by H. P. Bayne
The reasons for holding onto his secret were fading as quickly as Sully’s remaining life seemed to be. There was no point denying it anymore, not when it seemed they already had most of the answers they claimed to be seeking.
“I can’t see her, but she’s here.”
“If you can’t see her, how do you know?”
“I’ve been seeing her my whole life. I know how it feels when she’s around.”
Lorinda raised an eyebrow. “And what has she told you about us?”
“Nothing. I’ve never heard her speak. I can’t hear them.”
Lorinda’s eyebrows both lifted, this time. “My father had the same limitation. Lucienne, I believe, saw and heard. I didn’t know about her at first. Not until after Artie. I thought Artie was the only one.”
“Artie saw them too?”
“He would come to me at night in tears, talking about the bleeding man. It took me a while to understand he wasn’t scared. It was that he could feel the man’s pain. And I knew the man he was seeing was my father.”
There was movement in a corner, a shifting in the shadows, and Sully saw the image of a man slouched there, holding the hand of a sodden blond toddler who Sully could only assume was Artie. The child was otherwise unmarked, but the older ghost’s skin was blackened and charred, blood pouring from a gash in his head. One shoulder was out of joint, the arm badly twisted from a break. And he was stooped, not from age or disease, but from what Sully suspected was a broken back.
Sully followed the ghost’s sightline to Rhona. “He was pushed.”
Rhona squinted from what, to her, was likely empty space back to Sully. And he could see the fear there. “He fell.”
“I only see them if someone killed them.” The broken man continued to stare, the agony in his eyes going beyond that of simple physical pain. Sully continued, speaking for him. “Why did you do it? He was your grandfather. And he was a good man. If he wasn’t, my mother wouldn’t have named me after him.”
“Because he was a man,” Lorinda said. “Because we had no choice. Once the door is unlocked, there is no stopping the darkness. The women of this family have a duty to keep that door sealed.”
Rhona provided the explanations her mother was circling. “We always knew there were unnatural abilities in our family, people who saw and heard things that weren’t part of our world. Until I dug back through our family tree, we just thought insanity ran in the family. As I learned more about the Dule line, we came to realize it was far worse. There are stories of ancestors who, in cold blood, killed family and friends. My own great-grandfather fled Scotland after being implicated in the murder of a minister and two altar boys at his village church. He claimed he had no recollection of it and believed he’d been possessed by the Devil.
“I learned the Dule men are born to kill, that they each claimed to have been possessed when they murdered their victims. At first, we didn’t believe it. It was far easier to think they’d all suffered from some form of psychosis. But then my grandfather—an otherwise kind, rational and God-fearing man—began to claim he was being plagued by a demon.”
“Until then, my father had kept the family stories to himself,” Lorinda said. “When this entity came for him, he confessed everything to us. He’d hidden it because he knew what his father and his grandfather had become, and he broke his silence for that reason. He told us he felt he was being pulled down the same path, and he feared for his family. In the end, he accepted his fate where others had not.”
Sully doubted his biological great-grandfather had accepted it in the manner Lorinda claimed. He was here, after all, broken in both form and psyche, eyes never leaving the image of his granddaughter as she hovered behind Lorinda’s chair, clutching a handgun Sully felt certain she was prepared to use.
“How old were you when you killed him?” he asked her.
“Seven,” she said.
Her answer would have shocked him, had he not begun to doubt the existence of her soul. Some people were like that, he’d noticed. There were those who did terrible things because terrible things had been done to them. But there were those for whom the line between right and wrong was non-existent, their choice between the two dependent upon nothing more than a whim or an ill-conceived desire to protect themselves or the world from which they drew comfort.
“It wasn’t hard, in the end. I knew it was the only way to save his soul. I tripped him as he led the way to the basement. Then I set fire to his house as Mother suggested. They say fire is purifying, that it rids body and soul of evil. It’s how they used to save witches’ souls from Hell.”
“And no one suspected you?”
“I was a seven-year-old girl, and my tears were genuine, although not for the reason police believed. I didn’t want to do it. But in the end, there was no choice. Three times, I did what my mother couldn’t.”
Three. Her grandfather, Sullivan Dule. Artie. And Lucky.
“I almost failed with Artie. I adored him. We all did. It was so easy to look at him and see nothing but good. But the night after Grandfather’s death, Artie saw him, described his injuries in detail, and we knew. He had the curse. The ability to see and hear the dead has been passed to both males and females in our family, but only the women are strong enough to control it. I knew Artie would succumb just like the others. In time, Mother came to accept it too.
“I waited until the weekend Mother was away, once Bobby left us alone. I knew I couldn’t set fire to the house, but I’d read dunking had been used to expose witches and to purify their souls. So I gave Artie a bath and I held him down. I held him until he stopped struggling.”
A sob escaped Lorinda’s lips, but she allowed nothing else, no other sign of emotion, her face hardening back into stone.
What anger Lorinda had suppressed, Sully let fly in his accusation. “He was just a little kid. How could you do that to him?”
“He was a child in body only. His soul was rotten.”
A wave of nausea washed over Sully, and he fought it back along with all the things he wanted to say. There were other questions that needed answering first. “What about Lucky? If the women in the family aren’t cursed, why kill her?”
This time, Lorinda answered. “Just because our women don’t fall to possession doesn’t mean they can’t be touched by evil. After Artie died, I struggled to accept it, that his death was necessary to protect others. There are times Rhona has been more capable than I have been. I punished the girls after Artie’s death, kept them locked in their rooms. Rhona came back to me quickly, as she always has. But not Lucienne. I could hear her, late at night, talking to her brother, begging his forgiveness that she hadn’t been able to protect him. It wasn’t until then I realized she had the sight.
“My church refused to help as our minister didn’t believe in such things. Lucienne became more and more disturbed until, at fourteen, she tried to commit suicide. I sought the advice of a psychiatrist. Dr. Gerhardt said he would be pleased to help her, so I had her committed to Lockwood. If the doctor could keep her from seeing and hearing evil things, that was good enough for me. But then, two years later, she escaped and returned home. And she was unchanged, just as wild, her hair bright purple, lies spilling from her lips.”
“She told you Gerhardt hurt her,” Sully said.
“Lies,” the woman said. “Lies intended to make me do as she wanted. I wanted to send her back immediately, but my husband, her stepfather, argued against it. I thought he pitied her. He didn’t. My husband had been drawn in by the evil inside her, falling victim to it just as surely as any blood-born Dule male. I learned he brought her gifts—makeup, clothes, magazines—and provided her company when she was supposed to be left alone to repent. In time, I found out she’d tricked him into having her. I might never have known her true evil had I not walked in on them. He told me he’d been under a spell she’d cast.”
The nausea returned full-force, threatening to expel whatever was left in Sully’s stomach as the image of h
is biological mother’s rape passed through his mind—along with it, the possibility he had been born of that act. “And you actually believed that? She was just a kid.”
“He wasn’t the first she opened her legs for. You’re here, after all.”
Sully allowed himself a moment of relief, but there wasn’t much to be found. Not anymore. “Who is my father?”
“We don’t know,” Rhona said. “She never told us about you. We only learned about you after her death.”
The older woman picked up the explanation. “Lucienne abandoned you after your birth. She meant to hide you from us. Then we received information through a boy named Brennan. Like you, like your mother, he saw evil things. He described a ghost with purple hair and a child named Sullivan staying with him at the foster home. We could think of no reason Lucienne would be there, would be hovering around a child of that name and age, save one. Lucienne had a child. And we knew you would need to be dealt with.”
Sully thought back to the Blakes, to the blaze that had killed them. Would have killed him and Brennan but for Lucky. “The fire wasn’t meant for the Blakes at all, was it? It was for me.”
“Fire purifies the soul,” Lorinda said. “You were just a child. You deserved to be saved. You still do.”
“But the fire was set by a teenage girl.”
“Margaret.”
“Mother, no.”
“It can’t hurt to speak about her now.” The older woman returned attention to Sully and to her explanation. “Rhona was very young when she gave birth. Much too young for us to keep the baby.”
Rhona’s head drooped as if it weighed too much for her neck. The gun, still in her hand and aimed in Sully’s direction, had been brought to rest on the wheelchair’s handle near Lorinda’s shoulder. “The father was a boy from down the street. I was only thirteen. I thought I loved him.”
“I put the child up for adoption,” Lorinda said. “Rhona wasn’t happy about it, but she learned in time it was for the best. More than a decade passed before she thought about finding the child, and she hired a private investigator. We learned the girl had turned out wild as well, had run from her adoptive parents until they were at wit’s end. Margaret Parsons eventually ended up a ward of the state.”
“I decided I would give her a home,” Rhona said. “Margaret was just eleven, and was searching for her identity. When we met that day, it was like we’d known each other forever. It was like God had guided us to each other.”
“We worked with the girl for some time,” Lorinda said. “We were relieved to discover she was not touched as Lucienne and Artie had been, as my father was. As you are. In time, she found her place in the world. So we turned our attention to you.”
The connection clicked. “Margaret stayed at the Blakes and met Brennan there,” Sully said.
“He was smitten with her,” Lorinda said. “He shared all his secrets with her, even about the things he saw. They stayed in touch after she left, would meet secretly without our knowledge. We eventually found her out and she confessed, told us about Brennan, about the things he saw. That’s how we learned about Lucienne’s ghost and you.”
“But you couldn’t have known then about the things I saw. No one knew, not even Brennan. And you still tried to kill me.”
“The curse has touched every male born within the Dule line. There was no possibility you had escaped it.”
“But the Blakes, and Brennan. Didn’t you care about killing people who had nothing to do with this curse?”
“The Blakes might have had nothing to do with the curse, but they were no less evil,” Rhona said. “We knew about the terrible things they had done to Margaret and others. If she hadn’t been so pleased with the idea of starting the fire, I would have happily done it myself. And it was never our wish for Brennan to die. He didn’t welcome the evil inside him. I’m still convinced we could have saved him, given more time.”
“But you didn’t help him, and now he’s dead. He did everything you asked and you still killed him.”
“You were turning him against us,” Lorinda said. “His loyalties were shifting. You spoke to the darkness inside him and he was starting to pull away from us. We had no choice.”
“You keep saying you had no choice, but you did. You murdered Brennan. All of you. And he wasn’t evil. He recognized what he was doing, what you were asking him to do, was wrong. You realized he wanted to right the wrong, and that would ruin your plans for me and expose you and all the horrible things you’ve done. You didn’t kill him to save him or to rid the world of this ‘evil’ you keep talking about. You did it to save your own asses.”
The older woman leaned forward in her chair, fixing Sully in her glare. “Don’t think for a moment Rhona or I have enjoyed what we’ve had to do. I will carry the weight of my grief to my grave. But we are fighting on the side of angels, and sometimes terrible things must be done in the name of all that is good and holy in this world. You are my blood, and I do care for you. And that is why I have to save you. Please understand this.” She looked to her daughter. “Rhona, we have our answers. It’s time.”
The women were blocking the sole escape route, a revolver held steady in the hands of Sully’s biological aunt acting as an inducement to keep him from trying to push past them. But his grandmother and his aunt had made it clear he would die here, one way or another, and it was possible death by gun would be preferable to whatever alternative they’d planned for him. Sully took a breath, preparing himself for both a rush for freedom and the feel of a bullet that would, no doubt, result.
He hadn’t expected a second gun, emerging in Lorinda’s hand from next to her leg. He pushed forward as a high-pitched pop sounded, followed by the sharp impact of a dart embedding itself into the flesh of his abdomen. Sully yanked it out, forcing his brain to continue its focus on escape rather than the inevitability of succumbing to the effects of what he knew to be a tranquilizer.
He fell back on years of roughhousing with his brother as he shoved past Lorinda and shouldered Rhona into the wall, the revolver clattering to the cement floor as Sully pushed through the gap into the hall. A set of stairs was visible at the end of a hall and he ran toward it. But it was as if he was in a dream, his feet moving too slowly, never reaching the stairs that appeared to be getting further and further away at the end of a long, dark tunnel. He searched for something solid, found what felt like a wall, and he tried to locate a connection to consciousness there. But the line was breaking, the tunnel growing longer and darker, the stairs becoming smaller and smaller until they disappeared in front of him entirely.
He was dimly aware of his knee colliding with something hard, and then the cool press of what had to be the floor beneath his cheek.
A voice sounded, as if calling out from the topside of a well. “Just like Lucienne. She failed, too.”
“No, girl,” said a second. “We all failed.”
32
Three bridges had once connected The Forks to the rest of KR. Now there was just one, the others destroyed by a combination of flood waters and, later, dynamite.
While Forks Bridge still stood, the maintenance of it left something to be desired. Since dubbed Hell’s Gate, it was a crumbling ruin, passable only by truck or SUV, and then only by navigating a careful path around the potholes and cracks in the pavement.
Guarded by signs to use at one’s own risk, the bridge was thankfully only a few city blocks long. It tended to feel a lot further—giving travellers a good long while to think about what it was they were about to drive into.
It was early evening, the summer sun dropping but still hanging in there as Dez’s vehicle bounced across Hell’s Gate.
Dez and Forbes remained silent, each locked inside his own thoughts as their apocalyptic destination loomed. Dez had come here only once since the flood, searching for a missing friend. During the brief time he’d been in The Forks, he’d had to fight through a throng of would-be robbers and narrowly avoided a carjacking.
Little had changed in The Forks since, and the few differences only made the place worse. Nature grew unchecked out of every crevice; grass and weeds filled cracks and potholes on the streets; trees obscured what the groundcover could not reach: street signs, broken power and phone lines and abandoned homes and businesses. Here and there, wildflowers had been naïve enough to spring up, as if believing they might still have the power to deliver beauty and hope to a place long since abandoned by both.
If the scenery was eerie, the faces peering from it were terrifying. Junkies were everywhere, meth use having turned many into walking zombies. Occasionally, Dez would catch sight of a person coming into view from behind a tree or the edge of a building, leaving him to wonder whether a larger group lay in wait behind, ever-prepared to surround the vehicles of the few unwary fools who dared to trespass into this world.
Dez drove past a large melee of men in bandannas, some red and some blue, the colours of men in the midst of a full-out battle for territory or whatever it was rival gangs were warring over out here. Knives glinted pink in the slowly dying sun and long metal bars swung as the two sides clashed. Dez saw more than one man on the ground, the entrails of one flopped out next to him on the pavement.
“Keep driving,” Forbes said. “Just keep driving.”
Dez sped past, and no one broke off to come after him, the fight for survival outweighing any desire for an operating vehicle or the property of those within. He glanced at his passenger once they were clear, finding Forbes’s eyes wide and his lips parted as he drew in shallow, audible breaths.
“You all right?” Dez asked.
“Just don’t stop this vehicle, you hear me?”
Dez didn’t need the direction. Only the crazy or suicidal would pull a fool move like that. “I’m going to need you to direct me, here. You’re still checking the map, right?”
It was clear Forbes hadn’t been, as his eyes snapped back down to the screen of his smartphone. “Shit, you’re going to want to turn left. We were supposed to turn two blocks back.”