The Corruption Within

by Ty Griffin

  She nodded thoughtfully. “Yeah. Maybe you have a bigger fight ahead of you than most people do. But let me ask you something.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Of all the impulses this demon tried to push on you, how many of them did you give in to?”

  “Well. I don’t know exactly. Like I said, I don’t always know what’s him or not.”

  “Okay, of the ones you know were him, how many did you fight against?”

  I had to think for a minute. “Well, all of them, I guess. But I don’t know for sure—”

  “Okay, forget that for a second,” Kayla interrupted with persistence. “Answer me this, Wes. Why are you here?”

  I’m sure my face gave away my confusion, but Kayla refused to back down. She sat like a mountain, quiet and immovable, as she waited for me to answer.

  “You know why I’m here,” I started. “I figured you were hurt.”

  “Yes,” she insisted, “but why are you here?” Her subtle emphasis on you started to clue me in on where she was going.

  “Because I was worried about you,” I said quietly. “I wanted to check on you, to see if … if I could help somehow.”

  “That doesn’t sound evil to me. That sounds like a good friend trying to do a good thing.”

  “Yeah, but you don’t know how I—”

  “Did the demon want you to come here?” she interrupted again.

  “No,” I said honestly. “I kind of had to talk him into it.”

  “You can talk to him?” she asked in surprise. Then she threw up her hands. “Wait. We’ll come back to that. How did you talk him into it?”

  “I made him a deal.”

  “A deal?”

  I was growing increasingly uncomfortable sharing the interactions I had with Veikr, and I could tell he was getting frustrated as well. I had committed myself to answering Kayla honestly, though, and I wasn’t going to back away from that.

  “He was kind of burning me, trying to get me to run away. He fears Gabe and doesn’t like this whole mess that has been going on. He wants me to go somewhere new to start accumulating power. I told him I would fight him every step of the way, or he could help me and I would follow his lead to wherever he wanted to go. I guess he decided it would be easier to just help me.”

  “Help you do what?”

  I felt my ears warm like they do every time I’m about to say something embarrassing. “Help me help you.”

  With a wicked little smile, she said, “Good. That sounds like the intentions of a good friend, and I know exactly how you can help me.”

  Chapter 16

  ◆◆◆

  An hour later Kayla and I were on a bus heading to the far side of town. Her hair was still a little wet from her shower and left dampness around the collar of her shirt. Her eyes were a bit puffy from having cried for most of the morning, and the blue jeans and white T-shirt she was wearing did not have her typical goth flair, but being up and moving seemed to be helping her spirits.

  “All right, now tell me exactly what I’m helping you with,” I said, careful to keep my voice low enough to not draw unwanted attention on the mostly empty bus.

  “Evidence,” she said pointedly. “We are going to find out what happened and we are going to prove it to the cops. I just don’t trust that they’re going to do the work to find any real answers.”

  “I distrust the cops about as much as anyone else, but we don’t really know any more than anyone else what is going on.”

  “Everything that has happened so far has pointed toward Gabe. At least to him being involved. He is tied up in this somehow. You know it’s true. You just don’t want to admit it because he’s been nice to you.”

  “It’s not just that …”

  She cut me off with a wave of her hand. As she spoke her voice got higher and louder, and her words came out in a rush. “Gabe was there, Wesley. He was there when I was attacked. I was knocking on the door for you and saw his truck pulling up the street. I don’t know why I panicked then, but I did. I ran and hid in the alley. A few minutes later, I was on the ground with … with someone on top of me.”

  “Gabe attacked you? Kayla, why didn’t you tell the cops?”

  “Because I don’t know that he attacked me. I didn’t see him. I … I was too scared to look. I fought and screamed, but I kept my eyes closed the whole time.”

  I could see the emotions beginning to overwhelm her again. I put my hand on hers, trying to offer however much support I could. “Of course you were. I can’t even imagine how scared you must have been. No one would blame you for not looking.”

  “You don’t understand,” she said with a trembling voice. “The fear was overwhelming. It was like a physical force in itself. I couldn’t have opened my eyes if I wanted to.” She took several long, slow breaths before continuing. “But that’s not the point. The point is that Gabe was there. He had to have seen me run into the alley. I was screaming my lungs out. How could he not have heard me? If it wasn’t him, how could he have not known what was happening? It just doesn’t make sense.”

  After another moment of thought, she asked, “What time did he wake you up?”

  I shook my head, ashamed. “I don’t know. I was out of it and didn’t even think to check the time. I went straight upstairs and fell back asleep in the shower. I have no idea how long I was in there, either. I’m sorry.”

  She waved a dismissive hand. “How did he seem?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know. He seemed angry.”

  “Don’t you think it’s weird that he wouldn’t mention hearing someone scream outside? He had to have heard me, Wesley. He had to have.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Okay. You’re right. It’s weird. Everything about this has been weird, and everything has seemed to revolve around Gabe. I don’t want to believe this is him. He’s done so much for me, but the truth is that he gets oddly intense about some things. This afternoon he was yelling at me, accusing me of telling Barnett about him.

  “And you’re also right that we have to find out what’s actually going on. But Kayla, we have to do it safely. This is seriously dangerous stuff. There are some unimaginably dangerous things hanging around here in addition to whoever is attacking people.”

  “Yes, but you have that demon …”

  “Veikr,” I interjected.

  “Veikr? It has a name?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Okay, you have Veikr, which has already helped you kill one other demon, right? He can protect us from the others, right?”

  “I think I like her, Vessel,” Veikr rumbled.

  “I don’t know. It’s not quite that simple. I barely survived the last one, and I don’t really know if I can trust Veikr to help when we need it.” I felt Veikr’s offended growl, but I ignored it and continued, “I don’t really know anything about him. I don’t know what he will do.”

  “I have every reason to keep you alive, Vessel,” Veikr objected. I continued ignoring him, refusing to speak to him in front of someone else.

  “We’ve got to try, Wesley. I’ve got to try,” Kayla said softly.

  She looked me in the eye, steady and resolute. I watched her for a moment and knew that whether I helped or not, she was going to keep going. I had already left her alone and vulnerable once. I wasn’t going to do it again.

  “I’m with you,” I said solemnly. “But where do we start?”

  “With Jessica Jenkins. I looked up the addresses of the four other victims. We are going to start with Jessica and see what information we can get from them. Maybe if we show them a picture of Gabe, they’ll remember seeing him around or something. Or, I don’t know, maybe they can give us some pieces to the puzzle.”

  “Pieces to the puzzle? You are almost starting to sound like a professional investigator!” I said with a smile.

  Kayla gave my thigh a playful punch. “Shut up. I don’t know what I’m doing. I’m just making it up as I go.”

  Fifteen minutes later Kayla and I got off the bus in
an area of town nice enough I was worried someone would call the cops on us for just walking down the street—but not quite high income enough that the cops would come right away. The houses were shiny and new, the yards well manicured, but parked in the driveways were two-year-old Hondas and Chevrolets instead of year-old BMWs and Mercedes. We had to walk another ten minutes to get to the entrance to a neighborhood filled with a single house replicated a hundred times, with enough tiny variation that the owners—and no one else—could tell them apart. The houses were stacked side by side, close enough that neighbors could lend bottles of condiments between windows.

  I followed Kayla, who was following the GPS on her phone, winding through the neighborhood until we reached a house with larger front windows than the houses beside it and a tiny American flag hanging from a two-foot pole shaped like an upside down L. I recognized the shape of the house. It was the house in Gabe’s drawing.

  We stood on the sidewalk for a minute, staring at the house while we worked up our nerve.

  “Ready?” Kayla asked.

  “No,” I said as I began walking up the driveway.

  We rang the doorbell, and a couple minutes later I saw movement through the frosted, oval window in the front door. The door opened partway, and Jessica’s head poked through the crack. The Jessica standing there barely resembled the professional, put-together version I had seen in the picture in Gabe’s garage. The Jessica from the picture would never allow her hair to remain knotted and frizzy so late in the day. She also would never answer the door to strangers with eyes red and swollen. Maybe I was assuming too much from looking at a single picture, but it seemed to me that being assaulted had changed her into a haunted, terrified, sleep-deprived version of herself.

  “Yes?” she asked meekly. Even through the storm door, I could smell the alcohol on her breath.

  “Uh, are you Jessica Jenkins?” Kayla asked.

  “Yes,” Jessica answered guardedly, but she opened the door a little wider, obviously curious.

  “My name is Kayla. This is my friend Wesley. We were wondering if we could speak to you for a couple minutes?”

  “About what?”

  “About what happened to you.” Kayla’s voice was soft, as if the words themselves might damage Jessica’s soul even further.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about!” Jessica said harshly, but from the way the color drained from her face, it was obvious she knew exactly what Kayla meant. “I’m busy right now and I don’t want to talk to anyone. Please go away.”

  She had started to close the door on us when Kayla asked, “Were his hands cold?” Jessica froze, the door left open just a crack. Kayla, sensing an opportunity, continued. “Not just cold, but unnaturally cold? Like he had been holding a block of ice right before he … grabbed you?”

  Jessica pulled the door open enough to peek her head out again. “He got you too?” she asked. Kayla gave an almost imperceptible nod. “When?” Jessica asked.

  “This morning,” Kayla said hesitantly.

  Jessica scoffed. “This morning?” Her eyes narrowed as she slowly evaluated Kayla. “You must be a lot stronger than me, then.”

  “He didn’t …” Kayla faltered, and I could hear the emotion creeping back into her voice. “He got interrupted. I guess I was lucky.”

  Jessica scoffed again. “None of us are lucky.” Then her eyes went wide. “This morning …” she repeated.

  “Can we come in for a minute?” Kayla asked. “We just want to ask you a few questions.” She glanced at me nervously. “Or we can ask from out here if you—”

  Jessica put a hand up, cutting Kayla off. I saw her fingers trembling, and it dawned on me what her callous attitude was hiding. Fear. Jessica was scared. Just by being here, Kayla and I were forcing her to relive memories she was trying, and obviously failing, to forget. Or was it possible she was afraid our presence was putting her in more danger?

  “No, I don’t want to talk,” she said with a bitter smile. “You are interrupting my drinking, which is the only thing that helps me sleep. So if you’ll excuse me …” With that she slammed the door closed. I heard the sliding of a deadbolt and jiggling against the doorknob as if something was being wedged beneath it.

  “Okay, we’re leaving,” Kayla said. “I work at Painted By Genevieve on Aspen Street. If you change your mind, you can find me there.”

  “We are going to find them, Jessica,” I added. “If the police can’t do it, we’ll do it ourselves.”

  Kayla and I walked back to the bus stop in silence. The excited determination we’d felt on the way there was gone. Kayla walked like she was being led toward her execution: head bowed, shoulders hunched, and feet shuffling down the sidewalk.

  “I guess we can’t really blame her for not wanting to talk,” I said when we got to the bus stop. “She is dealing with it the best she can. But we have three more people to talk to. Maybe we can get some information out of one of them.” I tried to sound positive. I wanted to encourage her, give her something to lift her spirit, but I didn’t believe the words as I said them.

  “I understand why she doesn’t want to talk. I don’t blame her for that," she said. She looked at me with large, watery eyes. “Wes, I’m scared I’m going to become her.”

  I quickly put my arm around her shoulder and pulled her toward me. She leaned her head against my side. "You’re strong and you’ve taken this head on. I don’t think there is necessarily a right or wrong way to process this stuff, but I am so proud of how you are handling everything.”

  “Wes, I am barely holding on. I feel like it would take just one more little thing to send me spiraling.”

  “I know, Kayla. But you are getting through it. I think sometimes all you can do is survive for a while, and I think that’s okay. But you’re not alone. I’ll be here with you.”

  It took us an hour to get to the next house. Chanel Williams lived in an older, well-maintained ranch house on the north side of town. Or at least she had. My heart sank as we walked, watching the house numbers decrease in steady intervals, it becoming more and more obvious that her house would be the one with the rectangular white metal sign of a realty company.

  The midafternoon sun shone brightly, so it shouldn’t have seemed out of place that no lights were on in the house. But the slightly overgrown lawn and the sense of sterile, utter stillness about the place made me sure Chanel no longer lived there.

  We rang the doorbell anyway. After a couple minutes of silence, we rang again.

  “Step closer to the door, Vessel, and I will look inside,” Veikr said.

  I stepped uncomfortably close to the door, close enough to lick it if I had that inclination, and felt Veikr unweave himself enough to look inside.

  “What are you doing?” Kayla asked.

  “Veikr wanted to look inside the house,” I answered awkwardly.

  “Do you have to stand so weirdly close to do it?”

  “Yeah, I do. Apparently he can only pull so much of himself out of me.”

  I could almost feel Kayla’s wicked smile as she said, “Phrasing.”

  “From what I can see, the house is empty,” Veikr said.

  “Veikr said she’s gone,” I told Kayla.

  “Maybe she’s in the back of the house or in the bathroom or something,” Kayla said hopefully.

  “I do not mean empty just of people, human,” Veikr corrected. “The house is completely empty. No chairs or tables or television. Empty.”

  “It looks like she has already moved all her stuff out,” I said. “She either was already in the process of moving, or she was really motivated to get out of here, to get her house packed up and on the market in just a couple weeks.”

  “Damn,” Kayla muttered. And then, resilient as ever, she bounced back with, “Okay, let’s head to the next one.”

  I smiled. I couldn’t help but be proud of her.

  Marie lived in an apartment that was a little more than a mile from Chanel’s house, or rather, the house
that had previously been Chanel’s. Kayla and I decided to walk instead of spending the same amount of time waiting on the right bus.

  We made it there in fifteen minutes and walked through the tiny lobby straight to the elevator. Kayla hit the button for the third floor. I followed her lead to apartment K, watched her take a deep, calming breath and knock on the door.

  Part of me hoped she wouldn’t be home. The conversation with Jessica had been short but awkward enough. I knew we needed whatever information we could get from, but I also couldn’t help but wish for a safe and comfortable dead end. I heard movement from inside the apartment and felt a rush of nerves quicken my heart rate.

  “Do we run, little human?” Veikr asked with mocking, exaggerated concern.

  “No,” I growled.

  “What?” Kayla asked.

  “Nothing,” I said.

  I heard a dead bolt sliding open and the click of a security chain being unhooked. The door opened slowly, revealing the medium-height, middle-aged Marie Pittman. She wore khaki pants, a flower-print shirt with a cardigan over top, and comfortable-looking flats.

  Marie looked like she had a gentle soul, except the lines in her face were drawn into an untrusting scowl. The stern look seemed out of place on her somehow, like she was not used to feeling such negative emotions. She could have been a kindergarten teacher who had just received terrible news.

  I felt the light-headed dizziness I always felt when faced with an injustice and the inability to find a target for my anger. She seemed like softness forced to turn hard because of trauma inflicted on her, and the abuse pissed me off.

  Marie glanced at Kayla and then shifted a cautious gaze over me. I had to purposefully relax my hands from the fists they’d reflexively formed and force a smile on my face.

  “Hi, I’m Wesley, and this is Kayla,” I said, gesturing toward Kayla with one hand. “Are you Marie Pittman?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  I looked at Kayla, hoping she would take over the talking. She saw me look and thankfully understood what I wanted. “Ms. Marie, we were wondering if we could talk to you about …” Kayla’s voice broke and she had to swallow hard before continuing, “about what happened to you.”