Servant

by J. S. Bailey

  “Which one do you think it is?”

  “I don’t know. We could check them out one at a time.”

  Bobby feared that if they chose to go to one specific house, it would be the wrong one and they would barge in on innocent renters who would then call the cops, preventing them from reaching the other house in time.

  Phil fell silent. Then, “Is that intuition of yours telling you anything?”

  “Only that we’re all kind of in a bit of trouble.”

  “I don’t think anyone would need your ability to figure that out.”

  “Sorry.”

  “If we had your car, we could have split up. I take a peek at one house while you do the other.”

  The very thought of investigating one of the houses by himself made Bobby’s chest constrict with fear. Even though he had longed to become Rescue Man during his prepubescent days, in truth he was no hero. If he barged his way into the place where Lupe was imprisoned, he would end up dead, too.

  “Bobby?”

  He jerked his gaze up to discover that Phil was analyzing him with his stony gaze again. Heat washed over Bobby’s face, and he said, “I wish I could help, but I don’t think there’s anything I can do. I can’t control my premonitions any more than I can control the wind.”

  “It might be that way now, but it doesn’t have to stay that way.”

  “What do you mean?”

  A smirk tugged at the corner of Phil’s mouth. “Even the most gifted person has to work to refine whatever it is he or she’s been given. Try to focus and clear your head, because we’re running out of time.”

  Bobby forced himself to count to ten before speaking. Phil was the only ally he had right now. He couldn’t afford to say something that would widen the rift between them again. “I know we are, but I honestly don’t have a clue which house they’re at.”

  A pleading look entered Phil’s eyes, and his jaw tightened. “Bobby, please listen. When I was a kid I had a knack for patching up people’s cuts and scrapes and helping relieve their pain by touching and praying over them. I couldn’t always control it. But I practiced as much as I could, and by the time I became the Servant my ability had been honed so well that I could even bring back some from the brink of death.”

  “Why can’t you do it anymore?”

  “That’s something we can discuss another day.” Phil placed his hands on Bobby’s shoulders. “Look at me.”

  Bobby didn’t want to, but he did anyway.

  Phil gave him a piercing stare, and for some reason Bobby had the sudden impression that Phil’s antagonism had not been a manifestation of dislike at all, but one of intense and constant worry buried deep inside the former Servant’s psyche. “I need for you to relax. Can you do that?”

  The amount of adrenaline coursing through Bobby’s veins would have had him doing cartwheels if he knew how to execute them. He shook his head.

  “Then close your eyes.”

  Bobby did as he was told and took in a ragged breath. “Sometimes when I try to relax I pretend I’m on a beach.”

  “Then do that.”

  “Now?”

  He heard Phil let out an irritated breath. “If you don’t think you can do it, I’ll help. The waves are rolling in. The sun is out, warming you through and through. You’re lying in a beach chair. A pretty woman is sitting next to you laughing at something you’ve just said.”

  His mind immediately conjured an image of him and Carly lying in the chair together.

  Bobby reached up and gave the collar of his shirt a nervous tug.

  “The gulls are flying overhead. The waves are still rolling in, lapping against the sand. You’re becoming more relaxed and you’re sure you’re about to fall asleep right there with that pretty woman at your side. There’s nothing wrong in the world. Everything is going to be okay. You and everyone you love are safe.”

  Even though Bobby found Phil’s version of the mental exercise to be somewhat silly, he felt some of the tension leave his muscles. He cracked a grin. “Sounds nice.”

  “That’s because it is. Now keep your eyes closed. I’m walking you over to the couch, and you’re going to lie down.”

  Bobby allowed himself to be led to the couch. He sat down on its edge and eased himself onto his back, settling into the cushions as comfortably as he could.

  “You’ve never been at peace like this,” Phil continued, his voice becoming as gentle as the waves Bobby imagined lapping on the shore of this imaginary beach. “You feel as though you’re floating on a cloud. You’re at peace. And if you listen very closely, you can hear the voice of God himself saying he loves you and everything will be fine as long as you keep listening and trust in him.”

  Bobby hadn’t thought it possible, but he could actually see himself on the beach as if he were there that very moment. He wasn’t even sure if he heard Phil’s voice anymore—it seemed to have melded with the sounds of the cawing birds, the salty breeze, and the rolling surf. But no matter. He was at peace, dream or not, and everything would be okay.

  “Bobby?”

  He looked up out of the beach chair. The sky overhead was a deeper blue than any he could ever remember. Carly had vanished. A heavyset man stood over him now, but since the sun hung in the sky behind him, he appeared as a featureless silhouette. “What?”

  “I need you to listen to me.” The voice held a hint of familiarity, but unlike the gravelly voice of Graham Willard, this one brought him an inexplicable comfort.

  He squinted to try and see better. “I’m listening.”

  “You’ve got to have faith.”

  For a moment Bobby felt bewildered. “What are you talking about?”

  “You may have faith in God, but you’ve got to have faith in yourself and your abilities, too. You were a mess when I died. You couldn’t stand the thought of harm coming to anyone you knew again.”

  Bobby felt tears roll down his cheeks as he realized the identity of the speaker. “Dad? Is this heaven? I don’t understand how—”

  Ken Roland cut him off. “Your pain let you develop a gift you can use to help people. You’ve got to have faith that your gift will save others when you need it to the most.”

  “But I don’t—”

  “Promise me!” His voice became pleading—a tone Bobby had never heard the man use in life.

  His father’s seriousness unnerved him. “Promise you what?”

  “That you’ll do exactly what Phil Mason tells you. He knows what he’s talking about. Right now Randy and Lupe need for you to trust in him.”

  His father was asking him to do the impossible. “But I don’t know how to do it. What am I supposed to do?”

  “Have faith, Bobby. That’s all we ask.”

  Bobby’s anxiety returned for an unwanted encore. He just had to believe he could use his ability to find Randy and Lupe, and he would be able to locate them?

  “Promise,” his father repeated. He took a step forward, and his facial features came into view. His eyes were two deep pools of wisdom, and he was smiling.

  Bobby felt a slight boost of confidence. “I—I promise.”

  And with that, the beach and Ken Roland vanished, and Bobby found himself staring at the white ceiling of Randy Bellison’s living room.

  Phil had taken a seat in a chair across from Bobby, still watching him with utmost curiosity.

  Bobby willed his body to return to that peaceful state. Randy hadn’t broken his promise to Graham, and likewise he felt it would be wrong to break his promise to his father, even if the man had only been a figment of his imagination brought on by Phil’s hypnotic words.

  He imagined his limbs were turning into jelly. He slowed his breathing.

  All he had to do was believe. How hard could it be?

  Harder than not believing, that was for sure.

  I’m going to find them.

  His mind tried to rebel against him. The clock was winding down to zero. Even if they left for the right house this very moment, it mig
ht already be too late. The houses were both miles and miles from here. They could get pulled over for speeding. They could suffer an accident along the way and be killed, injured, or severely delayed in reaching their destination.

  No. I’m going to find them.

  He pictured both Randy and Lupe in turn, even though he’d barely been acquainted with the latter. They would die unless Bobby jumped in and saved them like a skinny-armed Rescue Man who had a kitchen knife as a weapon and no cape.

  All at once, a strange revelation blossomed in his mind.

  “Well?” Phil asked.

  “I don’t understand,” Bobby said, trying to decipher the information he had been given by the unseen power that had aided him so many times before. “They’re at both houses.”

  “I find it hard to believe that both Randy and Lupe have developed the ability to be in two places at the same time. Try again.”

  “No, no, I don’t mean that. I mean one of them is at one house, and the other is at the other house. But I can’t tell who’s where.”

  Blood drained from Phil’s face like watercolors bleeding out of a wet canvas.

  Then Bobby understood.

  Graham had no intention of reuniting Randy and Lupe.

  He had led Randy into a trap.

  LUPE HAD been shut away for centuries.

  At least that’s what it felt like. Graham had bound her wrists with zip ties, and they dug into her skin. Fortunately he hadn’t tied her to anything, so she was free to walk around in the space as she pleased. Granted, she couldn’t reach out and catch herself if she should stumble over something, so she took baby steps. Might as well measure the place while she waited for Randy to arrive.

  The wall in which the door had been set measured roughly fifteen feet across. She leaned her full weight into the door to test the strength of the latch holding it closed, but it only gave a fraction of an inch. She would need to be the size of a bodybuilder to break it.

  She tried to count her steps as she traveled along the next wall, but she tripped over an item that had been leaning against it and fell. Something clattered to the floor. A tool, perhaps? Maybe a shovel.

  She blanched. If it was a shovel, Graham might have used it to bury some of his victims.

  Lupe completed her circuit of the building, encountering several other tools and even some crates along the way. Her initial thoughts had proved correct. This building was much too small to be a barn. Graham only used it to store equipment and prisoners.

  Suddenly a memory flashed in her mind. When she tried to break the window in the mudroom, she had noticed a shed sitting a distance away from the house, but that information had borne no significance to her at that moment so she had forgotten about it.

  It probably didn’t mean anything. Lots of people had sheds at their houses. You had to have some place to stick your mower and four-wheeler and murder weapons, right? And for all she knew, Graham might have sheds at all of his houses.

  She sat down on the floor and rubbed her head against the wall to try to get the blindfold off. It bothered her that Graham had made her leave it on. After all, what did he have to hide?

  “COME ON. Let’s go.” Bobby rushed to the door, Phil close behind him.

  “Are you going to remember where those houses are?” Phil already had his key out and passed Bobby as he dashed to the parked Taurus.

  Bobby had taken mental snapshots of the satellite-view map and committed the addresses to memory, so he was good to go. “Yeah. You?”

  “I think so.”

  They clambered into the car and fumbled with seatbelts for a second before Phil jammed the key into the ignition. They tore off down the long driveway so fast that gravel sprayed out from under the tires.

  “We’re stopping at my place so you can use my other car,” Phil said. “I’ll take the house on Route 89. You can take Hidden Valley. And try not to do anything stupid.”

  Bobby nodded. The fact they were going at all might have been seen as stupid by some. Who were they to come to the rescue? Despite the fact that Phil obviously had a concealed carry permit, Bobby had the feeling that the man was no more qualified to locate and free the couple than he himself was.

  The registered nurse and the rookie janitor. A superhero team certain to strike crippling fear into the hearts of evil men.

  Bobby didn’t want for him and Phil to split up, but they had no other choice.

  He shivered.

  Bobby’s heart had taken up occupancy in his throat when Phil whipped the car into the driveway of a well-kept ranch style house that was by Bobby’s estimation only about a mile from the rental bungalow he’d already decided to move out of as soon as this ordeal concluded.

  It made him sick to think he’d been funding Graham’s twisted lifestyle for the past year. It seemed as if fate had latched onto Bobby’s life with twisted fingers and turned it into a macabre joke. Here you go, kid—a nice little house that has everything a guy like you could have asked for. Too bad you’ll be helping a serial killer pay for his groceries.

  Phil left the engine running and went into the house, returning moments later with a different key. Bobby got out and took it from him. “Where’s the car?”

  “Hang on.” He leaned back inside the Taurus and punched the garage door opener clipped to the sun visor.

  An archaic Buick Century with flaking blue paint sat inside the garage waiting to be used. Bobby climbed inside, hoped it wouldn’t die on him, gave Phil a solemn nod, and backed out.

  As he pulled onto the street, the garage door closed and Phil followed him.

  Bobby displayed the zoomed-in Oregon map inside his head and pictured the ancient Buick as a tiny blue dot marking his position. He was traveling northeast out of Autumn Ridge when Phil got stopped at a light somewhere behind him.

  He couldn’t worry about Phil. The man could take care of himself.

  The town limits soon gave way to forest, and the homes he saw grew further and further apart. Isolation, whispered a voice. The place where no one will hear your screams.

  He’d gone four miles into the evergreen forest when the tapping began.

  It started as a single pebble that pinged against the windshield. Bobby assumed it had been kicked up by the vehicle in front of him so he gave it no more than a passing thought.

  Half a minute later, it happened again—but the other vehicle had pulled so far ahead of him that he didn’t see how it was possible for the second pebble to have been flung from beneath its tires.

  Fear nearly loosened his bladder when he realized just what it was he heard.

  Though part of him longed to shove the pedal to the floor to get to the house as fast as he could, he eased off of it a bit and allowed the other car to disappear around an upcoming bend.

  Tap. Tap-tap.

  “You can’t scare me!” he said through clenched teeth as he struggled to focus on the road.

  He began to understand why the unseen entities might be trying to frighten him. Something evil must have been watching him with hidden, baleful eyes; maybe even for years as they’d done with Joanna. When he went to Randy for the job interview, the spirit or spirits had not liked it. They tried to scare Bobby away from the man, and it had very nearly worked.

  The fact that they didn’t want the two to meet up seemed to imply that his and Randy’s paths had been destined to cross for the greater good, whatever that might turn out to be. The spirits had tried to scare Bobby away a second time by flinging rocks and cans at the bungalow, but their plan backfired when Bobby chose to confront Randy about the “poltergeists” by showing up unannounced at the guy’s house.

  And then Caleb vanished, making Bobby go to Randy again since he had nowhere else to turn. Strangely, Bobby had heard no sign of the evil spirits from the moment he’d discovered Caleb’s absence. It was almost as if his roommate had taken the spirits with him.

  Until now. Now they were trying to stop him from reaching the house where either Randy or Lupe was prisoner
.

  Some larger pebbles sprayed against the windshield. Bobby did his best to ignore them. Keep his eyes on the road, that’s what he needed to do. If he maintained his current speed, he could be at the house in twenty minutes.

  What could it all mean? Why would the evil spirits—the demons—want him to stay away from Randy? Did they not want an outsider to find out about the Servants? Randy’s job was to free people from demonic possession, and Bobby supposed that no evil spirits would take kindly to that.

  But what did any of that have to do with him?

  As he steered the Buick through another bend in the road, a strange revelation hit him.

  If evil spirits had taken it upon themselves to cause him harm and distress, then conversely there would be good spirits in the world whose job was to protect him.

  His missing roommate’s face flashed briefly in his mind.

  Bobby was so startled he almost lost control of the wheel. No. Caleb was a human being. He didn’t talk much and kept to himself and liked to read about quantum mechanics. If . . . if an angel had been living in his house for the past year, wouldn’t there have been more Bibles and fewer textbooks lying around?

  Yet Caleb arrived in his life just when Bobby needed him to. He had been there to offer unbiased words of support. He kept his distance, but he was always there.

  Heck, he had even gotten Bobby his new job.

  And then he disappeared. And then the evil spirits had seemingly taken a vacation, too. Could Caleb have been working to fend them off for the past few days? If so, where was he now?

  The barrage of pebbles ceased, but now something knocked around like a hammer under the hood. It didn’t mean a demon was trying to ruin the car. The Buick had to have been at least twenty-five years old. This might have just been its time to break down.

  The temperature gauge showed a slowly overheating engine. Maybe the car was leaking coolant all over the road. He looked in the rearview mirror, but the dwindling lanes behind him looked bare of telltale drips indicating a leak.

  He wished he’d paid more attention when his father tried to teach him how to take care of a car.