Lance risked a glance behind him and saw the tiny silhouettes of the two deputies jump out of the way as the pair of headlights rounded the corner with another squelch of tires and made their way up Avenel.
They’ve seen us, Lance thought. We’ve got to hide. We’ll never outrun them.
They were reaching the edge of the vacant lot now, Lance impressed with how well his mother had kept up, her lean body and long legs striding across the grass with an elegance he’d had no idea she possessed. Guess I know where I get my athleticism from. At the far corner, at the edge of White Birch Lane and Route 411, which led toward the county line, was a crushed gravel parking lot tucked away by the side of the entrance to the cemetery. A place for visitors to park and funeral processions to gather on the days of burial. Tonight, it was an overflow lot for Centerfest, and the lot was nearly full, cars parked two rows deep along the edges.
And then he heard the screaming.
He stopped and looked back, watching in horror as the Creamsicle bus sped up Avenel, people jumping and diving out of the way as the headlights tore up the street. The bus was swerving, dodging in half-hearted attempts to avoid pedestrians, but clearly not overly concerned if there was collateral damage.
All because of me, Lance thought. This is all my fault.
The bus was three-quarters of the way up the street, making its way toward White Birch Lane. Pedestrians fled in every direction, some jumping on top of cars, some diving back into their cars, others filing into the vacant lot in which Lance and his mother stood. High-pitched shrieks filled the night air, men shouted curses that echoed off the old buildings. The two deputies ran far behind, their arms out, pistols raised in the direction of the bus. But of course they would not shoot. No way. Not with all the people around.
And then Lance was hit with the brilliant idea to turn around and run back the way they’d come and then cut down Avenel and across Main and head back toward home. They’d be going against the grain, so to speak, but the Creamsicle bus would have to do the same. And with the roads closed off, the Surfer and the Reverend would essentially have to make an entire loop around the outskirts of downtown to get back toward Lance’s home.
It would buy him and his mother enough time to get to the bus station, maybe. But, sadly, Lance realized they wouldn’t be able to stop at home first. It would be too risky.
He turned to grab his mother’s hand and lead her back toward Avenel, but his jaw dropped when he saw that she’d already run further across the lot, headed for the crushed gravel parking lot and the cemetery. She turned and called over her shoulder, “Come on!” Lance said a bad word under his breath but was left with no choice but to follow her.
Lance’s backpack bumped and jostled against his back. He reached for the straps and pulled them down in one swift jerk, tightening the bag against him. His mother was only a few feet ahead of him, but Lance felt she was much further. She had an agenda, some deeper understanding of the events unfolding around them than Lance had. She veered right just before they reached the crushed gravel parking lot, and Lance heard the strumming of an acoustic guitar and a male voice singing pleasantly. He looked over the parked cars and saw a man standing in the middle of the parking lot, guitar case flipped open at his feet, standing and smiling and singing to a good-sized crowd who’d gathered around him to watch and listen before heading toward downtown and the main activities. The sounds of the chaos taking place a few blocks away had not yet reached them, drowned out by the man’s music and singing, blocked by their turned backs. A young boy maybe five years old ran up to the man and tossed some loose change into the opened guitar case and then ran back giggling to his mother’s side.
Lance turned and saw his own mother running along the line of parked cars, headed toward the wrought-iron fence encircling the cemetery, stretching on into the darkness further than Lance could even see. He looked back toward the man playing the guitar and was shocked to see the singer looking directly at him. Still singing, the man winked at Lance, then turned back to his crowd. Startled and confused, Lance turned and ran after his mother. Found her to be impossibly far ahead of him. How long had he stopped and listened? It felt like only seconds, but now his mother had reached the fence and was.…
What is she doing? Is she … trying to climb it?
But no, that wasn’t quite right. She was at the fence, facing it, and her hands were gripping the iron rods, poised as if ready to begin to hoist herself up and over. But she stood motionless, her head bowed down, almost as if in silent prayer.
Lance ran to her, his feet suddenly very heavy, his legs feeling as if he were trying to sprint through wet cement. He trudged along, fighting his fatigue. Only a few short yards to go before he’d reach his mother.
And then he stopped, gasped.
The rest of the world seemed to fade away. The music from the parking lot and the sounds from the street and, further away still, the occasional thump of the bass coming from the speakers from the Farmers Market bandstand all vanished. The air grew still and Lance’s ears felt as if they needed to pop. It was if he’d stepped inside a giant bubble, one that was shielding out everything except him and his mother … and the spirits lining the interior of the Great Hillston Cemetery’s wrought-iron fence.
There might have been a hundred of them, maybe more. The spirits of so many of Hillston’s past residents huddled packed together in a semicircle that stretched deep into the cemetery, deeper than the light allowed Lance to see. But he saw them, lost souls dressed in suits and dresses and outfits spanning decades, centuries. Men and women, young and old, children, and even two dogs who sat quietly at one man’s side, as if waiting patiently for their dinner. Every single one of these ghosts had their gaze fixed on Lance’s mother.
And every single one of their mouths moved rapidly, as if muttering some repeated incantation or chant, over and over and over.
Lance took a small, tentative step closer, watching his mother as she kept her head bowed, her hands tightly gripping the fence. The mouths of the spirits continued to mumble, mutter, and as Lance stepped closer, he heard indecipherable bits and pieces of their words. It was as if his head were a weak antenna, struggling to tune in to a far-off station that would not come in clearly. He stepped closer still, the spirits’ gazes never looking his direction, only locked on his mother. Lance tried to concentrate, tried to home in on the staticky signal of the dead, but found he couldn’t. It was as if … as if he were being blocked, and he understood with a fresh wave of fear that frightened him to his core that he wasn’t meant to hear what was being said. The spirits’ message was a secret, meant only for his mother.
The squeal of tires on asphalt suddenly burst through the bubble that Lance had seemingly stepped into, and he turned around quickly, his eyes landing on the Creamsicle bus that jumped the curb at the corner of Avenel and White Birch before bounding back over the sidewalk, narrowly missing the front bumper of a parked pickup truck and turning sharply right, headed up White Birch. Heading for the crushed gravel lot.
We’ve got to get out of here!
Lance turned, ready to rip his mother free from the fence, even prepared to be violent about it if he needed to, but he only froze. Stopped and stood still at what he saw.
His mother stood directly in front of him, a few feet away from the fence. Tears streamed down her face, falling harder and faster than Lance had ever seen. His mother did not cry, not that Lance could ever remember. He looked quickly over her shoulder and saw that the inside of the fence was empty, just the trees and headstones casting shadows in the soft moonlight. He looked back to his mother, opened his mouth to speak and found he couldn’t.
“My boy,” his mother said, her voice quivering against her tears, but also filled with … was it happiness? “My sweet boy. Oh, what great things you’ll do.”
Lance stood, perplexed. “Mom, what—?”
“I am so proud of you. Always remember that,” she said. Then: “Tonight is not the end.” Then she
smiled, reached up and kissed him on the cheek, her tears warm against Lance’s skin. Their eyes met then as she pulled away, and Lance saw some final decision being made behind his mother’s gaze. “I love you,” she said.
And then she ran.
She bolted like a horse out of the gate, taking off away from Lance, leaving him standing alone in the grass by the fence. She ran hard and fast toward the crushed gravel lot and then kept going, back down White Birch. Lance looked on in stupefied awe and shock and disarming fear as he saw the Creamsicle bus plow forward, sprinting, eating up the short distance to the parking lot at a rapid speed, forty, maybe fifty miles an hour. And Lance knew what would happen next. The bus would reach the lot and jump the curb and spill out onto the grass, silhouetting Lance against the fence behind him. He’d stopped for too long, been too caught up in the moment. There was no way he’d outrun them now. They’d run him down in the grass, or they’d trap him against the fence, or … whatever happened, he knew he was caught.
Then he looked back to his mother and was dismayed to see her suddenly jerk to her right, darting out between the row of parked cars along the sidewalk and stepping out into the street.
“No!” Lance yelled with a voice he could barely find. A strangled cry that didn’t even travel far enough for the people in the parking lot to hear.
Pamela Brody had timed it just right. She’d run down the street, keeping herself hidden behind the rows of cars, listening for the noise of the engine, watching the flash flash flash of the headlights filling the spaces between the cars. And then she’d made her move, jumping out in front of the Creamsicle bus as it barreled its way forward.
The Surfer hadn’t even had time to hit the brakes. There was no squeal of tires—not until after. There was no blare from the horn, no sudden jerk of the steering wheel in a desperate attempt to avoid an accident.
The front end of the bus smashed into Pamela Brody’s body with a noise that Lance would never forget, a crunching of metal and a smashing of glass and the sickening thud of a human body being thrown twenty feet through the air and landing in a crumpled heap on the asphalt.
Now the bus did stop, the tires screeching and the smell of burning rubber filling the air.
People all around, people who’d been diving out of the way and standing wide-eyed on the sidewalk and fleeing for their own safety, began to react. Lots of them screamed, male and female shouts echoing all around. Some fled, desperate not to get involved in whatever tragedy had happened. But others, most, reacted in a way that would later make Lance smile, would help him to remember the good in people at a time when he thought he would never see the good in anything again. They started to run toward the Creamsicle bus, which had come to a stop a few feet from Pamela’s body, one headlight busted out, the engine purring softly as the vehicle sat motionless.
And that’s when the realization of everything came crashing into Lance and he was jump-started again, spurred from his crippling disbelief at everything he’d just witnessed.
“Mom!” His voice was hot now and full with panic … sadness. “Mom!”
He ran with everything he had toward his mother’s body. Already people gathered around her, many of them on cell phones, all placing frantic 911 calls. An angry mob had formed around the bus, knocking on the windows and pulling angrily on the door handles, tugging and jerking and trying to get to whoever was inside and was responsible. The Reverend and the Surfer were now targets. Villains to the residents of Hillston.
And when Lance was within twenty yards of the scene, he saw the reverse lights switch on from the rear of the bus and watched with primal rage as the bus backed up, slowly at first, as a warning to all who might be standing in the way, and then with a quick burst of acceleration that sent people jumping and diving and scattering away. Lance watched in horror as one man had his foot run over. Another’s shoulder was hit so hard by the bus’s sideview mirror that he spun around like a top before collapsing to the ground in a cry of pain.
The two sheriff’s deputies were both on their radios, shouting at whoever was listening on the other side of the connection, and as the bus began to execute another three-point turn and speed off down Route 411, they pulled up their pistols and fired off three or four shots in quick succession, aiming for tires.
They missed.
The bus drove off in a blur of speed, vanishing into the night.
And then Lance was at his mother’s side, pushing people out of the way and collapsing on the street next to her.
“Mom,” he said, emotions so strong and heavy in his heart he could literally find nothing else to say. “Mom…”
She was flat on her back, one arm bent awkwardly at the elbow. One of her legs twisted grotesquely out sideways. There was blood pouring from her forehead, dripping down her closed eyelids. It ran from her nostrils and spilled from her lips. She looked horrific.
But to Lance, she was still the most beautiful woman on earth. “Mom,” he said again.
Pamela Brody’s eyes flitted open, bloodshot and unfocused. But she saw him … deep down, Lance knew she saw him. She coughed, blood bubbling in her throat, and offered a small smile. “Just enough time, Lance. You have just enough now.”
There was shouting behind him and then a strong hand fell on Lance’s shoulder, gripping it tightly. Lance jerked his head back, turned to find Mayor Marcus Johnston standing there, a look of sheer dismay spread across his face. The sheriff’s deputies were on the group now, yelling at people to step back, to get away from the scene of the accident so paramedics could arrive and take over. There were protests, shouts, but Lance heard none of this. His turned back to his mother, found her eyes opened only to slits. She tried to speak, but the noise was barely a whisper. Lance leaned closer, cupping the back of her head with his hand and leaning so close he could still smell the scent of her shampoo and the sweet sugar from the funnel cake over the metallic stench of the blood.
And something his mother had said the day before, a mystery he could not let go unresolved, seemed all at once crucial. “Mom,” he said, doing his best to stay strong. “What is it I have? What is it you said I have that they don’t fully understand?”
Pamela Brody, despite her pain, despite her life fading from her, smiled. “You have me.”
She coughed again, and Lance felt as if his heart had split in two.
“Go, Lance. It’s only what’s right,” she said. Then, with one last breath, “I love you.”
And she was gone.
An hour later, after the sheriff’s deputies and the paramedics had controlled the crowd, and Marcus Johnston had helped Lance slip away unquestioned—after first tearing the young man away from his mother’s lifeless body—Lance was sitting on the seat of a rattling charter bus, his backpack on the seat beside him, leaving his hometown behind.
Pamela Brody had sacrificed herself for Lance for reasons he did not—and perhaps would not—ever fully understand. But there were two things of which he was certain.
One, his mother had learned something from the spirits of the Great Hillston Cemetery. Something that had moved her enough to feel as though she needed to end her own life in order to prolong Lance’s. “My sweet boy. Oh, what great things you’ll do.”
And two, the Reverend and the Surfer were not finished. Lance might have won this battle, but he was acutely aware that this was a war that had just gotten started.
Lancelot Brody, exhausted, drained, confused, devastated, empty, leaned his head back onto the headrest and found himself with no answer to anything other than to try and succumb to sleep. Succumb to the blackness, where hopefully nothing would chase him, and maybe, if he was lucky, he’d see his mother’s smiling face again.
Dark Game
(Lance Brody Series, Book 1)
1
His mother had always told him that a fresh slice of pie and a hot cup of tea were all any good soul needed to temporarily forget their problems. The type of pie and the flavor of tea were of no consequence. Fresh
and hot, that was all that mattered.
For the first twenty-two years of his life, Lance Brody had shared many an evening in his family home’s kitchen, crowded around the small table with his mother, eating her fresh pies and discussing the way of things. He’d never acquired the taste for tea, however, and preferred coffee for their long discussions. Black. His mother hated coffee, but his substitution of another hot beverage in place of the tea—instead of something from a bottle—seemed to satisfy her.
Alcohol was strictly forbidden in the house. If there was a familial reason for this, Pamela Brody had never told Lance. Nor was religion to blame; the only time Lance’s mother ever prayed was when the Bulls were in a tight one with whichever NBA opponent they were competing against, and those prayers were directed at unseen basketball gods who inevitably cared little about an individual's libations. She had no affiliation with the team, nor the city of Chicago. When Lance had finally asked her why she had chosen the Bulls as her team, she’d simply replied that she liked their mascot. He was funny. Her love of basketball in general was a mystery to Lance, as she’d never played the sport herself, but it was the only organized activity she’d ever encouraged him to participate in throughout his entire upbringing. But the alcohol—she said it poisoned the mind and the body, and Lance could see no argument against that. He’d never tasted a drop of the stuff.
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