“I’ll do it,” she said. “I’ll do anything you ask.”
The Sorrow King breathed a deep breath and said, “Good.”
With a slash of one long sharp fingernail, he cut the rope. Elise collapsed onto the ground and he bent to remove the thing that suckled at her leg. It squealed with a very unhappy noise and the Sorrow King threw it against the floor causing it to erupt in a shower of blood.
“Rest,” he said to Elise.
But she had no intention of resting. She was going to lie here and wait. And when she could force her muscles to move, she was going to try and bring about the end to this tragic saga.
Twenty-nine
Blood Graffiti
On his way to the park, on his way to the water tower, Connor realized this Gethsemane was not the one he had turned his back on. He wondered how it could have changed so rapidly. He wondered how the anger, hostility, and despair that had been locked inside the suicides’ minds could have come spilling out, infecting the rest of the town. What he should have been wondering was: where were all the emergency vehicles? Where were the police? Hell, where were the SWAT teams?
The neighborhood was rife with violence. Something had erupted. The citizens had been snapped by sorrow. He didn’t have to think very hard, didn’t have to wonder very much to know that was what it was. The pressure had broken them. The strain, the constant fear had worn them down. It had beaten them. Shouts of pain and panic came from the houses. Neighbors attacked neighbors. He heard gunshots and cries . . . but no sirens. It was what he had always imagined the end of the world would be like.
Connor looked at the clouds.
Above him, there was a multilayered dark gray sky. Spirals of lighter gray came down from the darkness. An individual spiral swirled above every house as though the spiral connected it to the larger black mass of cloud. He wondered if there was one of those over his own house but didn’t think it even warranted looking back. He knew the answer.
Was that really the reason he had left? The anger, hostility, and violence these clouds were causing? Had he come out on the prowl, looking for whatever caused his son’s death?
He still didn’t really know if anything had caused his son’s death. But the spiraling clouds were not natural. Let strange things explain the strangeness, he thought. Given that Steven had written about clouds in his notebook and Connor was headed toward the water tower amidst these strange miniature tornadoes (maybe they were the Obscura) he didn’t think he was so far off track.
He had left the house with a mission and he couldn’t betray that now. Jesus, he was even thinking in terms of combat. He thought “mission” was typically a word reserved for religious zealots and marines.
There were other things he thought about on his way to the park.
Part of his mind kept going back to Steven’s autopsy report. He had read over the thing several times. There was only one thing that seemed unusual and he figured it probably wouldn’t be looked into that deeply because of the fact the death was a suicide. The report had noted multiple abrasions on Steven’s right index finger and that his fingernail had been partially torn away. Even though the report had come after his viewing of Steven’s body, he remembered how that finger looked. He hadn’t really paid much attention to the injury itself. What he had noticed was the shade of green highlighting the fingernail before it reached the part that had been torn away. Even in that time of blurry distress that color had immediately made him think of the park bench in front of the water tower. Now he wondered why he hadn’t mentioned something about that to Officer Bando at the time.
He had recognized the color right away but it wasn’t until later, sitting in the attic and trying to put things together that it had actually clicked. Of course it had something to do with the bench in front of the water tower. Wasn’t that where it had all started for Connor? That strange conversation with Ken that had spurred the later conversation with Steven. He remembered his disappointment at The Conversation, thinking not that many things had come out. Now he realized everything had been right out there in the open and both he and Steven had chosen to ignore it. It was worse than either of them could have possibly imagined.
Steven was right. Or maybe it was Alison who had been right.
One of them, be it Alison’s ghost or Steven’s hallucination, had predicted it correctly.
It had been less than two years and Steven was dead.
Connor turned the final corner before the park. He passed a house with an old woman lying out in the front yard, clutching her stomach and murmuring, “Oh God please stop,” as her husband towered over her, ready to land another kick. And Connor didn’t even contemplate stopping to help.
What was happening?
That was the question. All this time, that was the question that had plagued him. What was happening? And he felt like he was rushing toward the answer. He felt so close to finding out what was happening, what had been happening that a sense of giddiness flooded him. Would he really be around to find out what happened or would he be sucked into the madness if he wasn’t there already?
Ah, madness! That madness seemed to hold only death as the answer.
Once at the park, he did not run to the water tower as had originally been his intention. He no longer even knew what he could really do with it, anyway. Approach the door and start banging on it, hoping for an answer? And when none came—what then, was he supposed to tear it off with his bare hands?
Instead, he rushed over to the park bench, thinking of the green paint around Steven’s mutilated fingernail. A fresh bout of rain hammered down onto his head, the wind hurrying it along so it almost slapped at his skin.
There, on the back of the bench, something had been scraped into the wood and Connor knew it had been Steven, using his finger to do it. It was a message. A message or something like a message, etched into the soft wood.
This is what it said:
Over time, the Jackthief continued to thrive, becoming the Sorrow King, a more powerful evil for a more sorrowful time. And the landscape changed around him. The woods were taken down, suburbs replacing them. And while he had traditionally hid in the tallest tree in the woods, he now found other structures to hide in, structures that towered over the towns and the cities—skyscrapers, radio towers, cell phone towers, water towers.
That was inscribed along the top slat of the bench and, below that, there was more:
These are the names of the dead
And there was a list. A staggering list and Connor wondered how many of these people were dying around him, how many more would die while he stood here in the driving rain and did the only things he had ever seemed to know how to do—think and contemplate and read.
True, he was thinking but no longer was it an excuse for inactivity. Now, it was with a purpose.
He thought about the end.
He thought of a way to bring about the end.
Thinking of endings, he read the end of the list, the final name on the list thinking, if there was a final name on the list then there had to be a finale to the death. There it was. The name, barely legible in the wood, pushed there with what had been left of Steven’s fingernail:
Elise Devon
And there was something after that, even more illegible, but which Connor was pretty sure said:
Elise Devon must be stopped. Kill her and the death ends.
He couldn’t believe it. His instincts were right. They had led him here to this place and he now had an answer. He knew how to stop the suicides and all the senseless murders happening around him now.
Now that he had a name, he had to find this person.
Kill this person.
His heart raced as fast as his head. He suddenly, for the first time in his life, wished he had a cell phone so he could call information.
Yes. That was it. Information. He needed a phone. There had to be one around here somewhere. He never really had to use a payphone before, this close to his house.
Should
n’t a park have a pay phone? he thought.
Frantically, he looked around, finally spying something he thought could be a pay phone on the far side of the baseball field.
He took off running for it, dashing as fast as he possibly could. Reaching the phone in under a minute, he cursed his luck. The phonebook had been stolen. The dangling piece of segmented chain flattened him. With shaky hands, he searched his pockets for change. Luckily, he found two quarters and, hoping that would be enough, plugged them into the machine and dialed information.
The operator came on and asked him what city and state.
“Gethsemane, Ohio,” he said breathlessly.
“Go ahead,” she said.
“I need a listing for Devon.”
“Do you have the first name?”
“No, I’m sorry.”
“There’s an Albert Devon on Albany. A Marcia Devon on Royal. And a Buck Devon on Chicken Bristle.”
“Uh, uh,” he stammered. “Albert Devon, do you have the specific address?”
“1411.”
“Okay. Okay.”
“Would you like the number?”
“No. That’s fine.”
He slammed the phone down and took off running across the park again. He had never before felt like he had such a sense of purpose. He didn’t even know if he was going to the right house and he didn’t know what he was supposed to do with this Elise Devon if he found her. He hadn’t bothered getting information about the other Devons because the first one was the closest. And he hadn’t heard any of them named Elise Devon as he had hoped. If it turned out that wasn’t the one, then he guessed he would just have to go from there.
To walk would take nearly half an hour. He thought he could probably make it in less than ten minutes if he ran hard.
His heart hammered in his chest.
Did he really intend on killing this person if he found her? He had never even thought about murder before, figured that was usually reserved for psychopaths and soldiers, and now he was contemplating killing someone he didn’t even know. But if it would bring back Steven and stop the rest of the deaths then he figured that, yes, he would do it in a heartbeat. Never mind he didn’t have any kind of weapon.
Was he really doing this because he thought he could bring Steven back?
No, he told himself.
That had to be impossible.
People do not die and come back.
But he had once believed dead people did not leave behind ghosts and that belief had been shattered.
Like the belief that murder, for whatever reason, was wrong.
And that was when he knew he would kill this person if he found her.
Kill her to stop all the other names on that list from dying.
Steven had scraped those names in there as some kind of warning memorial and Connor wasn’t about to let all of that be in vain.
What if Elise Devon was dangerous? What if she was just waiting for someone to try and kill her? What if she was the Jackthief or the Sorrow King or whatever the hell he was being called now?
None of that slowed him down.
He saw the house, at least he was pretty sure it was the house, just across the street now. It was a house he had passed just about every day on his way to work. Sometimes there was a cute redhead standing out front, waiting for the school bus to come and pick her up. Maybe that was Elise, he thought crazily.
But insanity was in the air. It was nearly palpable. He was going to knock on the door and if she was there, he was going to tell her she had to come with him and if she refused he was prepared to take her apart with his bare hands.
He stood at the bottom of the porch steps, staring up at the thin funnel cloud swirling above the house. It hypnotized him, coming close to lulling him but, at the same time, filled him with a righteous anger.
He didn’t know why.
He didn’t even want to know why.
It canceled all rationale.
No. He didn’t want to know why.
He only wanted to make death.
Rain continued to beat down.
He walked up the wet steps and knocked on the door. There was a decorative brown wreath hung under the arching window. He knocked on the door again and heard some muffled shouts from inside. He stood and waited. He would not wait much longer. He was prepared to grab a rock from the garden and hoist it through the front picture window if he had to. Eventually, the door opened and a haggard-looking man stood in the doorway. He had a large black eye and a gash across his forehead. He stared angrily at Connor.
“Does Elise Devon live here?”
“That’s my daughter,” the man snarled. “I haven’t seen her in days.”
“Do you know where she is?”
The man sucked in a deep breath, pulled back his fist and hammered it into Connor’s nose.
Connor reeled away from the door, slipping on the steps and landing on his ass on the walkway.
“If you see her,” the man cried, “tell her to get her fucking ass back home so I can rip her throat out and staple her cunt to the wall!”
The man flipped him off and slammed the door. Connor’s first instinct was to grab the aforementioned rock from the garden and charge into the house, attacking the man as he had been attacked. Yes. He wanted to destroy this man. He wanted to kill him even though he hardly knew him. The rage was huge and blinding until he remembered his purpose.
Of course Elise wasn’t there, he thought. She was probably in the water tower because that was where the Sorrow King lived. It had to be where the Sorrow King lived. And it was entirely possible that she was the Sorrow King. He grabbed the rock, just in case, and began jogging back to the park.
Thirty
Fate
Elise staggered out of the water tower, the Sorrow King giving her a nudge as though to help send her on her way, to expedite her in her quest to seal both their fates. Although, once out of the tower, not even knowing she had been in the tower, she turned to look, desperate to know where that horrible thing had kept her prisoner. Desperate to answer at least that much of the mystery. Once she had turned around, she was surprised to see the water tower looming there in front of her. Hadn’t Steven told her something about dead people coming in and out of the water tower? And she thought he was just sharing ghost stories at the time.
It was almost like she had been pushed through the door of the water tower without it even opening. If it had been opened, it had shut impossibly fast and without making a sound. But there wasn’t any time to stand and wonder. There wasn’t even any time to take in the brutality around her.
She had to get to the Obscura.
On the playground, in front of the merry-go-round, a group of three teenagers had the ride filled with other children, gleefully spinning them around and shooting at them with a BB gun. The children on the merry-go-round cried out when the small copper pieces slapped their skin. Strangely enough, Elise didn’t even think about telling them to stop. She didn’t think about telling them she was going to call the police.
There was just too much happening around her. She felt overwhelmed.
And she had things she had to do.
She began walking home, not really knowing if she had reached some kind of decision. Her mind felt as battered as her body and, observing the chaos around her, she wondered if she might be better off surrendering herself to the Obscura for one final time rather than trying to somehow outrun or escape the Sorrow King.
He will find you, a voice said in her head. It was a voice she didn’t want to believe but knew that it spoke the truth.
She only had the trip home to think about it. That was all the time she was going to give herself. That was all the time she had. She knew she would not be able to defeat the Sorrow King.
The violence and insanity happening around her proved to her that everything the Sorrow King said was true. Well, maybe not everything but she believed him enough to know she wouldn’t be able to run away from him. She wouldn’
t be able to just hop in one of her parents’ cars and take off driving. Wherever she went, he would find her. Whenever she lost control of her thoughts, he would be there, waiting to creep inside of her head, waiting to enter the world through her head. No. She remembered that he didn’t even need her now. He didn’t need her head anymore. Now the only thing he needed was her body. Her body to be human.
She still didn’t know why.
She still didn’t understand.
Except, maybe she did.
She was, quite possibly, the one person in this town he could not kill. He didn’t need her simply because he could enter her mind. He had entered everyone’s minds. Every person who had died, she knew, the Sorrow King was responsible, sitting in their heads, telling them life was not worth living, telling them to die so they could plant a seed that would one day grow into a tree of sorrow.
He needed her because he was afraid of her.
Now she just had to figure out how to use that against him.
Besides, running wouldn’t solve anything anyway.
Maybe the whole world had gone mad.
The rain beat against the back of her head and she noticed these funny swirling cloud-type things above each of the houses. At first she had mistaken them for chimney smoke before reminding herself that it was June and no one built fires in June. Not in Ohio. Especially not every house in town.
Out of the rain, a man walked rapidly toward her. She found herself excited at first, thinking it was Steven. Thinking maybe the dead Steven she had seen in the barn and in the water tower had been another of the Sorrow King’s hallucinations. Another of his lies. But, while this person walked a lot like Steven, as he drew closer, she saw that it wasn’t Steven at all. It was someone else. Someone she didn’t recognize.
The Sorrow King Page 21