He turned his gaze on her and forced a smile. He was trying so hard to be strong. He was thinking about…not letting her down.
Guilt threatened to crush her, but Alex gave him an encouraging nod.
“I don’t have much information on this one,” she said as she slid out a set of lock-picks. She pulled on a pair of latex gloves like she had at the previous crime scene and handed another pair to Jack. “So we need to be careful, but we also need to look more closely.” The lock clicked open for her with little effort.
She went in, pocketing the picks and unzipping her jacket. She wasn’t going to wait for sign of trouble this time. She pulled her Sig 226 and then attached the suppressor. She’d even brought three extra magazines instead of her customary one. No one ever survived a gun fight and thought, “Gee, I wish I hadn’t brought all that extra ammunition.” Her encounter with the Hound had left her with the shakes, as had talking with her father. There was only so long before a person had an adrenaline crash.
She’d be more prepared this time. And if there was nothing here, then she’d be ready for the next time.
Because there was always a next time.
She glanced over her shoulder and noticed Jack still hadn’t stepped inside. The door gaped open, an easy sight for anyone that happened to be looking. She walked back, and with her free hand grabbed his. It was cold and shaky.
“You need to come in, Jack,” she said as encouragingly as possible. With a gentle tug she pulled him inside. This time she did manage to give his hand a little squeeze before releasing it to close the door behind them.
“I hate this,” he whispered. She half-expected his thoughts to turn to fear and anxiety—and she wouldn’t have blamed him if they did. Instead, the next thing he thought, then said, was, “We have to stop this. I’m so sick of people—innocent people—dying.”
#
Alex gave me an odd look as the words left my mouth, but I meant them. This situation was so…terrible. So frustrating. So disgusting.
What had Abby and her family done to deserve their murder? Nothing. What had Barry’s family done? Nothing.
They were just caught—like the rest of the town and all normal people—between a crossfire they didn’t even know existed.
“Barry came over and apologized,” I said to no one, but I guess the words were directed at Alex. “He was such a mess. Thought he was going crazy.”
“Most people’s minds can’t rationally deal with all the paranormal stuff out there,” Alex said. “They don’t know how to justify the explained with the unexplained. Insane-asylums are full of people who see more than they are able to process.”
“But Barry wasn’t going insane,” I said, not really responding to Alex’s words. “All he needed was for me to tell him he wasn’t crazy. He just needed to be reassured.”
She nodded. “He was in a good place when he left your home yesterday. His thoughts were calm. Whatever you said made a huge difference.”
Her words made me feel a little better. “Maybe if…if…”
“Jack,” she said softly. “Nothing you could have said or done would have stopped this from happening.”
“So I should take comfort in that?” I asked. It felt wrong. “While I was trying to get some sleep and feeling sorry for myself because my life was hard, Barry was getting his soul sucked out through his ear.”
“It isn’t fair,” she agreed. “But neither is it your fault. You can heap blame on yourself all day, but isn’t that a similar thing to what you said you were just doing sitting on you bed?”
She had a point.
“Let’s go see if we can find anything.” I sighed. “Maybe something will give us a clue.”
The first thing I noticed was how sparse the home felt. This wasn’t the same atmosphere as in the Smith’s home. That was a soulless feel brought on by what had happened. That feeling was here in Barry’s home as well, but this was different. I hadn’t been to Barry’s place in over a month I realized. It was so barren.
Paintings were missing from walls. The TV wasn’t the 46 inch flat screen I was used to seeing. Instead it had been replaced by a squat, thick twenty-something inch. The kitchen table had been switched out for an uneven card-table.
In the living room was a single recliner, the back facing me. Spin it towards me, or walk around to look at it?
Either way it was like a horror movie.
I settled on walking around the recliner. A few steps took me to the front, and I was greeted with the dead image of Barry’s dad. The image—all inky shades of purple—sprawled out in the chair as though he’d been sleeping. From his left ear spilled a stream I recognized as the psychic left-overs from his soul. It looked like the majority had been sucked out, then the remains had dripped down the side of his face, down his shoulder, and down the chair opposite the side I’d walked around.
He’d always been nice to me. Whenever my dad had a business meeting to attend to at night—and before I was old enough to watch over myself—I’d always been welcome here. Now he was reduced to an afterimage of his corpse. I felt so empty staring down at him, like a hole had been carved out of my chest.
“Tell me what you see,” Alex said.
I shut my eyes to blot out the image, but the vision of the body remained. “Just read my mind.”
“No,” she replied. “Well, I am. Can’t really help it. But I need you to focus. Talking will help that. I can‘t see what you see, and your thoughts are all over the place.”
I opened my eyes and talked her through what I saw the best I could. I’m not gonna lie, I almost had to run outside and throw-up. I knew Barry’s dad. No matter how I looked at it, this time was personal to me.
“Try to keep personal connections out of it,” Alex read my mind. “I know it’s hard, but sometimes you have to view people not as people.”
Easier said than done. I kept my eyes focused on Mr. Peters’—the image’s—chest. If I looked at the face, it would be over. “There aren’t any scratches or anything.”
“Good,” she said. “The Leech came in at night, so it makes sense. He was probably dozing. Anything else?”
“No…”
“I’ll give you a minute to breathe, but then we need to go back into the other rooms.”
“I know.”
Breathe in. Breathe out. Breathe in. Breathe out. I turned around to get the sight of the afterimage out of my head. Memories of him taking Barry and I camping, or out for ice-cream, haunted me.
Now Barry’s dad was just…gone.
It was time to go to Barry’s room.
I walked through the hallway to the back room on the right, past the bathroom and his parent’s master bedroom. Like in the front room, any adornment that wasn’t a family picture had been removed. Barry’s mom had a thing for lighthouses, and the hallway used to be her personal gallery of paintings and photos. They were all gone. Sold so the family could pay bills maybe. I hadn’t seen this in Barry’s memories. Maybe he hadn’t realized–or bothered to notice—what was going on.
My hand strayed out and my finger trailed lightly on the wall. I must have run down this hallway thousands of times. We’d been friends forever. Not just Barry and I, but our parents as well.
A quick glance in his parents’ bedroom showed stacks of boxes. I stopped short and moved to the doorway. No psychic residue assailed me here, but the boxes were in the process of being filled. Moving boxes.
Barry hadn’t said anything about moving. Even if he hadn’t been killed—a macabre, but realistic assumption—I would have lost him anyway. I could almost feel weights being piled on my shoulders. I don’t know why it hurt me right now to think about Barry moving, but it did.
No matter what I did, I kept on losing people.
Who would be next? Alex? She was really the only person I had left. A lonely feeling, that one.
“Don’t worry about me,” Alex said from behind me. “I’m not going anywhere.” Strangely, that helped a little.
I walked past
the hall bathroom. The psychic image of Barry’s mom was in the tub. Her image was weaker than the one of Mr. Peters. She was already starting to fade. I didn’t go in there. Her image wouldn’t be clothed, and she deserved some privacy and respect, especially in death. She’d been more of a mother to me these last few years than my own mother had been before abandoning us. She made the best cinnamon rolls.
The last room was Barry’s. Man, how many nights had I stayed here? The ever-shrinking optimist in me was saying he could still be alive. The pessimist knew the reality of things.
Barry’s residue image lay on his back, arm hanging off the bed like he’d collapsed in bed and gone to sleep. But he hadn’t gone to sleep. He’d been killed, then left on the bed like a rag-doll. The wound was clearly visible, with psychic energy pooling around his head. My best friend, dead in front of me. It was worse for me than for anyone who actually saw the body, or at least I imagine that was the case. Everyone else saw a body with no marks. The cause of death was mysterious. They’d point to a poison, or breathing in too much gas. Natural causes or something.
They didn’t have to see things the way I did.
I shoved part of a closed fist into my mouth and bit down to keep from screaming. This was one of the worst things ever. My dad going missing was harsh, but even the pessimist in me couldn’t discount that he might still be alive. But Barry? He was gone. Forever.
My eyes scanned the room, and I walked from place to place, picking up weird odds-and-ends that wouldn’t have meant a thing to anyone but me. A doodle here, ticket stub there. His favorite book, Dune, on the nightstand—brand new, but only because he’d worn out at least two other copies. He’d been saving up for the past year so he’d have the money for a rare, signed copy. I opened the drawer of the nightstand and found the beat-up, paperback copy he’d read previous to the new one. A dark purple residue stained it, so I reached down and picked it up. I didn’t get the sense of anything strong, but just the tiniest hint of boyhood glee. I stuck the copy in my jacket pocket.
Posters of various rock bands he’d wanted to go see live covered the walls. Foo Fighters. U2. Rise Against. I used to give him a hard time about it. Who does rock band posters, man? I’d say. Isn’t that reserved for girls? At least get some super-model posters or something…
I stood right next to his bed. His afterimage was deep purple and strong. This had been bad for him. Worse than for his parents. They’d gone quietly. Not Barry. He’d been scared out of his mind.
Why is Helix letting this happen? I wondered. Why are they just letting the Leech kill people in the town?
“I don’t know,” Alex said, answering my thoughts. “I’ve been getting the run-around on that topic.”
I gazed back at Barry’s image.
Barry was my best friend, so I had to know.
Before Alex could say anything I reached down put my palm on the afterimage right where the wound was…
…and I was seeing what he saw.
It was similar to how my grandfather memory-dreams were, but more hazy and ethereal. The emotions and thoughts were stronger though, like when I had stood in the Leech’s steps.
Barry, with me invisibly in-tow, reached for his new copy of Dune. His parents were asleep, so he had all the time in the world to read. He’d helped them pack since getting home from my place, and he was trying to decide when to tell me they were moving. He’d just found out himself, and the thought was eating him up inside.
This was brutal.
A noise sounded from the down the hall, loud enough to be heard over his dad’s television. Barry assumed the sound was his dad popping out the foot-rest on the recliner. I knew better, but there was nothing I could do about it. I wanted to scream at Barry to shut his door, lock it, and shove his desk chair under the door knob.
The closest equivalent I could come up with was when I would watch a horror movie, with suspense as a fear trigger. I knew something was about to happen. In fact, I usually knew before the character in the film. Occasionally I would even yell at the actors not to go down that hallway or into that forest. But they don’t listen. They can’t.
They are doomed no matter what.
The noise came again, but that was it. Barry set down his book. He was feeling uneasy. Part of it, he was sure, was just left-over paranoia from his experience with me. He listened for a long moment then reached to pick up his book again.
The sound of the bathroom door down the hall opening reached his ears, then splash of bathwater. His first reaction was of disgust. No kid wants to know what his parents are doing together in a bathtub. Except…except his dad hadn’t closed the bathroom door behind him. His dad was big on privacy. Barry’s feeling of unease returned, only it included a fair share of panic.
He mulled the choice over in his mind. He could either stay here and hope he was just feeling some paranoia, or he could go see if everything was OK.
You guys OK? he yelled. You better not be doing anything freaky in there.
No response.
He got up from his bed, and to me it was like he was swimming in a purple haze. His heart was hammering and he felt sweat starting to bead on his forehead. Barry took a hesitant step towards the door then stopped. There was an ever-so-slight creak of hardwood under a foot right outside his door.
Dad? he squeaked.
In my head I begged and pleaded for Barry to run.
A figure stepped into the doorway, and for a moment Barry thought a kid had broken into their home. Then the figure opened its mouth and bared a set of teeth that could have been transplanted from a small shark.
Barry screamed, and I screamed with him. His terror swirled around me and engulfed me. Barry’s emotions of terror and panic were so intense they overrode my own.
It got worse.
Over the Leech’s set of teeth a new set appeared, but these were a writhing black and purple. They were psychic teeth. Whether Barry could see them or not didn’t really matter. All I know is I was already feeling pure fear from Barry, and I added to it with my own. I knew what those teeth—both physical and psychic—were going to do.
Barry tried to turn and run, but the monster raised its hands, and its aura flowed off of them like purple writhing tentacles, reaching out to grab Barry by the head. Even as the terror hammered me, I couldn’t help but wonder how the Leech was doing it. How was he extending his aura like that? It seemed so easy. So natural. More psychic tentacles appeared, these ones thinner, and undulated forward with lazy menace. They seemed to pierce my friend’s soul.
Barry screamed again, this time confused because he most definitely couldn’t see what was holding him in place.
Then the emotional feedback started.
The Leech took a deep breath and tasted the fear Barry gave off in waves. Barry’s own aura pulsed like a scared rabbit’s heart. Immediately I felt my friend growing weaker, and I could sense his aura being drained by the Leech’s psychic tendrils. The Leech drank in Barry’s aura, and with it, his fear. It was part of the experience for the Leech. Barry felt the enjoyment the monster was having, as did I. I felt Barry piss his pants, and he started sobbing uncontrollably. He wanted to shout for his mom, but couldn’t.
I got lost there for minute in the swirl of emotional terror. When I was able to see more of the memory, the Leech had moved up close and personal, the tentacles slowly turning Barry’s head so the creature could clamp down those psychic teeth around the ear. The last thing I saw were those teeth flexing out like a hundred sharp, little appendages.
And then pure pain, white-hot like a knife shoved slowly into my head.
I thought Barry had screamed before. I thought I had screamed before.
All of those paled in comparison. They were nothing compared to this. This was the sum-total of every other pain I’d ever experienced or even imagined all rolled up into one, then magnified a thousand times.
That was the last thing I saw. My last memory of Barry.
When my vision cleared I was sta
ring up into Alex’s face. Her expression was panicked, and there was even a little redness in her eyes.
“Jack! Jack! Can you hear me? Snap out of it Jack!”
I took in a deep, ragged breath, which prompted a relieved sigh on her end.
“You scared the hell out of me, Jack! I thought you weren’t going to see if that worked? Are you OK?”
For me everything became clear as day. I knew right then I liked Alex more than a friend. More than a stupid teenage boy’s crush. Her face paled, and I guessed she had just read those thoughts. But I didn’t really care.
Instead of doing anything impressive, tears blurred my eyes and spilled out of them down my cheeks. I couldn’t stop them, no matter how hard I tried. It just made matters worse, and I sobbed uncontrollably.
#
Alex did the only thing she could think of; she pulled Jack into a hug.
She wasn’t experienced at this sort of thing, and she couldn’t even remember the last time she had hugged anyone. Had she ever hugged her father? Doubtful. Her mother? A faint memory lingered in the back of her mind when she had been just a little girl. Her mother sweeping her up into a consoling hug after she’d fallen off of a bike.
That was also one of her only memories of reading a person’s mind who was legitimately concerned for her out love rather than responsibility. Until recently anyway. With Jack.
Alex tried to hug Jack the same way. It was awkward, and she didn’t think she was doing any good until he clutched back at her.
Her father had always told her crying was weakness, especially when others could see you doing it. It let them see into your heart and mind. And of course that wasn’t acceptable. That was a right reserved for actual mind-readers like them. Alex had embraced his school of thought. Lived by it. But now, as Jack sobbed into her shoulder, and she read the completely raw thoughts of sadness he experienced, she wondered had she been wrong? Had she been cheating herself?
In Alex’s opinion, people were generally scum. Not just scum, but lying scum. Sometimes people were good. It didn’t happen often, but every now and then she would find one. Jack’s dad had been one, and the more time she spent around Jack, the more she was sure he was cast from the same mold.
Residue Page 16