The Waiting: A Supernatural Thriller (2 page)

He was un
employed. He’d broken Colt’s nose, threatened Christy with blackmail. What the hell was he doing? And more importantly, what the hell was he going to do? The stall spun, and he closed his eyes, spitting acid into the water.

When he
managed to make it to the sink—the bathroom still blessedly empty—his reflection met him, but he avoided it entirely. He didn’t care to see what waited there for him. Instead, he bent and splashed cold water over his face until his skin stung.

He left the bathroom and
walked to a set of doors at the far end of the corridor, opting to take the stairs rather than risk bumping into someone in the elevator who might ask a question he didn’t want to answer. After six flights of steps, he swung a door open, stepped out on the ground floor, and made his way to his office at the rear of the building.

Office. It wasn’t more
than a glorified broom closet, just wide enough for a small desk, no window, and two file cabinets. He’d attempted to make it nicer several years before everything fell apart, by hanging photos of Elle and Shaun on the walls. He removed them, pausing to take in his wife’s and son’s features.

They both
had a fair complexion and light, wispy hair. Elle’s smile radiated from the picture and struck a bell in the center of Evan, as it had when she was alive. Shaun’s arms were wrapped around his mother’s neck, his face partially buried in her hair. The white scar on the side of his small head was all but invisible in the picture unless you knew what you were looking for, and Evan couldn’t help seeing it each time he gazed at the photo.

He
swallowed and turned in a slow circle to survey his office, searching for anything else to take, but other than a warm can of Coke inside his desk drawer, his favorite pen, and his jacket, there was nothing.

He
stood in the doorway to the office in which he’d toiled for eight years writing promotions, ads, and marketing strategies. He remembered all the time spent in the little room, away from his family. And what did it mean now? All his effort culminated at this point—alone, with nothing but his pictures beneath his arm to show for it. He snapped the light off and shut the door behind him, listening to the hollow
thunk
as it closed. The end of his career.

Before he could take a step, h
is cell phone sprang to life in his pocket, trilling and vibrating against his thigh. When he saw the name and number on the display, he almost hit the ignore button, but the thought of having to call his best friend later and tell him what had happened wasn’t appealing either. He answered the phone as he walked toward the lobby, slinging his jacket around his shoulders as he went.

“Hey
, man.”

“Wow, you sound like complete shit. Do me a favor next time I call and don’t an
swer if you’re having a bad day,” Jason said.

Evan sighed. “I almost didn’t.”

“Well fuck you too.”

Evan heard the tap of a keyb
oard in the background. “Yeah.”

A long pause from Jason’s end. “Ev, wha
t’s wrong?”

Evan nodded to a security guard near the front desk in the lobby, marveling that it was the last time he would do so, and pushed into the crisp spring air of the city.

“I don’t want to get into it on the phone.”

“Shit. Okay. Meet me at
Aran’s after work.”

A light mist fell as he strode across the parking lot, the mid-afternoon sounds of traffic and smells of wet concrete invading his senses.

“I’m leaving work now.”

An
other pause. “I’ll be there in ten minutes.”

“Jason, no, I’m going home
—”

“
Aran’s, ten.”

The call ended
, and Evan stared at the screen as he stood beside his minivan. “Shit,” he said to the deserted parking lot, and climbed inside the vehicle.

2

“You’re kidding me.”

The bar was quiet for this time of day, the regulars that adorned the barstools like drunken hood ornaments each night still at their day jobs, or wherever they spent their time when they weren’t here. No clack of pool balls rang out
, and no calls for another beer echoed off the stained oak walls. Even the sun seemed less inclined to shine through the wide glass windows near the door, opting instead to hide behind a cluster of tumorous-looking clouds above the buildings across the street.

Evan took a sip of his beer,
quenching the dryness in his throat, which hadn’t left since his meeting with Christy and Colt. He shook his head and met Jason’s stare from across the table.

“No, I’m afraid I’m not.”

Jason’s mouth, almost always curled in a half smile, hung partially open. His wavy blond hair, still wet from the mist outside, fell limp on his forehead.

“I can’t believe you did that.”

Evan nodded. “I know.”

“You never stole as much as a dime in your lif
e, you always left that to me.”

“And you ended up as an investmen
t banker, how’s that for fate.”

Jason looked poised to offer a contradiction and then merely shrugged. “I wish y
ou would’ve come to me, buddy.”

Evan shook his head. “This was when everyone was hurting, remember? You didn’t have fifty grand to loan me
, and I wasn’t going to ask.”

“So you took it from yo
ur company?”

“Yes,” Evan said
, with more force than he meant to. The bartender looked over a set of bifocals at their table before returning his gaze to a report on CNN. “Yes,” Evan repeated, in a lower voice. “There was sixty-three thousand dollars in their wonderful little account for the annual party every year. I took out fifty and paid it back from Elle’s—” He glanced across the bar. “Elle’s life insurance.”

“Christ,” Jason
said.

Evan brought his gaze back to his friend. Jason stared off into space, his fingers stroking the
blond stubble of his goatee. How many times had he watched him do that? Evan wondered. Ever since he was old enough to grow it, he supposed. He recalled the first time they’d met in third grade, their desks pushed together by the firm hands of Mrs. Carmichael.
Evan Tormer, meet Jason Price. You two are going to be friends,
she’d said. And they had been. Two kids couldn’t have been more different: Jason tall and lanky, with
GQ
-model good looks; Evan shorter and dark. Years later he’d read
Something Wicked This Way Comes
and thought,
That’s us, except I look like Jim Nightshade and Jason is more like Will Halloway
.
Jason always took the risks, his calculations paying off every time, while Evan stood by his side no matter what, along for the ride, for better or worse.

“I still would’ve helped you guys, you know that. I would’ve found a way.”

Jason’s words brought Evan back to the present, and he blinked. “You mean you would’ve ripped off Kimball and Owens to help pay our bills? No, I’m good with how things went down, the Zine didn’t lose anything when I took that money. No one knew it was gone until a week ago, and if I had any inkling that a few more thousand would’ve made a difference for Elle, I would’ve taken that too.”

Evan took
a long pull from his beer, the last dregs washing against his upper lip. He set the mug down and looked at Jason, his friend’s face full of concern.

“Will you be okay?”

“Yeah,” Evan answered, too fast, he realized a moment too late. “Yes, we’ll be fine.”

“W
hat’s your plan?”

“I’m going to finish one more beer, go down to
the corner of Broadway and Central, and take my pants off. Everything will work itself out.”

Jason burst out laughing and shook his head. Evan offered a small smile and spun his empty mug in a circle.

“Seriously, though, what’s your plan?” Jason asked.

“I don’t fucking have one,” Evan said. Tears sprung to his eyes without warning
, and suddenly the bar became a blurry mess. “I’m two months behind on our mortgage, Shaun needs more oxygen therapy that I don’t have the money for because I have to pay for his personal-care attendant every day I’m at work.”

“What about,” Jason
said, in a soft voice, “what about the rest of Elle’s—”

“Her life insurance?”
His words cracked with emotion. “Her policy was for a hundred grand. I mean, who would’ve thought we should’ve had it for more? Elle was thirty when she got diagnosed. Fifty of the hundred went back to the Zine. The other fifty went to the hospital, and guess what. I still owe them over forty thousand dollars.” He gritted his teeth. “For my dead wife.”

Evan placed a hand against his forehead and braced himself. More anguish
, like a rotten soup, wanted to spill out from inside him. Years of turmoil and pain, festering, a sore that wouldn’t heal like everyone else claimed it would with time. It only got worse with each passing day, with the addition of bills, the weight of Shaun’s treatments,
her
absence.

Jason placed his
hand on Evan’s arm. “Ev, it’s going to be okay.”

Evan jerked away from Jason’s touch and pointed a finger into his face. “No
, it’s not. No, it’s not. It’ll be all right for you, and for the fuckers that fired me today, it’ll be okay for them, but not for me, not for us. Not ever again.”

He wiped away tears and watched Jason’s face fol
d.

A young waitress
strode toward them, and Evan turned his head away. Jason ordered two more beers, and Evan thought about getting up to walk out. He wanted to but didn’t feel he had the strength. His muscles were atrophied with such crushing depression, he felt he might never move again. A few moments later, he heard the waitress set their beers down and turned to stare at his.

“I have an idea,” Jason said
, breaking the uncomfortable silence.

“I’m not taking a loan from you. I won’t do that to you and Lisa.”

“That wasn’t what I was thinking. How long does Shaun have left in the school year? Can’t be more than a month now, right?”

Evan’s brow furrowed. “He’s done on May
twenty-fifth—why?”

“Now hear me out,” Jason said
, holding his hands before him as though talking to a hostage taker. “I don’t know if you remember, but my grandfather has this cabin up north—actually, I shouldn’t say that since it’s technically mine, but anyways. It’s this really nice cabin on an island in the middle of Long Lake near Mill River. You know where I mean?”

Evan squi
nted. “Maybe. You visited them sometimes when we were younger, right? It’s west from Kelliston, isn’t it?”

Jason nodded. “Yep,
we went there every so often when Dad was still alive. The island is smack-dab in the middle of the lake, and it’s not really big, but definitely a few acres or more. The house is in good shape, Gramps always kept it up, he was fanatic about it since he was a carpenter most of his life. After he and Grandma passed away, it was willed to me since Dad was already gone and Mom was in Florida. Lisa and I took Lily up there quite a few times, but we slowly quit going. It’s a long drive, and Lily wasn’t actually too keen on staying in such an isolated place, no Wi-Fi or anything.” Jason took a sip of his beer.

“It sounds really nice, but I’m not following you,” Evan said.

“Here’s the thing.” Jason held up his hand. “Since we haven’t gone there in years, I’ve had to hire a caretaker to stay there—you know, do maintenance around the place, make sure no one’s breaking in or shit like that. My most recent guy just quit, and I was thinking—”

“No, I’m not doing that,” Evan said
, shaking his head. “Thanks, but no. How would I get Shaun his treatments? He has physical and occupational therapy twice a week.”

“There’s a great clinic in Mill
, we had to take Lily there once when she stepped on a fishhook on the dock. The place comes with a fishing boat and a little cruising pontoon. You could bring him back and forth across the lake, no problem, he’d love it.”

Evan began another protest
, but Jason continued: “Plus, he won’t be in school that much longer. You could take him out a couple of weeks early to get settled up there.”

“No, Jason, no, okay? I can’t run away from my problems here, it won’t fix anything.”

“Listen, I pay the caretakers that I hire well. They get to live there in the middle of paradise with a nice wage. I would pay you the same just to house-sit, and it would be more than enough to catch you up on your mortgage, I guarantee it. You could spend the summer there and write the articles you’ve wanted to finish for years. Justin over at
Dachlund
said the other day he’d love to print something of yours again. Now you have the time since you won’t be writing ads for that fucking e-rag anymore.”