The guys escorted her out of the room while one of them called 911, though Kate already heard sirens. Finally, she felt tears, and blinked one of them on the piece of paper she’d gotten from Charlie. She couldn’t decipher the message right away. Then, when she did, her heart skipped. Right before he’d died, Charlie had reached for a pen and scratched out the symbol:
#
3.
“He was so young.”
“And so talented. Why do all the good ones die so young?”
“He OD’d, you know.”
“Shame.”
Kate had to get away from the rumoring voices. To hell with those judgmental assholes. She found solace outside, on the Lincoln Terrace.
“Are you okay, Katie?” Eva stood at the doorway. “You sure you want to be here?”
“I have to be here,” Kate summoned the strength to talk. “It’s Charlie.”
“No you don’t,” Eva got close and wrapped an arm around her. “It’s just a funeral. Charlie hated these things. He wouldn’t mind if you skipped out.”
Kate shivered, though the February morning was warmer than normal. She snatched the Virginia Slim from Eva’s mouth and took a drag. “You don’t believe what people are saying, do you?” she coughed and handed the cigarette back. “About Charlie…about how he died?”
Eva looked surprised, both by Kate’s partaking in tobacco, and by her cryptic question. “What am I supposed to believe? Listen, I’m sorry, but it looks like he really did die of an overdose. It was accidental, I’m sure.”
“It wasn’t an overdose!” Kate raised her voice. People inside The Old North Church stared. “It wasn’t an overdose,” she said, quieter, and turned away from the gawkers, letting her eyes travel along the Santa Monica Mountains. “And it wasn’t an accident.”
“What do you mean?” Eva sounded concerned.
She stayed silent for a long moment
“Kate?”
“It’s real,” she showed Eva the notepad. “I found this in Charlie’s hand.”
“What is this? What’s real?”
“The death number. It’s real.”
Eva stared at the piece of paper with unbelieving eyes. She shook her head and shoved the pad back into Kate’s chest.
“What is this bullshit?”
“It’s not bullshit, it’s the death number, and it’s real,” Kate wouldn’t let her sister go, though it was obvious Eva wanted to leave right then and there. Arms locked, Kate told her sister what Dean and Angelle had said about the number of times a person’s name can be spoken, about all the famous people who’d used their own names and died early. She said Charlie had started acting strangely after he’d learned about the death number, and he’d admitted he’d seen the sign, the number symbol. She even told Eva about the demon and its tiny minions. And, finally, she pointed again to the notepad with the symbol scrawled clearly in black, directly from Charlie’s hand.
She told her sister everything, and as she spoke, she noticed Eva seemed under a dark cloud. Her normal, carefree attitude changed immediately, turning somber and dark. Kate attributed it to the upsetting story, but it soon became obvious Eva was bothered by something else.
“Eva? What is it?”
She only raised her shoulders a little, wrapping herself in her own arms.
“Eva, something’s wrong. I can tell.”
“No. nothing. It’s just Charlie. That’s all.”
“In twenty-five years, you haven’t been able to fool me yet. I know something else is wrong. What?”
Eva fell silent and they both listened to a solemn version of Amazing Grace from the chapel pipe organ. Kate became more and more worried the less her sister talked. It just wasn’t like Eva to clam up like this.
“Did you listen to anything I said?” Kate tried again. “I said Charlie didn’t kill himself. Someone else did…something else—the death number.”
“No,” Eva sounded like a zombie.
“Yes, it was,” Kate seized her elbows and made her look. “The death number is real, Eva. Listen to me. We’re using our real names. People all over the world are saying our real names, and the more they do, the closer our death number gets.”
“Do you hear yourself,” Eva tore away. “Do you even have one inkling how absolutely insane you sound? There is no death number,” her voice said angry, but her eyes betrayed her dissent. Kate wasn’t buying her act.
“Why are you so quick to deny this?” she probed. “What’s going on? Talk to me—”
“NO!” Eva screamed. Mourners and wake attendees watched through the open doors. “This is CRAZY! There is no curse! We aren’t in any danger! Now, stop it!”
Kate grabbed her arms again. “I know you believe me. You’ve got to believe me. I have a feeling, an awful feeling about this-this curse. The death number got Charlie because he used his real name, and it’s gonna get us, too.”
Eva’s head seemed to float on her neck, a gesture she’d used since she was three to display her boredom. “And just what do you propose we do? Change our names?”
“I-I don’t know,” Kate stuttered. “I thought about that, but I have a feeling it’s too late. I think we’re gonna have to drop out of Hollywood altogether. Just get the hell out of acting and go back home.”
“Go back to what? To Spokane and work at the Looff? You want me to give this up? All of this?” she got close to Kate and lowered her voice. “I’m not gonna be scared off that easy. Curses and signs…for all we know, it’s just Dean and Angelle trying to eliminate their competition. You know how cutthroat this town can be. Those guys were trying to get you to quit, they were hazing you, Kate. Can’t you see that?”
“Then why are you so upset?”
Eva clenched her teeth. “Because I’m seeing my sister start to lose it, that’s why,” her eyes got watery, her chin quivering. “Kate, I’m so sorry about Charlie, but he wasn’t killed by some-some curse on his name. He died of a lethal combination of cocaine and prescription pain medication.”
Kate kept to her story. “I know what I saw. There was something in that room with him. They killed him, and made it look like an overdose, an accident,” she kept shaking her head. “I saw them. Eva, I saw them. And I know Charlie saw the sign before he died.”
“He saw the sign?” Eva shot her a desperate stare. “How do you know?”
“I could tell by the way he was acting,” Kate eyed her sister. “And I know he saw this,” she showed Eva the piece of paper again, with the number symbol etched so predominantly.
Eva studied it for a second time, and the more she looked, the more the erratic she breathed. She became so unhinged, Kate had to assist her to a chair. Halfway there, Eva tensed up, and Kate couldn’t budge her.
“NO!” she shrieked, putting an abrupt halt to the organ music inside. Hundreds of mourners, including Charlie’s own mother and father, sent dazed glances their way. “This is BULLSHIT!”
She stormed from the patio and down a grassy walkway toward the parking lot, where she was greeted by dozens of flashbulbs, shouting photographers, crazed fans, and a squadron of police doing their best to maintain order.
4.
Kate didn’t like the looks of the building the second she laid eyes on it. Graffiti-infested, paint chipping, tucked behind a strip mall like a bum in an alley. She checked the address, then checked it again. 500 South Alameda. This was the place. She smelled urine and wanted to walk right then and there. Then desperation took over, forced her to go on. She had to know more about the death number, and, supposedly, this was where the best psychic in all of California lived. She didn’t believe it. The homeless sleeping in the street, the rundown cars. It looked more like a place where she’d find rats and syphilis, not a renowned clairvoyant.
She stepped past piles of maggoty trash, bikes with twisted, flat tires, and discarded wine bottles, and located Number Six. A knock on the door produced nothing. She heard a TV inside, blaring some kind of game show, a contestant squealing, an a
nnouncer declaring her victory. She knocked again, louder, and the TV fell silent. Then the door cracked open and a tiny eye peeped at her. The deepest, brownest eye Kate had ever seen.
“Is your mamma home, sweetie?”
The door opened a little more. Kate saw the child’s entire face, and it shocked her. The whole right side of the girl’s body was scarred heavily, in some places to the point of being grotesque.
“Who is it, Sunshine?” a woman bellowed from somewhere in the back of the apartment, a sparsely decorated place bursting with packed cardboard boxes. “Who’s there?” the woman had an uneasiness in her voice, as if she was in a great deal of pain.
“I’m K—” she stopped herself, unwilling to say her own name out loud. “I was told to come here…by Dean Bow.”
“We’re not doing any more readings! For anybody! I don’t care how famous you are, or how much money you have! Just go! Leave us alone!”
“Please, ma’am. I need your help. My friend was killed by some curse, a curse on his name…the death number!”
The girl took Kate’s hand and tugged her inside, putting her finger to her lips and telling her silently to be quiet.
“Sunshine? What are you doin’? I told you no! Don’t you help that woman!”
The girl smiled in brazen disregard to her mother’s vehement wishes. Kate argued with herself over the child’s age. Ten? Twelve? She hunched her shoulders and sorted through a shabby, antique trunk, finding an ornate yet ragged trinket made of feathers and teeth and bone.
“Sunshine!” yelled the woman. Kate got the feeling the lady couldn’t move. She pictured a bedridden soul, sentenced to a miserable, slow, living death. “Baby, please! Don’t do this! Mamma’s begging you, child! You can’t do this! Not again! You’ll kill me! Honey, you don’t understand how much it takes out of your mamma!”
“Is…is she okay?” Kate sat on the floor.
“Mamma’s okay. But you’re not,” the girl placed her charm on the trunk lid and stared at it. The thing looked like a Native American dreamcatcher, only it had a distinct African vibe. Carved animal faces, richly-colored fabrics, exotic plumage.
The woman moaned stridently, rattling Kate’s molars. Kate felt a freezing wind, only it was inside, beneath her skin. The girl seized the charm and shook it hard while the woman cried out in terror.
“NO! Go away! No! Sunshine! Make them go away!”
Kate uncrossed her legs and stood up fast. She ran to the hall and peered down. Two doors, both on the right. She knew the bedroom was the furthest, but didn’t want to go. She had to do something, so she took a nervous breath and started toward the bedroom when Sunshine grasped her hand.
“Stop! Don’t go in there!”
“I have to! Your mother’s in trouble! Can’t you hear?”
Kate grabbed the doorknob and her palm scorched instantly. Not from heat, but cold. Severe cold, so bad it gave her instant freezer burn. The woman cried something, her words slurred, her speech unintelligible. Kate had precious little time. She wrapped her hand in her shirtsleeve and tried again, this time managing to twist the knob and force her weight into the door, opening the pathway into hell. That’s what it looked like. Kate halted, every vein in her body turning to ice at the sight of dozens of dark little monsters clinging to the walls, darting across the ceiling, dangling from the curtains, crowding the floor.
The heaviest concentration of the malicious beasties was on the queen-sized bed, where, laying with her arms crossed over her chest, was a rotund woman. The monsters had her pinned, clinging to the mattress with their claws. Others crawled over her like parasites, gnashing their enormous and fanged beaks, drooling a thick, gelatinous ooze.
“Oh my God!” Kate screamed, then covered her own mouth when, all at once, each of the tiny creatures turned its attention toward her. A roomful of eyes, glowing yellowish-red, staring, pupils widening into fiery circles. One of the slithering, filthy vermin raised its slovenly skull and let loose a hungry roar. The others, in a macabre chorus, joined it, raising the cacophony to a fever pitch.
Sunshine walked past Kate, and the scraggly, demonic pests squirmed away like cockroaches in the light. Scurrying to the nearest corner, they congregated and cowered and squealed anxiously as Sunshine held up her amulet, swaying it side to side, and humming a little happy tune Kate knew she’d heard before.
“Good girl, Sunshine,” her mother panted. “Tell the bad things to go. Tell them all to go back to where they belong and leave your mamma alone.”
Sunshine walked to every corner of the room, humming and singing, smiling and giggling, as each and every one of the tiny monsters struggled and writhed in place. Popping and snapping little tumors rose from their skin, bubbling and boiling until they looked like lumps of shapeless tissue. Then they vanished in puffs of dust, and the room was silent and still. No more evil little monsters, bent on savage murder.
Kate fought to catch her breath, watching the beautifully scarred girl scurry to the bed and lay her hand over her mother’s forehead.
“Mamma, you’ll be fine,” Sunshine stroked her arm, but the lady would have nothing of it.
“You get out of here!” she pointed at Kate, her fingernail chewed to the nub.
“Mamma, I can help her,” Sunshine pleaded.
“No! She’s brought us enough trouble. They all have. We don’t do anymore readings for actors or writers or musicians. You especially,” she looked Kate directly in the eye with a bloodshot stare. “Your number. It’s almost up, and there’s nothing you can do about it.”
“I can do something, Mamma,” Sunshine sounded confident. “I can help her.”
“I said no!” she sat up, coughing into a handkerchief. Then she screamed the loudest yet. “Get OUT!” Kate backed away. “We don’t want you! We keep moving so you people won’t find us…but you keep finding us! Now get out before I call the police! GET OUT!”
5.
Kate never watched much TV, but she needed to unwind and take her mind off everything. It all seemed so unreal, she considered the extreme possibility it had been a figment of her own imagination, her subconscious, desperate for an explanation to Charlie’s otherwise unexplainable death.
She flicked on the set, and immediately wished she’d left the remote alone. The giant screen came alight with her sister’s likeness, complete with a headline about her stormy departure from Charlie’s funeral.
“Oh my God,” she realized the implications. People, talking about Eva, saying her name aloud, bringing her closer to the death number. Then Kate saw her own name on TV, along with video of her entering Forest Lawn Memorial Park. She hated the paparazzi now more than ever.
She hit the mute button on the remote and the TV went silent. The whole place went silent. Then her backbone erupted in ice pellets at a sound coming from the other side of the apartment.
She sat straight. Her guest bedroom, the one where Charlie had been killed—something, someone was in there. Talking. Kate didn’t know what was being said, but, as she got closer, clinging to the walls and inching toward the guestroom door, she recognized one voice over the general din of a large, yet subdued gathering. Charlie.
“Charlie?” she flung open the door. Could it be? Was it all a horrible fantasy, and her best friend was still alive, in her guest bed, calling for her? “Charlie!”
But when she stepped inside, she didn’t see her Nourison Persian rug, her Reilly-Chance window treatments and matching bedspread, her Louis XVI vanity, or her 18th century Bordeaux armoire. Instead, she saw the entrance to a majestic cathedral with high, vaulted ceilings and rows upon rows of pews, occupied to full capacity, by people wearing black gowns and suits, all heads pointed to the floor.
The door slammed closed behind her. Quite on instinct, she tried retreating to her apartment, back to some semblance of sanity. The organ music, somber and slow, beckoned her nearer, awakening inside an involuntary need to obey. Step by step she went, up the center aisle, past the dozens of mourners, sitti
ng in silence.
She looked closer at the faces. Those faces. She identified many of them. Patrick Swayze…Jim Morrison…River Phoenix…Brandon Lee. Then, as she neared the first row, she saw Charlie, his expression quiet, restrained.
“Charlie?” she found a place in his welcoming arms. He embraced her, but remained wordless. “Aren’t you happy to see me?” she stared. His eyes were unresponsive. He didn’t look at her. His attention, like everyone else’s, was fixed straight ahead, at the coffin.
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