Trembling

by V. J. Chambers

  But I could probably just unlock the window and open it, provided the windows weren't nailed shut. Then Lilith and I could climb out of the window. We were on the second story, but it looked like we'd drop onto several springy bushes that surrounded the house. That should help to cushion our fall. Plus, as near as I could tell, we weren't up so high that a drop would cause us to break a limb or anything. I didn't think.

  Of course, I realized that my hands were tied behind my back. I couldn't unlock or open the window without my hands. Breaking the window was pretty much out of the question too. We didn't have any furniture. Besides, that would be loud, and someone might hear me doing that, come rushing in, and put an end to my escape attempt.

  As if reading my thoughts, Jude opened the door and strode into the room. I turned my back to the window, hoping he wouldn't realize I'd been contemplating an escape route.

  "You're awake," he said.

  I nodded. "I hope you've come in here to tell me that you've come to your senses and you're going to trade me for your mother this afternoon."

  Jude sneered. "No way," he said. "Jason doesn't tell me what to do."

  Something about the edge to his voice let me know he was serious. He hated Jason. I could see that now. And to think, all that time in Bramford, Jason had known that there was something off about Jude, and I'd never noticed. I should have trusted Jason, but hindsight was twenty-twenty.

  "I don't know how he found us, anyway," Jude said. "How could he have had any idea who took you?"

  I shrugged. "Well, Jason's pretty amazing." But Jude was right, now that I thought about it. How had Jason figured it out so quickly? He'd beaten us to Shiloh. Was there something odd about that?

  Jude glowered at me. "So I hear. Been spending my whole life hearing about Jason."

  I didn't say anything.

  "My mother never shut up about him. About her visions. About the abomination. But I used to wonder why, if he was such an abomination, she spent so much time talking about him." Jude walked around me and stood at the window himself. He stared through the glass. "If it weren't for the fact that everyone else is convinced that you have to kill him, I'd kill him myself.

  "He's so self-righteous," Jude continued. "Thinking he can protect you. That night on the beach, he never knew that I had performed the ritual and placed the bell in your bag. Dingle's bell. There was a certain poetry to the way that it represented Azazel and also fit the ritual. It was just like Azazel to steal something from an authority figure for his own purposes. Like weapons. Like fire. I thought of that. Me. And I carried it out. And Jason never knew. He was clueless."

  "I'll never kill him," I said. "You have to know that. You know how much I love him."

  Jude snorted, still not looking at me. "You two have been arguing a hell of a lot, though, haven't you? And for all you know, he was screwing Lilith."

  "He was not. There's no way he . . ." Jude was wrong.

  Jude turned back from the window. He took my arm and began to lead me out of the room. "We've got some things to show you, Azazel," he said. He smiled. "But, just between us, I kind of hope you're right. I hope that when it comes down to it, you aren't able to kill him after all, because I'd love to step in and finish the job."

  I jerked my arm out of his grasp. "You're no match for Jason," I said.

  He snatched my arm back. "We'll just see about that, won't we?"

  * * *

  Noah had a laptop, which was running off battery power. There wasn't any electricity in the abandoned house. Gordon had the laptop open and was crouched over it on the floor. We were all in a large room on the first floor. Probably a parlor or a sitting room of some kind. There wasn't any furniture in this room, either, but the walls were decorated in graffiti. Someone had spray painted a large message proclaiming that Randy loved Sara, "4-ever + always." There was also a distorted mural of a naked woman on one of the walls, also rendered in spray paint.

  "Gordon, you're going to run the battery down," Noah was saying.

  Jude was still clutching my arm. We stood together in the doorway.

  "This battery will last hours," said Gordon.

  "Not if it's running video," said Noah.

  "It's not running video right now," said Gordon.

  "No, but—"

  Jude cleared his throat. Both of my brothers turned to look at us.

  "Where's Lilith?" asked Gordon.

  "Still asleep in the room," said Jude.

  "Should someone be watching her?" asked Gordon.

  Jude glared at him, but he dropped my arm and left the room. Noah got up and came to me. He untied my hands, and I stretched them, rubbing my fingers against each other. I hadn't realized how uncomfortable I'd been tied up until I wasn't. Noah led me further into the room.

  "Sit down," he told me.

  "What's going on?" I asked.

  "We have some things to show you," said Gordon.

  "Show me?" I asked. How? What were they going to show me?

  Gordon set the laptop down in front of me, so that the screen was facing me. He had a video file open. It was paused, but I could see a woman's face, frozen in the middle of speech.

  "What is this?" I asked.

  "We're just not sure that you know everything about Jason that there is to know," said Noah. "We want to make sure you're informed, little sis."

  "I know Jason better than I know anyone on earth," I countered, folding my arms over my chest.

  "So you know about the sorority girls," said Gordon.

  "Yes," I said. "I do." But I remembered something that Hallam had said to me, in the kitchen in our apartment. Something about what Jason had done that night. And the way I remembered it, Jason had told me that he hadn't done anything but watch.

  Gordon raised his eyebrows. "You do?"

  I stared him down.

  Gordon reached around the laptop and hit play on the video. The woman's face unfroze. She was young—maybe in her mid-twenties. She had a large scar on her face. It twisted over her features, purple and contorted. Her voice was halting and hesitant.

  "They left me for dead," she was saying.

  An off-screen voice asked, "So, they didn't leave any intentional survivors?"

  "No. They were there to kill us all," she said.

  "And do you know why they came to kill you?"

  "I don't know. I really don't know. They said something about us running a brothel or something, but that was just stupid. We were a sorority. We had boyfriends. Maybe sometimes, girls even had flings. But we weren't doing anything wrong or anything illegal."

  "And they've never caught the men who did this?"

  "Caught them? They've hardly even looked for them. At the beginning, there was a lot of media attention and the police made a lot of promises. But they only talked to me once. And they've never made any arrests. They say they don't have any evidence."

  I looked at Noah and Gordon. "I don't really think there's any reason for me to watch this," I said. "Jason told me all about it."

  "Just keep watching," said Gordon.

  I rolled my eyes. Sure, this was a horrible, terrible thing that Hallam had done. But both Hallam and Jason had been acting under the direction of the Sons. None of it had been their idea. And the Sons demanded that their members blindly obey.

  "Can you tell us what happened that night?" asked the unseen voice on the video.

  The girl looked away from the camera. "I can try," she said, but her voice sounded unsteady.

  "Take your time."

  The girl took a deep breath. She didn't look back at the camera, but instead down at the ground. "There were two of them," she said. "They were both young. One was maybe twenty or so. The other one was a kid. He couldn’t have been more than fifteen or sixteen. That was what disturbed me the most. The fact that he was just a kid. He looked so innocent. He didn't seem the least bit bothered by what was going on. It seemed so normal for him."

  I bit my lip. I knew it wasn't normal for Jason. It had really
disturbed him. I remembered the way he'd talked to me about it. The haunted, empty look in his eyes. This woman didn't know what she was talking about.

  "I didn't know what was going on in the beginning," she continued, "because I was asleep in my bedroom. It was late. Maybe two in the morning or something. I don't know. Anyway, I woke up and there was this figure standing over my bed with a gun. It was the kid. He told me to get up and come with him. He had three of the other girls with him. Apparently, he was rounding everyone up out of their beds. I didn't know why. If they were just going to kill us all, wouldn't it have been more merciful just to put bullets in our heads while we slept? Why did he have to wake me up? Why did he have to make me watch?"

  The girl put her head in her hands and started to cry softly.

  I looked away. I didn't want to know this. I really didn't think I wanted to know this. "It doesn't matter what you show me," I said to Noah and Gordon. "You can't change how I feel about Jason."

  "Just watch," said Noah.

  The unseen voice was speaking, gently. "Isn't it true that they did discover some of the girls shot in their beds?"

  The girl raised her tearstained face. "Yes, the police said that they did. But there were at least ten of us that the kid rounded up. He took us downstairs, into our kitchen and he made us stand in the middle of the room. He sat on the counter and talked to us."

  "Talked to you? What did he say?"

  "The stuff about the brothel, like I said. He said that he had to do it, because we were doing illegal and immoral things. He didn't seem upset about it at all. He didn't even seem sorry. He was very matter-of-fact about it. While he was talking, Tami—she was the president of the sorority—she managed to get hold of a butcher knife. I could see that she had it, but I didn't let on. I didn't know what she thought she was going to do with it, but she had it.

  "Then," continued the girl, "the other guy came in. The older guy. He and the kid started to argue. The older guy was saying that the kid was making it harder than it needed to be. They should just shoot them and be done with it. There wasn't any reason to drag it out. And the kid was saying that we deserved to know why we were dying. And they were yelling at each other. They were distracted, and Tami snuck up behind the older guy. She had the knife, and she started to raise it to . . . I don't know . . . stab him, maybe, I . . . But the kid saw her. And then . . ."

  The girl looked away again, shaking her head.

  "What happened then?" prompted the voice.

  "I don't really know," said the girl. "It was dark and it was so fast. There was all this gunfire and scuffling. And everyone started to try to run then. But I couldn't move. I just stood there. I was frozen and I couldn't move! The older guy ran out of the kitchen, chasing down the other girls. He was yelling and screaming then. This crazy screaming. Like he was insane or something. There was blood everywhere. And Tami was on the floor. She was bleeding, but she was still alive. The kid was standing over her. He was holding the knife. I was crying.

  "I lurched forward all at once. Like I finally had control of my muscles again. I fell on my knees next to Tami and the kid swung the knife at me. He cut open my face, and I crumpled onto the floor and waited for him to kill me. I was bleeding so much. It was getting all over the tile floor in the kitchen. It was everywhere. I could hardly see through the blood. And I couldn't move. Not really. I just lay there. And waited.

  "The older guy came back into the room. He shot Tami in the forehead, and she stopped moving. He looked at the kid and he said, 'Thanks. She was going to kill me.'

  "The kid didn't say anything. He just stared down at Tami, still holding the knife that was covered in my blood. He dropped the knife. It clattered to the floor.

  "'I'll always have your back like that,' said the older guy to the kid.

  "But the kid didn't even look at him. 'Is she dead?' he said, pointing his gun at Tami.

  "'Yes,' said the older guy.

  "And the kid just opened fire on her. He shot her and shot her and shot her. Pumping bullets into her dead body, over and over and over again. And I remember that I could see his face, while he was doing that. And . . . he was smiling." The girl broke down into fresh sobs.

  The video ended.

  "Is that what Jason told you?" said Gordon pointedly.

  I didn't say anything.

  "Well is it?" asked Noah.

  "He didn't give me a blow-by-blow," I muttered. "It's hard for him to talk about."

  "How could you love someone who was capable of something like that?" asked Gordon. He sounded genuinely puzzled.

  "How do I know this video is even real?" I asked. "Jason didn't tell me that anyone survived. Maybe you guys just made it up. Maybe you got some chick to tell some bogus story."

  "So he didn't tell you much about it at all," said Noah.

  "Maybe he even lied to you," said Gordon.

  No. I didn't think he'd lied. Why tell me anything about it at all if he were going to lie about it? If he were going to lie, wouldn't he just have lied and said it never happened? That didn't make sense. And what I'd said was true. Jason hadn't talked to me about the evening in detail.

  I shook my head. "Or maybe you're lying to me," I said to them. "After all, you've lied to me before. You lied to me about who our family was. You've tricked me and betrayed me and captured me and tied me up. Why in the hell would I trust you?"

  "We're your family, Azazel," said Gordon. "We're bound together. You may not understand everything we do, but we do it because we want the best for you."

  I snorted. "Right," I said. "You keep trying to turn me into a vessel for an ancient demon so I can commit murder. That's totally the best thing for me."

  "That's the best thing for the world, Azazel," said Noah. "Jason is evil. I don't know why you can't see that. He's a being who lives only for destruction and pain. He delights in harming others. He has no regard for human life. The idea of my little sister being under the influence of someone like that is driving me crazy. Yeah, maybe tying you up has been a little extreme. But this is an extreme situation. We're talking about the fate of the human race here."

  I gazed at Noah in disbelief. "You really believe that junk? You really believe Michaela Weem?" I looked at Gordon. "You really believe it too?"

  "Tradition, Azazel," said Gordon. "This is the way of our family. We can't abandon our roots. It binds us together. It makes us who we are."

  "Michaela Weem is a prophet," said Noah.

  "Jason's not evil," I said.

  "You've seen him kill people," said Noah.

  "Only to protect me," I said. "Only to protect himself."

  "And the girls in the sorority house?"

  "He didn't kill any of them," I said. "That girl didn't see him kill any of them either."

  "So you do believe the video is genuine?" asked Gordon.

  "No," I said. "I don't. I don't know what I believe. But I know that I trust Jason more than I trust the two of you."

  "You trust Jason?" said a voice. It was Jude. He was standing in the doorway with Lilith, whose hands were still tied behind her back. "That's why you and I went to that party in Bradenton, then, right? Because you trusted him so much."

  I looked at Jude. "It's not the same," I said.

  "If he was lying to you about Lilith, then he might have been lying about anything," said Jude.

  "Nothing was going on between me and Jason," said Lilith.

  Jude laughed. "Oh, tell the truth, Lilith. Or are you afraid your friend Azazel won't like you anymore?" He paused. "Oh, wait. I forgot. She already hates your guts. What have you got to lose really?"

  "That is the truth," said Lilith. "Nothing was going on."

  I swallowed. "What about that conversation I heard you two having? What were you going to show Jason? What did you show Jason?"

  Lilith rolled her eyes. "Jesus, Zaza. We're being held against our will by crazy people in the middle of nowhere, and you're worried about whether or not I flashed Jason?"

 
"You flashed Jason?" I repeated.

  Lilith pressed her lips together.

  "Ready to see some more?" asked Gordon.

  "More?" I said.

  It went on for hours. Gordon and Noah had more videos. Testimonies from people in two other incidents. One Jason had told me about. A gang war that the Sons had ordered him to be a part of. One that Jason hadn't. It involved vigilante-style justice carried out on a gang of bank robbers who'd slaughtered all their hostages. The robbers had escaped a jail sentence because of a technicality. In the videos, faces stared bleakly into the camera. They described Jason. He was always wielding a gun. He was always calm. He was never sorry. According to the testimonies on the videos, Jason was a cold and efficient killer. However, I did have to note that none of the testimonies featured a person who had actually witnessed Jason killing anyone. And none of the testimonies were about Jason working alone. Still, there were chilling similarities. According to several people, Jason had surveyed the dead bodies with a smile on his face. Jason also seemed fond of herding people in one place and explaining to them why they were being killed. Whether he actually did the killing or Hallam did wasn't clear. I told myself it didn't matter.