The Devil's Dream: A Nightmare (2 page)

The two of them stared at each other for a moment, Matthew wondering if she would wake up and realize who stood in front of her, or if she was too far gone for that. It didn’t really matter, though; she would serve her purpose without ever having to think another thought.

“Hi, Marley. Glad to see you,” Matthew said, and walked down the hall to collect the girl.

J
ake Deschaine looked
at the phone he had just hung up. He knew there were things he needed to do, things that he should already be doing right now, even though the call only ended moments before. He needed to make sure he had the correct address. He needed to call a few sergeants, make sure they had their people heading out there. He needed to get in his own car, head to the scene, and probably call forensics on his way. There were things to do, and speed—as always—mattered.

Jake didn’t move though. He just stared at the phone, listening to the words echo inside his head.

“The missing persons names are Allison and Marley Moore. Their house is at Fifty-Six Cherry Way. Beat cop went by because Moore’s work said she had no-showed which was out of character. Should have uniforms getting there within the hour.”

“The names again?”

“Allison Moore, and her daughter, Marley Moore.”

“Them? Like, not people with similar names, but them?”

“As far as I know, yes.”

Jake didn’t know Allison Moore. Had never met the woman and never seen her daughter. The name, though, was as common to Jake as Stephen King’s would be to a fan of horror fiction. Four years ago the woman had been the most important law enforcement officer in the entire country. Jake had just started patrolling Katy, Texas back then, but he watched her press conferences and read every piece of news that he ran across. She practically disappeared as soon as the case ended, and the country knew why, because that killer, Matthew Brand, took everything from her. Jake heard she ended up moving to Katy, which made sense because of the children’s clinic that the entire city touted as
the
best in the nation.

And now, Jake was what? Investigating her disappearance?

That’s exactly what he was doing.

He didn’t know the woman, had only seen her on television and online, and not even that in four years—but he still felt a loss. What had Allison Moore been to him? An idol? A goal? He hadn’t been some impressionable sixteen year old when she began her search; he was twenty-four, yet still, she had left her mark. He watched her travel the country, watched her trying things that no one else would have even thought of. Then he watched her lose everything while still stopping that psychotic.

Except now, Jake was about to drive a car to her house and look into a missing persons report.

He stood up from his desk, grabbing his cell phone and placing it in his pocket. He’d give his dad a call on the way, if he had time. Jake felt like he’d woken up in some different dimension: a world that he didn’t know and might not care to know. He wasn’t supposed to be the one doing this, looking into the disappearance of someone who should be considered a national hero.

I
f someone had asked
Art Brayden what was wrong, he would have told them, “I’m fucking pissed.”

No one asked though because no one here in Texas knew who he was or why he was here. He had shown up, more or less, on his own volition without giving warning to anyone. His boss knew—vaguely—and by vaguely it meant his boss thought Art was taking a few vacation days.

Art hadn’t spoken with Allison Moore in years. If he thought hard about it, perhaps they last spoke six months after the whole shootout (which received just about as much media coverage as anything Art had ever seen). He asked her how Marley was doing, received some honest answers, and that had been it. Allison left the bureau and Art didn’t, but he wasn’t really expecting her to stay around anyway. Her husband was dead and her daughter nearly the same, a body without a mind wasn’t much of a life, so it was clear to everyone that Allison had more pressing things to deal with than catching criminals. So. Three and a half years since he spoke to her? Four years since he’d seen her?

Last night he got the call that she was missing. It wasn’t anything huge, not anything the news would pick up if law enforcement had any luck. The call came to him because he had been her last boss at the bureau. It came to him because he’d been there with her when they shot holes through a metal warehouse and killed a monster. The FBI kept an eye on her, so when her job reported her missing and the cops showed up to an empty house, the FBI was made aware (even if most people involved didn’t care too much) which filtered its way to Art Brayden.

Art cared, so when he heard, he took two days off and flew from Washington D.C. to Texas. He wasn’t dropping anything off at a hotel room; he waited for a taxi at the airport, loaded his bag in the trunk, and told the driver Allison’s address.

There wasn’t any reason for Allison Moore to be missing. Her daughter either. They should be at work and school, but they weren’t. No one knew where they were, and from what the call said last night, a splattering of Allison’s blood was in the house.

It could be a copycat.

That’s what Art kept saying to himself. Allison was missing but that didn’t mean
he
was back.

This isn’t some Harry Potter novel. You can say his name.

Art didn’t want to though. He never wanted to say that name again, never wanted to even think it. Not out of fear, but out of the headaches that came with it. The man that shouldn’t be alive, that
wasn’t
alive—Art never wanted to chase him again. Chasing that man was like chasing a ghost, something that didn’t exist except in your imagination. He didn’t want to chase a ghost. He didn’t want to go through it again. Art didn’t fear him because Art only feared his creator, the Almighty God, and knew that one day God would lay this man as low as possible. God would take care of him in His own time and all the fear and hate that Brand had caused in the world would be put back on him. He knew that in the end everything would be taken care of without Art’s help, but Art
still
didn’t want to deal with the part that might need his help. The part of capturing the man.

Just say it.

Of capturing Matthew Brand.

It didn’t matter, he wasn’t alive. Dillan was dead, or at least gone, but that didn’t mean Brand took him. It didn’t mean that some superhuman, science-fiction creation had gobbled him up. It meant that the guy had done a lot of dirty deeds and someone finally offed him. Maybe they kidnapped him and took his money. Maybe Dillan fled on his own. None of it meant that Brand showed up and killed him; none of it meant he had done the same with Allison.

It could be a copycat.

Jesus, for fuck’s sake, let it be a copycat.

There wasn’t any other reason for Moore to be missing; Art kept finding himself at that inescapable truth. His mind traveled over and over the possible paths, and in the end, he came to that single answer. No one hated Allison Moore. No one really even knew she existed any longer. She had disappeared from the public eye quickly and was forgotten, which was what she wanted—a life of trying to fix her daughter. Except now she wasn’t here anymore nor the daughter she dedicated herself to, and why? Brand, or a copycat, took her. No one else is stealing a woman with a handicapped child.

Art boarded a plane heading to Texas at five in the morning for two reasons. He felt somewhat responsible for this. Not completely; he wouldn’t put that on himself, just as he hadn’t put the responsibility for the last Brand disaster completely on Allison. The Lord said each man would account for his own sins, and so if Brand had shown up in Texas and taken away this woman, then Brand would pay for that one day. Art’s responsibility lay with his forceful denial of Brand being alive. Three years ago, when that damned scientist started calling everyone he could about The Wall, saying Brand had escaped through someone else, Art called it preposterous. Ridiculous. Laughable. When Dillan turned up missing, Art discarded it as a coincidence at best and a publicity stunt by the writer at worst. Art had used a lot of clout to keep the bureau from looking. Allison told him once that he should do that anyway, that he should let Brand do as he pleased, get his son back, and then disappear from the world. Art didn’t do it, obviously, because he followed the goddamn bastard to Florida and got a whole bunch of people killed in the process. So maybe that was part of the reason he pushed against anyone believing Brand still existed. The other part, though, was that Art didn’t believe it. He understood that Brand had escaped from The Wall himself, that was
possible
, but that Brand had hidden himself inside the machine? Had then somehow implanted himself into one of the other criminals and
broke out again
? Insanity like that didn’t exist. The other prisoner escaped the same way Brand had, because the whole idea of The Wall was idiotic and didn’t possess the necessary technology to hold its prisoners in.

That’s what he preached and that’s what the world came to believe, at least the part of the world Art concerned himself with.

Allison was missing though, four years later, and no one had been watching out for her. The FBI only heard about it because her name tripped off alarms in their system. No cops sat outside her house. No one checked in periodically. Why would they? Brand was dead and no one besides him would hate this woman.

Only, Allison was missing.

It’s a copycat. It’s someone that wants to start scaring the entire country again, and the best way to do it was to grab her.

Art told himself that for the entire hour ride from the airport to Allison Moore’s house.

* * *

E
ighteen hours
after the first cop showed up, the premises were still abuzz. Twenty police officers moved around the house, a few stood out on the driveway talking, and yellow police tape was strung up around the yard and driveway entrance. Art had a general idea of what all these people were doing, but it had been decades since he had to do any of it himself. He knew they were trying to figure out what happened, but didn’t really understand the ‘hows’ behind it. He didn’t need to anymore.

He got out of the taxi then draped his FBI ID around his neck. He rarely wore the necklace ID, but he simply didn’t want to have to explain himself to everyone that asked. They might instead ask what the FBI cared about this, but maybe not. Either way, the FBI didn’t care, not yet, and so he wasn’t going to do much answering.

“Keep the meter running. I’m going to want to leave here in a bit, okay?”

The cab driver nodded, not saying anything, but gazed lazily out at the crime scene in front of him.

Art stepped over the tape and walked up the driveway. Local cops looked but didn’t say anything. Art wasn’t carrying a notepad, a gun, nothing. He was here to view the scene and hopefully leave with at least a semblance of surety that this had nothing to do with Brand.

He walked through the front door and stood in the foyer. The living room was to his right, the kitchen straight ahead, and a hallway towards his left.

“How did the intruder get in?” Art asked two cops standing in the living room.

They turned to him. “Excuse me?” One said.

Art lifted up his necklace, dangling it from a finger. “How did the intruder get in?”

The cop who had spoken nodded. “No signs of forced entry. No broken windows or door frames. The only damage to the house happened in the bedroom, where it looks like the perp bashed the victim’s head against the closet door frame. We’re really not sure how the perp gained entry yet, unless the victim let him or her in.”

Art let his eyes drop to the living room floor. “Was she in here when things started?”

“We think so. Some of the furniture has been slightly moved which probably happened when she started running to get to the gun in the bedroom. She kept it locked in a box at the back of her closet.”

A former FBI agent who kept her gun locked up and hidden in a closet. A former FBI agent who had once been hunted by the goddamn devil deciding she no longer needed a weapon around her and her daughter. So stupid. Art wanted to shake her right now, just grab her by her shoulders and shake her until her teeth clapped against each other inside her head. Had she kept the gun within eyesight, she probably would still be here. She and her daughter.

“Thanks,” Art said and walked into the kitchen. He looked at the small table with two chairs underneath it. A box of cereal stood next to a bowl. Art walked over and looked inside; it was mostly empty besides a thin layer of colored milk at the bottom. The food-dye from the cereal had leaked into the milk, giving it a slightly green color. Nothing had been touched in the house yet. Soon Allison’s family would begin arriving and they would take things out and the box of half-full cereal would find itself thrown into a garbage can. For now, nothing was disturbed because the police had no bodies, no perpetrators, no breaking and entering. They had a missing person and were hoping something in this house would give them a clue as to what happened yesterday morning.

Art turned from the kitchen and started walking down the hallway. Someone passed on his left but didn’t look at him or give any salutation. Art had been told what was in the bedroom, but he wanted to see it for himself. Just because there was a message didn’t mean it was Brand. It didn’t mean anything besides someone had written something. Grandiose actions were copycat killer trademarks

They’re also Brand’s trademarks.

He walked into the bedroom and his eyes were drawn to a detective squatting down over a bloodstain. Art moved over to it, standing a few feet back from the cop, but still able to see the scarlet red on the white carpet. Not a lot of blood, just enough to be noticeable.

The detective looked up. “Heard you might be stopping by. My name is Jake Deschaine.” The man extended his hand and Art left it there for a second.

“Heard I’d be stopping by?”

“Yes, sir. Kind of a rumor that’s been going around, saying someone from the FBI might take an interest and you were the most likely candidate.” Jake’s hand still hung in the air.

Art shook it, then looked back down at the stain on the carpet, saying nothing else.

“There’s blood here and then you’ll find some in the closet smeared on the inside of the frame. She was trying to grab the gun from up above, but it’s lying on the floor now, in its case, unopened. She got pretty close to it, apparently.”

“Someone up front said you don’t know how the perp got in?” Art asked as he walked to the closet.

“Nothing official, but I’m pretty sure he came through a window in here.” Jake pointed next to the bed. “The left window isn’t locked but the right one is, which doesn’t make a lot of sense. Of course, the victim could have slept on one side or the other and opened one window or the other, but why she would do that during a Texas summer is beyond me. The rest of the windows in the house are locked too.”

Art found the window and looked at the latch. “So, then, how did this one become unlocked?”

“At some point, the perp had to have access to the house. That’s the only thing that makes sense if the theory holds. He came in, unlocked the window, and left again.”

“Why not just take her then or come in the same way the next time?”

“Because this window is facing the backyard would be my biggest guess. The front door was locked when we arrived, and the only other door to the house actually exits on the side that faces a neighbor, with a stone pathway that leads to the backyard. That door was locked, too. So it would be hard for the perp to come in the front door and drag people out that way. Someone would have seen. He arrived when no one was home, unlocked the window, and then left. He came back later, I don’t know how much later, when people were home and came through the window, then took everyone out the window as well.”

Art nodded. He wasn’t sure if any of what the kid said was true, but it made some logical sense. Art walked back to the closet, having gone to the window before getting a chance to look inside it.

“The blood is smeared in a consistent pattern with someone getting their head whacked on the wall a few times. You can see where the original blood splatter happened here, and then as the perp continued to hit her, how it smeared as her face continually touched the wood.”