“People are looking for her?”
A snort. “Everybody’s looking for her.”
“Thanks,” said Shane. He hung up. Dammit. Dammit. Dammit. How could he have let this happen? He’d been so drunk last night, but that was no excuse.
“Well?” said Chris.
“She’s missing,” said Shane.
“Shane, that doesn’t prove anything,” said Lark.
“New rat, abandoned car, missing girl,” said Shane. “Proves it to me.” He sat down on the steps heavily. He wouldn’t play again. If it meant he never left this house again, he wouldn’t do it. Playing wasn’t worth people’s lives. God. How had his life come to this? He wished he could go back in time. He wished he’d never taken those mushrooms. He’d trade it all—the money, the fame, the records, the tours—if he could just know that he could play again, and no one would get hurt.
Lark sat down next to him. She put her arm around him. “Baby, this isn’t your fault,” she said.
He looked at her. “Yes,” he said. “Yes, it is.”
“We don’t even know she’s dead,” said Chris. “They haven’t found a body.”
Shane glared at Chris. “He needs the bodies. That’s why he does it. Don’t you people listen to me at all?”
Chris rubbed his face with his hand. “Come on. Let’s try to stop sounding crazy for a couple minutes, here, okay?”
The doorbell rang.
Shane couldn’t believe it. What was going on here? He never had this many unexpected visitors.
“I guess I’ll get that,” said Lark, and she sounded a little annoyed.
Shane started to get up, but Lark beat him to it. She opened the door. And stepped back with a look of horror on her face.
Shane did get up then. He moved forward. “Whitney Eros?” he asked. “What are you doing here?”
Whitney made an embarrassed face. “I don’t really know,” she said.
“Well, come in,” said Shane. This was weird. He’d never expected to see Whitney again. Whitney came in. Another man trailed behind her. The two of them looked a little worse for wear. Whitney’s hair was in a sloppy ponytail. She wasn’t wearing any makeup. The man had about three days worth of growth on his chin.
Shane shut the door after them. “So, um, hello,” he said.
Whitney took a deep breath and started to speak. Then she stopped. She took another breath. “We have no idea why we’re here,” she said finally.
Shane nodded. “Okay. Well, I did want to thank you for finally getting the article out.”
“That was Tim’s idea, actually,” said Whitney. “This is Tim O’Doole. He used to work for USATunes, but he lost his job trying to get the article published.”
“Really?” said Shane. “They fired you?”
Tim shrugged. “They really didn’t want that article published. After I got it on the web, I got canned.”
Shane offered Tim his hand. “Well, thanks,” he said.
Tim shook his hand. “Yeah,” he said. “No problem.”
Shane was sort of weirded out by this turn of events, but at the same time, he felt like he owed both Whitney and Tim for their dedication in trying to get the word out for him. If they dropped by, he should be hospitable. “Um,” said Shane. “This is Chris Dearborn, the lead guitarist for The Wrenching, and my girlfriend Lark.”
Whitney shook Lark’s hand and then Chris’. Tim shook Chris’ hand. He didn’t shake Lark’s. He just looked at her. “Hi Lark,” he said, but he didn’t sound really pleased to meet her.
“Hi Tim,” said Lark, her voice shaking. She moved closer to Shane, wrapped her hand around his arm.
Shane looked back and forth between the two of them. There was some kind of weird tension there. He started to ask about it, but Whitney started to speak again.
“We should just go,” said Whitney. “I’m not really sure what we’re—”
“No,” said Shane. “You’ve come all this way. You should stay. As my guests.”
“What?” said Lark. She looked up at him, shaking her head.
“Lark,” said Shane, “we have a lot of empty rooms. And you said you were feeling a little frightened alone in this house. Won’t this help?”
“But—” Lark bit off whatever else she was going to say.
“We don’t have to stay,” said Tim. “Whitney’s right. We should go.”
“I insist,” said Shane. “I’d like you to stay.” After all, he did have a huge house. And it might not be awful to have some company. It would help keep his mind off all the horrible things that were happening around him. Besides, it just seemed like the thing to do, somehow. It seemed right. “Do you have anything you need to bring in from the car?”
He and Chris helped Whitney and Tim with their bags. He told Lark to go find some towels and toiletries for their guests. Lark looked positively livid, but she did it. He didn’t know what was going on with Lark, but he’d have to talk to her about it later. He didn’t want to make her too angry, but he couldn’t see any reason at all why she wouldn’t want the two of them to stay.
He put Whitney and Tim on the first floor, in two bedrooms right next to each other that shared a bathroom. “Unless you guys are sharing a room?” he asked them.
The two looked awkward.
“No,” said Whitney.
“Yeah, separate rooms,” said Tim.
Well, what the fuck was up with them? It was kind of cool, Shane decided. He felt as though he was in an Agatha Christie book or something. Weird mystery guests. Fun. He left the two of them to settle in and get cleaned up and said he’d see them at dinner. He was actually excited. They could have dinner in the enormous dining room he’d never once eaten in.
* * *
After dinner, they all started begging Shane to play. Shane wanted to play too. He liked playing. He’d been playing every day of his life since he was fourteen. Except for the days after the tour was over. Those days he hadn’t played. And without the promise of fitting his fingers to the frets of his guitar, he hadn’t felt like getting out of bed. He wanted to play.
“It’s not public,” Lark said to him softly. “It’s just us.”
It wasn’t public. And no one else believed him anyway. Everyone else thought he was nuts. Why was he so convinced that his music was dangerous? Weren’t crazy people always convinced of their delusions? And he wanted to play. He wanted to play so badly.
So he and Chris got out guitars. And they sat down in the living room. No amps, just the two of them with acoustics. Lark, Whitney, and Tim perched on the couches, their faces eager. He grinned at Chris. The guitar felt good in his hands. It felt good to be with Chris like this again. It reminded him of when they were younger, just two teenagers in his bedroom, his mother pounding on the door, telling him to keep it down, she was trying to sleep. Everything felt right. Everything felt perfect.
“What do you want to play?” he asked Chris.
Chris shrugged. “Let’s do some old school stuff. Like some covers?”
Shane nodded, strumming experimentally. His fingers found a G chord. Moved almost instinctively to Em. He put down his ring finger on the fret down. Em7... “Smashing Pumpkins?” he asked, grinning even more.
“What are you playing?” Chris asked, as Shane began to move to different chords, trying to remember how the chord progression went.
“‘Disarm,’“ said Shane.
Chris nodded. “Yeah, yeah. Okay. How’s that go?” He watched Shane’s fingers, then began to move his own.
It was only later, when Shane was lying in bed, that the lyrics came back to haunt him, tripping through his brain on repeat. The killer in him was...
* * *
Lark nearly tripped over Chris in the darkness of the kitchen, late that night. She let out a little scream, and then clamped her hand over her mouth when she recognized him. “You scared me,” she said.
Chris was lounging at the kitchen table in the dark, his feet sprawled out over the linoleum, beer i
n hand. “Sorry,” he said. He sounded a little drunk.
“I, um, couldn’t sleep,” she said, feeling the need to explain herself. “I had a nightmare.” Not to mention the fact she’d never been able to tell Shane about Tim and Jimmy and how they were brothers. Shane had fallen immediately to sleep the minute he got in bed. She’d tried to wake him, but he’d only made sleepy mumbling noises at her. She didn’t want to think about Jimmy any of the time anyway. Maybe she hadn’t tried hard enough to tell Shane. But whatever the case, the fact Shane didn’t know was not making her feel good.
Chris nodded. “Get a beer,” he said.
“No, I just wanted some water,” said Lark. She should go back to bed. With her boyfriend. Besides, something about Chris sitting out here in the dark didn’t seem very comforting. Chris seemed, well, a little creepy.
Chris shrugged.
Lark crossed the kitchen to the refrigerator and got a bottled water out of it. When she opened the door, it sent a beam of light into the room, illuminating Chris, but casting long shadows over the rest of the kitchen. She clutched the water close. Shut the refrigerator. Didn’t move.
“What was your dream about?” asked Chris.
“I...don’t remember,” Lark lied. She remembered the dream very, very well. Crystal clear, in fact. She’d been having bad dreams since Jimmy died, but lately they seemed to be getting worse. Still. She should be used to it by now. She wanted to walk past Chris. To go back up to Shane’s bed, where his body was warm and she could snuggle into it. But she just hesitated there, outside the refrigerator, watching Chris.
“I had a dream too,” said Chris. “It was Shane’s devil guy.”
“Really?” said Lark, sitting down at the table across from Chris.
“Yeah,” said Chris. “Must have been because we were talking about the story earlier, I guess. I’ve never dreamed about him before. But it was a pretty creepy dream.”
“I’m sorry,” said Lark. She twisted the cap off of her water bottle and took a long, cool swig.
“He showed me things,” said Chris, and his voice sounded far, far away.
Lark watched him. There wasn’t a lot of light in the kitchen, so Chris’ features were dark and they ran together. In this light, he didn’t quite look like himself. His eyes seemed to fall deeper into his face, two black hollows on either side of the bridge of his nose. Skeletal. “What kind of things?” she found herself asking.
“Things he wants me to do,” Chris said again in the same far way voice. “Terrible things.”
Lark didn’t say anything.
After a moment, Chris looked down. He shook himself. He took a drink of his beer. Then he looked back at Lark. Leaned forward. He looked more like himself now.
Lark toyed with the cap to the water bottle. “I dreamed about him too,” she said, unsure why she was admitting this to Chris. She really did just want to go back to bed. In fact, at any moment, she was going to get back up and walk out of the kitchen. Walk up the steps, into Shane’s bedroom. Pull back the covers...
“That’s weird,” said Chris. “I mean, it’s an odd coincidence.”
“Yeah. Maybe we had bad Chinese food,” she said, trying to make a joke. But she didn’t smile after she said it, and Chris didn’t laugh.
“What happened in your dream?” asked Chris.
“He talked to me,” said Lark. She tried to shake away the images of the dream, flashing red eyes, bursts of angry smoke, darkness going down into her lungs— “He said that I’m getting in the way of the bodies. He said I should go, or he’d make me go.”
Chris didn’t answer. He took a long drink of his beer, finishing it. He got up and went to the refrigerator for another one. “You sure you don’t want a beer?” he asked Lark.
Of course she was sure. She didn’t want to drink. She wanted to go to sleep. With Shane. She wanted to get up and— “Sure, I’ll take a beer,” she said.
Chris popped the caps off two bottles and sat one in front of her. Then he sat back down at the table and took another drink. “After I woke up, I just felt like drinking,” said Chris. “So I finished up Shane’s whiskey, and then I started drinking beer. I’ve maybe been up for an hour. I can’t stop thinking about that dream. I’ve had nightmares before, but this... It seemed so real. I know that sounds crazy. In the morning, I think I’ll feel better. I’m just going to sit here and wait until the sun comes up.”
It had been a bad dream, then, hadn’t it? “Chris, you should go to bed,” she said. “It was just a dream.”
“I know,” he said. “But I’ve been feeling so strange lately. As though nothing I do makes sense. As though I can’t stop thinking about Shane. About the two of you. And I wonder...why have I been thinking that, Lark? Why have I gone nuts?”
“You’ve gone nuts?” Lark wasn’t following him. But, yes, Chris did sometimes seem obsessive when it came to Shane. That was because they were best friends, though. Wasn’t it?
Chris shook his head. “I can’t talk to you about it.”
Weird. “Well, I guess I’ll go back to bed, then.”
“No. Stay. If you want, I mean.”
Lark stayed. She wasn’t sure why. She took a drink of her beer. She and Chris were both dreaming about the ash man. And she’d seen that painting. She’d gone inside the painting. And there was a new rat. And that girl was missing. And— “Chris, you don’t think that...what Shane is saying...you don’t think that maybe—” And Chris turned on her, his face twisting in the shadows, his eyes disappearing into the dark again and his teeth gleaming somehow even though there wasn’t any light. The words choked in her throat.
“I don’t think anything,” he said. “But I know that I didn’t start feeling like this until you showed up.”
“Chris,” she said, retreating into her chair.
“Everything changed after you showed up,” he said. “I started to get all crazy and obsessed, and I couldn’t stop thinking about you. Either of you. And then Shane quit the tour and now these dreams.”
He was so intense. So angry. “I didn’t have anything to do with any of that,” she said. And she really, really wanted to be in bed with Shane now. Really did. But she didn’t want to walk past Chris to get to the doorway out of the kitchen. So she just sat and watched him.
Chris slugged more beer and slammed the bottle down on the table. For a moment, she thought he was going to stand up and come for her, and she didn’t know what he’d do to her. But then he crumpled. Collapsed against his chair, defeated. He hung his head. And then Chris started crying. Sobbing. His shoulders shook with the force of it. “I know,” he said. “I know, I know.”
Lark didn’t know what to do. She wanted to go to bed, but she couldn’t leave him like this. So she went to him. Put her arm on his back and rubbed gingerly, trying to comfort him. He threw his arms around her, pulling her into a tight embrace, burying his face against her breast. She was only wearing a thin nightshirt, and she could feel his hot, wet tears burning against her skin. And then, shamefully, the stubble on Chris’ face rubbed against her breast and her nipple hardened unwillingly. The sensation was sexual. It set shocks running down her body from her breast to between her legs. She tried to pull back, away from him. Chris was holding her tightly, however, and he was too strong. So she let him cry against her, occasionally awkwardly patting his back. Wishing like hell he’d let her go.
Chris moved his head, his sobs subsiding. He was still pressed against her, however. His face against her breast. His lips moved, seeking out her nipple, kissing her skin through her nightshirt.
“Stop,” she said, breathless, struggling against him. “Don’t.”
For a second, she was afraid he wouldn’t listen. His lips didn’t stop, and her traitorous body was responding against her wishes. But then he did. He pulled away, wiping his eyes with his hands, looking embarrassed. “I’m sorry,” he said.
Lark backed up, out of Chris’ reach. “I-I need to go back to Shane.”
“Ye
ah,” said Chris, nodding. “Of course you do.”
Lark let out a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding. “Yeah.” She turned. Started toward the doorway.
“Lark,” said Chris.
She stopped.
“I really am sorry,” said Chris. “Really.”
“It’s okay,” she said, not looking at him.
“Are you going to...” Chris trailed off. “Are you going to tell Shane?”
Lark turned around for a second. “You were upset,” she said. “You didn’t mean it. I don’t think Shane needs to know.” And she didn’t. She just wanted to forget it had ever happened anyway.
“Thanks,” said Chris.
Lark padded through the foyer to the steps. She could hear a car on the road in the distance. She started up the steps. The car sounded louder. That was weird. She halted on the steps and turned around. Through the windows, a swath of headlights illuminated the interior of the foyer. There was car in Shane’s driveway. Lark went down the steps and back to the window. Her eyes widened. “Fuck,” she said.
Chris came out of the kitchen, still holding his beer. “What?”
“Look,” said Lark.
On the lawn, there were two tents being pitched and three vans, including the one that had just pulled up. Lark didn’t recognize the people pitching the tents by name, but she’d seen them before. “The Entourage is here,” she said.
Chapter Fourteen
There was a faint knock at Tim’s door. He rolled over, blinking, shaking away the last shreds of the dream he’d been having. It had been awful. Smoke in his lungs, a dark figure... It was slipping away from him now. He didn’t remember what it had been about. He sat up in bed, for a moment not remembering where he was either. Then it came back to him. Shane’s house. Tennessee. The knock came again. He threw the covers aside. Went to the door. Opened it. It was Whitney.
She was wearing a white, flimsy nightgown that came to her knees. Her hair was tousled from sleep. She hugged herself in the doorway to his bedroom. Tim didn’t think he’d ever seen her looking vulnerable before. She was Whitney Eros. She was one tough chick. But there was something about the way she looked now. Feminine. Young. Frightened.
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