by Mark All
“People aren’t inherently evil,” she said, voicing whatever thoughts came to mind while her fingers clicked what she hoped were the right buttons. “The music isn’t just amplifying people’s desires, it’s influencing them.” She found and pressed 1 to speed dial her boss. “I don’t think it’s even your music. Something is using you. Something from Hell, which is where you’ll burn for eternity.”
Vince laughed. “There is no Hell. There is no Heaven. There are only dimensions, planes of existence. We make our own Heaven or Hell, in this reality or another. Where I live now, there’s no lake of eternal fire. There’s only the flame of my desire to express the essence of my soul through music—and get some righteous payback.”
She could hear Ben’s number ringing, faint and tinny, from the phone behind her back. On the floor, John Emory lay his head back down.
“You must bring it to the world,” Vince said ominously, getting a two-handed grip on the axe.
Jessica began to tremble uncontrollably. He was going to hack her to pieces here in this odorous abattoir, far from her home and friends. If she didn’t do something, she would join the man she’d never met on the floor in death. No, she could not agree to help Vince Buckley any more than she already had. She could not shake his bloody hand, walk out of here, and go back to her life and her job to plague humanity with the music of Hell. If she did promise but did not mean it, she was sure he would know. She was going to die, here and now. But she would do what she could.
“Fuck you!” Stepping back, she spat the words at him and jerked the phone to her ear.
“You’ve reached the voicemail of Ben Westfeldt. Sorry I can’t take your call right now, but if you’ll leave a message, I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.”
The world slowed down as if she were in a nightmare. Her sensory perception heightened and rendered everything in hyper detail, a surreal wonderland, the last moments of her life dragging out in milliseconds to prolong her terror and agony.
As Vince’s face contorted and he hefted the axe to chest height, taking the stance of an Olympic shot-putter, Jessica screamed in frustration and terror.
The beep on the phone sounded.
“Ben, cancel the contract! Pull the single, destroy the files!” She realized that even if Ben heeded her warning, the song now riddled cyberspace like the drillings of a host of carpenter bees, residing on numerous pirate and mainstream sites. He could never take them all down. She didn’t care, she was running on instinct. “Tear up the contract, Ben! Burn it. Burn it!”
Vince cocked the axe—oddly, he shimmered in her vision like the sun seen with dilated pupils—and began a roundhouse swing.
Jessica screamed again, clenched her hands into fists, clutched the phone like a breaching mother crushing the hand of her husband, and braced for the unimaginable pain of him cutting her body apart.
In mid-swing, Vince suddenly became transparent, and the axe slowed, then stopped. An expression of madness and rage on his now wraithlike face, he flickered, then reappeared again, but looking even less substantial than before.
Jessica blinked away tears. She didn’t know what had happened, but her primal instincts didn’t wait for her conscious mind to catch up. She scooped up her bag, ran around Vince to the door, wrenched it open, and stumbled onto the porch and into the yard.
Barely able to breathe from sobbing, she half-ran, half-staggered to her car, tripping over the curb and barely regaining her balance as she rounded the hood. She spilled half the contents of her bag fishing for the key fob, but she managed to pull it out; she thumbed the button to unlock the car and tumbled in. She then dizzily inserted the key, started the car, and hit the gas, putting as much distance as she could between herself and the house of death.
The idea that she’d just been attacked by a ghost made her world seem unreal, but she had no doubt that was what had happened. Even if she could rationalize that he’d somehow faked his death a year ago, live people didn’t just disappear the way Vince had. More surreal was being spoken to telepathically by yet another dead man.
She tried to order her mind, a cauldron of jumbled thoughts roiled by emotion, and recalled events in sequence. She’d called Ben as John had told her to, then Vince Buckley had vanished; that could not be coincidence.
She came to a stop sign and sat there, her foot on the brake, unsure where to go and unable to concentrate on anything but what had just happened. When she’d told Ben to destroy the files and tear up the contract, she’d stopped the progression of Oblivion in its tracks. She had changed reality, altered the course of the future. That must have weakened Vince, diminished the likelihood that he would exist in this world, and he’d lost some of his physical presence here.
Stop the concert.
The rest of John Emory’s words came back to her, and her mind reeled when she thought of the band playing the entire album live for a packed house. She wasn’t sure what would happen, but the idea filled her with dread.
She had to call it off. She snatched up the phone from the seat beside her and punched in David’s number. No answer. He was probably working in the basement studio, his phone off, or ignoring it. A thought chilled her: he could be sitting in front of his speakers, effectively lobotomized by the music. No, wait, Vince needed her, the music needed her, and of course it needed David, too. He had to play the show.
She went cold. David must have known where the music came from. Safe deposit box, her ass. Vince had appeared to David, given him the music, and David had told no one. A crushing sense of betrayal fell over her. She thought back to the time she’d spent with the guitarist the day before, remembered his expressions, the tone of his voice. The emotion that had passed between them when he’d taken her hand. She could not believe he was willingly, knowingly, helping Vince bring mass murder to the world. Which meant the music did have David in its grasp after all.
She’d served the music as well, until she’d discovered its true nature. Maybe she could somehow deter David from his path, break the music’s spell on him. She had to try. It was her only hope of preventing the unimaginable carnage.
She wheeled the car around in the middle of the intersection and headed back to David’s house, dialing the Athens Theater as she drove.
Chapter Thirty-One
Saturday late afternoon
Ben Westfeldt pulled into the parking lot of the Willow Run condos, nauseous with apprehension, and searched for Charlene Hanscomb’s number. The buildings held six units, each with a tiny lawn and flowerbed along the front wall, beside a front door and beneath two wide windows. The numerals were easy to see from the curb, and wooden plaques indicated number ranges at each turn in the driveway.
Charlene’s uncharacteristic absence without notice from work yesterday had been eating away at him. He couldn't help but think of her staring blankly at her computer, the cords to her earbuds gently shaking as she bobbed her head in time to the music. While checking the web marketing efforts to promote Penumbra, the new album, and the concert, he kept finding horror stories concerning Loopers. They were growing increasingly violent, and now reports were coming from every continent. It freaked him out, not just because it concerned the potential legal liability of Sage Records, but because he played a part in what was happening. He feared the phenomenon had exploded far beyond his control, and if he tried to do anything to stop it, he’d lose his job, and the music would be published anyway.
He also wondered if he was crazy ascribing such hideous power to music, but his nagging worry for Charlene wouldn’t leave him alone. He had to check on her.
He found her unit, parked, and approached with trepidation. The drapes were closed in the front windows, but there didn’t appear to be a light on behind them. Ben rang the doorbell several times, but received no response. He knocked, timidly at first, then harder as his unease grew. A jogger passing by gave him a funny look and he stopped his frantic rapping, his knuckles aching anyway. He noticed the jogger wore earbuds and wondered what she
was listening to.
Verging on frantic, Ben looked at the windows and back at the door, then at the cars in front of the building, wishing he knew what Charlene drove. He hadn’t thought this through. If she wasn’t answering her phone, why would she answer the door? He tried the doorknob and of course found it locked. Getting no answer and the lights being off paradoxically made him more certain she was home, and in trouble. He glanced around the parking lot again. People wandered about, cars came and went, kids ran around in a small playground at the end of the short block. He couldn’t break in. Around back? That would probably have even more people, starting their Saturday evening beer and barbeque fests.
His gaze focused on the garden. Charlene was very thorough and detail-oriented in her work, so maybe she had a hide-a-key. He leaned over the flower bed, heedless of anyone watching, not much caring, and thinking that looking like he knew what he was doing was the best way to not attract attention. A strip of egg rocks separated the plot from the building itself; sure enough, there was a plastic-looking rock among them. He scooped it up, shook it, and heard a rattle. He flipped it over and found a little panel on the underside. After easily prying open the little panel on the underside, he found the key. He tossed the rock carelessly back to the ground and fumbled the key into the lock and opened the door.
He stepped inside and looked around. The condo was stylishly appointed with modern furniture and accessories, with a definite feminine touch.
He moved farther into the darkened living room and called her name. “Charlene?”
The apartment was deathly still and silent, and too cool. There was a funny smell, a bit like garbage. He thought maybe it came from the kitchen. He shivered as he went around the bar and into the kitchen, where the stove vent hood lights were on, but nothing else. In their glow he could see several empty wine bottles, one on its side next to a little spilled wine, within which sat empty cracker cartons. A plate held several stalks of celery with pimento cheese smeared into them, only one having been nibbled on. An empty container beside it was covered with orange crust, suggesting she’d eaten something. The pimento cheese smelled pretty bad; it must have been out for at least a day. That couldn’t account for the heavy putrid odor permeating the apartment.
The quiet and darkness made the hair rise on the nape of his neck. He returned to the living room, realized he was putting off further exploration, then turned on a lamp beside the sofa and stared at the mess on the coffee table. There was a wine glass, another bottle, mostly empty, another plate with cracker crumbs, and globs of congealed cream cheese.
Among them lay a note.
His hand trembling, Ben bent and picked up the stenographer’s pad, brushing the eyebrow liner pencil from it. The gummy, waxy script provided only three words.
MAKE IT STOP
His throat went dry, and he tried to swallow and failed. He almost reached for the wine bottle, but resisted. A suspicion of what the smell was fought its way to his consciousness and he knew he was on a failed mission; he was too late; why hadn’t he come before now?
“Oh, God, no, oh, God, no.”
Ben wanted to just get out of the apartment without going further, but to what life would he return? He had to find Charlene. With a feeling of inevitability like that of a condemned man going to the gallows, he turned to the hallway to the rest of the condo and forced himself toward it.
The first door to the left appeared to be a closet, so he ignored it. He peered into the second one at the end of the hall, and found a neat guest room lined with shelves of books and CDs, though otherwise empty. Facing the single remaining door on the right side of the hallway, he closed his eyes for a moment, finally managed to swallow, and entered the master bedroom.
In the dim sunlight seeping from the crack between the curtains, he could see that the bed was made, but it was rumpled as if a couple just had wild sex on it. What must have been the door to the bathroom was closed, but he could see a narrow bar of light beneath its bottom edge.
It was not too late. He could still turn around and leave, pretend he’d never been here.
No. He couldn’t.
Fighting an overpowering fear, Ben stepped up to the closed door, turned the knob, pushed. It yawned open to reveal dried blood spread across a white tile floor, like a miniature river sending tiny branches out in all directions.
Ben moaned. He didn’t want to know, didn’t want to see. Yet he forced himself to take a small step into the bathroom, carefully avoiding the runnels of blood. A hand on the door to steady himself, he slowly peered around it.
Charlene lay propped in a sitting position at the end of the dry tub, fully clothed, a paring knife stuck in her throat. Her eyes stared soullessly off to a distant horizon only she could see, her expression one of great, terrible sorrow.
She might have been murdered, which meant he would now be a legitimate suspect since his prints were everywhere, but he didn’t believe that. He knew as surely as he knew she was dead without feeling for a pulse that Charlene had plunged the knife into herself. The words “MAKE IT STOP” coursed through his mind and told him so. The blade had gone into her carotid artery at an angle and the handle was smeared with blood, as was her right hand, which hung over the side of the tub. Blood had thickened around the wound, her throat, across her chest, and spilled down the arm to the floor.
Sobbing, Ben collapsed onto the tiles, his pant leg sliding through the blood. This can't be happening, he thought. If only he’d come earlier, said something to Charlene at work, told her to stay away from the music. Told her I loved her.
He’d had such a bad feeling about all this, and known that something was hugely not right. He should’ve struck down the entire idea of this album, this music of the dead. It had smelled wrong from the beginning. Instead he’d been tempted by the lure of a big score and an opportunity to save his job. Well, his job and Jessica’s, and eventually Charlene’s. Penumbra was going to pull Sage’s ass out of the bottomless pool of red ink. God, why was he thinking that? He involuntarily stole another glance at Charlene and his stomach clenched in another spasm, but his gut was empty.
He had to get out of there. He crawled across the floor, smearing the blood, onto the carpet of the bedroom, where he lay gasping, his eyes screwed shut, waiting for it all to go away, knowing it would not, that nothing would ever be the same again.
For a few minutes he was overcome with sorrow. There would never have been anything between him and Charlene, she’d made it clear that she was aware of his attraction to her and didn’t feel that way about him. She’d been so sweet and kind though, he’d almost believed there was hope for them some day, and had managed to be content having her as a dear friend. Now he’d lost her forever.
Sniffling, his breath hitching in his chest, he wiped his nose and clenched his jaw. That fucking guitar player was going to pay for what he’d done to Charlene. Ben had his address and a fucking GPS, and he was going to see to it that Fairburn would not hurt anyone else like he’d hurt her. Ben was going to stop this goddamn music, stop it dead in its tracks.
He struggled to his feet and started walking but ended up running from the bedroom, down the hall, through the living room and out the door, slamming it after him. He looked down at the blood on his pants and got into his car as fast as he could.
His phone lay on the car seat. He had to call the police. No matter what. Had to. It might serve as some sort of warning. He’d call it in anonymously, hope they couldn’t identify his cell from the few moments he would be on, then turn it off and head for Athens.
He flipped it open to see he had a message.
“Ben, cancel the fucking contract! Kill it! Pull the single, destroy the files!” A pause. “Tear up the contract! Burn it! Burn it!” A scream. Frantic scrabbling sounds. Then nothing. He’d thought he was incapable of feeling any emotion more intensely than he already did, but a deep dread filled him. What had happened to Jessica? Had a crazed Looper attacked her? Had David Fairburn been driven in
sane by the music? He prayed she was okay. She was in Athens, so much farther away than Charlene had been, and look how little help he’d been to her. He would go there, make a fucking beeline for the Classic City.
First, he had something even more important to do. He wasn’t sure why it would make any difference, but knew he had to do as Jessica instructed. He snatched his briefcase from the floorboard, opened it, clawed out the Oblivion contract, and ripped it to pieces. He considered burning them, knew he didn’t have time.
He called IT, had them take “Fire It Up” down from the company web site, and hit the road for Athens.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Saturday evening
The sky darkened as Jessica made her way through the back roads of Athens. Where the hell was she? Apparently there were two Barnett Shoals Roads and they intersected each other and one of them turned into Gaines School Road. This was as bad as Peachtree Streets in Atlanta.
She should have called the police, but John Emory was dead, there was no helping that now, and she had bigger issues to deal with. Not to mention, they’d never catch the killer. They couldn't execute a dead man.
Edging toward panic, shot full of adrenaline from her encounter with death, and driven by an imperative to stop the concert, Jessica wasn’t sure what she could do. She needed David’s help. She had called the theater, but the manager was out and the flunkies couldn’t or wouldn’t cancel the show. She also still got no answer from David’s phone, and now she was lost as shit. She’d always found the car’s GPS computer voice annoying and had difficulty fiddling with her phone while driving, so she usually relied on printed out Google Maps. But now, scrabbling at the papers on the passenger seat, trying to orient them toward her, she felt foolish and growled in frustration. She didn’t know what was going to happen at the concert, but she had to stop it, and it was getting late.