Lance Brody Omnibus

by Michael Robertson Jr.

  Lance didn’t know what to do, what to ask. With his head still spinning, and the look on Rich Bellows’s face clearly unhappy, Lance thanked the couple for the ride, apologized for all the trouble, told Victoria he hoped her head felt better soon, and then grabbed his backpack and got out of the Explorer.

  He offered a wave as he passed by the side of the car, and Victoria gave him a smile and waved back. Rich put the Explorer into gear and was driving the car out of the parking lot before Lance had even made it to the start of the path.

  Once the sound of Bellows’s engine was gone, it was replaced with nature—a few birds chirping, wind rustling the leaves, water trickling from somewhere. A stream, perhaps—and the sounds of life. The chains from the swing set creaked softly, and a few children laughed as their mothers pushed them gently back and forth. Four boys were playing two-on-two on the basketball court. The echo of the ball bouncing on the asphalt would always be one of the sweetest sounds to Lance. He was more than half-tempted to walk over to them and ask if he could join. Only for a game or two. But the numbers would be uneven. Plus, he wasn’t here to play basketball. At least he didn’t think so. At this point, he was more confused than he’d been in a long time.

  But now he did have one piece of information that might at least help point him in the right direction. Ray Kruger played a bigger part in all of this than Lance had originally thought. Lance had first thought the sheriff to be an unlucky casualty of the aftermath of the murders, unhappy about the crime and angry that the truth might never surface—no matter what sort of opinion he presented to the town. Now, it turned out the sheriff was more deeply connected to the farmhouse.

  But how?

  Surely he wasn’t the one who’d pulled the trigger. Impossible. Right?

  Lance knew better than to completely discredit possible scenarios, but this seemed too much. He thought again about the flash of memory he’d received from Kruger when he’d shaken the man’s hand—the little boy and girl playing in the backyard kiddie pool. Would the Universe really make Lance work so hard that it wouldn’t show him a vision of the sheriff committing the crime instead of some childhood play day?

  Lance sighed. Boy, did he want to play basketball right about now. Just let his mind wander away from the real world for a moment and disappear into the game.

  He walked by the courts and watched as one of the boys swished a three-pointer, the chain net jingling as the ball fell through. Then Lance kept going, following Rich’s directions until he’d wrapped around the empty baseball field and turned right and found a clearing in the tree line that had to be the start of the trail. He headed for it and heard the jingle of the basketball net again, fading into the distance.

  The terrain was mostly flat for the first fifty yards or so, but then it quickly increased in its incline, starting a winding path up and around the hillside, much as the road did from the other side. The trail was mostly dirt and rock, the occasional gnarled tree roots surfacing and crisscrossing the walking path like booby traps, waiting for an unsuspecting ankle. The sky was blotted out by the tree growth, an umbrella of limbs and leaves. Lance heard small animals scurrying through the bed of fallen leaves and pine needles that blanketed the ground on either side of him, among the trees and bushes and overgrowth. He wondered if some of them stopped to watch him, wondering if he were friend or foe. He wondered if animals could see the dead like he could. Dogs, particularly, always seemed to get this sixth sense associated with them when you watched horror movies. Lance would like a dog like that. A companion that shared his gifts, a loyal and understanding friend.

  He kept walking.

  The sounds of nature were soft and gentle: the leaves rustling, the breeze whistling through limbs and gaps in the trees, the creatures going about their business without a care in the world. It was soothing, peaceful. Lance let his mind slow down a bit, tried to relax and focus on one thing at a time. Tried to recap his day so far and make any sense whatsoever of everything he’d learned.

  He sighed and gave up after only a few minutes. Let himself disappear into the forest and the trail, enjoy the quiet, appreciate the simplicity of it all, if only for just a brief moment. He adjusted the straps of his backpack and continued to walk, climbing the small inclines and carefully stepping through the rock and roots. It was cooler under the tree cover, and Lance breathed in the fresh air, smelling pine and soil and, faintly, his own sweat.

  He imagined himself back in Westhaven, him and Leah sitting at the Sonic Drive-In, eating hot dogs and slurping slushies and laughing so freely it felt illegal. He could see her, sitting there with the windows down, the breeze teasing her blond hair, making it curl around her face, framing it in such a way it made his heart skip. He watched as she shivered at both the coolness of the air and the icy bite of her slushie and pulled her hands into the sleeves of her blue Westhaven High School sweatshirt and wrapped her arms around herself. And that was when he couldn’t take it anymore and leaned across the center console so fast he nearly spilled his slushie and went in to kiss her and—

  “That’s close enough, Ethan. You wanna keep all your fingers, don’t ya?”

  A male voice grabbed Lance and pulled him out of his daydream. The words were followed by a sharp crack and a dull thud. “See, Ethan? See how sharp the blade is?”

  Lance resurfaced back in reality and looked up, not even having realized he’d been staring only at the ground for who knew how long, absentmindedly following the trail up and around the hillside. But now, the ground around him had flattened out, and when he looked to his left, he could see where twenty or thirty yards out, the trees began to thin out and give way to land that had been cleared. A small one-story house that looked more hunting cabin than home sat on a few acres of land. To the left of the house, Lance could make out a man and a small child standing by a stacked pile of wood. The man wore blue jeans and no shirt, his chest and arms smeared with sweat and dirt. He was lean and roped with muscle, his skin bronzed by the sun. On the ground at the man’s feet were split pieces of wood, waiting to be added to the pile. He held an axe in one hand, its sharpened blade gleaming in the sunlight that made it through the cracks in the clouds as he moved about, and with the other, he was motioning for the child to move back, further away.

  “A little more … little more … there, that’s good. You can watch from there. You can help me stack it and bring some in the house when we’re finished, okay?”

  Either the boy didn’t answer, or he spoke too softly for Lance to hear. But all the same, he stood where he was told and watched dutifully as the man set another piece of wood on the block and gave the axe a mighty swing, sending two perfectly halved pieces to the ground.

  Lance watched the man split two more pieces of wood, took another glance at the small house in the distance, and then turned and continued to follow the hill. He was almost back to the farmhouse, he felt, and as the ground began to rise up again, a gentle swell that he was positive led to the precipice that his temporary home was perched, Lance turned and looked over his shoulder, back toward where he’d seen the man and the boy.

  He wasn’t positive, but it looked like the man was staring straight at Lance. Through all the cover of the trees, and with the small elevation change, Lance wasn’t sure it was even possible for the man to see him from his vantage point, but nonetheless, Lance wasn’t particularly in the mood to make new friends at the moment. He turned and hurried along, nearly jogging the rest of the way.

  The tree line began to thin more and the ground flattened out again and soon he spilled out into the side yard of the spook farm, approaching the house from its south side. He passed by what was left of an old barn that he was too tired and too frustrated to bother taking a look inside and continued toward the rear of the house. To his left, the sun was beginning its descent, dipping below the clouds, and as Lance got closer to the farmhouse, he found himself pulled in that direction like iron to a magnet. He stopped and stood maybe fifty yards from the farmhouse’s ba
ckdoor, looking straight ahead, out and over the edge of the hilltop.

  The sun was perched beautifully in the sky, the early fall evening setting in quickly. Below the highlight of orange and pinkish light, the rooftops of downtown Ripton’s Grove looked like a child’s plaything. Decorative accessories to a model train set. The fall foliage was only just getting started here, but already the bit of color the leaves provided added to the landscape’s beauty. Lance felt as if he could reach out with two fingers and pinch one of the buildings and lift it up to eye level. It was a stunning scene. Beautiful and serene and the epitome of bliss.

  He wished Leah could be there to see it. She’d love it, he just knew she would.

  And at the thought of his friend, Lance felt his emotions shift away from the happiness he’d attempted to allow himself to enjoy and turned quickly to look at the farmhouse. Stared for a long time, his shadow growing shorter on the ground before him as the sun continued to sink.

  “What do you want from me?” Lance asked the house, his voice carried off on a breeze.

  The house did not answer.

  Lance didn’t bother to take another look at the scene behind him. Instead, he walked around to the front of the house, glanced at Victoria Bellows’s Mercedes SUV in the driveway, and then took the porch steps two at a time. He gripped the doorknob and turned it and—

  “THANK GOD YOU’RE HERE! YOU’VE GOT TO HELP US!”

  The woman’s voice, same as the night before, echoed all around Lance on the porch.

  “Well,” Lance said as he pushed through the door, “I see we’re playing this game again.”

  19

  Lance stepped into the farmhouse and closed the door behind him. The house had a chill to it and smelled faintly of pine and disinfectant. The air felt fresher than before, and Lance turned and saw that the windows were still thrown open from earlier, the cool fall air pouring in. It helped to abate the stuffiness, but the sight of the open windows only recalled the memory that Victoria Bellows had been attacked in this very house earlier today.

  Lance positioned himself so his back was against the front door, letting his eyes fall across the stairs, and then focus on the back door in the kitchen down the hallway. All was still and quiet.

  “Honey, I’m hooooome!” he called out, like a devoted husband after a long day at the office. If his intuition was correct, he should be getting his response any second now.

  Sure enough, just as he was about to make his way forward, down the hall and to the kitchen, the man’s voice bellowed from nowhere, like an overhead loudspeaker that only Lance could hear.

  “Who’s at the door? Is it him? Tell me!”

  Lance paused, waited to see if there would be more, then announced, “It is I, Sir Lancelot, protector of this land, drinker of coffee, and eater of pies. I demand you tell me at once with whom I’m speaking!” A pause, then, “Please.”

  A breeze from outside picked up some speed and gusted through the window to Lance’s right, and the wooden frame of the house creaked and groaned along with it, but otherwise there was silence. Lance’s request had fallen on deaf ears. Or, more correctly, dead ears. He’d expected this much but figured it was worth a try. He waited another full minute by the door, listening for anything else, then gave up and started toward the kitchen to check the lock on the back door.

  He got halfway down the hall when the man’s voice hissed with anger.

  “She doesn’t want to see you.” A pause. “No. Never. You’ll never see it. We’re leaving, for good.” A longer pause this time. And just when Lance thought the man had said all he was meant to hear for now, the final, chilling words came. “You’ve got three seconds to get off this property or I swear to God I will fucking kill you. You see this? You think I don’t know how to use this? You think I’m afraid to use this? Go ahead. You’ve ruined us, and you’re lucky you’re not already dead.”

  Lance stood motionless in the hallway, holding his breath as the words around him crescendoed in intensity. He waited, ears strained, hanging on for the conclusion of the argument.

  Nothing happened.

  No more words. No more yelling.

  Lance threw up his hands in disgust. “Really? You’re just going to leave me hanging like that? What a tease.” He thought about giving the house the finger, but he’d never flipped off the spirit world before. Wasn’t sure it would have the same impact or satisfaction. Plus, he doubted his mother would approve of such juvenile behavior.

  He walked into the kitchen and set his backpack down on the table, pulling out a chair to sit and retrieving a bottle of water from his bag. He twisted off the cap and downed half the bottle in three big gulps.

  Then the gunshot boomed and rattled the walls and shook the glass, and Lance dropped the bottle onto the floor. He jumped up from his seat at the table and turned to look back down the hall…

  …just as the door to his right, the one leading down to the basement, began to rattle in its frame, the sounds of pounding fists beating against the other side almost in perfectly synced rhythm with Lance’s heart as it danced in his chest.

  “Let me out!”

  A female voice, younger than the voice from before and sounding very weak. Exhausted, and also terrified.

  Lance lurched forward and ripped the door open.

  There was nothing there but blackness and the sight of the first couple wooden stairs that led down into the dark mouth of the house’s belly.

  Lance stood and waited, listened for a long time.

  He heard no more. The house was finished for now.

  The house creaked occasionally, and the breeze still trickled in from the front windows, stirring up the air. A few floorboards groaned as Lance walked around the kitchen, pacing back and forth and thinking.

  “Three voices,” he said to the kitchen. “If you count the girl from behind the basement door.” He glanced at the door, which he’d decided to close, promising himself that he would inspect whatever lay down there very soon. But first he needed to think, go over things while they were still fresh in his mind.

  Playing on the theory that the voices he was hearing were in fact a message, some sort of cosmic reenactment meant as a clue to assist Lance in figuring out what had happened at the farmhouse, Lance felt it was safe to assume that the woman’s voice he’d now heard twice on the porch belonged to Natalie Benchley. Which meant that the man’s voice, that angry, inquisitive voice, likely belonged to her husband, Mark Benchley.

  “And the girl’s voice was Mary,” Lance said aloud, stopping and again looking to the basement door. He didn’t know how he knew, but he was certain. It’d been Mary Benchley pounding away on the basement door, sounding weak and tired and crying to be let out.

  Lance eyed the sliding bolt meant to keep the door locked. “Why was she down there?”

  He sat down at the table and finished what was left of his bottle of water. Stared at that bolt. His first thought was that Mark Benchley, while being a suspected murderer, had also been some sort of psychotic child abuser and had locked his daughter away. After all, if you could stomach murdering your whole family, what was throwing one of them down into your home’s very own dungeon?

  But then Lance thought about his conversation with Joan earlier that day, as she’d sat across from him in the booth at Mama’s and poured her heart out to him.

  Mary was his absolute pride and joy. He was so proud of her.

  Joan was adamant that Mark Benchley hadn’t killed his family.

  The ghost of Sheriff Bill Willard had a similar opinion.

  One was the town gossip, the other was an ever-present fly on the wall at the local sheriff’s office. Both were privy to all sorts of information. Lance trusted both of them, though he knew he’d need a lot more than just his trust in a waitress and a spirit to prove anything.

  He eyed the bolt again.

  “Protection,” he said. “He put her down there to protect her.” Then, “But from who?”

  The answer s
eemed obvious.

  Lance replayed the voices in his head again. The initial shock from Natalie Benchley (“THANK GOD YOU’RE HERE!…”), and the argument Mark Benchley had followed with (“You’ve got three seconds to get off this property or I swear to God I will kill you”).

  Lance had heard three voices … but there had been four people in the house that night. The fourth was somebody that wasn’t supposed to be there. Somebody who was not welcome.

  (You think I’m afraid to use this?)

  Lance envisioned Mark Benchley holding a shotgun up into the face of whoever else had been in the farmhouse that night, angry, his words full of intent. Threatening.

  Yet it was the Benchley family who’d ended up dead that night.

  And if Lance was only hearing the voices of the dead, that meant the fourth person who’d been in the house that night was still alive. And they might be the only person who knew the truth.

  Lance sighed and looked up to the ceiling. “What the heck happened here?”

  Then his stomach grumbled, and he realized he’d never made it to the grocery store.

  20

  The sun had gone down completely, encasing the farmhouse in darkness. Lance had closed the windows and locked them, then turned on all the lights on the house’s first floor, bathing everything in yellowish tinge that unfortunately brought to mind seventies slasher films. But he preferred this look to the darkness. Not that he was afraid, but the light helped the place feel more alive. Less like the crime scene everybody seemed determined to cement it as. He sat on the steps and waited for his guests.

  Susan and Luke were on their way. Lance had gambled that their curiosity about the farmhouse, Susan’s past friendship with Mary Benchley, and the fact that there might not be a whole lot to do in a town as small as Ripton’s Grove on a Saturday night might be enough to entice the two of them to come over and spend some time with him. The only stipulation was that they were required to bring dinner. And maybe answer a few questions.