The Portal ~ Large Print (5 page)

R
un,” Vivian shouted
at Phil. Clutching Cody, she bolted to the back of the warehouse and stopped. The stairs and catwalk dead-ended with only a second-story window for escape. Instead, she raced along the drill presses and welding machines that lined the back wall. There had to be another exit.

“You’re going to die,” Phil yelled.

She ducked against the skeleton of a stripped car and peeked out. Phil raised a crowbar and squared off with Jarod. God, he needed to run.

“Did you hear that, Vivian?” Jarod’s voice sounded amplified. Though he stood in darkness next to a suspended engine block, those teeth were unmistakable in the trashcan’s firelight. “Your boyfriend here’s upset with me.”

“Fuck you.” Phil charged him.

She ducked back. Metal clanged on the concrete, followed by a scream so intense that it seemed to chill the darkness around her. She covered Cody’s ears too late. He whimpered.

“It’s okay. Everything’s going to be okay.” She blinked back her tears. “Mommy loves you.”

Jarod would never let her out of here alive. Somehow, that bastard had to die tonight. The guns. They were still inside the cooler behind him. She had to lure him away.

Lifting Cody into the front seat of the car chassis, she whispered, “Don’t move. I’ll be right back.”

“No.” He clutched her shirt.

“I promise I’m coming back.”

“You can’t breathe.”

He was right. Her chest wheezed, and she’d left her inhalers back at the cabin. Saint Mary’s was two blocks away. They could still make it, but she had to hurry.

“It’s going to be fine.” She gave her best smile and kissed his forehead. “Now don’t move, no matter what you hear.”

“Butterfly,” Jarod called out. “I know you’re there.”

“Don’t go.” Cody shook his head. “Don’t go.”

“Shhh.” She pulled a tarp on the front seat over him. “I love you.”

“Butterfly.” Jarod dragged out the word.

On the ground, she found a lug nut and tossed it through an upstairs window. In two agile moves, he leapt impossibly far into the shadows. Seconds later, it sounded as though he was tearing the upstairs office apart.

She raced for the cooler. Gurgled breaths. Jesus, Phil lay on the floor. His torso had been sheered vertically from the side of his neck to his stomach. Wide-eyed, he smeared a puddle of blood as he reached for her. She covered her mouth and looked away.

Then she crept over to the chest, peeled back the lid, and grabbed one of the guns.

“I wouldn’t,” Jarod said. She spun to find him towering over her. His sunken eyes looked starved, his cheeks torn like bloody rags. “I’ll have your spine before you clear the first chamber.”

“Please don’t do this.” She didn’t know why she was trying to reason with him, except that somewhere inside this thing had to be Cody’s father.

“Pleading,” he said. “I like that.”

“He’s our son. Doesn’t that mean anything to you?”

“You were the one who left me. Remember?”

“You broke Cody’s ribs. You punctured his lung.”

“Yes I did.” With one bone claw, he gouged the fender of the car next to him. His other amputated arm trembled in spasms as he sliced the metal. “You want to know how that feels?”

“Daddy, stop it,” Cody yelled across the warehouse.

Jarod’s neck snapped to the side, right to the car where Cody was hidden. It was now or never. That son of a bitch would never take her baby. She grabbed the gun, swung the barrel up, and pulled the trigger. Bullets punched his chest, again and again, dancing him backwards until the gun chamber clicked empty. He collapsed to the ground.

Was he dead? Nothing could live through that. Yeah, nothing human. Where was that other gun? She grabbed it from the ice chest, stood over Jarod, and fired repeatedly into his head.

Chunks of skin, bone, and gore tore away, until the final round left his face unrecognizable. Leaning against the truck’s grill, she tried not to look at the bloody mess. Cody cried hysterically across the room. She dropped the gun, ran back to the car, and pulled away the tarp.

“It’s all over.” She hugged him and kissed his tears. “He can’t hurt us anymore.”

Her muscles ached as she picked Cody up. Careful to hold his face away from the bodies, she staggered to the sliding front door and screeched it open.

Outside, streaks of sunlight pierced the storm clouds. What did this all mean? Nothing. Jarod was dead, but his crazy family was still out there. If life had taught her anything, it was that people who got their hopes up were asking to get kicked. She needed to stay focused.

“Close it.” Cody pointed at the front door. “Don’t leave me with him.”

“It’s okay now,” she said. Her chest grew tighter. Her asthma was kicking in hard now, but there was still time to make it to the hospital. Sparks popped in her vision. “We’re going to the doctor. Everything is going to be okay.”

“No it’s not.”

Dizzy and exhausted, she slammed the door shut, found a pole, and rammed it through the handles to lock it.

“See,” she said. “He can’t get us anymore.”

The door rattled. She jumped back. It couldn’t be. She’d almost blown his head off. Four claws slammed through the door and sheared it. She turned to run, but her legs collapsed. She managed to set Cody down before she face-planted into a huge puddle. Wiping her eyes, she coughed a mouthful of gritty water. Cody stood alongside her, pulling her shirt as she crawled.

“Leave,” she tried to shout at him, but the words choked in her throat. Jarod punched his way through the door.

“Run.” She gasped. “Please, baby. Just run.”

“Mommy.”

“I’m right—” She paused for breath. “—behind you.”

Jarod walked toward them. Chunks of his scalp were still missing, but worms of flesh on his skull appeared to fuse and heal before her eyes. She urged Cody to run, but he just stood crying.

Sunlight reflected over the top of the warehouse, blinding her. Her breaths grew shallow. Then Jarod stood above her.

“I want you to see this before you choke to death.” He snatched the back of Cody’s pajamas with that claw. Her vision constricted as she reached for her baby.

“Don’t hurt him,” she shouted.

“Mommy.” Cody reached back with both arms.

Tears filled her eyes as she listened to him scream. Jarod dragged him away by his shirt. Desperately, she tried to chase them, but her body wouldn’t move. And then she could see only a blurred sky. Darkness.

J
arod woke with
a throbbing headache. Looking down in the dark, he found his body covered in…what was that? Mud? A rotting smell stuck to the back of his throat. Somewhere across the room, a fly buzzed against a windowpane. He felt around, found a light on the bed stand, and clicked it on. A smeared handprint across the lamp’s shade doused the room with reddish glow.

“Shit.” He jumped onto the cold concrete floor and nearly slipped. Pools of blood stained the white sheets. He looked down. This couldn’t be happening. His forearm had been severed. Rough scar tissue capped the injury. Someone must have kidnapped him. The bastards had cut off his arm. For what? Proof of life. They took his arm! He needed a phone. Rankin would handle this. Whoever did it was fucking dead.

“It’s been awhile.” A raspy voice made him jump. “Twenty-seven years. Come to think, it’ll be twenty-eight next week.”

Next to a guitar and amp on the far side of the room, a black man creaked back and forth in a rocking chair. His uneven gray Afro spilled into an equally scraggly beard. His eyes were simultaneously kind and disturbing, as if he were some old blues singer sitting in front of a bloodbath, waiting patiently for his next gig in hell.

“No matter how much money you get from my people, it won’t save you. Your children won’t recognize you when I’m finished.”

“I hope you’re not blaming me for last night.” The man pointed a knobby finger at him. His varicose hands looked ancient. Jarod didn’t see any weapons.

“If you didn’t do it, who did?”

“That’s not important right now—”

“Answer me,” he said loudly. “Who took my arm?”

The man stopped rocking. The room grew cold.

“I’ve watched out for your family for a long time now,” he said. “But I
can
leave.”

“Conrad,” a woman’s muffled voice called out. “What’s going on down there?”

Jarod spun to find a wooden staircase leading up. Across the room, the only window had no bars. This was no cell. It looked like a basement that had been converted to a bedroom. That didn’t make sense. If he wasn’t being held hostage, what was happening? The blood. His arm.

“Talk quiet,” the old man whispered. “This is Janet Winston’s house. You broke in here last night when you ran out of the juice. Trust me, you don’t want that woman coming down and finding out what you did to her son in the bathroom over there.”

Just then, Jarod noticed the blood trail that led into the darkness beside the old man.

“Conrad,” she repeated. Above, a door opened. Jarod stepped back from the light that spilled down the staircase. “We didn’t let you move back in so that you could sleep all day.” She paused. “I swear.”

The door slammed. Footsteps thumped away.

“Who the hell are you?” Jarod turned back.

“Just an old friend. Here to help you through a difficult situation.”

“Your name now or I promise—”

“I am Mister Vincent.”

Jarod felt dizzy. That name. Where had he heard it before?

“What happened to me?” he asked. “My arm?”

“You tangled with the wrong alley cat last night.” Mister Vincent chuckled. “That Vivian is quite a lady.”

Vivian. His stomach burned with anger. That’s right. He’d found her hiding in Mercer. But then what? His memory blurred. It didn’t matter. He should’ve known that bitch was somehow responsible for this. If she was on the move again, there’d be a trail for Rankin to follow. A cell phone sat on the end table. He walked over and picked it up. Before this day ended, he’d personally beat the life from her.

“Put it down,” Mister Vincent said. “You’re not going to touch her. Besides, the police aren’t going to think too highly of this situation when they show up.”

“They’ll do what they’re told, or they’ll end up with her.”

“Use your head. Cody’s not going to react well if you kill his mother. Your boy already sees too much. It’s dangerous. And foolish.”

He started to dial Rankin’s number with his left hand, and was reminded of his arm again. She’d turned him into some kind of freak. For that, he’d make her beg for death.

“You’re insane if you think she’s going to get away with this,” Jarod said.

“You’re calling me crazy?”

“Nuts.”

“If I’m so crazy, then why are you the one who’s chatting with himself?”

Jarod looked up to find the basement empty. He spun around, but he was alone with his thundering heart.

Above, the door opened again.

“Conrad.” A heavy-set woman clomped down the stairs, fiddling with a set of keys. “I told you the dishes in the washer were clean.”

She reached the bottom, glanced up, and froze.

“Take anything you want.” She stepped back, and then looked at the bed’s bloody sheets. “Oh God.”

She darted upstairs. He leapt forward and grabbed her ankle. She slammed into the staircase, and her body fell to the floor below.

“Please,” she said as he spun her over. “Don’t.”

What could he do? His fingerprints would be everywhere. And she could ID him. A thought crept into his head. She could’ve slipped while trying to escape a house fire. The fumes could have overcome her.

“Whatever it is that you’re thinking,” Mister Vincent said. “I can promise you that it’s not smart.”

From the corner of his eye, he saw the old man standing a few feet away now. His posture seemed tense, like a stalking predator.

“Get out of my head.”

“Pull yourself together,” Mister Vincent said. “Change your clothes. Tie her up in the yard and burn the house. You’ll be fine.”

“She’s seen my face.”

“I won’t tell anyone,” the woman mumbled through a swollen lip.

“She can’t touch you,” Mister Vincent said.

“No,” Jarod told him. “I won’t take the chance.”

“Don’t let your son see you behaving this way. Too much is at stake.”

“He’ll never know.”

“He’s here right now. Don’t you remember?”

Just then, a sound came from across the room. He kept an eye on the woman as he walked over and opened the closet door. Cody hid in the back corner, under the hanging clothes. Finally. His luck had changed. The bitch had taken his arm, but he’d taken more from her. He didn’t need to look for her. Vivian would come to him now.

“Mister Vincent.” Cody stared over Jarod’s shoulder.

“What did you say?” Jarod looked back to see the old man behind him. “You can see him?”

Did that mean Mister Vincent was real? Even a family of lunatics couldn’t share the exact same delusion.

“Keep it together,” Mister Vincent said. “For your boy’s sake.”

What could he do? Vivian had taken his arm. There was no way in hell he would let her live. Still, he couldn’t shake the fear in his gut. For now, he needed to play along. At least until he figured out what was going on.

“What do I need to do?” he asked.