Surrender

by J. S. Bailey

  “And your odds of actually catching him there?” Phil asked.

  “I’m not counting the odds.”

  RANDY PARKED at an office that was closed for the weekend and walked a tenth of a mile to the nearest set of tracks that crossed Hay Street. Darkness was falling like a shroud, and the chill in the air ate all the way to his marrow.

  He knew his odds of encountering the runaway at this precise location were miniscule, so he’d convinced Phil to monitor another railroad crossing a mile away. Father Preston opted to remain at home with Lupe and Allison in the unlikely event Bradley returned to his perceived place of imprisonment.

  Randy had put on gloves, but he tucked his hands into his armpits anyway and looked as far as he could up and down the tracks. A streetlamp illuminated the crossing, though the light faded too soon on either side of it.

  No sign of Bradley.

  “Someday,” he said to himself, “just once, things will work out without a hitch.”

  Who are you kidding? asked a tiny voice. When had anything in his life gone smoothly? Even his so-far short marriage was proving rockier than he’d expected, what with Lupe still eaten up with guilt over what had happened the previous summer. Too often she would withdraw into herself and hardly talk to him, not out of anger, but out of shame. Looking back, they should have waited a few extra months to get married, just to smooth out some of the kinks beforehand.

  Too late to regret any of that now.

  Movement to the west of the railroad crossing caught his eye. Checking for cars, Randy crossed the road and squinted into the darkness. “Bradley?” he called. “Is that you?”

  Here, the tracks ran parallel to a tall wooden fence behind a row of houses. He followed the fence for perhaps five minutes, wishing he’d thought to bring a flashlight, when a rustling sound startled him.

  Jerking his gaze to the opposite side of the tracks, he spotted a stray dog rooting around in a discarded fast food bag.

  “Figures,” he said and walked back to the road so he could continue to watch the crossing.

  AT TEN o’clock that night after having abandoned the search for Bradley a second time, Randy and Lupe huddled on one of their living room couches doing a very poor job of not thinking about Frank or Bradley or Bobby or any of the other dozen things that had placed a damper on their holiday season thus far.

  He’d tried calling Bobby a few times once he’d gotten back from monitoring the railroad crossing, but it went to voicemail each time. Evidently Bobby decided he didn’t feel like talking to anyone. Randy wasn’t quite sure what to make of that, because despite the fact that Bobby wasn’t an annoying chatterbox like poor, late Frank, he did typically let Randy in on the gist of his plans.

  There came a knock on the door. Weary from the day’s efforts, Randy rose and pulled it open…

  …and nearly recoiled to see Thane and an unfamiliar woman waiting on his doorstep in the glow of the porch lamp.

  “You!” Randy said, moving to prevent the duo from entering the house, although since Thane was an apparition, he could “enter” it whenever he darn well pleased.

  A flash of annoyance lit up Thane’s face. “Yes, it’s me. Mia?”

  “You will let us inside,” the woman said with a smirk. She had black hair and was dressed like some kind of New Age punk hipster, or something like that—Randy wasn’t well-schooled in his generation’s fads.

  “Sure,” Randy heard himself say. He stepped aside and let Thane and the woman in, and Lupe clapped her hands over her mouth to muffle a scream.

  “Cool it,” the woman said as her gaze roved over the room’s contents. “We’re not here to hurt anyone.”

  Randy moved to stand in front of Lupe, who had risen in alarm. “So you say.”

  “Relax, both of you. Now tell us where Bobby Roland has gone.”

  “For whatever reason, Bobby didn’t feel the need to grace me with that information,” Randy said. “And why do you want to know? Can’t Thane probe my brain himself and see that I don’t know where he went?”

  Mia shrugged. “He wanted to double-check when he couldn’t find any answers from you. So tell me: what do you know?”

  Don’t tell her anything! screamed the voice of reason, so of course Randy said, “He left town with Carly Jovingo sometime last night, or so we think. Right after he showed up and killed my friend.”

  Thane rolled his eyes. “That dinosaur outlived his usefulness a long time ago. His death left no mark on my conscience.”

  “That’s because you don’t have one,” Randy spat.

  Thane placed a hand over his heart. “Oh, how your words hurt me! How will I ever recover?”

  “Get out of here and go back to wherever your body is,” Randy growled. “Bobby told me it’s not at the nursing home anymore.”

  To Randy’s concern, a smile broke across Thane’s face. “Oh. He’s right about that. But I wonder—if I try to kill you now, will dear Bobby have a premonition about it that sends him gallivanting back into town like the hero he thinks he is?”

  Randy clenched his jaw. “You can’t kill me.”

  “I killed Frank, and I practically killed Graham. It isn’t that hard for me to do. But if you’d rather live, I can kill your lovely wife instead.”

  Thane made a lunge toward Lupe, and Randy instinctively moved to block him, but Thane stepped back and laughed. “Do you really think you can fight off an image of me? I can kill either of you from anywhere.”

  “Almost anywhere,” the woman named Mia muttered. Randy couldn’t figure out why she’d accompanied the man’s apparition on this unexpected visit, or if she was even real at all. Knowing that last bit of information might come in handy if she decided to become violent.

  Thane ignored Mia’s comment. “Then again,” he said to Randy, “I’d much prefer to kill you.”

  Randy brought up his fists to protect himself from the apparition as Thane dove toward him (how stupid of him was that?), but he moved too slowly. Thane’s fist cracked into Randy’s left cheek, snapping his head to the side, and Randy staggered to his right and tried to regain his balance. He wished he had his knife on his person before remembering it would have no effect on what was basically a ghost.

  Thane, whose apparition indicated that he would have been a couple of inches taller than him in person if he hadn’t been confined to an electric wheelchair, loomed beside Randy and brought another fist smashing into his face. Randy made to punch him away, but Thane managed to clench his hands around Randy’s throat and started to squeeze tight.

  Randy had experienced his fair share of injury in his twenty-six years, both mental and physical. He’d been punched, shot, and stabbed by all manner of scum, but strangulation? This had to be a first.

  He grabbed Thane’s wrists and tried to force the man’s ghost-hands off his neck so he could draw in a breath. Lupe had joined the fray, yanking on Thane’s arm in an effort to aid Randy, when spots started to dance in Randy’s vision and the room swayed.

  “Thane, let him go,” said a voice from far away.

  Randy opened his eyes. He lay on the floor in his living room gasping while Lupe shrank off to one side to avoid Thane, who inexplicably had ceased trying to kill him and was now scowling at Mia.

  “You don’t need to kill anyone to bring Bobby back here,” Mia said to Thane. “By the sound of it, he’s the type of guy who’ll come back on his own. Now let’s go.”

  Randy watched in disbelief as Thane and his accomplice turned tail and left through the front door with the abruptness by which they had arrived.

  “Are you okay?” Lupe whispered as Randy sat up and rubbed his neck.

  “I’m breathing, so that’s a plus,” he rasped through his pain.

  Lupe looked toward the door, which Mia had been tactful enough to close behind them. “What in the world just happened?”

  Randy frowned and staggered to his feet. “I have no idea.”

  “WHY DID you stop me?” Thane asked when they got bac
k into the car, which he’d parked out near the road so Randy wouldn’t hear the sound of the engine or the car doors slamming. “I’ve wanted that one dead for years.”

  “Randy isn’t the Servant anymore, so what does it matter to you?” Mia said, snapping her seatbelt into place. “Besides, you don’t want to let on to anyone just yet that you’re all better. Don’t you want to catch Bobby by surprise?”

  With a terse sigh, Thane started the car and let the heat blast him for a moment before pulling back out onto the road. Of course he wanted to catch Bobby by surprise. But how could he do that, when Bobby had surprised him by vanishing?

  CARLY TWITCHED awake. Rows and rows of unfamiliar people surrounded her, some snoring, some reading books or murmuring amongst themselves. Where was she? On a bus? No, a plane. She and Bobby were flying to Ohio for reasons completely unapparent to her.

  She squirmed in the cramped seat and glanced to her left to see that Bobby slumbered on. Their seats were located on the right side of the plane and Carly opted for the one closest to the window because it gave her the illusion of having more room. The sky outside was black as tar.

  She wondered what her father would say to her when she and Bobby returned to Autumn Ridge. It would probably depend on whatever she and Bobby managed to accomplish during their trip. Already she’d ignored three calls from her parents while waiting for their flight, and she had the suspicion that wouldn’t go over so well. But what was she supposed to do? Tell them where they were and have Thane find out by peeking into their heads? Who knew what he’d be able to do with that information?

  I’ll pay Dad back whenever I’m able, she told herself, having no idea when that would be. Even if she got hired on soon at one of the many places to which she’d sent an application, it would take time to make enough to pay back her parents for everything they’d done for her. Heck, she even got to live in their house rent-free.

  Her relatives were probably right for pestering her about getting a job. Carly wasn’t a little girl anymore—she’d be twenty-two in February and had no marketable skills. Basically human waste.

  She scooted around to get more comfortable and bumped Bobby in the arm. His eyes snapped open and he sat up straight. “Where am—oh. Do you know what time it is?”

  “No, my phone’s still off.”

  Without warning, Bobby jumped and recoiled toward Carly as if something had just appeared in the empty seat to Bobby’s left.

  “What are you doing?” she whispered, seeing nothing that should have elicited such a reaction.

  “Crazy question. Do you see anything in this seat here?”

  “No.”

  “Good. That just means I’ve flipped my lid.”

  “Bobby, what do you see? Is it Thane?”

  He shook his head.

  “Then what is it?”

  “Nothing important.”

  She grabbed his chin and turned his head toward her.

  His blue eyes were round with fear.

  “You seeing things is pretty darn important if you ask me. Now what is it?”

  Bobby’s Adam’s apple bobbed up and down. “It’s me.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’m sitting in the seat next to me, and I don’t look so good.”

  Any typical person would have instantly questioned Bobby’s sanity, but Carly had unfortunately become used to such weirdness. “You see an apparition of yourself?” she asked, keeping her voice as low as possible so none of the other passengers would overhear and start to panic.

  “It’s been popping up here and there the past couple days. I thought Thane was doing it to me as some stupid joke, but he said it’s not him.”

  “Because you should believe someone who’s trying to kill you?”

  “It doesn’t really feel like him, though. It’s just…frustrating seeing myself like that. I look like a little pipsqueak.”

  “Is that how you think of yourself?”

  Bobby’s face flushed. “Have you seen me lately? I’m no match for anyone bigger than me. I even had to have your dad come out and help me with Bradley because I’m not strong enough to deal with things on my own.”

  “That’s not uncommon.”

  “The night I walked in on Randy working with Trish, he didn’t have anyone helping him.”

  “I don’t mean to make this sound sexist in any way, but if Trish had been a man, you can bet Randy would have called in my dad to help. Even when they’re possessed, a woman isn’t going to be as strong as a man, so trust me: Randy needed his help fairly often. I can’t tell you how many times I woke up in the middle of the night hearing him leave.”

  “I didn’t know that.”

  “Well, now you do.”

  Bobby crossed his arms and stared miserably at the seat in front of him. “I just wish I could be stronger for everyone.”

  “You’ve been doing those exercises with Phil. Keep it up, and you’ll be stronger in no time.”

  Bobby uncrossed his arms and flexed his right bicep, staring at it in disappointment. “If you say so.”

  “Bobby, please try to be positive. Keep your eyes closed if you don’t want to see yourself looking like this supposed pipsqueak.”

  “I just don’t get why this is happening. Normal people don’t just start seeing themselves.”

  Sometimes Carly couldn’t believe how dense her newest friend could be—it was practically cute. “It’s pretty obvious to me,” she said. “Randy had rocks thrown at his windows because certain entities knew it would grate at his nerves. This is the same thing, but tailored to you.”

  Bobby’s face paled a few shades. “The rocks didn’t stop for him until Randy passed the mantle on to me.”

  “Yup. This doppelganger isn’t going to be leaving anytime soon, so you’d better get used to him. You should come up with a nickname for him, or something. Like Buddy.”

  “This is fabulous.”

  The plane hit a patch of turbulence without warning, and both Carly and Bobby gripped the arms of their seats.

  “Wouldn’t it be awesome if the plane went down?” Bobby muttered, looking like he was about to be ill.

  Carly tried not to roll her eyes. Sometimes Bobby could be a tad too much melodramatic. “Trust me, it’s going to take a lot more than a plane crash to kill either of us.” She grinned at him. Bobby did not grin back.

  SOMETHING NUDGED Bobby awake, and once more he found himself on the plane crammed in with dozens of other passengers, only this time when he awoke, he could feel the telltale tingle indicating the onslaught of a sore throat. A quick inspection of his surroundings told him his doppelganger had departed for the time being, though if what Carly said was true, it would be back again in no time to torment him.

  “Buckle up,” Carly said. “We’re about to land.”

  Bobby obeyed, marveling at how his exhaustion had enabled him to fall asleep not once but twice on their trip out here. “That was fast.”

  “Let’s just hope your mom is up waiting for us.”

  Stepmom, Bobby silently corrected her. Prior to their departure from Salt Lake City, Bobby had phoned Charlotte to let her know they’d need to be picked up that night.

  The jet began its descent into northern Kentucky, where Cincinnati had decided to locate its airport in order to hopelessly confuse out-of-town visitors, and before Bobby knew it, they had landed.

  A bundled-up Charlotte Roland met them out in the terminal after they’d collected their luggage. “Oh, Bobby!” Charlotte hugged him in a tight squeeze, and when she stepped back from him, tears of joy glistened in her eyes. “I had no idea you’d be here for the holidays. Talk about a Christmas present! And how have you been, Carly?”

  Carly flashed her a smile that didn’t completely mask the grief of losing her grandfather. “I’ve been great, Mrs. Roland. You?”

  A flush appeared on Charlotte’s face as she said, “Oh, yes! Things have been wonderful around here. Come on, you two must be exhausted. I can whip up some
hot chocolate when we get in—I figure neither of you will want coffee this late.”

  Charlotte started toward the exit ahead of them, and while her back was turned, Carly shrugged at Bobby. He bit his lip and followed them. Carly must have caught on, too.

  Charlotte was keeping something from him—he’d seen it in her eyes.

  Uneasiness stirred in Bobby’s midsection as he tried to guess what it might be.

  Carly caught up with Charlotte, and the two chattered away like the best of friends while Bobby trailed behind them with his hands jammed in his pockets. Charlotte, whose sunny temperament rarely dulled, seemed even more cheerful than usual, yet at the same time Bobby felt she was trying to hide her spectacular mood.

  Thankfully it wasn’t his job to unravel the complexities of human behavior.

  It wasn’t a far drive to Eleanor. When they got off the interstate they followed U. S. 52 until the town came into view. Charlotte swung onto North Broadway and then turned right onto Glade Street, where Bobby had lived his whole life before he left at the age of eighteen.

  Even though he’d just been here in July, the sight of the white two-story house caused a lump of emotion form in his scratchy throat. He’d grown up here. His father had died here.

  And now he was back. Again.

  Jonas opened the door for them dressed in navy blue flannel pajama pants and a yellow and blue team t-shirt he’d acquired at one of his many sporting events. “Dang, you sure showed up late,” he said by way of greeting.

  “It’s nice to see you too, bro.” Bobby smiled at him, then realized he didn’t know what else to say.

  Fortunately, Carly and Charlotte did a sufficient job of filling in the silence. “You’re lucky I was just at the store this afternoon,” Charlotte said as she grabbed sky-blue mugs out of a cabinet and plunked them on the counter. “They had bulk packages of hot chocolate mix on sale.”

  Bobby made a surreptitious survey of the room, searching for any clues leading to the source of Charlotte’s joy. He realized he hadn’t called her for about two months before tonight. She did call him on the morning of his birthday and wished him well, but he’d had to leave to meet up with Phil at the gym and cut their conversation short.