He pushed the pedals. Down, down, down, down. He wasn't moving nearly as fast as he usually did, but even middle-speed for Ralph Hickey was pretty-damn-fast for most. He would put as much space between himself and this latest attack –
(think, Ralphie, think what she actually said, man!)
– as he could. He would get back –
(think, Ralphie, think what she actually said, man!)
– to R.I. and get another fare. He would –
(think, Ralphie)
– stay ahead of these things –
(think what she actually)
–until he could figure out –
(said, man!)
He skidded to a stop.
She had been asking what happened. What was going on.
Or had that been a dream? Some kind of psychosis brought on by too much caffeine, too much work, too much exertion, and too little sleep? Ralph had heard of things like that. R.I. had its own urban legends about riders who went until they saw dragons flying behind them and their bladders exploded. Ali called them "Model Employees" but they were a cautionary tale about couriers misusing their most important equipment: themselves.
Or maybe it was a trick. Could it be the things were getting subtle? Trying to fool him with pleas for aid, like that woman had done yesterday –
(or was it the day before or the day before that?)
– when she walked in front of the car?
He stiffened.
He wasn't moving. Wasn't rolling or running for the first time in days.
But when he looked around, he saw he was alone. No one – nothing – near. No hands reaching for him, no voices taunting him.
"What's going on?" he said. His voice sounded tired, even to himself, and his head was packed with sawdust.
Had the ghosts gone away?
No, he didn't think so. They were still around. Just not here. Not in this particular place.
"Why not?" he said. Talking to himself wasn't what he thought of as a great sign of mental health, but that ship had probably already sailed. "What's here?"
He looked around. Houses, lawns, hedges. Some kids' toys on a few properties. Normal neighborhood, close to downtown, where fairly well-to-do folks lived. Nothing interesting. Nothing suspicious.
"What's going on?" he said. Realized it was what the woman had been screaming. And now he wondered if she hadn't been another one of the specters that had come so close of late. Maybe she was real. Maybe she needed help.
Maybe she could help him.
He pulled out his tablet. Brought up the delivery history. The last address he'd delivered to was at the top. Not one he recognized. He had a good memory for places, so if he'd delivered there before he probably would have remembered it.
But the recipient name… that was familiar. He stiffened on his seat.
Blake Douglas. That had been the name he delivered to when he saw the dead boy. The poor kid with his throat cut to pieces.
And after that, everything started to go to Hell. Literally.
He put his tablet back in his bag and started biking. The wheels turned slowly, the pedals were bricks under his feet.
He didn't want to go back there. Whatever was going on to him, it had started with the Douglas delivery.
But he had to go back, didn't he? Because the dead were getting bolder, getting stronger, getting closer. If they kept it up he'd be one of them before long.
He didn't want to see that little boy with the slit throat. Worse, he didn't want to see whoever had done that to him, like the woman who carried the shotgun around to tap on the daughter she had blown to pieces with it. He didn't want to face the malignancy of a monster that would kill a child.
So, fine, he wouldn't go in the house. He'd stay out on the porch and hope the thing that killed that boy wasn't around.
But he had to see the Douglas woman – if it was her that he had heard calling to him. Because that was the only way he might find answers.
Ralph could see the dead. He had other skills, too. But it didn't take a prophet to know that if things didn't change he was dead meat. Then maybe it'd be him catching rides, talking to a few freaks who could see into the beyond.
Maybe his mom would be there.
That thought made him feel like he was drowning. But it got him moving faster. Back to the Douglas house. To the people who had brought this darkness.
Hoping that the darkness would illuminate his way.
When he got there he dropped his bike at the curb and walked to the door. R.I. policy was that if you were delivering to a residence you left the bike at the curb. The other couriers said it was because that showed courtesy – no leaving skid marks or grease stains on a client's sidewalk or driveway. Ralph followed protocol automatically, but halfway there realized he would have that much farther to run to get to his bike if he needed it. He almost turned back. Didn't.
He needed to know what was happening.
The package was gone from the porch. The front door was open. Not things that normally caused his nuts to tuck right up into his chest, but that's what they did now.
He pushed forward.
At the doorway he let himself stop moving. He wasn't going in, no matter what. And he didn't have to. He could see the woman clearly. It was the same woman who had been on the stairway at the other house, standing like she was exhausted or tired or maybe both. She was about to grab a doorknob to someplace down the hall.
"Don't," he said. She jumped, but she wasn't any more surprised than he was. He hadn't intended to speak. But when he saw the doorknob, it was like looking at a fire. Only fires were bright, usually cheery. This was a thing that looked dark. All of the burn, none of the comfort. Touching the doorknob would just hurt this woman.
She looked at him, and he saw instantly that his life wasn't the only one that had fallen to pieces in the last few days. The pain in her eyes wasn't just physical. It was mental, emotional, and spiritual. She was being hammered to pieces by something bad. Something… evil.
"Come with me," he said to her.
She looked back at the door. "I can't," she said. "My kids –"
And again the words jumped to his lips. "They're not yours. Not now." He didn't know what the words meant, and that frightened him, too. Seeing the dead was one thing. To have your voice hijacked, to speak words that were true but unknown even to yourself….
It had happened before. The day he told a young woman to get to the hospital because she had an aortic dissection and would die within the hour if she didn't. A time he gave five dollars to a bum and told him to go buy a lottery ticket at exactly 6:02 pm.
The day he heard his own voice telling himself to run away because his mother was finally going to kill him.
It had happened before, and it was always terrifying. The voice that knew more than he did using his own lips to speak.
"It's still happening," he said. And now he wasn't sure if it was himself or that Other who spoke. "It's not done." He looked at the woman. "There's still time to get them back. But you have to know, or all you'll do is die first, probably right in front of them."
Those last definitely weren't his words. And they were too much. He ran from them. Ran from the woman, ran from the house. Wishing he could run from himself.
He was at the bicycle in a second, holding it up, trying to keep himself from running even farther, riding into day until it turned to night and then perhaps just riding off the side of a freeway overpass and being done with it all.
A moment later the woman left the house. She stumbled down the walk to the sidewalk the same way he had done, and he wondered how long it had been since she had slept properly.
Same as me.
He started walking the bike away. Moving fast enough to show her he had no intention of stopping to wait, but not so fast that she would have to run to keep up.
"Come on," he said. Even exhausted he could have left her behind in a moment, since he trained his legs and lungs all day every day. But as badly as he wanted to get a
way from this place and the darkfire he had seen leading to that room, he needed her with him. She was his only hope for peace.
She kept up better than he expected. No panting, no murmur of complaint. She simply fell in beside him, both of them walking in the street, hugging tightly to the curb.
"Who are you?" she said. "What's happening?"
He didn't want to answer that. "What's your name?" he said. "The last name's Douglas, right?"
"Alyssa." She answered quickly, but wouldn't be swayed from her question. "What's happening? Who are you?"
He fixed his gaze straight ahead. Wondered if maybe this was why so few of the dead would look at him: maybe they all had things to say they knew he wouldn't want to hear. Sobering thought.
"My name's Ralph," he said. He opened his mouth to say more, but something flitted through the edges of his sight. He snapped his head to the right and saw… nothing.
Another shadow moved. This time when he turned toward it he saw a man in a bathrobe standing on one of the lawns. Nothing unusual about that, but the lawn was being watered, the sprinkler tchk-tchk-tchk-ing as it wetted every inch of green.
The man was dry.
He smiled at Ralph.
"Here's not the place to talk," said Ralph.
"I need –"
"Come on," he said. He didn't want to let her start her questions. Starting here would be bad. Another shadow flashed, another specter appeared. A woman dressed in a poodle skirt, holding a wriggling bundle in bloody hands.
Another shadow blinked into this reality. Another.
This was another new thing. Another bad new thing. These specters weren't merely following him as he passed, they were gathering.
How many would come?
What was calling them?
He moved faster. "There's a place. We should get there."
"My kids," said Alyssa. "They –"
"I told you they're not yours!" Ralph shouted. The force of the words stopped him, and again he wasn't quite sure if they were his words or those of the thing that sometimes spoke through him.
The shout vibrated through the neighborhood, seeming to shake leaves in the trees and causing a trio of jays to erupt from a bush before they evaporated in the daylight.
Alyssa fell back, terror and despair on her face.
One of the ghosts – a cherub-faced man with a bloody third eye where a bullet had gone through his forehead – clapped approvingly at Ralph. The clap made no sound.
Ralph swallowed. He held out his hand. Alyssa shied away from him. He remained motionless so she would know he wasn't going to hurt her. "They're not yours," he said softly. "But maybe you can get them back."
The bleeding cherub stopped clapping. That made Ralph feel good.
"How?" said Alyssa. Still pulled away from him, wary.
"Come on," he said again. And started walking to what he hoped would be a safe place to talk. If such a thing still existed.
THE SAFETY OF THE GRAVE
Sometimes when a nightmare has you tight, jammed between its claws and ready to cram you into its mouth and chew you to pieces, sometimes you just can't move. You twist and turn and struggle, but nothing happens. Your body is immobilized, wrapped in dread that locks every muscle in place. This is the last thing a fly feels before the spider sucks it dry. This is how Alyssa felt as she walked after the courier, the man-boy who seemed to know something, but who said nothing.
She felt her feet pacing forward, was incidentally aware of the ground moving below her, the slight breeze around. But still she still felt like something held her motionless. Or perhaps like she was floating in a void where the only realities were herself and the things made real through the raw power of her fear.
She was walking, but standing still. Moving, but not toward anything she understood.
The courier remained silent. He looked around, his gaze never stopping to rest on anything, his head on a constant swivel. She tried to follow what he was looking at, but there was nothing there. And there was something in his gaze – the stare laser-focused on specific places, but those places completely bereft of anything but the wind – that unnerved her.
Not as much as what was happening back home, though. Not as much as what could be happening with her family.
She didn't know how long they had been walking. She looked around and didn't recognize where they were. Not in her neighborhood. Miles away.
Why am I walking when my family needs me?
And the answer to that was simply that she didn't know what else to do. She didn't understand what was happening, only that it was real, strong, and evil. And it apparently had something to do with Blake and Mal and Ruthie and her. Something specific.
She felt ashamed that she wasn't slamming through the house, looking for the children. That was what Momma Bears did, and she had always prided herself on being a Momma Bear among Momma Bears. Someone who would defend her cubs from danger no matter the cost.
Yet she was running away.
Not running away. You have to know. He even said that. Said you have to know or you'll just die.
But know what?
"Who are you?" she asked. Her mouth seemed to crack as she spoke, and again she wondered how long, how far, they had walked. She was awake, but in a dream. And in a dream distances passed in a blink though you barely moved at all. Time was nothing, and distance just another part of the dream.
The kid – he was a young man, but his face was so boyish and his energy somehow so light it was easier to think of him as a kid – didn't stop looking around. "Told you," he said. His voice clipped the edges off each word, left them smooth and tumbling out of his mouth. "Ralph. I'm Ralph."
"No, I mean –"
"I know what you mean." Still biting the words off, still flicking eyes left, right, up, down, from one empty point in mid-air to another. But now she also heard exhaustion in his voice. He sighed, the sigh turned into a cough. She got a whiff of bad breath and wondered when he had last brushed his teeth. He stank, too. Like he hadn't showered in days and days. "I'm a guy who sees things sometimes."
"Like a psychic?"
This time the sigh ended in a snort. "I said 'a guy who sees things,' not 'a guy who cheats people."
That seemed like a conversation-ender. She was quiet again. Knowing that she should be asking questions didn't mean she could think of any to ask. Simply saying "What's going on?" hadn't gotten her anywhere yet, and she didn't understand enough to ask anything else.
Some people said there were no stupid questions, but she suspected that only stupid people actually believed that. Anything she asked would be stupid. And she didn't want to risk pissing off or scaring off this kid who looked like he was on the verge of jumping off a mental cliff of some kind.
They walked. No talking.
The kid stopped. So quickly she was a full ten feet ahead of him before she realized she was walking alone.
"What?" she said.
"We're here," he answered. He turned his bike. Started walking in the new direction.
Alyssa laughed. Not a belly laugh, not a chuckle. It was the craggy laugh of a person who has gone to church and found an orgy in progress. A laugh substituting for every sound of disbelief at once.
"You've got to be kidding me," she said after a few moments, after the laugh wore away and speech returned.
Every town, no matter how small, has one thing in common with every city, no matter how large. All of them are places where people live, and so they are also places where people die.
Most of the dead travel to cemeteries that, like hardware stores and restaurants and grocery markets, have become the province of big businesses. The dead are tagged and stacked and embalmed with modern efficiency, then entombed with whatever religious ceremony the family desires and can afford.
After that it is just a matter of determining which landscaping service can mow the lawn for the cheapest rate.
Some of the dead, though, pass into other places. Less organized, older, l
onger on history though shorter on curb appeal. Here the dead rest in small graveyards tucked away behind old churches, across from what had once been county seats, or simply parked on unexpected blocks in unlikely places.
Alyssa remembered seeing this small cemetery a few times, though her dream-soaked brain couldn't bring up when that had been or where this place lay. A wood fence surrounded it, posts and crossbars that were so old they were splintered and graying. Old headstones so weathered they barely retained a shape sat next to several ledger markers – flat slabs that covered the entire grave. A few small obelisks, a stone angel with one wing chipped away to nothing. Some tufts of grass that were all that remained of beloved dead.
Three trees crouched protectively over the area, willows whose branches swept lightly across stone and swung in the breeze. It was a graveyard that had clearly housed the most prestigious members of this area a hundred years ago and more, kept intact by historical societies or relatives or just the ties of tradition.
Alyssa had always liked passing the place. It bound her part of the world to the past, gave it solidarity. But it was not the place she would have chosen to go under the present circumstances.
Now she realized: it was miles away from her house. Six, seven – maybe more.
Ralph was already passing between the two tall posts that marked the cemetery entrance. His footfalls were silent, the wheels of his bicycle made no sound. But he seemed a clumsy intruder, a sneak thief in an unfamiliar room. And she wondered whom he might awaken.
She hurried after him, though. The last rays of the sun pushed through the willows, and that only heightened her sense of anxiety, the sense of unbelonging.
Sunset? How long have we been walking? How much time do I have left?
The realization brought another. She was alone. Not just separated from Blake and the children, but from everyone else. She had her sister, but Heather was a continent away, living in a cramped apartment with Xanthe and Teresa and still trying to make it as a drummer.
When she and Blake had moved into this house, they hadn't reached out to the neighbors. They knew them, but didn't have phone numbers. Didn't have friendships. Didn't really have anyone but each other.
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