “Oh, good. You’re awake.” Barry Faber’s face slid into view, blocking the illumination. “Is there anything I can get you? More wine? Cheese?”

  “Where’s Molly?” Henaghan said, tasting blood.

  “My little sea cow,” the agent said. “She’s here.”

  If Faber was on Quinn’s right, that meant Molly must be on her left. She tried to turn her head, but the harness prevented it.

  “Don’t worry,” Faber said. “I’ll take that off in a moment. It gets in the way.” He ran his hand over her belly. “Look at this,” he said, meaning her scars. “You’re not as pristine as I expected.” Then he laughed. “They’re gonna think I did that.”

  “Rosebud,” Quinn said.

  “Peekaboo.” He was moving around her, but she couldn’t see what he was doing. Adjusting furniture from the sound of it. Moving metal implements on a metal stand. “You’ve been out for a while. I must’ve hit you good and hard. You’re a tough one, though. I can tell just looking at you. I’m a good judge of woman-flesh. My stock-in-trade.”

  “Molly?” Henaghan said, again trying to turn her head.

  “She’s… quiet now,” Faber said. “Did you know I travel a lot for work?” This came apropos of nothing. “I was in Raleigh, North Carolina. Can you believe that? I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking, What’s a guy like Barry Faber doing in a shit-hole like Raleigh, North Carolina? And it is a shit-hole, make no mistake. But I think you already know why I was there, right?”

  “You drew a diamond on Noah.”

  Faber laughed. “That I did. I couldn’t do what I normally do. With him being a boy and all. When I started this, I never thought I’d have a gimmick. It’s so hackneyed. But it’s also so much fun. People say, ‘My God, that’s so fucked-up’, and I get to say, ‘I know, right?’ Alfred Hitchcock said, ‘Movies are like life with the dull bits taken out’.” His face moved out of her line of sight again. “I like taking out people’s dull bits.” He finished arranging his equipment. Quinn knew he was done because he announced it. “There. All set.” Then he went around behind her head and undid the straps of the harness holding her head in place. He then forced her head to the left and locked the straps again. Henaghan was looking at Molly on the adjoining table. Molly’s head was locked so that she looked right, facing Quinn. The older woman had a dirty rag jammed into her mouth. Her eyes were enormous.

  Henaghan opened and closed her jaw and blinked her eyes several times. “How many women have you had down here?” she said to Faber.

  “Not including you two? Eight. There’s one they haven’t found yet—despite all my efforts to steer them. I’m convinced our best and brightest don’t go into law enforcement. Anyway, with you guys, I’ll hit the decade mark. Isn’t that cool? ”

  “I still don’t understand why I’m here,” Quinn said, her mind racing. Her only thought was to strand Faber in conversation. She was desperate to reach out to Molly; to touch her. “I didn’t see you dump the body,” the redhead went on. “Noah did—and he couldn’t see anything in the dark.”

  “Oh, I know,” Faber replied. “The truth is, I had an ulterior motive inviting you here. My sponsor requested it.”

  “Verbic.”

  “Mister Verbic.” The big man came into Quinn’s sight again. He wheeled his cart between the two tables and stopped. He pulled the rag out of Molly’s mouth. “My lovely seacow. Ready to lose some weight?”

  Molly inhaled, clamped her eyes shut, and screamed. The sound echoed in the concrete chamber. When she ran out of breath, Blank gulped air and screamed again.

  Faber intervened, testy. “Yeah, yeah, yeah. Aaah, aaah, aaah!” He grabbed Molly on either side of her face and squeezed. “Open your eyes.” She didn’t. “Open your eyes goddammit or I’ll put ‘em out!”

  The girl did as she was told, her desperate pupils redirecting toward Henaghan. Her state was beyond panic. She was an animal.

  “I’m gonna bounce back and forth until I get bored,” Faber said. He stopped himself, standing erect and mulling over his last utterance. “‘Bored’. Did you just hear me say that? Must be that banality of evil thing.” He sat down on a rolling chair and picked up a scalpel. “There. Can everybody see okay?” He leaned in to cut Molly’s face.

  It was Quinn’s term to scream, but it wasn’t a scream of terror. It was rage. Anger and fire welled up inside of her, pushing its way upward through her body. When it burst out, she screamed again. A predator’s scream. Her essence shot from her, leaping across the gap between her and Barry Faber. She entered him. Inside his head, his panicky psyche retreated from hers. The invasion stunned him. Didn’t your sponsor tell you what I was? Henaghan shouted. Didn’t he tell you?! Faber was helpless on his own home turf and he knew it.
Quinn’s persona gave off flames and fury. She knew that she must look to Faber like a phoenix ready to burn and tear. On him, she caught Sato’s scent, and that only amplified her rage.

  She enveloped Rosebud and destroyed him.

  When Quinn returned to herself, she was still lying on the metal table but the straps holding her down had burned away. Sitting up, she rubbed her extremities and looked around. Molly was still prone on her table. Her straps had burned away too, but she was locked in her last position, stunned beyond rational thought.

  The chamber was exactly what Quinn expected. Concrete, underground, overhead lighting, a small metal table on wheels upset when Barry Faber fell. The agent lay on the ground, surrounded by the tools of his trade, his eyes vacant and dead. Throwing her legs over the table, she took halting steps to the room’s big metal door. Right by the door was a wooden table with two piles of clothing, Quinn’s and Molly’s. Once she was dressed, she found her cellphone still in her pocket. Picking up Molly’s clothes, she went over to the older woman and dressed her. Blank was catatonic but compliant. She then ushered Blank up the stairs and back through the house. Once outside, she helped her into the Prius.

  Henaghan called the LAPD and directed them to Faber’s house. She told them the route into the basement and explained that, no, she couldn’t come in—at least not right away—but they’d be hearing from her soon.

  She still had work to do.

  The call made, she stumbled to the Prius and got in.

  It was raining just as Barry Faber predicted.

  9

  Company Town

  Annabelle was dead. And Darren was dead. And Noah Keller was dead. After her work was over, Quinn would deal with the losses. She took Molly to the Gower Street apartment, laid her in bed under the thick comforter and, for a time, watched the black-haired beauty sleep.

  The drive up to 119 Mulholland was a lonely one. No radio. Not even an internal monologue. Just a girl focused on the road.

  She reached her destination, locked the Prius, and a familiar voice from behind her said, “Where you going, little girl?”

  Quinn turned and there was Jack Nicholson collecting his newspaper. Even though it was raining. She sighed. “It’s a long story.”

  The actor nodded. “I have some weird neighbors,” he said. “They don’t have guests and they sure as shit don’t have parties. They’ve been a fixture here since I moved in. Long before that even.”

  Acting on a suspicion, Henaghan reached out with her mind to touch Nicholson’s. He was like her. A Channeler. He was powerful. More powerful than David Olkin. Maybe more powerful than Darren Taft. “Are you Guild?” she asked.

  Jack grinned the grin that had made him a millionaire. “I quote Marx—and I don’t mean Karl: ‘I would never belong to any club that’d have me as a member.’ No, I got no time for that shit. Buncha little boys jerkin’ onto a cracker.”

  Quinn nodded. That sounded about right. “You’re okay with these neighbors of yours?”

  Nicholson shrugged, looking up at the wet sky. “It’s like the weather. It’s nature. How much say am I gonna get in nature? These men you think you’re going to see, they’re not really men. They’re… forces. Old as time. And you… I feel you. You’ve got more than a touch of The Shining.” Even he couldn’t resist smiling at his own reference. “You’re a little girl with special gifts, but you’re still just a little girl. If you keep walking up that hill, you know what I’m going to say to you?”

  Henaghan shook her head.

  “‘Virgin, meet lava.’ And that,” he said. “Is today’s news.” He saluted her with his paper and ambled back up his driveway.

  Quinn stood watching him leave. “Huh,” she said aloud. She’d just gotten friendly advice from Jack Torrance.

  Good advice, but it didn’t matter now. Quinn was a machine. With a single purpose.

  Turning toward 119, she reached out, hoping to detect some presence therein (and feeling for a moment like Luke Skywalker). The house was stone cold—unlike the ones on either side which both had varying degrees of life pulsing through them. Stopping for a moment, she pushed her Self out from her body and it jetted away toward Reginald Verbic’s home. With the bobbing and weaving point of view of a snake, her consciousness crossed the lawn, reconnoitering. She hit a wall. An invisible barrier woven through with needles. Her mind recoiled from it, smarting from the unseen defenses. Her essence retreated to the sidewalk and hovered there. She hoped she hadn’t triggered some kind of mystic alarm, but she sensed no movement inside the two-story home. She sensed no movement, but would she? If Reginald wasn’t human, he didn’t have to play by human rules. She pictured a jagged shadow rushing her and enveloping her and she shivered.

  Now that Quinn had triggered the ward around the property, she could sense its boundaries. Skimming its perimeter, her essence circled 119 completely. The back of the house was as uninteresting as the front. Uninteresting and cold. She snapped her Self back into her body. There was only one thing left to do. She walked up the hill and up Verbic’s driveway past a 1930s coupe and the Floor-de-lys car that she’d seen parked in the street a few days prior. When she reached the edge of the mystic barrier, she stretched out a tentative hand. It was as she suspected—the barrier wasn’t designed to stop flesh. Flesh could stop flesh, and that had been Chuck Sato’s job.

  But Chuck Sato wasn’t around anymore.

  Confident she wouldn’t fry herself, Henaghan mounted the concrete steps to the front porch. Every cell in her body cried out for rest. She knocked.

  Reginald Verbic opened the door. He was tall, ashen and gaunt with piercing blue eyes. Wordlessly, he stepped out of the way so Quinn could enter.

  The foyer was small and opened onto the living room. The living room looked, Henaghan expected, exactly as it must’ve looked decades before. The room’s most prominent feature was its three floor-to-ceiling birdcages, each in its own dedicated corner. All three cages contained big ravens, their beady black eyes upon her.

  And, of course, the whole place smelled of bird shit.

  “Here you are,” Verbic said quietly.

  “Here I am,” Henaghan agreed.

  “Please. Have a seat,” Verbic said. He moved with all the verve of a long-term cancer patient. Still, Quinn felt incredible power emanating from him.

  Henaghan sat down on the couch and Verbic took the embroidered chair facing her. He stared at her for a long time with steely eyes, but Quinn was determined not to speak first. She would force him to take the initial jab—if jab was the right word. Finally, he did. “Here’s the simple truth, Miss Henaghan. You cannot kill me. I suspect you already know that despite what you accomplished with Mr. Sato. Which, by the way, I congratulate you for. I’m not a sentimental man, and what you did was… remarkable.” He covered his mouth and coughed, “But don’t be too proud of yourself. Your historical antecedent couldn’t kill me and neither can you.” He was referring to Aisling. Somehow, he knew she’d had the dream. Smiling, he went on. “I know the Guild feels I’m a strict father from whom they want to break away, but they are naive. You cannot do a thing if you don’t understand how to get your hoped-for outcome. Are you with me thus far?”

  “Are you asking if I understand or if I agree?”

  “Understanding is enough for now.”

  “Then I understand.”

  “Good. You’re familiar with the philosophy of live and let live. That is what I propose. You are not to come here uninvited again, and you are not to interfere in anything I do regardless of how repugnant you find it to be. In exchange, you will get a similar policy of noninterference from me. And, just so you know, yes, this is an unprecedented circumstance. Consider it a gesture of respect. If you accept my proposal, you may come here from time to time—at my invitation—and you may learn from me. The way you were learning from the late, lamented Mr. Taft.”

  “You want me to be Louie.”

  Verbic blinked at her with tired eyes.

 
; “Louie from Casablanca.”

  Again, the old man was silent.

  “The Vichy French,” Quinn clarified. “Nazi collaborators.”

  “Do you know enough about me to compare me with the Nazis? It’s a simplistic analogy.”

  “I know that you murder—or, at the very least, you encourage murder. Innocent girls. Pregnant women.”

  “I’m afraid you’ve misread me, Miss Henaghan. Did Taft not explain the nature of visions?”

  “He did.”

  “Then how can you come here thinking you know me?”

  “Why do they want to overthrow you?” Quinn said. “The Guild?”

  “Because they want reward without risk. Once, long ago, we—people like Mr. Sato and myself—were toppled by a coalition of rebels. Human rebels. Even at the time—even as I hated them for what they did—I respected them because they rose up, took what we had given them, and used it against us. That takes clear-headedness. It takes courage. One can respect the act without respecting the actor. But this new breed… They’ve sent you—my apologies—a mere girl, to do what they are too cowardly to do themselves. That deserves, I think, contempt rather than respect. Do you not feel used, Miss Henaghan?”

  Quinn shrugged. “What does this ‘mere girl’ have that bothers you?”

  “You’re familiar with the concept of a recessive gene?”

  “I’ve heard this one.”

  Verbic was undaunted. “You have a very particular recessive gene. One that goes back through the ages to your people’s distant past. I would say that, today, one in a hundred million carry it—and only one in seven billion can have it activated. You have a power within you that makes you like those rebels I mentioned. The ones who rose up against us. You can contain and release greater energies than others who use magic. A hundred-fold more energy than any of those fools that sent you here. I have just emerged from hibernation and have a long way to go before I will be fully myself. Neither of us are at our best now. But you are a rare creature. An outgrowth of our work during your species’ earliest days. Without us, there’d be no you. I am interested in your development—not only because observing you will be its own reward, but also because I take pride in my ancient craft.” He held out his waxy hand. For the first time, Quinn noticed his nails were long, pointed and lacquered—just as Horace Kronenbusch said they were long ago.