Ultimate Supernatural Horror Box Set

by F. Paul Wilson

  “What if you’d been killed in the wreck?”

  “They would have taken me just the same. I just wouldn’t have been able to come back and make contact with the two of you.” He turned to Paige and patted her knee. “My darling, you wore that same look on your face when you were five. I see you’ve not let it gather dust.”

  “What look, Daddy?”

  “Like I’m bullshitting you.”

  “You’re saying that was you under my bed?”

  “Something went wrong on my return. It was my fault. I let myself get drawn to your energy instead of my shell at the hospital. I came to consciousness in your backyard. That thing is barely mobile, ill-equipped for earth’s gravitational and atmospheric demands. It was all I could do to crawl up the steps of your brownstone. I hid under your bed while you slept. The weeks I spent there, I was slowly dying. Desperate to find some way to reunite with my earth form.”

  “I thought you were a ghost. Or a demon. Do you have any idea of the hell you put us through?”

  “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to cause you pain. I couldn’t communicate with you, Paige. At least not like this.”

  “But you had this incredible power. There were times you were in my head. In my dreams. I couldn’t leave the house.”

  “I was trying to talk to you. I couldn’t let you leave. I needed you. I reached out to you the only way I could, but it was awkward—like riding a bicycle backward and blindfolded. In that form, the one Grant carried in here, I was so weak, so vulnerable, and running out of time.”

  “What did you do to those men?” she asked.

  “Think of it as installing a program. You see why I needed them.”

  “Will they have any memory of this?”

  “I imagine their experience will be similar to Grant’s.” Jim glanced at his son.

  “Like waking after a dream,” Grant said.

  “Exactly. And as time passes, the memory of it will fade away.”

  “You had them break into a hospital,” Paige said. “There will be—”

  “Consequences?” He smiled. “Are you really going to ask me if I’m concerned that four men who have been using my little girl will have some explaining to do? I would’ve done anything to be with the two of you again.”

  “A good man died,” Grant said. “Don.”

  “I know, and I’m sick about it. The others were vulnerable. Their guards were down when I broke inside their minds.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The region of the brain behind the left eye—the lateral orbitofrontal cortex—shuts down during orgasm. This is our center for reason and behavioral control. It gave me an opening.”

  Paige blushed deeply and stared at the floor.

  Jim’s eyes darkened. “I don’t know what happened with your friend. He was suddenly in the room. He saw me. I tried to make him leave, but I could barely get inside. It was just a handhold, but it devastated him. None of this has been easy or gone like I’d hoped. But we’re here now, aren’t we? Together again.”

  “You still have this power?” Grant asked.

  “Only to an extent. I’m still adjusting to life back in this skin. It’s awkward.”

  Paige held her head in her hands.

  Still staring at the floor.

  “But how do we know?” she asked.

  “Know what?”

  “That this is really you? Our father. We’ve been through hell the last two days. For me, it’s been even longer. Scared out of my mind. Thinking I’m going crazy. And then suddenly this?”

  “I know it’s difficult, sweetheart. I’m so sorry. But you know it’s me, don’t you? Can’t you feel it? Haven’t you, in some way that maybe you only now recognize, known it all along?”

  “Assuming everything you’ve said is true, what did you think? That after all this time, all you say you experienced, you could just come back and it would all be okay again? You were gone for thirty years.”

  “And yet to me it was only a month. I didn’t know what to expect, Paige. That’s the truth, and I didn’t care. I just wanted to be with the two of you. To make things right for us again. I know it’s been hard, darling.” He reached out, touched his daughter’s face with a trembling hand. “This isn’t the life I wanted for you.”

  Tears rolled down her cheeks, but she didn’t look away from him this time.

  “You could’ve been anything you wanted, Paige.”

  He turned to Grant. “And you’re coming apart on the inside, son. I felt it under the bed. Your rage. Your loneliness. The urge you sometimes have to just end it. You’re still that little boy and girl to me, and now to see you both grown and struggling like this ... it kills me.”

  “It hasn’t been easy,” Grant said. “We had no one.”

  “So what now?” Paige asked. “As you say, nothing went as planned. We’re in a big mess here, Daddy.”

  “I know, but I have a way to fix things.”

  The sound had been slowly building in Grant’s subconscious, and for the first time, he was aware of its presence.

  Jim had started to say something, but he stopped when Grant rose to his feet.

  “What’s wrong?” Paige asked.

  Grant moved quickly across the room to one of the windows that looked out across the porch into the meadow.

  The sound was the crunch of tires rolling over gravel.

  Sophie’s TrailBlazer emerged out of the forest and moved through the clearing toward the cabin. A few seconds behind, he spotted a white Chevy Caprice topped with a light bar.

  Didn’t even need to see the emblem on the doors.

  “What is it, Grant?” Paige asked again.

  “Sophie. And she’s brought along a Statie.”

  Chapter 42

  Loose gravel pinged the undercarriage of Sophie’s Trailblazer as it slid to a stop next to a black CR-V.

  A derelict cabin loomed straight ahead, surrounded by hemlocks.

  Front windows busted out.

  Too dark to tell if anyone was inside.

  Sophie killed the engine and watched the Caprice approach in the rearview mirror. When she’d asked for backup, she’d envisioned more force than one lonely Statie. Then again, what could you expect in the sticks?

  The Caprice pulled up beside her.

  She grabbed a fresh magazine from the glove box and climbed out.

  Slammed her door as the trooper stepped out of his cruiser.

  Crisp blue suit.

  Flat-brimmed hat.

  Tall, rail-thin, blinding smile.

  “Sophie Benington,” Sophie said. “So it’s just you?”

  “Trooper Todd. But Bob’s plenty. What’s the dealio?”

  “There was supposed to be a black van here. Three men abducted a fifty-nine-year-old patient from a psychiatric hospital in Kirkland. He’s violent. They brought him here was my understanding.”

  “In the black van?”

  “Exactly.”

  “And how did you come by this information?”

  “One of the other suspects called me when they arrived. That’s her car.”

  “What’d she do?”

  “I’ll have to get back to you on that.”

  “We gonna go say hello?”

  Sophie studied the cabin.

  Curls of smoke plumed out of the chimney and up into the branches.

  “I am.”

  “I got a shotgun in my trunk.”

  “This isn’t gonna end that way.”

  “No offense, ma’am, but that’s not always up to us.”

  “Why don’t you go around back. Make sure the van’s not there. Cover the back door.”

  “When do I bust in?”

  “You don’t. Not unless you see my gun. We clear on that, Bob?”

  He released the button snap on his holster, grinned.

  “It was a joke.”

  Bob high-stepped his way through the overgrowth and disappeared around the corner of the cabin.

  Sophi
e thumbed off the snap on her holster and started toward the covered porch.

  Mist was forming across the clearing.

  She’d been drive-off-the-side-of-the-road tired just moments ago, but now she was fully awake, all systems go.

  As she climbed the steps onto the porch, she remembered Grant telling her about this place. It wasn’t the rose-tinted family retreat she’d expected. Or the weekend fixer-upper Grant had played it off as. If it hadn’t been in the middle of nowhere, the county would have condemned it years ago.

  The front door stood open a half-inch, but she knocked anyway, her palm resting on her Glock.

  “Seattle Police.”

  She heard footsteps approaching.

  They stopped on the other side, but the door didn’t open.

  “Sophie?”

  He sounded so tired.

  “It’s me, Grant. Everyone okay?”

  “We’re fine. How’d you find this place?”

  “Who’s in there with you?” she asked through the door.

  “Just the three of us—Paige, me, my father.”

  “What about our other friends?”

  “Gone.”

  “Gone?”

  “Yeah, they left a little while ago.”

  “Would you open the door please?”

  Nothing happened.

  “Grant.”

  The door swung open, but it caught on the floor and stopped after only a foot.

  Grant looked burnt-out, confused, on edge.

  The dim interior trembled in the firelight behind him. Sophie craned her neck to see inside, but he blocked her line of sight.

  “Gonna invite me in?” Sophie asked.

  Grant took a step back.

  She squeezed through the opening.

  Eyes slow to adjust.

  Paige by the hearth.

  Old man who was a dead ringer for Seymour’s receipt portrait sitting on a disgusting couch.

  “This your father?” she asked.

  “Yeah. Hey, Dad, meet my partner, Sophie Benington.”

  Jim Moreton said, “A pleasure.”

  “Are you injured, sir?”

  Jim shook his head.

  “I was at the hospital,” she said. “I tried to stop those men from taking you. I’m sorry I couldn’t.”

  “It’s quite all right. I’m with my children now. How could things get any better?”

  “Your condition isn’t exactly what I expected,” she said.

  “He’s had a remarkable recovery,” Grant said.

  “I’m sorry, I’m just confused. Those four men kidnapped you from the hospital just to bring you back to the old family cabin. Didn’t harm you in any way. And once they delivered you here ... they just left?”

  Grant said, “Sophie, relax—”

  “I’m all done relaxing. I’m ready for answers now.”

  She moved past Grant into the gloom of the cabin, fixed her stare on Paige, said, “You called me here, honey, said—”

  Grant fired a look at his sister.

  “—you were scared. That the van was here, and you didn’t know what was going to happen. You asked me to come. I came. So could you or somebody at least extend me the courtesy of explaining what the fuck is going on?”

  Paige said, “Grant, I’m sorry, I didn’t know what was waiting for us in this cabin. You weren’t talking to me. Those men were here. I didn’t know what else to do.”

  Grant turned back to Sophie.

  “I wish she hadn’t done that.”

  “That’s all you got for me, partner?”

  “I wouldn’t know how to begin ...”

  She’d been simmering since her epiphany in Bothel, but with that, she felt it all boil over.

  “You asked me to trust you. I did. Now Art’s in the hospital with a concussion. Seymour’s injured. I’ve been shot at. You kidnapped me. And Don ...” She felt a tremor enter her voice, steadied it. “Just so you know, I called Rachel. Forensics is at Paige’s house right now.”

  Grant’s jaw had gone slack.

  “How is she?” he asked.

  “How do you think?”

  “I’m glad you called her. So ... what? You’re here to arrest me?”

  “I came first and foremost to make sure you and Paige were safe.”

  “And after that?”

  “To make sure you do the right thing.”

  “Which is ...”

  “Let me bring you in.”

  “Bring me in.” Grant smiled. “And how exactly do you see that playing out?”

  “I don’t know. It doesn’t matter. People are dead. Hurt. Missing loved ones.”

  “Face the music time, huh?”

  “Tell the truth. Tell your story.”

  “Nobody wants to hear my story. I’ve sat in that interview room for thousands of hours. I can’t ever remember wanting to hear someone’s story, whatever that even means.”

  “Grant—”

  “I wanted to hear something that would help me make a case. You look me in the eye and tell me I’m wrong.”

  She couldn’t.

  He continued, “Our job is not about finding the truth. We want someone we can hand to the DA so they can throw them under the bus. Order restored. Citizenry comforted. I know how this will go down, and so do you.”

  Grant looked over her shoulder through the space between the door and the doorframe. Of course he’d seen the highway patrol cruiser.

  She said, “I know you’ve been through a lot. I know you’ve seen things that don’t make any sense. I don’t even dispute what you’ve said. But it’s time. You know that, don’t you? And don’t you also know that I will do everything in my power to support you?”

  Grant looked at Paige, at his father.

  “I want this to be over as much as you do,” he said.

  “Then let’s end it.”

  “Not happening.”

  Everyone in the room turned to Paige.

  She stepped toward Sophie, away from the hearth. “Walk me through this, Sophie. You show up at the precinct with the three of us in tow. We roll up to the front desk where some tired kid who drew the short straw is half-asleep because it’s Saturday morning. He looks up from his Sudoku puzzle and sees you standing there with three suspects in handcuffs. Are we in cuffs? I don’t know how this looks in your head. And then Grant steps forward and says, ‘I’m here to turn myself in for the crime of’ ... what? What does he confess to? What’s he guilty of?”

  “Nobody said he, or you, or your father are guilty of anything.”

  “Then why are we with you?”

  “Because a man died. In your house. Because shit happened that has to be answered for.”

  “What if there are no answers? At least none that fit neatly into your playbook?”

  “Like I just told your brother, you will have my full support.”

  Paige was still moving toward Sophie, now reaching into her gray coat.

  “I’m sorry,” Paige said, “but that’s just not good enough for my family.”

  It was the last thing Sophie had expected, and she was utterly unprepared to react.

  One second Paige.

  The next second Paige with a gun pointed at her face.

  Grant spoke first.

  “Paige—”

  “She thinks you did it. Or I did.”

  “Did what?”

  “Killed Don.”

  “Of course she doesn’t think that. Put the gun down.”

  “I certainly don’t think that,” Sophie said, her heart rate escalating, the back of her throat threatening to close.

  “I don’t believe you.”

  Grant caught Sophie’s eye. “Please don’t do anything. Just give me a minute to shut this down.”

  He took a step toward Paige.

  “We’re leaving, Grant.”

  “Paige—”

  “I’m done. Two weeks a prisoner in my own goddamn home to have it end like this? To be treated like a criminal?”

/>   “Put it down.”

  “I didn’t do anything wrong.”

  Jim Moreton had begun the long, painful journey to his feet.

  He said, “Not this way, Paigy. It’s my fault.”

  “Stop it, Daddy. Grant, go take her gun away from her,” Paige said.

  “Paige, you draw down on law enforcement, you get shot. Put—”

  Sophie saw it a split second before everything went to hell.

  Everyone frozen.

  A tableau of ruination.

  Grant intense, lips together forming the P in “put” and leaning toward his sister, already on the balls of his feet, like he might be on the verge of making a play to stop this.

  Jim standing by the sofa, eyes on Paige.

  And Sophie herself, tongue grazing the roof of her mouth as she began to scream the word “no” because of what she had just glimpsed out of the corner of her eye—a tall, slim streak of blue standing in the kitchen behind the muzzle flash of a Smith & Wesson M&P40.

  Sophie was too late.

  Paige still had the gun trained on the center of her chest, eyes averted to Grant, and her face just beginning to screw up in pain as the bullet punched through a rib on her right side.

  The sound of the trooper’s gunshot filled the cabin.

  She smelled gun smoke.

  Paige dropped her gun and stumbled sideways.

  Her legs buckled.

  The trooper screaming at everyone to lay down, spread out their arms.

  Paige sat on the floor, her eyes narrowed, a perplexed expression expanding across her face like she was trying to come to terms with what had just happened.

  Grant knelt beside his sister. He was saying her name over and over as she lay across the rotting hardwood, eyes open, blood already beginning to pool beneath her, a line of it running a meandering course over the uneven floor toward Sophie.

  She hadn’t drawn her gun.

  Hadn’t moved.

  Todd started across the cabin toward the chaos, pushing Jim Moreton back down onto the sofa as he passed.

  There was a lot of blood.

  Too much.

  Oh God.

  The trooper coming around the sofa.

  Screaming at Grant to get down, screaming he was about to get shot like his sister.

  Grant’s arm came up.

  This time, she saw it happening. What was about to happen. Could have stopped it. Maybe. No. For sure. She could have stopped it by shooting Grant. She eased her Glock an inch up out of her holster, finger in the trigger guard, but she didn’t draw.