The Dark Ones (13 page)

At various points through this, Mark perceived flashes of bright light at the periphery of his vision, little stuttering blips like static in the fabric of reality. These were followed by occasional glimpses of some other place.
Blip
. A fiery place. Great, billowing columns of fire radiating incredible heat.
Blip
. Back in this world, watching the tips of Natasha’s outstretched fingers clawing at the concrete floor, her voice hot in his ear, begging him to fuck her into oblivion.
Blip
. Another horrid glimpse of that awful place. He saw piles of body parts stacked to the sky, trailing ribbons of intestines and other organs. He saw blood like a river flowing over a cobbled street. Then
blip
one more time, returning again to this world, seeing Fiona beneath him now, her eyes wide and full of tears. And as he fucked Fiona, he felt his own tears begin to flow, already experiencing the shame that later would haunt them all. He saw tears on all their faces. There was no pleasure in any of these acts for any of them, at least not beyond those initial few moments of raw, aching need.

He knew the deepest despair in that moment.

This was never going to end. They would go like this until they were dead, all of them, until their hearts had exploded from the relentless, forced exertion. The thing that had been imprisoned here—that they had inadvertently released—was never going to let them go.

But then it did.

All but one of them.

P
ART
II:

U
NBOUND

T
WENTY

Five days later
. . .

There was something wrong with her son. Something more sinister than the infuriating spark of rebellion he had shown the night Kurt keeled over. It had certainly started that night, though. He wouldn’t talk about it, but something bad had happened. She sensed this every time she made uneasy eye contact with him. That hard, knowing stare of his made her feel like he was seeing right into all the nooks and crannies in her brain, making him privy to all those dark, secret things lurking there.

I know you
, that look said.
I know every sick thing about you
.

You’re pathetic
.

Pitiful
.

And I am better than you
.

That perceived judgment made her seethe with rage and resentment. But she’d had to keep a tight lid on those feelings with so many of Kurt’s relatives around the last few days. And now, in the aftermath of the service and subsequent reception, she was being made to feel like a bad parent by Kurt’s insufferable witch of a mother.

“You should go check on the boy. He’s feeling lowly.”

They were standing in her kitchen, both of them still dressed in funeral black. Ella McGregor held a coffee mug in her wrinkled, liver-spotted hands and sipped from it with an irritating daintiness that made Suzie want to swat it away from her. Her right pinkie stuck straight up, making her look like a proper society lady enjoying a spot of tea. She was very prim and ladylike, an impression undercut somewhat by her black mourning dress, which was shorter and more formfitting than was proper for a woman her age, in Suzie’s opinion. She had a nice figure for such an old cunt, though. The dress did made her look sort of sexy. Sexy for a woman of sixty-one, anyway. But it was not at all appropriate for a funeral service. Suzie supposed the old bat had been hoping to hook up with one of the older gentlemen in attendance.

Disgusting
.

And now this.

Don’t you tell me what to do, you fucking hag. He’s my son, not yours
.

Suzie blew out a cloud of cigarette smoke. “The boy’s father just died, Ella. He needs time. He’ll be more upset if I bother him.”

Ella waved at the haze of smoke. “I wish you wouldn’t do that in here.”

“My house. I’ll do what I want.”

Ella sniffed. “How childish. You know those things are deadly. And if you don’t care about your own health, at least think about your boy. You’re all he has now.”

If you don’t start minding your own business soon, I’ll put this thing out in your goddamn eye, you hag
.

Suzie reminded herself she would only have to endure the woman’s company for one more night. Just one more night of playing the somber, grief-stricken widow. One more night of getting an earful of Ella’s advice on how to deal with sudden widowhood. Suzie needed none of that. She already knew exactly what to do. She dimly heard her BlackBerry buzzing in her purse, which was propped on the island in the middle of the kitchen. It would be Tom again.

She snatched the phone out of her purse.

Sure enough, there was a new message from Tom.

MUST SEE U SOON. SAFE TO CALL NOW
.

Suzie flashed her mother-in-law a phony smile. “Excuse me. I just need a minute.”

She ducked out of the kitchen before Ella could reply and made her way to the opposite end of the house, where she slipped into her own bedroom and shut and locked the door behind her. She pulled up Tom’s number and put the call through.

He answered on the first ring. “Hey.”

She smiled as she sat on the edge of the bed and pulled at the hem of her black dress. He had such a sexy voice. “Hey yourself.”

He sighed. “I’m so glad to hear your voice.”

She lay back on the bed and lifted her ass to pull the hem of the dress up over her thighs. She settled her ass on the mattress again and touched herself through already wet cotton panties. “Where are you? I wish I could see you.”

Another sigh, the regret and horniness in it palpable through the phone. “I’m at home. Lydia’s gone to the grocery store. But she won’t be gone long. If I have to hang up suddenly, it’s because she’s back.”

Suzie wriggled a little on the bed. “You meant what you said, right?”

“Um . . . about what?”

“That you love me.”

“Of course.”

She smiled again, liking how fast the reply came. She needed this thing with Tom to happen. Kurt had left behind a significant amount of money and there was a generous life-insurance policy that would be paying out at some point. She had more than enough to pay the bills and be comfortable for the foreseeable future. But she needed a provider in her life. She wanted to be more than comfortable. She wanted luxury and the endless indulgence of a handsome man who worshipped her. Tom could give her all that and more.

“I want you, baby. So bad.”

He coughed. “I want you, too. I can’t take Lydia anymore. She’s fucking crazy. She’s never been able to get over, you know . . . you and me.”

“You poor thing. It must be hard, living with that.”

“You don’t know the half of it.”

“Some people just aren’t as strong as us, baby. They can’t get past their own insecurities. I’m sure she’s made life a living hell for you. I’ll make you happy again, I promise.”

But even as she uttered these reassurances, she was thinking how a man who strayed while married to one woman could surely do so again with another. Once they were married, she would make the potential consequences of cheating on her very clear.

“Tom?”

“Yeah?”

“You’re the man of my dreams. I want to be with you forever.”

“You will be. You’re all I’ve been thinking about the last few days. And . . . hold on. Shit. I have to go.”

The phone went dead in her ear. She sighed and for a moment felt an aching emptiness. No matter. Tom would belong to her soon enough.

She returned to the kitchen.

Which was empty.

Thank fuck
.

She’d not been looking forward to resuming the maddening conversation with Ella. She realized how exhausted she was. A nap would be nice. She started back toward the bedroom, but stopped at the archway separating the kitchen from the living room and foyer. She quirked an eyebrow, thinking she’d heard something strange. A gasp. Or a moan. She poked her head through the archway and stared up the flight of stairs leading to the second floor. It was dark up there, but there was a slice of dim light visible through the slightly cracked door to Derek’s bedroom. The gasp came again.

You naughty boy
.

It sounded like he was masturbating up there and trying to keep quiet about it.

Why, Derek . . . jerking off on the day of your father’s funeral . . . my, my . . . I guess you’re not better than me after all, eh?

All thoughts of rest were quickly forgotten. She stepped out of her two-inch heels and began to ascend the carpeted stairs in her stockinged feet, treading lightly to avoid warning creaks. Instinct told her the act of voyeurism she planned was a bad idea. She was still concerned by the strange change in his demeanor. But the residual erotic charge from her conversation with Tom overrode her common sense. She was remembering her original plans for Derek on the night of Kurt’s death. She very much hoped to catch him in the act. And there was that cracked door to consider. It was almost as if he
hoped
to be spied on.

Oh, I’ll spy on you, darling
.

And maybe it won’t stop there
.

But she paused again halfway up the stairs, frowning as she remembered more about that night. He had returned home shortly before dawn, shimmying up that tree to crawl through the window to his room, where she had been waiting. Her intent had been to hit him with the news of his father’s death right off the bat. She would reassert her authority over him while he was off balance, berating him for not being there in her hour of need. And then she would punish him, giving him the thorough thrashing he should have received hours earlier. The cops and paramedics were long gone by then, Kurt’s bloated corpse gone with them. The boy needed to be corrected, and there was no one around to prevent her from using any means she deemed necessary to adjust his behavior.

But she abandoned this plan as soon as he entered the room, the color draining from her face as she got a good look at him. His clothes had been reduced to shredded rags that barely hung on his slim frame. Most of his body was visible through huge holes in the fabric, and much of the flesh she could see was bruised and scraped. He had cuts on his face and all over his arms and back. A closer look at the dark clothes showed they were stained with blood. Once she got past the initial shock of seeing him like that, she assumed he’d been in a brutal fight, had maybe been lucky to escape with his life.

His eyes looked darker than they should, almost black. He didn’t say anything, but that moment was when she first realized something was wrong. Something deeper than the obvious physical abuse he’d endured. Then his eyes rolled back in his head and he toppled over, a dead weight crashing to the floor, rocking the hardwoods and causing his guitar to fall off its stand. The Les Paul landed with a jangly, discordant thud. She had screamed then, certain he had died. He hadn’t died, though, and his breathing had seemed regular. But he didn’t wake up for hours. She wavered for a time over whether to call 9-1-1 again, but in the end she decided to wait it out. She stripped his ruined clothes from his body and wrestled him into his bed. It wasn’t hard. He didn’t weigh much. She covered him with a sheet and left him there. The next morning she called his school to let them know he wouldn’t be in for several days due to bereavement.

He slept until late afternoon. As planned, she hit him with the news as soon as he was awake. “I’m sorry, Derek, but your father died this morning. A heart attack.”

He’d nodded. “Okay.”

That was it.

No expression of grief. No questions. He accepted all her instructions about how to behave around the relatives and what to wear to the funeral. He didn’t say much at all in the ensuing days. He just watched her with those too-dark eyes and that smug expression.

She gave her head a hard shake and started up the stairs again.

Probably a lot of it was just her imagination. She had a lot to deal with, after all. And Derek was a typical sullen teenager, prone to a lot of the usual weird mood shifts.

She reached the second-floor landing and heard more muffled gasps emerging from his room. And then a low moan. She smiled.
Definitely sexual
. But there was something about those sounds . . . some subtle variations in the timbre. It almost sounded like a couple trying to keep quiet about fucking rather than one person masturbating. But that made no sense. None of Derek’s few friends were here today. In fact, they hadn’t been around at all.

It didn’t occur to her to wonder again about Ella’s whereabouts until she peered through the crack in the door.

The old cunt was in the room with Derek.

Suzie slapped a hand over her mouth to stifle a gasp. Her first instinct was to retreat, get back down the stairs as quickly and quietly as possible. But she felt rooted to the spot. The reality of what she was seeing was impossible to accept for several moments, but it just kept going on, affirming that it was not a hallucination. They were on Derek’s narrow bed. Ella was beneath him, with that little black dress hiked up over her waist. Suzie spied a scrap of black cloth on the floor. Thong panties. Most of Derek’s funeral outfit was also on the floor. The polished black shoes, the dark gray trousers. He still wore the crisp white shirt, but the front of it hung open. She saw a scattering of white buttons on the floor. He was positioned directly above Ella, his hands braced flat on the mattress on either side of her, arms locked and rigid at the elbows, upper body arched high. Her legs were spread wide, the slender white limbs looking ghostly pale in the dim light. The light was dim because someone had tossed another shirt over the nightstand lamp. Ella’s head was turned to one side, and a corner of the pillow beneath her head was in her mouth. She was using it to muffle her gasps.

Oh my God
. . .

Suzie’s mind reeled.

Despite the twisted fantasies she had entertained herself, her mind was temporarily incapable of processing this on any level. Ella was a little shameless in her flirtations with men her own age, but these were all normal interactions. Hell, she was a regular grandmother in most ways. A fucking cookie baker.