by J. S. Bailey
“So why are you in Oregon?” he asked in a voice that came out sounding dangerously soft.
Adrian took no notice of his change in mood. “Because after all these years I finally grew up. My son’s out here somewhere. I intend to find him.”
What a heartwarming reunion that was bound to be. Jack wondered if her son was one of the other urchins that had crawled into the bar that evening. “Do you have his address?”
“I sure do. I just haven’t worked up the courage to go see him.”
I can’t imagine why. “What will you say when you do see him?”
She swallowed and looked away. “I’ll tell him I’m sorry.”
Yeah, right. People like her didn’t have a sorry bone in their bodies. “So what’s this fine young man’s name?”
“We named him Robert Roland.” Adrian’s eyes welled up with tears. “His stepmother says they call him Bobby.”
MIDNIGHT JUST changed over to morning when, in high spirits, Bobby Roland pulled up in front of his new rental house on Oakland Avenue in Autumn Ridge, Oregon. He’d experienced no premonitions for days, his Nissan sported a new set of tires (Jack Willard slashed the old ones beyond repair), and the new house had the lowest monthly rent of any place he’d lived in, and it wasn’t even a dump.
In fact, it was the sort of house that Charlotte, his stepmother back in Ohio, would have called “cute”—one story, brown siding, a small covered porch with one step leading up to the door. Bobby had even gone to Walmart’s garden center the day before and bought a couple of terracotta pots and some bagged dirt and planted orange and purple impatiens to liven the place up a bit. Currently the pots sat on either end of the porch like a pair of flamboyant sentinels.
A cloud of moths swarmed around the porch light as he approached the door, key in hand. He’d spent the past five hours vacuuming, dusting, and sanitizing every surface inside St. Paul’s Catholic Church, and he couldn’t wait to shower and slip into a pair of boxers so he could lounge around drinking Sprite and picking out new tunes on his guitar until he got tired and went to bed around three.
He swung the screen door open and jerked backward.
A white envelope was taped to the inner door at the height of his face. Someone had drawn a red smiley face on it—hopefully in paint and not blood.
It’s okay, the Spirit inside of him murmured. You may open it.
Bobby’s skin crawled as he touched a finger to the smiley face on the envelope. He had the uncanny sensation that someone hiding in the shadows was spying on him to see what he would do. He swept his gaze across the dark yard, where the outline of a large maple was silhouetted against the light from a neighbor’s post lamp. Seeing no one, he faced the door again and carefully peeled the tape off the wood so it wouldn’t damage the paint. He flipped the envelope over and pulled up the flap.
At least two sheets of inkjet paper nestled within. He reached to pull them out when the weight of immense terror crashed down upon him, bringing him to his knees.
A genderless voice spoke with a sneer inside his mind as his vision went black. You deserve this, Servant.
“Who are you?” he croaked, even though he knew the answer.
We didn’t want you, and now you’re going to pay.
Bobby’s vision cleared as quickly as it had gone dark. He was still kneeling on the porch. The light above him continued to glow with yellow indifference, and one of the moths bashing itself against the light fixture took a sudden dive into Bobby’s face. He flailed, dropped the envelope, and blushed profusely as he stood up on wobbly legs.
He doubted there had been a Servant this jumpy in the entire history of Servants.
Many entities who longed to harass him would be watching him now that he’d taken on this position. Until now, the past few days had been harassment-free. Phil Mason had cautioned him not to let his guard down—ever. The demons, Phil said, would want to lull Bobby into a false sense of security so he’d be an easier target.
Bobby wasn’t about to grant them the pleasure of trying to torment him. “You can’t hurt me,” he said into the night before unlocking the door. And based on the events of the previous week, he had reason to believe they couldn’t as long as he prayed.
Inside, Bobby threw on the overhead light and sat down in the kitchen at a cheap card table he’d purchased after he learned the new house didn’t have a built-in island like the old one. Hoping but doubting the envelope contained a friendly note left by a neighbor he had yet to meet, he slid out the papers and unfolded them.
And felt his stomach flip.
One showed a photograph that shouldn’t have been printed on such thin paper because the ink had made it ripple. The other was a note, and Bobby hoped to God it hadn’t been left by a neighbor since someone had clipped letters of various fonts, colors, and sizes out of a newspaper and glued them onto the sheet ransom-note-style to spell the sentence I know something you don’t.
So simple. So succinct.
And so recent, because the glue adhering the letters to the paper hadn’t dried.
The note had to be some weirdo’s idea of a joke. Welcome to the neighborhood, Mr. Roland. Don’t mind the serial killers.
The thing that made it seem less like a joke—aside from the demonic voice that had tried to frighten him—was the photograph on the other paper. The image had captured a gaunt, dark-haired woman midstride in front of a log cabin that had small, square windows open high up on the walls. She wore a faded turquoise blouse and tan shorts that stopped just above her knobby knees, and a giant tote bag was slung over her shoulder. Her haunting gaze was fixed on a point somewhere beyond and to the left of whoever had taken the picture.
Was this supposed to be someone he knew? Bobby squinted, tilted the picture to different angles, and held it at a distance from his face. Nope. He’d never seen her before. He was sure of it.
The envelope with its sinister red smile might have been taped to his door by mistake. He’d only lived here a few days. The note may have been intended for a previous tenant.
His new landlord, a squat black man named Kent Lawson, had mentioned that the house sat empty for a week before Bobby moved in. It was possible someone didn’t know the former renters had moved.
Bobby crossed the kitchen and grabbed a Sprite out of the refrigerator, then sipped on it while he decided on a course of action. One: he could ignore the whole matter and move on with his life, but he had never been one for ignoring things so that was out of the question.
Two: he could go outside and try to find whoever left the envelope.
Gritting his teeth, Bobby turned off the kitchen light, opened the back door just a sliver, and held an eye to the opening. He could barely make out the tall fence at the back of the yard. Nothing out there moved.
A false sense of security…
If something invisible started chucking rocks at him he would probably run and barricade himself in the bathroom with a Bible and the bottle of holy water he’d acquired at church, but when stillness continued to reign, he crept out into the night with all senses on full alert.
A quick search of the postage-stamp-sized yard revealed nothing.
To be honest, he hadn’t expected much different.
He stomped back into the kitchen and switched the light on. “Could you please give me some advice?”
The image of his new landlord’s face filled his head. Kent Lawson was sixty years old and had about as much hair as a cue ball. He told Bobby he’d once been in the Marines, though Bobby had difficulty picturing it since no Marine would have been permitted to weigh as much as Kent.
Should he call Kent now? The note and photograph didn’t exactly constitute an emergency, and Kent and his wife might not take kindly to being awakened at this hour over something that could very well wait until morning.
“Heck with it.” Bobby wasn’t going to be able to sleep until he’d learned something. He slid his phone out of his pocket and dialed Kent’s number.
Kent
picked up on the second ring, sounding surprisingly awake. “Lawson speaking. Who’s this?”
“Kent, it’s Bobby, your new renter. Sorry to bother you so late.”
The man’s tone changed in an instant. “What’s the matter? Did something happen to my house?”
Bobby half expected to hear windows shatter as bad guys forced their way in with clubs and guns, but all remained still. “Not exactly. I probably shouldn’t have called.”
“No, that’s fine. Marge and I’ve been up watching old movies on AMC. What kind of bee is trapped in your bonnet?”
Bobby wasn’t about to tell him about the items in the envelope. “I was wondering about the people who lived here right before me. What are their names?”
“Looking to write them a letter calling them fools for moving out of a showplace like that?”
Bobby tried to sound upbeat even though the sensation of dread continued to swell within him. “Sure.”
The phone line was filled with the sound of Kent’s hearty laugh. “Got a pen? Their names are Jenny and Myron Asher, and they didn’t leave me a forwarding address so I’m afraid you’re out of luck if you’re looking for some new pen pals.”
Bobby committed the names to memory. “Does Jenny have dark brown hair?” he asked as he returned his attention to the slender woman in the photograph. Her eyes were haunted pools in her white face.
“Afraid not. Her hair’s as red as Lucille Ball’s. She’s kind of pudgy, too, but not as pudgy as me.” He chuckled. “So what else do you want to know? Eye color? Dates of birth? Social security numbers?”
“Actually, I wondered where they worked.”
“The Home Depot. They might still be there for all I know.”
“Were they ever involved in anything shady?”
“I never saw the cops over there, if that’s what you mean. They seemed like nice folks.”
“Why’d they move out?”
“Because they knew a nosy kid would need a place to live sooner or later. How should I know? I don’t pry into people’s business, unlike you, apparently.”
It didn’t look like Kent had any useful information after all. At least Bobby couldn’t say he hadn’t tried. “I think my prying is done for now. Enjoy the rest of your movie.”
Bobby laid the phone down when he ended the call. He doubted the Ashers had anything to do with the envelope and its contents. That meant whoever left it either had the wrong house or really did intend for it to fall into Bobby’s hands.
The Spirit that dwelled inside of him now that Bobby had taken on the mantle of Servitude—a position granting him the ability to cast evil spirits out of the possessed—remained silent. Phil said that while Bobby would always be able to sense God’s Spirit during his years as the Servant, it wouldn’t always provide him with the answers he desired.
It would have been nice, though.
Knowing he would never be able to concentrate on playing his guitar at this point, Bobby wished he had someone human to talk to. Problem was, Phil Mason and his wife Allison would undoubtedly be asleep, Randy Bellison was recovering at home from a violent altercation with his old mentor, Lupe Sanchez had gone through so much turmoil that Bobby wasn’t about to burden her with anything else, and Carly Jovingo…
His face flushed. Even though Carly had been friendly to him for the past week, he couldn’t forget the silly argument they’d had on the day they met. Phil had brought a bewildered Bobby to the Servants’ safe house to talk to Randy, and Bobby, knowing nothing of the Servants at that time, accused Carly and Randy of being part of a religious cult.
Carly, who counseled many of the victims Randy healed, hadn’t taken kindly to that.
She seemed to have forgiven Bobby for being a jerk, though. The day after Bobby took Randy’s place as the Servant Carly gave Bobby her cell phone and home numbers and told him to call her whenever he wanted. After all, she said, Bobby was now technically her boss, which made him far more uncomfortable than it probably should have.
He entered her number into his phone and hit send before he could convince himself to wait until morning.
While he waited for her to pick up, he gazed at the rippled picture. “Who are you?” he asked the woman by the cabin. “And why did somebody put you on my door?”
Carly’s voice startled him. “Hey.” A muffled note in that single word made it sound like she’d been crying.
Bobby swallowed, unsure of what to say now that Carly was on the line and clearly not in a great mood. “Hey,” he replied, silently cursing himself for his lack of eloquence. “Are you all right?”
She sniffled. “Are you?”
He wanted to ask what was wrong but feared he’d accidentally alienate her as he had when they met. “I have a mystery on my hands.”
“A mystery?”
“Yeah, but if it’s a bad time, I can tell you about it in the morning.”
“Technically speaking, it is morning.”
“I meant the part of morning that can’t be confused with night.”
More sniffling. “I’m awake now, Bobby. If something’s bothering you, tell me.”
Here went nothing. “Someone left a funny note on my door. I wondered if you might know who sent it.”
“Was it Roger? That sounds like something he might do.”
“I’m about a million percent sure it wasn’t him.” Roger Stilgoe, like Randy and Phil, was formerly a Servant. Bobby met him a few days previously when a meeting of all the former Servants minus Randy was called together to discuss the training Bobby would have to undergo before he faced his first victim.
Round-faced Roger was in his fifties and had salt-and-pepper hair and a perpetual twinkle in his eyes that made it look as though something constantly amused him. Bobby could picture him playing lighthearted jokes on his friends, but the note left in the envelope seemed too sinister to have come from him.
“But you said it was funny.”
“I meant weird funny. They left a picture of some woman, too. I wondered if any of you might know who she is.”
“What’s she look like?”
“Tall, skinny, dark brown hair. She might be in her forties.”
“That could be a zillion different people. Want me to come over and take a look?”
“Carly, it’s after midnight.”
“So? You called me. Besides, I can’t sleep.”
“But—”
“You can’t throw this on me and expect me not to do something. I’ll be there in a jiffy.”
Before Bobby could continue to object, the line went dead.
He put his head in his hands. “Crap.”
A TIMID knock sounded on Bobby’s door ten minutes later. Before unlatching the deadbolt, Bobby peered through the peephole. His stomach fluttered when he saw Carly waiting for him to let her in.
Carly had tied her auburn hair back in a sloppy ponytail and put on flannel pajama shorts and a white tank top. In addition to her purse, she carried a bag of chips and a six-pack of Sprite in glass bottles—a peace offering if he had ever seen one.
Bobby pulled the door open, fully aware that he had yet to take the shower he’d desired prior to finding the envelope. Dirt he’d picked up from somewhere inside the church smudged his gray t-shirt, and he was fairly sure he smelled like something that was supposed to live in a barn.
Carly’s eyes were puffy and bloodshot.
“You look nice,” he blurted when he realized he might have been staring just a little bit too long.
“You’re full of crap.” Carly stepped past him and went through the living room into the kitchen.
Bobby closed and re-bolted the door. “Do you want to not look nice?”
She was already digging around in a drawer, probably looking for a bottle opener—she had helped him unpack and organize when he’d made the big move from the bungalow over on Fir Street, so she probably knew where his things were better than he did. “I’m here to help solve a mystery, not to look pretty. Or was that
just a ruse to get me to come out here?”
“Coming here was your idea. Don’t you ever sleep?”
Carly held up the bottle opener in triumph and slid the drawer shut. “I sleep plenty. One little night of insomnia isn’t going to hurt anything. Have some chips.” She proceeded to pry the lid off of one of the Sprite bottles and eyed Bobby’s can of the same drink with disgust. “So this is the great mystery.” She picked up the papers after setting aside her drink, and her expression faltered. “I can see why this might have caused you some concern.”
Bobby’s heart sank. He’d hoped she would recognize the woman. “Don’t you know who she is?”
“Nope. But this cabin looks like one of the shower houses at Mountain Lake State Park.”
“Where’s that?”
“About thirty miles east of here, in the middle of nowhere. I went with some girlfriends last summer. Are you going to have some chips or not?”
He wasn’t hungry, but to appease her he tore open the bag and popped a barbecue-flavored crisp into his mouth. “That doesn’t help me figure out who she is or why she was on my door.”
“No, it doesn’t.”
Bobby didn’t bother masking his disappointment. “I just don’t get it.”
“Me neither.” Carly withdrew a single chip from the bag and chewed it slowly, deep in thought. “You could take these to the police.”
“What are they going to do? Leaving papers on my door isn’t a crime.”
“Hmm.” Carly bit her lip. “Whoever did this clearly wants to taunt you about something.”
“Yeah. Something I don’t know a thing about. Maybe this just means I’m stupid.”
“Don’t say that about yourself.” Carly sat down in one of the folding camp chairs Bobby had brought with him from when he’d lived in Utah and put her head in her hands. Her eyes reddened as if she were desperately trying to hold in more tears.