[Anthology] The Paranormal 13- now With a Bonus 14th Novel!

by Dima Zales

  I finally managed to get myself clear of the bodies. I lay there on my side, gasping and retching. Williams nudged me with his foot. I looked up at him. He was just a vague silhouette against the starlit sky. I absolutely hated him.

  “Do not fuck with me, Ryder. Not again.”

  He pulled me back to the van and ran my cuffs through the ring again. We drove. I lay there, shocked and exhausted. That terrible smell was in my hair and on my clothes.

  I was too afraid to ask again about Justine. Justine could deal with her own problems.

  It was some time before it occurred to me that he hadn’t killed me.

  When Williams dragged me out of the van a second time, it was at Callie McCallister’s house. Unbelievable. I could not imagine two people who seemed less likely to hook up.

  He frog-marched me up the walk. As we approached the front door, Callie opened it. At first she looked apprehensive. Then, when she recognized me, she looked frightened.

  “No. No, no, no. We can’t shelter her. The order’s gone out.”

  She blocked the door with her body. I expected Williams to shove her aside, but instead he stopped a respectable distance away.

  “Let us in, Callie. I’ll explain.”

  He spoke with the kind of gentle, soothing tone a parent would use to calm a scared kid.

  Amazing. I wouldn’t have thought he had it in him, even for the purposes of manipulation.

  “John, this isn’t a good choice.”

  Williams said, “Callie. Trust me.”

  Callie stared at him for a long while, then nodded slowly. She stood aside.

  Williams only took me in as far as the foyer. Callie closed the door and edged around me, wringing her hands nervously. Williams leaned down and growled “don’t move” in my ear. Then he took Callie’s elbow and led her farther into the house for a private conversation.

  Williams couldn’t see me, so I risked looking around. The house was a rambler with an open floor plan, so I could see much of the living space: a large living room to my left, with a dining area just beyond. The kitchen was straight ahead of me. Beyond the kitchen, I could see a den with a fireplace. The bedrooms must be down the hall to the right.

  The place was extremely clean and orderly, which didn’t surprise me. It was also really nice, which did. I’d never thought about what Callie’s house might look like inside, but if I had, I’d have predicted a wall of kitschy porcelain shepherdesses, some Jesus paintings, and a bunch of lace doilies. It wasn’t like that at all. The furnishings were simple and modern, very tasteful. Lots of pale colors and wood tones. It was nicer than my place, that’s for sure. Mom’s decorating had been less Scandinavian Designs, more St. Vincent de Paul.

  I stood there, not moving, until my captors came back. Williams told me to go with Callie. She looked nervous but gave me a tentative nod and headed down the hallway. Just as I went to follow her, Williams caught my arm.

  “Do not hurt her.”

  I could tell from his tone of voice that this was a different category of forbiddenness than “don’t move” had been a few minutes earlier. The fact that he squeezed my arm hard enough to leave bruises added to that impression. As soon as he loosened his grip, I jerked away, heart racing. His touch was unbearable.

  Callie took me to the master bathroom. She told me I could shower, but that she had to stay in the room with me for now. She sat down on the toilet and discreetly looked away as I stripped.

  I turned the water on as hot as I could stand it and scrubbed myself. Then I stood there, letting it wash over me. Slowly, the muscles in my back and shoulders began to unknot.

  As my body relaxed, all the weirdness, disruption, and terror of the past few days came welling up. Oddly, I didn’t have a panic attack. Instead, I started crying and couldn’t stop. I just stood there and sobbed, minute after minute.

  Finally, Callie reached in and turned off the water, which had gone cold. She helped me out and dried me off, making cooing noises, as though I were a baby. She sat me down on the edge of the bed. By that point, I was so tired I could barely move. I was done. I let her put some sweats on me. They were warm and soft. Then she pressed me down into bed and pulled the covers over me. I slept like the dead.

  4

  It was early afternoon when I woke up. I felt better physically. A lot better.

  Mentally, things weren’t so good. I had to sit there and figure out what day it was: I’d fled Dorf Tuesday morning, returned Wednesday night, and it had been early Thursday morning by the time Williams had brought me to Callie’s. So, now it was midday Thursday.

  Shit. I was supposed to have been back at work today.

  I went to the bathroom and found that Callie had left a new toothbrush on the sink for me. I brushed and thought about my situation.

  First, a group of religious nutcases had kidnapped me and seemed to have some future plans for me that I probably wouldn’t like. Second, my sister-in-law was missing. And then there were some ancillary issues. If I didn’t show up for work, I was going to lose my job. I’d seen a huge pile of murdered people but didn’t know where they were, exactly. Williams was pretending to be an FBI agent, and the police chief seemed to be in on it. And news had no doubt spread all over town about my supposed involvement in some kind of meth operation.

  When I got to thinking about it, it was really a bit much. I felt the panic coming on, so I sat down on the bathroom floor and snapped my rubber band, focusing on my breathing. I had to calm down and figure out what to do.

  It didn’t work.

  Twenty minutes later, I lay on the floor, recovering from the attack. The cool tiles felt good against my sweaty cheek. I stayed down until the nausea receded and my heart rate slowed.

  Slowly, my ability to think came back. I tried again to consider the situation.

  It all went back to the two weird photographs and the interest they’d generated. If I could convince Williams and Callie that I didn’t go around photographing “hell-spawn,” maybe they’d cancel their plans for me and let Justine go. Once Justine and I were safe, I could worry about the other stuff.

  So, how could I convince Williams and Callie that there was nothing demonic about the pictures I’d taken?

  The one showing the naked guy in front of J.T.’s should be easy: all I had to do was find that guy. No one could claim there was anything weird about the photo, then.

  But what about the monster foot? Unfortunately, I still hadn’t come up with an explanation for it myself. It looked so real. If I couldn’t explain it to myself, I’d never be able to convince others it was nothing special.

  I retrieved my toothbrush and finished brushing. Then I lowered the toilet lid and sat down to think about it. I wished I had the photo to look at. Damn Williams for taking it. I called the picture up in my mind’s eye, which wasn’t too difficult, considering how much I’d looked at it. I remembered how you could see the ankle tendons flexing.

  What if it’s real?

  I sat very still. Where had that thought come from? Of course it wasn’t real.

  I needed something to eat. I checked myself over. No piss or barf this time, thank goodness. Callie’s sweats were too short in the arms and legs, and too tight all over. I wasn’t a particularly big woman, but I wasn’t tiny and delicate like her. Whatever. I was covered.

  When I opened the bedroom door, I could hear a washing machine running somewhere. Maybe my clothes were in it. Frankly, I’d rather have thrown them away.

  I stood there, finding it hard to leave the room. I’d felt relatively safe inside. But that was an illusion: I wasn’t really any safer in one room than another. Squaring my shoulders, I headed down the hall.

  Callie was in the kitchen. No Williams, thank god.

  Callie looked up nervously. She blurted out, “You can’t leave,” then flushed and seemed to remember her manners. “Would you like some tea?”

  “That’d be great, thank you.”

  Callie made me a cup of tea and then a san
dwich, which was nice. She sat down across from me. There followed an awkward silence of several minutes. It felt increasingly weird to eat while she alternately looked at me and stared down at her hands. Finally I couldn’t bear it anymore.

  “Did Williams go out?”

  “Yes. He had something to take care of.”

  Torturing a puppy to death, maybe.

  “Will he be back soon?”

  “I’m afraid I don’t know.”

  Well, so much for the questions I really cared about. I wracked my brain for small talk. “Where did you two meet?”

  Callie said nothing for a few seconds. She seemed to be considering whether to answer me.

  “I had been taken by Satan’s minions,” she said at last, “some years ago. They did wicked things to me, sinful things. John rescued me. He told me I could be a warrior against that kind of evil. He has friends who taught me what to do, what not to do. I’ve been fighting evil ever since.”

  Right. Momentarily forgot about the crazy thing.

  Well, maybe I could get a better handle on the way these people thought. “So, how do you fight evil?”

  Callie flushed and looked down at her hands. “Well, I’m not much of a fighter — not directly. I’m more of a watcher, like a sentinel. When I see evil, I let them know. Sometimes they don’t do anything. But sometimes they send John. He’s one of the fighters. Sometimes they send others.”

  I took another bite. It was a good sandwich — sliced turkey and Colby on soft white bread. The mayo tasted homemade.

  “Who’s ‘them,’ exactly? Some kind of secret society?”

  “I don’t know how much I should tell you about that,” she said uncertainly.

  I hadn’t really expected a clear answer.

  “So why don’t they always send a fighter when you tell them you’ve seen evil? Don’t they believe you?”

  I was sure hoping they didn’t.

  “They believe me. I don’t know why they ignore the demons sometimes. I don’t understand it, really.” She paused, looking troubled. “That creature in the cemetery — it’s been there for as long as I’ve lived here. I keep telling them it’s there, but they always say it’s okay so long as no one knows about it. I don’t see how that could be. It’s on holy ground, even.”

  I stared at her. Maybe my photograph had prompted a full-on psychotic break.

  “You could fight it yourself,” I suggested.

  She looked at me like I’d grown a second head. “It’s eight feet tall and has teeth like a shark. And claws. And horns. It would kill me.”

  “Ah. Well, it’s probably best to leave it alone, then.”

  Callie nodded, and a few moments passed in silence.

  “John says you can’t actually see it?” she asked, cocking her head at me.

  It was an oddly birdlike gesture. But then, she was vaguely avian — slender and tiny, with a long neck and pale, sharp eyes. Her light blond hair was even sort of feathery.

  “No, I’ve never seen it.”

  She looked pensive. “That’s really unusual, I think.”

  “Oh?”

  She nodded. “I’ve heard of people who can photograph demons, but not without seeing them first. It’s like you make music you can’t hear. Well, not exactly.”

  She drifted off a bit, thinking.

  Whoever these people were, they hadn’t done Callie any favors on the sanity front, filling her head with this stuff. I felt sort of angry on her behalf, which was surprising since I didn’t even like her. Then again, I’d never talked to her at length. There was something childlike about her. I’d always assumed she was nasty, what with all the moral crusading, but maybe she wasn’t. Nutty, but not nasty.

  “Callie, did you hear that my sister-in-law is missing?”

  “No.” She hesitated. “Do you think she’s in trouble?”

  “I really don’t know.” Damn, no help there.

  “Well, I hope she’s all right.” She stood up. “Excuse me, I’ll just switch the laundry.”

  She left the kitchen. After a few more bites of sandwich, I followed her. The laundry was in a small room at the end of the hallway. The dryer was running, and she was folding a load of lights.

  “Can I help?”

  “Oh, no, that’s all right. I like folding laundry.”

  I leaned in the doorway, formulating a plan of attack. I knew I couldn’t leave. There was no way I’d try it. Go ahead and call me a coward, but I wasn’t going to cross Williams again. I was viscerally afraid of him in a way that made it impossible.

  “Callie, I should probably call Ben. I haven’t talked to him in more than two days. And maybe my workplace. Would you mind if I used your phone?”

  She glanced up at me, unhappy. “I’m sorry, but John said you couldn’t.”

  “He said I couldn’t call Ben?”

  “He said you couldn’t use the phone at all.”

  “Oh.”

  I thought for a minute. Maybe there was a way around this.

  “He’s probably afraid I’ll try to tell someone again, but now I know I can’t.”

  She nodded, not looking at me.

  “So, I won’t tell Ben anything, okay? I’ll just let him know I’m all right.”

  “I’m sorry, Elizabeth. I’d let you if I could, but the phone won’t work for you. You just can’t make any calls.”

  “What do you mean the phone won’t work for me?”

  “There’s a barrier around the house. It’s something John can do, a gift from the Lord. You can’t leave or make calls or wave at someone out the window or anything like that. I’m sorry.”

  I stared at her. I went to the kitchen and tried the phone. It was dead. I went to the front door, my skepticism momentarily overcoming my fear. I opened it and tried to step out.

  There was something in front of me that I couldn’t see. It was like running into a massive blob of invisible gelatin. I stepped back from it. The world swayed.

  From behind me, Callie said, “You really didn’t believe any of it, did you? He said so, but I wasn’t sure.”

  “No.” My own voice sounded weirdly calm and normal to me. “I really didn’t.”

  Callie sat me down in the living room and tried to explain things to me, but honestly, it all sounded like a jumble of crazy. Hell as a vast world full of demons. People like her and Williams as protectors of our world from demons who come here to sow evil and reap souls.

  I listened with a fraction of my attention, catching random tidbits. With the rest, I focused on my breathing.

  We were still sitting there when Williams got home. He stood there for a second, taking in the tableau — me hunched over, pale and shaking. Callie holding my hand, speaking to me quietly.

  “Had a come-to-Jesus moment?” he said nastily.

  I stared back at him, too shell-shocked to respond.

  “I don’t think I’m getting through to her,” Callie said. “Can you explain it to her?”

  “Nope. Not my job.”

  He headed into the kitchen, then called out, “Come with me tonight, Callie? I still can’t get it closed. Must be stuck on something.”

  She stiffened slightly beside me. “Is it safe?”

  “I just need you to take a look. No need to leave the barrier.”

  She nodded but didn’t say anything. I wondered what sort of demon they were going to send back to Hell that night. The thought struck me as so ludicrous, so cliché, that I got the giggles. Lord help me, I couldn’t stop. Even Williams growling “shut the fuck up” didn’t do it. I laughed until I cried. Eventually I got up and wandered into the den and turned on Callie’s TV. I channel-surfed until I found a dour episode of Law & Order. Even then, I kept having to stifle laughter. It kept bubbling up, as though it were washing something away.

  At last, I curled up on the couch and went to sleep to the drone of the TV.

  Sometime in the wee hours, the front door crashed open. I got into the kitchen just as Williams was setting Callie
down on the floor. At first he was in the way, and I couldn’t see. When I did, I couldn’t make sense of what I was seeing. Her face, neck, and upper chest were a dry, grayish white. I couldn’t see her features. I could only tell it was her by the gray slacks she was wearing. I didn’t understand. What had happened to her?

  I came closer and smelled cooked flesh. She had no hair. She had no ears. In a rush, comprehension came — she was burned to char. What I was seeing was ash.

  “Not in here,” Williams said without looking up.

  I rushed out but didn’t make it to the bathroom before vomiting. I crouched at the end of the hallway, heaving, for several minutes. Then I gathered myself and struggled back to the kitchen. I was shaking so badly it was hard to walk.

  Williams was speaking quietly into a cell phone. He had brought in some couch cushions and put Callie’s feet up on them. I looked at her. The unburned parts I could see were a clammy white. Her fingertips were blue.

  When he hung up, I said, “Was that 911?”

  He didn’t say anything.

  “She needs a hospital. Right now.”

  He turned to me. I cowered, expecting rage, but his face was strangely blank.

  “You want to be useful? Hold her hand.”

  That was it. Even though I knew I was colluding in Callie’s death, I didn’t say another word.

  I sat down on the floor beside her and took her hand. It was unnaturally cool to the touch, and sweaty. I listened to the harsh crackle of her breathing. Her airway must’ve been burned as well. Williams sat on the other side of her with his back against the cabinets, looking down.

  There we waited. For hours.

  Callie did regain consciousness briefly at one point. Her hand tightened on mine, and she stirred. I saw the opening that used to be her mouth moving and bent down to hear. I couldn’t really understand her. She might’ve said, “Doesn’t hurt.”

  Around dawn, I heard the rumble of a motorcycle outside. Moments later, someone entered the house — a woman. She paused in the kitchen doorway.