by Platt, Sean
“Are you okay?” Greg looked Hannah in her eyes. “Wow, you seem pale.”
“Stomach,” she said, holding her belly and wincing. “Just puked.”
“Oh, wow, I’m sorry … let’s get you back to the cabin, and in bed.”
Hannah swallowed, looking past Greg to the red glowing exit sign hanging over the restaurant’s rear door. Every instinct ordered her to run — right past him and into the night without stopping. Surely, he wouldn’t pursue her in public. Then again, it was dark. Maybe no one would notice if he did.
But rather than running, she followed Greg to the front of the restaurant, and then the parking lot. There were a few dozen cars in the lot, but no new arrivals, and no one leaving. If she ran now, or made a scene, there was no one to notice, call the police, or intervene. It would be her versus Greg, and Hannah wasn’t sure she could outrun or overpower him.
Greg opened the car door and she climbed inside.
He got in and keyed the ignition.
“Get back in there! Go in, leave out the back door, and run!”
“Oh, crap, I think I left my phone in the restaurant,” Hannah said, seizing on a half-baked escape plan. She could go in, run out the back, and grab a head start. “Maybe in the bathroom. I’m gonna run back inside and …
“No, no,” Greg said, laying his hand gently on hers. “You’re sick. Wait here. I’ll go.”
Shit.
Greg surprised her by leaving his keys in the ignition. He got out of the car, then leaned back inside and said. “Be right back.”
“Thanks,” she said, her heart pounding while eyeing the keys.
“Well, hello, Plan B. Take the car, Hope. Take it and go!”
As Greg entered the restaurant, Hannah crawled over the center console and into the driver’s seat. She moved the seat higher and closer, then slowly backed out of the parking spot, darting between her rearview and the restaurant’s front door.
“Go! Go!”
She floored the pedal, and tore into the night.
Thirty
Duncan
Duncan sat in the bedroom turned prison, focusing, searching, and probing through his parasite’s psychic defenses. The creature was sentient, and responded to the prodding with short painful bursts to its host’s brain; a message to stop, though its communication was nothing like words.
Duncan wondered if it spoke their language, or even at all. He shuddered to think of any creature existing without wants, needs, or desires besides feeding. Jacob was right about one thing: the parasitic bonding was an evolution inside him.
Duncan could feel the changes in his brain even if he couldn’t figure out exactly how they happened. He was stronger, more aware, and his already enhanced senses felt sharper than ever. From dissections of feeders over the years, they’d found that the parasite connected to its host’s brain, forming an inseparable bond. But when the human, or Otherworlder, died, so did the creature. So far as he knew, the reverse was also true: if someone tried to remove his parasite, they would die.
John and Caleb were the only people he knew who’d managed to pause the parasite’s incursion, though both used outside intervention of magickal means. And Duncan hadn’t known how either intervention occurred, or how to replicate the success, if it could be done. For everyone else, the parasite, and the Darkness it brought, were lifelong curses.
But Duncan had found its weakness. Everything had one if you probed hard enough. It had a strong aversion to pain, and that pain was shared between the parasites’ psychic bonds, meaning if he hurt himself and Jacob was connected, he injured Jacob as well.
Duncan only needed to interfere briefly, long enough to allow a connection with John and warn him of the danger to Hope. He’d first sensed John after Jacob appeared demanding the list. Duncan wasn’t sure why he could suddenly feel John in the world, or if the feeling was reciprocal rather than a vestige of Jacob’s ability to sense his brother, passed through his parasite.
Duncan was reasonably certain the parasite would sense what he was doing once he reached out to John. Then the only question was whether his parasite would relay information to Jacob’s. Duncan hoped not, but had a plan just in case.
He searched the outside world for John, unsure of what he was doing, and almost certain he was doing it wrong until he felt himself suddenly inside John’s head.
John, he thought.
Then, as if he were on a phone, he heard John’s voice in his head, surprised.
“Duncan?”
“Yes, I have to tell you—”
Suddenly, he felt Jacob probing.
Damn it, that was fast.
Duncan tried shoving Jacob from his mind, but the monster’s power was too strong. “Let me in,” Jacob screamed inside Duncan’s skull — a neutron bomb between his ears.
Duncan couldn’t let Jacob see what he was doing, or worse, so much as try to stop him. He didn’t dare push another thought out to John until he’d banished Jacob from his head.
Duncan buried the plan, his hand gripping tight around his desk chair.
Jacob sent a sharp pain through his skull trying to stop Duncan from doing anything other than obeying his master’s will. But there was no stopping the chair once it was in motion, crashing through the blackened windows.
Sunlight poured into his prison, and with it, a rain of fire, erupting along Duncan’s arms as he screamed loud enough to spray blood from his throat.
Jacob echoed his terror and withdrew from his brain like a scurrying roach. The moment he fled, Duncan pushed the message to John, telling him as much as he could in his scant few moments, though he was unsure how much of it made sense with pain tainting his every thought.
Do you understand?
“Yes,” John said. “Where—”
Duncan’s connection to John dropped as the door to his prison burst open and two men tore inside, trying to rip him from the window. He shoved the men aside and leaped through the glass, into daylight’s final hours.
Behind the roaring inferno, Duncan’s life flashed before his eyes.
Most of the memories went too fast.
When they finally slowed, Duncan found himself standing on a dock overlooking the lake with Caleb as a young boy. “I can remember the flavor of ice cream you bought me at Six Flags, but sometimes I don’t even remember what day it is.” The boy looked up at Duncan and shrugged. “I guess what you remember depends on what you think is important.”
Duncan remembered looking into the child’s eyes and feeling a little less alone in the world. He might never have children, but he was lucky that he at least had the chance to feel a parent’s love, even if he wasn’t the boy’s father. That love came with fear, and a fierce desire to protect, like lion to cub.
Duncan once believed he’d never die, and never thought it possible that he could die protecting a son.
But as fire ripped through his body, bubbling soul and flesh, Duncan found himself remembering Ed’s funeral again.
Caleb had said, “This is all my fault.”
“What do you mean?” Duncan had asked.
“I killed him.”
“We had an argument, a big one. It was about you. He wanted me to refuse the car you promised to buy me. He said it was too much. And that if I wanted a car, I should ask him. I told him I didn’t want a crap car, and that Uncle Duncan said I could pick any car I wanted. The look on his face, was just, it was like I had stuck a knife in his heart. He said, ‘Duncan Alderman isn’t your father. I am. And you have to do as I say.’”
Caleb had to stop before finishing his story. “And I just said the most awful thing I could. I told him that I wished he wasn’t.”
Caleb bawled as he fell into Duncan’s chest, crying. “Those were our last words. He died that night.”
“Jesus,” Duncan had said, tears streaming down his face.
It was then, as he comforted Caleb, that Duncan realized he’d not lost the ability to mourn. There was still one person left in the world wh
ose death he couldn’t bear, and whom he would do anything to protect.
“It’s okay,” Duncan had said, hugging the boy. “He knew that you loved him. And he loved you very much.”
And so do I, was Duncan’s final thought.
Thirty-One
Hannah
Hannah floored the gas, her heart pounding, pushing Greg’s car as fast as it would go along the Northern California highway. She tore from El Montaña and drove north without stopping for hours, too frightened to pause her flight for more than a few minutes at a gas station about 150 miles upstate.
The station looked like it last had new pumps installed in the 30s, probably around the same time as the sign that read Gas-4-Less! in giant, blocky almost Art Deco letters. Though it was a full 15 minutes past “quitting time,” the old man working the station was waiting for his wife Lucinda to get him. The old man asked Hannah what she was doing driving out on the roads all by herself so late at night.
“You heading out toward Ashford Canyon?”
“What’s Ashford Canyon?” Hannah asked, thinking she should have simply said yes.
The old man mopped his brow beneath a single tuft of hair, and looked at Hannah with undiluted surprise, as if it was impossible to believe that anyone could be filling their tank at his station and not headed out toward Ashford Canyon.
Since the old man couldn’t go anywhere without Lucinda, he decided to give Hannah a history lesson while waiting. He jabbed his finger at a thick swath of trees, without any general direction. “You probably know all about the gold rush, right?”
Hannah shrugged and lightly nodded. She knew a little.
“The gold rush is what changed this state. You see,” he said waving his hands in a wild circle, “gold is everywhere. In every rock, believe it or not, and even ocean water. The world’s always changing, and California wasn’t nothing like it is now millions of years ago when it was sitting at the bottom of the sea.”
The old man took Hannah’s mild surprise as an invitation to continue. Despite her urgency to flee, there was something comforting in the old man’s lilting voice that kept her sitting in her seat, smiling through the open window and willing to hear the rest of his story.
He thrust his thumb behind his shoulder. “The Pacific shoreline lay to the east, where Utah and Arizona are now. Hot springs along the ocean floor built up huge deposits of sulfide minerals. That makes gold, and once all that gold was sitting on solid ground instead of being stuck under water, people all around the country, if not the world, started seeing California as the end of their rainbow. Ashford Canyon was one of the state’s more profitable mines, until she called it quits back in 1968.”
The old man whistled, and only then did Hannah smell the whiskey. Her nerves tightened. She wanted to key the ignition and take off.
“Now it’s just a ghost town people like to visit,” the old man shrugged. “But the hotel is nice if you’re looking for a place to stay, or at least I’ve heard it said. Never stayed there myself.”
“How do I get there?” An out-of-the-way ghost town hotel might be the perfect place to rest her head and gather some thoughts.
“You can’t miss it,” he said, again pointing nowhere in particular. “Just keep driving on the road, you’ll see the first sign in about five minutes, then fairly regular after that. You’ll hit the canyon in about 25 miles or so. Just follow the signs.”
“Thank you.”
“Sure thing,” the old man nodded and slapped the side of Greg’s car as if giving Hannah permission to leave. “Just be careful and don’t drive too fast. The roads twist something fierce up toward the canyon, and there’s no light until morning, outside what you make yourself.”
Hannah thanked him again, then turned the engine and gave him a small salute just as Lucinda — she assumed — pulled into the station. Hannah turned to the heavyset blonde around 60, smiling from behind the steering wheel of an ancient F150, and sent her a similar salute. The heavyset blonde returned her wave, looking uncertain.
With a full tank of gas, Hannah tore into the night, only slowing through the treacherous turns the old man had promised. She followed the signs leading toward Ashford and was now only an exit away. As the highway turned flat, Hannah floored the pedal, racing through the walls of trees and hallways of darkness around her, keeping her eyes fixed ahead on her flight from paranoia or nightmare.
Hannah didn’t doubt her instincts enough to stop, or even slow, but she doubted them enough to fill her trip with self-flagellation.
What are you doing?
You stole Greg’s car and left him stranded hundreds of miles from home.
Why?
She waited for her other inner voice, the one which prompted her haste to flee like a bat out of hell. She needed that voice to weigh in and assuage her guilt. Unfortunately for Hannah, that voice stayed oddly silent, thickening her doubt and decaying her resolve.
I should turn around, drive back, and say it was all just a joke, ha-ha.
Maybe I can say I forgot about him, blame it on the accident and my bump on the head. Yeah, that might work.
Despite the thought that Greg would probably forgive her, Hannah’s body was in no hurry to turn the car around. She accelerated, racing toward Ashford, eager to put more, not less, distance between herself, Greg, and whatever his plans for her might be.
What was he going to do to me?
Hannah considered listening to the rest of the recording, to see if she could glean anything more. But she’d have to wait. It was too dark, and the roads too unfamiliar. She couldn’t risk messing with her phone now. While nothing made sense, her fear was as real as any other instinct. Hannah now knew Greg was a danger, and maybe a threat to her life, the same way she once knew she loved him.
Loved him?
Is that now past tense?
Hannah wished her other inner voice would return to ease her mind, and assure her she was doing the right thing. She felt like a rocket sent into space without any destination. Along with the fear, a small part of her also felt an undeniable tingle of exhilaration along with a welcome, much-needed freedom. That feeling made her nervous more than anything, causing her to wonder if she hadn’t just imagined Greg’s imminent danger to justify running from a great relationship growing too serious and fast to stop.
No, that’s not it. Yeah, I could see me getting into a fight with him or thinking he was cheating, both of which did happen, yes, but I wouldn’t be this creative.
Hannah wasn’t sure what to do next. Maybe forget Ashford, flip the car around and head back home? If she spun it now she could probably still beat Greg, unless he’d left immediately. She could go home and pack her bags. Then what? Abandon the life she’d made for herself? Hannah’s Bucket Boutique and everything else? And all for what? A suspicion that Greg might do something to her?
That’s stupid! I can’t run away based on a hunch!
At the same time, Hannah didn’t think she should go home. Greg could find her there, would find her there, then what? If she was right, and he was working for someone who wanted to hurt her, as outlandish and Jason Bourne as it all sounded, it wasn’t like she could defend herself from him. But if he was crazy and acting out of some sort of paranoid delusion, or something worse, then perhaps she could call the police.
No, not the police. I should call Sergei. I need to see him, to see if he recognizes me. If so, that means I’m right, and there’s something weird happening. If not, then maybe I’m the paranoid one.
Hannah looked down at her speedometer — 95 mph, 35 miles over the posted 60 mph limit. She started to decelerate, but it was too late.
Bright blue lights from a police car flashed in her rearview.
Shit!
The inner voice was back in her head. “Don’t stop.”
What?
“Keep driving! Don’t stop.”
No way I’m running from the cops!
That was the final straw. Hannah had listened to her inner crazy
long enough. In the space of a day she’d gone from being on a romantic getaway with the love of her life to stealing his car and considering a run from her life and the law.
Enough is enough.
Hannah took the Ashford Canyon exit, then pulled to the side of the road, hoping the cop car would fly on by on its way to chasing someone else instead of her, but her luck wasn’t good enough to keep the cop from following her off of the highway, or from pulling up right behind her.
“What are you doing? The cop is going to run your plates, find out the car is stolen, then throw your ass in jail. Go! Go!”
I’m not outrunning a cop! I doubt I could, even if I tried. This isn’t some stupid movie. Real chases don’t end with people getting away. They end in arrests or horrible wrecks. There are trees everywhere and I can’t even fucking see.
Hannah kept both hands on the wheel, fingers shaking around her palms as she waited for the cop to either get out of the car and approach her window, or say something over the car’s speakers. She stared into the rearview, trying to see through to the cop’s interior, but Hannah saw nothing beyond high beams, a flashing light rack, and blankets of black.
What’s taking so long?
“He’s probably being told over the radio that he’s dealing with a nutcase who stole her boyfriend’s car.”
Shit. Shit. Shit.
“I told you to run.”
I’m not running.
A stern woman’s voice called out, “Get out of the car with your hands on your head.”
Oh, shit.
Thirty-Two
John
Duncan’s dying message came as the sun set, adding an urgency for John and the others to hit Cromwell’s house sooner rather than later. Time was thinning. They needed answers, now.
They arrived just after 10 p.m. — John and Tiny waited outside the van, parked a block up from Cromwell’s posh estate. The van, a white utility vehicle with a magnet on the side displaying the local cable company’s logo, didn’t seem like it would draw the sort of attention that might prompt a call to the cops. The pair were waiting on Larry, who was tapping away at his computer in the back of the van, accessing a backdoor into Cromwell’s security system so they could control it remotely.