by Michael Bray
“That’s up to you. Maybe you might want to consider what might come to light if you do.”
“Are you threatening me, Henry? Let me remind you, as a councilor—”
“Cut the crap, Edgar. You can call it whatever you want. The bottom line is this. If I don’t get my motion passed to build the hotel, you can guarantee everyone will know the truth behind your retirement from the army.”
“I was injured, it’s no secret,” Edgar stammered, his eyes wide. Marshall only smiled and shook his head.
“Injured yes, just not in a training exercise like you claimed, was it? You were injured in a car crash. Three people died.”
“I… it…” Rollins’ cheeks were flushed, and his normally pristine hair was sticking up in the back like a porcupine.
“In fact, the only reason you survived is because you were so drunk behind the wheel you didn’t even know about the impact or try to tense up. Ironic isn’t it? The drunk driver gets away with a crushed vertebrae and cuts and bruises whilst three innocent people died.”
“It wasn’t like that…”
“How much did it cost?” Marshall went on, disregarding Edgar’s mutterings. “How much did you have to pay the authorities to change the records of the accident? I can’t imagine it would have come cheap. Who knows what could happen if such a story found its way into the public domain?”
“Alright goddammit, point taken! It’s not just me you need to convince!”
“Oh, you mean Cleaver? I’m not worried about him. Whatever you do, he’ll follow.”
“How do I know you’re good on your word?” Edgar hissed.
“You don’t,” Marshall replied with a wide smile as he stood. “I’ve known about it for this long and haven’t felt the need to share. Let’s just say as long as I have enough to do to keep me busy, maybe I’ll just forget about it.”
“I can’t promise, surely you understand?”
Marshall walked towards the door, paused and turned back towards the former Major.
“You’re a military man, Edgar. I’m sure you’ll find a way to do what is right. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
Marshall opened the door and left. Rollins sat for a moment, fists clenched as he heard his fellow council member drive away. Unable to restrain his anger, he threw his beer bottle against the wall, picked up the phone and called Dennis Cleaver.
II
The heady smell of strong coffee and the sizzle of bacon cooking greeted Marshall as he entered the diner. It was the peak of the breakfast rush, and the place was full to bursting with both locals and tourists alike. A steady murmur of chatter along with the clatter of plates and cutlery filled the room as Henry squeezed in at the table opposite his brother. At a glance, they were eerily similar, almost like an image of the same person taken ten years apart.
“You look happy,” Dane said as he mopped up tomato juice with a dinner roll and popped it into his mouth.
Henry grimaced as he glanced at the remains of the breakfast his brother just finished eating. “How the hell can you eat that shit?”
“It sets me up for the day,” Dane replied as he pushed the plate away and took a sip of coffee.
“Want some?”
“I’ll get my own,” Marshall replied, and called the waitress. After he’d ordered, he sat back and grinned.
“I take it you got the approval?”
“Of course I did. Unanimous too.”
“I’m surprised. I thought Edgar Rollins would have shot you down in flames.”
“Edgar knows what’s good for the town. He made the right call.”
“What’s good for this place is getting the hell out of here and into the real world.”
“And yet, you just keep coming back,” Marshall countered with an oozing smile.
Dane lowered his eyes to his empty plate, and stared out of the window at passers-by walking down Main Street. “How’s dad?” he said, his voice barely carrying above the general chatter in the room.
“He’s fine, although, he still hasn’t forgiven you for leaving.”
“Jesus, Henry, let’s not go down this road again okay? I haven’t seen you for a long time, it would be nice just to spend some time with my brother.”
“Take it easy, I have no issue with you. Hell that should be obvious enough by the fact I’m the only one who will sit here in public and talk to you.”
“Well, that’s not why we’re here is it? From what you said on the phone, we have business which can mutually benefit us both. Let me hear it.”
Henry sat up straight and folded his hands on the table. “I know when you asked me about doing some kind of investigation at the Hope House site, I wasn’t initially very accommodating to the request.”
“That’s one way of saying it, I can’t remember the exact wording you used, but the message came across loud and clear as a no.”
“Yes, yes, I remember, the point is, I may have been hasty to deny the request.”
Dane raised his eyebrows. “Do my ears deceive me, or is the all-powerful Henry Marshall admitting to a mistake?”
Henry started to push out of his seat. “Look if you can’t take this seriously…”
“Hey, calm down okay? I’m just messing with you. Jesus, Henry, when did you get so uptight?”
Henry sat, remaining silent whilst the waitress brought his coffee and refilled Dane’s cup. Dane watched her leave, and turned back to his brother.
“Okay, all joking aside, what do you have in mind?”
“I want to change my decision. I want to give you the opportunity to investigate the site.”
“Thanks for the offer,” Dane said, sipping his drink, wincing at the heat before setting it back down on the table, “But that ship has sailed. They’re looking at some abandoned farm over in Scatmore. Fred’s busting his balls trying to get the network to give us one last roll of the dice to try and spike the ratings.”
“Scatmore farm?” Marshall said with a shake of the head. “We both know that isn’t going to get you the numbers you need to stay on air. Besides, I’ve already made waves with the council to make sure this happens.”
“Too little too late, Henry.”
“Come on, think about this. What would your viewers rather see? Scatmore farm which has been investigated countless times, or the infamous Hope House site. We both know the show needs the ratings spike from this.”
“And how would you know?”
“I make it my business to know things. I know the future of the show is hanging by a thread. We both know you need this.”
“What’s in it for you? You’ve never been the one to do things out of generosity. There has to be a catch.”
“Of course there’s a catch,” Marshall said as he flashed his reptilian grin.
“So what is it?”
“Isn’t it obvious? I want you to wait until opening night and do the investigation live from the new hotel.”
“We can’t wait so long. The show needs to do this now.” Dane said, doing a fine job of hiding his excitement.
“We don’t need to do it right now, as long as we announce it. The anticipation will keep you on the air until the Hotel is built. I’m fast-tracking the construction, so it shouldn’t be too long until we can start to make firm plans.
“How long are we talking about here, wait-wise I mean?”
“I’m meeting with the landowner today to sign the papers, and construction crews are ready to go in and start work as soon as I give the nod. We’ll have the place up within eight months. Less if we can.”
Dane fidgeted and looked out of the window.
“What’s wrong?” Henry asked, his smile wavering.
“I don’t know, it’s just… out of all the places I’ve investigated, it’s the one place which always raised a question mark in my head, you know?”
“Don’t tell me you, the great skeptic, actually believe the stories?”
“I’m not saying I believe in anything, but at the same time enough weird
shit has happened over the years up there to at least make me accept the possibility.”
“Isn’t this a perfect opportunity to find out?”
Dane snorted and shook his head. “Don’t get too excited. A lot of these places with reports of incidents are just embellished stories. Nothing ever really happens. What if our investigation proves there’s nothing there and kills your business before it starts?”
Henry beamed, and his brother felt a pang of discomfort. He never liked that smile. Even as kids growing up it usually meant trouble. There was something predatory – almost shark like in it.
“What if we made sure something did happen?”
“You mean like a hoax?” Dane said as his stomach did mini-somersaults.
“Don’t sound so surprised,” Henry countered, further stretching his animal grin. “We both know this isn’t new territory for you.”
Dane nodded and sipped his coffee as his brother looked on. “Well, it seems you really have done your research on the show. I don’t know who you spoke to, and if it were anyone else asking about this I would flat out deny it. Let’s just say, for the sake of argument, you’re right. What did you have in mind?”
“I want to treat this like an actual show, not a reality program. I want to stage an event so spectacular it will bring people flocking to the hotel.”
“Didn’t you say you wanted to prove there was nothing there so you could discourage visitors? Am I missing something here?”
Marshall took a long slurping drink of his coffee and smiled at his brother.
“I thought you knew me better. Why would I build something I wanted to fail?”
“Didn’t you say—”
“—Oh I fed the council a story about proving nothing was there, just to get them onside. Do you know how much money I could make out of this? It’s a goddamn goldmine. If we show them weird shit happens here, they’ll fall over themselves to stay. Hell, they’ll pay whatever I choose to charge.”
“It sounds like you’re planning some kind of off-the-wall freak show. I’m not sure I’m sold on the entire idea. It will kill the town.”
Henry leaned forward and lowered his voice. “Come on, we both know this town is already dead on its feet. We need to make sure we protect ourselves and our families before it goes belly-up. We have to plan for the future.”
“The only person I see gaining from this is you, Henry. Where’s my security?”
“You don’t even live here anymore. What does it matter to you?”
“If I’m going to do this and put something together, I have to have some protection too. What if people find out it was staged? Something so controversial would kill my reputation. Besides, it’s the principal. I think if I’m going to help you, it’s only right I get a cut of the profits. It’s how we were raised after all.”
Marshall leaned back and chuckled. “It seems we aren’t too dissimilar after all, are we? How much were you thinking you should get?”
“Forty-percent.”
“No way,” Henry said with a shake of the head. “Not when I’m injecting all the capital and have to find the money to run the place whilst you’re off sleeping in graveyards. I was thinking more along the lines of five percent.”
“Nowhere close, I see your point about the capital though. Thirty-five?”
“Ten.”
“Twenty and I’ll give you a show to see you booked for months in advance.”
Marshall smirked and leaned close, lowering his voice.
“Shake my hand on fifteen, and I’ll go one better.”
“Like what?”
“I’ll give you the ones who got away.”
“Impossible, nobody even knows where they are!” Dane said, and yet, as he looked his brother in the eye, he knew he was telling the truth.
“I do. And I think I know just how to get them. Can you imagine, your investigation at my hotel, including the only living survivors of whatever they claimed happened to them the night of the fire?”
“They would never go for it. I hear the husband was in a bad way after what happened. I can’t see how anything you say would ever convince them to get involved, as spectacular as it sounds.”
“You forget one thing,” Marshall said, straightening and holding out his hand. “I can be very persuasive.”
“How can I say no? Okay, Henry. Fifteen it is.” Dane said as he shook on it. “I just hope you know what you’re doing.”
“Don’t you worry about it. You just think about how to make this night memorable. I know just how to get our former residents on board.”
“I hope you do. For the record, I’d have shaken hands with you at eleven.” Dane said with a grin.
“That’s fine. I’d have gone all the way up to twenty two.”
“Come on, give me a clue at least. How do you ever hope to get those two back to the site?”
“In my business,” Henry said as he finished his coffee, “anybody can be talked into doing anything as long as you have the right leverage.”
“And you have some with the Samson’s?”
“Yes I do. I have plenty of leverage where they’re concerned.”
CHAPTER 5
6 months later.
They were thrust into the inferno, the heat surrounding them indescribable. Donovan wasn’t fighting back, seemingly content to simply restrain Steve from reaching the front door, which looked out of reach as the flames licked at it hungrily.
He pushed anyway and tried to struggle past, but Donovan’s grip was strong and vice-like, and he flashed his sick, dead grin at Steve even as his hair burst into flames.
Steve stopped struggling and smiled at Donovan; whose skin was beginning to bubble and blister.
“You are dead Donovan. You can’t hurt me. You can’t hurt my family,” he shouted above the raging sound of the conflagration.
A moment of uncertainty passed over the Donovan thing’s melting face as Steve pulled out the protective cross from where it was embedded in its stomach. It staggered backwards, and fell to one knee.
“This House is no more. The Gogoku can rest, nobody will inhabit these grounds again,”
Steve gasped and coughed as the smoke began to fill his lungs, his own skin beginning to peel and blister.
“Leave my family alone,” he added weakly, attempting to ignore the agony of his burning flesh.
It wasn’t a request, but a command. Donovan appeared to shudder, then fell to his knees and sideways into the flames, which hissed as the fatty parts of his skin were devoured by the intense fire.
Close to losing consciousness, barely able to breathe for the thick, black smoke, he turned back to the kitchen and half-ran, half-staggered as fast as he could towards the glass-paneled door. He slammed into it at full-speed, the door exploding in a shower of wood and glass.
Steve always woke at this same point. For the first couple of years it had been with screams as he clawed at the sheets, imagining the agonizing burns were still fresh. Now, even though the nightmare still filled him with indescribable horror, he awoke only with a gasp. He lay in the dark, listening to the trip-hammer sound of heart beating against chest, then the pain came, and he was thrust into another day of perpetual misery. He glanced over to Melody’s side of the bed. She lay on her side, breathing slowly and untroubled.
He shuffled out of bed, gritting his teeth as he tried to keep his patched-together body quiet.
“Where are you going…?” Melody mumbled.
“I just need a drink,” he whispered. She moaned something in response then rolled over, draping her arm across his side of the bed. He shuffled to the sitting room, trying to ignore the deep, dull ache which seemed to fill his every muscle and joint these days – the after-effects from the dozen skin graft operations he had endured over the last seven years. He swept the curtains aside, looking at the blinking lights of the city and the never-ending line of car lights, resembling thousands of pairs of eyes. The sounds of the city soothed him after his dreams. The sig
ht of the concrete jungle helped to remind him he was far away from that time and place.
And those trees.
Most of all he was away from those. He watched the traffic for a while, waiting for the awful memories to pass, then let out a deep sigh. Lately his thoughts were turning increasingly dark, to the point where he started thinking it might have been better if he hadn’t survived the fire. Even to think it made him feel ashamed and guilty, but he felt it nonetheless. The problem was, although he survived, the after-effects had meant the quality of his life had been vastly reduced. He continued to breathe, the engine continued to tick over, the days and weeks ticked by, and yet it was all without any enthusiasm. An apathy had set in and it was proving increasingly hard to shake off.
A yellow crescent of moon managed to briefly peek through the cloud cover, and Steve held his right hand up to the window. It was gnarled and thin, his index and middle finger fused together due to the fire. He had no real articulation or dexterity, no sense of touch or feeling. He often wondered if it had been some kind of bitter irony how the hands which could once play beautiful piano chords, and effortlessly pick their way through guitar scales when he was composing a ditty for a TV ad, could now barely hold a spoon so he could feed himself.
The rest of his body hadn’t fared much better. In constant pain, his skin was a jigsaw of grafts and scars. His right ear was mostly gone, his left a stumpy, fleshy lobe. What little hair was still able to grow did so in intermittent patches, which Melody kept trimmed for him. Even blinking hurt, the skin on his face feeling stretched and alien, which he supposed in essence it was. Although he wasn’t even forty yet, he looked like a ghoulish seventy-year old.
He was a complete and utter failure; a monster. Melody would never say it, and she didn’t have to. He saw it in her eyes when he caught her looking at him sometimes, a mixture of resentment and disgust. Those reactions he could handle, it was the pity he hated. He saw her watching him when she thought he was sleeping. The more he saw it in her eyes, the more he in turn resented her for it.