by J. S. Bailey
Her skin prickling at the inexplicable phenomenon, she rubbed her neck where the knife had cut her all those years ago. The man hadn’t cut deep enough (though he hadn’t known it) and left Kaori for dead, and she’d held completely still while he carried her to a nearby creek and dumped her body down the embankment like human refuse.
She’d waited a quarter of an hour to make sure he was gone before she stirred, then sat up and bathed her wound in creek water. It stung, and as Kaori watched her own blood swirl away downstream, she knew she’d done the right thing by spying inside that man’s barn and finding the meth lab he’d established there. Drugs could kill. Her discovery might very well have saved people’s lives.
Overall, it had been the most terrifying day of her life—not that it had sway over her any longer. She’d come to terms with the fact that a grown man had tried to kill a child just because she’d stumbled across his illegal operation. He’d been sentenced, after all, and even though half the town hated her since the man in question happened to be the much-loved mayor who just had to have been framed for the whole thing, she’d eventually gotten over the ordeal and moved on.
So why had she just relived it?
A sudden cry behind her made Kaori turn. Matt, Bobby, and Carly had each halted at different points on the sidewalk, wearing varying expressions of horror.
She ran to Bobby, who stood the closest to her and was presumably the source of the cry. Tears streamed from his red eyes, which had focused on a point well beyond her.
She knew better than to turn and look in the direction of his gaze. Whatever horrified him lay inside his head just as much as her vision had been inside hers.
“Bobby, snap out of it,” she said, her heart racing. She no longer cared about facing the unknown here; she just knew they needed to keep moving before whatever Bobby foresaw came to pass.
He remained unresponsive.
Having no better course of action at that moment, she slapped him across the face. He blinked, then made a coughing, spluttering sound as he regained his awareness.
“What’s just happened to us?” she asked, keeping one eye out for any form of approaching danger. She hadn’t spotted any threats yet and had no idea how long it would be before one arose.
“I—it’s Thane.” Bobby shivered. “He’s done this before, sending bad memories into my head.”
“I thought you said his influence couldn’t reach this far.” Bobby had recounted Thane’s basic biography to her and Matt minutes before their mad dash out the back door. He seemed a formidable enemy, though in Kaori’s experience, all enemies could be defeated if dealt with in the proper manner.
“If he’s in Oregon, I don’t think it can.”
“So you’re saying he’s here, in Eleanor.”
Bobby’s face turned a sickly shade of white. “Oh, crap.”
“What?”
“The vase. My arm.”
Kaori stared past Bobby at Matt and Carly, who both appeared to still be in dazes. This would look awfully fishy to anyone driving by, and they still needed to hurry. “Could you explain in English, please, and quickly?”
“Thane does stuff to people’s heads. That’s why I can’t remember breaking the vase or cutting my arm.” Bobby grimaced. “He came to the house earlier today. Something must have gone wrong, and he made me and Carly forget.”
“Okay. Let’s get to my car and lay rubber before he plagues us with more visions, but first let’s get our friends to snap out of it.”
BOBBY GRABBED Carly by the shoulders and shook her, wondering if Thane had made her relive her sister’s death again like he had when she went to confront him at the nursing home with Lupe, Phil, and Kevin Lyle the previous summer.
He decided he wouldn’t ask her, and hoped she wouldn’t ask him about what he’d seen: a vision of himself stabbing the cruel Farley in the back and then ending his life with the pull of a trigger.
Her eyes snapped into focus on his face, and before Bobby could offer an explanation, Carly hissed, “Thane.”
“Yeah, I know,” he said, noting that Kaori was still in the process of reviving Matt. “We need to get out of here.”
“But Bobby—”
Bobby heard running footsteps seconds before Thane himself raced around the corner gripping one of the knives from Charlotte’s knife block.
As impossible as it may have been, Bobby knew in his heart this was no apparition. Somehow Thane had been cured, either through the marvels of medical science or some demonic miracle.
“Run!” Bobby cried, and tore off in the direction of Main Street. It might be a long shot, but if Bobby could get Thane to pursue him to a main thoroughfare, the chances of Thane being stopped by law enforcement improved drastically. The cavalcade of police cars he’d expected to respond to his 911 call hadn’t yet arrived, and he didn’t think he’d have the time to stick around and wait for them at this point, anyway.
Thane wouldn’t be able to alter dozens upon dozens of people’s perceptions out in the busier part of town without compromising himself—Bobby knew that much after having witnessed his limitations in person last summer.
Without looking back to see if his friends were following, he increased his speed and bolted through the intersection with Glade Street, hoping to make it to Main before Thane caught up.
Maybe that made him a bad person, but he could not allow himself to die.
Only a hint of grayness clouded his vision as he ran down the sidewalk—he wouldn’t be fainting today, not since he’d been working out more and building up his stamina, though his illness had sapped his energy and he could feel himself winding down.
He pushed himself past his weakness. Main Street grew closer and closer. He could see it now, and the narrow view of the river visible between buildings on the far side of the four-lane road.
At once, Bobby halted. Anxiety surged through his veins as yet another premonition assaulted him.
He couldn’t run across the road to safety and wait for Thane to be waylaid by cops.
If he did, somebody would die.
His heart stuttering with every breath, Bobby assessed his surroundings. He could hang a right at the intersection with Main and run inside the grocery store so he might be able to hide from Thane there…but no, Thane could read his thoughts. He’d be able to find Bobby anywhere in this town just by probing his mind.
A quick glance behind him revealed that Thane was nearly upon him, knife raised.
Sidney, the daughter of Charlotte’s boyfriend Drew, had said that she would hug an evil man who had superpowers and tell him to be nice.
Bobby did not have that luxury, because hugging Thane in this moment would result in death by exsanguination.
Perhaps if he ran across Main Street, Thane would be the one to die, and then half of Bobby’s problems would be over.
Caleb had said that Bobby would be required to make a choice.
This was it.
Praying that he wasn’t making the costliest blunder of his life, Bobby bolted toward Main Street and, without checking for traffic (because stopping would have allowed Thane to stick the knife in his back), started his crazed dash across the roadway.
You will be required to make a choice.
Horns blared and tires squealed. Bobby narrowly avoided being flattened by a Honda Accord and veered off to one side, right into the path of a heating oil truck, which swerved and hit a semi head-on just as Bobby made it to relative safety on the far side of the street.
No sooner had he reached the other side when the blare of sirens sounded—likely belonging to whichever vehicles were responding to his emergency call. Bobby glanced back toward the road and gasped when he saw the damage he’d unintentionally inflicted. The semi’s cab had crumpled and a woman inside it let out agonizing screams, and the heating oil truck had sprung a leak upon impact. Oil gushed across the road in rivulets.
Oh, crap.
Bobby raced to the cab of the semi, forced the passenger side door open, and yanked the i
njured driver out onto the ground.
“The hell’s the matter with you?” the woman shrieked as she held one arm to her chest, blood streaming from her nose and forehead. Bits of broken glass glistened in her short hair.
Bobby tugged the woman’s good arm to get her to move. “That other truck is leaking oil. We’ve got to get out of here.”
The man who’d been driving the oil truck forced his cab door open and bolted toward the river.
Bobby followed, half-dragging the semi driver with him, when it all ignited.
A wall of searing heat pushed at his back as he hurtled away from the scene. Having no desire to be detained by law enforcement for his involvement in the crash, he ran along the edge of the river, leaving the semi driver behind at a bench along the riverbank, and circled back to the street a few blocks away from the accident, where an immense cloud of smoke and flames billowed into the air.
If Thane had gotten caught up in the explosion, Bobby didn’t know.
All he knew was that he had to get away before someone arrested him.
People driving on Main had stopped and fled their cars, and none of them paid Bobby any notice as he ran back toward Glade Street.
One street away from Charlotte’s house, a gray Ford squealed up beside him and stopped.
It took Bobby about five seconds to register the fact that it was Kaori’s car, and that Carly and Matt were inside it as well.
“Get in!” Kaori shouted, her eyes wide as they went to the fireball filling the air in the distance.
Bobby complied without hesitation, piling into the backseat with Matt. To his surprise, his and Carly’s luggage had been crammed onto the floor between the rows of seats.
Kaori squealed away from the curb before Bobby could properly situate himself and buckle his seatbelt.
“I thought it would be prudent of us to run back here and get my car and your stuff while you were distracting Thane,” Kaori said. “Did you blow him up?”
“No idea,” Bobby panted, feeling his gut sinking faster than the Titanic. “I—I didn’t mean for there to be an explosion. I ran across the road, and a heating oil truck, it sort of…”
Carly, who sat in the front passenger seat, turned and looked at Bobby, her face a mask of horror. She gripped her purse in her lap so tightly that her knuckles turned white. “Blew up? I noticed.” Her voice came out in an un-Carly-like squeak.
Bobby coughed, then wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “I swear it was an accident! Thane was right on my tail; he would have stabbed me if I hadn’t run out into traffic.”
“I get that.” Carly turned away from him to stare out the windshield. “But how many other people died as a result?”
MIA HAD caught up to Thane just as he reached Main Street, his knife raised mere inches from Bobby Roland’s back. She held her breath, fully expecting to see Thane plunge the blade into his flesh, but Bobby derailed her expectations by running out into the road like an animal with a death wish.
Thane drew up short, and his mouth dropped open in disbelief.
“What is he doing?” Mia asked.
Thane jumped. He must not have realized she had reached him.
Slipping the knife into his pocket, Thane said, “He’s being an absolute fool. Just look at—”
Mia gasped as a small tanker slammed into the front of a semi coming the other direction.
Without another word to each other, she and Thane each broke into a run, putting as much ground between them and the tanker as possible before it went kablooey. Getting roasted alive in a hayseed river town wasn’t exactly on Mia’s list of plans for the day.
Mia refused to look behind her, even when she heard the tanker blow and felt the heat radiating from it. Within minutes they made it back to the vacant house, and she and Thane stood on the porch for a few moments to gather their respective breaths.
“What now?” Mia huffed.
Thane closed his eyes to concentrate. “We just missed them. They’re already on their way out of town.”
“So let’s chase them.”
Thane shook his head. “Let them think they’ve escaped. We can go back home, and I can lure him—them—to the estate like I’d planned on doing in the first place.”
Mia still didn’t think that plan sounded ideal, but she said, “Okay, we’d better get going then.”
She didn’t tell him she felt like she needed a nap after the strains she’d put herself through so far that day. Hanging out with Thane was turning out to be the wild ride she hadn’t expected.
“YOU’RE SAYING that Bradley Scholl was here.”
“If that’s his name.” Ellen glared at Father Preston, who stood in her living room doing his very best to act calm. He’d left for her house the moment he’d gotten off the phone with her, but by the time he arrived, Bradley had been gone for nearly forty minutes.
“Bradley is a disturbed young man currently under my care,” Father Preston said, hoping to defuse the bomb he could sense was about to go off inside his old friend. “Unfortunately, he ran away from my house while I was at Mass on Sunday, and I haven’t been able to find him.”
Ellen folded her arms. “If he’s that disturbed, he needs psychological care, not spiritual guidance. No offense.”
“There’s not a thing a psychologist could do for him.”
“And you know this how? You’re a priest, for God’s sake, not a doctor.”
Father Preston suppressed a sigh. He had no desire to lie to her—it would reflect poorly on his character—yet he didn’t want to divulge the full truth since doing so would reveal Bobby’s role in the whole matter. “Others and myself believe Bradley to be possessed by an evil spirit,” he said as delicately as he could. “I hope to see him cleansed.”
Ellen blinked. He thought she might laugh at him, but her voice sounded cold when she spoke. “You believe that.”
“Yes.”
“You understand how serious this is? I ought to report you.”
“For what, exactly?”
“For feeding that boy delusions! It’s sick, and you should be ashamed of yourself.”
“Ellen, please.”
“I’m tired of this. All I wanted to do was attend this conference to let you religious types know I’m not out to get you, yet two people—two—who have connections to you show up here within days of one another and tell me I shouldn’t go.”
“They’re worried about you is all, and I am, too. I feel there’s a very real threat to your safety.”
She rolled her eyes. “Of course, I should leave it to all the men to be my shining knights in armor. Nobody’s going to kill me, Preston. I have no enemies.”
“Everyone has enemies.”
“Oh, sure. Do you think—”
A sudden thud made them turn their heads in the direction of the kitchen.
“What in the…” Ellen said, then strode off toward the kitchen archway.
Father Preston, his senses on alert, followed.
“Oh, would you look at this!” Ellen gestured in disgust at a broken pane in her back door. “That’s how he must have gotten in here. Must have used a hammer or something.”
The thud came again, but louder. Father Preston frowned at the ceiling. “Is someone else here?”
“Just Terence. He works third shift; it’s a wonder he hasn’t woken up already from all the commotion.”
As if in response to her words, a thin man just a few years older than Father Preston shuffled into the room wearing rumpled clothing like he’d just dragged himself from bed. “Ellen, what—” He blinked at the sight of Father Preston, then said, “What in the blazes is going on?”
“Preston came by to see if I was okay,” Ellen said. “A man broke in while you were sleeping and threatened me.”
Terence’s stubbly jaw dropped open. “Why didn’t you wake me up? Why did you call him?”
“Something the burglar said led me to believe he and Preston are acquainted.” Ellen gave Father Preston a
sidelong glance as if to encourage him to go along with her story.
A pinkish tinge appeared on the man’s cheeks. “Burglar? Did he take anything?”
“Not that I can tell, but we’ll have to replace one of the panes in the back door.”
“Wonderful,” Terence grunted. “I should have a security system put in so it doesn’t happen again.”
“We don’t need to do that.” Ellen’s voice grew terse. “What we need is to control unstable people instead of telling them they’re possessed by demons.”
Terence’s mouth dropped open further, and the moment it did, a nearby window shattered, and a rock the size of a grapefruit came to rest on the white linoleum among the broken shards of glass.
Terence dove for the cordless phone sitting on the counter while Father Preston instinctively shoved Ellen toward the living room.
“Get off of me!” she hissed, making an effort to scramble back toward the kitchen. “I can handle this.”
Terence let out a curse. “The phone’s dead. Someone must have cut the line outside.”
One of the living room windows shattered—either the assailant must have rushed around to the front of the house to continue the attack there, or he had an accomplice. Bitter wind gusted through the house, rippling the curtains. “My purse,” Ellen said, rushing toward where she’d set it on the coffee table. She grabbed it up by the handles the moment a figure loomed in the empty window frame.
“Upstairs!” Terence whispered. “Quick!”
The three of them clambered up carpeted stairs into an upper hallway. Terence led them into a generously-sized bathroom, slammed the door, and locked it, then stepped into the bathtub.
“What are you doing?” Ellen whispered back at him.
“If he starts shooting through the door, he’s less likely to hit us in here because of the angle. Get in.”
Ellen and Father Preston obeyed, the latter feeling simultaneously silly and terrified. Innocent people were at risk, and he didn’t know what to do about it.
Ellen dug through her purse and cursed. “I must have left my phone on the table after I called Preston. This was a bad idea. We should have run out the back instead.”