by Chad Huskins
“The hell is goin’ on here?” he demanded to know.
Kaley was smiling, and crying at the same time—this confliction written on other people’s faces always sickened Spencer, for reasons he couldn’t elaborate on, he just generally mistrusted such a contradiction. The girl opened her eyes, and looked at him in a way that told him he needed to be patient, and quiet, a little bit longer.
“How the hell are you holding him?”
Kaley patted the boy’s head. “I don’t know,” she whispered. “I’m here now. Somehow…I’m just here.”
“What about back at the school?”
“I’m there, too, but I can’t touch anything.”
Spencer raised an eyebrow. “You’ve switched places,” he said skeptically. What sort of game was she playing at here?
As if reading his mind—Maybe she is, he thought—Kaley said, “This is not a trick. I really don’t know what’s going on here, but I really don’t think this is the time or the place—”
“To discuss this? Tell me, when would be a better time to discuss this, little girl? What’s happenin’ here?”
“Spencer,” she said slowly, “just give me a second.” Her eyes flicked to the boy in her arms.
“He better start talkin’,” he warned. “An’ you better, too.”
“What do you want me to say?”
“How is this possible?”
“How is any of this possible?” she countered.
“You’d better have a better excuse than—”
“Look, all I know is that he came at me. He needed me…I was struggling to make a connection with him, and the next logical step was human contact,” she said, eyes still going like faucets. “I suppose…I-I just reacted. He flung himself at me, he needed me, he needed to hold someone, and I reacted. A reflex.” Kaley sniffled, and stood waveringly to her feet, holding the boy. “Like when someone throws a baseball at your face; you don’t think about it, you just catch it, or at least put your hands up to keep it from hitting you in the nose.”
Spencer didn’t know if he trusted that assessment. She knows more. He became aware of the cold—not as cold as a few moments ago, but still chill enough. “That storm’s not getting any lighter. If we’re gonna get anything out of this kid, we need to do it now.”
“He’s not exactly in a talking mood at the moment, Spencer, in case you hadn’t noticed.”
He raised another eyebrow. “You givin’ me lip, little girl?” he said, stepping closer to her, the gun trained on her this time, not the boy in her arms. “I’ve gone along with this little game long enough. Now, I think it’s time that you—”
“He has to come with us.”
Spencer blanched, laughed, and drew serious again. “‘Come with us?’ Come where? An’ who’s us?”
The boy looked over his shoulder, saw the gun aimed at him, and stared dumbly at Spencer. Kaley pushed his head back to her shoulder. “He’s a little numb right now, and after all he’s been through I don’t blame him. He’s okay to move now but he can’t talk like this—”
“Bitch, we didn’t discuss bringin’ this little brat with us to anywhere!”
“If we leave him here, he’ll die—”
“You keep sayin’ that like that’s supposed to mean somethin’ to me—”
“—and then you won’t have your Eight Cats, now will you?”
Spencer snorted derisively. The basement passed into silence. There were no longer things whispering to him or licking him, but Spencer knew that there were forces still at play here, and one of them was this little cunt’s game. Maybe she has got some guile, after all. She’s done some growing up in the last seven months. He said, “Don’t think I don’t know what you’re playin’ at here. Leadin’ me on like a mule with a carrot. Bitch, I’ve played these games all my life, what makes you think I don’t see—”
“You can’t get information from a corpse, Spencer. I know you don’t like it, but the kid needs to be treated. He needs warmth and food, and most of all he needs distance from this place. It just makes logical sense.”
“Logic? The Amazing Teleporting Girl wants to talk logic now?” He turned and headed for the stairs.
“Where are you going?” shouted Kaley Dupré.
“I’ve wasted enough time here. I’m out.”
“Wait! You can’t just leave us here!”
“Why not? You can apparently touch and move the kid around now.”
“But there’s only one car out there, and I can’t drive those four-wheelers in snow like this.” She looked down at her inadequate clothes. “I left my jacket back in my classroom. I’d freeze! We both would. And I don’t even know where we are, or speak the language. And what if some of Zakhar’s people show up with us still here?”
“Hit ’em with the Force, Obi-wan. Unleash hell like you did before—”
“I can’t do that without you and you know it!” In her arms, the boy had started to cry again. Kaley took a few steps towards Spencer, but paused when he reached the basement door. He aimed the Glock at her in a careless, lazy kind of threat. “That’s why all of this is happening now,” she said, in a quieter voice, patting the boy’s head. “You and me…we’re like two halves of something else. I don’t understand it, and I don’t like it, but it’s the truth and you know it.”
Spencer mulled that over. He prided himself in knowing many things—things about people, things about life, things about animals, and things about things. This was one of those things. All his life, his perception had been sharp. Even when he was a boy, he’d known that he could think in dimensions that others couldn’t, or wouldn’t, see. And Kaley Dupré had the same strange affliction. Only whereas he was devoid of emotions, she had a surplus of them, and therefore looking into things so deeply had an adverse affect on her that it didn’t have on him.
Spencer’s power, he’d figured, had always come from his lack of empathy—it kept him emotionally detached from the outcome of his own actions—but Kaley Dupré’s powers, whatever they were, and whatever source fed them, seemed to flourish only when she was intensely involved with her emotions and those of others around her. It’s her source of power, he thought. Or at least the lighter fluid tossed on the flames.
But that wasn’t all of it. The little bitch had opened up something else, a crack in the divider between words. She’d done it that night on Avery Street, and it seemed she was doing it again.
“Please,” she said. Spencer continued looking at her indifferently. Then, she snorted. “Fuck that, I know you don’t respond to begging. Just…just think about it for a second, would you?”
“I have. I’m out.” He turned to leave.
“I’ll do anything you want!” she hollered.
Spencer turned, looked at her. “Pardon me?”
“Please…please just—”
“Define ‘anything,’ ” he said.
“I-I just meant that…” She trailed off. It was obvious she hadn’t known what she meant.
Spencer tilted his head to one side. “Are you offerin’ yer services to me, little girl?” Kaley Dupré said nothing. He smiled. “That it?” Kaley Dupré said nothing. “Because I gotta wonder, what the fuck could a little nigglet do in Russia?” Kaley Dupré said nothing. “What use could she possibly be? Niggers stick out like sore thumbs here. You’re not exactly natives to this land.” Kaley Dupré said nothing. “Or is it your power? Is that it? Is that what you’re offerin’?”
“I-I-I-I…”
“Yeah, yeah, I, I, I, I, I what?”
“I j-just want the boy safe,” she said.
“Yeah?” Spencer smirked. “And so…what’re ya willin’ to do? How far are ya willin’ to go?” Kaley opened her mouth, and he held up a silencing finger. “Before you say anything, you need to think about what you’re about to say. If you’re willing to give me your word, I’ll accept it, but if you deceive me, renege at all on our arrangement…well, you know I can and will hurt people. Remember what I told ya up in tha
t shed.”
This is a dangerous fucking game you’re playing here, she thought. That’s what he said in the shed. It already seemed like it had happened ages ago—so much had happened in the intervening minutes, so much she did not understand—but Kaley remembered it clearly, and she did not doubt Spencer’s convictions for a second. He’ll kill this boy if I go back on my word, or hunt down Shannon someday and kill her. But if I leave this boy here…
“I’ll help you find these other people,” she told him. Spencer’s cold expression did not change, but she could feel a smile emanating from within. He had his hooks in her. He had leverage. “If,” she added, “you promise that it ends when we get the rest of these people, the ones that did this to this boy.”
Spencer shrugged. He started to say something, paused to reach inside his pocket to silence the iPhone, which had just started ringing again. “Fair enough. But I can’t guarantee we’ll find them quickly. Are ya in it for the long haul, little girl? Are ya in it to win it?”
Kaley stood at many crossroads. In the hallway outside of Mrs. Cartwright’s classroom, she stood alone and stared at her hand, which had first felt the slippery surface of the doorknob before it had phased completely through. She backed away from that door, but in the basement she stood stock-still, holding the child in her arms, patting and consoling, while gazing into the eyes of the monster from Shannon’s dreams. From my dreams, too, she corrected. I’d be kidding myself to deny it.
“Yes,” she said. “If you’ll drive this boy out of here, and to someplace safe, I’ll help you get these guys.” Truth be told, she wanted to help, anyway.
“That all sounds fine and good,” Spencer said, lowering his gun. “But a promise don’t mean jack handy shit if you can’t deliver when the time comes.”
“What do you mean?”
He looked her up and down, touching his tongue to his top lip, appraising her. “These people, they ain’t the sorts to be trifled with. If yer power turns out to be unreliable, an’ if they get a hold of you, or find out where your family lives, they’ll take the lot o’ you and tie you down in some basement, strip you naked, and butt-fuck you ’till you bleed to death.”
“I remember their kind,” she said defiantly. “I’m not scared.”
“Bullshit, you’re not. That’s all you are, is a ball of emotions. And fear chief among them.”
“I survived Dmitry and the others.”
“This ain’t like Dmitry an’ the others,” he told her. “The Rainbow Room wanted to fuck little children and then just slit their throats when they were finished with them, nice an’ clean like. These people? They’re a step up. They’re the main group that Dmitry and his pals split off from. Russian Mafia, straight up. These people have Russian politicians scared shitless. They tie down traitors and remove them, piece by piece, keep ’em on an IV drip so they don’t pass out—they remove the toes, the feet, the fingers an’ hands, then their dicks, their tits, their teeth an’ their tongues, their eyeballs, everything. Everything until there’s nothin’ left but a sightless head on a torso. They’ll do this to you, too, then they’ll chain you up to a furnace in a basement in an underground cathouse, somewhere in Portugal maybe, and let people rape your throat, your eye sockets, your asshole, whatever the sick fucks have in mind. Some of ’em are into that kind of thing. They’re not cursed with an excessive amount of mercy or what you define as humanity. This world they occupy, it ain’t filled with mustache-twirlin’ supervillains like Batman has to put up with. Some o’ these fuckers would make the Dark Knight leave Gotham City forever, an’ make the Joker second guess his career choice, savvy?”
Kaley swallowed. “Why are you telling me all this? I’ve already decided.”
“Because I gotta know that my partner ain’t gonna scram when things start lookin’ tight,” Spencer said, taking a step closer to her. Kaley Dupré took a step back, and put a protective hand on the back of the boy’s head. He was beginning to tremble in her arms again. “I gotta know you got what it takes to push through, to survive, to look right at this disgusting shit an’ not flinch, not look away.” He took another step closer. This time, Kaley Dupré didn’t step back. That made him smile. “Without your power, you’re useless to me. I know that harnessing fear is part o’ that power, but with too much fear, you’re just a limp dick.”
The basement passed into another silence. Spencer thought he heard things, more whispers perhaps, but for the moment he ignored it all. His focus was on the little girl who had traveled all the way from Atlanta in a nanosecond, who could somehow occupy many places at once. If he had her power on his side…This game might just be changing, he thought.
“Whattaya say, little girl?” he said, raising a quizzical eyebrow. “Stay, or play?”
Kaley Dupré appeared frozen in indecision for all eternity. But eternity finally ended, and she nodded resolutely. “I’ll stay and help,” she said. Then, a cloud fell over her.
Spencer saw it immediately. The girl shivered, and her eyes darted around the room, then up at the ceiling. “What is it? What’s wrong?”
“Spencer…someone’s coming.”
The streets were mostly open. The salt trucks and snow plows had done their jobs admirably; all the main squares had traffic moving through them at a right pace, and with enough control that there was never really any danger to the lawbreaking pedestrians darting across the street.
Shcherbakov was driving his own sedan now, a dark-green Lada Priora. Zverev had deposited him in the parking lot outside of the Grand Hotel Vidgof. The Priora was parked in a well-lit part of the lot, in the blue section, row thirteen. All around the parking lot were signs reading: Все путешественники должны быть осторожны. Старайтесь не ездить в темное время суток. Translation: All travelers should be careful. Try not to travel after dark. Wrapping around the parking lot, there were more signs with the same message written in English, French, and Spanish.
There had been a spate of attacks on travelers recently, and an increase in reports of tourists gone missing. For some, it might’ve been strange to see such a public warning issued by the government, and know that you personally had something to do with that. Shcherbakov had gotten over that strange feeling long ago. He’d been in the family business almost his entire life, and was used to being part of an organization that shaped public policy and changed people’s perceptions.
Shcherbakov unconsciously checked the pistol inside his jacket. He’d gone up to his hotel room and gathered the duffel bags that Zverev’s people had hid under the bed for him. He had tossed them into the trunk, checked his fuel gauge, and got underway.
The complex where his target was staying was the Bogema Apartments, modest-to-upscale on Zvillinga Ulitsa. An ideal location for some since it was within a five-mile walk of Pushkin Park, filled with Ferris wheels, merry-go-rounds and plenty of games for families affixed on a boardwalk across the park’s vast lake.
The lake was frozen, of course, and the world was blanketed in white. It looks like when the Stay-Puff Marshmallow Man blew up in that one American movie, Shcherbakov thought, using his knees to guide the steering wheel while he lit up another cigarette. What was it called? Ghost-killers or something? He put his father’s silver bear’s-head lighter back in his pocket, took a long, grateful toke, and let it all out in a huff. He pulled up to the front gate of Bogema Apartments, a line of forbidding, pronged wrought-iron bars, and waited. One toke after another. Finally, a car pulled up, and the gate began to roll open. Shcherbakov lurched in front of them and into the parking lot, receiving a honk for his rudeness.
What little ice had melted due to the salt trucks passing through was now becoming a slushy mix. Shcherbakov pulled into a parking space between two large SUVs, with the largest apartment building right behind him. He left the car running, turned up the radio, and set his eyes on his rearview mirror. He inhaled deeply, drawing in the smoke from his cigarette. He could be waiting a
while.
Spencer bounded up the stairs ahead of her. Kaley shouted, “Wait! Wait for us!” In the murky water, something slithered past her, tasted her, perhaps tried to snatch at her, and then disappeared back below.
Kaley was moving sluggishly now, and not just because of the boy in her arms. Kaley felt somehow heavier, like she’d gained thirty pounds. But part of her understood that she was just wiped out from the transition from America to the Siberian wilderness, as well as the emotional baggage she had imbibed from the boy. Whatever transferences had taken place, they played hell on the body.
The psychopath was already up the stairs and running for the door. Kaley was taking one step every two or three seconds, huffing, clutching the boy to her chest while sending wave after wave of love, trust, and comfort at him. “Stay with me, baby,” she told him. “Ya hear? Stay with me, chil’.”
“Fffffffffuck!” Spencer hissed. He was at the front door. He’d walked clear through the pool of blood that was finally starting to cease flowing from Zakhar’s body. Kaley whispered into the boy’s ear “Keep your eyes closed, sweetie,” and tiptoed her way around the corpse. She tried not to look herself, but she had to in order to make sure she didn’t slip and fall. Even though the man on the floor was inhuman and deserved no less than what he got, Kaley wasn’t comfortable with the level of cruelty, much less the cavalier way that Spencer had handled it all afterwards. It made him happy at first. He doesn’t even care now.
It begged the question: who was the greater monster, the dragon or the dragonslayer? Typically it would be the former, but Spencer had taught Kaley that it greatly depended on the level of glee and heartlessness on the part of the slayer.
The boy was starting to tremble again. Perhaps Kaley had unconsciously sent him her mistrust of Spencer? She tried to concentrate, using both her power and a good old-fashioned pat on his back, like trying to calm a squealing baby down. When she made it to the door, Kaley was waved to one side by Spencer. “Keep away from the windows,” he said.