Sacrifice (22 page)

“Alex,” he whispered. “Something has me. I can’t see it but it won’t let go.”

“I see it,” she said. “It’s coming from a crack in the wall. That must be the doorway that she opened here when she killed Jack.”

He stepped forward involuntarily again, and now they were halfway across the room, standing in front of the bed.

She killed me right here,
Jack announced. He stood at Alex’s side, and shook his head sadly at the monster in front of them.
It’s hideous. And there are millions of them.

You wanna help me here?
Alex said to the ghost. She had dug her feet in and was playing a game of tug-of-war with Joe. The demon’s body grew thicker and more forceful with every step they got closer to where its smoky feet were anchored in the wall.

Jack tried to take hold of Joe’s sleeve, but his fingers slipped right through.
I don’t think I can,
he said.

Another step forward, and now the demon was cackling mercilessly.
The chain is almost forged,
it said.
And your devil friend has provided us with the final key.

“Malachai?” Alex asked, and loosened her grip momentarily. Joe stumbled forward, and in a heartbeat his arm was disappearing into the wall.

“No,” Alex screamed, as Joe’s head slipped out of sight. “Let him go, you bitch!”

Now or never,
Malachai offered.

“You fucker,” she breathed, and then remembered what he’d said in the hallway. Joe’s chest slipped out of the room and his arm had disappeared past the elbow. Alex let go of his hand, grabbing him instead around the legs as, inexorably, his body pulled away from the room to someplace else.

Closing her eyes, she focused again on finding that place inside. That feeling. She tried to imagine a chain around Joe’s waist that held him here, and in her anger, she wished—no demanded—that the creature release him.

“Let him go!” she screamed, her anger releasing whatever walls she kept up normally between herself and her inner secret power that she didn’t understand. She felt the fire race through her fingers to cascade along Joe’s body. When it met the blackened crack in reality where his form disappeared, the smoke of the Curburide seemed to glow bright with tension. “Now!” she insisted and pulled with every secret muscle that she’d ever used to talk to a ghost.

And then Joe was tumbling backwards, knocking her to the floor as he was set free. Alex heard a deafening shriek in her mind, a scream that was answered by distant howls of contempt.

“Holy shit.” Joe gasped, and shook his head, choking as he rolled off her. He didn’t pause to regain his bearings or discuss what had just happened. He only grabbed Alex’s hand and pulled her to her feet. “Let’s get the fuck out of here!”

She was dizzy, and could hear the screams gaining in the distance. They were growing louder fast. Like a train that was approaching a station.

“I think we had better do that right now,” she agreed, and staggered ahead of him to throw open the hotel room door.

“What was it like?” Joe asked, turning his eyes away from the gray ribbon of asphalt. It stretched out in front of them like eternity; the way to Austin would take them that long driving, it seemed. It was more than a thousand miles. He hoped they would make it by Tuesday. After four days of long drives, they were going to need to hole up and rest somewhere soon.

“What was
what
like?” Alex asked.

“Growing up in Nebraska. Kind of out in the middle of nowhere, like this.” He pointed at the clear blue sky, and the red-rutted gullies beside the road. The land on either side of the highway stretched lifeless and unused as far as the eye could see.

“Well, it wasn’t this bad,” she said. “We had fields for corn, and there were some people about. Not like this. I only lived in purgatory. This is hell.”

You have not a clue,
Malachai offered.
But you will know soon.
She ignored him.

“I grew up praying every night for the day when I could be old enough to get away. I used to construct these amazing fantasy escapes, where I stole a car and drove to Las Vegas and became one of those dancers with all the glitzy outfits and feather headdresses until I could make enough money to go to L.A.”

“What did you want to do in L.A.?”

“Work at Disneyland? Be in a movie? Hang out at the beach all day and work as a lifeguard?” She shrugged. “Anything, really. It didn’t matter. All I knew was that I had to get away from home, and the longer I stayed, the more I knew that if I didn’t do it soon, I was going to die. Literally.”

“From what, boredom?”

She laughed. “Hardly. Though I
was
pretty bored—my parents didn’t even allow me to watch TV or listen to the radio. Claimed they were the devil’s tools.”

“So…from what?”

Alex was quiet for a moment, alone with a thought she didn’t know how to phrase.

“That time I told you about, where my dad whipped me in the basement…that wasn’t the first time he did something like that.”

“Kinda figured,” Joe said. “It sounded pretty bad, but, I thought maybe there was more to make you go so…”

“Psycho?”

“Maybe a little.”

“More than a little,” she said, and looked back out the car window. “Most kids don’t take a hatchet to their parents. But most kids don’t spend half of their childhood being locked in a closet, with nothing to play with but the ghosts and the attic mice.”

“He used to lock you in a closet?”

“It was supposed to be a pantry, between the kitchen and the front room.

“It was kind of a weird space right under the stairs. But my parents didn’t keep food in it. Oh no…that would be too normal for them. Instead, they made this…chapel. They put in a statue of Jesus, with a kneeler in front of it, and on the shelves where you were supposed to put cereal or flour or sugar or whatever…they put candles. When my father found out that I talked with the dead, he made me kneel in that little room and pray to Jesus for, what he called, my ‘wicked fraternizing with demons.’”

“I’d think a religious person would have been excited about his little girl seeing spirits,” Joe said. “Kinda like, it proves that there’s an afterlife and all. Maybe that you’re a girl God had given special gifts to, as well.”

“Yeah, well, my daddy didn’t see it that way. I think it scared the hell out of him that I could see ghosts, and the way he saw it, if they were really dead people who were still here on earth, then they hadn’t lived their lives right or they’d be up in the light, having dinner with the Father, Son and Holy Ghost. So if they were here still, they were either the spirits of the damned or demons themselves. He wasn’t too keen on the idea of me talking with either.

“Anyway, he used to make me go in there and kneel for hours. Every now and then, he’d open the door really fast, to see if he could catch me off my kneeler, or talking with someone invisible. After I got caught doing that a couple times, and had the switch spanked across my bare ass for it, I wised up, and kept my knees to the kneeler. The more he put me in there though, the less I prayed. Sometimes he’d open the door and see my lips moving and holler ‘Who’re ya talking to, young lady?’ and I always said ‘Jesus.’ But it wasn’t Jesus, and I think he knew that. But what could he do about it? Usually it was Genna I was talking with, telling her about how mean he was being to me, and when my dad poked his head in and I told him I was talking to Jesus, she’d laugh like crazy. It would be all I could do to keep the smile from creeping across my face as she was doubled over next to me, whispering things like ‘Can you see my halo?’ and ‘Never mind my breasts, I’m the king of heaven!’ ”

“Sounds like a character.”

“She was. I really miss her. She’s the one who helped me make friends with the attic mice.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, sometimes my dad would lock me in the room overnight. I used to wonder if he would just forget about me and leave me in there for a week to starve. Genna told me to hide some food in there when things were okay, so that it would be there for me when things got bad…which they did every couple weeks.

“So I tucked a couple candy bars behind the candles on one of the shelves. One night, I had been locked in the room for hours. It was stifling in there, with the candles going. The smell made me dizzy, like being locked in church with incense under your nose. Sweat was dripping off my forehead. A drop actually ran down my nose, I remember, and dripped on my hand. I was so tired, I didn’t even wipe it off. I just laid my head down on my arm, stretching my hand forward until it rested on the little altar shelf that Jesus was on. I started slipping into sleep.

“But something tickled my hand. I don’t know how long I was out; probably not too long or I wouldn’t have woken up from such a small touch. But I felt the tickle, and struggled to push open an eyelid to see what it was. For a second I thought that it was a hairy spider, and a chill went down my back. When my eyes finally opened though, I saw it wasn’t a spider at all. It was a mouse. Its little pink nose was puffing in and out, and it looked all jittery. Its head twisted back and forth and then it pushed its little mouth up to my hand and I saw a pink tongue flick across my skin to lap up the bead of sweat there.”

“Cool.”

Alex nodded. “It was. That night, when I moved my hand, it skittered away. But later, I started leaving little crumbs around the statue, and I would kneel there and wait. Sure enough, if I was patient for an hour or two, the mouse would come, and chow down on whatever I’d left for it. Genna would help me sometimes, letting me know that the mouse was near so I would be still. It took a long time, but eventually it got so used to me, that it would eat right out of my hand.”

“So you made it a pet.”

“For awhile. Until my dad found out.”

“How’d he do that?”

“One night, it was really late; and I’d been in there for hours. I figured my parents were asleep, so I was laying there on the kneeler, petting the mouse with one finger, and feeding it little bits of this granola bar with my other hand. I don’t know how long he had been watching me, but he saw enough. He must have had the door cracked; I never heard it open. But then there he was, yanking me by my hair off the kneeler and dragging me out into the kitchen.

“ ‘No matter what we try to teach you about goodness and purity, you have to do the opposite, don’t you?’ he said to me. ‘I try to protect you from cavorting with demons and so you take the next dirtiest thing and befriend the rats. You’re a dirty, scandalous child, Alexandra,’ he said and shoved me face-first up the stairs. But not before he said the words that I’ve never, ever forgotten.”

“What’s that?” Joe asked, though he was afraid to hear the answer.

“ ‘I wish you’d never been born,’ he said. And the next night, when he got home from work and shoved me into the closet, I wished I’d never been born, too.”

Alex squeezed her eyes shut, holding back a tear.

“What happened?” Joe asked.

“That night, when he pushed me in the closet, well right there in front of Jesus, next to a sprinkle of granola crumbs, was a little spot of blood. The blood had dripped from the mouth of my mouse. His little neck was twisted and broken from where my dad’s mousetrap had snapped it. The poor thing was still there, dead and mangled in the trap, next to Jesus’ feet. I cried a long time that night, and petted the soft fur of the poor thing. It was my fault that this had happened, and I couldn’t bear to see that accusation written there in its glassy eyes. It had come to the trap lured by the granola I had fed it. Granola I had taught it to think of as safe. That was probably the first time I wished my father dead. But it wasn’t the last. Not by a long shot.”

“Man,” was all Joe could think to say. The car was silent for the next hundred miles. Joe was afraid to ask any more questions. Instead, he just started looking for a likely town to find a place to get a couple good meals and spend the night in.

“So, what do you wanna do in Austin?” Joe asked, when a road sign finally announced the town was just over a hundred miles away. They’d spent the night in a tiny town just shy of the halfway point, and gotten an early start the next morning. Now the afternoon sun was slanting into Joe’s eyes.

“What do you mean?”

“Well…in San Francisco, we didn’t get a chance to check out Alcatraz. Didn’t know if you’d ever wanted to see Austin.”

“Don’t know anything about it,” she said. “Bunch of country boys there, isn’t there?”

“Actually, no. Austin’s like the only place in Texas I’d recommend going. It’s totally a Mecca for music and stuff. They call it the Live Music Capital of the World.”

“In Texas?”

“Yep. It’s a college town and the state capital, and there’s even a lake there up in the hills. It’s different than the rest of the state. There’s a really famous nude beach there by the lake—Hippie Hollow. We could go up there if you’re curious.”

Alex punched him in the shoulder. “You wish. If you wanted to see me naked, why didn’t you just say so? You’ve had enough opportunity this week, sharing a room and all.”

Joe took his hands off the wheel and raised them above his head.

“Me? I’d never take advantage of a lady.”

“Naw, you’d just take her up to a nude beach and make her show everyone what she’s got.”

Joe laughed, and flicked a strand of coal black hair from her cheek. “Yeah, you’d be showing them pretty clearly that the carpet doesn’t match the drapes!”

She rolled her eyes. “Let’s just find the hotel and see if there are any ghosts still hanging around that know any more about this slasher chick.”

“Suit yourself,” Joe said. “But don’t underestimate the attraction of fat naked guys lolling around a lake in the sun.”

“I’ll pass. You go. I’m sure they’d be interested in seeing your white ass walking around. Maybe you’ll find yourself with some new admirers.” She gave him a long look up and down and grinned. “Make sure you take some soap to drop.”

“You’ve been watching too many prison movies.”

Alex put a hand over her heart. “
Moi?
I don’t know what you mean. I’m an innocent girl from Nebraska remember?”

“Innocent, my ass.”

The Marriott was just off the highway, a few blocks from the convention center and the city’s famous Sixth Street club district. Joe got directions at a gas station, and moments later pulled off I-35 and found the hotel.

“Why here?” Alex mused, as they walked into the black marble lobby. Someone was playing a piano near the bar. “I thought she killed a guy here on Halloween…someone who was all dressed like Beetlejuice and walking in some parade.”

“Not a parade,” Joe said. “A few blocks from here though, they close off the whole street for Halloween and a lot of other festivals. It’s like a big party district.”

“Okay…well…skip the hippie nudies and take me there.”

“Got a fake ID?”

“Naw. But I’m sure you can get me in. You’re a big, strong older man and all.”

“Flattery will get you drunk. Now shoosh while I get you a bathtub to sleep in.”

Joe got a room with twin beds and pointed the way towards the elevators. When they were out of earshot of the front desk, he asked, “So…any ghosts lurking about?”

Alex nodded. “Some. None have really paid attention to us though, so I haven’t encouraged them. I’d kinda like to take a nap first.”

“Wimp.”

“Nudist.”

“Only in the shower.”

“Thank God.”

“You’re feeling pretty feisty for a girl who wants a nap.”

“I’m mouthy when I’m tired.”

“Hate to see you when you’re awake then.”

They stepped off the elevator on the fifth floor, and found their room. Joe waved a hand at the beds and proclaimed, “Your boudoir, mistress.”

“I’m no mistress,” Alex announced, bouncing up and down a few times on her butt on the nearest mattress. “I’m a dangerous murderer who talks with ghosts and is on a top secret mission to save the world from demons.”

“Mistress is easier to say.”

“Keep dreaming,” she said, and laid her head back on the pillow, closing her eyes. “That’s what I’m going to do.”

In seconds, Alex was sleeping. Joe looked out the window at the city and decided to do the same. His back was sore from driving, and he found himself stifling a heavy yawn. In moments, both of them were lying on their beds on top of the comforters, mouths open, eyes shut. Alex began to snore.

“This looks like a good spot,” Joe said. They had both awoken and showered, before taking a walk to the downtown hub for dinner. After passing about 20 bars, ranging from the blatantly titled Chugging Monkey and the clear utility of Buffalo Billiards to the testosterone whimsy of Jackalope and the more ethereal Eternal, they had stopped in front of an Irish Pub, B.D. O’Rileys. The 10-foot-tall front windows were open, and people sat at square wooden tables drinking beer and eating sandwiches while looking out at the street. It was dusk, and the neon lights of the bar district had just started to glow.

“Think they have burgers?” Alex asked.

“I’m sure.”

“Think they’ll serve minors?”

“Never hurts to try.”