The Forsaken (34 page)

We get so excited when sadists come inside to keep us company. You cops tend to flirt with our side more than most anyone. Fallen saviors with a badge and gun. So pretty.

Then the final word repeated in a faded echo.
Pretty.

The walls reflected every word, the syllables dripping with accusation and beguilement. With a straining stare, he searched for faces carved into the surfaces. From which vile space did the haunting whispers originate?

Haunting?

Yes.

No. Not haunting. Beautiful whispers. True whispers. Everything you fear.

The corners were spies. The cracks and door jams heckled treachery. Pictures left abandoned of the holy family cried horror. An enchanting, unrelenting dreamscape of black and red. Trapped somewhere within the fog—the lips without fabric, jaws torn open. And more. Eyes that followed. More like lenses peering into other worlds, other lives these spirits had lived. But how were they still here if they were dead?

We. Never. Die.

“Everything dies,” Jude mumbled.

Only flesh is born to end.

At once, the spirits manifested more clearly in the dark. Their long and eventual fingers reached out toward his chest, and for a second, Jude swore he saw the creation and distortion of a soul. His own. Gray and shackled it was.

The presence of these now visible apparitions put spiders on his back. With legs that struck his bleached skin, they taunted and spun webs, new spirits working the ceilings and the chambers at the end of the hall.

The place became a frightful tunnel.

Come closer, sadist. Hearken to us, weak flesh.

“What are you?”

We are the unwelcome. Like you, dropped from grace. Fallen. We were rulers once. And we will consume again before the final hour. But you don’t believe in us, do you? Not really. You rely only on what your manflesh eyes can see.

Listen, sonny,
Azrael enticed from Jude’s gut.
Come awake.

You are condemned. Lonely. Hollow. We are full of reality. There are three levels. And every level wars. There is not enough time to find forgiveness, Jude Foster. Not nearly enough time.

“Why are you here?” Jude begged.

We are many places. Like him who breathed us into being. But we are not all places. Not everywhere.
The whispers echoed,
Everywhere.

“Why this church? Why a church at all? What are you doing
here?
”

You know already, sonny.

This is where the lost came to hide,
the hushed shapes answered, confirming what he’d been thinking all along.
This is where they all come to hide
. And then, much softer,
Sadist.

Jude rubbed his red eyes. “Why do you call me that?”

Your soul is colored with the intentions of your heart. These things have become your identity. Don’t screw with us, Jude Foster, and we won’t screw with you!

“What? Who?” Jude stammered, his vision blurring all of a sudden. “What is happening to me? What have you done to me!”

We have done nothing. Our humble brother, Azrael, is responsible for your…stunning transformation. He completed the good work in you. Your truer nature now runs freely in your fragile body…along with his own.

Eyes wide open now, sonny.
Azrael’s usual breathy words morphed into an almost hypnotic chant.

Jude walked across broken boards in the floor, the voices guiding his cautious steps. He listened to them, liked their way. The brutal, unflinching truth was that he had never longed to return to this wretched arena a second time, the battleground where he lost his friend—his partner—and close to his life. But something unquiet endured underneath the routines and the trips to and from that dark room in his mind where the past had made a home.

“I can feel you. What are you going to show me?”

He gasped, a new energy fueling him. He did not wish to leave this place. Not yet. Still it stung. Somehow the colorless splash of reality that was his memory, the night Morgan forsook him for good, was fading. What existed in its place was a series of images from the past. His infatuation with the dark. Azrael pulled the strings this time, he knew, but the ghosts were with him too.

Wait for it, sonny. Your past is clearer than you think
.
Your nature born again.

Images bubbled like stained water behind his shut eyes. Each lens exhumed things he’d buried. He saw the man the voices spoke of. He saw the creature living underneath a badge. The one who existed before his encounter with Azrael. Before Rachel.

Splashes of blood soaked into his fists. It was so real he could taste it. His knuckles pounded into a man’s face until the force pushed an eyeball loose.

Another mirage bloomed before him and blended. Several bodies were piled atop one another, becoming a gruesome display of his wrath. It came back now. The reason.

Drug operation gone to hell real quick. One of many. You got a bloodlust for the menaces. Bet you never thought you’d become one.

Then he turned numb to the cries of children as they screamed for their father, a careless hound Jude was forced to put down with bullets.

Cleansing the streets can get messy, can’t it? The crimes disappear with the reasons. All that remains is the deed. We are the world we make.

“Stop it!”

Ease up. You’re missing the best part.

The final photograph peeled back like a cigarette-spotted projection. At the center of the rusted world, Jude stood, not of his own will, but of the other’s. In the final frame, he watched Kevin inhale his first line. His veins stuttered surrender as the bleached powder invaded a weak body. Of all the images shown, this one disturbed Jude to the core. The lens then faded out, and his own reflection came into focus.

“No!” he screamed, as if he had never before experienced this nightmare.

But you’ve seen it. And better…You’ve done it.

He had played the villain in this terrible adaptation. Put it back, he wanted to shout. Put it back.

No. Breathe it in now, sonny.
Azrael’s taunt was definite and unflinching, his accusation a numbing, corrupted summary.
Slower. Taste it once more. This is real.

“I am not that man!”

“Yes, you are,” they badgered. “He is you. And the angels will cry murder. We…cry murder.”

“Dear God.”

“Yes, beg the Ancient of Days to save you. Howl for his
mercy
.”

“I am…” His words trailed off. But the regret could not pull him out of despair, the gray pit that enveloped him now. No way out. No escape. Perhaps this was home now. And the faces and whispers his new family.

Each voice oozed the same unfertile response. And with persistence, the voices cut deeper. He swore there were marks on every inch of his flesh, knew for certain these scars would follow him the rest of his life. His hands seemed to tremble. His breath wavered, as an infant from the womb struggles for oxygen. From his gut came a feverish shriek, unhinged, unclean. It raced off a ruined tongue.

Could it demolish the doors waiting at the end of the hallway? Could it rattle his ribcage or set him free? Could it unsettle the fabric of his soul?

At last, he fell on his face. Dropped from the trance. It was ended, but Jude couldn’t stop his muscles from convulsing. Sweat, fear, everything in between. He dabbed his eyes until they were clean, and ever so suddenly a revelation came.

“It makes sense now,” he said quickly, in a hurry to push out the words. The demon had given him new knowledge. For what purpose, he did not yet realize, but the knowledge was there. “I get it now. I get it.”

Jude Foster raced down the hallway maze and descended the stairs. His Chevelle was parked outside on the opposite end of the street, beneath a flickering light post. But the light was dead before his vehicle revved to life.

46

THE DARK MOVED ASIDE
when he slowly came down the steps. The sound of his feet exiled the rats to holes in the concrete walls, cold places where the living couldn’t follow. Morgan’s shadow stretched over the ground, driving its lethal black hands into the floor. He reached down, where Kevin lay lifeless.

Morgan scoffed at the body with slices up and down the wrist, the black blood, once red, oozed and crusted over. “We all play our part, don’t we?” After pulling a dirty shard from one of the veins, Morgan held it tightly in his hand. With gnashing teeth, he cut into his palm, feeling the hurt but waiting for the red to spill out. Deeper he forced it. Every cut healed.

With a fury, Morgan punched a hole in the wall beside a limp body. It was strangely startling that Kevin’s eyes didn’t flinch or that his muscles didn’t jerk from fear of injury. Morgan looked through the hole and saw the trailer park that lay across the brush separating his house from the outside world. Those living there had never even known of him, his twisted family history, nothing. When he’d purchased the house again, after countless years of it being on the market and not lived in, he’d thought about sucking every one of their trashy corpses dry. But they weren’t a part of the plan.

“Just human waste,” he muttered, scraping out the glass from his palm and clapping some of the dust off his wrist. What wouldn’t go away was the notion that he and Kevin really weren’t all that different. Not now. Scared, stupid boys they both were, lost. Helpless. Left behind.

With a grunt, Morgan reached down and grabbed Kevin’s body, sparing no time in tossing the corpse over his shoulder and carrying it outside and into the night. The remains had already begun to ferment.

47

JUDE WASN’T WHOLLY AWARE
that he looked deranged upon entering the department. Several awkward stares left no question, however. In response, he snarled back, knowing he could drain them dry if he wanted.

Rachel was the first to approach him. “The chief’s been trying to get a hold of you for the last couple hours.”

“Rachel, I understand it now,” Jude said quickly.

“All right. Calm down. Where have you been?”

“It doesn’t matter. All that matters is that it makes sense now. I get it.”

“Are you talking about the case?” Rachel asked as he followed her back to her desk, where the death notes with red-stained letters lay sprawled out. It was apparent she was trying to decipher the enigmatic collection.

She didn’t let him step too closely to her. “These notes are giving me a nosebleed. I wonder if they add up to anything at all.” She attempted to show him her progress, making it clear that what little push was made, she had done
without
his help. “I’ve tried deciphering it both ways. First I put all the bloodstained letters together; then I put the black letters together. I think I managed to get a few patterns to make some kind of sense, but everything seems irrelevant to the last week.”

It was an impressive feat that she could carry on without much of a hiccup. All business as usual, in spite of the memories her body no doubt harbored and perhaps even relived.

“Right,” was all he said. Jude rearranged the letters, but he knew that Rachel’s complications were due to the fact that the collection was still incomplete.

“Forget it,” she finally said, arms folded. “Jude, I can’t keep suppressing this.”

“We can deal with our personal issues when this is over. Until then, let’s give this our full focus.”

“I can’t. What’s with you? I mean, what is this?”

“What?” Jude scoffed.

“It’s like you’re a completely different person,” she said.

“No, I’m not. You got hurt. Take a breather if you need to. Your mind’s just a little mixed up.”

Rachel’s chest nearly caved. “A little
mixed up
?” she asked with door-slit eyes. “First of all, I
did
get over what happened at that motel. Easy to put that amateur episode out of my brain. So no, Jude, I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about you. There’s something going on with you. Stop denying it. You are not the same man I met last week.”

He had come here to try to make sense of the last several battles, not start a new war. Before he bent to an apology, though, his cell phone vibrated.

“Yeah, this is Foster. Speak quickly.”

“Evening, Detective.”

The hairs on the back of Jude’s neck spiked.

Jude cursed into the phone. “Morgan.” He froze, staring outside, through the violent rain. It had just started to pour. He fought to make out what looked like little more than a shadow standing atop the building across the street. But when he focused more, the figure vanished.

“You pronounce my name with such disgust. Can’t we be friendly for a little while before all of this ends? After all, I’ve come with a gift.”

“I don’t want anything from you!”

“’Course you do. We all want something, don’t we?”

A short response shot back. “What are you talking about?”

“Look closely,” Morgan whispered.

“Morgan, what have you done?” Jude sensed it again, that unsettling motion that wouldn’t be stopped. The phone shook with new screams. It was as if the electronic device had sprung to life. But maybe that was just his wrist jerking, wanting to squeeze the connection between them to bits, ending Morgan’s wretched life.