The Diablo Horror (The River Book 7) (3 page)

“I brought every item that matched your list,” Steven said.
“And I delivered them. We’re done.”

“You didn’t deliver every item,” the man said. “You let one
get away from you. That’s unacceptable.”

“I didn’t know it would do that,” Steven said. “I don’t know
what any of these things do. These are your items, you should know how they
work. If anything, you should have warned me it would revert.”

“I didn’t know it would,” the man said. “But even if I did,
it wouldn’t change your responsibility to return it to me.”

“I’ve acted in good faith here,” Steven said.

“That means little to me. Meanwhile your friend in California
is getting worse, I hear.”

“If you kill her, I’ll never do anything you ask. And you’ll
have an enemy for life.”

“Why does that leave me so unimpressed?” the man asked. “Is
it because you can become ill as quickly as she did? Maybe that’s why.”

Steven stopped arguing. He knew it was pointless and would
just make the demon angrier.

“Where is it?” Steven asked. “The object?”

“The Agimat?” the man said, enjoying that Steven had
acquiesced. “You mean the Agimat?”

“Yes, the Agimat, whatever the hell it is. Where is it?”

“It’s an ancient object, from the Far East. Very important to
me. And it’s powerful right now, because it’s recharging.”

“It’s recharging?”

“That means its owner will be active. You’ll want to use
caution.”

“Where is it?”

“A hundred and twenty miles north of here, in a little town
called Diablo.”

“Where in Diablo?”

“Your friend in California will continue to worsen until I
get the Agimat. Bring it back here, to your home, by tomorrow. No later.”

“Where in Diablo?” Steven yelled.

Before he’d finished the sentence, Aka Manah was gone –
disappeared along with the objects in the boxes. Steven saw Jason fall back to
the couch and over on his side.

“Are you OK?” Steven asked Jason as he helped him up.

“Yeah, fine,” Jason said, shaking his head. “I think I need
food.”

“We’ll go get food,” Steven said. “But I have to call your
grandfather first.”

Roy grumbled as coffee spilled onto his shirt. Steven just
crossed the Ship Canal bridge, and the bump as he hit the bridge deck caused
some coffee to spill up and out of the container.

“Goddamnit,” Roy said under his breath, grumbling quietly.
“Sorry, I wasn’t listening, I spilled. Start over.”

Steven backtracked. “There’s an object somewhere in a town
north of here. We’ve got to get it back, by tomorrow.”

“Is this an additional task from you-know-who?” Roy asked.
Jason, who was in the back seat, leaned forward and tried to hear Steven’s
answer.

“Yes,” Steven replied. “And no. It’s to finish up from a task
last night.”

“Is this an object from you-know-where?” Roy asked.

“I’m right here,” Jason said. “I can hear what you’re
saying.”

“Yes,” Steven said to Roy, “and apparently once it was
outside of the protection of you-know-where, it reverted to its owner.”

“Well, that’s a handy way to return them,” Roy said.

“Return what?” Jason interjected.

“Well, it didn’t go to the proper owner,” Steven said to Roy.
“At least, according to you-know-who.”

“This is really irritating,” Jason said.

“There are some things I can’t tell you,” Steven said to
Jason. “I don’t have a choice in the matter. If I tell anyone, I’ve violated an
agreement and it would make matters worse. So you’ll just have to trust me and
be patient if I talk in code.”

“Grandpa Roy seems to know what you’re talking about,” Jason
said. “So it’s just me who’s in the dark.”

“No,” Roy said, turning to Jason. “I know who he’s talking
about, but I don’t know the details of what he has to do. I’m as much in the
dark as you on that.”

“You mentioned an object,” Jason said. “What is it?”

“It’s called an Agimat,” Steven said. “No idea what it does.”

“It wards off evil spirits,” Jason said. “It’s Filipino. They
call them anting-anting.”

Roy turned to Steven, surprised. He turned back to Jason.
“How’d you know that?”

“I dated a Filipino girl once,” Jason said. “She had one.
Wore it around her neck, even during sex. It was bugging the hell out of me, so
I asked her what it was and why she wouldn’t take it off. She said there had
been an evil spirit that followed her family for generations, making them sick
and poor. She was very sincere about it. And she would
not
take it off.”

“Well, this particular Agimat,” Steven said, “seems to have
the ability to return to its owner. And I was warned that it was recharging.”

“Oh yeah, the holiday,” Jason said.

“What?” Roy asked. Now he felt like the one in the dark.

“Supposedly Agimats recharge every year between Good Friday
and Easter,” Jason answered. “Or so she said. I’ll bet there’s plenty of info
about them on the internet. I could pull it up on my phone and show you, but I
forgot to bring it.”

“That’s got to have something to do with his accelerated
timetable,” Steven muttered to himself, hoping Roy would hear him but not
Jason. Jason had insisted he come along, and Roy supported the idea. But both
Steven and Roy agreed Jason wasn’t ready to know about Eximere, and Steven was
under obligation to the demon to keep the terms of their deal secret. Talking
to Jason about anything they were currently doing was proving to be very
difficult.

“So we’re going to Diablo to hunt for this thing?” Roy asked.
“Do we know what it looks like?”

“It’s a square, flat metal piece about an inch wide, with red
markings,” Steven said, “attached to a leather necklace. So I assume, like
Jason said, it’s meant to be worn around the neck.” For some reason he involuntarily
thought of the Agimat being worn by a naked woman, the amulet dangling between
her breasts.
Must be Jason’s story,
he thought, shaking his head.

“And do we know where in Diablo it is?” Roy asked.

“No,” Steven said. “We don’t. We’re going to have to do some
detective work.”

“Well, that shouldn’t be too hard,” Roy said. “It’s not very
big.”

“I’d been to Diablo Lake with friends,” Jason said. “I didn’t
realize there was a town called Diablo.”

“It’s hard to call it a town,” Roy replied. “It’s strictly a
company town, not more than a couple dozen houses, tucked at the bottom of
Diablo dam. Only employees of the utility that built the dam live there.”

“You-know-who said that because it was recharging, the owner
of it would be active,” Steven said. “Whatever that means. And he said to use
caution.”

“Could mean anything,” Roy said. “I guess we’ll see. And when
we find it, what then?”

“He said to bring it back to my house in Seattle,” Steven
answered. “I presume that meant he’d take it from there. And that should
complete the deal.”

“Hmm,” Roy said, leaning back in his seat and looking out the
passenger window. Tall evergreens lined the freeway as they sped toward
Everett, but Roy didn’t seem to be seeing them. Steven knew he was kicking
around what he’d told him.
He probably thinks it’s a trap,
Steven
thought.

“And Eliza?” Roy asked, turning back.

“Still in the hospital,” Steven said. “I called just before
we left. Too weak to speak, so I talked to Joe. I’m guessing you-know-who
realizes I need help on this, or I expect you’d be in the hospital right along
with her.”

“Christ,” Roy said. “Really?”

“That’s been his M.O. from the beginning. Threaten you two
until I agree.”

“What a pig’s ear,” Roy said, turning again to look out the
window. Thomas’ words to him from the night before returned to his mind:
He’ll
keep coming back. It’ll never be over.

“So Eliza’s in the hospital because of this deal you have,
that you won’t tell me about?” Jason asked.

“Basically, yes,” Steven answered. “We need to locate this Agimat
as quickly as we can and get back to Seattle with it. By tomorrow, if
possible.”

“How are we going to do that?” Jason asked.

“I don’t know,” Steven said. He turned to look at Roy. Roy
was back to staring out the window, watching the evergreens go by.

◊

Steven pulled his car off the main road where a large wooden
brown sign read “Diablo” with an arrow pointing to the left. The sign didn’t
look like a normal highway or forest service sign.

He slowly progressed down Diablo Street, Gorge Lake on their
right, and a steep cliff lined with evergreens on their left. The small two-lane
road twisted and turned along the edge of the lake. After a mile it emerged
into a clearing that looked like a small collection of houses placed simply
along two small roads. Steven chose one of the roads and slowly drove along it,
observing the houses. They were all the same; same size, shape, design.
Little
houses made of ticky-tacky,
he thought. They were painted different colors,
but the colors were in a limited palette – nothing interesting or eye-catching.
Each home sat back from a one-lane asphalt road, with a cement driveway
connecting the house to the street. Lawns filled the space between the house
and the road. There were no fences, and the lawn of one house ran into the lawn
of the next. After passing nine or ten houses on both sides of the street, he
turned and drove down the other lane running through the clearing. It was
similarly lined with the same houses. The only real difference between any of
the houses was which children’s toys were lying in front of or behind each
house.

One house seemed different than the others, standing out for
odd reasons. Whereas all the other houses had closed windows, this house’s
windows were open, and drapes were blowing out of it. There were clothes on the
ground near the front door, strewn across the lawn toward the driveway. “That
one looks promising,” Roy said. Steven stopped the car in front of the house.
It had the feel of being empty, but honestly, so did all the other houses. There
were no people to be seen anywhere, as though the rapture had hit or an
evacuation had been called.

“Do you want to drop into the River and check it out?” Steven
asked Roy.

“Not if there’s people living in there!” Roy said.

“It looks vacant,” Steven said, cocking his head. “I think
the front door is actually open a bit.”

“People obviously live there,” Roy said. “Look at all the
stuff outside.”

“Looks to me like they left in a hurry,” Jason said.

Steven observed the number seventeen on the side of the house
in small reflective decals. He looked over to the house across the street, and
saw eighteen.

“Come on,” Roy said. “Let’s see if there’s anything else
here.”

Steven continued on. The similarity of the houses and the
lack of any living people, any movement inside any of the houses, was
disconcerting. There were vehicles parked in front of some of them, and an
occasional barbeque or croquet set stored in the driveway, but no people
anywhere.

“This place is creepy,” Jason said. “It feels like something
out of a Stephen King novel. Every house exactly the same, and no one around. Kinda
fucked up.”

When Steven reached the end of the road, he was facing a steep
rise of rock cliffs and was forced to turn around.

“The whole complex is boxed in by the mountain,” Roy said. “Seems
that first road is the only way in or out.”

As Steven backtracked through the houses, he noticed a road
that lead further to the east, out of the housing complex, and around a corner
of the mountain.

“Wonder where that goes?” Steven asked.

“To the dam,” Roy said, “which is the only other place these
people need to go. To work.”

Steven drove up the eastern road, watching the houses retreat
in his rear-view mirror. After a sharp turn he found himself at a large parking
lot and an old brick building that almost looked as though it was built into
the side of the mountain. Rising behind it in the distance was Diablo Dam. They
were sitting at its base. Steven suddenly realized how much water was in front
of him just beyond the dam, and it made him a little nervous. He saw incline
tracks that ran from the base where the brick building was located up to the
top of the dam.

There was a chain link fence surrounding the parking lot, but
the gate was open.

“Why not start here?” Steven asked. “Someone must be in
there.”

“Might as well,” Roy agreed. “I’d prefer that to just driving
around, trancing as we go, surprising people.”

Steven parked the car in the lot and the three of them walked
up to the administration building. As they approached the doors, Roy said,
“I’ll handle this.”

Steven knew that meant he was about to give one of his
performances, and although he was familiar with what Roy was about to do, he
doubted Jason was. He turned to Jason and whispered, “Just go along with
whatever he says!”

They walked in. Roy noticed a woman sitting behind a counter.

“No, you’re wrong,” Roy said to Steven in a loud voice. “You
can’t! They’re not for sale, you don’t understand!”

“Can I help you?” the woman asked, rising from her chair
behind the counter and walking out to meet them. She was young and slim, and
had a name badge with her picture on it, pinned just above her left breast. Steven
found himself trying to read her name from the badge, and he worried that he
might be looking too hard at her chest.

“My son here seems to think you can buy these houses,” Roy
said, pretending to be exasperated. “I keep telling him you can’t. They’re company
owned, isn’t that true?”

“That’s true,” the woman said, smiling back at Roy and the
others. “They’re all owned by the utility, and they’re just for employees of
the dam.”

“See?” Roy said, turning on Steven as though he’d won some
kind of victory. “I told you that, but you wouldn’t listen!”

He turned back to the woman. “He never listens, never did as
a boy, either! Hi, I’m Roger.” He extended his hand.

The young woman took his hand. “Liz,” she replied, smiling
back at him.

“I suppose I could have proved it to him by asking Bernie,
he’s my brother, staying with the people in number seventeen, but they don’t
appear to be home. There’s a mess in front of the house, too. We came all this
way to visit them, and I’m surprised they’re not here. We’re worried about
them!”

Liz’s face began to pout. “Well, there was an incident there
or something,” she said, walking back around behind the counter. “Mr. Kinsley
came up here this morning and said they were moving out to a motel in
Burlington.”

“Really?” Roy asked. “What happened?”

“I don’t know,” Liz replied. “I’m just temping today, because
of the holiday weekend. I got here at seven, and he was at the door, waiting
for me to open up. He said he was moving out, that he’d already taken his wife
and kids to a motel in Burlington, and would send a van to remove their stuff from
the house before the end of the month.”