by J. S. Bailey
Preston had mellowed out during his teenage years, becoming more serious and more of an academic. He’d been handsome, too, not that she’d ever admitted it to him. If their deeply-held beliefs hadn’t begun to deviate from one another in such a drastic manner, their personal lives might have taken a very different course that wouldn’t have included priesthood or Terence.
“It’s going to be all right,” Terence said, his voice hollow as if he’d been reading into her thoughts.
“I’ve got to talk to that boy.” Ellen faced her husband, resolute. “Maybe someone at the church will know how I can get hold of him.”
Terence’s brow furrowed. “What boy?”
“Well, a young man. The one who came here the other day warning me not to go to the conference. He might know something.”
“How is a boy going to know anything the police don’t?”
“I don’t know. He and Bradley both tried to stop me from going. There’s a connection there.”
Even as she said it, she realized how absurd the notion would sound to her husband, but she knew she was on to something. Bobby Roland had barged into her life claiming to be a psychic, of all things, cautioning her that if she went to this conference, she would die. Then Preston, also scheduled to be at the conference, did die. Was someone targeting all the speakers? Bobby had to know something he hadn’t told her.
She picked up her phone and opened up the web browser. “I’m calling the church.”
“Ellen, you’re not being reasonable. The cops will figure this out without you digging into things.”
Ellen ignored his comment and found the church number on their website. She dialed it and waited.
A tear-choked voice answered on the second ring. “St. Paul’s Church. How may I direct your call?”
“I need to speak with Bobby Roland. Do you know how I might get hold of him?”
“IT WAS just so horrible,” Ellen sniffled. “I can’t get it out of my head, like my thoughts are on some kind of loop.”
“I know what you mean,” Bobby said over his second cup of coffee of the day. After receiving an unexpected phone call from Ellen herself mere minutes after he’d tried her home phone, he’d agreed to meet with her down at the Brew Barn Coffee Bar at the northern edge of Autumn Ridge.
The round woman looked somewhat deflated this morning, her rosy cheeks containing more of a pallor than they had when he’d met her previously. She kept dabbing at puffy eyes with a crumpled tissue, and she’d hardly touched her coffee.
“Terence thinks I’m crazy for wanting to talk to you. He’s distrustful of anyone associated with organized religion. I told him he needs to get over himself.”
“I’m just a church janitor,” Bobby said.
“You were friends with Preston. That’s enough for him.”
Bobby cringed at her use of the past tense. “You were friends with him, too.”
“Yes. I know.” Ellen blotted her eyes again, seemed to realize how sodden her tissue had become, and tucked it away in a pocket. “It’s just so…hard. I mean, I’ve lost people before, but never in front of me. Never like that.”
Bobby wished he could say the same. “I’m sorry,” he said, because there was nothing else to say. Not only was he not good at this sort of thing, but he knew from experience that hollow platitudes did nothing to lessen the sting of a loved one’s passing.
Ellen cleared her throat and straightened her shoulders. “Tell me everything you know about what’s going to happen at the conference.”
Her command took him aback. “What do you mean?”
“You came to me the other day warning me not to go because I’ll die if I do.”
“That’s because Bradley told me he overheard a conversation in a bar where someone was plotting your murder. We went to the police, but they didn’t believe us.”
What little color that remained in Ellen’s face bled out of it. “Bradley? The one who killed Preston?”
“I know it sounds bad—”
“I get it now. You and Bradley are working together—you threaten us, and then kill us so we don’t get to speak at the conference!”
She started to rise, but Bobby said, “Wait! Ellen—I’m not friends with Bradley. He’s sick and needs me to help him. He probably didn’t even know what he was doing when he shot Father Preston.”
Ellen plopped back into her seat, her jaw clenching. “Preston said that Bradley is possessed.”
“He is. I have the ability to save him.”
She paused several long moments to study him. “Supposing that’s true,” she said at length. “How am I to believe that someone in his condition overheard this alleged conversation? He could have made the whole thing up, or imagined it.”
“You didn’t see how upset he was. He seems to care a lot about other people. He insisted that we try to stop you from going so you don’t die.”
“Why would he even care? I don’t know him.”
Bobby shrugged. “If you overheard a conversation like that about someone else, wouldn’t you want to save their life, too?”
“But he killed Preston.”
They both fell silent. Bobby sipped at his coffee, enjoying the way it helped soothe the scratchiness in his throat, then said, “Why did you tell the sketch artist that Bradley has a scar?”
“Because he does. Well, I didn’t notice it the first time he got into the house, but when he came back and shot Preston, I remember seeing it. He had a bleeding cut on his forehead, too, but the scar looked old.”
Bobby frowned, reviewing the time he’d first met Bradley in The Pink Rooster and then when he’d met him the other night on the train tracks. “Bradley doesn’t have a scar,” Bobby said. “So whoever shot Father Preston is someone else.”
“But you agree that the sketch looks like Bradley?”
“Other than the scar, yes.”
“So…if the shooter isn’t Bradley, who is it?”
“Well,” Bobby said, mentally reviewing the police sketch from the news, “if I had to guess, I’d say it’s Bradley’s brother.”
“YOU MEAN there’s two of them?” Randy’s voice crackled through Bobby’s cell phone.
“That’s what it looks like.” Bobby paced back and forth outside the coffee shop, having left Ellen alone at the table so he could go make the call without her eavesdropping. “I mean, it’s the only explanation.”
“Did he ever mention having a twin?”
“No, but he did say he has a brother. And they don’t have to be twins. A couple of my cousins are three years apart and look so much alike people are always mixing them up.”
“So we’ve got Bradley Scholl and Brother Scholl out there running around, one a danger to himself and the other a danger to everyone else. This week just keeps getting better and better, Roberto. Do you think the other one could use your services, too?”
“I don’t know, but probably, since he’s so violent. How else would he have known about Father Preston or Ellen, if the demons didn’t tell him?”
“Good point, unless they’ve been meeting up with each other.” A burst of static came through the line. “I’m still on my route right now, but I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
“Okay. Bye.”
Bobby realized as he pocketed his phone that Randy hadn’t asked anything about Kaori or Matt. He counted it a small blessing. He just didn’t have the energy to argue with anyone today.
WHEN BOBBY returned home, Carly’s Chevy Aveo had gone, along with Carly, Kaori, and Matt. Presumably they’d gone scouting for signs of Bradley, having gotten a good description of the man from Bobby.
Only now he knew there were two Scholls out there somewhere, and if they ran into the wrong one, things could end badly for everyone involved.
Bobby had left the phonebook sitting on the kitchen counter. He paged through it to the S section and found five Scholls listed: Scholl, B., Scholl, Chas., Scholl, D., Scholl, Mary, and Scholl, P.
The first was probably
Bradley, unless he had an unlisted number and there was a different B. Scholl living in the area. He called the number anyway, and after several rings Bradley’s thin voice instructed him to leave a message.
Bobby ended the call and tried the next number. When it too went to voicemail, he hung up, not knowing what to say.
D. Scholl’s number went to voicemail, too. “Hey, you’ve reached Dennis,” said a voice bearing similar inflections to Bradley’s. “I can’t come to the phone right now, so leave your name and number and I’ll call you back when I feel like it.”
Bobby ended the call. While there was no guarantee that Dennis had gunned down Father Preston, he had the feeling in his gut that Dennis was their man.
Next he called Mary Scholl. She picked up almost immediately. “Hello?” she said in a curt voice.
“Um, hi,” Bobby said. “This might be a really strange question, but are you related to Bradley and Dennis Scholl?”
First, silence. Then, “Oh, God. Has something happened?”
That answers that question. “We’re trying to find them, ma’am,” he said, trying to sound as official as possible so she wouldn’t think he was just a nosy twenty-one-year old. “We, uh, have reason to believe they might be connected to a crime that occurred yesterday in Elkview. If you have any information about where they are, it would help us tremendously.”
“I—I haven’t seen them,” she said, sorrow painting her voice a dismal shade. “Not in months. They won’t talk to each other, not since the funeral.”
“The funeral, ma’am?”
“Yes—their younger sister Jess passed away suddenly about a year and a half ago. She was my only daughter.”
“I’m sorry to hear that. You said Bradley and Dennis won’t talk to each other?”
“Bradley accused Dennis of introducing Jess to marijuana. She died at a party after getting high and falling off a balcony. Bradley and Dennis got into a bad argument in front of the casket. Dennis pushed Bradley and knocked him into a display of flowers. The whole family got to witness it. It was awful.”
It sure sounds like it. “Ma’am, when was the last time you saw either Bradley or Dennis?”
“Let me think…I saw Bradley on the Fourth of July. He’d stopped by my house to pick up a book he’d left here.”
That wouldn’t have been long before Bobby ran into Bradley at The Pink Rooster. “What book was it?”
“Something to do with horticulture—Bradley does love his plants.”
“Was he acting unusual?”
Mary gave a hollow laugh. “If you mean talking to himself, darting his eyes every which way, and insulting me and his father when we asked what was wrong, then yes, he was acting unusual. Bradley’s always been the sweet one.”
“And what about Dennis?”
“He stopped in a couple weeks later. He asked if Bradley had been around, and we said no, not for days and days, and he just turned around and left. You should have seen the look in his eyes—it was scary seeing him like that. Like if he’d run into Bradley then, he would have killed him.”
Bobby fell silent, unable to think of anything else he could ask her. “We thank you for the information,” he said at last. “It will be very useful.”
“I’m sorry if they’ve gotten onto the wrong side of the law,” Mary said with a sniffle. “Ever since their sister died, neither of them has been himself.”
CARLY DROVE to Elkview and took streets at random while Kaori and Matt kept eyes out for Bradley.
In her heart she knew they wouldn’t find him, but she had to give their guests something to do, so why not drive around and around for hours to see what they could find?
No doubt Bobby was off somewhere doing something actually useful, when what he really needed was a comfortable bed and about a week of rest. But no, he had to go off on his own to save the world again, and to hell with whatever anyone else thought about his health.
Stop thinking like that, she chided herself as she came to a stop at a light. He always seems to know what he’s doing.
Still, he seemed to completely disregard her concern for him. People died from the flu—not often in this age, but enough to make her gut squirm. If something happened to Bobby…
“Is that him?” Kaori asked.
Carly turned her head to the right. Kaori pointed at a blond man on the sidewalk outside a row of shops. He had shaggy hair swept into tangles from the wind.
“His face is too round,” Carly decided as the light changed to green and traffic eased forward. “Our guy is supposed to have a skinny face.”
“You’re probably right. I don’t see an aura.”
“It doesn’t seem likely that we’ll find him out in the open,” Matt said from the backseat. “He won’t want to be found for fear of being returned to Bobby.”
She turned down another street that led them toward the wooded outskirts of Elkview. She’d give it another half an hour and then stop someplace for lunch—like her house. It was too expensive going out to eat all the—
Fifty feet in front of her, a man stepped out into the road.
Swearing, Carly slammed her foot into the brake so hard the tires let out earsplitting shrieks.
The man waved his arms in the air to get their attention, as if he hadn’t gotten it already. He wore a gray jacket and had a narrow, stubble-covered face and blond hair.
“You’ve got to help me!” His shouting sounded muffled through the windows of the car. “Nobody else will listen!”
“That’s got to be him,” Kaori said. “He has the aura.”
Without any delay, Kaori climbed out of the car and strode resolutely toward Bradley, whose chest heaved up and down from apparent exertion. Carly hastily switched on her hazard lights. Thankfully this didn’t appear to be a busy street.
Kaori said something to Bradley but spoke too softly for Carly to hear.
Bradley’s eyes widened.
Then he bolted into the trees.
Kaori bolted after him.
In the backseat, Matt undid his seatbelt and bolted after Kaori.
Carly’s shoulders slumped as she watched her companions flee into the undergrowth. “I guess I’ll just wait here, then,” she said before pulling off the road and parking along the shoulder. She rested her forehead against the steering wheel and let the engine continue to run so she wouldn’t freeze to death.
She liked helping Bobby—it was generally one of her favorite things to do, and she enjoyed spending time with the dork, even when they argued.
But sometimes, like when the temperature outside hovered around twenty degrees and she had to go find a missing person for him, helping Bobby out just kind of sucked.
KAORI RACED through the woods, down a slope into a gully, through a drainage ditch too small to be considered a stream, and up an incline, never letting Bradley out of her sight for more than a few seconds. She could hear Matt pounding after her, but she was too fast for him to keep up.
She almost called out to Bradley to tell him to stop, that she wanted to help, but she would have wasted her breath. He was in no condition to follow commands and would simply ignore them if she issued any. Better for her to tackle and detain him so she could begin his cleansing without further complications.
Ahead of her, Bradley had gotten his jacket caught in some brambles and struggled to free himself. She’d almost reached him when he tugged free, leaving a shred of gray fabric clinging to the thorns.
So close.
The frigid air hurt her throat as she continued after him. She pushed her legs to the limit, and just as she started to think she wouldn’t be able to run anymore, Bradley tripped over a gnarled tree root and went down, hard.
He still lay on his side when she got to him. His face was an unhealthy shade of white, and tears ran freely from his eyes.
The black aura emanating from him thickened. There’s nothing you can do for him, hissed a voice. He belongs to us.
Ignoring it, Kaori said, “Bradley? Bradley,
can you hear me?”
The man let out a whimper like a wounded animal. He had bony cheeks and hands, like he hadn’t eaten properly in days.
“Bradley, I’m here to help you. Didn’t you say you wanted help?”
Matt caught up to them and put his hands on his knees, panting. “What happened?”
“He tripped over that,” Kaori said, nodding toward the twisted root.
“My ankle,” Bradley moaned. “I think it’s broken.”
“You’re going to be okay,” Kaori said. “We can take you to a hospital and have it x-rayed.”
Bradley’s body went rigid, and when he spoke, his voice came out in a harsher tone. “There’s nothing you can do for him,” he said, rising to his feet in spite of his allegedly-injured ankle. “You should have stayed away.”
Kaori, who’d dealt with countless dozens of people with Bradley’s condition over the years, wasn’t fazed. “In the name of God, I command you to tell me your name.”
Bradley’s expression twisted as though he were in tremendous pain. “Our name is Mortem.”
Mortem. Latin for death. How very original.
“Mortem, in the name of God, I command you to let Bradley speak.”
Bradley gasped, and he collapsed onto the ground once more. “I’m so hungry,” he moaned.
“When was the last time you ate?” Kaori asked, standing over him with muscles tensed in case he tried to bolt again.
Bradley blinked at her. His blue eyes were pale, like the sky. “I don’t know. I’m dead so I don’t have to eat, but I’m hungry anyway.”
“You’re not dead, Bradley. That’s just a lie they’ve told you so you starve yourself to death.”
“How can I believe you?”
“I’ve been told I’m a terrible liar.”
Bradley groaned, and Kaori knew that dear old Mortem was fighting to take back control. “Mortem, in the name of God, I command you to be still.” If the weather had been more ideal, she could have continued the cleansing here in the woods, but Bradley’s condition appeared too fragile for that. What he needed was a good, hot meal and some ice for his ankle, which was more likely sprained than broken.