Omens ct-1

by Kelley Armstrong

  I stumbled back and wheeled to see that every tree was the crucifix for a flayed corpse. That’s when I started to scream.

  I woke up still screaming. I clapped my hands over my mouth and huddled there, heart pounding as I strained for any sign that I’d woken up the whole building. But all stayed silent.

  When I closed my eyes, I saw the corpses again. I saw those horrible, flayed bodies and a half-remembered rumor about the Larsens surfaced.

  I vaulted from bed and made it as far as the bathroom door before hurling my last meal onto the freshly scrubbed tiles.

  I returned to bed but couldn’t get back to sleep. Each time I closed my eyes, I saw that raw muscle and sinew and—

  I couldn’t get back to sleep.

  I called James. I couldn’t help myself. But I did manage, halfway through dialing his number, to stop, think, and punch in his work number instead. He wouldn’t be there. That was the point. I listened to his voice message, hung up, called back, and listened again, feeling my heart rate slow, the dream fading into wisps that floated away as he asked me again to leave a message. That time I did. Just a brief, “Hey, wanted to let you know I’m okay. Hope you got the car.”

  Hope you got the car. I’d broken off our engagement. I’d thrown the ring at him and stolen his car and run into the night … and that was the best I could come up with? Yes, it was.

  While hearing James’s recorded voice helped, I still couldn’t sleep. Finally I broke down and took a pill. That only made things worse. Now I dozed in twilight sleep, dreams and hallucinations rolling into an endless drama. I’d see those bodies in my room, hanging from the walls, lying on the bed, sitting up and talking to me.

  Then I’d see the Larsens. But I wasn’t seeing them with the corpses. It might have been better if I did. Instead I dreamed of them, laughing and teasing and singing, scooping me up and holding me tight and making me feel … wonderful. In Pamela Larsen’s arms, I felt something I never felt in my own mother’s awkward embraces. I felt adored.

  It was those images that sent me back to the bathroom, over and over, until I gave up on going back to bed and just huddled on the floor, the cool tile against my cheek. Lying there, I tried to force the two images together—my birth parents and the flayed corpses. I tried to imagine them in that grove, as if the image would freeze and shatter those warm memories. But no matter how hard I tried, my brain refused to insert the Larsens into that scene.

  When dawn’s light finally flooded through the glazed window, the nightmare dreams fluttered away and instead I saw that newspaper headline: “A Mother’s Desperate Jailhouse Plea.” I saw that and I knew I had to see her.

  No, I had to face her.

  She’d helped my father murder eight young men and women. My brain knew it. My gut refused to agree.

  I now realized I’d locked away memories of a happy childhood, but I wasn’t sure if they were real memories or the inventions of a miserable, abused child. I had to face my past, which meant facing my biological parents. Or at least the one who’d reached out.

  First, though, I needed to know exactly what they’d done. No more nightmares based on half-remembered stories. I needed facts. I got ready, then realized the library wouldn’t be open yet. I couldn’t stomach the thought of breakfast, so I just lay on the bed for another hour, haunted by my dreams, worried about my future.

  When I opened my apartment door, I halted. Then I tried to figure out what had stopped me. A sound? A smell? A flicker of movement?

  I looked down the hall. Three closed apartment doors, plus the stairwell. I inhaled. Just the faint smell of pine cleaner. I listened. Nothing. Really nothing—that church hush I’d noticed yesterday still enveloped the corridor. It was strange, actually, the silence and the peace, when I was so accustomed to the usual assault on my senses. While I still noticed smells and sounds, they didn’t seem to have the same effect on me here in Cainsville. I could say it was like the other day in Chicago, when I’d been too shocked to notice anything, but this felt different. Like stepping off a busy street into a library. Maybe it was just the difference of small town life.

  But something had caught my attention out here. I stood there, feet on the lintel, unable to step into the hall.

  I looked down. There was something on the floor, just outside my doorway. Some kind of dark gray powder, almost hidden on the hardwood. I bent. Scattered powder.

  No, not scattered. It seemed to form lines. A pattern?

  I rubbed the back of my neck. Then, after a glance down the hall, to be sure no one was watching, I hunkered down with my face almost to the floor, trying to get a better look. It might be lines. It might even be a pattern. Or I might be an idiot, prostrate on the floor, staring at dropped cigarette ash.

  The more I stared, the more certain I became that it was ash. I could even detect a faint smoky smell.

  I shook my head, went back into the apartment, and grabbed my brand-new dustpan and broom. I swept up the ash, dumped it, and headed off to the library.

  The Internet confirmed that the Larsens had killed four couples. One was dating, two were engaged, one married. All were in their early twenties.

  The Larsens themselves were only twenty-six when they’d been arrested. They’d been born on the same date, in the same Chicago hospital, delivered by the same obstetrician. The media had made much of that coincidence. I don’t know why. It only meant that their mothers had met in the maternity ward and become friends, so Pamela and Todd grew up together. To hear the tabloids tell it, though, you’d think some nurse had injected them with Serial Killer Serum in their cribs. Or practiced satanic rites on them while their mothers slept.

  Speaking of satanic rites…

  Normally, when couples kill, it’s about sex. Brady and Hindley, the Gallegos, the Bernardos … Torture and rape and murder as a cure for the common sex life. But none of the Larsens’ victims had been sexually assaulted. All the indignities committed on the bodies had occurred postmortem. Eventually, the experts came to realize these weren’t sex murders. They were ritual sacrifices. What kind of ritual? Well, that had been a little less clear. It still was.

  There were five elements of the murders identified as ritualistic. An unknown symbol carved into each thigh. Another symbol painted on the stomach with woad, a plant-based blue dye. A twig of mistletoe piercing the symbol on the women’s stomachs. A stone in the mouths. And a section of skin removed from each back—which was the part I’d vaguely remembered hearing about and had mentally exaggerated into the flayed corpses of my nightmares.

  There. I had the facts. Cold facts. My parents had brutally murdered eight people. And now, knowing that, I was going to see them.

  I couldn’t face the Larsens. Not wouldn’t. Couldn’t. There was, apparently, no way to get near either of them. Not right now.

  At the library, I’d researched the prisons where they were being held according to old articles. Then I looked up the phone numbers, returned to the apartment, made the calls, and got the news. Three months ago, Todd Larsen had been transferred to an undisclosed prison for an undisclosed security reason. I told the officials I was his daughter. The bored clerk on the other end replied that I was welcome to fill out the required forms to establish that, and if approved, they’d tell me where he was being held. Then I’d need to contact that prison, fill out more forms, complete a background check, wait another month or two, and maybe, just maybe, be allowed to see him. When the clerk asked where to send the forms, I told her not to bother.

  Then I called the facility holding Pamela Larsen to ask about visiting her and discovered that her visitation privileges had been revoked temporarily. When I asked how long that would last, I couldn’t get a straight answer. The only contact she was allowed was with her lawyer—and apparently she hadn’t hired one since firing Gabriel Walsh.

  I decided to make breakfast. Then I realized I’d bought coffee and bread, but had no coffeemaker and nothing to put on toast. Back to the diner to eat, then.

&n
bsp; When I reached the first floor, Grace was in the hall, lawn chair on her arm. Without a word, she handed it to me and marched ahead. Outside, I handed it back. She sniffed, clearly put out that I wasn’t going to set it up for her. I softened the blow by saying, “I’m heading to the diner. Can I grab you a scone?”

  “You ever go to the diner and don’t get me one, you’ll be looking for lodgings elsewhere, girl. I want a coffee, too. Cream and sugar. Bring the cream on the side or it’ll make the coffee cold.”

  “The scone is my treat. The coffee I’m willing to get but not on my dime.”

  She muttered and rooted around in her pocket, then dropped coins into my palm.

  Mick and Margie

  Margie was not having a good morning. Margie had not had a good morning—or a good day—since 1993. That was the year she graduated from elementary school and left Cainsville. It’d been only temporary, hopping onto the bus for high school each morning and returning before dinner, but it had been enough.

  At the time, she’d have said she changed for the better. Last week, she’d come across a stack of old yearbooks in her mother’s attic, and she’d cringed as she leafed through the pages, seeing her thin face and sunken eyes. Worse was her expression. A defiant smirk. And the messages her “friends” wrote? None that she’d want her young nieces and nephews to read.

  Margie—rechristened Mick in high school—had been voted most likely to end up dead. Her best friend, Nathalie—rechristened Nate—was “most likely to end up in jail.” Their schoolmates got the prophecies right; they’d just mixed them up. By twenty, Nathalie was dead of an overdose. A year later, Margie was in jail.

  She got fifteen years for knifing the girl who’d sold Nathalie the drugs. It sounded good—avenging a friend. Eventually that helped her get parole from a sympathetic board. The truth, one she only admitted to herself, was that she hadn’t knifed the bitch for Nathalie. She’d just wanted free dope.

  She’d been out for two years now. Clean for nine. But life hadn’t rewarded her turnaround. She supposed she still hadn’t earned it. After eighteen months of trying to make it in Chicago, she’d come home to Cainsville at the insistence of her family. A new guy owned the diner. An ex-con. He would cut her some slack and give her a job. And she’d be home.

  Home.

  This may have been home once. In prison, she used to lie in her cot and dream of Cainsville the way others dreamed of Hawaii and Acapulco. Paradise.

  Only she’d soiled her paradise years ago. Shit on it every chance she’d gotten, and people here had long memories. When she came back, they didn’t see the new Margie. They only saw the kid who’d broken into their homes, threatened little kids in their park, stolen cars from their driveways.

  It’d been the dope—she’d needed money for more and had been too stoned to care what she did to get it. That didn’t matter. She’d made them lock their doors. She’d made them call their children in before dark.

  They’d get past it, her mother said. Margie just had to hang in there.

  She could. She would.

  If only the universe would see fit to recognize her efforts and give her a break.

  Being a waitress had seemed easy enough. There was a learning curve, and she expected that. What she didn’t expect was that she seemed incapable of getting around that curve. No matter how hard she tried, things were always going wrong. Plates dropped when she was sure she had them balanced. Cream curdled weeks before the sell-by date. Salt turned up in the sugar dispensers even when she’d taste-tested it before putting them out.

  Then there was the nurse. After her mother’s hip replacement last month, they’d hired someone to come in while Margie was at work—it cost almost as much as Margie made, but it kept her job safe. The damned woman phoned her several times a shift. Margie had complained to the agency, but they had no one else within commuting distance. So she was trying to keep the calls as short as possible.

  And speaking of unwanted interruptions…

  “Margie,” Patrick called as she came out from behind the counter, weighted down with plates. He lifted his empty mug.

  She pretended not to see him. Damned parasite. Took up one of the best tables for hours every day. And what did he buy in return? A single cup of coffee. She wasn’t even sure he paid for it. She’d tried to give him a check her first day on the job, and Larry came roaring out of the kitchen so fast you’d have thought his shorts were on fire. He’d snatched it from her and said Patrick paid monthly for his coffee.

  Like hell.

  Patrick had something over Larry, something that made the poor guy break into a sweat when Margie suggested they kick him out if he didn’t buy food.

  Larry didn’t deserve that, and she wasn’t putting up with it. She wouldn’t jump to refill his coffee every time he raised his mug. If they were lucky, Patrick would get the hint and take his damned novel to the coffee shop. Isn’t that where writers were supposed to work?

  Until then, she’d just keep ignoring him and otherwise do her best. Because she couldn’t afford to lose this job, not when she was so close to turning her life around.

  Chapter Twenty

  As I walked into the diner, the first people I saw were the elderly couple from the day before. Ida and Walter.

  “Thank you for yesterday,” Ida said, giving my arm a pat. “I had my silk blouse outside. The rain would have ruined it.”

  “Any more predictions?” Walter asked. “I’m taking the boat out tomorrow. Hate to drive all the way to the lake and have the weather turn on me.”

  He smiled when he said it, but the look in his eyes was dead serious. Across the aisle, two old ladies leaned closer, listening.

  “No predictions today,” I said. “I don’t even know why I said that yesterday. Just a hunch, I guess.”

  “Hunch?” one of the women called over, loud enough to make me wince. “That’s no hunch. You read the signs. Some people can.”

  Ida nodded. “There are always signs, dear. You just need to pay attention.” She moved over in the booth. “Come sit with us. Don’t worry. We won’t pester you for any more predictions.”

  As I was sitting, the would-be novelist caught my eye and lifted his coffee cup. I hesitated. There was no sign of the server, but he was closer to the coffee station than I was. He could damned well get his own refill. And yet … Well, he gave me this feeling that said ignoring him would be … unwise. I wouldn’t mind a job here, so showing my willingness to work wasn’t a bad thing.

  I got the pot and filled his cup.

  “Looking for a tip today?” he said.

  “Sure.”

  He leaned over, voice lowering. “Larry’s in a foul mood. Breakfast isn’t even over and Margie’s already dropped two plates, including the one for Peter Marks, which landed on his lap, right before he took off for a big meeting in Chicago. Marks is the landlord—gives Larry a good deal on the place. Larry said if she screws up again, she’s gone. And he just might mean it this time.”

  “Thanks.”

  He lifted his mug. “Quid pro quo.”

  I filled a cup for myself and took it back to Ida and Walter’s table. I looked around for Margie—I was starving—but there was still no sign of her.

  “I hear you met Gabriel Walsh,” Walter said as I sat.

  I nodded and took a wild guess. “Someone said he’s a local? Or he used to be.”

  “Oh, yes,” Ida said. “But Gabriel himself never lived here. His momma did. Moved out when she was just a young one herself.”

  I’d heard of towns where you were considered local if you were born there, but this seemed a little extreme. As I poured creamer into my coffee, I could hear Larry tearing a strip off someone in the kitchen. Margie, I presumed. The novelist was right.

  I unwrapped my napkin-wrapped cutlery for a spoon to stir my coffee. Only a fork and a knife fell out. I lifted the knife.

  Stir with a knife,

  Stir up strife.

  I hesitated. I glanced at Ida a
nd Walter, but they were engrossed in their conversation. I glanced at the kitchen doors and started to put the knife down.

  No, that was silly.

  And even if it wasn’t, I shouldn’t…

  I lifted the knife again and gave my coffee a quick stir. As I laid it down, I noticed the novelist watching me, his eyes dancing. I turned back to Ida and Walter, and I was about to say something when a construction worker rose, a twenty in his hand.

  “Where’s that girl?” He peered toward the kitchen. “Margie!”

  She came out bearing a tray of steaming plates. A couple across the diner looked up expectantly. She nodded and moved a little faster. As she rounded the corner to our aisle, Ida’s cane fell. It didn’t drop with a clatter, just silently slid to the floor.

  Margie didn’t notice. No one seemed to notice. Margie was heading straight for it. I looked around. The writer caught my gaze. He looked at the cane, then back at me, smiling slightly, as if in challenge.

  I glanced at Margie. Her expression was determined, but her nostrils were flared, her eyes a little too wide. Anxious. Exhausted, too, if the circles under her eyes were any indication.

  I took another swig of coffee and lifted the menu. I thought I heard the writer chuckle. I didn’t, of course—he was too far away and the clatter of plates and murmur of voices would have drowned him out.

  Margie tripped over the cane. Not just a stumble, but a full-out sprawl that sent the plates crashing to the floor, oatmeal splattering everywhere, including on the two diners who’d been awaiting their breakfasts.

  Larry ran from the back, apologizing as he handed the customers damp towels and promised to cover dry cleaning. Margie picked herself up, babbling about the cane. I quietly slid from the booth and cleared away the broken bowls and plates.

  “You’re fired,” Larry said, spinning on Margie. “Go on. Get your things. I’ll send over your last check.”

  “It wasn’t my fault,” she protested.