The Dark Ones (10 page)

Though still imprisoned, they were close enough to touch in subtle ways.

It reached out to them, probing again, searching for the weakest link among them.

Derek
.

Oh, Derek, I’ll be taking you so very soon
.

It could not yet make Derek do as it wished. The binding magic was too strong. But it was able to plant a seed in Derek’s mind. A suggestion.

It would be enough.

The young were too curious. They wouldn’t be able to resist. The young were also more apt to take risks than adults, occasionally doing things they would later see as very stupid. Things like breaking into a sealed-up piece of private property. Of course, they couldn’t know the true degree of risk they were taking. Nor could they have any way of knowing they had broken the first of the binding seals the moment they had knocked that door open.

The air in the basement vibrated subtly again as the demon laughed and awaited the inevitable arrival of its liberators.

S
IXTEEN

Clayton aimed the remote at the fifty-one-inch high-definition screen and paged through the channel guide listings. TBS had several consecutive episodes of
Family Guy
scheduled. He’d come back to that if he found nothing else of interest. There were a lot of channels and a lot of possibilities. Yes, a lot of possibilities. So why was he paging so rapidly past many very interesting-looking programs without pausing to click the info button for any of them?

Well, here was the answer to that question.

He’d reached the pay-per-view porn section of the channel guide. He scrolled slowly through the selections, pausing the longest on
Lesbian Summer Camp Sluts
. That’d probably get the job done. He ordered the movie and settled back on the couch, getting comfortable for his masturbation session. The sooner he got it over with, the better. He could then resume his normal late-evening habit of frying his brains and watching random shit on the tube until he passed out. He untied his bathrobe, pulled it open, and slid a hand into his pajama pants to grasp his already swelling cock. The action on the screen had barely begun and he was already about to pop. Which wasn’t surprising, considering all the unspent erotic energy bubbling inside him in the wake of Fiona Johnson’s abrupt departure.

Fuck
.

He didn’t want to think about her. He should have continued shooting down her repeated sex-for-dope offers. It was what anyone with brains would have done. But a long-unquenched thirst for physical intimacy with another warm body made him weak.

And, hell, here he was, going over it all again in his head.

Damn
. . .

She’d cuddled up with him right here on the couch after they’d shared some of the weed. He made one token, halfhearted effort to push her away, but she giggled and clung to him, leaning into him to nuzzle and kiss his neck. One of her delicate hands reached through the fly of his pajama pants to grip him through his underwear.

She draped one skinny leg over his knee and laughed softly. “Like that?”

“Yeah.”

He remembered feeling a combination of lust and despair at what he saw in her expression. Her face, so pale and achingly pretty despite the sprinkle of acne across her chin, conveyed an exciting amount of actual desire, but this thrill was leavened by an obvious contempt that showed in her eyes and in a smile that was trying hard not to be a smirk.

“Would you like to put this thing in me?” she’d asked him as she continued to stroke him through his underwear. “Would that be nice?”

“Oh, God . . .”

She giggled then. And the next words out of her mouth were the pin that popped the balloon. “When was the last time anybody fucked you, Clay?”

He didn’t say anything. His hard-on instantly shriveled.

“Clay? Is something wrong?”

Ten years ago
, he’d thought.
It was ten years ago and you even look a little like her, but you don’t need to know that. It was ten years ago that my father blew his brains out and everything changed forever, and you don’t need to know about that, either
.

“Get out.”

“What the fuck is wrong with you?”

“Just leave. Please. I’m sorry, but . . . please, just go.”

She’d stared at him for a long moment, disbelief etched in her features. Her eyes turned shiny, but then she blinked away the excess moisture, scooped up the bag of weed he’d dropped on the coffee table, and stood over him. “I’m not paying for this.”

“Okay.”

“I mean it. I figure the little thrill you just got is payment enough. Am I right?”

“Okay.”

“Okay.”
A sneering, mocking tone. “Fuck you, you fat fucking old asshole.”

She kicked him hard in the shin then and left.

Her harsh words cut deep. He liked Fiona. He liked all of them. But he knew his relationship with the so-called Dark Ones had an expiration date and it was coming up soon. They were growing up. Graduation was around the corner. There might be other kids to replace them one day, other young troublemakers, but odds were they wouldn’t be half as interesting as these kids. He thought of them as friends, but in his rare sober moments he recognized this as foolish. Soon they’d move into a new phase of their lives and he’d never see any of them again.

“What the fuck am I doing?”

He was getting depressed and when he was depressed he couldn’t bear to watch porn. He aimed the remote at the screen again and clicked over to
Family Guy
.

The doorbell rang again.

His first—and only—thought was that Fiona had come back to apologize for being mean. He’d ordered her out, but the self-pitying turn of his thoughts made him eager to see her again. Which was why he failed to exercise the usual degree of caution. The Louisville Slugger stayed propped in its corner as he pulled the door open without a glance through the peephole.

“Hey—”

A huge fist crashed against his jaw and made him stagger backward. He tripped over his feet and crashed to the floor. The tip of a boot slammed into his stomach, blasting the air from his lungs. He wheezed and rolled onto his back, looking up through a blur of tears at his assailant.

The man towering over him wore a blue uniform and a badge.

Cop
.

Clayton had just enough time to start being really scared.

Then the beating began in earnest.

When it was over the cop stood over him and sneered at his quivering, huddled form. “Consider that a warning, Campbell. That’s how I deal with sickos like you. I hear you got away with a lot for a long time because of your daddy. But daddy’s dead and nobody cares anymore. Your days of living above the law are over. You give that girl trouble again and it’s your ass, you hear me?”

Another boot to the stomach. “YOU HEAR ME!?”

“Y-yes.”

The cop left.

Clayton stayed where he was for a long time, holding his stomach and shaking from the pain. Then he got to his hands and knees and made his way back to the living room. He grabbed a rum bottle from the coffee table and sat with his back against the sofa. Fat tears spilled down his cheeks as his body quaked with sobs.

He drank most of the rum before he passed out.

S
EVENTEEN

Ransom, Tennessee
Hollis House

December 6, 1984

The top of her head was a pulpy mess. Norman sat on his knees next to her, his hands shaking as he stared at her empty face. The stillness of her features was horrible. His stomach churned as spasms of remorse ripped at his conscience and warred with the instinct for self-preservation. He knew the latter would eventually prevail. It was, after all, why he’d done this awful thing in the first place. He wasn’t a killer by nature. He hadn’t actually meant to kill her, really. Just maybe beat a bit of sense into the bitch and scare her into giving up any additional blackmail materials. But then she had to go and bust her head open after he popped her one.

It was all her fault.

She was no angel. That was important to remember. She had wanted to kill his wife. His dear, sweet Audrey. In a way, what he’d done was a virtuous thing. He’d been acting to protect someone he loved. He couldn’t let himself think of this dead thing leaking blood on the ground as a human being. It had been a threat, an invading cancer, and it had to be excised. But he looked at her unmoving lips and remembered how soft they had been, how nice they’d felt giving him teasing little kisses up and down his body. She’d had her good points, for sure. Another twinge of remorse made him grimace.

No
.

I did the right thing here. She brought this on herself
.

He grabbed the corpse by the wrists and dragged it over to the Fiat Spider. After getting the trunk open with her keys, he hauled Louella’s body up off the ground and wedged it in the trunk. He then covered her with a tarp and slammed the trunk shut, mercifully removing the grisly vision from his eyes. He would leave her here for now and get back to town in his own car. Maybe go home and change out of these bloody clothes before heading over to Louella’s place to purge it of anything investigators shouldn’t see.

No. That was no good. Audrey would be there. And Clayton, who was home sick for the day. The boy was home sick a lot. Only he wasn’t really sick most of the time. Unless being allergic to school counted as being sick.

He couldn’t go home. Not yet.

There was one person in town he could count on to help. It wouldn’t be a no-questions-asked or no-strings-attached kind of situation, though. There would be plenty of both. The mayor would take care of this for him. They were drinking buddies. Business partners and friends. They had done favors of questionable legality for each other before. Not anything as severe as this, perhaps, but certainly things that could land either of them in jail for a good stretch if state investigators ever became privy to the information.

The mayor might scold him something fierce, but in the end he’d help.

And that would be the end of this nightmare.

The decision made, Norman turned and ran flat out for his car.

He didn’t stop shaking until he reached the mayor’s house.

E
IGHTEEN

Lydia Bell let go of her husband’s throat and watched with satisfaction as he coughed and spluttered. She felt his chest heave beneath her as his lungs worked hard to draw in fresh oxygen. His cheeks were flushed a deep red and covered in sweat. He gasped and whimpered, staring up at her with eyes that were wide with terror. She loved the choking game. It made her feel powerful and in control, the opposite of the way she’d felt after learning of his infidelity.

“Lydia . . . you . . . have to . . . stop this . . .”

“Why?”

“Because . . .” He sucked in another big breath. “You’re going to . . . kill me.”

She cocked her hand back and snapped it across his face.

He was actually crying now and that was good. That was
very
good.

“Please . . .”

“You betrayed me, Tom.”

“I know. Jesus, I know.” He whimpered again. “How many times do I have to say I’m sorry?”

“You’ll never be sorry enough. Never.”

She slapped him again.

“Let’s get a divorce.” His eyes radiated desperation. “I won’t contest anything. You can have it all. The house. Custody of Mark. As much money as you want. Let’s just end this misery.”

He didn’t get it. He could never give back what he had taken from her. Her dignity. Her sense of herself as a woman. She was intelligent and desirable. The whole package. Until earlier this year, the notion of her man straying would have struck her as absurd.

But Tom had done just that.

Lydia wrapped her hands around his throat again.

“No.” He sobbed. “Please . . .”

She smiled. “We’re not getting divorced. Ever.”

She tightened her grip on his throat.

The truth was, this wasn’t just a game.

It was practice.

One day she’d keep the pressure up until the cheater had breathed his last. Because why go through the hassle of divorcing him when she could simply put an end to him forever?

Yes. He really didn’t get it.
At all
.

The room was spinning again. She grabbed the edge of the bathroom sink to keep from toppling over. That would be bad. She could crack her head open on the hard tiles. She had a fleeting vision of her bleeding and very still body on the floor. She let go of the sink with one hand and touched the top of her head, feeling for a gash that wasn’t there.

Silly
, Suzie McGregor thought.

That didn’t happen. That was just an idea in my silly head. A visualization of something that could happen, but I won’t let it. No, I won’t let you do that to me. You want that to happen, don’t you
?

“Don’t you?”

Her voice emerged soft but steady, belying how she really felt.

It wasn’t enough that the force that controlled the universe was maliciously messing with her in the usual insidious and hateful ways. Oh, no. And it wasn’t enough that it had planted that awful image of her split-open noggin in her head. That was its way of saying,
Look, Suzie, there you are dead. Doesn’t that look about right to you?

Wouldn’t you be better off not alive anymore?

She sneered at her reflection in the mirror, knowing the powers working against her could see it. “How subtle. Fuck you. FUCK YOU! Go to hell! You can take your stupid little subliminal suggestions and shove them up your fat fucking cosmic ass!”

She thrust an upraised middle finger against the mirror. “FUCK YOU!”

No.

This . . . nonsense . . . was par for the course. This was Standard Operating Procedure. It was Situation Normal, All Fucked Up. She had been dealing with it nearly all her life. She was used to it. The thing that had her perhaps seconds away from a total meltdown was the lingering psychological sting from the confrontation with her son. It hurt to even look at herself, knowing the galling degree of weakness that lurked within her. She didn’t know how she could face Derek again. Hell, she didn’t know how she could even be in the same
room
with him.