Echoes (Whisper Trilogy Book 2) (20 page)

“Okay, champ,” Rebecca said, ruffling Isaac’s hair. “It’s time mum and dad were on the road. Why don’t you give them both a hug?”

Isaac nodded and hugged Steve, then turned to Melody and did the same. She squeezed her son against her, unsure if she could ever let him go. He eventually wriggled free and stood beside Rebecca.

“You be a good boy,” Melody said as she choked back more tears.

“I will,” Isaac promised, grinning at her with a natural innocence which made her melt a little inside.

“We’ll be back in a few days.”

“Okay, Aunt Becca said we can have ice cream, then play games and maybe even go swimming.”

“That sounds nice,” Melody said with a smile. “I love you. You remember to behave, okay?”

“I will. Love you too,” he replied.

Melody got into the car, knowing she wouldn’t be able to fight off the tears for much longer. She put the car into gear, and they pulled away. Rebecca glanced at Isaac, who was frowning at the car as it moved away from the house.

“What’s wrong, champ?”

“I’m sad.”

“Why?”

“Because.”

“Because what?”

“Because that’s the last time we’ll all be together as a family.”

“Don’t be silly, they’ll be back in a few days.”

Isaac looked up at her, his eyes dark and knowing.

“Not both of them,” he whispered, then walked slowly towards the house.

III

“You’ll never guess what I have,” Carrie said, grinning at the rest of the group.

Emma was preoccupied with trying to find the right time to tell them about the things Alex had told her, so far without success.

“Aids?” Scott said, chuckling at his own joke. Carrie scowled at him and turned towards Emma.

“You know how my dad works for KLMN?” she continued, ignoring Scott.“Yeah,” Emma said, still distracted by recent events.

“Well he usually gets sweeteners from investors and advertisers looking to plug their products on the radio. Anyways, do you guys know who Henry Marshall is?”

“I know him,” Scott said. “My dad’s on the town council with him.”

Carrie nodded. “Well, he gave my dad complimentary tickets for a special pre-opening night of the hotel. Paranormal Truth is doing an investigation into the haunting, which will air on TV this summer, and we all get to take part. My dad wasn’t interested as you’d expect, so he gave them to me. I have five tickets.”

Neither Scott nor Emma seemed particularly excited by the news. Cody however looked like all his Christmases had come at once. He grinned, the first genuine emotion he had shown for weeks.

“Amazing! Are we going?” he asked, looking at the others.

“Hell, I’m up for it,” Carrie said. “What about you two?”

Scott squirmed and looked at his shoes, Emma was just about managing not to share the warning she’d been given.

“I’m not sure,” she said, glancing towards Cody.

Whatever is there now is something else. It might look like Cody, and it might sound like him, but it’s not

“Should we really be going up there after what happened last time?” she said, trying to ignore Alex’s words of warning.

“I told you,” Cody said. “I was sick when it happened. I think I must have come down with a bug of some kind. I’m fine now. I’ve tried to apologize to Alex. He won’t answer my calls.”

“I went to see him,” Emma said, looking at her friends. “He’s not in a good place. He warned us away from the hotel – told us we shouldn’t go back there.”

“Are you sure it’s the same Alex?” Scott said.

“Like I said… he’s changed.”

“Well I want to go,” Carrie said. “We’re all interested in what happened up there, I think we’d be stupid to pass this up.”

“Hell, I’m in,” Scott said, the unmistakable glint of boy trying to impress girl in his eye. “I’m not afraid.”

“I’m in too,” Cody said, turning his eyes towards Emma. “How about it, Emma?” he said.

Monster.

Monster.

Monster.

The word repeated itself in her head until she pushed it aside.

“No. I don’t think I want to go back there.”

“Oh come on,” Scott said. “What happened to wanting a real scare?”

“That was before.”

“Before what? Nothing happened up there.”

“I just don’t want to.”

“Come on, Em,” Carrie said, her eyes bright with excitement. “This is a once in a lifetime opportunity here.”

“I appreciate it.”

“You’ll regret it if you don’t go, you know.” Scott interjected.

“Maybe you’re right. I’m willing to live with it.”

“Pffft. Your loss.” Scott grumbled.

“What about Alex?” Cody asked, a smile forming on his lips. “You think he’d be up for it?”

“No, I don’t think you could drag him there.”

“His loss,” Scott said, glaring at Emma.

“We should still ask him though. Give him the chance to come if he wants to,” Cody said, looking directly at Emma as he said it.

Good god, he knows. Somehow he knows what we spoke about. He knows I know he’s a monster. He wants Alex there so he can finish the job.

“I really don’t think he’ll go,” she insisted, somehow managing to keep her voice from wavering while looking at Cody. He seemed to fit Alex’s description of some ‘thing’ in a Cody mask more than the friend she once knew.

“Ask him anyway,” Cody pushed. “It will be nice to be able to bury the hatchet.”

In his skull.

Blood.

Soaking into the thirsty earth.

Finish what they started.

Finish what they started.

She shook it off, and pulled her gaze away from the bottomless well of Cody’s eyes. “I can ask him for you if you like, just don’t expect him to come along.”

“Are you sure you won’t come?” Carrie said.

“No, I don’t think I want to.”

“It’s settled then,” Carrie said, a touch of a sneer in her face as she turned away from her friend.

“When’s the opening night?” Scott asked, also giving Emma a sour glare.

“This Friday. It’s going to be amazing.”

“It will,” Cody said, turning his eyes back towards Emma. “I imagine it’ll be spectacular.”

She nodded, unsure if she was seeing Cody in such a new light because he had genuinely changed, or because of the things Alex had told her. Either way, another chat with him couldn’t hurt, especially in light of this new info. She didn’t have any expectation he would want to go, yet she felt compelled to tell him nonetheless. Maybe she half-hoped he might make her feel better about her decision not to go, or maybe because she wanted to see his reaction so she could better gauge if he was playing some kind of sick prank, or if, as she suspected, the thought of going anywhere near the Hope House site genuinely terrified him in the same way it did her.

“I’ll go talk to him today and let you know,” she said absently. She tried to convince herself it wasn’t bothering her, even though she could feel the awful penetrating gaze of Cody on her back as she averted her gaze and looked down Main Street.

CHAPTER 13

Henry Marshall stood naked in front of the full-length bathroom mirror, peering into the haunted eyes of his own reflection.

“I don’t approve of this new look Henry. You can’t dress like that anymore. You’re too old.”

He ignored the nagging voice of his wife in his head, and glanced at the grey sweats folded neatly over the edge of the bathtub. Wrinkling his nose at the noxious, sweet rot smell of decaying flesh filling the house, he slowly put them on. Joggers. Hooded top. Black gloves. It felt good. It felt natural.

“Look at you, dressed like one of those dreadful teenagers who’ve polluted this town. You’re supposed to be cleaning it up Henry. You said you’d put it right.”

“I will,” he said to the silent house. “I’m working on it.”

“I hope so. Those kids are like a cancer. Spreading and killing the lifeblood of this town. It’s up to you to fix it Henry.”

“I know!” he snapped, for the time being silencing the nagging voice in his brain.

He turned to the sink, looked at the photograph taped on the wall above it. It was an old publicity photo of Donovan standing in front of his shop, beaming in a cheap blue pinstripe suit, blonde hair parted at the side and combed over in a slick fifties side style.

“It’s a good look,” Henry muttered as he ran his fingers lightly over the dog eared glossy.

He turned back to the mirror and inspected his own hair, a greasy, listless mop.

“We can fix it all,” he muttered.

He returned to the sink and picked up the bottle of Peroxide, then leaning over the basin, poured it onto his hair, ignoring the burning sensation as the chemical bleach assaulted his scalp. He rubbed it in, working it with his fingertips, eyes scrunched closed.

“What are you trying to achieve, Henry?” Hillary said as he gritted his teeth against the stinging pain. “Are you trying to make yourself look younger? Appeal to the new generation?”

“Shut up Hilary!” he gasped, pouring more of the bleach onto his hair. “I swear to god if you don’t shut up I’ll—”

“You’ll what? Kill me again? I’m just trying to stop you making a fool of yourself. Why I bother I don’t know.”

Henry grabbed a towel off the side of the bath and wrapped his upper head in it, encasing his hair and letting the peroxide do its job. The pain was good. It was his sacrifice, his burden. Super sensitive skin or not, he’d made a commitment and intended to see it through to the bitter end.

An hour later, Henry walked into the sitting room, somehow managing to ignore the awful stench and busy drone of flies from within. He strode to the sofa and stood in front of his wife’s body. Her skin was bloated and ruptured, staining the seat where she slouched. An army of maggots were navigating the bulbous, vein-lined highways of her arms and face, while her open eyes had taken on a milky sheen.

“Well, what do you think?” he said as he stood before the body.

“I’m not sure what you’re trying to prove Henry. Whatever it is, I don’t like it one bit.”

“Don’t you think it suits me? I look ten years younger.”

“And that’s the problem. You’re forty five not thirty five. It’s stupid.”

“Why do you have to be so negative all the time, Hilary? Why can’t you, just for once, be happy for me?”

“Do what you want, you always do anyway,” his wife’s shrill voice said. “Nothing I say will make the slightest bit of difference.”

Henry turned to the mirror above the fireplace, brushing away flies which had settled on its surface.

His hair was now an electric blonde color and, although it had taken a ton of hair wax to do it, had been parted at the side and combed over in an identical style to the one Donovan had sported in the photograph. Henry grinned broadly at his reflection, attempting to emulate the sleazy salesman smile from the photograph. His efforts came out more as a horrific rictus, and he stared past his reflection to the body of his wife.

“Well I like it,” he said. “It’s all a part of the new me.”

“And what does this mean for the old you?”

“He’s gone, and won’t be coming back.”

“So what happens now?”

“Now, we finish what we started.”

“And what’s that supposed to mean?”

He hesitated.

Did he mean by launching his hotel project, or was there another meaning. Something involving the Samsons? He wasn’t sure, and either way it didn’t matter. He’d come too far to turn back.

“I have to go meet Dane,” he said, walking into the hall and grabbing his jacket. “I might be late, so don’t wait up if you’re tired.”

He didn’t bother waiting for an answer and hurried out of the door, leaving his dead wife in the company of the flies.

II

Emma’s parents weren’t home, which Carrie thought a bonus as she walked down the driveway, their ancient Toyota conspicuous by its absence, a miniature puddle of oil the only evidence of its existence. Carrie walked purposely up to the door, fighting with the moral implications of what she was about to do. She pulled a miniature bottle of perfume out of her bag and squirted some on her wrists, then knocked on the door.

She waited and watched as the figure approached, its form distorted by the frosted glass. Emma opened the door, her surprise lasting only a split second as Carrie held up the bottle of wine.

“Guess what I brought?” she said with a grin.

“If my parents saw you with that, they would freak out.”

“They’re always out on a Tuesday night aren’t they?”

“Yeah,” Emma said with a grin. “Tuesday is date night.”

“Well, tonight, Tuesday is wine night.”

“In that case, you better come in,” Emma said with a mischievous smile.

Carrie obliged, closing the door behind her and following Emma to the sitting room. Emma pointed to the sofa.

“Go ahead and take a seat, I’ll grab us a couple of glasses.”

Carrie obliged, setting the bottle on the table.

“What the hell are you watching?” she shouted, watching what appeared to be a Japanese game show of sorts where contestants were put through a series of painful-looking games which invariably saw them either getting wet or covered in mud after a painful fall.