by J. S. Bailey
Bradley blinked again. “It’s inside of me, isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“Can you get it out?”
“Yes again, but not here. How about you come with us, and we can help you?”
He nodded. Kaori reached out a hand, and he latched onto it so she could help him up. No warmth emanated from his frozen fingers—he really did feel like a corpse.
“We’ll help you walk,” Matt said to him. “Stand between us and put your arms around our shoulders, and we’ll make sure you don’t have to use that ankle.”
“Okay.” Bradley sniffled and did as asked.
As they started off in the general direction of the road, Kaori added, “Mortem, in the name of God, I command you not to try anything stupid.”
BOBBY HAD lain down on the couch after getting off the phone with Mary Scholl with every intention of getting some rest, but barely ten minutes later, car doors slammed out in the driveway and the sound of footsteps pattered up onto the porch.
He couldn’t say he hadn’t tried.
He dragged himself across the room and opened the door to see a disgruntled Carly standing before him. “We have a present for you,” she said, and stepped aside to allow Kaori and Matt to drag in none other than Bradley Scholl.
Bobby found it difficult to speak. “What in the…how?”
“Long story,” Carly said. “I just about ran him over in my car.”
Matt went out into the kitchen to rummage around in the freezer, then returned to the living room with an icepack and the dishtowel Bobby had lying next to the sink. “Here, hold this on your ankle,” he said to Bradley. Then he grabbed the coffee table and dragged it closer to the couch. “You’ll need to elevate it.”
Warily, Bradley sat down on the couch with Kaori’s aid and propped his ankle up on the table.
“He needs something to eat,” Kaori said. “I don’t think he’s eaten anything in days.”
“I’ve got more ramen noodles in the cabinet,” Bobby said.
Matt went back into the kitchen, presumably to make Bradley some chow, and while he dug around in search of said ramen noodles, Kaori said, “The demon’s name is Mortem.”
“Oh, yeah,” Bobby said. “I got it to tell me that the other day, but I haven’t had the chance to go further from there. You can thank Thane for that.”
“You’re aware that ‘mortem’ is Latin for ‘death’?”
“Huh. You’d think they’d come up with more original names for themselves.” Bradley had been preoccupied with death—the death of his sister, and then the belief that he himself had died. By the look of Bradley’s gaunt face, it was too easy to believe that he’d been starving himself ever since he escaped from Father Preston’s house.
Thinking of the priest hurt. Since Bradley hadn’t been the one to kill Father Preston, it was unlikely he knew the man had died. It might be best to keep it that way for now so as not to upset Bradley even further.
“Bradley,” Bobby said, “tell us about your brother.”
Bradley looked up at him in confusion. “You mean Dennis? Why?”
“I think he might need help, too. I thought you might know where we can find him.”
Bradley shivered. “I haven’t seen him in ages. I…I…”
His expression twisted, and Kaori said, “Mortem, in the name of God, I command you to let Bradley speak.”
Bradley relaxed. Matt brought out the steaming bowl of noodles and a fork and handed them to him. “It’s a little hot,” Matt cautioned.
Bradley seemed not to care, for he started forking noodles into his mouth at an almost sickening rate. When he finished just over a minute later, he said, “Dennis is a couple years older than me. He never let me forget that.”
“He lorded it over you, you mean,” Kaori said.
“He was always right, you know? And everyone else was always wrong. When our sister died, I blamed Dennis. It was stupid, I get that now. It was Jess’s fault. Not his.” He squinted up at Bobby. “Are you sure I’m not dead? Because Jess…”
“I don’t think a dead guy has that big of an appetite,” Bobby said with a smile.
Bradley leaned forward and set his empty bowl on the coffee table. “Could I have a glass of water, too? I didn’t realize how thirsty I am until now.”
THEY LET Bradley rest awhile, and while the man’s eyes were closed, Kaori motioned for Bobby to join her in the kitchen.
“What?” Bobby whispered so his voice wouldn’t travel. Carly and Matt had gone out to get groceries since what Bobby had on hand wasn’t enough to feed five people for long.
“I don’t want to step on your toes,” Kaori said. “You started with Bradley. You should be the one to finish it.”
Bobby’s pulse spiked. “But you said you’d help out with Bradley while I go after Thane.”
“You haven’t gone after him yet, have you? And it turns out we have Bradley’s brother to worry about, too. I can cleanse Dennis when we find him, if he’s truly possessed.”
Her reasoning did make sense. “When should I start on Bradley?”
“It’s best if you begin after Matt and Carly get back. We don’t want them to walk in during the middle of it and cause a disruption.”
“Good point.”
Bobby returned to the living room. Instead of resting, Bradley now sat upright, completely alert.
He’d removed his leg from the table. The towel-wrapped icepack lay beside where his leg had rested, making a puddle of condensation on the wooden surface.
“Everything okay?” Bobby asked. So far he’d been able to stop the black aura from invading his thoughts, but now that he’d returned to the living room, the blackness pulsated thicker and sent out tendrils to probe for cracks in his mind.
“Thane is going to kill you,” Bradley said in a rough voice that didn’t belong to him.
At that moment, Bobby’s doppelganger materialized in front of the television wearing the identical outfit Bobby had on at that moment. Instead of taunting him as it had been wont to do in recent days, it mirrored perfectly Bobby’s expression of unease.
“Mortem—in the name of God, be silent,” Kaori said, stepping up beside Bobby.
Bradley started convulsing, and the photograph of Ken and pregnant Adrian flew off the shelf above the couch onto the floor.
“Okay, change of plans,” Kaori said. “I think you should start now.”
Bobby nodded and tried to swallow, but his mouth had gone dry. He’d never wanted to cleanse anyone in this house. Neighbors pressed close on all sides. What if someone heard them? What if Bradley destroyed the property?
Kaori lingered near the front door so she could warn Carly and Matt not to barge in on them when they returned with groceries, and Bobby wearily stepped up to Bradley, praying for the strength to see this through.
Remember, the Spirit whispered.
Bobby’s thoughts went back to that moment back in July when he had accepted the mantle of Servitude from what he’d thought had been a dying Randy. As soon as he’d taken the mantle for himself, sheer joy had exploded within him, and he’d seen the world as he’d never seen it before.
That sensation had worn off, and until now he hadn’t realized how much he’d missed it.
During those moments of bliss, Bobby had felt invincible—not the naïve invincibility of youth, but the invincibility of knowing that whatever happened to his body, nothing could ever harm his soul. A week later, Frankie Jovingo had reminded him and their posse of former Servants of the same thing.
Bobby felt his confidence bolster. Nothing can harm me. I can do this.
“Mortem,” he said. “In the name of God the Father, and in Jesus Christ his son, and the Holy Spirit, leave this child Bradley and never return to him.”
Bradley’s face twisted in agony. The black aura hammered itself against Bobby’s mind, and a thousand voices whispered that Bobby wasn’t good enough, that he would never succeed no matter how hard he tried.
Time
passed slowly as Bobby repeated his command to Mortem again and again. The cleansing shouldn’t take too much longer since Bobby had already worked with him on a different evening, and a burst of faith told him that he’d nearly completed it.
Thick tears coursed down Bradley’s cheeks, making him appear much younger than his twentysomething years. “Stop hurting me. Stop hurting me.”
“Mortem—in the name of God, leave him!”
Bradley convulsed again and flopped over onto the couch with spittle leaking from the corner of his mouth.
The black aura evaporated like it had never been there.
Bobby held his breath as Bradley’s breathing evened out. After a handful of seconds, he sat up and blinked. “I—I don’t feel it anymore,” Bradley said, his pale blue eyes wide with wonder. He blotted his tears on his sleeve. “It’s like the thing is gone.”
A big, stupid grin the size of Oregon stretched across Bobby’s face—that hadn’t been so hard after all. “There’s a really good reason for that.”
Bradley ran a hand over the stubble on his chin, then wrinkled his nose in pure disgust. “Why didn’t anybody tell me I was starting to look like Sasquatch? I don’t do beards.”
BRADLEY LIMPED from the bathroom freshly showered and shaven and struck a pose for Bobby and Kaori wearing some of Bobby’s clothing. His cheeks held a pinkish tinge from the hot water, and mischief glinted in his eyes.
If Bobby hadn’t known any better, he’d have said Bradley was a different person.
“How do I look?” Bradley asked with a wink.
Kaori smiled. “Like the most alive man who’s ever been.”
“What she said,” said Bobby, then coughed. His fever may have dropped a bit, but his illness had far from vanished. Maybe now he could get some of that rest Carly had been nagging him about.
“I didn’t see any hair gel in your closet,” Bradley said to Bobby.
“That’s because I don’t have any.”
“What kind of man are you?” Bradley gaped as if Bobby were the strange one. “Do you at least have something to eat? I’m starving.”
Kaori went into the kitchen to fix Bradley his second meal of the hour presumably so Bobby wouldn’t contaminate it with germs, and Bobby drifted to the front window to watch for Carly and Matt. He hadn’t expected them to take this long. What could be holding them up?
He dug out his phone and called Carly’s number just to have a little peace of mind. It went immediately to voicemail.
His chest tightened. Three minutes later he tried her number again to no avail.
“Something’s wrong,” he said when he entered the kitchen. Kaori was in the midst of scrambling a skillet full of eggs, one of the few remaining food items he had left in the house. “Carly isn’t picking up her phone.”
“They’re probably just stuck in traffic.”
“And that’s why it went to voicemail without ringing?”
“Could be her phone needs charged. Why are you worrying? You’re the person who has premonitions when his friends are in danger.”
Kaori was right, but that didn’t settle his nerves. He could feel his skin prickling like all the hairs on his arms stood on end. He didn’t sense the usual tidal wave of urgency—more like distinct unease which was probably what normal people felt when they worried about their friends.
“Give them a little while longer,” Kaori said. “Then you can start worrying.”
“WHAT’S IT like, traveling the country with Kaori?” Carly asked as they pulled into the parking lot of the nearest Safeway. Their ride to the store had been fraught with awkward silence, and this seemed as good of a conversation starter as any.
“Sometimes adventurous, usually dull,” Matt said, unbuckling his seatbelt. “Not that I find Kaori dull. We’re on the road more often than not. It all starts to blur together after a while, like one long vacation. Sometimes I feel like we need a vacation.”
Carly, still fighting exhaustion from her travels over the past few days, couldn’t help but agree. “It must take a lot out of you, still being on the job like that. Our guys like to retire.”
“That’s not an option for me. Kaori doesn’t have anyone else to look after her. Bobby has all of you.”
They got out of the Aveo and made their way across the parking lot. She supposed Bobby was lucky to have so much support, but with the way her father had acted toward him lately, she couldn’t help but wonder if having so many living predecessors might be a detriment, too.
“Has she lined up a replacement?” Carly asked him.
Sadness crept into the man’s eyes. “Not yet. We haven’t stayed anywhere long enough for her to choose one. Sometimes I worry that…you know.”
They conducted their shopping in that same mostly-awkward silence. All the things Carly would have liked to discuss with the man couldn’t be spoken of in public, so she had to settle for safe utterings such as “Hey, let’s get a few frozen pizzas” and “Do you and Kaori like bagels?”
At one point as Carly tossed a loaf of bread on top of the mound of groceries they’d gathered so far, Connie, the mother of her old friend Carmen, came around the corner with a shopping basket hooked over her arm and offered her an overzealous “Hel-lo!”
Carmen had returned from a mission trip a few months back with their mutual friend Julia but practically snubbed Carly every time she’d tried to set a date to meet up, citing illness and busy schedules. Luckily Carmen did not accompany her mother today.
“Hi, Mrs. Olson,” Carly said, reverting to her childhood habit of using the woman’s formal name. “How are you?”
Connie was a stick-thin woman who always looked like she needed to be somewhere an hour ago. “I’m great! Everything’s great. Just trying to get everything ready for the party Saturday. Carmen wanted to have it at our place instead of hers since we have more room, and I’ve got a million things to do! I assume I’ll be seeing you then?”
Carly opened her mouth, closed it, then said, “Um, no, I have other plans.”
“Oh, now that’s too bad! You heard that Amber drove in from Seattle? She’s staying the rest of the month. It’ll be just like old times for the four of you.”
“Four?”
“Yes, Julia will be there, too. They’ll be disappointed to hear you can’t make it. Anyway, got to run! It was nice seeing you.” The woman stuffed a loaf of bread into her basket and hurried off.
Carly’s shoulders slumped as she watched Connie Olson disappear around the corner.
“You didn’t receive the invite, I take it?” Matt asked once the woman had gone.
Carly drew in a breath. “It’s okay. I haven’t talked to any of them in ages. It’s okay.”
Her foul mood didn’t dissipate after they’d paid for their food, and when they emerged into the parking lot into another burst of flurries, she was just about seeing red. What had she done to any of her friends to make them treat her like that? Did they consider her a freak now, or something? Amber had always been the smart, overachieving one who vowed to conquer the world someday with her 130-point IQ; maybe she’d decided Carly was nothing more than an ignorant worm best left to its own devices.
But Amber isn’t the one having the party.
Carly popped the hatchback and was about to start hefting bags of groceries out of the cart when sudden movement off to her right caught her eye.
She turned. Thane and a dark-haired young woman a few years older than her stood two yards away from the car. Amusement flickered in the woman’s eyes. “Don’t go anywhere,” she said.
Rage bubbled inside of Carly. She wanted to lunge at Thane, who stood calmly beside the woman with folded arms, but her legs refused to move.
She ignored a surge of panic, too angry to be afraid. Such a shame he hadn’t been roasted alive in Bobby’s little explosion.
“What do you want?” Carly spat.
“You,” Thane said. “As bait.”
“Oh, so Bobby can come after us and you can kill hi
m. Genius plan right there.”
“You will not scream or call any other attention to yourself,” the woman said. “I’m Mia, by the way, not that you’ll care.”
Carly gnashed her teeth together. This day was going brilliantly so far. “You’re forgetting something,” she said to Thane.
“Oh? And what might that be?”
“Bobby will know if Matt and I are in danger. He’ll come here to stop you before you can take us anywhere to use as bait.”
“That would be a magnificent idea,” Thane said, “since that would bring him to me sooner than I would have hoped for, but it’s not going to happen. I need to put certain things into place before he comes to me.”
“And just what’s going to stop him from coming after you now?”
“Mia.” Thane smiled. “You probably don’t remember this, but we all had a bit of a run-in with each other at the airport before we all flew back west. I couldn’t have you making a scene in public, so Mia forced you to be civil. Then she ordered Bobby to turn off his premonitions. Then she ordered all of you to wipe the encounter from your memories. She seems to be rather good at that.”
Mia grinned. Carly just felt sick. Her memories wiped, and Bobby’s premonitions turned off? That couldn’t be good for anyone.
Carly glanced to the side and saw that Matt’s face had turned a deep shade of red. Like Carly, he appeared unable to move despite the deep desire to do so.
“If it makes you feel better,” Mia said, “we can bring your groceries with us. I’d hate to see all that food wasted.”
Thane rolled his eyes. “We don’t need their groceries.”
“We don’t, but food pantries do. They’re usually crying for donations this time of year.” Mia turned back to Carly and Matt. “Come on, you two. We’re parked right over here. Get in the backseat, and don’t move until I say so.”