Ghostwriter (32 page)
And he knows that the killing is not over yet on this night.
Dennis breathed through his mouth.
The smell almost made him throw up. He didn’t know if this was another one of Cillian’s plans—luring him into this putrid
place. All Dennis knew was that something—or someone—had died in this house. And even though everything in him knew he should
get out of here, he needed to see if this house had anything to do with her disappearance. He needed to find Audrey.
He turned on a dull light. The hallway from the front door was littered with debris. Old magazines and newspapers.… He couldn’t
tell if the floor was carpeted or wooden. A crumpled shirt lay on the ground. Black stains (coffee, maybe, he hoped) speckled
the aged, orange wallpaper. He saw an old dress shoe, dusty and curled. A fire pick. A baseball bat. A set of gloves. More
paper. A plastic ball of—something.
Everything about the house seemed dark, the hall light casting a cold glow into the room. There wasn’t any noise—nothing seemed
alive in here.
You need to get out now.
But Dennis was afraid someone was in here. He thought of the messages he had left for Ryan.
What if he came in here? What would he find? What if…
He reached the end of the hallway and stopped at the dark doorway.
“Hello? Anybody there?”
Even with the hatchet in his hand, he didn’t feel secure.
Because there are other forces at work, and they’ve already been killed. You can’t kill them again.
“Anybody home?” he called out.
Dennis stepped into a gray, still room and felt for a light switch on the wall. Instead he bumped into something on the ground,
some type of furniture. He could see outlines of furniture in this room, faint light spilling from behind him.
His hand eventually found a lamp. He tried it, but it didn’t work.
“Hello?” he called, but his voice sounded weak and unsure.
He tried another lamp, and this one worked. The bulb poured flickering light into what appeared to be a living room.
A dusty brown couch faced him, a pillow coated with dark stains.
That’s blood, Dennis. Get out of here.
He looked around, making sure no one was going to sneak up on him. The hatchet remained firm in his hand.
There were muddy tracks on the carpet and even on the couch. Another chair contained a torn arm, fabric spewing out and scattered
all over the floor.
There were no pictures or decorations on the drab walls.
A television set sat on a small tray table. The TV had wobbly antennas. There was uneaten food still on paper plates, boxes
with strange writing on them, old milk cartons, a brown sweater wrapped around something circular.
The filth in here is unimaginable.
His eyes burned. His skin itched. He needed to get out of this cloud of grime.
Another hallway appeared to lead to the back. A door nearby promised more filth.
Dennis knew these people harbored more than simple stench and refuse.
Something evil had happened here. He could feel it. He could see it. And he could smell it.
And without thinking, he called out her name.
“Audrey!”
Saying it weakened him, made this seem more real, more finite.
“Audrey?” The strange echo of his voice made his skin crawl.
As he left the room, he noticed something he could barely make out on the floor in the corner.
That’s not—
He squinted his eyes and leaned forward, studying it.
Then he jerked backward and fell on his back, wiping his face and nose with his forearm and coughing.
No, not here. Don’t do it. Don’t throw up.
He stood and felt like he couldn’t move. He wanted to simply vanish, to take a long, hot shower.
Is that really what I think it is?
But Dennis didn’t want to find out. He didn’t want to see if that belonged to someone. Because if it did, that meant the person
was most surely dead.
He didn’t bother turning off the lights.
As he hastened down the hallway, his eyes glanced around him uncontrollably. As he moved to swing open the front door, the
hatchet still in hand, he glanced back to make sure someone wasn’t following him.
His only mistake was not looking ahead to see if somebody was in the doorway.
He saw blank eyes and a terrifying smile.
I’ve seen you before.
And then something moved and struck him into darkness.
Breathe.
It jerks and moves and shifts and shakes.
Breathe, Den.
He tries. He isn’t sure if his eyes are opened or closed. All he sees is blackness. He hears a rumbling.
Breathe.
He swallows and coughs and takes in air.
Then he breathes.
And nauseous pain comes back, and this time the darkness is from blacking out.
He knows someone is in the house.
So he waits outside.
And he watches.
And then he goes and stands by the door. He pulls it shut.
He is patient.
His hands and arms are covered in their blood, his fingernails torn, the skin on his knuckles shredded like beef, the veins
in his forearms sticking out.
It was messy with the two of them.
He won’t be as messy this time. This time it will be easier.
He waits, the wrench in his hands.
And when the door opens, he strikes methodically, carefully, hitting the side of the man’s head and then striking his shoulder.
His neighbor, the author, falls to the ground. The big guy thinks of the kid, the one fascinated by this man, the one who
talked about the writer, who dreamed about being one himself, who now comes to him only in whispers and screams.
The writer will be joining the kid very soon.
His eyes opened to darkness.
A murky shroud wrapped itself around him. Dennis couldn’t see anything more. His forehead beat like a mallet, and he tasted
blood in his mouth. His body shook.
A wave of nausea hit him. But then his eyes grew heavy again and closed.
This time he sucked in a breath first, warm and stale. He inhaled and tried to move. But his back ripped in pain, his hands
burning, his legs lifeless.
Dennis moved his head, something—a tarp?—pressing against it. He lay on something cold and hard and grooved. He trembled but
couldn’t move. His hands and feet were tied together. He tried to scream but couldn’t muster up enough strength to make much
of a sound.
The darkness surrounded him. His eyes grew stronger, but they couldn’t discern anything.
“Hello?” he screamed, but his voice grated against his dry throat.
It felt like the word echoed into nothing.
The pain in his back seared. Then came the jutting throb in his head.
He forced himself to breathe slowly, calmly. But he couldn’t think. He couldn’t figure this out.
Darkness fell over him again.
Something jerked him up. And awake.
It was his hands. He couldn’t feel his hands. They were still bound, still immobile.
Another jerk propelled Dennis forward. He couldn’t feel anything below his waist, but he struggled until he fell into dirt.
He felt rain against his already wet, sweaty hair.
Wake up, Dennis. Wake up.
A bolt of lightning illuminated everything around him. Then all he could see was darkness. Flat, straight, empty darkness.
Where am I?
A towering figure came out of the darkness, gripping the wire that bound his hands. He crawled forward, his face crashing
down into a puddle of mud.
A curse echoed around him.
The blackness swallowed him. For a moment that was all he knew. His hands and wrists burned as something yanked him up. He
couldn’t feel his legs but tried to shuffle on them anyway.
As Dennis was led somewhere—an empty path, a dirt road, an open, wet field?—he saw it.
At first his mind couldn’t comprehend what he was looking at.
But then he did, and it cleared his mind, tore his heart.
The white Mustang.
It was Mitch’s car. Audrey’s Mitch. The car was latched to the back of a large truck.
And that means…
But he couldn’t think that.
Just like in Sorrow… after killing them, after killing both of them and disposing of their bodies, he drove the car out here.…
Something pounded the back of his head, sending him to the ground. He lay there for a moment, able to think of only one thing.
Audrey.
She had gone off with Mitch. She had snuck out for the night.
But why?
There could be any number of reasons. Because she was in love. Because she wanted to blow off steam and talk about visiting
her mother’s grave earlier that day. Who knew?
But now…
He tried to say something, but he couldn’t. His voice and tongue wouldn’t cooperate.
A crack of thunder sounded. And again the world lit up, and he saw the hulking figure with white hair and a long glistening
coat standing over him. And he was sure he saw the white Mustang.
No no no no no.
He wanted to cry out, but he couldn’t. He wanted to run but couldn’t feel his legs. He wanted to reach out and protect himself,
but he couldn’t move his hands.
No.
His body shook as everything in him started to die.
The storm that smothered the night lit up the stall he’d been thrown into.
He was in a barn in the middle of nowhere. In the middle of flat nothing. And as the cold, pale light slipped in through the
cracks, he took in his surroundings.
His heart and soul felt nothing. Slowly ticking away to nothingness.
He lay in a barn stall filled with dead bodies.
Even as he recognized where he was, and what surrounded him, he refused to let his mind go there.
I will get out of here. This is only temporary. This is only made up. This is not real.
But it felt and looked and sounded and smelled and tasted real.
His body shook and shivered. He was cold. But more than that, he was without hope.
She can’t be dead. She can’t be gone. Not like this. Not like this.
He couldn’t think it. It couldn’t be.
She left with him and now the car’s there and it’s all led to this. This is exactly what Cillian wrote about, what he said
I could have prevented.
This was it. The end. The last book that would ever have his name on it, Empty Spaces, the book he stole from Cillian, the
novel that ended with the protagonist dying in a barn…
This was Cillian’s plan and always had been.
But his own life didn’t matter. Not anymore.
“It’s not my daughter. It can’t be,” he said to the darkness.
For the monster to hear. For the bodies around him to hear. For God or Lucy or Audrey or someone, anyone, to hear.
God, get me out of here. Help me, Lucy. Help me, God. Please. I can’t, and I won’t. I cannot do it alone, not without her.
He opened his eyes and saw the back of a head, dark short hair spilling out of the pile.
That’s not her, but maybe just maybe…
But he stopped. He had already thrown up and there was nothing left inside him. His hands were bloody and wounded, his legs
tied and useless.
I’m useless and have always been useless and I couldn’t save her, not even after a dozen warnings. I’ve never had control,
not ever.
He started to cry. Blood filled his mouth and dripped down his cheek as he wailed. Dennis Shore cried out, but his voice was
frail. He pressed his arms against his chest to try to keep warm, and he knew that this would be the last night of his life.
I have so much more to do and say and so much more to give. So why was it so hard to find the words? Why? I have so many left.
He tasted salty tears.
This was death and hell and horror.
This is what you wanted, Cillian, and you won. You got it. Are you happy now? Are you happy, you evil waste of a life?
He bit his lip, mouthing the words, his voice gone, his life almost gone.
“Help me. Please help me.”
And unseen in a small, square stall in a locked-up barn, surrounded by death and rot, Dennis curled into a ball and closed
his eyes and cried.
The last time he’d cried out like this was in an empty field west of his house, off a side road where he had stopped and parked
the car and ripped open the door and finally dealt with his pain.
There wasn’t any God above to yell at.
There wasn’t a heaven above to dream about.
And there was no Lucy around anymore to protect.
Dennis held the picture he had given her.
Some kinda nonsense about this is what heaven should be, what our heaven should be. Nothing but a lie, a terrible awful deluded
lie.
He was finally going to do something about it.
Us and Them.
That’s what he had called it.
That’s our heaven.
That’s what he said before she died, but now she was dead and the photo meant nothing.
He cursed out loud and gritted his teeth and took the picture of the old couple and ripped it in half.
This doesn’t exist and isn’t real, and love is gone. Love is gone. Love is forever and ever gone.
And he took out the matches he had brought and tried to light the picture.
The first one went out. He cursed the wind.
The second one went out. He cursed the skies and the grass and didn’t even realize he was barking at nobody and that tears
streamed down his face.
The third one went out. This time he threw the matches across the field and took the picture in his hands and crumpled it.
On his knees, he looked at what he had done.