“Sooner or later, they’re going to get in,” Clay told him. “We need more than a knife to defend ourselves.”
Peter nodded and reached into the pocket of his bathrobe. “I didn’t really give the .38 away.” He revealed the silver revolver, small and cold-looking in his palm.
“That’s good. But I’m not sure if bullets alone are going to stop them.”
“How can bullets not stop them?”
Clay was still forming a reply, when they realized Essie had quit pounding.
There was a moment of truly unsettling calm. Before—
Watch out! a voice hissed at his back. Boyle’s voice. Drifting through the central-air vent near the ceiling. Clay, watch your back!
Clay swung around. Davis Karney was running down the hall at him, hands held out. One blackened, the other skeletal. He was still naked, the charred muscles flexing, the half-nub of his scorched penis bobbing as he charged. Clay barely had time to lift his arms before Karney tackled him. His legs struck the Rickenbacker’s case and he keeled backward over it, Karney tumbling with him.
Peter screamed at the sight of the intruder, angry and terrified.
In the stark light of the foyer, the rock star’s face was worse than imaginable, greasy with pus that leaked from the burn scars. His strangling fingers were irrepressible. Clay grunted in revulsion as his own fingers sank all the way to Karney’s wrist bones.
The blackened hand covered Clay’s face and sealed off his airway. “Gonna get that tongue of yours,” Karney promised. And inside his exposed throat, the vocal cords jumped like the strings of a piano. “Gonna eat it up right in front of you—”
A loud crack shrank Clay’s eardrums. A bullet tore through Karney’s skull.
Peter had the gun pointed inches from the burnt man’s head. And if Karney had been a mortal being, or even a staggering zombie, the slug would have ended him. But Karney, whatever he was now, was neither. He stuck his pinky into the exit wound in his forehead with child-like wonder.
The gun cracked again and Karney’s right eye—the milky, acid-fried one—burst like a rotten grape. A piece struck wetly against Clay’s cheek.
But the rictus grin never left the scalded face. He leapt off Clay and went for Peter. Clay snatched at one of his ankles, but Karney tore it loose—he wasn’t anything but jellied flesh and brittle bone, and yet his strength was twice any living man’s.
Peter got one more shot off—Clay heard it burrow uselessly into Karney’s torso—before Karney was jerking his father’s wrist violently upward. The snap was unmistakable, as was Peter’s low moan at the sight of the .38’s barrel pointing ceiling-ward while the rest of his arm was held straight out.
Karney shoved him against the stairs and would have pounced had Clay not seized a strip of hospital gown, melted and fused into Karney’s back, and slung him across the foyer. Karney’s body weighed next to nothing and he went flying, slamming headfirst into the door.
Essie slammed the door back, furious. “Goddammit, open!”
Karney sat blinking at Clay with his good eye. Then he reached up and threw the lock and chain before Clay could reach him. The door gave and Essie was inside, still in her nightgown, spattered with mud and grass—and a pinkish discharge that appeared to be leaching from the fatal wound Annie Strafford had delivered to her chest. To Clay, she looked beyond dead now, her skin as pale as cottage cheese, eyes sunken and jaundiced. Her stare rolled hatefully toward Clay, then to his father, her sugar daddy, who had been little more than a peripheral player in all of this, and yet who’d dared to stand in her way at a pivotal moment.
The sight of her finally broke the old man and he began to weep. Clay tried to get in Essie’s way, but she swatted him easily aside. His already-battered body rebounded off a console table and crashed to the floor. Essie stood over Peter, gripping his chin between her fingers like she was scalding a shitting dog. “When I tell you to open, Petey, you do it, goddamn you.”
“Rocco!” Clay called hoarsely. “We need help!”
“He’s isn’t going to help,” Essie told him.
“He’s scared shitless of our master,” Karney added. “Always has been.”
Essie’s hand dropped to Peter’s gun hand and held it delicately, mother-hen-like. Peter was in pain, but had come to accept the warped reality confronting him in his house. Perhaps he imagined that he was still upstairs, Essie peacefully asleep at his side as he moaned and tossed his way through this nightmare. Gritting his teeth, he lifted the carving knife off the stairs and held it under Essie’s chin. “Keep away from my family.”
“Oh my, no,” Essie spat. “Hell no. You use me, have your fun with me, lock me out—now you want to gouge me like that little bitch gouged me?” With her free hand, she yanked down on her neckline, exposing her left breast and the deep, red gash of the wound beneath. “My dearly departed momma warned me about dating lawyers.” She gave Peter’s broken wrist a squeeze and he yelped in pain. “‘All they’ll want to do is screw you. One way or the other.’”
The razor point of the blade shook under her chin. “What are you?” Peter asked. Pleaded.
Essie clamped down harder on the broken bone and Peter screamed. “Essie, God!”
The knife fell away.
She grinned and seized his wrist with both hands, squeezing, squeezing. “No!” Clay shouted, just before the bloodcurdling crunch. Peter’s forearm collapsed under the pressure. His body shuddered and his eyes rolled up to whites.
“Yes! Do the same to his throat!” Karney screamed. “Make his hot-shit son watch!”
And Essie tilted Peter’s head back, started to go for the exposed Adam’s apple.
But she was interrupted by guitar strings.
When Essie had shoved him aside, Clay assumed she would continue her onslaught, and he had pawed at and lifted the Rickenbacker’s case to put something between them. Except Essie had beelined for Peter, blinded by her rage, and Karney seemed content to stand back and bask in her violence. That was when Boyle had spoken up, whispering close to Clay’s ear: There’s a better way to fight them.
And Clay did as he instructed, popping the case and removing the guitar—repaired and intact now, the fire-glow paint more vibrant than ever. Don’t draw attention to yourself, Boyle warned, but as Clay strapped the Rick on, he’d witnessed his father’s pain-racked face, Essie crushing his bones to powder, and he’d rushed forward, meaning to swing the stringed axe like a literal ax. Instead, he struck an invisible force halfway across the foyer—Boyle, standing between him and the staircase. Play something, he said. Something repetitive.
Clay took a step back and strummed the strings, praying they were in tune. They were, sort of, and their twang drew Essie immediately off his father.
Quickly!
Backing up, Clay finger-picked the strings, playing the three open notes that had lured him to the Generator at the start of all this. Thrum-Tum-Tee… Tee-Tum-Thrum…
Essie stared over at Karney, and he back at her.
Boyle moved alongside Clay. The ghosts that intrude here, he sang, picking up the rhythm, bring no malice or fear here. The ghosts that intrude here bring no malice or fear here. The ghosts that intrude here—
“—bring no malice or fear here,” Clay crooned. “The ghosts that intrude here…”
His attackers looked suddenly off-put, helpless against this simple incantation. Music soothes the savage beast, Boyle reminded him.
Clay walked backward so he didn’t have to turn his eyes from the dead intruders. They matched him step for step like trained monkeys on a leash.
“The ghosts that intrude here…”
Take them outside. The tool shed burnt with the Generator, but a bunch of tools survived. They’re piled in the yard. There’s a battery-powered chainsaw….
Clay weighed the implication of such a statement. How long would it take to drop the guitar and gather a chainsaw? Would Boyle take over playing? Or would he lift the disembodied saw and give the starte
r a yank for him? Chanting, Clay didn’t have the luxury to ask.
As he Pied-Pipered Karney and Essie forward, Boyle slide the kitchen table away from the back door with a screech. “The ghosts that intrude here bring no malice or fear here…” Another backward step. Another. Almost out of the house. “The ghosts that intrude—”
“What the unGodly fuck?” Back down the hall, William Priest had appeared, his face purple with rage. “Is everyone hypnotized by this asshole?”
Essie managed to snap out of it first, plugging her fingers knuckle-deep into her ears and shaking the incantation out of her head. Karney, more susceptible to a good tune, followed Clay’s lead for another few paces until Essie plugged his ears—no lobes anymore, just holes. Shit, Boyle said.
The spell broken, Karney and Essie stared guiltily back at Priest. “Well?!” Priest shouted, so loud his voice broke. “Get the motherfucker!”
Clay quit playing and unstrapped the Rick. “A little help here, Roc.”
Okay, here goes, Boyle’s footsteps thudded against the floor, charging directly at Davis Karney. And the burnt man was struck by Boyle’s unseen force, the same way Boyle had once struck Clay, trying to leap into him. Only this time, the outcome was different. For a moment, Karney was jerking and spasming like a man who’d stepped on a power line. Then he was still again, his single eye blinking. He lifted his skeletal hand and regarded it, as if for the first time.
Essie snarled and started for Clay—and Karney seized her by her feral hair, bringing her to a cold stop, her long nails inches from Clay’s face. “What the fuck are you doing?” she hissed.
“The orders changed,” Davis Karney said. In Rocco Boyle’s voice. He tossed a skeletal finger at Priest. “Now we’re gonna kill that son of a bitch, and fast before he scurries off.”
“You’re not Karney,” Essie realized. “You’re—”
“The ghostly prick you’ve been tryin’ to talk to,” Boyle replied.
Essie went for him, but Boyle/Karney still had her by the hair and he heaved her down the hall with such force that Priest had to dodge her sliding, tumbling body. Boyle regarded the hair that had ripped from her scalp—so much of it, he appeared to be holding a wig—then shouted for Clay to “Go for the saw!”
And Clay knew Boyle was right. But he had been on his heels, in retreat, for so long that when Boyle charged back into the foyer, Clay couldn’t resist going on the offensive too, screaming, “Yeah, fuck you, Priest, fuck you!”
It was a mistake. Essie gathered herself and was ready for Boyle. Screaming, she dug her nails into the sagging meat of Karney’s pectorals and turned his momentum against him. He went crashing into the wall, cratering it. And Karney may have possessed impossible speed and strength, but Boyle had picked the wrong body to leap into. It was no match for Essie’s more-intact physique. She tore violently at his face, stripping wet flesh from dry skull. And then, with the precision of a judo champion, she stepped into Boyle/Karney and flipped him over her hip.
Something in his ribcage broke on impact and the mini-amp tumbled loose from his body.
“Es!” Clay called.
“Look out,” Priest warned, but not quickly enough.
Essie turned, and Clay swung the Rickenbacker like a Louisville, smashing her nose back into her face. The foyer seemed to echo with the sound of shattering teeth. There was no blood, but her days of walking into a supermarket without terrifying children were over.
Clay reached back to brain her again and her arm shot out, striking the Rick’s neck with enough strength to knock it away. Clay’s arms were still moving forward, his mind just registering that his axe was no longer in his grip, when she seized his torn shirt and slung him against the wall.
Boyle/Karney started to drag himself from the floor, but Essie put a stop to that, delivering a crushing kick to his bare groin, then pinning his throat with her foot. All Boyle could do was grunt and writhe under her. “How many rock stars does it take to handle one angry lady?” Priest laughed behind her. “Ruin him, Essie. Like how you were told.”
Essie seized Clay’s jaw. With her other hand, she stuck the web of flesh between her thumb and forefinger under Clay’s nose, lifting his head and simultaneously pulling down on his jaw. To get my tongue, Clay realized desperately. And he did what he could to prevent her, wailing on her with both fists.
Essie wouldn’t be denied though.
His lips parted. His teeth unlocked. Her fingers violated him, seizing his tongue in a swift pincer grip.
“We’re going to remove your voice, boy,” Priest explained, “then both your hands. How will you be a rock god then, hmmm? Before long, you’ll wish you could hang yourself.”
Clay’s wide eyes watched Priest, taking such pleasure in his demise. There would be no bargaining here, no second chances. No vocalizing. No guitar playing. Could there be anything worse?
And then Clay saw there could. Because at that moment, a figure stepped into the open doorway.
Savy.
30
NOW THAT WE’RE DEAD
Priest turned to her, not the least surprised by her presence. “You made it.”
His fingers snatched Savy’s arm and drew her inappropriately close. Savy did not protest. She met Clay’s stare with a withering rage. He had ruined her band, her family’s chances—now she was going to watch the beasts tear him asunder. And it was too much for Clay, the one thing his mind could not handle. His struggling hands slowed. His body went slack. His biting teeth loosened against Essie’s invading fingers.
All she had to do now was yank and it was over. Clay hung there, waiting for the inevitable rip, the screech of his own blood-filled shriek.
At the same time, Priest was noticing something else, something Savy was holding behind her thigh. “What have you got there?” he asked, petting her head.
And Savy lifted the object for him to see.
It was an old bottle. With clumps of dirt clinging to its ocean-smoothed glass. Glass that was cold and frosted under her grip. Just like—
Suddenly Clay understood. Her withering rage wasn’t meant for him.
Savy reared back and hurled the bottle at the wall over Clay’s head. The glass exploded and cold shards rained down. Essie flinched, her fingers lost their grip on his slick tongue, and Clay shoved her backward over Boyle/Karney’s prone body.
Next second, a fierce gust of wind blew past Clay’s face, racing to the far wall, dislodging a painting there. It rebounded, slammed the front door closed, rebounded, and struck the railing on the stairs hard enough to crack one of the balusters. The rapid motion reminded Clay of a pinball shot from its launch, the chaotic physics of thrust meets mass.
“What the fuck did you do?” Priest demanded, grabbing the back of Savy’s neck.
Savy knocked him violently away. “I sealed my fate,” she told him, “and yours with me.”
The gust struck the foyer mirror, one of Peter’s prized heirlooms, and there was another bright explosion. “Deidre!” Savy shouted. “If you want the ones responsible for you and Rocco—here they are! The smashmouth in the nightgown and the dickhead in the suit!”
Priest, finding himself outnumbered, told Estelle, “New plan. Kill ’em all!”
The gust rebounded again and struck Essie with such force that she rose up on her bare toes, ballerina perfect. And like that, Essie was gone and Deidre McGee was there with them, screaming and clutching at her new face and hair. She reached down to lift a shard of mirror, regarding herself with honest amazement. Shocked to be sealed in flesh again.
Then her new eyes narrowed on Priest. “Dickhead in a suit,” she said, and Clay remembered her high, airy, angry voice all too well.
Beside her, Karney’s ruined body was dragging itself to its feet. His appearance didn’t stop Deidre from knowing him. “Rooster,” she growled.
“No,” Boyle told her. “Not Rooster.”
And Deidre/Essie’s jaw fell slack. Some of the stiffness went out of her spine. Her ha
nds reached up to touch Karney’s half-exposed skull. “Rocco? No—I was fooled before.”
“It’s me, darlin’,” Boyle assured her. “Amazing how easy it is to fly into a body with a tainted soul.”
“Holy crow, Roc,” Deidre/Essie snorted. “You look like total fucking shit.”
“You ain’t ready for no catwalk either, babe.”
They laughed together, a harsh discordant cackling that froze everyone else in the room. “Been looking for you,” Deidre said. “Feels like forever.”
“You should hate me,” Boyle told her. “I’m the reason you’re dead.”
“But you saved me long before that. You got me away from abusive parents and a town that was never going to accept me. When you died, I’d have died either way.”
Overcome, Boyle grabbed the back of Essie’s head, pulled her toward him, and they hugged fiercely, impassioned with the tactile feel of each other.
And Priest took the occasion to casually bolt.
“Hey!” Savy yelled.
Boyle and Deidre broke their embrace and went after him.
Priest made it as far as the empty fountain in the front yard before Boyle seized his tailored jacket and dragged him down. Priest kicked and punched as they fell upon him, but he was like a tantrum-throwing child in the hands of seasoned parents.
Clay joined Savy on the stoop. And in the harsh glow of the motion light, they watched in silence as one of Priest’s Italian loafers went flying. Deidre was yanking at his pants, while Boyle tore his tie off.
“Are you alright?” Savy asked Clay. Half her hair was still pinned up, while the rest hung madly around her face.
“I think so,” he said, flexing his wounded tongue.
“You’ll regret this!” Priest cried furiously.
“Yeah,” Boyle laughed, “it’ll take The Man ten whole minutes to find your replacement.”
He shredded Priest’s silk shirt, sending the buttons shooting across the lawn and into the fountain. Deidre pulled down his briefs. There was nothing underneath. Not hair or genitalia, not flesh or bone, or fire and brimstone. And when Boyle pulled Priest’s face away, ripping it like the cheap mask it was, there was nothing between him and Deidre but the night air and the clothing lying at their feet.
FAREWELL GHOST Page 34