Vision (27 page)

Anger and adrenaline coursed through his veins, burning away the weakness in his limbs. Crawling, he combed the ground, hands scrabbling for something, anything he could use. He broke a dry stick in half and, scraping the sharp point across a rock to sharpen it, fashioned a shiv. As a weapon, it would have to do.

Standing, Bobby turned slowly in a circle until he picked up the trail, stretched out before him, bright and sharp, as if Galloway had scattered breadcrumbs to mark his way.

He shivered. The killer understood Bobby well enough to know that he would never, as long as he breathed and walked, leave Gabe to die. It was all part of his game.

Bobby found another stick, a long one. Despite the pain constricting his chest, he thrashed it in front of him and loped into the woods, hurtling over sticks, rocks and fallen branches. He kept running, awkwardly, on and on, resisting the pain, until he found himself gripping the cold, wrought-iron gates to the abandoned estate.

He pulled, and the rusty gates creaked open. Slipping inside, he knew it was all too easy. All orchestrated. But the question that nagged at him, that ate away at his insides, was whether Carl Galloway had kept his word.

If Gabe was still alive.

He told himself that he would know. That the vibrations of her death would have ripped through him like an electrical charge. The fact that he’d felt nothing was what urged him on.

As he crept through the overgrown yard, the trail formed a bright path in his mind. The exhaustion and pain he’d tried to ignore gripped his chest in a searing arc. He slithered on his side, wormlike, until he located the grate he’d escaped through the last time.

He listened carefully for signs of life, but from within the dank interior there was only silence. Sickened from the loss of blood, Bobby lay in the high grass, teeth chattering, his forehead slick with sweat. Fighting to keep alert, he realized the truth—Galloway had tricked him. There was nobody down there.

Or I’m too late
.

He had to fight past the pain and the sluggishness that gummed his muscles. Removing the loose grate, he lowered himself slowly to the cellar floor and hit the ground with a grunt.

The cellar echoed with his ragged breaths. Unless Gabe was there, under his feet, already dead, Bobby was positive the putrid hovel was empty.

If Gabe
were
lying dead somewhere beneath his feet, he told himself, he’d know it. He’d
feel
it.

Wouldn’t I?

He hoped.

He was growing weaker by the minute, his shirt soaked through. There wasn’t much time. He had to find her.

Sensations assaulted him. Images barraged him in a riot of brilliant shards, like floating bits of shattered glass.

Following the visions, Bobby stepped carefully through the dark void until he came to the staircase, visible to him in translucent fragments, like a mosaic missing half of its pieces. Then, as clearly as if it were engraved into the blackness in a diamond sharp line, he picked up the trail of her terror. The vibration of the killer’s filthy enjoyment of it.

Gabe is in this huge house. Somewhere
.

Panting with the effort, Bobby propelled himself up the stairs, fury driving him beyond the pain.

At the top, the dark shivered with shreds of detail, the estate’s luxurious past overlying the dimness like layers of peeling wallpaper. Glimpses of the mansion’s tortured history created a phantom map.

Bobby wandered through the vast house, finding his way by touch and the shimmering flickers of the past.

Then he heard it. Faint piano scales reverberating through the musty rooms.

Treading across a smooth-floored foyer, he reached a grand staircase, its former glory visible in his splintered vision. He climbed the stairs, the old wood creaking beneath the decayed carpeting. At the top, Bobby picked up the laser-bright trail of Gabe’s anguish. It led him down a long hallway, until he found himself standing outside a pair of embossed double doors, once gilded with gold leaf, now dry and cracked to the touch.

Galloway’s gruff voice raked through the delicacy of Gabe’s piano. “Keep playing, bitch! You might want to start praying that Romeo doesn’t get here too soon. The longer he takes, the longer you live.”

“Promise you won’t hurt the boy, Carl.”

Stepping back, Bobby sucked in a sharp breath. It was Mr. Cooper. Galloway had him here, too.

“Shut it, Kenny. Just shut up for once! You never let me think!”

The two of them argued as Gabe continued to play valiantly. His own pain forgotten, Bobby’s heart broke for her terror. He felt it climbing into his nostrils, pressing against his skin, pale and sour, heavy with sorrow. She was so tired. Giving up hope. Preparing to die.

“I’m trying to make you think. To make you understand that you’re sick. That you need help. This has to stop! The boy has done nothing to you.”

“He’s your little pet, isn’t he? That’s reason enough to tear him to pieces.”

“Don’t hurt them, Carl. Let the kids go. Please,” Mr. Cooper pleaded.

“Shut up!” Galloway yelped like an injured dog. “Go! Get out of here.”

“You know I can’t, Carl, unless you let me.”

“I can’t do that, idiot. You know I can’t do that.”

Inside the room, one set of footsteps paced to and fro. Galloway must have had Mr. Cooper tied up in there, too, Bobby realized. Under the constant pacing, he thought he heard Gabe’s piano playing falter.

“Say another word and…” snarled Galloway.

“And what?” Mr. Cooper’s tone bit. Bobby had to respect his coolness under pressure. “You’ll what? You’ll kill
me
?” Mr. Cooper laughed. Not in his usual easy manner, but with a hint of lunacy. “You know that’s not possible, Carl. You know the
rules
.”

“Fuck you and your damn rules!” Carl roared. Heavy footsteps headed for the door. Bobby had to hide. Quickly. Piecing together his surroundings from the tattered ghosts of the past, Bobby searched along the wall, found the handle to a broom closet, and slipped inside.

When he was certain Galloway was gone, he left the closet and slowly pushed open the double doors to the room where Gabe was being held.

The large space echoed with her halting piano playing. Her distress mingled with the room’s past, stitched to the void of his blindness in a grisly overlay. The visions smashed against him in waves of vivid clarity, anguish and pain splattering every surface. Bobby reeled from the weight of the evil that had transpired in this room.

And Gabe kept playing.

In haunted smears of light he saw her, achingly beautiful at the piano, her image alternating between flashes of the long-dead Olivia, back erect in an elegant silk gown, at the same piano.
Flash
. And the chair.
Flash
. A boy tied to the brocade chair, blindfolded. Crying.
Flash
. The chair empty.

Waiting for him
.

And Bobby understood. This room of horror had produced a tormented boy who’d grown up to become a monster.

“Mr. Cooper?” Bobby whispered. He’d heard only one set of footsteps leave. Kenny Cooper had to be in here. “Mr. Cooper? It’s Bobby.”

No answer. Just Gabe’s piano. He was afraid to stop her. Afraid Galloway would come back at any moment. But where was Mr. Cooper? He’d heard him in here, loud and clear. Of that he was certain.

Had Galloway killed him already? Maybe Mr. Cooper lay dying in a pool of his own blood.
But I’d know that, wouldn’t I?

Bobby’s head swam with strange sights and visions that were not his own, as if he’d been swept up into a tornado of fractured light.
Flash
. The room sprawled before him in slivers of detail.
Heavy drapes, a fire burning in a grand marble hearth. The gleaming baby grand piano at the center of the room, where Olivia sat straight-backed, white-necked, playing sonata after sonata. The boy sat sobbing in the chair by the window until the woman came in, lashed him with a belt and sealed his mouth shut with electrical tape. He could hear his weak cousin, Kenny, crying silently, watching, as he took the blows for both of them
.

Bobby felt his way across the room to where Gabe sat at the piano in Olivia’s place. He whispered in her ear. “It’s me, Gabe. Don’t stop. I’m going get you out of here.”

His fingers grazing slippery silk, he felt her sharp intake of air. He pulled back as if burned. Like his other victims, Galloway had forced Gabe into an elegant gown.

His own pain thrumming like a hot brand on his chest, Bobby wanted to fold her in his arms and hold her against him, but there wasn’t enough time. He was fading, his hands going numb, his head buzzing with unnatural colors and the stream of impressions from the room’s horrifying past. The abuse against Galloway as a boy. Kenny Cooper’s complacence, Galloway’s bloody spree. No wonder there was such venom between them.

Bobby felt for Gabe’s wrists. Galloway had bound them with some kind of plastic cording and left just enough give for her hands to stroke the piano keys. It wouldn’t be easy to cut through with a stick for a knife. He’d have to find something else.

Scanning the broken bits of the past that orbited around him, Bobby forged a fragmented portrait of the present-day room. Across from them was a mantle, a roaring fire long since gone cold. A collection of pictures on the marble shelf, fireplace tools.

Bobby walked toward the ragged bits of visions and found what he was looking for. On the shelf above the fireplace, he found a framed photo. Smashing the glass with his boot, he felt for the old fireplace tools and took the pointed spear that still hung exactly where he’d seen it.

“It’s okay, Gabe,” he soothed. “I’m going to cut the ropes, now. We’re going to get out of here, I promise.”

Sweat stung his eyes. He struggled to suck in air that had gone syrupy and warm, sticking in his lungs like hot honey. Slowly, he worked the glass through the tough fibers, every second a fight to keep aware, to listen for Galloway’s return or for some sign of stirring from Mr. Cooper.

“Gabe, when I free your hands, you’re going to have to keep the tape on your eyes and mouth. You’re going to have to make it look like you’re still bound. Can you do that? I’m so sorry.”

Through it all, she continued to play as he explained his plan.

Once he’d finally worked the cord loose, he crawled behind the heavy drapes that hung in tatters, sank heavily to the floor and tried to fight off the oblivion that threatened to devour him.

It seemed like hours until the scrape of boots startled Bobby alert. He must have dozed off, curled in a tight ball behind the drapes, his lips cracked and swollen, his body stiff with agony. The pain in his chest had migrated, every nerve now on fire.

Gabe still played, haltingly, sloppily. Fury over her plight jolted him with renewed energy.

“Keep playing!” roared Galloway.

The keys surged with vibrant notes. Bobby gritted his teeth against his rage.

“Where, oh, where, is your little blind knight?” Galloway taunted in his sing-song voice. “Maybe he had better things to do than come hurtling to your rescue? Or maybe he just died out there. I carved him up pretty good.”

There was a muted wail as Galloway slammed Gabe with a vicious kick. Seething, Bobby wondered if he could gather enough strength to attack from behind with his iron fork. He was weak, lightheaded, holding on by a thread. Plus, he’d already tried that when he’d had the strength, and failed even then.

This time, Bobby had no doubt Galloway wouldn’t hesitate to skewer him like a shish kebab, and laugh as he died, twitching on the floor.

He couldn’t risk it.

“That is not necessary, Carl.”

Bobby reeled with shock. Mr. Cooper, appearing again like a phantom. What was going on? He wished desperately that he could see to make sense of things.

He wondered if Gabe would follow through with their plan now. If she would trust Mr. Cooper enough to help her after she stabbed Carl Galloway in the neck.

All he could do was wait and listen.

Galloway responded with surprising patience. “You’re wrong, Kenny. It’s all necessary. Everything I do, I do to serve you.”

“I know,” Mr. Cooper said, his voice breaking. “But you’ve gone too far. I want you to stop. I’m begging you to stop. If I find the boy and bring him here, after you take care of her, will you let him go? He can’t see, but he’ll hear her screams. He’ll feel her pain. It will tear him apart. Won’t that be enough for you?”

“Why this attachment, Kenny? He’s just trailer trash. And a promise is a promise. I told him I’d kill him first. Quickly. And save the fun for myself.”

“Please,” Mr. Cooper wailed pitifully, “don’t kill him. Don’t you understand how I need the music? He makes such beautiful music. It helps me, Carl. And if I can keep it together, we can keep up our little arrangement.”

Their arrangement? Bobby’s heart pounded. What was Mr. Cooper talking about? All this time, had he been covering for his depraved cousin—or was he just trying to calm him down to save his own neck? It was hard to tell.

But now Bobby understood what he had to do. Slowly, he dragged himself forward, each step an effort.

“It’s me, Mr. Cooper.”