by J. S. Bailey
“So do we go back home now?” Carly asked. “Or do you want to do something else?”
“We still haven’t figured out anything.”
“Then we shouldn’t go home.”
Use your atlas, the Spirit whispered without warning.
Skin prickling, Bobby said, “Would you get my atlas out of the glovebox?”
Carly opened the compartment and handed the atlas to him. He flipped it open, and it fell to the Nebraska page, but Bobby knew that didn’t mean anything. “Just for fun, I’m going to try it again,” he said.
“The atlas thing?”
“The atlas thing.”
Carly frowned. “But how is that going to help us?”
“Maybe it’ll tell us if there’s another Servant lurking around out there.” Bobby shrugged. “Maybe.” He closed the atlas and stared at the bent and tattered cover. He’d had this atlas for so long. When had he even gotten it?
A memory came to him then: his fifteenth birthday, just a few months after his father had passed away. Charlotte, his stepmother, had thrown a small party consisting of Ken Roland’s relatives (her own family had little to do with Bobby, so she hadn’t invited them). It had been a dismal affair, what with no one wanting to celebrate so soon after Ken’s passing, and Bobby remembered solemnly opening a giant gift bag from Charlotte and pulling out a brand-new 2009 road atlas with a picture of multicolored hot air balloons on the front.
He’d looked up at Charlotte, puzzled. “You got me an atlas?”
“There’s more than that in the bag, but yes.” She’d smiled at him, though the sadness in her eyes made his heart ache.
Six years later, Bobby couldn’t remember what else had been in the bag—probably some new shirts or a pack of guitar picks or something. What he did remember was going down to his basement bedroom after his relatives went home and flopping down on his bed with his new atlas. He ran a hand across the glossy cover and then flipped it to a random page, where differently-colored squiggles denoted various highways and such.
For the first time in his life, he’d found himself wondering about all the lines on the map and the places they might lead to. Probably somewhere much better than this lousy little town that flooded every time they got a bad patch of rain. Why, this atlas could show him how to go anywhere, and maybe he’d do just that once he got his license.
“Bobby? Are you okay?”
Bobby wiped a hand at his eye as he continued to stare at the atlas in his lap. So much had happened during the six years it had been in his possession. Had Charlotte known in some way that Bobby would leave her and everything else behind? Had the atlas been her way of saying that it was okay for him to go his own way?
“I’m going to see where we should go for help,” he said.
He closed his eyes, opened a page, and stabbed his finger at it.
“Um, Bobby? Did you do that on purpose?”
He cracked open an eyelid and felt his stomach plummet. He’d opened it to the map of Kentucky, and his index finger was planted firmly on the Ohio River right on top of Eleanor in Southern Ohio.
Bobby’s mouth went dry. “Oh, crap.”
BRADLEY SCHOLL jerked awake from yet another dream in which he’d been chased by invisible phantoms. Sweat soaked his clothes, and a glance at the round wall clock told him he’d slept until noon.
Noon? He blinked, realizing he must have fallen asleep sometime last night while waiting for Bobby to show. The priest had said something about Bobby being delayed for some reason or another. Perhaps Bobby was too afraid of him to finish his work. It wouldn’t be surprising. He’d acted jumpy when they went to the police station together, like Bobby expected Bradley to turn on him at any second.
Bradley sat up, balling his hands into fists. The nerve of that guy, promising to help him and then bailing!
He strode to the door and tried to pull it open, but it wouldn’t budge. Banging on it, he shouted, “Hey, priest! Let me out!”
He received no response. Was the priest even home? He strained his ears, hearing nothing. He thought it might be Sunday, so Father Preston was likely still at church.
“I wish I could go home,” he muttered, retreating to the other end of the small bedroom and looking out the window, which faced a neighbor’s fenced-in yard. He could go downstairs and study his plants to his heart’s content, and life would be good once more.
“Then why don’t you try escaping?”
Bradley turned, feeling his pulse spike. Jess—poor, dead Jess—stood beside the door with her arms crossed, looking entirely too disappointed in him.
“I can’t escape,” he said. “They’re supposed to help me.”
“People lie. They’re all dead, too, and just don’t want you to know it.”
Not this again. Bradley couldn’t cope with the internal conflict of figuring out if Jess was real or in his head. Bobby and the priest said he was possessed by demons. Could demons make him see and hear things that weren’t there?
He wondered if Bobby had told him that already. He couldn’t really remember.
“Aren’t you going to do something about this?” Jess asked.
“About what?”
She spread her arms. “They’ve locked you up, dork. Why don’t you find a way out?”
Narrowing his eyes, Bradley went back to the door and jiggled the knob once more to no avail. “I think he set something heavy on the other side.”
“You’re thinking like the living. You’re better than that.”
You can do anything if you surrender yourself, a voice whispered. You can even be free from that which torments you.
That didn’t sound like such a bad deal. Bradley closed his eyes and drew in a deep breath to calm himself. Yes, he could surrender himself if it meant all his troubles would be over.
“I surrender,” he said.
At once he felt warm inside, like someone had placed hot coals within his bones. He felt energized, too, more so than he’d been at any point since Jess’s passing.
He looked to the window, which consisted of one solid pane that couldn’t open, then to the door. He could see if his new energy translated into newfound strength by pulling the door off its hinges, or he could bust the window and maybe buy himself some time since the priest wouldn’t immediately know he was gone upon his return.
He chose the second option, bringing his hand back and punching the glass with all his might.
Ordinarily he would have simply busted his knuckles all to hell from such an act, but this time the pane shattered as if it were made of blown glass. Wind buffeted him, so he slipped on his light gray coat and scrambled over the windowsill, taking care not to cut himself on any stray shards.
He made a visual sweep of his surroundings to make sure no one watched him. By the look of it, no one on this street was out on this cold afternoon, so nobody would stop him and question why he’d broken out of the priest’s house in such a peculiar manner.
But if he was dead, perhaps nobody would see him anyway.
“What are you going to do now, hmm?” Jess asked. She leaned against a tree trunk, apparently unaffected by the cold since she still wore her tank top and shorts.
Bradley’s thoughts whirled. He could go home, but there was something more important he needed to take care of.
“I’m going to find Ellen Barkley,” he said. “And I’m going to stop her from going to that conference.”
“YOU KNOW,” Carly said as Bobby navigated the car down a lonely northern Nevada highway, “we could get to Eleanor a whole lot faster if we fly.”
Bobby took one eye off the road and brown desert scrub to regard her. “Do you want me to go rob a bank? I don’t have that kind of money.” He’d spent entirely too much of it to get his round-trip tickets for Adrian Pollard’s funeral and left his bank account sorely dry in its wake.
Carly dug her hand into her purse and produced a credit card. “Dad does.”
“You stole your dad’s credit card?”
“Won’t they need to see our IDs at the airport? They won’t match what’s on his card.”
“We’ll stop at an ATM first and pay for the tickets with cash. I know his PIN.”
Bobby just shook his head. “You think of everything, don’t you?”
She shrugged. “Somebody has to.”
“Where do you think the nearest airport is?”
“Hang on; I’ll find out.” Carly tapped at her phone for a few minutes, then said, “Great.”
“What?”
“If we hadn’t headed east out of Lakeview, we could have gone down to Reno and caught a flight there. Looks like the closest major airport going the way we are is Salt Lake City, and we’re still six hours out.”
“You could have mentioned flying before I decided to go this way.”
“Sorry, I was thinking about other things. I just watched my only great-grandfather die, you know.”
Bobby made no reply. In the few months he had known her, Carly seemed almost abnormally resolute in the face of tragedy, so he often forgot that she had feelings buried deep inside just like everyone else.
“I could turn around and head to Reno if it’s closer,” he said instead.
“Nah, just keep going. If I have to see that same desert scrub again, I’m going to scream.”
AFTER LONG, monotonous hours, Bobby got onto the interstate and drove east into Utah, where he’d lived for close to a year, trying to get his music career off the ground. Looking back, he saw it had been a fool’s endeavor from the start. Salt Lake City was not known as a breeding ground for musicians. If he’d been smart, he’d have gone to Nashville, where he would have had marginally better chances of being noticed.
Perhaps deep down, he’d known even then that he was not meant to have a career in music.
Carly said something, jerking him out of his reverie. “What?”
“Are you sleeping behind the wheel? I said, this is some crazy scenery.”
Bobby nodded. They were headed through the salt flats, where white stretched out before them in all directions like a light dusting of snow.
Carly pressed her face against the window. “It kind of makes you think you’re on a different planet, doesn’t it?”
“A little.”
“I don’t see any craters, though. Or aliens. Or the landing crew from the Enterprise.”
Bobby sighed. She was trying to cheer him up, but he just wasn’t in the mood for it. Too many things were going wrong for him to desire humor.
Seemingly sensing defeat, Carly switched the subject by saying, “Doesn’t Interstate 80 go into Ohio?”
“Yeah, but in the north, not the southern part. Besides, you want to fly, so that’s what we’re going to do.”
They stopped at a Starbucks to recaffeinate and use the bathroom shortly after arriving in Salt Lake City. When Bobby and Carly regrouped with their coffees at a tiny square table in the back of the shop, she said, “We need to find an ATM.”
“I think I saw a bank across the street.”
“You’re certain beyond a reasonable doubt that we’re supposed to go to Eleanor.”
Yes, the Spirit murmured.
Bobby nodded. He still couldn’t understand how anyone in his hometown could be of any help to them. Most of the people he’d known there were your typical down-on-their-luck types, many of whom escaped from their woes through the joys of booze and the needle. Not everyone in Eleanor was into drugs, of course, and there were some nice folks here and there who’d been friends with his parents, but none of them struck him as the type who’d have anything to do with Bobby’s line of work.
He didn’t know what kind of person would, save for another Servant, and he’d sooner believe in alien abductions than he’d believe that a Servant called Eleanor home.
Bobby’s phone rang in his pocket as they headed toward the coffee shop exit. “Hang on,” he said, drawing to a stop. He fished out his phone and checked the caller before answering.
“Who is it?” Carly asked when he grimaced at the screen.
“Father Preston.”
Bobby answered the call, dread brewing inside of him. “Hello?”
“Bobby? This is Father Preston.”
“I know.”
The priest cleared his throat. “Would you mind telling me when you think you’ll be back? We’ve had a…development.”
Bobby threw Carly a look of desperation. “No idea. Why? What’s happened?”
“Bradley is missing.”
“What?”
“He broke out of his room while I was at church. Smashed a window and fled that way so I wouldn’t notice he’d gone right off the bat. I asked my neighbors if they’d seen a young man of his description walking by, and none of them saw a thing.”
A wave of nausea washed over him, and it was all Bobby could do to keep his coffee in his stomach. Bradley escaping was his fault, plain and simple. “Do you think you should call the police?”
“I don’t see what they can do.”
“What do you mean?”
“Bradley is a grown man, and telling the authorities he’s possessed isn’t going to be taken seriously. Besides, I can’t tell them I’d locked him in my house.”
Bobby clenched a hand into a fist. “You’re going to have to go find him before he tries to jump in front of another train.”
“Bobby, I’ve tried. I recruited Phil, Allison, Randy, and Lupe to help me, and we scoured the neighborhood for five hours. Which reminds me—I’m so sorry to hear about Frank. He could be a bit cantankerous at times, but he was a good man.”
Bobby wondered if anyone had told Father Preston that Frank hadn’t died of natural causes. “I’ll be back when I’m back,” he said in answer to the priest’s earlier question.
“I still don’t understand why you’ve left.”
Me neither. Not really, but apparently that’s what I was supposed to do. “Because if I’d stayed, more than just Frank were going to die.” And they might die anyway, but Father Preston didn’t need to know that. “I’ve got to go, okay? Keep me posted.”
Bobby ended the call and looked to Carly for help.
“Bradley escaped,” she said.
“Yeah. Which means we’re going to have to work even faster to figure out whatever it is that needs figuring out.”
CARLY WITHDREW a large sum of money from an ATM at the bank across from the coffee shop, the amount of which she would not disclose to Bobby; and then they drove the short distance to Salt Lake City International Airport, where they purchased one-way tickets to Cincinnati.
“Since we don’t know how long we’ll be there, it doesn’t make sense to buy round-trip tickets,” Carly said, and Bobby decided she made a decent point.
After what felt to be interminable hours of waiting, they boarded a cramped flight packed with screaming children, and Bobby sent a silent prayer to the heavens. Help me figure out what in the world I’m doing. Help me figure it out before anyone else dies.
“WE NEED to decide what we’re going to do next,” Father Preston said as he set the phone down on his kitchen counter. Lupe stared listlessly at the floor, Phil stood in a corner with his hand on his chin, and Allison sat at the table nursing a coffee in silence. Since a child had no place taking part in a manhunt, Phil and Allison had left their daughter with a neighbor.
“What was he even thinking, running off like this?” Randy said, looking at his wife and friends as if they held the answers as to why Bobby had abandoned the demoniac he was supposed to be curing. “Did I make a mistake in choosing him to replace me?”
“I’m sure he has his reasons,” Lupe said. “He always seems like he tries to do the right thing.”
No one seemed to have anything to say about that. Randy let out a pent-up breath and tried to cal
m his nerves, wanting to give Bobby the benefit of the doubt. Bobby had saved the lives of so many people during the few months Randy had known him, and it just wasn’t like him to run away once Thane had made it clear he was back and in business.
“And he didn’t mention his plans to any of you,” Randy said for roughly the hundredth time that day.
Four heads shook.
“Don’t forget Carly is with him,” Lupe said, lifting her gaze.
“If they left together,” Allison said, “it can only mean she approves of whatever he’s doing.”
“Or it means she doesn’t approve but is going along anyway to keep him in line,” Phil said, rubbing his temples.
The five of them fell silent. “Thane’s apparition said something to Bobby after Frank collapsed,” Lupe said. “Did any of you notice?”
Randy had seen something along those lines the previous night but had been too preoccupied with Frank dying to pay the apparition much attention. “You didn’t happen to hear what he said, did you?”
Lupe shook her head. “I was hoping you did.”
“Okay,” Randy said. “Maybe we should forget about Bobby right now. This Bradley is going to be a danger to himself if we can’t find him and get him restrained. Does anyone else have any ideas on where we should look?”
“Bobby mentioned something about him jumping in front of a train,” Father Preston said. “I believe that’s what Bobby caught him doing when he first ran into him.”
Randy’s stomach turned a slow somersault. “Has anyone watched the local news today by chance?”
“No, but I’m sure we would have heard something if someone had leapt in front of a train. Like sirens.”
“Maybe no trains have gone through yet.” Randy pulled his coat off the back of a kitchen chair and slipped it on. “I’m going to go wait by the nearest railroad crossing and see if he shows.” Father Preston had given him a basic description of the man—platinum blond hair, pale blue eyes, thin as a bean pole—but given the circumstances, Bradley would likely be the only person in town tempted to throw himself in front of a rolling locomotive.