Secrets of the Hanged Man (Icarus Fell #3) (An Icarus Fell Novel) (18 page)

“I think it’s gone.”

I turned toward her, relieved to gaze upon the face of an eight-year-old girl, then looked back down the bank. No shuddering branches or shaking leaves, no thud of heavy steps.

Maybe I don’t want to catch it anyway.

I hauled my leg back over the rail but didn’t bother mentioning my relief at not having to go after the creature. There are a few things your young girl companion doesn’t need to know...when you’re afraid of monsters, for instance.

“Okay. Let’s get him moving,” I said, then gave Dee an oh-boy-are-you-in-trouble look. “Then we have to talk.”

Instead of protesting, she nodded and went to where the teen’s spirit stood watching us, mouth agape. I waited a moment, catching my breath and massaging the pain in my shoulder, gazing into the darkness at the bottom of the embankment. A chill racked my spine; I shook it off and hurried to catch up to Dee and the spirit.

“That was him.”

I raised my eyebrow. “Him?”

“Meg’s son. Scarecrow.”

I glanced back over my shoulder at the spot where the thing had disappeared, unsure how Dee knew such a thing or whether I should take her at her word. In the time I’d been dead, I’d seen some shitty stuff, and chances were good this might be another.

I breathed deep and detected the odor of over-cooked toast that often accompanied creatures of Hell, the smell bringing rough goose flesh to my arms. I shivered and followed Dido, not liking the thought devouring my mind.

Devil child.

Cory woke to a pain in his head and a chill in his bones, but didn’t open his eyes. He knew this state as wakefulness, for the pain, and chill, and sounds told him so, but they seemed dim and far away at first. As the world forced itself on him, noises became more distinct: traffic passing on a busy road, running water, his own heartbeat. He detected smells, too, unidentifiable odors mixed into a horrendous stench. He opened his mouth and inhaled, sucked foul liquid between his lips and into his throat, choking him, making him cough. Cory bolted upright, fully conscious, staring into darkness.

Water rushed around his naked legs, stirring the fine hairs on his thighs and calves. He sensed the coldness on his skin—something to which he’d grown unaccustomed—though it wasn’t the touch of cold air and winter water making him shiver, but the shock of not knowing where he was or how he’d gotten to this place.

Cory rose to his feet, guiding himself with a hand touching a coarse wall. A couple of yards ahead, he saw the outline of thick bars and realized his location: a drainage culvert. Traffic thrummed by on the street overhead, and for the first time in his life, he wondered if the bars were truly in place to keep people out, or to keep things in.

Outside the grate, night faded toward dawn, but the night within remained black. He sloshed his way toward the partition, careful of his step on the concrete under his feet, its surface slick with moss.

He reached the end and wrapped his fingers around two of the bars, their metal surfaces rusty and pitted. Beyond them, he saw the runoff flowing away in the concrete-sided drainage ditch, a tangle of blackberry bushes, shrubs lining both sides. He recognized this place, remembered the last time he’d been here.

Water flowed around his calves, deepened by the thing lying against the grate. Cory directed his gaze to the bloated face pressed against the bars, water tangling the boy's hair around the bars like tinsel left on a discarded Christmas tree.

“Hello, Tom,” he said aloud. “Everyone’s been wondering where you went.”

Dead eyes stared up at him, their blankness lacking both understanding and accusation. Cory smiled.

He peered out through the bars again, judging the light and estimating if he’d make it home before too many people took to the streets. Running through the neighborhood naked would cause him enough trouble, but what about the other oddities on his body? What if someone saw them?

His fingernail clicked against the hard square on his chest, then he let his hand trail down his belly. His fingers encountered three more that hadn’t been there last time he checked. His other hand reached around and touched the stump where he’d hacked the appendage off his tail bone, found it sore and unappreciative of his touch. A scab covered the wound, but sitting in water had softened it. A corner came away, sticking to his fingertip, and he touched the nub of another tail starting beneath it.

He sighed, then bent and pushed against the bars. The grate moved with a teeth-numbing squeal and Cory maneuvered one foot through the gap, then an arm. He crouched, the cage pressed painfully against his chest, the stink of Tom’s body making him gag, and wriggled through into the deeper water of the drainage ditch. The cover screeched back into place and Cory stopped to survey the area, cold water submerging his legs to the knee. He saw no one, so headed along the ditch, water splashing, feet numb. Half an hour later, he climbed through his mother’s bedroom window at the back of the house and collapsed, exhausted, on her bed.

***

I paused to ponder the half-moon-shaped bite in my Moons Over My Hammy sandwich, then replaced the delicious Denny’s breakfast on the plate. I didn’t want to come here because it still reminded me too much of Poe, but Dido insisted. She sat across from me, an untouched mug of hot chocolate on the table in front of her as she watched me wipe ketchup off the corner of my mouth. I breathed hard through my nose for effect and leaned forward to rest my elbows on the edge of the table.

“
What’s going on?” I asked around a mouthful of Denny’s goodness.

Dee regarded me for a few seconds without replying. Her disheveled hair hung limp around her face, the curl relaxed and the color drained from it, leaving it gray. She stared at nothing and jumped a little when I spoke, as though I’d surprised her out of deep contemplation. She regarded me long enough before answering, I thought she didn’t hear me.

“I’m not sure what you mean. Nothing’s going on.”

She fidgeted, grasped the mug with both hands and spun it back and forth, the undrunk hot chocolate inside coming dangerously close to slopping over the lip. I took another bite of my sandwich and watched her. She didn’t give the impression of someone with nothing going on.

“Why did you think that...thing was this Scarecrow kid?”

“
What else could it be?”

“
Some sort of super carrion? Maybe they realized that, if they’re going to fu...mess around with Ric Fell, they need to be better prepared.”

She stared at me—no smile, no laugh, not even a giggle.

“I had a feeling, I guess.”

I nodded. Not the best excuse, but in the months I’d been dead and doing the job of harvesting souls, it often seemed as valid as any. That was only part of what I meant, though.

“And what was going on with,” I waved my hand around my face, doing a mediocre Jon Cena impression, “with your face.”

“
I don’t know what you mean.”

“
When you jumped in...you didn’t look like you.”

She diverted her gaze again, finding an object of interest in her cup of cocoa. “What did I look like?”

I thought back to the different faces flickering across hers. The weirdness didn’t last long enough for me to recognize any of them, but it happened. But how to explain it?

“
I don’t know.”
Good job.

“
A trick of the light, probably.” She raised her head, one corner of her mouth tilted up in the beginning of a smile. “Or maybe something scared you into seeing things. It happens sometimes.”

“
Right,” I scoffed. “Me. Scared.”

Her eyes twinkled and the side of her mouth already on its way toward a smile rose a bit farther. “Oh, I bet you’ve been scared before.”

I didn’t share her apparent mirth, so I chose to take another bite of my sandwich rather than answer. The truth was, I’d spent way too much time being scared since Mikey brought me back from whatever purgatory I’d been in. Scared for Trevor, scared for Rae, scared for Sister Mary-Therese, and Poe, and myself, too. Sister Mary-Therese and Poe were gone, along with a number of others, Trevor had been to Hell, and I couldn’t figure out what to do with the wayward soul of an eight-year-old girl. Fat lot of good fear did me. I shifted, looking for comfort, and my ass made a farting sound against the vinyl booth seat, providing a good opportunity for a change of subject.

“
Something’s going on here, Dee.”

“
Yeah. Someone’s killing teenagers.”

“
Besides that. What’s up with you?” I jabbed my fork at her for emphasis, a ketchup-slathered home-fried potato skewered on its tines.

She tilted her head back, looking toward the ceiling as if she’d find what to say among the rafters. I followed her gaze to the cobwebs and dust hanging from the HVAC system but saw no answers floating around amongst the pipes and ducts. It seemed she had better luck than I did.

“
I don’t know, Ric. I--”

“
Come on.”

“
Really.” She fidgeted, twirled the mug, played with her hair. “I’ve never been dead before. I don’t know what’s going on. Aren’t you the one with all the experience?”

I frowned at her. The way she squirmed when I questioned her made me doubt she told the truth, but I could see I wasn’t going to get anything from her, if there was anything to get. Back to the real problem at hand.

“Fine. What do we know about the three kids who were killed?”

“
They were around the same age. When they died, I mean. Not after.”

“
Exactly.”

“
And?”

I waved my eating implement in a small circle and a drop of red tomato goodness plopped on the surface of the table. “Don’t you think it means something?”

“Yeah, I do. Shouldn’t we be doing something about it?”

“
Some of us need sustenance to keep going.”

I popped the hash brown into my mouth, enjoying the sweet, acidic taste of the ketchup on my tongue. There was a connection between the three dead teens, but I just didn’t see it yet. Or was I trying to make sense of a shitty world full of shitty deaths? Every time I looked into the cherubic face of the eight-year-old girl sitting in the booth with me, and the way the light seeped through her, I was reminded of it. It also made me wonder how odd it must seem to the other early-morning Denny’s patrons seeing me alone in a booth with a hot chocolate sitting across from me. Fuck ‘em.

“Two of them knew each other,” I said, then concentrated for a second to come up with their names. “Manny and the Gonzo kid. They went to the same school. I bet the other one did, too.”
Trevor’s school.

“
Tom?”

“
Yeah. Tom.”

“
But why would someone be killing teenage boys?”

“
It’s got something to do with Meg’s kid. Or that creature we saw.”

“
I’m telling you: they’re the same.”

I shrugged. “Maybe. Either way, it’s making me uncomfortable.” I drew four straight lines through the glob of untouched HP Sauce on my plate with my fork—shouldn’t have poured it, I’m not really a fan of the stuff. “The fact they went to Trevor’s school is a little too close to home.”

“They could have been accidents.” The genesis of a smile disappeared from her mouth. “One kid fell asleep in a culvert and drowned, the second hanged himself. Death by monkey bars. Manny got the business end of a truck.”

“
Because that thing was after him. Probably there when Gonzo died, too. Remember the guy standing at the other end of the field? I bet that was it. What do you think? You chased it.”

She leaned back in her seat and turned her gaze away again, this time to her hands in her lap, and I had the distinct impression she was keeping something from me. It seemed to be some kind of compulsion against which dead people and angels had no defense, and it wasn't my favorite habit of theirs.

I let a minute pass, neither of us speaking. She stared at her hands, I stared at her, but it didn’t seem to be loosening her tongue. I wasn’t convinced the thing was really Meg’s devil-son—I’d seen enough things in Hell to recognize other, worse possibilities existed—but if it was, and he went to school with Trevor, then I wasn’t going to take chances. Not again.

“
Where did you go after Gonzo died?” I stared at her, willing her to look up. “And how did you know Gabe was waiting for us with Manny’s scroll?”

“
It doesn’t matter, Icarus.” She leaned forward and rested her arms on the edge of the table. “They went to Trevor’s school. What do you want to do?”

I didn’t want to consider it. For years I was a mediocre father at the best of times, but since I died, the angel of death kidnapped my son, a dead priest threatened him, and he took an unscheduled vacation in Hell. I never worried my Dad-of-the-Year nomination letter got lost in the mail, but the idea he was in danger again made me want to punch a wall. Instead of hurting my fist, I scooped some hash browns up with my fork.

“He might be in danger,” she clarified.

Thanks for the news flash.

My utensil halted halfway to my mouth, spilling most of the hash browns off in a spatter of ketchup. I looked at them strewn across the off-white table top for a second, then raised my gaze to hers again. She managed to appear both determined and apprehensive at the same time.

“
Seems like more than a coincidence to me. Three teens who knew each other, go to the same school.” She hesitated, swallowing hard. “And Trevor knew them.”

“
What?”

“
Icarus, I want you to--”

I slammed the flat of my hand on the table, stopping her mid-sentence while attracting the attention of everyone else in the restaurant and slopping hot chocolate over the lip of her cup. Given none of them could see her, they must have thought me crazy. So what?

“How do you know this?”

“
It doesn’t matter.”

“
It does matter. Does Michael have his fingers in this?”

“
No, he--”

“
Gabe?”

“
No.”

“
Then how?” I narrowed my eyes. “How did you know what was on the scroll before Gabe gave it to me?”

“
Icarus, you’re losing sight of what’s important here.”

“
Am I?”

Her lips parted, and her expression went soft, caring, but she didn’t say anything. I like to assume my stern expression convinced her to dispense with the runaround, but maybe not. Her gaze dropped away from mine to her fingers fidgeting in her lap.