Gloria freed the pistol from her waistband and held it out in front of her, aimed at her son’s small back as he turned to face her.
Haden’s head slowly swivelled to his mother sitting slumped on the floor. He saw the small black hole of the pistol barrel and his mother’s sweaty, terrified face behind it. The gun was shaking in her grip, but her jittery terrified eyes were pinned on him.
The voice that issued from his throat was not entirely his own.
“Don’t.” He said quietly.
Gloria didn’t have to ponder.
There was only one decision.
She pulled the trigger.
6
Buford had just stepped from his cruiser thinking how best to box this crazy woman in when gunfire exploded behind the door to room number three.
Later he would not be able to recall the trip he made across the parking lot to the motel room door. Three strides? Ten? In an instant, he was at the door, gun out. He lowered his shoulder and slammed into the plywood door at full speed. The Sheriff’s momentum carried him clear into the centre of the room where he saw the terrified woman sitting on the carpet. Gloria’s face was candle-wax pale and greased with sweat, but it was her. One hundred percent. He saw the gun in her hand a moment later. She whipped the barrel around in his direction, the silver barrel winking in the weak light, and fired. Her hand was shaking like a leaf and her bullet missed by a country mile, hitting the bay window of the motel room and nothing else. Buford took another step toward the woman and fired from three feet away.
He didn’t miss.
Buford’s first bullet tore the top of Gloria’s head clean off. His second punched a fist-sized hole in her throat leaving no doubt to her demise.
Gloria was thrown backward against the dresser, only to flop to the carpet in a growing pool of her own blood.
It was over in less than a second.
The tiny room smelled of gunfire and piss. Gun smoke together with Buford breathing like a draft horse clouded up the entire room. Shaking, he turned slowly, sweeping the barrel of his weapon over the dresser and the bed piled with grocery bags until he found the boy.
The boy was a sliver of moonlight in the dark. Thin and delicate.
He stood utterly still, naked from the waist up. His milky skin glowed in the weak light.
Buford quickly searched the bathroom, and under the bed. Sirens were screaming now through the night, getting closer. When he was sure they were alone Buford holstered his gun and rushed to the boy. He got down to one knee, his joints popping like kindling, and slipped off his heavy winter jacket and draped it over the boy’s narrow shoulders.
Jesus Christ
The boy’s face was covered in blood. An angry gash had opened up bisecting his face in a bloody diagonal.
“It's okay.” He told the boy. “You’re safe now.”
The boy’s grey eyes were aimed at what remained of his mother, but his attention seemed fixed on something more. Something only he could see.
Buford wrapped the boy in his coat and lifted him into his arms. He weighed less than a sack of grocery store potatoes and felt like a bundle of sticks inside his jacket.
He carried the boy out of the motel room and down the frosted boardwalk. The Sheriff pulled at the door to the motel office, but it was locked. Buford knocked, banging on the glass until Johnny Lee cracked open the bathroom door where he was hiding, and pressed his face to the gap.
“That you Sheriff?”
“Yeah, it’s me, Johnny Lee.” He said. “Come on out, and bring some blankets.”
Johnny shuffled to the front desk, a little warily, pushing the glasses back up on his greasy nose and unlocked the front door.
“What're the blankets for?”
Then he saw the kid swaddled in the Sheriff’s coat and his eyes grew wide as dinner plates.
“She had the kid in there?” he said.
“That doesn’t matter now, Johnny. Just get them blankets.”
Buford carried the boy past the registration desk to the stuffy office of the motel manager where he knew there was a beaten down leather couch. He set the boy down gently on one end and kicked off an empty pizza box, and a few stray beer cans as Johnny Lee came hustling back with a stack of blankets piled high in his chubby arms.
“This enough, Sheriff?”
“That’ll do, Johnny Lee.” He said. “That’ll do fine.”
With the couch clear he slipped his sheriff’s coat from his shoulders and wrapped the skinny boy in a rough white blanket that smelled faintly of bleach and lay him down on the couch, slipping another folded bundle under his head.
Buford smiled down at the child with the bloody face.
“You’re safe now, you hear?”
The boy’s dead gaze looked straight through him.
Buford smiled again and said, “My name is Buford. This here is Johnny Lee.”
The boy’s eyes cut to the motel clerk who shot him a quick little wave.
“We’re gonna take good care of you okay. If there’s anything, you need you holler. Johnny Lee will be sitting right out there at that desk, okay?”
The boy stared straight at him. Eye to eye, but there was no recognition. No indication that Buford’s words were getting into that scrambled brain of his and making any sense. Buford decided not to press the matter and leave it to more capable folks. He smoothed the boy’s dark hair and found that his hands were still shaking.
“I’ll be back in a few minutes. You hang out here, okay?”
The boy stared back at him.
Finally, Buford nodded and climbed to his feet. He desperately needed a cigarette and to lie down, but after what had transpired that was definitely not in the cards. At least not anytime soon. Sirens were screaming in the parking lot now, and there would be a hell of a lot more in the next few hours. Not to mention national news crews and local reporters that would swoop in and pick the boy clean of every second he was trapped in that woman’s clutches.
Johnny Lee leaned in the doorway, essentially blocking it.
“Just keep an eye on him, okay?” Buford said. “Let me know…just, let me know if anything changes? I’m gonna call an ambulance, and I guess social services.”
Johnny nodded and plopped down into his rolling desk chair.
Buford fished his cell phone from his pants pocket and scrolled through his speed dials, his fingers still shaking as he stabbed the right buttons.
“Think he’ll be okay?” Johnny asked.
“I do not know, Johnny Lee. I do not know.”
Buford raised the phone to his ear and stepped through the front door into the flashing red and blue lights as the cowbell clanged above him.
7
Haden’s eyes were closed when the temperature dropped like a rock inside the tiny office that smelled of old pizza, rotten feet, and burnt coffee. Goosebumps spread across his skin like wildfire, and when he opened his eyes, he saw his breath forming tiny clouds in the semi-dark.
He found that he was not alone. A tall black man was leaning against the office desk. He wore a tailored suit as black as night over a crisp white shirt open at the throat. No tie. He guessed the man was about forty, give or take, with soft dark eyes and a gentle smile.
“Hello, Haden.” The man said. “My name is Moses.”
Haden’s eyes cut to the doorway where Johnny Lee sat in his office chair hunched over a cell phone, talking excitedly to someone. Johnny Lee must have felt the boy’s stare because he turned and asked, “Everything okay little man?”
Haden looked back to the black man still watching him, and then back to Johnny, who was getting that puzzled look again.
“Everything okay?” Johnny asked again.
Haden nodded, and Johnny Lee slowly scanned the room searching for whatever caught the kid’s interest. Finding nothing, he turned away and began whispering into his phone once more.
Moses was still staring at him.
“Haden, I know you can see and hear me.”
>
Haden stared.
“You’re not safe here, Haden.”
The boy looked around the small cramped office without windows.
“There are those that want to hurt you. To kill you.”
“Who?” Haden’s voice was a breath below a whisper.
“They’re on their way.” Moses replied.
Haden swallowed and glanced worriedly around the room.
“We have to leave,” Moses said. “Now. But to do that you’re going to have to listen to me and follow my instructions to very letter. Can you do that?”
The black man stood to his full height, and Haden watched as his outline shimmered and scattered at the edges before reforming as he moved, as if he were made entirely of smoke. Moses turned his dark stare to Haden once again.
Haden nodded.
“Good.” Moses said, “Now, you have to listen to me Haden and listen good, you understand?”
Again Haden nodded.
“That’s good. Good boy.” Moses replied as he waved the small boy over to the desk. “Come over here.”
Haden threw another quick look to Johnny, but he had turned completely away now, his back bouncing gently as he no doubt recounted the night’s events to whoever would listen.
“Quick, boy, we ain’t got all night.”
Haden slipped out of the curl of blankets and silently padded to the office desk.
“Now, we in a bit of a pickle,” Moses said. “There’s no windows in this shithole and fat boy is guarding the only door. Which leaves us with only one viable option.”
Moses pointed at the desk blotter where a folding knife lay.
“I need you to open that knife and do exactly as I say.”
Part II
“Even in the grave, all is not lost.”
- Edgar Allan Poe
8
Thirteen years later
Edna Walton hated to look at the body wrapped in plastic. She didn’t even like coming into the bedroom where he kept it, but she couldn’t help herself. She was drawn to it for some reason. Curious. She would shake the thought away and chide herself for being so morbid, but she couldn’t help it. All day long when Freddy was away, she would drift around the little house from room to room, staring out windows and doing the small things one does when they live alone. But, more often than not, she kept returning to this room.
To the body.
The body barely looked like a person anymore. To Edna, it looked more like a poorly rolled marijuana cigarette, not that she would admit to anyone in proper company that she knew what one looked like. It lay in the centre of the bed, a large saran-wrapped doobie as they used to say. Fat in the middle tapering off to nothing at the ends. With no distinguishable colours or contours. Soon it would look more like a vast flattened burrito.
Fluid had begun leaking into the bedspread. The windows were covered in sheets of sturdy, clear plastic, and the shades were drawn. Her son had even pressed rolled up towels blocking the space under the bedroom door. Her good towels, no less. It was too upsetting. She didn’t know how much longer she could stay here in this house.
But where would she go in her condition?
Who would take her in?
Who would take care of her?
She began to hyperventilate, her massive chest bobbing up and down as her face flushed with blood. She found a chair in the corner of the room. Her old reading chair, the one that she used to sit in with Freddy. She would call him in before bed, and he would jump right into her lap. He was so small back then. He would curl up into her lap like a little kitten. Warm and clean and still a little bit damp from the shower. His hair smelling like Johnson & Johnson shampoo. She would read him stories of pirates and haunted schools or buried treasure. She used to have an old blue milk crate filled with his little chapter books. Right there. Right beside the chair.
Edna looked to the space on the floor where it used to be and frowned. He had taken it away. She hadn’t read to him in years, and he had stopped sitting in her lap when he was ten. Too big for that, he had told her. He preferred to sit on the bed and listen.
It wasn’t the same.
Perched on the edge of the double-wide chair she closed her eyes. She held her breath for a three-count and then slowly let it out while thinking of the smell of fresh cut grass and mayonnaise and Dr. Phil. Slowly she began to calm down. When her breathing was back to normal, and the sound of her pounding heart grew quiet in her ears, she hoisted herself up onto her feet.
Through the bedroom door, she heard her son’s scraping footsteps trudge down the hallway. She needed to have a word with him. This whole house was becoming a shambles. A pigsty. This was not how she had raised him.
Edna waited for her son in the kitchen not wanting to sit at the small breakfast table cluttered with scribbled notes and lists, and diagrams of God knew what. And she didn’t want to lean against the counters stacked high with takeout boxes.
Ten minutes later, Freddy appeared wearing a pair of faded brown cords and a yellow button-down shirt complete with his signature bowtie. Edna had to admit the boy looked striking. Even the Coke-bottle glasses seemed to add an air of sophistication to his appearance.
“You can’t leave that thing in the bedroom, Freddy.” She said. “It’s not sanitary. I won’t have it. You have to go to the police and tell them it was a mistake. An accident. I watch CSI, Freddy, the longer you keep it here the harder it would be to…”
Freddy didn’t respond. Didn’t even turn around to face her. He merely chewed his way through a piece of raisin toast, leaning over the already overfull sink and sighed.
“Did you hear me, young man?” Edna tried again. “I’m speaking to you.”
Still nothing.
He popped the last bit of crust into his mouth, took a swig of coffee and spun on his heel for the door. She stood stupidly in the centre of the small kitchen waiting to catch his eye, if only for a moment. A simple sign of recognition. But there was nothing. His gaze swept through the cluttered kitchen as if she were as unimportant as the dirty dishes and stacked takeout containers that were piled on the countertop. As if she didn’t matter, and maybe she didn’t.
Freddy peeked out through the front curtains and saw the yellow cab slide to a stop at the curb in front of the house.
A moment later she heard the side door slam and the bolt slide into place. She drifted to the front living room window and watched as her only son got into the cab. She had to do something, she couldn’t live like this. She had to tell someone. But who?
There was only one option.
She would do it to save her son. He would hate her in the beginning for going to the police, but he needed help. Serious help.
Edna went to look for her purse.
9
The noose slipped around her head, scraping across her chin as she fell. She felt the rough rope cinch tight around her throat, cutting off her air supply. In an instant, she was ripped backward. Her fingers dug around the edge of the rope that sliced deep into her flesh. Her lungs burned from the lack of oxygen. She was being pulled, not back, but up. Off the floor. Nyah’s chest convulsed as her legs kicked uselessly at the hardwood. She was rising faster now. The soles of her boots barely scraping the floorboards, until she was suspended. White-hot pain exploded up and down her neck and spine. She writhed and twisted at the end of the noose, her hands clawing uselessly at the rope, at her skin. Her face darkened from pale alabaster to red to a deep purple as her vision faded and curled in at the edges until there was only darkness.
Nyah Foster opened her eyes and felt herself sway on her feet. She pressed a hand to her rental car roof and steadied herself. The long slender fingers of her right hand crept past her collar and touched the spot where the rope had dug in, had torn flesh and muscle and tendon as she hung like a fish on a line. But the pads of her fingertips found nothing but smooth skin and she released the breath she had been holding.
She took a long, deep breath and then another.
/> She had to focus. She could not fail. A second chance in this business was about as common as having sex with a unicorn. It just didn’t happen.
Nyah found her rental car in the parking garage exactly where she was told it would be. A newer beige Camry. She opened the trunk with the key fob and found a black duffel placed squarely in the centre of the trunk. The garage was deserted at this time of day, barely dawn, but she still did a quick scan and found no prying eyes.
Can’t be too careful.
In her head, she replayed a snippet of the conversation she had had with Ministry of the Wraith director, Madeline LeClerc before boarding her plane to Toronto.
“If Haden dies.” She had said, leaning forward, her dark eyes shining in the firelight. “You’re next.”
Nyah’s jaw clenched and focused on the task at hand.
She unzipped the bag and found her requested kit. Two pistols, two MP5’s, a thousand rounds of ammunition for each, three hand grenades, an assortment of knives, a lock picking kit, and handcuffs.
She unzipped an outside pocket and found a protein bar. She smiled. It was even the brand she liked in the spot she had requested. Whoever was filling her requests deserved a tip. She selected a small but powerful Walther PPK pistol and slipped it into the holster onto her belt. A new iPhone waited in an adjacent pocket fully charged and stocked with all the pertinent numbers which, when she scrolled through was local hospitals, police stations, arms dealers and one personal contact: Haden Church.
Her mission was simple: keep Haden Church alive.
She had spent the plane ride going over his dossier.
Recruited at age ten into the Ministry of the Wraith he was identified as a Reaper candidate by a high level wraith called, Moses. A ‘Reaper’ was defined by the Ministry as a specialized demon that can put himself, or herself for that matter, into a deep coma-like trance at will. Once in that trance they could direct their consciousness to inhabit, regenerate and resurrect a recently dead body anywhere in the world. This unique skill allowed a Reaper to instantly confront a supernatural threat in order to neutralize them completely by using the resurrected body as a prison of sorts. Nyah had, until recently, been assigned to another Reaper for three years and she still didn’t fully understand that last bit.
The Blood Singer_A Haden Church Supernatural Thriller Page 3