* * *
The kids were still awake when Charlie watched the eleven o’clock news. The top story on Channel Six: “Late Wednesday night, five men suspected in the murder of Shaundra Warner barricaded themselves in a warehouse on Memorial Drive when police arrived to arrest them. All five perished in an blazing inferno.” There were few details, only footage of the fire.
Charlie was still staring at the screen open-mouthed when the anchor moved on to the next story and a camera cut to a familiar landscape. “Our Forsyth County saga continues,” reporter Trent Brown solemnly intoned. “Earlier today, Sheriff Allan Burch announced the discovery of the skeletal remains of a man and either a horse or mule. Currently, GBI investigators are working to exhume the bodies, believed to have been there for several decades. While Burch says no positive identification is possible at this time, he told us that lawmen were acting on a tip from someone who had read the controversial bestseller, American Monster, which means it’s possible that they have found the remains of John Riggins, a black farmer allegedly lynched by a mob in 1937. Isaac Cutchins, the man author Charles Sherman has accused of this crime, was found dead in his home a week ago. Cutchins’s death, originally believed to be a suicide, is under investigation. More as it develops.”
The newscast cut to a picture of the book’s front cover, then the shallow grave and a section of an unearthed skeleton. Wyatt looked up at the TV and sang out, “Dinosaur bones!”
“Time for you to go to bed,” Charlie declared. He turned off the TV and herded the kids to the bathroom to brush their teeth.
After they were tucked in, Charlie went out on the fire escape to be with the trains and that distant glimmer of Tawny. He tried to collect his mashed-up thoughts. Tomorrow he would leave this place, taking with him a laptop computer, an overpriced painting, his wardrobe, some books, two new kids, and not much else. What would happen after that, he hadn’t a clue. Hopefully, each day would bring less pain. But no matter what, he had to endure, because people counted on him.
He heard a noise and turned to see Romy inside, comically splayed out against the plate glass, cross-eyed, nose bent up, nostrils flaring. He laughed and slid the patio door open.
“Sing to me,” she said.
He scooped the girl up and carried her back to her mat. Wyatt was already asleep. Charlie knelt as she crawled into her sleeping bag, shifting his weight away from his right knee. When she was properly snug, he sang, though it came out as more of a croak:
There was a man in our town, and he was wondrous wise;
He jumped into a bramble-bush, and scratched out both his eyes.
But when he saw his eyes were out, with all his might and main,
He jumped into another bush, and scratched them in again.
Her dark eyes shining, Romy touched the bristly scar on his left cheek and brushed his black eyepatch. “You’re Brambleman.”
“I guess I am.”
“I love you.”
“I’m glad.”
“Do you love us yet?”
“I suppose I do.”
“It’s about time. I’ve been waiting for hours.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Loud, insistent rapping woke Charlie. He rolled out of bed and limped barefoot across the cool concrete floor. Endure. Before he reached the door, it opened and a surly, mannish-looking woman stepped inside, holding her key like a weapon. She froze him with a glower and dropped an orange five-gallon bucket filled with cleaning supplies at his feet.
“Your face is beat from shit,” she declared.
Satalin’s Eastern European cleaning woman. He knew her slightly, having declined her services in January after Satalin’s next-door neighbor told Charlie, “We think she’s ex-secret police.” And now she returned triumphant and vengeful on this, the day of reckoning.
“Excuse me, but—”
“You must go now,” she said, scouting the loft with narrowed, suspicious eyes. “And what are those?” she said, pointing at Wyatt and Romy, both now awake and blinking in fear at the strange and terrible creature. “Checkout time is ten o’clock.” She gave Charlie an evil laugh.
He groaned, then looked at the clock. “Hey, it’s not even—”
“I joke, I joke. Checkout time is now. Don’t worry. I give you half-hour before I throw things out.”
The effects of his concussion lingered. He had a headache and felt a heavy-handed stupidity controlling his thoughts. By Charlie’s reckoning, he had fifteen hours left on his lease, but he was no match for the cleaning lady. Fortunately, he’d already packed up. Wyatt and Romy, accustomed to quick getaways, dressed and threw their stuff, virtually all of it new, in their sleeping bags. To honor the occasion, Charlie donned his monogrammed shipping department uniform, a gift from Barbara Asher—so he’d know who he was. Lately, he hadn’t been so sure.
They fled her toxic brew of ammonia and bleach mixed together. Charlie packed the trunk and front seat of the BMW. (So little to show for being rich!) He threw the kids’ backpacks on the rear floor, then walked them into La Patisserie for breakfast.
Charlie ate a Danish. Amy fretted over his ruined, swollen face and was surprised to hear Romy call Charlie “Daddy.”
She whispered to Charlie, “Weren’t your kids white last time?”
“Yes,” he whispered back. “Go figure.”
Amy turned away, then pivoted back toward Charlie, her pretty face a picture of puzzlement. “So you’re their father?”
“Long lost,” he said, nodding.
“But now you’re found.”
While the kids busied themselves with coloring books, Charlie got a refill on his coffee and pondered his changing fate. Realizing it might be a long time before he returned, he bought another Danish. Halfway through his second cup, Amy came hurtling out of her office and flopped her chest over the counter, urgently beckoning him. “Charlie! You need to see this! I heard them mention your book.”
He stepped around the counter and squeezed into a tiny office decorated with clipboards hanging everywhere, positioning himself so he could watch the kids and the ceiling-mounted television at the same time. The set was tuned to Channel Six, with a “Breaking News” graphic running across the bottom of the screen. He heard helicopter rotors humming and saw the aerial shot of an upscale house by a lake.
Charlene Guy held a cellphone as she stared into the camera. “We’re talking with a neighbor who says the house belongs to Marie Hastings. Apparently a family member is also in the house.” Speaking into the phone, she said, “Mrs. Pilson, you’re on air. Can you tell me if anyone else lives there?”
“Her son,” the woman said in a slightly muffled, high-pitched voice. “They call him ‘Momo.’ He’s in trouble with the law a lot. This may have something to do with him.”
Momo’s monster pickup sat in the drive. The heli-cam panned to show a black-helmeted deputy run in a crouch to take a position behind a stone wall. Other SWAT members advanced on the house like ants on a picnic basket.
“Thank you. Please hold a moment,” the morning news anchor said, then addressed the camera: “According to the Forsyth County Sheriff’s Office, deputies were attempting to deliver a murder warrant in the death of Isaac Cutchins this morning when they were fired upon. Since then, there’s been a standoff, and our source reported that just a few minutes ago, a single shot was fired, apparently inside the house. SWAT members look like they’re setting up to enter the house—”
“Charlene,” said the reporter in the helicopter. “You can see smoke coming out under the eaves of the house.” The camera zoomed in. “I see flames now. The house is on fire.”
Then came a voiceover from Charlene Guy: “We’re just had a report of another gunshot.”
Charlie groaned. Amy touched his arm and said, “Do you know these people?”
“Yes.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“It’s Judgment Day.”
“That’s harsh.”
“Yes.” He stared
at the screen and watched flames quickly spread as black smoke roiled out from under the eaves. “Yes, it is.”
He took a step back. “I can’t watch this anymore.”
After he said goodbye to Amy and promised to come back for Danish someday soon, Charlie slipped out with the kids. He buckled them into their safety seats and traveled down Memorial Drive, stopping at the Holy Way House to inspect the damage from Wednesday night’s fire. Charlie had seen the news coverage of the inferno that wiped out the gang of cutthroats responsible for nearly killing him. Up close, the scene was terribly stark. The warehouse and other buildings on three sides of the church and the Hunger Palace had burned to the ground, and their ruins were now wrapped with ribbons of fluttering yellow tape. Redeemer’s church and the Hunger Palace had escaped the flames unscathed and looked like they had risen from the ashes of the surrounding destruction. He briefly considered going inside to retrieve Romy’s and Wyatt’s things, then decided against the idea, especially since they didn’t want to be there and neither one cried out for anything they’d left behind.
* * *
When Charlie exited the hospital’s elevator with Romy and Wyatt, he sensed something was wrong. The ICU nurse’s station was deserted. The floor seemed unnaturally quiet, even though he could hear unseen people talking and a far-off voice over an intercom speaker. A hard chill stronger than any air conditioning raised goose bumps on his arms, and the hallway was filled with static electricity. A glance through a window revealed storm clouds rolling in. He smelled deteriorating body functions vying with disinfectants, and to top it off, a whiff of the street. Trouble was near.
Wyatt frowned and said, “Something’s wrong.” Charlie glanced at Romy, who wore a serene expression. The poor little girl had no idea of the danger she was in. He hesitated, considering the threat to the children from the supernatural being who hated them. But Susan was in danger, too, and there was no safe place for the children or for him. At least here, they were in public—and close to an emergency room.
“No fear,” Charlie muttered.
“No fear,” Romy echoed.
Charlie scooped up the girl, grabbed Wyatt’s hand, and quickened his pace. A shadow fell from Susan’s room, forming a puddle of darkness on the hall floor. In Room 330, a man in a cleric’s collar hugged an old woman, patting her back as she cried on his shoulder, both of them oblivious to the unearthly presence next door.
Charlie braced himself and walked into Room 332 with his new kids. Trouble was sitting in the aqua chair, wearing a battered tan jacket, reading a book Charlie recognized: Dog Heaven. The trickster was pallid, with dark circles under his eyes. The room smelled of rank sweat and decay. Well, the old death-dealer had been working overtime. What was it—ten people killed in the past week? Charlie couldn’t keep track. The storm clouds were overhead now. There was a flash of lightning, followed by an understated boom—subtle, compared to what he’d seen and heard before.
Without taking his eyes off the book, Trouble said, “I love happy endings, don’t you?” He pantomimed wiping a tear. When he glanced up, he recoiled in the chair like he’d been tased. “Oh no you didn’t.”
Wyatt whimpered and pulled on Charlie’s hand. “Stand behind me,” Charlie told him, and the boy stepped backward into the doorway. Romy stared at Trouble wide-eyed, unblinking.
“Well, that explains what happened the other night,” Trouble said, shaking his head in sad amazement. “I thought maybe it was you, but I was giving you too much credit, as usual.” He looked at the book in disgust and tossed it aside. “I was going to tell you I killed your dog, but we’re a little beyond jokes, I see. Kill the dog, kill the bitch. Get it? No? Humph. I wondered why your wife—she is still your wife, no?—was so remarkably resilient. She was supposed to writhe in agony, then die. I was just getting ready to try again when you dropped in. Now I can see that ain’t gonna happen. Everything makes perfect, horrible sense.”
Not to Charlie. He glanced toward Susan, who wore a troubled expression in her sleep. He listened to her breathing, a wonderful sound, since she was off the respirator. Then he noticed that Trouble was tense, gripping the chair arms, looking like he would spring and attack.
“Yeah, I wondered why she wouldn’t die,” Trouble said, relaxing a bit. “Right when she was supposed to flatline yesterday, they took her off the critical list. Now I’ve heard about the miracle of modern medicine, but that was just contrary to nature. It was also a personal insult. So I had to see for myself, come in and—what’s the opposite of jump start?”
He stared Charlie in the eye. “Now I know. You went and got yourself some kryptonite. Let me guess. You claimed her as your own.” He glanced at his bare wrist. “I’m guessing you locked it down yesterday at nine-fifty-eight a.m., give or take.”
Confused and unsettled, Charlie took a step back. He’d told the caseworker that Romy and Wyatt were his right around ten o’clock, of course. It was beyond belief to think—
“I’ve been trying to destroy her since she was born,” Trouble said, pointing at Romy. “Always thought we had a shot, with no one to claim or protect her except the whore. And you, a fool of the major sort, latched onto her. I lost some of my best minions the other night.” Trouble narrowed his eyes, then shouted, “Unlike you, they do as they’re told! I said, NO COPS! And you had to change the locks. They couldn’t get in … well, too late now.” He shrugged. “Then again, you never were a minion. More of a mistake, you ask me. But maybe I just don’t get it anymore.”
Seeing Trouble frustrated was quite amazing (and gratifying) to Charlie. Was it possible that he was now powerless? “I thought you’d be up in Forsyth County, supervising the mayhem,” he said.
Trouble waved off the idea. “Oh, they didn’t need me for that. The Cutchinses were bound to self-destruct once you exposed them like rats to light. Turned on each other. Tantie Marie informed on her brother and sister. Her son killed her and burned down the house while he was still inside. Tried to shoot himself, but he missed. Too bad. He burns. By the way, that firestarter trait is genetic. You can’t teach it,” Trouble said, sounding like a proud father.
“Are you saying the whole family was in the house that burned?” Charlie asked.
“Oh, no. Your mother-in-law will die in jail. I know that breaks your heart.” Trouble let out a little chuckle. “By the way, in case there was even the tiniest bit of doubt in your mind, she’s the one who paid to have you killed. Twice. And the man you call Uncle Stanley has embezzled just about all the family’s money, abandoned his wife for his mistress, and boarded an airliner bound for parts unknown—to the authorities, that is.”
Charlie’s eyes narrowed. “You’re not going to blow up the plane, are you?”
“You think I’m that clumsy?” Trouble held up his hands and twiddled his fingers. “I’m more of a surgeon. Or a maestro, I suppose. These things are orchestrated, more or less.” He shrugged and wagged his head to the side. “You’ll be interested to know what happened to Momo was an answer to Kathleen’s prayer. Really unspeakable, what he did to his mother, even for my tastes. Again, it’s a family thing.” Trouble sighed. “Kathleen would have had her vengeance, too. But you had to set her up to die happy,” he said with a sneer. “All because of that little piece of fluff you edited. And then you cut her and her heirs and assignees out of the real deal on the work in question! Unbelievable. You broke the deal—”
“Some deal. More like a trick.”
“—and made your own worthless life forfeit. Yet there you are.”
So he could have kept all the money from Flight and should have shared the royalties on Monster. What a bunch of hair-splitting nonsense. He suspected Trouble of running a rogue operation or just ad libbing everything.
“Here I am.” Charlie shifted Romy to his left arm. “Though not exactly in one piece. What about Susan? What about Beck and Ben?”
“Well, you saved them, thanks to your dumb-luck stunt with the little whore-child. If it were up to m
e, well … I shouldn’t even say. I never could figure you out. Believe me, it was bothersome, watching you mess everything up. Takes a certain kind of … well, it’s not easy to do what you did and survive, let alone get in line for a promotion.”
“A promotion? I almost died the other night.”
“You still don’t get it. And you may not get it.” Trouble looked to the ceiling and held up his hands in exasperation. “That is what is so amazing about you. You stumble around, and … somehow succeed. You were supposed to share that money for the Cutchins book, but noooooo … you break a deal under penalty of death and go out and get yourself a bodyguard and a Beamer. Hardly original.”
“The bodyguard was a fake.”
“Everything about you is fake! From your footnotes to your industrial chic hairstyle, you’re a fraud. How ya gonna teach the little whore-children to do right when you got no standards yourself, eh?”
“Watch your language,” Charlie growled.
“Shut up. I’m tellin’ a story.”
“Don’t you talk to my Daddy that way,” Romy said.
Charlie thought he heard Susan say something and turned his head toward the bed just as Trouble charged forward, his fist raised, shouting, “Your mother is a worthless bitch, you insolent little whore-spawn!”
There was a whump, then a loud POP! Charlie was knocked backward. His legs buckled and he barely kept on his feet. Romy started to fly off his shoulder, and he tightened his grip to keep her from sailing away. A loud buzz filled the room, along with an acrid cloud of smoke that stank of ozone and burnt hair.
Charlie turned to look at Romy. Her eyes were on fire with anger. It took him a second to realize that Trouble was pinned between the top of the window and the ceiling. Whimpering, with his hair on fire. He tried to put it out with his hands as he slid down the glass and fell on his face. Charlie was awestruck. The girl had her smite on.
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